This below by Taibbi and Kirn on AI propagandizing us through news media. “We are the most propagandized people and we don’t know it”, sage Jimmy Dore.
And some new stuff with Douglas Murray commenting on Trump’s playing with a “moral suasion” approach to the thugs of our world. Careful, careful, Donald. But yes, give it a shot as the old approaches haven’t worked.
Also, go to the “Mother of all contributing factors” to eruptions of violence- i.e. bad archetypes still protected “under the canopy of the sacred”. Nothing more impactful here than the great contradiction between the message of Historical Jesus (his “stunning new theology”) and the retrograde themes of Paul’s Christ myth.
This is good on what they do best– i.e. Matt in journalism, Walter in novel/script writing- as in the search for truth. And they then analyze media/journalism today that has become something very different. This is about something much larger than how news and AI propagandize us. Its about how power-seeking elites manipulate public narratives to deceive us commoners, to dominate and control us with endless lies, with what H. L. Mencken termed “hobgoblins, mostly imaginary” so that we will clamor to be saved by the elites.
Matt asks- “What if suddenly it wasn’t about that (i.e. truth) anymore? What if the standard was to have enough quantitative convincing power to force a version of reality onto people that isn’t real?”
In what they refer to, I see the same old totalitarian impulse to coercion, domination, and control of populations. The elite obsession to dominate and control others- i.e. us commoners. This gets into how propagandized we are today by media, and how media refuse to self-correct today even after being exposed for endless distortion and lying.
They get into how AI and Google algorithms now shape media to continue propagandizing us. This gets into things like search results and what is prioritized for our searches.
Snippets from their conversation (their “America This Week” is a great independent news source/subscription, among the best for in-depth, behind-the-scenes probing of what is going on in our liberal democracies):
Taibbi: “They have a very complex calculation that involves what people think about who the most authoritative source is, and that’s based on things like how many awards they got and how many bestsellers and other things of that sort. So it up-weighs the New York Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, it downgrades independent sites.”
This goes to how public narratives are created, maintained, pushed on the public, even after exposed as grand lies.
Kirn: “It’s orthodoxy, in other words, that AI seeks, not necessarily truth. Orthodoxy is often in the history of mankind overturned by truth. That’s usually what does it. The Catholic Church’s idea of how the universe operates and what orbits what is taken down by astronomical observation.”
He adds: “The AI doesn’t see anything. The AI is blind and neutral. It’s the people who are manipulating it or using it and trying to reach certain goals through it that see it that way.”
They go into how truth is no longer prioritized, but authority and orthodoxy are the priorities. Winning is primary. Kirn says, “The motive is to protect your world. To protect yourself… your authority becomes something that you protect at all costs, and you also protect other authorities.”
They note how AI search results mix truthful fact with wrong information and that audiences are being programmed to accept it all as truth. AI mixes hallucinations with non-hallucinations.
Kirn: “its hallucinations are to it exactly as convincing or have the same status as its non-hallucinations. In human beings, we know the difference. Like, whoa, pink elephants, I’m sitting in a doctor’s office. They’re not usually in a doctor’s office. Grok has no ability to know to grade its own output…”
Matt Taibbi: “Right. It doesn’t weight its insane results against its correct results. Which is scary. And in being like that, it’s training audiences to have some of the same instincts, which is particularly terrifying. And it’s tempting people in the journalism business to make use of this in ways that I think are going to be extremely dangerous. We just saw a remarkable phenomenon where former CNN Gadfly, Jim Acosta, interviewed an AI version of Joaquin Oliver, one of the Parkland School shooting victims.”
They then talk about how Acosta is violating the “uncanny valley” response, the natural human revulsion to some monstrous deformity that someone has created, “But this is conditioning us to accept. You talk about permission structures. This is a permission structure to accept the mechanized version of something that’s not quite right.”
They play sections of the Acosta interview of the AI version of the murdered boy to illustrate how grotesque this is.
Kirn asks the father of the deceased boy, “What the fuck are you doing? Really? That’s your honor of your son, is that you’re putting him out there to ask cliched questions and repeat mechanized lines?”
Also, some interesting analysis of how the unpredictable and non-standard Trump came along and upset the standardized, comforting presentation by politicians on both sides. This gets to the crushing of the unique individual for standardized humanity, the collective ruling all. Unique individuals upset that composite standardization.
Kirn: “That in some ways Trump’s outrageousness, his humor, all his edges and his unpredictability, and his egotism and his un-correct ways of expressing himself, are actually a counter force to what he saw coming a long time ago. Because politicians, except for Trump, have been getting more and more AI-like. Obama really was. Now that you look back at him, at the time his smoothness and his skills and his fluidity was kind of wondrous. But now in retrospect, it looks a little AI-like. And it’s as though we have been approaching this omega point of composite being for a while now. And maybe behind the scenes there were two forces, and that knew that these were actually it wasn’t left-right anymore. It was the composite mind versus the individual.”
Matt Taibbi: “And 100%, Walter. My first campaign stories for Rolling Stone, when I went out in 2004, and I talked to aides, and they told me about how they wrote their speeches. The candidate speeches. That they used dial surveys and had groups of people, focus groups react to certain words. For Democrats, warmth, compassion, help, future, progress, these are all words that democratic voters like. The actual content of a speech was usually irrelevant. If you listen to how they were written, they’re not really arguments, they’re strings of words that people like. On the Republican side, they did the same thing. It was responsibility, work, opportunity. These are all things that strike chords with Republican voters.
“Somebody like Mitt Romney you get up there. He was the classic example of this phenomenon. Someone who just spat out words, talking points. And it worked at first, right? Some of the politicians were good at that. But then I started to see audiences react negatively to what they knew was a mechanized presentation, on some level. And when Trump came along, I had the exact same thought that you just did. That even though what he’s saying, people may not agree with, or they may think it’s nuts or offensive or whatever, they know it’s not a machine.”
They conclude that AI is now conditioning us to accept bullshit made by humans as truth.
And to accept something based on numbers and consensus- “What we’re looking at, Matt, is a revolution against the individual and against the old idea of truth by a new algorithmic consensual sense…”
As they say, news “true-ness” is now about “The violence of brute force versus the person who knows.” (Referring to the push of ‘consensus’ in areas like climate alarmism where it is claimed that there is a 97% consensus, versus a few skeptics.)
Matt Taibbi: “Yeah, versus reason, discussion, debate, evaluation, all these human things that we used to do.”
And much more…
https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-august-0a7
Transcript – America This Week, August 8, 2025: “The AI Invasion: Why the Media Won’t Correct Itself: When all you have to convince is a programmable AI, journalism becomes a contest of might, not right. Plus, the brutal hilarity of Voltaire’s ‘Candide’”, Matt Taibbi, Walter Kirn, Aug. 9, 2025
More coming on “ideas matter” as in deal with the bad ideas that incite and validate the worst impulses in us. The Jesus’ message versus Paul’s Christ myth.
A Rose interviews the contemporary “thorn” Murray, Wendell Krossa
Some interesting comment in this interview (see link just below) regarding Trump trying a new approach to dictatorial regimes because past more blunt approaches have not worked. So, suggests Murray, Trump is trying the friendly approach with praise of the thugs- “He is my friend, a great man/person” (referring to Putin, Kim Jong Un, etc.).
Trump is trying this different approach that employs flattery. But it appears that Trump may be getting carried away a bit with an element of pacifism known as “moral suasion”, the belief that if I just set a good example then the bad guy will come around, swayed by my sweetness and respond in kind. Well, that does not work, for example, with psychopathy or minds that are possessed by religious death-cult extremism (i.e. people who glory in death/martyrdom like Hamas).
The moral suasion approach did not work with China where leaders were possessed of the totalitarian impulse to rule all humanity and have pushed an expansionism to control world resources and territories (Silk Road initiative and debt obligations). They took advantage of America’s past state position on moral suasion, that if we let the Chinese take our manufacturing away, that loss was acceptable if they would open their markets and join the club of liberal democracies (a guiding idea behind past globalization).
Instead, the Chinese abused that expression of moral suasion and let the US “hang themselves with their own rope” (Khrushchev’s quip). Yes, try moral suasion but be very careful of the situations and people that you try it with. Maybe with 90%-plus of people it will work, as when Gandhi used it with the “moral sensibilities” of the British who held similar values and would not let their horses trample the protesting Indians (if that Gandhi film was accurate).
But then you have the hardcore psychopathic thugs where moral suasion won’t work and they will abuse your kindness so be ready to defend yourself with counterforce to the bullies. You have no other option to defend yourself and your people (“peace through strength”).
So certainly, as Murray suggests, try moral suasion where the other blunter approach has not worked. Give this a try but do it cautiously and be fully aware of who you are dealing with and be ready when the bullies don’t respond in kind. Your only option then is superior counterforce to back the bullies off because your number one responsibility is to protect yourself and your people from harm. And that too is love, not an abandonment of love.
“Douglas Murray on Donald Trump, America, Israel, and Europe: A Charlie Rose Global Conversation”,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=439z3D3-i18
Add here- Beware of “suicidal empathy” (Gad Saad) clouding common sense as in what we have seen in US cities that are governed by woke progressives possessed of the DEI framing of people according to tribal dualism mythology. Their “decriminalization, de-carceration” policies have let repeat violent criminals free to further harm innocent citizens. That is neglect of the most basic responsibility of governments to protect citizens from harm, from assault/violence. Woke progressives (neo-collectivists) view people as classed by skin color not character (the DEI element). They believe that all people in their “victims” class are perpetual victims due to past historical abuses/racism, claiming that “systemic racism” continues so the status of victimhood continues unendingly for brown and black people. Even repeat violent criminals are victims. Elon Musk has pointed to the ridiculous conclusions this has led some to make, with claims that even Hamas are victims due to their classification in opposition to the white oppressors that are the Jews. So liberate even the repeatedly violent “death cult” people who are committed to your extermination.
Personal character, behavior, and history are not primary in tribal dualism thinking. Skin color takes precedence in classifying people (“Woke Racism”- black scholar John McWhorter). That has resulted in harm to the wider citizenry with leaders blinded by suicidal empathy framed in terms of dogmatic DEI ideology. They are ignoring the consequences/outcomes in harm for innocent others because they are locked into the tribal dualism of woke progressivism with its simple-minded classes of victims/victimizers. They believe history has changed nothing, so they advocate a new discrimination, a new racism that is infecting liberal democracy society with unnecessary hatred and division.
So also, suicidal empathy has influenced leadership in the letting into the US of tens of thousands of violent murderers, rapists, and pedophiles among the larger illegal immigrant invasion of past years. Again, we see in that the blinding effect of suicidal empathy that dominates the far-left progressive movement that refuses to distinguish people according to personal character/behavior, as urged by Martin Luther King, but classes all people, as in traditional Marxism and now in neo-Marxist progressivism, by skin color.
The same has happened with Islamic migrants in Europe. Not with all, but a significant minority estimated at around 15% who come in refusing to assimilate to liberal democracy but expressly hate it and state that they will not accommodate/adapt but want to “take over” and replace liberal democracy with their totalitarian Islamic theocracy (statement of a British Islamicist). The same percentage of the world Muslim population support the death cult belief system of violent jihad against the demonized evil West. That population births the suicidal radicals.
Varied commentators have also noted what should be a normally incompatible association of leftists with Islamicists because of their joint hatred of Western liberal democracies. They are willing to join forces to overthrow liberal democracies as seen in the US protests where leftists join anti-Israel protesters.
The proper, thorough, and long-term solution to such problems is to also confront the bad ideas that incite and validate violent behavior, and that involves confronting the bad ideas long embedded at the core of our great western religions, our dominant belief systems, ideas that have been “secularized” in ideologies like Marxism, Nazism, and environmental alarmism, all sharing the same fundamental primitive narrative themes.
The project of solving violent eruptions for the long-term future, especially religiously-motivated violence, involves more than just “tinkering around the periphery reformism”. We have to go right to core of these dominant belief systems, to the cohering center of theology, to the God at the core of religion that is still revered and worshipped with these features of tribalism, domination, and punitive destruction as the divinely-authorized route to salvation.
These themes have had brutal outcomes across history and they are still there, protected under “the canopy of the sacred”. That defensive protection has to end. Basic human responsibility obligates us to fearlessly go after the monster God at the core (like Christopher Hitchens willing to stand up and “give the finger” to the Western religious God).
A courageous wisdom sage gave us the solution two thousand years ago, the alternative of an entirely, stunningly new theology, a new image of God as essentially unconditional love. Two decades later Paul rejected that new theology and retreated shamefully to reestablish the old monster theology in his Christ myth (his statement of theology in Romans 12:17-20, “’Vengeance is mine, I will retaliate’, says the Lord”). Paul buried completely the Jesus’ breakthrough insight and message on unconditional reality and ethics, a message that transforms everything and radically so.
Don’t take my word for this. Americans, listen to your founder Thomas Jefferson and to Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy. They did not spell out the details but got the jist of the matter right, the “diamonds of Jesus buried in the dung of Paul”. The “Search for Historical Jesus”, “Jesus Seminar”, and “Q Wisdom Sayings” research have given us all the historical details that enable a better understanding today of the differences between Jesus and Paul. Most helpful is the research of dedicated scholars like Bob Brinsmead.
“The Historical Jesus: What the Scholars are Saying”
https://bobbrinsmead.com/the-historical-jesus-what-the-scholars-are-saying/
“The Doctrine of Christ and the Triumph of Hellenism”
https://bobbrinsmead.com/the-doctrine-of-christ-and-the-triump-of-hellenism/
Continuing with comment above…
So be angry, pissed off, even outraged, just like that first audience of Jews listening to Jesus’ first public speech in a local synagogue. He left off the emotionally satisfying conclusion in Isaiah 61- “the day of vengeance of our God”. He left the focus, in the minds of his audience, on the liberation of captives and the generosity of an unconditionally, inclusive God who ignored tribal hatreds and boundaries to send his prophets to heal and help enemies.
Like those enraged Jews, get yourself all worked up at that stunning new theology of unconditional love for even enemies.
But then, with all the integrity you can muster, look at the evidence of historical outcomes from the old monster theology, the violence following early Councils, the Crusade slaughter of Jews and Muslims, the murderous inquisitions and persecution of heretics and witches, and worst of all the 100 million-plus slaughtered by Marxism and Nazism, all shaped by the same basic themes listed just below.
Recognize the outcomes of the ideas/ideals/beliefs that you are holding on to, believing, and worshipping. It’s not all goodness and light. There is a monstrous dark side, dark elements in the mix. Features that incite outcomes of immense harm. Take responsibility for that in your belief system. Just as the military guy warned- You will just get more eruptions of violence if you don’t’ deal with the “Mother of all root contributing factors” to such eruptions, the inciting, guiding, and validating ideas.
The bad stuff has long been deeply embedded as “subconscious archetypes” and we often don’t even know how they influence us because the influence may not be from their presence in daily “awake conscious awareness”. Look at how many find unconscious “emotional satisfaction” in embracing the climate apocalypse narrative as true, despite now amassed evidence to the contrary.
These archetypes (long deeply embedded in human subconscious) push us to repeatedly frame our narratives with the same old themes of (1) original paradise lost or ruined by bad people, (2) humanity and life now declining toward something worse, toward apocalyptic ending, (3) the demand for salvation as sacrifice/payment, suffering, and (4) salvation through violent destruction as in (5) the obligation of true believers to engage some deformed hero’s quest shaped by Zoroaster’s cosmic dualism of a Good God fighting an evil monster (Satanic threat) that must be exterminated in order to (5) clear the way to salvation in restored paradise or the installation of a new utopian kingdom of God (see Revelation).
Many continue to find emotional satisfaction in embracing an endless series of proposed “new narratives” that are framed with these same old primitive themes. Many remain unaware of the real nature of the archetypes in their subconscious that are influencing them.
Also, some of my articles presenting critical points made on this site:
From Retaliation to Unconditional love- the story of humanity’s exodus/liberation from animal existence to become human.
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9809
Humanity’s worst ideas, better alternatives (Old story themes, new story alternatives).
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=9533
The Christ myth buried the singularly profound insight of Historical Jesus. The project to recover that insight involves “separating diamonds from dung” (Thomas Jefferson, Leo Tolstoy).
http://www.wendellkrossa.com/?p=8664
Where have you heard this before, eh? Wendell Krossa
A military guy, after crushing the ISIS eruption in Syria (2014), said: “You can crush these eruptions of violence with military force but they will keep recurring until you go after the ideas that drive them.” Historian Richard Landes said the same with regard to the “apocalyptic millennial” ideas that drove Marxism and Nazism, and are now driving environmental alarmism, that until you recognize how these themes can lead societies into mass-death movements, you will only keep repeating the same errors.
“We become just like the God that we believe in, that we worship. “God”, or whatever else that we embrace as our ultimate ideal.”
And… “If your God uses violence to solve problems, then so may you”, psychologist Harold Ellens, quoted in psychotherapist Zenon Lotufo’s book “Cruel God, Kind God”.
This fuller statement from Ellens:
“There is in Western culture a psychological archetype, a metaphor that has to do with the image of a violent and wrathful God (see Romans, Revelation). Crystallized in Anselm’s juridical atonement theory, this image represents God sufficiently disturbed by the sinfulness of humanity that God had only two options: destroy us or substitute a sacrifice to pay for our sins. He did the latter. He killed Christ.
“Ellens goes on by stating that the crucifixion, a hugely violent act of infanticide or child sacrifice, has been disguised by Christian conservative theologians as a ‘remarkable act of grace’. Such a metaphor of an angry God, who cannot forgive unless appeased by a bloody sacrifice, has been ‘right at the center of the Master Story of the Western world for the last 2,000 years. And the unavoidable consequence for the human mind is a strong tendency to use violence’.
“’With that kind of metaphor at our center, and associated with the essential behavior of God, how could we possibly hold, in the deep structure of our unconscious motivations, any other notion of ultimate solutions to ultimate questions or crises than violence- human solutions that are equivalent to God’s kind of violence’…
“Hence, in our culture we have a powerful element that impels us to violence, a Cruel God Image… that also contributes to guilt, shame, and the impoverishment of personality…”.
Harold Ellens concludes, “If your God uses force, then so may you, to get your way against your ‘enemies’”.
To frame this for non-religious or atheist folks- “We become just like our ultimate ideals.”
I would add to the feature of violence in deity, (1) the feature of domination (deity as Lord, King, Ruler with the ultimate hope for true believers of eternal absolute totalitarianism under their religion with crushing “rod of iron” rule by Lord Christ), (2) the feature of tribal exclusion (deity favoring true believers, damning unbelievers), and (3) the feature of punitive destruction as in the belief that the route to salvation involves destruction (i.e. apocalyptic purging of evil to prepare for the installation of the utopian kingdom of God, as per the vision of Revelation, and as advocated throughout Paul’s letters- e.g. 2 Thessalonians 1:9, “They (those refusing to submit to Lord Christ) will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord”).
The above are bad ideas/beliefs that incite, guide, and validate bad human behavior, as Ellens noted above. One of the most disturbing features above is the feature of totalitarianism under the Christ. It is eternal and absolute like nothing under any earthly dictator because refusal to bow the knee is met with being thrown into the lake of fire to be tormented forever. Earthly torture by dictators has an end.
This feature of domination began with the earliest shaman elevating themselves over fellow tribals with priestly claims to know the secrets to the invisible world of spirits/gods and how to appease their anger with blood sacrifices, often human. That demand for submission to their religious conditions led to the later formation of the myth that “people were created to serve the gods”. Divine validation of domination/subservience relationships. As my friend Bob Brinsmead states, “Where there is no freedom there is no love”. Christ lording over all forever has nothing to do with “God is love”. Don’t fool yourself that you can merge and mix such entire opposites. That only ends with profound cognitive dissonance from one of history’s worst oxymoronic combinations, as in Paul’s “Jesus Christ”.
The above features define the deities of the great Western religions- Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And you wonder why the histories of these religions have included so much ongoing violence?
Two millennia ago, Historical Jesus offered the insight that there was no such tribal, dominating, destroying God. Instead, he claimed that God was no conditions love. He framed his stunning new theology within the “behavior based on belief” coupling. Stating, “don’t engage ‘eye for eye’ retaliation. Instead, love your enemies because God does. God does not ultimately (nor here and now) retaliate against bad people but gives sun and rain to all people alike, to both good and bad” (the two basic gifts that are critical to agrarian society). That was making a theological conclusion based on the best of human behavior- i.e. unconditional love toward all people.
(Insert: It has to be repeated- this is a statement of theology, not prescriptive for approaches like pacifism in the face of violent people who must be restrained/incarcerated to protect the innocent which is the fundamental responsibility of any government. But an unconditional ultimate reality does point to heroically mature humanity in the treatment of your offenders, as in restorative justice programs for incarcerated offenders. This is about an ultimate reality and ideal to point us toward the safest, as in most humane, way to navigate through life, doing the least harm to others, and the most good. Maintaining our own humanity in the face of evil/offense.)
The persistent argument of this site… The contradiction between Jesus and Paul’s Christ myth.
Jesus’ insight was buried under the Christ myth of Paul, a myth that epitomized the above features of tribal favoritism, lordship, and punitive destruction of unbelievers/enemies, taking them to universal and cosmic status in a world savior. The myth of “salvation through destruction” was graphically detailed in the Christ as apocalyptic destroyer in Revelation 19. No wonder violent revolutionary movements, like Marxism and Nazism, found inspiration in such ideals. Historians, like Richard Landes, have detailed the evidence of this their books (i.e. “Heaven On Earth: Varieties of the Millennial Experience”).
Billions across the millennia were taught to revere such qualities in their messiah Lord and we wonder why so many people have acted just like the God that they were told to believe and worship.
We have long had the answer to this fundamental problem of bad ideas/ideals that incite and validate bad behavior. It is inexcusably irresponsible to ignore or deny that answer given to us by sages like Historical Jesus, an answer that belongs at the center of human narratives (cohering center), the ultimate humane ideal of unconditional love that would transform everything for the better.
Transform everything? Yes, I argue that point on this site to echo James Tabor’s statements on Paul’s all-pervading influence on Western civilization. I would argue that the Historical Jesus insight/message would have an even more profound and all-pervading influence than Paul’s Christ as the Jesus insight orients human consciousness to the supremely humane, where Paul’s Christ reenforced primitively inhumane features, similar to Plato’s influence on the West. For example, Paul’s Lord Jesus continued the “philosopher kings” theme of Plato- i.e. divinely validated elites ruling commoners.
The new unconditional theology of Jesus, if given priority status and not buried under Paul’s Christ myth, would have liberated us from the primitive archetypes that validate the base animal impulses that keep getting us in trouble- i.e. tribalism, domination, and punitive treatment of differing others.