American Delusions

My Year End Siege of Angers – the addendum

January 6, 2023 Comments Off

Here are two more angers: (an addendum to the 1.1.2023 post: My Year End Siege of Angers – the list) Guns: “Eighteen percent of U.S. households purchased a gun since the start of the pandemic (March 2020–March 2022), according to new survey data from NORC at the University of Chicago, increasing --->> read more -->>

My Year End Siege of Angers – the list

January 1, 2023 2

Yesterday as I was taking a walk up and down Warren St. here in Hudson I realized that I had become actively angry about the state of the US and the world. I walked past hotels where a single room would set you back $400 for a night or you --->> read more -->>

Is OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI app a deceptive, perhaps dangerous tool?

December 18, 2022 Comments Off

Further experiments with ChatGPT (following yesterday’s post >>>) significantly weaken its usefulness and even suggest that it is a potentially dangerous, unreliable source of information. Experiment Six (continuing from previous post) – Query: when will ChatGPT provide bibliographic references for its answers? As an artificial intelligence, I am not able to --->> read more -->>

The State of Artificial Intelligence – OpenAI’s ChatGPT

December 17, 2022 Comments Off

ChatGPT has been all over the internet in recent weeks. I have now experimented with it and have some initial thoughts to share. I ran a number of “experiments” to explore what this natural language AI could do. Using the December 15th version of ChatGPT I posed a series of questions. --->> read more -->>

Capitalism – the actual workings – coming soon

August 27, 2022 Comments Off

The work to revise and expand my 2018 essay “Capitalism – a critique” has entered its final stages. A final draft has been distributed to a number of readers for comment and critique. I am now working on a book version. Capitalism – the actual workings – is the new working --->> read more -->>

The State of Mass Incarceration – 2022

March 14, 2022 Comments Off

Prison Policy Initiative released a new report on the state of incarceration in 2022. (graphics from prison policy.org) Over 80% of those in Local Jails are waiting for trial – they’ve been convicted of nothing other than not having the money to buy their way out of jail. Drugs still --->> read more -->>

Oligarchs in Action – in the US

March 12, 2022 Comments Off

The Russian war against Ukraine has produced a lot of noise about the fate of Russian oligarchs. Seizures of the yachts, bank accounts and more. Perhaps we should spend a bit of energy focusing on our own oligarchs, the rich and corporations. Despite all of the noise of the Republican --->> read more -->>

Our Social Nature and the Future

February 10, 2022 2

I’ve spent more than a year investigating the sources of our species reaction to autocrats, pandemics, global warming and the crisis of global capitalism. Here is a draft of an introduction to the topic. Lots of evolution, anthropology, archeology, neurology and cognitive psychology all rolled up. Now on to understanding --->> read more -->>

What Is Meant By “Human Nature”?

November 29, 2021 Comments Off

As a preface to my new field of inquiry: Human nature: “the general psychological characteristics, feelings, and behavioral traits of humankind, regarded as shared by all humans” I am most interested in how human nature is framed and partially determined by the mechanisms in our brains. In addition human culture --->> read more -->>

borrowed without permsission from The Atlantic 2017

Accounting for Trump and the Resurgence of Autocracy

November 28, 2021 Comments Off

11.28.2021 – revised 11.29.2021 For the last ten years and more I have been studying US history and the current state of our affairs. A significant focus has been on what I refer to as the “actual workings of capitalism”. You can find some of the findings at AmericanDelusions.com. More --->> read more -->>

What’s Wrong With Inequality – the word?

November 26, 2021 Comments Off

Ban inequality – the word, the naked word, from our political rhetoric. Inequality is everywhere around us in the media sphere as well as in our day-to-day conversations. Amongst progressive folk one can drop the word like an F bomb and summon up agreeable outrage in one’s interlocutors without saying --->> read more -->>

Our Corrupt Politics – Drug Pricing Again…..

October 21, 2021 Comments Off

“A 30-Year Campaign to Control Drug Prices Faces Yet Another Failure Democrats have made giving government the power to negotiate drug prices a central campaign theme for decades. With the power to make it happen, they may fall short yet again.” This is the headline with its tagline in today’s --->> read more -->>

Reading George Packer’s Last Best Hope: America in crisis and renewal

August 15, 2021 Comments Off

Packer’s Last Best Hope: America in crisis and renewal (Ferrar, Straus & Giroux 2021) has aroused quite a bit of attention and comment in the media. At the heart of the book is Packer’s description of four Americas: Free America, Real America, Smart America, and Just America. The writing is --->> read more -->>

Humans, Human Culture and Popular Government

March 22, 2021 Comments Off

The US is commonly cited as the first large experiment in popular government. Even admitting that it started on the basis of a government of white men that excluded women and non-European men and who enslaved other human beings, it was the first large trial of the idea that the --->> read more -->>