I was reading Joanna Stern’s report in the Wall Street Journal about the new AI features that Apple is rushing to complete for the iPhone 16s. (Can’t LLMs debug their own code? I thought that was a done deal.) Among the promised features is a Rewrite function that will translate your messages and other writings into different styles of prose. One style is called Professional. Stern tested it on a note she was writing to her mom. Here’s the original:
I’ll be home tomorrow.
Here’s how it reads after the rewrite:
I anticipate returning home tomorrow.
So, if I’m getting this right, you’d use Professional mode any time you want to sound like you have a stick up your ass. I anticipate forgoing its deployment.
This is all very silly, or at least would be if we hadn’t lost our collective mind. For years now, we’ve been acclimating ourselves to having machines speak on our behalf. It began with autocorrect and autoedit functions in word processors and has continued through ever more aggressive autocomplete functions on phones. Having an app fiddle with your writing now seems normal, even necessary given how much time we all spend messaging, posting, and commenting. The endless labor of self-expression cries out for the efficiency of automation.
We don’t even care that computers, despite years of experience, still do a crappy job of what would seem to be pretty simple algorithmic work. Here’s a sloppy text that I wrote with the aid of my messaging app. It’s filled with typos, weird punctuation, and bizarre word substitutions, but I’m sure you’ll get the gist. If not, who cares? Along with speeding up exchanges, the implicit it’s autocomplete’s fault! excuse that now accompanies every messy text has the added benefit of covering up the fact that we can’t be bothered to spend five seconds proofreading the messages we send to friends and family members. We’ve got headlines to read, YouTubes to watch.
Since OpenAI introduced ChatGPT two years ago, people have taken to using it for all sorts of formal writing tasks, from college papers to corporate memos to government reports. I was recently talking with a Methodist bishop, and she told me that a colleague now uses generative AI to help him write sermons. Apple’s Rewrite, and the similar writing tools being introduced by Google, Microsoft, Meta, and others, extends the AI-based outsourcing of personal speech into more intimate areas, shaping the way we talk with the people closest to us. It may start with rewriting—to help us “deliver the right words to meet the occasion,” as Apple describes it—but it will soon expand into the automated production of condolence messages, wedding vows, and the like. LLMs give us ventriloquism in reverse. The mechanical dummy speaks through your mouth.
It’s also the next stage in the long-running industrialization of human communication—one of the subjects of my forthcoming book Superbloom. For nearly two centuries, we’ve embraced the relentless speeding up of communication by mechanical means, believing that the industrial ideals of efficiency, productivity, and optimization are as applicable to speech as to the manufacture of widgets. More recently, we’ve embraced the mechanization of editing, allowing software to replace people in choosing the information we see (and don’t see). With LLMs, the industrialization ethic moves at last into the creation of the very content of our speech.
It’s hard to know what to say. Why not make it easier?
When something like Dick Cheney endorsing Kamala Harris happens, it is possible to see the limits of mainstream American political commentary. Attempts to explain this occurrence using traditional left/ right methods of analysis are sure to produce answers that quickly drown themselves in absurdity. Dick Cheney… is a man of honor? No. Kamala Harris… is the most right wing candidate? No. Personal grievance against Trump? A softening of the wily old war criminal VP in his old age? Anyone trained to see politics as a straight line in which the two parties are separated by substantial distance on policy will have to conclude either that Harris changed, or Cheney changed, or the parties have shifted permanently.
Though I try not to write too much about day-by-day campaign news, this particular endorsement is a good opportunity to reflect on the way that the American power structure operates. This is also a case where the explanations of the far right and the far left reflect the truth more than the explanations you will find on CNN and in the New York Times. The far right will shrug and say, “This is the deep state at work.” The far left will shrug and say, “One warmonger endorses another warmonger.” Neither of these explanations quite capture the underlying driving force in action, but each of them is much more true than MSNBC Republican-flack-turned- “news anchor” Nicole Wallace exclaiming that “hell has frozen over” with this mighty realignment.
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In fact, allow me to say something surprising: I believe Dick Cheney’s own explanation that “We have a duty to put country above partisanship to defend our Constitution. That is why I will be casting my vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.” Before you scoff, please allow me to explain. Dick Cheney is one of America’s best living representations of the fluidity of establishment power. Congressional staffer, White House staffer, presidential assistant, White House Chief of Staff, Congressman, Secretary of Defense, corporate CEO, vice president. Dick Cheney is not so much “a Republican” as he is “a man in power.” He ascended the ranks of government power in a friendly administration and then when the administration was gone he got elected to Congress and then he leveled up in another friendly administration and then when that was gone he slid over to running a major corporation that was wholly intertwined with the United States government and finally he leveled up into the White House by standing behind a more likable patsy who he could control. If Dick Cheney, a draft dodger who oversaw two major wars and happily caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in order to try to solidify US power over oil, causes revulsion in you, understand that that revulsion is less about the Republican Party and more about The Unblinking Exercise of American National Power. It’s easy to think that Dick Cheney sucks because he’s an asshole Republican. It’s harder to grapple with the fact that Dick Cheney did the work that this entire nation implicitly expects to be done, in order to maintain our status in the world.
Dick Cheney would prefer lower taxes on the rich and fewer corporate regulations and a more conservative social policy than Kamala Harris would prefer. So what unites them? What unites them is this: a settled commitment to American global supremacy. That is something far more important to Dick Cheney, the human embodiment of the existing global power structure, than a few points on the tax rate or a little more diversity in government hiring. Kamala Harris, in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, promised that “I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world.” This is enough for Dick Cheney. In this sense, she is a traditional Democrat.
All of us who vote for Democrats need to understand what we are getting. Our feeling of moral superiority on domestic policy—we are the ones against racism and poverty! We are the ones who protect women!—is at all times floating atop an unmentioned sea of weapons pointed at millions of less powerful people outside of our own borders. Republicans are bastards on domestic and foreign policy and Democrats are nicer on domestic policy and very, very close to Republicans on foreign policy. Even among Democrats, the baseline assumption that America must have enough guns to exert our will on the entire world is not questioned. Kamala Harris may push for paid family leave, but she is not going to dismantle the United States intelligence agencies. Kamala Harris may raise taxes on capital gains, but she is not going to meaningfully slash military funding. Kamala Harris may protect abortion, but she is not going to stop sending weapons to Israel, or remove America’s drone bases in Africa, or Give Schools All The Money They Need and Make The Air Force Hold a Bake Sale to Buy a Bomber. The harshest things that America does, its most uncompromising violence, its rawest assertion of pure power over weaker people, is always done overseas, far away from where we can watch it. For generations, there has been a mutual agreement from both major parties to do what must be done to protect America’s ability to militarily dominate the world—the gun that protects our concurrent ability to be richer than everyone else, the velvet fist that allows us to extract trillions of dollars in value from the Global South and use it to raise our own national standard of living. This commitment to maintaining the global order, people like Dick Cheney understand, is more important than all the other, smaller issues that voters get worked up about. This is the tree, not the branches.
It’s not that Donald Trump has any ideological opposition to this commitment, which the Republicans have always embraced with relish. It’s just that he’s insane and an unpredictable egomaniac and therefore cannot be counted on to fulfill his role on this matter. Trump has found himself in a feud with America’s intelligence agencies strictly out of personal vanity and prickliness. He is the sort of man who might undermine the CIA or fuck up the Army’s plans for the stupidest, most childish reasons imaginable. This possibility is more than the sort of people who live in that world can tolerate. They may prefer a Republican, but they need, above all, someone predictable. Someone who will not try to undermine the entire system. In this race, that person is Kamala Harris. And so Dick Cheney and the men like him will support Kamala Harris.
If you are a Democrat who shares, at least broadly, progressive values, this fact should make you nauseous. Mostly, Democrats deal with this reality by not talking about it. I was at the DNC, and yeah it was cool when Lil Jon and Stevie Wonder were partying and everything, but a very important key to putting on a good party is “don’t talk about all the dead bodies overseas.” We, as Democratic voters, pretty much just ignore this stuff. We may come out against specific wars that are particularly bad ideas, but we, as a party, have almost zero will to confront the military industrial complex and its global tentacles and the way that it maintains, at gunpoint, the complex system of global economic power that allows us to live nice lives. I am not offering some grand solution to this bedrock injustice, here. I’m just pointing out that Democratic voters and Dick Cheney are both on the same side of it.
The binary Republican vs. Democrat, left vs. right, red vs. blue method of thinking about “politics” is a very good way to protect and maintain the underlying things that do not change from administration to administration. This binary allows Democrats to feel happy and triumphant when we win elections even if the most consequential and brutal aspects of American policy towards the rest of the world do not change. This is one of those disturbing cognitive dissonances that adults mostly solve by waving them away as juvenile, unrealistic thinking, utopian bullshit for kids—a reaction which is, ironically enough, a childish way of pretending things do not exist if we choose to ignore them. Donald Trump is an awful piece of shit who should not be voted for under any circumstances, but that, of course, is not why Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris. Dick Cheney will be voting for Kamala Harris because both of them are committed to the basic premise that America will protect its standard of living by maintaining the ability to unleash more violence than anybody else on earth.
“So?” you ask. So, nothing. I offer nothing today except the tiny step of being clear about what exactly is being offered in this election. It is going to be very hard to uproot this tree without acknowledging that you and me and Kamala Harris and Dick Cheney are all sitting in it, together.
In nicer news, I have been on the road doing events for my book about the labor movement, “The Hammer.” A few days ago I was in Las Vegas with the mighty Culinary Union, who are the subjects of a chapter in the book. They recorded the event and also made the very nice photo montage which you see above. Please remember to tip your room cleaner the next time you stay in Vegas, or anywhere.
“The Hammer” is available for order wherever books are sold. I have a few more events coming up this month. If I’m in your area, come through and say hey:
Wednesday, September 25: St. Augustine, Florida. I’ll be speaking at Flagler College at the Ringhaver/ Gamache-Kroger Theatre at 7 pm.
Thursday, September 26: Gainesville, Florida. At The Lynx Books at 6 pm. In conversation with labor activist Candi Churchill. Event link here.
The last thing I would like to say today is “thank you” to all of you who subscribe to How Things Work. Here is how How Things Work works: I do not have a paywall. I keep this site open for everyone to read. In exchange, I ask that if you can afford the (modest) cost of becoming a paid subscriber, please do so. As long as enough people are willing to become paid subscribers, we can continue to keep this site available for everyone. It’s a simple system that works as long as you make the choice to support this place, if you can. I appreciate all of you.
I can't stop thinking about this quote from Ted Chiang (originally snipped by Simon Willison).
Art is notoriously hard to define, and so are the differences between good art and bad art. But let me offer a generalization: art is something that results from making a lot of choices. […] to oversimplify, we can imagine that a ten-thousand-word short story requires something on the order of ten thousand choices. When you give a generative-A.I. program a prompt, you are making very few choices; if you supply a hundred-word prompt, you have made on the order of a hundred choices.
If an A.I. generates a ten-thousand-word story based on your prompt, it has to fill in for all of the choices that you are not making.
There's so much push in the web development scene to use AI for jobs and my own LinkedIn feed is chock full of "AI to do X", such as generate articles, and amass content, but, as this quote so simply puts it, the actual human input is so utterly thin.
To me, it makes that AI generated content unwhelming and unimpressive because it lacks so much of the individual's own input.
One of the occasional defenses of generative AI is that it quote-unquote ‘democratizes’ art and writing — and then, as with the NaNoWriMo statement yesterday, it becomes somehow problematic to condemn generative AI, because what, do you hate DEMOCRACY? Do you not want everyone to have access to art and writing? Oh! Oh! Somebody doesn’t want the competition, doesn’t want the masses to rise up with the FREEDOM of their RENEWED ACCESS to ART and STORY, you PRIVILEGED ELITE BASTARD.
But I think it’s important to take the air out of these things (often by kicking the absolute shit out of them).
Generative AI is not democracy.
Generative AI is not free.
Because that’s the cornerstone of the idea, right? It’s a freely accessible tool that evens the playing field.
But generative AI has considerable costs.
Let’s go through them.
1. Money, Cash, Ducats, Coin
Access to much of generative AI will cost you actual money in many cases, though certainly it’s also becoming freely accessible at some levels — and more and more services are forcibly cramming it into their existing platforms, which, I’d like to note, is seriously fucking annoying. I’m waiting for the day where my microwave tries to write and sell its “slam poetry.”
Still, free now isn’t free forever. I mean, the “first taste is free” drug deal rule applies here, c’mon. They get you interested, you use it, and suddenly it costs more, and more, and then more again. They have to do this. The development of this fucking nonsense horseshit has been a billions-of-dollars investment. They want that money back, and if that means they have to put it on a chip and have Elon Musk fire it into your skull with a modified .22 rifle, then that’s how they’ll do it. If it remains free to use, then that means it’ll come with advertising jackhammered into it. (“Every time I ask it a question, it answers ‘Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme,’ wtaf.”)
2. Future Money
Generative AI is meant as a disruptor. And classically, disruption is not always a good thing. (One might argue it’s rarely a good thing.) Big shiny new tech company shows up, reinvents a thing by offering it cheaply and loopholing its way around regulations, you get hooked, the older industry withers on the vine, the shiny new tech company nests inside the chest cavity of the older industry until its dead and it can erupt out from the carcass in a spray of blood and bone, and then it just charges you even more than the older industry did for what may potentially be a lesser product.
As such, the way one can currently earn money from art and writing is at risk thanks to the rise of generative AI. How this might happen is myriad — Amazon getting flooded with AI books makes it harder to find any book; companies learn they can generate “content” with the push of a button and either choose to do so or use the threat of doing so as leverage to reduce the money they will pay for art and for writing; generative AI’s implementation damages enough outlets for art and writing and sends them packing, which means fewer outlets for artists and writers, which lowers opportunity and, by proxy, money; generative AI acts as a labor scab during union disputes for creators; writers and artists are no longer hired to iterate and create but rather to “edit” and “fix” the work “created” by generative AI, which is to say, generative AI artbarf robots puke up a bunch of barely digested material and a company pays a cut-rate to once-notable writers and artists to push that slurry into some kind of shape, like they’re Richard Dreyfuss with the mashed potatoes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
And that’s just a sampling.
Ultimately, it puts power in the hands of corporations and tech-bros, and removes the power from artists and writers. And will try to eat away at copyright laws to do so.
That’s not democracy. And it certainly doesn’t come free.
3. Future Artists, Future Writers
There is a literal human cost. There will be people going forward — and, I’m betting, there are people right now — who are going to turn away from the art-and-writing path because of this. I know kids who already look at those career paths with the question of, “What’s even the point?” There will be a bonafide brain drain from the bank of artists and writers. (Not to mention teachers, or any other career currently being targeted and poached by generative AI on behalf of awful corporations.)
(And here, my conspiratorial eye-twitch red-thread-on-a-bulletin-board personality comes out and says, well, that’s awfully convenient — we’ve already seen such a heavy lean into STEM and away from the Humanities, because artists and writers tend to be thinkers, philosophers, they tend to have empathy, they tend to be less interested in the hustle culture churn of corporate life, and this only drives that nail in deeper, doesn’t it?)
Again, doesn’t sound like it’s democritizing shit. Anything that makes it harder and less likely to become a thing isn’t democritizing that thing.
4. The Costs of Actual Theft
Uh yeah, it steals shit. That’s how it works. It can’t do it without stealing shit. They’ve admitted it. Out loud. I don’t know how to explain to you the very real cost of having your work yanked out of the ether and thrown into the threshing maw of generative AI so your creations can become hunks of fake meat in their artbarf stew. But the cost isn’t metaphorical. It’s literal.
Once again, that’s not democritizing anything. It’d be like saying, “Ahh, Google has stolen your vote, and will vote on your behalf. How wonderful! You don’t even need to do it, now. We’ll handle it for you, for free. See? We’ve democritized democracy!”
God, even as I typed that out it feels alarmingly possible.
*shudder*
5. Environmental Cost
You don’t need to look far to learn about the environmental costs of generative AI. We didn’t ask for it, but it’s here, and even casual use can increase the burden on our environment.
We’re in danger of turning away from our already too lax environmental goals. We need coal and other fossil fuels gone, we need to protect water usage, and here comes AI to gobble up the water and our power and force us onto our back heel, all because some dickheads want a robot to lie to them about how many giraffes they see in Starry Night or because they need the magic computer to draw for them a picture of a 13-fingered Donald Trump freeing White Jesus from the cross with a couple of M-16s.
The only thing that’s democritizing is the death of our natural environment. Wow, nice work, Tech Bros. Guess that’s why Google removed their plan to DO NO EVIL from their mission statement.
6. The Damage to Informational Fidelity
It is increasingly hard to tell truth from fiction. Visually, textually, it’s getting easier and easier to just… lie, and to do so with effective facsimiles made from generative AI. Trump posting that Taylor Swift endorsed him, or creepy videos from Twitter’s AI showing Kamala Harris covered in blood and taking hostages, so newer abilities on a phone to just take an image and edit in whatever you want with the touch of a button — a giraffe, a bloody hammer, a hypodermic needle, a child’s toy, a sex toy, a loaded gun, whatever. The laws are far far too slow to catch this. This will be propaganda, given a nuclear-grade steroid injection. This will be revenge porn, god-tier level.
To sum up?
AI isn’t free.
It isn’t sustainable.
It isn’t democratizing a damn thing.
The tools and skills to create are already available. No, not perfectly, and no, the industries surrounding art and storytelling are certainly imperfect. But AI doesn’t push the existing imbalance into the favor of artists and writers, but rather, the opposite. And as it does so, it burns the world and fucks with our ability to tell truth from fiction, even right from wrong.
It’s weird. It’s horrible. I kinda hate it. I hope we all realize how absolutely shitty it is, and we can eventually shove its head in the toilet, same as we did with NFTs and crypto. Shove it in, give a good couple flushes.
In a Telegram channel with around 1,300 members, there are individual chat rooms for 70 colleges and universities across the country. The bolded text are names of universities. (captures from Telegram)
“Does anybody know *** ***-***, born in 2007, from *** High School? Send me a DM if you do.”
After recent revelations about sexually explicit deepfake images being shared on certain Korean university campuses, the Hankyoreh has uncovered evidence that the illegal practice of creating manipulated images of acquaintances from school or a particular neighborhood and distributing them is occurring rampantly across the web. Those targeted by the deepfakes include students not only at the country’s biggest colleges and universities, but students and minors at middle and high schools as well.
The Hankyoreh conducted a web search on Aug. 21 scouring various social media platforms, revealing numerous Telegram chat rooms that distribute illegal deepfake pornography categorized according to region of residence and school. The crimes are continuing to expand in breadth while becoming more detailed.
The process is as follows. A group funnels potential members through a Telegram chat called “friends of friends.” From there, groups are further divided into regions of residence and university. Members then chat with each other about specific girls and women to see if multiple members recognize any of them. They then acquire ordinary photos of their victim from social media and utilize them to illegally produce pornographic deepfakes.
One Telegram channel has over 1,300 members. This channel hosts various chat rooms that are categorized according to university, with over 70 universities represented. Members post photos of young women they know, along with basic information such as their majors, when they started school, and their names. Other members within the same chat room then chime in if they know the young woman. People who know the person then form their own chat room to produce and share illegal content. Once there are enough deepfakes for a specific person, members will create chat rooms dedicated solely to that individual. The chat rooms are labeled with names like “Degrading Kim ***-***.”
The deepfakes are distributed systematically on a disturbing scale. The sexually explicit illegal images are shared in a chat room over and over, where some members even create emojis out of them “for fun.” The images created in one room quickly spread to other chat rooms.
One chat room, called “Link Sharing Space,” had over 3,700 members. Members of this chat room share links leading to dedicated chats for deepfakes specific to one person or deepfakes pertaining to students from a specific university. Some chat rooms even have selection processes, where applicants must submit 10 photos of someone they know and pass an interview before being allowed in.
One Telegram channel, dedicated to deepfakes of middle and high-school students, had over 2,340 members. Members of this channel regularly produce and distribute content that lands you at least a year in prison for simply possessing or viewing it.
The criminals who produce such disturbing deepfakes are widening the breadth of their victims while becoming more detailed in the classification and labeling of their illegal content, adding to mounting fears shared by many women and girls.
“Although I’ve made my account private, I can’t stop thinking about someone I know using my photos for criminal purposes,” a woman, 24, who normally enjoys using social media platforms told the Hankyoreh.
Another 24-year-old university student, who asked the Hankyoreh to only identify her by her surname, Kim, said, “It’s impossible to know where the photos are being shared, and how far they’ve spread. It’s truly depressing.”
Since Telegram is an overseas firm with servers outside South Korea, the Korea Communications Standards Commission and other domestic agencies do not have the legal jurisdiction to demand the erasure of content being distributed through its chat rooms. Even if local authorities conduct an investigation, the confiscation and or search-and-seizure warrants they attain have no teeth, making it extremely difficult to identify individual suspects.
“Deepfakes distributed on Telegram can then spread to other websites, where they are reproduced or altered and redistributed. We therefore need to revise laws like the Telecommunications Business Act to require any overseas platforms with branches in South Korea to cooperate with domestic investigations,” said Min Go-eun, an attorney.
Critics also point to the lukewarm attitude of investigative authorities and the ineffectiveness of legislation.
A Telegram channel for “middle and high school friends of friends” with 2,340 members. Once a user verifies their identity, they find common acquaintances and generate deepfakes. (capture from Telegram)
“The most common complaint we hear from victims of deepfakes is that investigators cannot identify specific suspects operating via Telegram, but private actors such as ‘56 Flame’ have identified specific individuals in connection with deepfake crimes,” said Heo Min-sook, who researches legislation for the National Assembly Research Service.
“Investigators are essentially twiddling their thumbs and not exploring all possible routes of identification,” Heo added.
“Someone who produces illegal deep fakes with intent to distribute can be sentenced to up to five years in prison or a fine of 50 million won (US$37,453), but the majority of suspects are given probation, or their indictments are delayed,” Heo continued.
“We need to revise legislation to punish not only those who distribute or produce such deepfakes but those who possess or view it as well. The courts also need to realize the severity of such crimes,” she said.
In the wake of Biden’s withdrawal from the race and Kamala Harris’s shockingly rapid and decisive ascension, I have begun feeling emotions that I haven’t allowed myself to feel in connection to politics in a long time: hope, excitement, even enjoyment. As many commentators have noted, there is a joyfulness, even a level of fun, to Harris’s campaign that is an almost shocking contrast to what came before. The fact that they are playing along with the JD Vance couch meme may be the clearest sign that they are in tune with contemporary culture, but the more general pattern of calling conservative leaders “weird” and “creepy” feels like a major turning point — not just in terms of political tactics, but in terms of liberal political culture. It marks the end of a certain fatalistic defensiveness on the one hand, and also of the joylessly self-righteous habits of policing and shaming allies on the left.
For all my life, conservatives have been the norm. Everybody (who matters) feels at best very uncomfortable about abortion and non-normative sexuality. Everybody (who matters) resents the burden of funding high-quality public service. Etc., etc., etc. Tactical observations from the early 90s hardened into inescapable truisms, even as they became less and less true. This produced a permanent defensive crouch, as Democrats seemed to believe that Republican rule was the norm and they could at best eke out a narrow win to take their turn — at passing a more nuanced and “smarter” version of Republican policies. Priority number one after each victory was to get bipartisan support, as though Democrats didn’t believe it was legitimate for them to legislate on their own. Attachment to the fillibuster rule among the older cohort of Democratic senators is the most destructive example of this built-in defeatism.
So the new confidence of the Harris campaign is refreshing, as is the contempt and puzzlement they express at conservatives’ increasingly unpopular and downright bizarre beliefs. More specifically, what is refreshing here is their willingness to be mean, to insult, to reduce their opponents to sputtering speechlessness. I cannot emphasize enough how much of a break this is with the joylessly self-righteous policing of language that has been the norm among liberals and leftists for my entire adult life. From that perspective, the parody responses write themselves — “we shouldn’t kick-shame JD Vance…” or “Republican leaders won’t read your post calling them weird, but your friends who could be viewed as weird for completely unrelated and totally harmless reasons will…” — and the fact that it’s so easy to come up with them shows how that mode of engagement has reduced itself to self-parody.
A key shift for me when I saw a white man worrying aloud about the tendency to refer to Vice President Harris as “Kamala” — there is of course a whole history of belittling people by refusing the respect of their last name, it’s especially fraught since she’s a Black woman, etc., etc. And I will be honest with you and say my first response was that this person should simply shut the fuck up. “Kamala” is a very distinctive name, whereas “Harris” is not. Her own social media team is called “Kamala HQ.” We do not need to get out ahead of the supposed “victim” herself.
More broadly, though, my strong gut reaction reflected my belief that we have just got to be done with this style of whiny preemptive strike against any hypothetical offense that may one day be perceived. Political correctness is a strategy that has failed. Aside from eliminating the grossest slurs and overtly bigoted jokes — which even conservatives themselves know not to share in mixed company — it has produced only irritation and insecurity.
People like to present it as simple common sense, but the euphemism treadmill and, more than that, the constant incentive to find ever more nuances of linguistic “oppression” ensure that the politically correct linguistic norms can never actually settle into a coherent common sense. It produces bristly defensiveness in those who can’t keep up and an unhealthy and counterproductive readiness to be offended among the avant-garde. My favorite example of the counterproductive nature of such language policing is the fact that disability activists are more or less singlehandedly keeping alive the etymological association of words like “moron” with disability. Linguistic usage moves on — take the win! But no, etymology is destiny when it gives you something to nitpick and alienate potential allies over.
Related here, I think, is the culture of constantly nitpicking headlines from the New York Times on social media. Again, the belief is that politics will take care of itself if everyone agrees to speak in just the right way. Obviously, the New York Times is a bad actor in many ways and the media establishment is artificially propping up Trump through the application of double standards. They are worthy of critique, but the obsessiveness and detail-orientation of the critique is what raises my hackles. It bespeaks a whiny wounded entitlement, as though we all believe that the New York Times should be a liberal actor or that a simple description of reality would automatically favor our politics.
In reality, to do politics, you have to do politics. The media is not an umpire, it is a terrain of struggle. The Harris campaign is engaging that struggle much more effectively than Joe Biden ever could because it does not embrace the false premise that the New York Times is or should be on her side by default. And she has received overwhelmingly favorable coverage! Not 100% — there is always something to whine about, of course. They don’t always put the word “falsely” in the headline, and sometimes they take too long describing Trump or Vance’s claims before debunking them. They achieved that not by whining about how unfair the Times has been, but by actively setting the agenda and setting the tone.
And that tone is mean. It is contemptuous. It aims to harm Trump and Vance and their reputations. It aims to make them personally angry and make people question their loyalty to such deeply flawed men. To achieve these goals, it is not overly concerned about petty details like whether JD Vance really engaged in an elaborate form of masturbation involving his furniture and described it at length in his memoir — much less whether other furniture-masturbation enthusiasts might be collateral damage of the joke. The joy and humor and fun of the Harris campaign, the way that it acknowledges the Republicans as enemies without setting them up as all-powerful, hopefully marks a decisive end to that kind of idiocy. From now on, entitlement and prickly defensiveness can remain in its more natural home — among the washed up losers who have coasted on white male privilege so long and spent so much time in the “safe space” of their ideological bubble that they don’t realize how pathetic they appear to anyone halfway normal — because eventually everyone complaining about unfair media coverage and moaning about how they aren’t being shown the proper respect will realize that… they sound like Trump.
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