Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Donald Trump still hasn't withdrawn his endorsement of North Carolina gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson. We have such a great show for you today, The Lincoln Projects. Rick Wilson, host of The Enemy's List, talks about the new lows that Trump plumbed the depths of in his
Wisconsin speech. Then we will talk to Team Human host Doug Rushkoff about the update of his classic book program or B Programmed eleven Commands for the AI Future.
But first the news.
So Bally, there has been a thing that we kind of saw coming that Trump and the RNC are just going to file tuns of lawsuits because they think they're going to win this election by taking it up to the courts.
George Bush two thousand style. You see it here.
So Mark Elias of Democracy Dockett, election lawyer who worked with the Democratic Party now is on his own, actually brought attention to the Times about this story. He's been covering a lot of this and he's been fighting a lot of it in court. But what this piece talks about This is in the New York Times. Republicans are filing like a barrage of different election lawsuits. They're doing
it in the hopes of working the refs. It's already worked in Georgia, where they now have hand counted ballots. The idea here is to inject fuckery, make a longer timetable so that they can so that they can do election challenges lawsuits. Look, the ultimate goal of all of these Republicans is to kick this stuff up to the Supreme Court, because Donald Trump feels that with a six to three majority, three of whom he has put in
the job himself, that he can win. If he can just get it up to the courts, I think you'll see more of this, a lot of it will lose. But again, this is the structural integrity of our elections. So it's really scary, and the Republican goal is just to get them to throw out as many ballots as possible.
Keep an eye on this, so Maya.
Since we're the same age, I imagine your childhood was least with watching episodes of Roseanne like mine was.
I'm nodding my head furiously because for us, Roseanne was, you know, a sort of Hero of the Working Man. Her sitcom was really fun to watch, and now she has become a complete lunatic, so much so that I will now do a dramatic reading.
But in all of her glory, can I play Tucker? Yes?
But basically the point of this story, which it's been debunked, right, nobody's eating cats and dogs?
What about babies?
Well, and that is and I.
Think you have to be a special kind of crazy to go further. Instead of saying, well, it may or may not be true, as Jade Vance tried to spin it, it is just not true. Roseanne decided to address the migrant situation in the Haitian immigrant situation in Ohio. We know it's not true. This is all a lie. So she starts with, you know they eat the babies. That is not bullshit. It's true, by the way, again, completely untrue.
While this is happening, since I'm Tucker, he was giggling and smiling like a pig and shit.
And then she continues, it's not just the dogs and the cats, bar says, and she's not joking. They're full on vampires. And everyone still thinks I'm crazy. There's a reason why people think you're crazy, Roseanne. It's because you're crazy, but I'm not crazy. They're full on vampires. They love the taste of human flesh, they drink human blood. They do so again they do not. Nobody is drinking human blood. Nobody is a vampire. None of this is true.
This is just.
Right wing fever dream bs and it's a complete lie. And that's where we are, and that's where Carlson has fallen.
Yeah.
I have to say, I think we were all a little gleeful when he lost his Fox News gig. But where he's going now, he has a huge platform and he's doing shit like this.
It's really really bad.
Yeah, like with so many things. Yes, Tucker Carlson is not on Fox News anymore. So he's the second highest rate podcast on Spotify. He has a huge number of listeners, and he has continued to inject this far right nonsense into the mainstream. So we're all touched by it and it's affecting people, and it's really negative.
Speaking of negatively affecting people.
So what I saw you put this on the document that we did this segment the life fill Out of My Body that CBS News says it will be up to vance and walls to fact checked each other at the debate.
Yeah, this is so interesting because it's such a stupid idea.
It's so bad.
ABC did such a good job fact checking the debate in a very tasteful and non disruptive way. They did a few fact checks, were able to just sort of thread the needle. It was not so hard, and it made a big difference. It made such a big difference that Maga world was furious.
But here's the thing.
If you are not on the side of facts, you will be furious by a fact check. The answer is not to not fact check. The answer is to not lie. Right, there are right. You know they're eating the pets. They're not eating the pets, right, that's a lie. So if you don't lie, you don't have to fact check they're eating the pets. And that is why this is a terrible move on the part of CBS, and I think that it is really unfair and I think it's really stupid.
It shows us how well working the refs work. If your maga and you say fact checking is against you as opposed to fact checking is that facts are against you, and you do that, then in fact it works so We're seeing Maga work the refs work the refs with CBS, and I'm really disappointed.
Smile over in the Virginia's seventh congressional district, which, for people who don't know, that's the southwest below DC area, an area that is very, very contentious that this is only a D plus one district. There's some serious fuckery going on. Can you tell us what you're seeing here?
Yeah, So this is a race against one of the vinmin twins. This is an open seat vacated by Abigail Spamberger. Abigail Spamberger is planning to run for governor. This a very competitive purple seat. So the anti choice Republican Derek Anderson, who's running in Virginia's seventh congressional district. He wants to appeal to women. A lot of these Republicans have started trying to appeal to women using their wives. Derek doesn't have a wife, so he borrowed another family for a
weird family photoshoot. He's sort of making it look as if he has a family that he does not.
I'm not surprised.
I'm not sure that borrowing someone else his family will help him win the way he thinks it might.
I just want to know why they can't stop being weird.
I just want to know why they can't just pose with their own families. He's also engaged. Our last sort of newsy bit today features your friend and mine George Conway.
Oh please tell me I forgot about this.
Speaking of these Audience of One ads George Conway.
And we'll have more about those with Rick Wilson in just a few minutes.
Yeah, but George Conway is involved in Audience of one ads and he made a big ad about a sexual assault survivor, one of Trump's many victims. You'll remember this news cycle from twenty sixteen, which seems to have been abandoned. So he did this news cycle, and he did these ads, and they are really kind of brilliant. But more importantly,
they are getting in Donald Trump's head. Carolyn Levitt, Trump National campaign press secretary, said, George Conway has no idea what he's talking about and suffers from a serious case of Trump to arrangement syndrome that has rotted his brain. So congratulations, George. You can't stop winning.
You're always winning. When they say you have Trump arrangement syndrome, we have even more tour dates for you. Did you know the Lincoln Projects Rick Wilson have Fast Politics, MALEI jug Faster are heading out on tour to bring you a night of laughs for our dark political landscape. Join us on August twenty sixth at San Francisco at the Swedish American Hall, or in la on August twenty seventh at the Region Theater. Then we're headed to the Midwest.
We'll be at the Vivarium in Milwaukee on the twenty first of September, and on the twenty second we'll be in Chicago at City Winery. Then we're going to hit the East coast. On September thirtieth, We'll be in Boston at Arts at the Armory. On the first of October, we'll be Infiliates City Winery, and then DC on the second at the Miracle Theater. And today we just announced that we'll be in New York on the fourteenth of
October at City One. If you need to laugh as we get through this selection and hopefully never hear from a guy who lives in a golf club again, we got you covered. Join us in our surprise guests to help you laugh instead of cry. Your way through the selection season and give you the inside analysis of what's.
Really going on right now.
Buy your tickets now by heading to Politics as Unusual dot bio.
That's Politics as Unusual dot bio.
Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project and host of the Enemy's List.
Rick Wilson, Mully, Jong, Fast, How are you today?
I am just delighted to have you here pre tour. Rick Wilson on his way to Boston. Recently survived a Cat three hurricane.
Very exciting times.
Climate change is real.
Well, you know, I've been told over and over again that you can't use those words anymore because Governor DeSantis has banned them from a recent state government or in education. So they don't know, they don't If you don't say the words, they don't exist, like gay and climate.
That's right.
I actually, because I am such a lunatic, I listened to c SPAN all the time, and so I was listening to DeSantis' presser.
Yeah, you guys have in Florida.
We're just going to take a second to talk about one of the kind of interesting, horrible side things from climate change is that you guys have crazy high insurance premiums in your state.
And you know, luckily for the state of Florida, there's another hurricane on the way. And for the last three years, all Ron DeSantis has wanted to do in the legislature is culture war bullshit, don't say gay book burnings, taking over colleges, all these things he thought were going to get him to the White House, which didn't. But they did leave the state of Florida with the most expensive property insurance in the world.
Yeah, it turns out that woke does not stop hurricanes.
The War on woke has somehow, call me crazy, I don't know what this is. It somehow doesn't have any impact on actual people in the state of Florida. And look, if they're happy that the War on Woke has been such a wonderful center of everything about Ronda Santis's political career, God bless them, good luck or knock yourselves out. And look, I want to expand this a little bit too, Molly, because the bible of the War on Woke in the Future Project twenty twenty five has called for the elimination
of things like the National Hurricane Center. Yeah, the National Oceanic Administration NOAH, which produces all the weather products in the country.
Yeah, and of course they.
Want to downsize FEMA and put it in control of the president so he can decide if people do nice to me, they will get help. If not, it will.
Yeah.
It is basically the plan to make the federal government an arm of the Trump campaign, which means does Trump need the Fed to cut interest rates right before an election?
Maybe he does, and so he tells them to.
I mean, it is a complete shittery on the highest level.
At some point, we'll get the fuckery today. And that's really where my fucker he's at right now, because it really is something. This is a deliberate attack on people in a way that honestly is beyond the pale.
Speaking of beyond the pail, last night, Donald Trump was in Wisconsin Swings Day, Wisconsin. Yeah, he did the weave. That's what he calls it. When he goes from subject to subject.
We call that. We call that late stage dementia.
And he does the weave, and he wove a lot of real fucked up stuff, including.
We'll start light. Here's him talking about a fly.
Can't take it any longer. Remember there's a hat that's made.
It sounds like crazy. Oh, there's a fly.
Oh, I wonder where the fly came from. See two years ago, I wouldn't have had a fly up here. You're changing rapidly, but we can't take it any longer. We can't take it any longer.
It takes it.
So that was the fly ref, the famous fly ref. And I guess he means that there wouldn't have been a fly because of climate change.
Yeah. Look, actually what he's saying is that somehow the deep State has released their insect army against him.
Yes, yes, it's the mass It makes mathing.
It's obviously the deep state. But look, anyone who disputes the absolute evidence before their eyes that Trump is increasingly deranged on the stump is you know, either an immediate Trump family member or Jason Miller. And I'm sorry, none of this, none of this makes any damn sense. But you know what, I think there's a series of things that he's going to have in the coming days that really make him continue to look completely fucking ridiculous. And he's completely fucking ridiculous.
What I'm struck by when Mark Cuban, who's been become a very good Harris surrogate, talks about how Trump's people have to explain what he meant more and more.
Right, the conceptual weirdness of Trump. It keeps going down this rabbit hole where normal people can't understand it. The magas believe it is some sort of secret, cryptic, magical code between themselves and Trump, and they're always like, you know, he could be saying like herbal berbal dood and they're like, well, thats well, that means, that means and it's it's bullshit and it's crazy town. But nothing about his presence on the stage anymore is rational. It all comes across as kooky.
It all comes across as weird, It all comes across as unhinged and dangerous because it is right, Well, why don't we hear a little bit more of that?
Joe Biden became mentally impaired.
Kamala was born that way.
She was born, and if you think about it, only a mentally disabled person could have allowed this to happen to our country.
Anybody would know this.
First of all, Harris has been a sex crimes prosecutor, an attorney's general for a state that's large enough to be the fifth largest.
Economy in the world.
She has been a senator, She has been the first female vice president. She's actually quite smart. And literally, it's just a racist being racist. And then also it's horrible to people who are disabled, Molly.
It's also just stonking gigantic projection.
Yeah, she got into his head.
She got into his brain at that debate. She did more damage to Trump than the assassination attempted. Mentally, that should be something that you're absolutely like, your life crumbles around you, all that stuff, but it really didn't. He was golfing the next day, and in this case, she took him on that stage and tore his brain out and whipped it with a blender, and he can't stop
thinking about it, talking about it, overreacting to it. And honestly, now we're entering the stage where the low propensity voters okay, have started to pay attention, and those low propensity voters are like, the fuck is this wait? I thought Trump was smart and funny and commanding on stage, and now you've got a sick, sad old man. And look, just as she didn't respond to his bullshit about I think she was black, and then maybe she wasn't black, and
then maybe she's back decided to be black. Just like that, she shouldn't respond to this at all. It should be like, okay, crazy man, thanks, thanks for your input, Grandpa Ranty. But other than that, they should let it roll, and they should let roll all of the things, because you're starting to see out in the States they are really throwing a lot of crap at the wall now trying to
figure something that sticks. So in Michigan and Wisconsin right now, their ad is like Gomla Harris wants your text dollars paid for trans prisoners, You're going to get free sex change. I'm yeah, I know. Whatever fucking focus group y'all vomited that out of was a bunch of guys with a zen pouch in when they're in their jawline and a red hat and an indifferent history of education and an
eager history of inbreeding in their families. But this thing is like all of its projection on Trump's part, all of its desperation on Trump's part, and that is not going to change as we get closer, and it doesn't help them as they get closer.
Right, No, I think that's a really good point. I would also add that as we're seeing Trump World just evolve into racism and craziness and I'm going to cut all your taxes. No taxes on tips, no taxes on anything, no use.
You know what, listen what ever, it is such a narrow casting thing, and I'll tell you what it is. I pick this up. Apparently some donor of his told him, you'll win in Nevada if you just say no tax
on tips. The problem for Trump is he's so insane that there's a certain amount of noise that just that people are like, okay, cuckoo man, that's enough, right, because he could promise, like the other day when he says maybe I'll take at a sip of paper and say when Simon trying in debt for bitcoin and there'll be no debt, and everyone watching that with two neurons to rub together, it's like, the fuck is this?
I want to talk about this for a minute, because it does feel like a victory for you. You were one of the first people to ever do Audience of.
One, and I was the first person.
But yeah, it's right, the first person to start Audience of one.
And the idea here was that if you made Trump, if you just got in his head, he would start making insane decisions.
Correct.
Talk to me about how it feels to have George con we do it, to have all sorts of other people do it, and also to have the HAIRRISCA.
That is what delights me the most is that the Harris campaign has figured out that the model that we proposed and executed starting in twenty nineteen is a thing that gives you an advantage over Trump and that he cannot shake. It makes him vulnerable because when you see Trump acting as Trump really is, it's a lot harder for those normy Republicans to say, Oh, it's either Trump or communism, and so.
They can't say it.
Now.
It's like, well, she seems pretty normal and he's pretty crazy, and the more crazy he is, the better for America.
So Jeff Flake endors this morning. Jeff Flake Arizona, Republican Senator Arizona is super important Swings Day. Does this mean you know? Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush are not far behind.
Jeb will never endorse her. I can just tell you that right now from what everything I'm hearing, Jeb is a is a hard no to endorsing her. So that let's let's drop that one w has said no. But I hear a whole bunch of conflicting answers out of that world. I think Mitt Romney is strongly considering it.
And at this point, as I wrote the other day to my Republican friends, like those of you who think you're sticking around in the Republican Party to influence what it becomes after Trump, you are operating from a really, really flawed assumption. For people that make up the GOP, now they loathe every one of us from the before times. We will never get to a point where the party
goes back to being based on ideological principles. It's now all crazy, all the time, all of this nationalism, hyper populism, all this garbage that they believe is the most important thing, the Rond de Santis model. And so it's important to understand we're not going to get to go back in time and fix the GOP. If you want a conservative party in the future, right now, the play is to
break from the Republican Party. So then in the future you can say, listen, I put country over party at the most important moment in time, I came out and I threw everything, everything to the wind, and I said I'm going to vote for Kamala Harris, even though I disagreed with her on a lot of fundamental questions. I didn't believe that she was going to destroy the country, and that's what Trump would have done. And to have credibility to rebuild a center right party, you have to
repudiate Trump before he is out politically. You have to do it now.
Not Yeah, no, I agree. It's not clear to me that the Republican Party doesn't. You know, eventually there'll be someone there to rebuild it, and someone like if you've been trumpy or if you've been going along with it, you're not necessarily going to be that person.
Listen. Jd Vance is already already whispering to people like, well, you know, well, if we were just running on this ticket without Trump, it would be an amazing populist movement and we'd be winning by a billion points. I disagree, But what it tells you is their ambition is to go forward from here using the Trump model, using the Project twenty twenty five model.
Right.
It's a fascinating gambit, especially because we all know that trump Ism without Trump has largely just absolutely destroyed itself.
Trump Ism without Trump does not scale. Trump Ism without Trump is Mark Robinson.
By the way, Trump still has withdrawn his Mark Robinson endorsement.
By the way, did you catch that jd Vance when he was asking about Mark Robinson this weekend? That looked like he had shoved a live otter up his ass and it was squirming to get out. My god, how can.
You not be prepared for this? I mean, the guy right like you, what you're gonna say when people ask you about Mark Robinson?
And all jd Vance had to say was I stand with the President. I started with Donald Trump. That's all he had to say. And you know what, people would have gone blah blah blah, but instead he's up there flipping and squirming and it's just like, oh, I mean, I just I'm going to say this. For the tenth time I have been in politics my entire life, I have never seen a candidate as bad at this work as jd Vance.
Yeah, it's wonderful.
He makes Sarah Palin look like golden my ear. He's a astounding He's an astounding claude in every way.
He makes Sarah pale and look like gold in my air. I mean, that might be a bumper sticker right there, a T shirt something to put on a golden necklace, a trimp stamp, right, a tramp stamp.
Were allowed to say that. I don't think we're left.
We are we are You can say trip st a tramp stamp.
Oh, I don't think it was very feminist, but okay, but yes, yeah.
But I have a tattoo of f A Hayek on my back.
But I do think it's a really good point, which is there is no and again, like when Trump ran in twenty sixteen, there was Trump and there was a Republican Party. Now it's almost a decade later, we've all aged quite significantly.
I've aged thirty five years in that decade. But yeah, I have.
Bags under my eyes. I literally never had bags under my eyes. I you know, I go get TV makeup and they can't. It takes them like a half an hour just to address the bags. So we've all gotten much much older. But the Republican Party is basically now Trump is if you have fialty to Trump, you are allowed to stay, and if.
You don't, you're out.
Yep, that is correct.
So you've got Mark Robinson, You've got you know, Jady Vans. I mean, you don't have like there are no young stars in the party.
Oh god, no, I mean. And the people that think they are rising stars are all very contingent on Trump. Sarah Huckabee thinks she is a rising star in the party. Christinoam still even after dog murder, thinks she's a rising star in the party. And the people that also think they have an option, like Nicki Haley. Nicki Haley thinks she's a rising star and that she's going to be the next nominee and she's wrong. Yeah, I'll explain this
to Republicans since twenty sixteen. Once you cross him, even if you go and kiss his ass later, at some point, he will fuck you in the future just to humiliate you. Watch what happens the day after election Day with Vance. Yeah, they will say I thought JD would be better on TV, but he sucked. Turned out he was still a rhinoshel They won't ever escape. And Nicki Haley, because she said mean things about Trump, her opponents from them in any Republican primary in the future are going to run ads
saying remember when Nikki Haley attacked our president. Yeah, remember what she said that he was incompetent, insane, That's why Harris won. And now we live in Marxist socialism, the ads right themselves for.
These Yeahsi, there's a really, really, really good point. Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how awful Trump's second term could be? Well, so are we, which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make a limited series with the experts on what a disaster Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now, we have just released the final episode of this five
episode series. They're all available by looking up Molly John Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube, and if you are more of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber, you can hit play and put your phone in the lock screen and it will play back just like a podcast. All five episodes are online now. We need to educate Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do to this country, so please watch it and spread the word.
Doug rush Gooff is the author of many many books, including The Update of program or B Programmed eleven Commands for the AI Future, Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Thank you, it's a whole new Fast Politics. Congratulations on fourth day. I was just thinking you could record those like during your like two hour nap between Stephanie Rule and Morning Joe.
From the Room.
I did fall asleep yesterday on the sofa which I was with a teenager and they were talking to me, and then I was like, you know, I could just close my eyes and no one will notice.
So Doug, tell me about this book.
All right, I just want to talk about you. That's what I'm terrible.
I'm great.
You know this book. I was thinking about how you're reading the news now, right, and it made.
Me think of this book.
Actually, because the value add of you reading the news like a Mike Schmidt article or something is not that we can't get that information, that data ourselves. It's that we listen to how agitated you are by Mike Schmidt might have written in order to gauge how concerned we should be.
Right, So we are getting the.
News of the day as metabolized by Molly john fast nervous system. Right, that's the human value of media. And what I was always concerned about was this shift that we're valuing you know, the data over the human or doubt that the content over the context, you know, And that was really what set me on this whole journey. So yeah, so I wrote this book This was fifteen
years ago called Programmer b Programmed. It was ten Commands for the digital age, and I was kind of trying to update the ten Commandments as these passive things for the age of text to tend commands for this more active, interactive age. And I was arguing, if you don't know how these things work, they're gonna be working you right, You're going to be the tool rather than the tool user. Fifteen years ago, though, the way the book got interpreted was like learn to code right.
Nobody got the liberal arts critical thinking metaphor, and I became like this hero of like the digital you know, boot camp online, care to stem education, get rid of those liberal arts.
It was like, oh my god. When it was actually a call for you know, liberal arts and maybe a little bit of Marx right.
Berl Arts and a little bit of marks, that's good.
Yeah, automation was reducing our agency, you know that with the human beings are being understood in terms of utility value, like programming humans, like auto tuning our music, right, auto tuning. I mean you could auto tune Ariana Grande, but don't auto tune James Brown right, him reaching up for the note. That's literally the soul, that's what we're listening for, and that we were moving into a world where we saw that reaching up for the note as the noise and
the noted sofa is the signal. And I was trying to argue the opposite, that we can program this reality. But that was back in the age of early early Facebook. Right this is before Facebook even turned pure evil. It's when he was innocently doing evil rather than consciously doing evil.
But AI, like back then, compared to artificial intelligence, like social media, was kind of like the missionaries, you know, that came to Americas and softened up the population, got a lot of intelligence on them, and then reported back to the crown that AI is like the conquistadors, right use for that information to actually come and squish us.
So it's like, finally, now with AI, people are ready to understand what I was trying to say then, that you can either be a programming human who's programming the world that you live in, or you can accept these programs at face value and basically be enslaved by them. And we're at a really critical juncture that way right now.
Yeah, and again, what you're talking about here is aggregation right to.
A large extent. Yeah, I mean, it's really being able to see that the digital platform or environment that you're in has been programmed with really specific biases. These are not neutral territories. These are places that tilt in certain ways, like those of us on the on the so called left, although I don't even know if we'd be considered left compared to the original real left. We're like and yeah, you sit on a place like Twitter and it's hard
to know. I mean, I just went. I had hadn't been on Twitter really since like the second week of Musky and Twitter, and I went back because a friend of mine's group, one of the Kamala for you know the people I forgot which one it was, you know, deadheads for Kamala or dude one of those groups had gotten like kicked off, and I wanted to.
See, Oh it was Dude's Yeah it was Dude.
Was it Shadow or this or that? And I went and I hadn't seen it in the year. I'm like, oh my god, this is like, this is what jacque Alul meant by a propagandistic universe, the landscape itself. I don't subscribe to Musk as one of my Twitter people yet he's got every other post is from him, right, that he's controlling this world where even if you're in a little progressive conversation somewhere, the ads that come in are the worst, most awful, violent, right wing insanity or
bot stuff. So it's as if the are you're breathing in this environment is controlled by the feudalist dude who's running the thing, the content, the context, the whole space is tilted, and then that other things are actually banned. And this is supposedly this freezepeech open platform. It's like if you don't understand how programmed it is, and you just you spend time in there, your understanding of what's happening in the world, you know, really really changes.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's right.
Why is there no transparency when it comes to the algorithm? And actually we were just talking about this with another interview that maybe Elon is so all over the place because there's because that site has degraded so much. I wonder if it's sort of a less focused than say a TikTok, which has this sort of incredibly sensitive algorithm.
Right.
Well, I mean, I think part of the problem with x there's incompetence and mental illness kind of combining. So it's intentional, but it's not as articulated as a place like TikTok, where there's you know, tremendous competence in programming that environment. And I keep thinking that the underlying problem, and I hate blaming everything on capitalism, but the underlying problem in some ways is the una acknowledged operating system
underneath everything. The reason I wrote programmer every program was partly for us to be able to deal with this universe and to have these sort of simple commands, you know, to understand you you don't have to choose one of the above, that you can acknowledge your complexity, that not everything happens at scale, you know, these sort of ten
simple ideas. But for the developers and programmers, I wanted them to understand that there's an unacknowledged operating system underneath all of these platforms, and that is extractive growth based exponential capitalism. That yes, every program you write, sure it should have a good interface and serve people and do this, but it should be capable of growing exponentially forever, right, And that's only a certain kind of program is going
to do that. Right, grow exponentially forever means oh, it must function like cancer. It must eventually destroy its host. So Twitters it has to destroy. If it wants to be the virtual version of the public square, it has to extract all value from the public square and leave
a carcass behind it. I mean that was what ended up being their philosophy's in Survival of the Richest, my more recent book, it was that, Oh, they're realizing this, which is why they're going to lift off from the planet, which is why they see humanity as the maggot larval stage of evolution and themselves as the flies you know, that get off this big dung keep that is planet Earth.
But it's all because they can't see the programs that they're working with, and that's because they lack this critical thinking, this sort of basic liberal arts.
Interesting, you were sort of right about these tech billionaires.
Turns out, I mean, yeah.
Does that bring you any joy?
Or now it brings me joy in that Honestly. By nineteen ninety three, after my year of raving with the kids making fractal, I said, I saw Wired Magazine's first issue and I said, uh, oh, someone else is trying to kind of recontextualize this people's renaissance into a business revolution, and the window of opportunity for us to really seize what this is about is going to close, and we're all going to get programmed into oblivion and worse, I
guess you know. And that's why I'm happy this book came out again.
Now this is a reissue, right.
Yeah, fifteenth anniversary reissue, a program or reprogrammed with a whole new command and eleventh command about artificial intelligence, arguing that we value the human. But then this afterward that I wrote at the last minute, where I realized that that we on the progressive left have ended up absorbing some of this same digital ethos about engineering human beings. I'm at Climate Week at all these things, and every single talk and panel I keep hearing people say, how
do we get people to finally do this? How are we going to get people to do that? And it's like, once you're saying how do we get people too, you're in the programmer's mindset. You're not treating them as humans. So I'm arguing, is instead of trying to implement something by by instrumentalizing human beings to your cause, instead try to engender the behaviors you want, try to develop a landscape that engenders these kind of pro human qualities. What I started to do is look at well, why do
you do that? And then I came up with these four interventions that really makes sense, almost as a kind of a liberal arts approach to politics, where first one is just denaturalized power right, help people see the difference between the given circumstances of reality and the social constructions that have been imposed on us. Like I was doing
Jake Tapper the other night. I mean, bless him, he's a good guy and all, but I get in this mood and he was trying to get me to say bad things about AI and I was just feeling AI stupid. I don't really care about it today. And then finally he said, well, what about the unemployment problem? And I said back, I said, well what about the unemployment solution? He's like huh, And I'm like, well, I don't really want a job. Does anyone want a job?
I don't want a job.
I want stuff, I want money, I want meaning, but I could live without a job. Where did jobs come from? And then you go back to late medievalism and you find out, oh, jobs came along with the charter monopoly where doing business for yourself was illegal. Now you had to go work by the hour. It's when they put the clock on the tower, right, that's denaturalizing power. It's what media theorists love to do to say, since when, since when was it like this?
You know?
And then that leads to the second one, which is like to trigger people's agency, And that's you know, how do you help people see that they once it is a social construction. Once this money? Where did money come from? Who's programming my money? Could I have a different kind of money? Could we make local currency? That's triggering agency? And once you do that, it leads to well, if I have my agency, I don't want to do this alone. If I'm going to make new money, I'm going to
need other people. So we resocialize the people. I kind of call it like put the social back into socialism. I don't like the ism of it, but the social You got to put up a picture of your kid graduating from school. You've got to get a drill. You're going to go to the home depot and buy a minimum viable product drill or are you going to borrow a drill? From your neighbor.
Let's come back for a minute.
We're in this weird moment in American life where I don't know what AI can do. I have some sense that my Google searches look a little better now, but I have no sense of really what AI can do. It feels like we're on the precipice of something that could be quite bad or could be quite good. So explain to us sort of where we are at this moment with the AI, and if you want to tell us what it's going to do, that's fine too.
The jury's out on AI, just like the jury's still out on the Internet, just like the jury's still out. I guess I'm the industrial age, right. Aren't we going to to promote human and other earthling flourishing? Or are we gonna double down on extraction and death. It's funny I find AI is both better and worse than people think. I mean, AI is simply the realization of al Gore's original dream for the Internet. Right what al Gore said way back when. I know he didn't build the Internet,
but he really did lead to its funding. He said, I bet we already have all the solutions to all of our greatest problems. We just don't know how to put the data together. This scientist doesn't know that one. This politician doesn't know that policy and what the Internet was supposed to do was allow all those ideas to come together and be utilized. Google search was not enough to do that. Google search is like casting out with a fishing rod into the ocean and hoping that you
find something. What AI can do is bring those data points together in a way that you can see and a value them. So it's not replacing the human creation of the activity the way we're using it and say entertainment, you know, to get rid of actors or get rid of screenwriters. But it can amalgamate stuff. It can draw together ideas that we wouldn't have been able to do. It can find these eight symptoms seem to actually lead
to this particular disease or centric. It can do things that our brains aren't quite big enough to do that would be so powerful. But it's going to require us understanding data differently. We're going to have to really understand data as more of a commons that we can use to figure things out together, rather than this proprietary bunch of IP and surveillance and nuttiness. So I'm not really worried about AI.
Tending American democracy or or let me rephrase, killing all of us.
No, I'm not if you want some safeguards around this, and it sounds so either I don't know, old new age or mushroom influenced or something, but you know, make real relationships with other people, learn how to make eye contact, learn how to be with and breathe with other people.
If AI is going to be turned against us, it's going to be used like the internet's being used to decalibrate us, right, to alienate us from one another so that we're better customers, more frightened voters, and more manipulable. And you can recalibrate yourself in ten seconds by just holding someone's hand and looking in their eyes and keeping
your feet on the ground. I mean, even if you're freaking out when you're tweeting, just stop for a second, stand up with your feet on the ground, and take two deep breaths in through your nose out through your mouth. You'll recalibrate your nervous system and musk will look different to you.
You're saying that we should all touch grass.
Touch grass, right. That is the actual, natural, real way we have of defragging the hard drive or re starting our operating system. To people today, going outside and touching grass is probably as profound as like getting shock treatment in the nineteen fifty.
I mean, there's no grass to touch where I live, so I mean, I guess I couldn't.
But there's people. There's a child, yes.
Theoretical, yes they're not children anymore, but I do.
Have them, yeah, or humans, it really does. I just play it. I do it on the street of New York. I walk around and play this game. I try to make eye contact to try to find someone who's not on their phone and then just have that moment. It's like in body snatchers when you see another one who's not snatched yet. It's like wink, weak, nudge, nudge, I'm.
Here, are you? You know?
It's not even a flirt. It's just like there's another living human. It does settle you do. But that's again that's why sorry, I don't mean to just compliment you. It's why people listen to to fast politics. Fast It's true because it's like it's human. It's just breathe with us. You're you're helping us metabolize the shock and horror of
living in this age. And somehow it doesn't make it okay, but it makes me less vulnerable to the programming, to the programming that's trying to keep me tense and upset and decalibrate it. So it's it's a precursor to being able to program my own experience of this life.
Yeah, so true. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Thank you, thank you for what you do. I'm here anytime for anything, whether I get credit or not. I really I support this effort.
No moment time. Rick Wilson, Well, the jong Fast my moments of fuckery this week does return, as we talked about earlier in the show, to Project twenty twenty five and the Heritage Foundation, who did this plan on Donald Trump's behalf and behest. And anytime you hear someone say Trump is to separated himself from twenty twenty, it's a lie, people,
It's a fucking lie. But the thing that's in that plan, I want everybody this week who is suffering from the terrible, damnag which the hurricane has done in Florida, in Georgia, and most specifically in North Carolina, where the damage to western North Carolina, part of the country I truly love and I spent a lot of my time in in.
My life, and you used to have a house in Yeah.
It sorry, that was so mean.
I know. It's a very sad outcome. Yeah, and it's a terrible moment for everyone. But Project twenty twenty five, on its own pages, in its own words, wants to eliminate Noah, which is the weather for Service. They want to eliminate the National Hurricane Center because it uses the phrase a climate change maybe driving the intensity of these storms. They want to eliminate FEMA or move FEMA so that
the president controls FEMA. I am sorry, but if you buy in to getting rid of Noah and the Hurricane Center and FEMA, you are putting the lives of the people in these states that are increasingly facing these storms at risk. So that Project twenty twenty five continuing catalog of fuckery.
Yeah, and my they fuckery is actually related, tangentially related to yours, which is that what has burst from this hurricane, which I think is such a great example of like it mirrors what happened with the pandemic, is that we have all of these lies from magaworld saying that weather modification, that the hurricane appeared from nowhere, that you know that this was somehow not a real natural event, but somehow caused by Democrats or in some way targeting MAGA.
We think of it as laughably untrue.
But we thought about Donald Trump as laughably untrue in twenty fifteen, and then he became president. So all of this post truth stuff, well it's ridiculous. It can lead to really bleak you know, those people who believed QAnon and hurt people, you know, who believed QAnon was real and then when and hurt people. This can happen through this kind of on reality. So that, in fact, is my moment of reckery.
And Molly just a correlaor to to that bit. Right there, I'm seeing all over social media the claim by magas like Roy Cooper in North Carolina and Joe Biden have cut off North Carolina. They're not supporting us. They won't declare an emergency, you dumb motherfuckers. They declared an emergency before the storm even hit. FEMA is their enforce, National Guard is their in force. It's an astounding lie, but that's what they do.
Yep. Exactly. Thank you, Rick Wilson.
I will see you, Molly John Fast in Boston, Massachusetts. Here we go, then Philly, then DC and the Philly Show is all nude.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
And again, thanks for listening.