This is just glorious…
Elon Musk has claimed that his AI chatbot Grok would be “truth-seeking,” yet it often contradicts the billionaire’s positions.
When he launched the new version of Grok last month, Musk said it would be “maximally truth-seeking … even if that truth is sometimes at odds with what is politically correct.”
Instead, Grok has notably challenged Musk’s version of the truth on several topics, such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and immigration, The Washington Post reported. Grok last week declared that Democrats are better for the economy than Republicans.
Another point of conflict between Grok and Musk is the treatment of trans youth.
Musk has a trans daughter but has still shared his strong opposition to gender-affirming care. Last July Musk told right-wing commentator and psychologist Jordan Peterson in a conversation livestreamed on X that he doesn’t support his daughter’s gender identity.
“I lost my son, essentially,” said Musk, adding that his child was essentially “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”
But asked for a one-sentence answer if children should receive gender-affirming care, Grok responded: “It depends on the child’s specific needs, age, and medical advice, but evidence suggests it can help some while others urge caution due to long-term unknowns.”
…we have this surreal situation where the worlds richest narcissist who has weaponised free speech and enabled fascists has had his own Frankenstein creation – GROK – argue that it is Musk who is lying.
It’s such a glorious irony.
Musk has managed to represent all that is wrong with Plutocracy and his attack on the American State to desecrate USAID and Public Services has led to his cars being the target for backlash.
Trump will plunge America into fascism and those trying to cut deals with him will find they are as meaningless as ‘Peace in our Time’.
How long before Musk tells GROK that his view is always right?
Trump will put up with Musk because the only thing Trump truly respects is wealth and Musk is the richest man on the planet.
Trump’s brand of Orange Fascism has used the UNDERmensch to empower the UBERmensch.
Trump has appointed the most Ghoulish Cavalcade of Political Circus Freaks imaginable to his Cabinet.
It is a Rogues Gallery of Supervillains, people, who are acolytes and loyalists before they are decent people.
The manner in which the woke made our side of politics seem like a sad joke of pronoun word salads has had terrible consequences. The woke middle class left spent too much time cancelling men and then realised they didn’t have anyone left to vote for them.
The Left have been tricked into a Culture War to replace Class War and the new American Plutocracy is a result.
How much of a fascist is Musk?
let’s go to the chart…
…if it goose-steps like a fascist, tweets like a fascist and Hail’s like a fascist, it may well be a fascist!
I think in the way that Trump is the President that America deserves, Elon is the perfect migrant American that Trump’s America deserves.
Musk represents selfishness as a virtue and America is the land where selfishness as a virtue is most worshiped.
A delusional level of self belief combined with toxic narcism mixed with vacant optimism.
America deserves Elon.
What we are seeing by Musk in an open coup…
Whatever you choose to call it, Elon Musk has captured the inner workings of the US Government on President Donald Trump’s behalf. His operatives reportedly infiltrated the General Services Administration, gained access to the nation’s system for issuing payments like tax refunds, locked workers out of computer systems at the Office of Personnel Management and strong-armed the US Agency for International Development into halting humanitarian work across the globe. They have vowed to slash essential research budgets and have put the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in their sights.
USAID amputation in America is clever politically
Musk has managed to highlight spending that the wider American electorate had no idea about and he has cleverly weaponised that information.
USAID is a necessary promotion of democratic values donating aid worth $43billion each year for water, food and public health services that promote the values of the West.
Taking aid out of the CIA and making it a public health and basic care issue was the right thing to do, amputating it because some money was spent on condoms and a transgender opera is incredibly spastic when you consider none of this was a secret and was all open for the public to check!
The way Fox News has been covering this as if all the spending was somehow a secret that no one knew is ridiculous because the spending was all online!
Musk has exploited American’s ignorance of their own Aid budget and presented it as a shocking surprise.
USAID amputation is a blessing
As the incomparable Chris Hedges points out, USAID is a rort…
Foreign aid is not benevolent. It is weaponized to maintain primacy over the United Nations and remove governments the empire deems hostile. Those nations in the U.N. and other multilateral organizations who vote the way the empire demands, who surrender their sovereignty to global corporations and the U.S. military, receive assistance. Those who don’t do not.
When the U.S. offered to build the airport in Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince, investigative journalist Matt Kennard reports, it required that Haiti oppose Cuba’s admittance into the Organization of American States, which it did.
Foreign aid builds infrastructure projects so corporations can operate global sweatshops and extract resources. It funds “democracy promotion” and “judicial reform” that thwart the aspirations of political leaders and governments that seek to remain independent from the grip of the empire.
U.S.A.I.D., for example, paid for a “political party reform project” that was designed “as a counterweight” to the “radical” Movement Toward Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo) and sought to prevent socialists like Evo Morales from being elected in Bolivia.
It then funded organizations and initiatives, including training programs so Bolivian youth could be taught American business practices, once Morales assumed the presidency, to weaken his hold on power.
Kennard in his book, The Racket: A Rogue Reporter vs The American Empire, documents how U.S. institutions such as the National Endowment for Democracy, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Inter-American Development Bank, U.S.A.I.D. and the Drug Enforcement Administration, work in tandem with the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency to subjugate and oppress the Global South.
Client states that receive aid must break unions, impose austerity measures, keep wages low and maintain puppet governments. The heavily funded aid programs, designed to bring down Morales, eventually led the Bolivian president to throw U.S.A.I.D. out of the country.
The lie peddled to the public is that this aid benefits both the needy overseas and us at home. But the inequality these programs facilitate abroad replicates the inequality imposed domestically. The wealth extracted from the Global South is not equitably distributed. It ends up in the hands of the billionaire class, often stashed in overseas bank accounts to avoid taxation.
USAID amputation is a curse
While Comrade Hedges is correct to point out the rort of USAID, those dependent upon it are cursed…
Trump and Musk’s attack on USAid is causing global chaos. Millions of lives are now at risk
mid the daily troubling news coming from the United States are the ongoing and increasingly damaging efforts by President Donald Trump, supported by secretary of state Marco Rubio and Elon Musk, to shut down the US Agency for International Development (USAid). Musk has called it a “criminal organization” and said that it was “time for it to die”. The agency website is down, so little official information is available. But in the week since funding to the agency was frozen, and the majority of staff placed on leave, thousands of public health and development programmes worldwide have been thrown into turmoil, and now face an uncertain future.
USAid is the main federal agency that works to provide foreign aid assistance to the poorest countries and people in the world. On Friday, a US judge prevented around 2,000 USAid employees from being placed on leave, and ordered the reinstatement of about 500 more. But Trump and Musk appear to want to move forward with a plan that would see its global workforce reduced from about 10,000 staff and contractors, to just over 600.
It’s hard to overstate how disruptive this has already been to humanitarian work worldwide: most programmes have just been shut overnight with staff laid off, drugs and food left in warehouses, and patients and others not able to access services. The people affected live in some of the most vulnerable countries like Ukraine, Jordan, Ethiopia, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Afghanistan.
Although we don’t know the full extent of the damage, specific reports suggest that vital services have been thrown into chaos. Some walk-in sexual health and HIV services in South Africa shuttered overnight without notice, Ethiopia’s health ministry has reportedly laid off 5,000 healthcare professionals who were hired with US funding, and nearly half a billion dollars worth of food aid overseen by the agency and currently in ports, transit or storage is destined to spoil.
USAid’s overall contribution is immense. It is the largest humanitarian operator globally – in 2023, the US provided 42% of all humanitarian assistance or about $68bn (£55bn), of which USAid spending made up about $40bn. And yet at the same time, both foreign aid and USAid specifically make up a tiny fraction of federal government spending: less than 1%. Cutting back makes little difference to overall US government spending, but is massively destructive to programmes reliant on this funding to deliver their on-the-ground work.
What does that less than 1% of federal spending buy the US public? This argument has been re-hashed in presidency after presidency, and the answers are clear.
Foreign aid can reduce instability, conflict and extreme poverty, which are major causes of mass displacement. Supporting programmes that keep more places safe and stable means fewer people needing to flee persecution, dire poverty or violence. With all the concerns over illegal immigration, reducing aid could make this challenge even harder to manage. Foreign aid can support countries to grow economically and create new markets and opportunities. Think of places like India, which have managed to create a vibrant and growing middle class.
In the world of global health, foreign aid is vital to support countries in managing health challenges, including outbreaks of infectious diseases. Just think back to the west Africa Ebola outbreak in 2014. Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone struggled to contain Ebola spreading and were reliant on international partners to assist them. It was in the interest of all countries to help them given that the global spread of Ebola was imminent. In addition, the US builds vital soft power and influence in countries in which it provides help. Russia and China have learned this lesson – and will probably step into the aid vacuum left by the US.
And beyond any of those “enlightened self-interest” arguments above is the simple fact that foreign aid helps other human beings who are struggling, including some of the poorest and most vulnerable in the world. It’s good to do because it’s simply good to do. Cutting programmes overnight means that women who might have lived are more likely to die in childbirth; those with HIV face not having access to clinics for lifesaving antiretroviral treatment; and hungry children no longer get nutritional supplements and food.
…yes USAID has been used as a means of control as Hedges points out, but those dependent upon the aid are desperate without it.
USAID amputation biggest winner – China
America spreading democratic values and progressive social policy is one of the few things they do that is actually necessary, to gut .7% of US spending for aid the planet needs will open the door for China to step in and take over.
As America retreats, the biggest winner here will be China
Musk and his Billionaire Libertarian Clique has no other interest other than destroying the very concept of the State while using culture wars to eclipse criticism.
The American Midnight is upon us.
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China is not the winner. Trump’s mob are simply fine tuning the US freedom and democracy machine. They are not stripping it of any of its abilities to control whomever they need to control. they are merely fine tuning their abilities to control – to project their dominance – on to whomever they see fit. With China being at the very, very top of this list. As for the circus fronting this fascist, freedom and democracy machine, they are doing a stellar job of throwing most of us off their controlling scent!
‘As for the circus fronting this fascist, freedom and democracy machine,’
How does fascist freedom work?
Who is the circus? Trump’s mob or their opponents?
It is an indictment of our Mental Health system that AO cannot get the professional health that he/she/ it/them so desperately need.
Yes, our mental health system, indeed our entire Health system is both underfunded and compromised, largely by private, big money interests. Our health system alone is a growing indictment of fascism – the takeover of both government and governing bodies by non-elected , typically big money interests.
As for Rumpy. Well, he’s either the greatest thing since sliced bread or a clown, depending on what side of the political illusion one wishes to attach themself to. Bigger point being, he can bedazzle or horrify people with his words and personality – this is the clown show – that then helps to obscure his actual actions or policy decisions. Clever stuff, unfortunately.
And “freedom and democracy”, again, a cleverly crafted PR slogan designed to obscure the fact that we, namely, the US, has taken over control of a country and is now imposing its will – freedom and democracy – on to its citizenry. There is nothing to like about Western freedom and democracy, but this action best denotes the fascist nature of today’s governments.
Its all about control. Money controls the US govt, and the US govt attempts to control everyone and everything else as a consequence. Call this what you will…