By Steve BermanIf you want to read a hellscape for 2023, Dmitry Medvedev has one on Twitter. Here’s one in the thread.
Medvedev, Vladimir Putin’s longtime partner in crime, also predicted the EU’s collapse, a united Irish republic including Northern Ireland, and a Fourth Reich “encompassing the territory of Germany and its satellites, i.e. Poland, the Baltic states, Czechia, Slovakia, the Kiev Republic, and other outcasts.” The Fourth Reich will go to war with France (!), and Poland will again be partitioned. The U.S. will divide in a civil war, with Elon Musk becoming president of the GOP’s states.
Musk could not contain himself, calling this “the most absurd predictions I’ve ever heard,” but first tweeting “Epic thread!!” But Musk’s specific problem with Medvedev’s drunken rant was his “astonishing lack of awareness of the progress of artificial intelligence and sustainable energy.”
Funny how Musk draws attention to a couple of things that he’s got his pocketbook tied to. But neither Medvedev or Musk are known for their humility (except to Putin). Let’s say that neither of these two is barking in the right forest, nevermind up the right tree.
Moving on…
One of the victories Republicans crowed about in their retaking of the lower house of Congress is George Santos’ win in New York City. Finding a Republican representing any part of NYC is a rarity, and now we are learning the extent of Santos’ deep and wide canyon filled with lies and deceptions. The New York Times’ Michael Gold and Grace Ashford have documented some of these, and I am guessing it will be the proverbial tip of the iceberg.
Santos said, and the NRCC website biography maintains he received degrees from Baruch College and NYU. He didn’t. He said he worked for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. He worked for neither. He has said he was of Jewish heritage, but then backtracked, saying he meant “Jew-ish” not “Jewish.” Santos can’t explain how he went from owing thousands of dollars in back rent and other financial difficulties, to loaning his own campaign $700,000 in just a few years.
He lied about having a criminal record in Brazil, being charged with check fraud as a young man, but the case was never completed because authorities couldn’t find him.
The only thing Santos might not be lying about is that he’s gay. And even there, he deceived about a years-long marriage to a woman. “It’s personal stuff,” he hand-waved. There’s literally nothing this man says that can be believed, putting him possibly lower on the trust scale than the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene might be bat-guano nuts but at least the details of her life are fairly verifiable.
Congress will seat Santos, unless he’s got some kind of felony or other hidden skeleton worthy of breach of his oath. God knows, there’s plenty of room for crooks in that body.
Moving on…
Remember in August of 2020—eons ago—when then-President Donald Trump signed an executive order sanctioning TikTok? Now it appears that everything the former administration claimed about the company’s ties to China’s government and potential spying is pretty much accurate. The Biden administration has taken a both roads, confusing approach to TikTok, but states and the federal government have cracked down recently, banning the app from their devices.
TikTok collects user data—all kinds of metadata—and its data stores are, by law, available to Chinese government authorities. This isn’t going to change unless ByteDance, TikTok’s owner, divests the service outside China. And that’s unlikely without a diplomatic showdown with Beijing.
This might end up a back burner issue, with tensions on Taiwan increasing. Plus, China has just, after a zero-COVID bloodletting, opened up its borders with practically no COVID restrictions, other than a negative test. China also said it would halt publishing daily infection data.
The point…
Who could have predicted, at the start of 2022, that #RussiaIsCollapsing would trend on Twitter, which is now a private company owned by a man described by many as an unstable genius, and that Republicans had not yet found a way to deal with Trump, but feature liars, thieves and charlatans as success stories? Well, maybe the last one is predictable.
The main benefit of truth coming out is that it leads to humility. At the start of 2022, I didn’t think Vladimir Putin was a religious extremist and would attack Ukraine, which has clearly been bad for business in Russia. I was wrong. After several years of smears against Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, promoted by the Trumps, I didn’t think he was a serious leader. Neither did the Biden administration. But we were all wrong.
In 2023, my sincerest wish is that we’re all wrong about the direction this country, and the world, is taking. Truth, and humility, need to make a comeback. If there’s one thing Elon Musk is right about, it’s the rise of artificial intelligence, but not for the reasons he probably thinks. The current crop of AI, like ChatGPT, is best at writing believable falsehoods. This AI is not trustworthy because it can’t tell truth from lies. Yet the promoters of AI think it’s an advance. The best advance in AI would be humility and skepticism.
It’s not enough that George Santos might admit he lied (how can he not admit it when his lies are in front of his face?). It’s not enough that he get punished for lying. Humility requires all of us to admit we have believed lies because we’ve biased our views on so many things.
We’ve become cynical about everyone and everything, except our own biases. As the proof of so many biases, including Twitter, our government, COVID-19, China, politics, Trump, elections, and so many war scenarios, bubble up in 2023, I am hoping people, right and left, will remember that we’re all wrong on so many things.
It’s better to be humble, and admit we don’t know, and frequently care more about our ignorant opinions, than about having the truth. The best prediction for 2023 might be two words: I’m wrong.
Follow Steve on Twitter @stevengberman.
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