Organized Fakery

 The world in which we live is chockerblock filled with Fake News. Surely, Fox, The Faux News Network leads the parade, although they are not alone, as the right wing in America (what used to be known as the Republican Party) is filling up our Land with Fake News outlets, for example One America News, an extreme right wing news outlet founded by Robert Herring of Herring Network, Inc. And the list goes on and on.

But, to be fair, if you aren’t extreme right wing and still want news that is unbiased, you need not listen to/watch Fox and the other dregs like OAN.  You can listen to your news on PBS, or even MSNBC or the other main network news outlets. They may lean one way or another depending on which host they are using at the moment, but still they are not bouncing off the walls of right wing lies, like Fox. I still have difficulty understanding why any thinking person listens to/watches Fox News.  Regardless of whether you voted for Trump or Biden, would you not prefer gaining facts through your news outlets, rather than flat-out lies? Rupert Murdoch has so corrupted our landscape that he really should be forever banished from our Land, and from the Lands of any Nation that wishes to lead a relatively normal National viewpoint.   I mean, Oz, how can you stand that cretin? And he pretends to Australian Nationhood. How did you allow that to happen?

But we go on, day by day. And we listen to Donald Trump and his Fascist political Party, promoted by the likes of Fox News.  And we laugh when Stephen Colbert uses some element of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to make believe that Donald Trump is even more outrageously stupid (but funny) than we might have imagined.  But his AI fakeries are promoted simply as laugh pieces, known to be only partly true (he really did say that he could go out on 5^th Avenue, shoot someone and his poll numbers would rise).

But in conversations with a number of people, who are more steeped in the world of AI than me (because they use it to create AI pieces for TV) I am beginning to wonder, in dismay, just when it will be when we (I) can no longer tell when some news piece produced using AI is real or a fake. And when we can no longer tell, what will we do then?

Just imagine a Donald Trump (or a Marjorie Taylor Greene) who has a fully competent AI system at their disposal.  And they then begin producing fake news elements and finding ways to slip them into all the various news outlets.  Now if such things came into real news outlets like PBS, or CBS, or MSNBC, would we be able to tell whether what we were watching was real or fake?  Now, to be fair, if the source were known to be Donald, or MTG, then we would likely dismiss it. But supposing the source was unknown? And the item showed a Democratic President, Kamala Harris for instance, saying or doing something awful or simply compromising to our future? What then?

I am told that this kind of dystopian future is now within our grasp. It is not off 50-100 years in the future, but more like 5 years. And are we ready for such a future? Hmmm, No. See, in olden days, before our government was made by the right wing to seem completely unreliable, we might have actually asked our government to help, maybe to weigh in on such Fake News events and declare them Fake.  But now, with Fox News and others of that ilk working daily to destroy our government’s credibility, what will we do?

This possibility has me truly baffled, mainly because then, we mighty simply not know any longer whether something we were watching was real or a fake. So maybe, we will need to produce some substitute for video news. But, right now, I cannot imagine what that might be.  Everything is LIVE? Seems extreme, but might be necessary.  Could we trust anyone any longer? If not, how do we operate a Nation-State? See, sometimes it seems as though the right wing does not want to operate a Nation State, but I think that is not the case. I think they only wish to operate a Nation-State if it is their own Nation-State, i.e., one operated by Donald Trump, or others of his ilk. But the rest of us would obviously not trust such a State. So, what then? Two states??? A Red State of TrumpLand and a Blue state of ordinary, mostly honest people. To be preceded by a Civil War? Well, we hope not, but that is the direction in which we are being dragged by our right wing citizenry. So, let us hope for a saner, more civilized solution. Voting?? Well, will voting somehow avoid/correct the AI nightmare future scenarios?  Who knows? Not even the Shadow knows.