American Metamorphosis
Might as well paint that mutant red, white, and blue
The President won’t save America from itself, nor will Senators or Representatives. Ours is a crisis of identity and purpose. We suffer from a spiritual malaise. It’s a God-shaped hole cluttered with plastic personas.
Politicians play on racial, religious, or sexual identity, but these are forces far deeper than any campaign slogan. Politics do emerge from those forces, though, and political decisions feed back into them. Elections have consequences.
Our current election will have dramatic consequences. Indeed, it seems obvious we are entering a critical act of our national drama. This is not a mere political contest. It's escalating political warfare.
That doesn’t mean the outward displays we see or the slogans we hear indicate much about actual reality. You hear all sorts of promises of a brighter future and heartfelt oaths of loyalty which tend to dissolve in the course of time.
Electoral politics is mostly noise, with only faint signals buzzing beneath the surface. Most politicians execute their agendas under a cloud of empty words. Much of what we see is a smokescreen.
But going into 2025, a few tangible electoral outcomes are straightforward. Mass immigration, free speech, free association, unlawful search and seizure, bodily autonomy, weaponized "justice"—these issues will play out very differently under a Trump administration than under Harris and Co.
That’s why I voted for Trump. I want secure borders and the preservation of our constitutional rights, especially free speech and freedom of association. It’s the least any president can do for Americans.
If Harris and Co. take office, they will undoubtedly keep the immigrants coming—using amnesty to shift voter demographics in key states—and they’ll trample on our rights to call out this treason and organize to stop it. Under a lefty regime, America’s Balkanization will accelerate and either justify more intense control systems or widen the fractures to the point of mass violence—or both.
If Trump wins, it buys us a little more time to work out who we are as a nation. Viewed at a finer resolution, it buys more time for the various tribes that now make up America to make sense of themselves and adjust to each other. At least in theory.
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Facing the “Inevitable”
The threat of technological transformation is less immediate than mass immigration or a potential death blow to our constitutional republic. But in the long run, this tech overhaul will be far more pervasive and at least as destructive. As of election day, neither Trump nor Harris have had the will or wherewithal to address this problem head on.
In fact, Trump is being carried across the finish line by Elon Musk—the world’s wealthiest transhumanist. Trump also enjoys continued support from surveillance state superstar Peter Thiel, and is endorsed by the reckless tech investor Marc Andreessen and his various e/acc surrogates. Any time Trump mentions AI, it's usually to boost the dream of American dominance in the field. Most MAGA influencers are along for the ride. The "Elon" fanboys got everything they wanted and then some.
It’s hilarious thinking back on all those accusations of “evil transhumanism” when it was politically useful, only to hear the same people now label artificial intelligence, brain implants, humanoid robots, death drones, IVF eugenics, and social media swarms as “good American technology.” One reason I can’t stand democratic politics is the ephemeral nature of its supposed “core values,” which shift with the prevailing winds.
Not that it matters so much. Americans won’t arrive at a political solution to techno saturation any time soon. Tech is the water we’re swimming in—a rising deluge that began over two centuries ago with the First Industrial Revolution.
Technology is power, and if electoral politics has one consistent drive, it’s the will to power. So naturally both Republicans and Democrats are scrambling to lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution—even those who pretend it’s something else.
Harris and Co. have the quiet support of the AI ghoul-creator Sam Altman, the slovenly jabberwocky Bill Gates, the meta-frog Yann LeCun, and the death drone-summoning Eric Schmidt, along with many other tech-pushers. Barring a solar flare or some other catastrophe, the transhuman revolution is living up to its promise of “inevitability,” even if its actual manifestation is more like Idiocracy than The Matrix.
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Will the Gray Goo Be Colored Red, White, and Blue?
The reality is we are all lab mice in a vast global experiment. Millions of children are now being taught—or programmed—by “educational” artificial intelligence. These haphazard mind-warp operations are quietly unfolding from Appalachia to Africa. Before long, the millions will likely become billions.
Adults are undergoing a similar metamorphosis in which their minds and behaviors are infused with and synched to digital entities—the “fusion of our physical, digital, and biological identities”—whether it's in the military-industrial complex, the corporate world, government bureaucracy, or just day-to-day life.
Taken to its extreme conclusion, the normalization of “personal AI” will be sort of like those hapless Uyghurs in the Chinese hinterlands who are forced to host some pale, angular Han agent who watches their every move for the CCP and photo-bombs their family portraits. The biggest difference is that Americans will pay good money to have an AI spy on them 24/7.
From there, it’s a dizzying cascade into the Greater Replacement by digital agents and industrial robots, highways swarming with autonomous Bug Man mobiles, worn or implanted biodigital devices, fetishized humanoid robots, fashionable biohacking, various social media based “everything apps,” ethereal digital currency, and all manner of irritating human-machine feedback loops.
This is a global experiment and we are the lab mice. It’s run by the wealthiest men in the world, and facilitated by the most powerful corporations and governments. At present, rival factions of transhumanist billionaires are supporting both Trump and Harris, respectively.
We’re already paddling around a sea of technological gray goo. It’s just a question of whether that ooze is rainbow-colored or red, white, and blue.
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Preserve the Control Group
These technologies will not be evenly distributed, though. Whenever people talk about the “future of humanity,” I always ask—which “humanity”? There are many civilizations and subcultures, and countless individuated personalities spinning out of them, all treading their various paths. We should do our best to keep it that way.
Every serious experiment needs a control group. If it turns out that cyborg consumerism is an evolutionary dead end, then we’d be wise to keep a healthy stock of legacy humans around to rebuild the wreckage. That's not too much to ask.
I’d like to think Trump is more likely to make space for that control group, but so far there’s no solid reason to think so. Oh well. You can’t get everything you want, and I wasn’t so crass as to write in “Ned Ludd.”
Picking a candidate is about trade-offs, so the T Don got my vote. Besides, he’s way funnier than his opponents, so at least we’ll get a few good laughs as the bots multiply around us like nonhuman immigrants.
People get hung up on buzzwords, but this election is not a choice between “fascism” or “communism,” or any other tidy label from the 20th century. Even so, we are certainly at a decisive crossroad. Which way to steer the ungodly Machine?
For me, it’s better to have patriotic Americans using their free speech to debate the merits of living on Mars or jabbing iTrodes into their brains than to live in a virtualized global shopping mall that runs on “equitably” distributed UBI.
If we are destined for one technodrome or another, I want options. I want the freedom to make fun of it all. I want the possibility to erect cultural barriers and remain in the control group. Most of all, I want to live in something like the America that I remember.
No political leader will save “humanity.” We all have our own boats to paddle through this gray goo. But only one candidate has shown the backbone to stand up for legacy Americans, so there's some hope that—when the time comes—Trump will be as bold in defending Team Human.
No one knows the future, but I bet that time will come faster than you can say “competitive exclusion principle.” Be ready to adapt.
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Thanks, Joe. Missed you, it would have been tough to get through such a consequential (at least from my perspective) day without hearing from you. God save the control group 🙏
I figure we humans, part of a populist movement must cross one bridge at a time, then burn it after we have crossed. Movements evolve, but revolutions are always betrayed.
On the negative side, I see AIs as the next nuclear boogeyman = we must continue to develop our AIs because reasons. Mostly that Russia, China, Iran, Botswana, Easter Island, or the Svalbard empire will surpass us and use them against us