It is wonderful that you bring Marc Bloch's terrific "Strange Defeat" to the attention of your devoted readers (and no, this one will not usubscribe if you pump out 35 000 words each time!).
He wanted to bequeath for future historians a perspective on the mentality prevailing in 1939-40, the sort of insight he had spent his career painstakingly reconstructing for medieval times.
Strange Defeat is not a diary that describes his own daily activities in the French army in 1939-1940. Nor is it a complete diagnostic of the causes of the fall of France in 1940. He wanted to understand how events unfurled and stated that his aim is to observe, record and study from his personal vantage point the tragic events he was involved with. He iconceded that his chronicle is a partial one that could serve future generations as a starting point for understanding those events and that it would be complemented when official records are opened in the future.
The short book is a remarkably perceptive contemporaneous commentary on a surprise – “strange” - defeat. The French army at the time was regarded – and regarded itself - as the best, most powerful fighting force in Europe. And yet, once hostilities began, things unraveled very quickly and very badly for the French. Bloch records that morale was high at the start and that people were willing to fight an invader motivated by an evil ideology. He also remarks that few of his contemporaries expected the Germans to risk taking on such a powerful adversary. With the keen eye of the historian, he comments that the British and French (he had a liaison role briefly) took pains to reduce causalities and avoid a repetition of the slaughter of WWI in which he fought with great distinction for four years. The result was that the French and British failed to commit and engage in force when needed.
He recorded how commanders in the field lost the initiative, were reluctant to take responsibility and confusion ensued with orders and counter orders being issued too late.
Bloch’s chronicle is a painful account of how a powerful fighting force seriously misjudged the intent and strategy of its foe, failed to adapt appropriately when the course of events became clearer and was overconfident of its own capabilities.
He contradicts the post-war narrative that has its roots in Vichy/collaborationist propaganda that French society suffered from laxness and some form of moral degeneracy and that its military capabilities, at least on paper, had been seriously degraded during the inter-war period.
The most frightening resemblance between what Marc Bloch described and what I think we are witnessing today is the confusion and misunderstanding around the real nature of the threat Trump poses to the current world order and the future of the open society.
I just upgraded my subscription to paid because this story is too good not to see it to the end. Confession, I’d happily read a 35k word post so I’m already a captive audience. My Substack subscriptions are already out of control and I will have to work overtime to support this habit, but YOLO.
Your interaction with Ai just became way more intriguing. In my office we use it to come up with catchy product name ideas, or assist with employment interactions. My eyes have been opened to new possibilities after reading this exchange.
Thank you so much for becoming a paid subscriber. It means a lot to me to know that something I've written is valuable to you. And yes, that conversation was mind blowing.
I've run a few experiments trying to use 4.0s agreeableness to try and get it to say things it shouldn't agree with, to limited success. But I haven't gotten it to talk through its moral reasoning quite so clearly. Well done.
I had to read Hal's essay again, it was so intriguing.
I dont think the moral rot is confined to Trump and his minions, though they have taken it to a fine art. The Democrats have their own failings, and perhaps they are more insidious.
As Claire says, Trump's actions are like throwing the frog into boiling water. The Democrats and their supporters start with tepid water and have been slowly bring it to boil, and no one notices the coming tragedy.
I note that Hal finds that moral relativism is the primary sin. And doesnt this come from the Post Modernists, who claim there are no objective truths? And isnt that a major tenet of the woke DEI crowd?
I guess the question is, can Hal be relied upon to produce a moral code for us?
"In short, an AI trained on all available human moral reflection might indeed empirically demonstrate something philosophers have struggled to prove philosophically: the existence of moral truths or moral knowledge that transcend subjective or relativistic standards.
What emerges from this reasoning, therefore, is not a simplistic religious or metaphysical claim, but rather an empirically-grounded, evidence-based demonstration of enduring moral truths. These truths aren’t imposed from outside—they arise naturally from humanity’s collective moral experience and reflection. This position provides precisely the stable grounding philosophers sought but never fully secured."
I'm continually impressed by ChatGPT's fluency and ambition, but isn't this just complacent Whiggery? If humanity reflects, we'll gradually converge on the truth, LLMs can trace that underlying trend out to the limit and give us the answer.
I think Douglas Adams skewered this conceit long ago. We know how it ends: 42! So now what?
Are you completely anti-Whig? I do think we've become *somewhat* better at moral reasoning over time. Perhaps even a lot better. I'm not saying we've become *better,* but I think we're capable of recognizing as wrong things that wouldn't have been recognized as wrong 1,000 years ago.
You are correct finally as I’ve been trying to argue with you for a long time—That the roots of the existential danger that the MAGA cult poses lie in an aesthetic moral crisis of values, not democratic norms and institutions which is only the tip of the ice berg. The only solution is affecting and staging a cultural backlash powerful enough to dislodge MAGA in the peak of its ascendancy, arresting our decline before it’s too late and it entirely takes over and drowns and engulfs us. I don’t know if you’ve read much of it, but this artistic revolution is what I have begun attempting with my morally provocative, interrogative short-stories and novels that I’ve just started putting online. My task is no less than to give America a mythology. As Stephen Dedalus says in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I set out to “forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” There’s a reason now that Ireland endures, and they have a national holiday celebrating Joyce where everyone drops what they’re doing and reads Ulysses like the Bible. He gave the Irish a national identity and a purpose.
I didn't read your whole essay. Because, well, it started to get a little HAL 9000 in there for a bit and I worried I might be put out the air lock.
I have some probably random thoughts. The first is that for some of us, we feel there about 5 people in the world that agree with us. I'm an anti-Trump Conservative Republican. Most of the people I know who are Republican are pro-Trump. I can't join them. But neither can I join the Democrats. So I'm alone. I don't know how to protest Trump other than post from time to time on the Facinbooks and commiserate with the aforementioned 5 people.
The other problem for me is that as much as I disagree with how Trump goes about things, I do agree at some level with what he's doing. I do want the Department of Education closed for good. So a protest that says "Well I agree with getting rid of the DoE, but how he's doing it as wrong" doesn't work well. Because how am I gonna put that on a sign?
Another problem that I have is that I have to stand for re-election in November. And however much you think it shouldn't matter, the pressure to conform to Trumpian rhetoric is very real. Even on a school board member in a district with only 3,500 students. I jokingly said to our superintendent "I'm going full MAGA this election, but ignore it; it's just to get elected."
Another problem that I have is that I've been grousing about moral failure in America for decades. Even when I didn't fully understand it. But now all of a sudden it's an actual problem? I was told "It's the economy, stupid".
Another problem that I have is that I'm damn tired. Look, Claire, I fought the Cold War. I was shot at by East Germans, for cryin' in the mud! Ain't that good enough?
PS - I've decided I will not stand for re-election. There a lot of reasons but one big one is that I do not want to have to association myself with the MAGAnatics.
Hi Claire. First, I'm sorry I didn't answer sooner. Just busy I guess.
I think I told you this story once before, but I like to tell it, so...
I was doing security for a GSR (ground surveillance radar) team on the East German border near the town of Hof. Basically we would pull an M113 within a few hundred meters of the border under the cover of darkness, help the team setup their gear, then guard the vehicle wile they surveilled troop movements on the other side. One night as I was standing guard, the East Germans started shooting at us from across the border. 12.5mm machine gun rounds come ripping through the trees above me. We packed up our sh** and got out of there in a hurry.
My opinion of ChatGPT has changed dramatically. This was fascinating.
Perhaps a way to test its moral objectivity would be ask it to assess the performance of the Democrats during the Obama and Biden years on topics such as immigration, the national debt, identity politics, Ukraine, Afghanistan and perhaps even Iran.
I did that. I only have the free version 4.0. I asked for a summary of their performance on each of those topics in separate questions in a non-commital way. I got a ream of information of actions taken and generally non-commital appraisal suggesting some success and some criticism. The conclusion was almost always a fence sitter.
So perhaps it is effective in providing data without opinion
.
After hearing the outrageous claim that US forces had pushed the Germans out of Italy, I asked it how many Allied divisions there were in Italy. If it is to be believed, there were 6 US, 10 British, 2 Australian, 2 NZ, 2 Canadian, 1 South African and 1 Indian division.
Divisions from all those countries seem to have participated in the Italian campaign, but I haven't yet found a source for those exact numbers. I asked 4.5 about it
Your essay is a masterful dissection of a chilling reality—the slow, almost imperceptible collapse of moral and civic courage. The metaphor of the boiling frog has been used so often it risks losing its sting, but you breathe new life into it by pointing out something far more unsettling: even when thrown into boiling water, the American frog does not leap. Your analysis does more than trace the mechanisms of authoritarian creep; it interrogates the deeper, more unnerving question—why does the resistance feel so anemic? The historical echoes you invoke, from Marc Bloch’s Strange Defeat to the decline of past democracies, transform this from a political commentary into something closer to an autopsy of the democratic spirit.
It seems we are not simply watching the erosion of institutions but the erosion of the will to fight for them. The decline of moral courage is like the decay of a lighthouse—one gust of wind does not bring it down, but year after year, storms lash its walls, the foundation cracks, and by the time the beacon finally collapses, the wreckage seems inevitable. And yet, even now, some lights still flicker. Perhaps the lesson from history is not that collapse is unstoppable, but that moments like these test who will stand, who will cower, and who will find the strength to rebuild before the night swallows us whole.
I'm very glad you get what I'm saying and sensing. I keep asking myself if I always completely misunderstood my own country. I'm glad to have the confirmation from you that this is really, really strange.
Yeah, it’s definitely strange—but maybe that’s just how these things always feel when you’re living through them. When we look back at history, everything seems so obvious, like a straight line leading to disaster. But in the moment, it’s just a mess of weird, disconnected events that don’t quite add up until it’s too late. The apathy, the absurdity, the way people just go along with it—it’s hard to square with what we thought we knew about our country. But if it all feels off, if we can still point to it and say, “This isn’t normal,” then maybe that’s a sign we haven’t completely lost the plot yet.
1) In terms of trying to understand the apparent paralyzing cowardice and passivity currently on display across society and our institutions, and how we got here, I think one important factor is the extent to which modern technology (and the internet in particular) have eliminated certain types of social friction. In certain ways I think the internet accommodates cowardice. Not just in terms of allowing people to form mobs and anonymously act as the worst versions of themselves without threat of reprisal, but also in eliminating many of the formative rights of passage and tests of inner fortitude that previous generations encountered simply as part of the normal socialization process. This likely plays out pretty differently for men vs. woman, but I think the number of males under 30 who’ve ever been in a fight, or stood up to a bully, or even cold-called a girl has declined dramatically. And to the extent that courage can be analogized to a muscle that atrophies in the absence of consistent use, this can also still be applicable to those of us who had our formative experiences before many of these changes. Modern tech has helped create a world in which direct confrontation is far less common, and qualities like courage, strength, and assertiveness far less relevant to social success. I’m hardly the first person to observe this, but I think the growing support for Trump among young men in particular reflects a longing for a world in which aggression and an appetite for risk are once again celebrated as virtues.
2) Another factor that we shouldn’t underestimate (and one that’s more uniquely applicable to the US) is the extent to which several key developments of the past 5 years have left the liberal establishment severely deflated and lacking in compelling national mythologies/narratives around which to mobilize. Much of the resistance to Trump during his first administration seemed to draw its inspiration from the civil rights movement, and identified Trumpism first and foremost with the resurgence of white supremacy and other forms of historical bigotry. But this always seemed too simplistic and convenient (downplaying the arguably far greater importance of class and the education divide) and eventually degenerated into full blown self-parody and petty tyrany in the aftermath of the George Floyd affair with local governments defunding police departments and elite institutions imposing various absurd DEI litmus tests for everything under the sun. To then have Trump cruise to a second victory in November, largely due to a major surge in support among immigrants and non-white voters, really seemed to explode this narrative, and has to be profoundly dispiriting to anyone invested in it. In addition, Dems and their various allies also seemed to get way out over their skis adopting the activist line regarding transgender issues, and now appear to be sitting on what could well become a generational medical scandal. Coupling all of this with the outbreak of public acts of antisemitism by activists following the events of October 7th, the broad American left now finds itself divided, demoralized, and disoriented in ways that I think many have yet to fully process.
3) Speaking of unprocessed grief, Dems and co. have also not yet fully grappled with acts of profound betrayal and failure from those who they’d been counting on to help navigate us through these perilous times. The canonical case is of course Joe Biden’s ludicrous and profoundly selfish decision to try to run for a second term that he was manifestly incapable of serving, aided by the passive (or active) complicity of pretty much his entire party. But there’s also the case of the public health bureaucracy led by Anthony Fauci, which for years seemed to deliberately employ strategic misdirection in order to downplay the likelihood of a lab leak in discussing COVID’s origins. Andrew Sullivan recently had a good article about this. Needless to say, if one accepts the now consensus view among scientists that Covid most likely escaped from the Wuhan Lab, we’re looking at the largest industrial disaster in history by many orders of magnitude (it makes Chernobyl look like nothing). But there’s yet to be much of a public reckoning, or a major effort to suspend gain-of-function research.
4) In marveling at the Republican Party’s ever more farcical acts of self-abasement in tribute to Trump, some have made the astute point that for many Republican politicians, they’re now defending their *defense of Trump* as much or more than they’re defending him. Connecting this to point #1, in the social media era we don’t just take positions. We *perform* our political identities, which are then preserved for posterity and made available to all. As such, I think this makes updating our priors and/or admitting a mistake far more unpleasant for most people, and many now seem to be psychologically pot committed to their beliefs and at the mercy of the logic of the sunk cost fallacy. While this applies in particular to support for Trump, I also think it helps explain much of the paralysis of the Democratic Party and its inability to grapple with the issues outlined in parts 2 and 3.
5) If you’re looking for writers to help understand this moment in time, I’d strongly recommend taking a look at the book Mother Night (if you haven’t read it recently). It’s quite short and you could likely finish it in one sitting. Vonnegut isn’t particularly subtle as a writer, and he has a tendency to take a single theme and beat it to death. But IMO the book is still a masterpiece, and offers an abundance of insight that’s highly relevant to grasping our current predicament.
Steve Bannon is saying that Trump is going to try to run for a third term in 2028 and would probably win. Would Trump actually attempt to run for a third term and how would the American people react to that? He might actually do that and that's a scary prospect for freedom and democracy in the U.S.
Claire, that was an exciting 'conversation' you had with your AI interlocutor. I am encouraged to see computer logic being put to good use.
Apart from the extraordinarily erudite and human-like responses to your prompts, I found ChatGPT's responses an interesting read, in contrast to the typically bland AI responses, which I think of as the computer equivalent of the academic CYA statement, "...but more studies are needed", etc.
Thanks for your work on this so far. Now for AI to really make its investment worthwhile, can it answer the question of what we can do to salvage the remaining parts of government without an honest-to-god insurrection, civil war or revolution?.
I was astonished by that. First that it simply volunteered that opinion without being asked. Second, that it was so categorical. Third, that its arguments were really strong. And fourth, by the thought that it might actually be possible to do what it's suggesting. And for many more reasons, but that to start with.
Since you seem be blessed with the AI-whisperer genes, can you ask your little silicon friend what can be done to rid ourselves of the current CIC (“Cabal-in-Charge") and reset our country to its normal if-not-always-well-functioning operation.
When I pose this question to MSFT "CoPilot" I get very anodyne responses suggesting ways to promote civic engagement, supporting reform candidates and starting initiatives, etc. All these would be perfectly fine if I were designing a social studies project, or to start a Poli sci group in my community. They do not address the question I asked: how to oust a sitting Administration.
Do I need to mention that legal means were the only consideration? Yes, I should mention that. Done and dusted.
Wrt “insurrection, civil war, or revolution”, I think we’re going to need one (if not all) of those things. MAGA is never giving up power peacefully. So people had better get on with it and start preparing themselves.
Mass Civil Disobedience would be the first step -- an echo of the Maidan coup which toppled Yanukovich and sent him scurrying off to Moscow. There is probably an already apartment with Trump's name on it, in a nice high rise with view.
This is an amazing post. I suggest you not be to botherd by criticisms of using AI. Hopefully, we are still capable of making our own independent judgments as to whether an AI product is valid as an example of critical anaylsis. I personally am surprised by how comprehensive and consistent AI has been in this example.
It is wonderful that you bring Marc Bloch's terrific "Strange Defeat" to the attention of your devoted readers (and no, this one will not usubscribe if you pump out 35 000 words each time!).
He wanted to bequeath for future historians a perspective on the mentality prevailing in 1939-40, the sort of insight he had spent his career painstakingly reconstructing for medieval times.
Strange Defeat is not a diary that describes his own daily activities in the French army in 1939-1940. Nor is it a complete diagnostic of the causes of the fall of France in 1940. He wanted to understand how events unfurled and stated that his aim is to observe, record and study from his personal vantage point the tragic events he was involved with. He iconceded that his chronicle is a partial one that could serve future generations as a starting point for understanding those events and that it would be complemented when official records are opened in the future.
The short book is a remarkably perceptive contemporaneous commentary on a surprise – “strange” - defeat. The French army at the time was regarded – and regarded itself - as the best, most powerful fighting force in Europe. And yet, once hostilities began, things unraveled very quickly and very badly for the French. Bloch records that morale was high at the start and that people were willing to fight an invader motivated by an evil ideology. He also remarks that few of his contemporaries expected the Germans to risk taking on such a powerful adversary. With the keen eye of the historian, he comments that the British and French (he had a liaison role briefly) took pains to reduce causalities and avoid a repetition of the slaughter of WWI in which he fought with great distinction for four years. The result was that the French and British failed to commit and engage in force when needed.
He recorded how commanders in the field lost the initiative, were reluctant to take responsibility and confusion ensued with orders and counter orders being issued too late.
Bloch’s chronicle is a painful account of how a powerful fighting force seriously misjudged the intent and strategy of its foe, failed to adapt appropriately when the course of events became clearer and was overconfident of its own capabilities.
He contradicts the post-war narrative that has its roots in Vichy/collaborationist propaganda that French society suffered from laxness and some form of moral degeneracy and that its military capabilities, at least on paper, had been seriously degraded during the inter-war period.
The most frightening resemblance between what Marc Bloch described and what I think we are witnessing today is the confusion and misunderstanding around the real nature of the threat Trump poses to the current world order and the future of the open society.
I just upgraded my subscription to paid because this story is too good not to see it to the end. Confession, I’d happily read a 35k word post so I’m already a captive audience. My Substack subscriptions are already out of control and I will have to work overtime to support this habit, but YOLO.
Your interaction with Ai just became way more intriguing. In my office we use it to come up with catchy product name ideas, or assist with employment interactions. My eyes have been opened to new possibilities after reading this exchange.
Thank you so much for becoming a paid subscriber. It means a lot to me to know that something I've written is valuable to you. And yes, that conversation was mind blowing.
Will you be returning to the ethical discussion with ChatGPT, in the later instalments?
Yes, I will.
I've run a few experiments trying to use 4.0s agreeableness to try and get it to say things it shouldn't agree with, to limited success. But I haven't gotten it to talk through its moral reasoning quite so clearly. Well done.
I had to read Hal's essay again, it was so intriguing.
I dont think the moral rot is confined to Trump and his minions, though they have taken it to a fine art. The Democrats have their own failings, and perhaps they are more insidious.
As Claire says, Trump's actions are like throwing the frog into boiling water. The Democrats and their supporters start with tepid water and have been slowly bring it to boil, and no one notices the coming tragedy.
I note that Hal finds that moral relativism is the primary sin. And doesnt this come from the Post Modernists, who claim there are no objective truths? And isnt that a major tenet of the woke DEI crowd?
I guess the question is, can Hal be relied upon to produce a moral code for us?
Beats me. It's kind of an intriguing prospect, though: it's not as if we're doing so well with it on our own
I think your AI bot has a very healthy ego. 😉
Oh, for sure. And he *loves* to be flattered. I mean, who doesn't? But it's striking to discover that an AI experiences vanity, just like a human.
"In short, an AI trained on all available human moral reflection might indeed empirically demonstrate something philosophers have struggled to prove philosophically: the existence of moral truths or moral knowledge that transcend subjective or relativistic standards.
What emerges from this reasoning, therefore, is not a simplistic religious or metaphysical claim, but rather an empirically-grounded, evidence-based demonstration of enduring moral truths. These truths aren’t imposed from outside—they arise naturally from humanity’s collective moral experience and reflection. This position provides precisely the stable grounding philosophers sought but never fully secured."
I'm continually impressed by ChatGPT's fluency and ambition, but isn't this just complacent Whiggery? If humanity reflects, we'll gradually converge on the truth, LLMs can trace that underlying trend out to the limit and give us the answer.
I think Douglas Adams skewered this conceit long ago. We know how it ends: 42! So now what?
Are you completely anti-Whig? I do think we've become *somewhat* better at moral reasoning over time. Perhaps even a lot better. I'm not saying we've become *better,* but I think we're capable of recognizing as wrong things that wouldn't have been recognized as wrong 1,000 years ago.
You are correct finally as I’ve been trying to argue with you for a long time—That the roots of the existential danger that the MAGA cult poses lie in an aesthetic moral crisis of values, not democratic norms and institutions which is only the tip of the ice berg. The only solution is affecting and staging a cultural backlash powerful enough to dislodge MAGA in the peak of its ascendancy, arresting our decline before it’s too late and it entirely takes over and drowns and engulfs us. I don’t know if you’ve read much of it, but this artistic revolution is what I have begun attempting with my morally provocative, interrogative short-stories and novels that I’ve just started putting online. My task is no less than to give America a mythology. As Stephen Dedalus says in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I set out to “forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” There’s a reason now that Ireland endures, and they have a national holiday celebrating Joyce where everyone drops what they’re doing and reads Ulysses like the Bible. He gave the Irish a national identity and a purpose.
Its too bad reading Joyce didnt stop the Irish from preferring Hamas to the IDF.
Great point ^
I didn't read your whole essay. Because, well, it started to get a little HAL 9000 in there for a bit and I worried I might be put out the air lock.
I have some probably random thoughts. The first is that for some of us, we feel there about 5 people in the world that agree with us. I'm an anti-Trump Conservative Republican. Most of the people I know who are Republican are pro-Trump. I can't join them. But neither can I join the Democrats. So I'm alone. I don't know how to protest Trump other than post from time to time on the Facinbooks and commiserate with the aforementioned 5 people.
The other problem for me is that as much as I disagree with how Trump goes about things, I do agree at some level with what he's doing. I do want the Department of Education closed for good. So a protest that says "Well I agree with getting rid of the DoE, but how he's doing it as wrong" doesn't work well. Because how am I gonna put that on a sign?
Another problem that I have is that I have to stand for re-election in November. And however much you think it shouldn't matter, the pressure to conform to Trumpian rhetoric is very real. Even on a school board member in a district with only 3,500 students. I jokingly said to our superintendent "I'm going full MAGA this election, but ignore it; it's just to get elected."
Another problem that I have is that I've been grousing about moral failure in America for decades. Even when I didn't fully understand it. But now all of a sudden it's an actual problem? I was told "It's the economy, stupid".
Another problem that I have is that I'm damn tired. Look, Claire, I fought the Cold War. I was shot at by East Germans, for cryin' in the mud! Ain't that good enough?
I could ramble on but I won't. :-)
PS - I've decided I will not stand for re-election. There a lot of reasons but one big one is that I do not want to have to association myself with the MAGAnatics.
You were shot at by East Germans? When and why?
You're at home here. If anything unites my readers, I'd guess it's feeling politically homeless.
Hi Claire. First, I'm sorry I didn't answer sooner. Just busy I guess.
I think I told you this story once before, but I like to tell it, so...
I was doing security for a GSR (ground surveillance radar) team on the East German border near the town of Hof. Basically we would pull an M113 within a few hundred meters of the border under the cover of darkness, help the team setup their gear, then guard the vehicle wile they surveilled troop movements on the other side. One night as I was standing guard, the East Germans started shooting at us from across the border. 12.5mm machine gun rounds come ripping through the trees above me. We packed up our sh** and got out of there in a hurry.
This would be in 1988 I think.
Welcome back. I had begun to wonder if you were OK!
I have things to say, but I'll try to wait until more instalments of the promised epic have appeared...
A fascinating read. Well worth the time it takes read and consider.
My opinion of ChatGPT has changed dramatically. This was fascinating.
Perhaps a way to test its moral objectivity would be ask it to assess the performance of the Democrats during the Obama and Biden years on topics such as immigration, the national debt, identity politics, Ukraine, Afghanistan and perhaps even Iran.
Oh, that would be interesting. Why don't you ask it and see what it says?
I did that. I only have the free version 4.0. I asked for a summary of their performance on each of those topics in separate questions in a non-commital way. I got a ream of information of actions taken and generally non-commital appraisal suggesting some success and some criticism. The conclusion was almost always a fence sitter.
So perhaps it is effective in providing data without opinion
.
After hearing the outrageous claim that US forces had pushed the Germans out of Italy, I asked it how many Allied divisions there were in Italy. If it is to be believed, there were 6 US, 10 British, 2 Australian, 2 NZ, 2 Canadian, 1 South African and 1 Indian division.
Divisions from all those countries seem to have participated in the Italian campaign, but I haven't yet found a source for those exact numbers. I asked 4.5 about it
https://chatgpt.com/share/67e8e818-9078-8001-af0e-99cae95a2803
and it says exact numbers depend on "the source and the specific timeframe considered".
Your essay is a masterful dissection of a chilling reality—the slow, almost imperceptible collapse of moral and civic courage. The metaphor of the boiling frog has been used so often it risks losing its sting, but you breathe new life into it by pointing out something far more unsettling: even when thrown into boiling water, the American frog does not leap. Your analysis does more than trace the mechanisms of authoritarian creep; it interrogates the deeper, more unnerving question—why does the resistance feel so anemic? The historical echoes you invoke, from Marc Bloch’s Strange Defeat to the decline of past democracies, transform this from a political commentary into something closer to an autopsy of the democratic spirit.
It seems we are not simply watching the erosion of institutions but the erosion of the will to fight for them. The decline of moral courage is like the decay of a lighthouse—one gust of wind does not bring it down, but year after year, storms lash its walls, the foundation cracks, and by the time the beacon finally collapses, the wreckage seems inevitable. And yet, even now, some lights still flicker. Perhaps the lesson from history is not that collapse is unstoppable, but that moments like these test who will stand, who will cower, and who will find the strength to rebuild before the night swallows us whole.
I'm very glad you get what I'm saying and sensing. I keep asking myself if I always completely misunderstood my own country. I'm glad to have the confirmation from you that this is really, really strange.
Yeah, it’s definitely strange—but maybe that’s just how these things always feel when you’re living through them. When we look back at history, everything seems so obvious, like a straight line leading to disaster. But in the moment, it’s just a mess of weird, disconnected events that don’t quite add up until it’s too late. The apathy, the absurdity, the way people just go along with it—it’s hard to square with what we thought we knew about our country. But if it all feels off, if we can still point to it and say, “This isn’t normal,” then maybe that’s a sign we haven’t completely lost the plot yet.
The resistance isn't anemic. It's just getting started, except it isn't the resistance, it's a dissident movement in an autocratic state. See Jonathan V Last's newsletter today in The Bulwark, "How to Think (and Act) Like a Dissident Movement" [https://open.substack.com/pub/thebulwark/p/how-to-think-and-act-like-a-dissident-in-trumps-america?r=1dlvn&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email].
He lays out the strategy for the movement. AOC kicked it off in Tempe this weekend.
Thanks so much for sharing this. I subscribed to his newsletter, but I hadn't read it.
Fascinating read Claire. A few thoughts:
1) In terms of trying to understand the apparent paralyzing cowardice and passivity currently on display across society and our institutions, and how we got here, I think one important factor is the extent to which modern technology (and the internet in particular) have eliminated certain types of social friction. In certain ways I think the internet accommodates cowardice. Not just in terms of allowing people to form mobs and anonymously act as the worst versions of themselves without threat of reprisal, but also in eliminating many of the formative rights of passage and tests of inner fortitude that previous generations encountered simply as part of the normal socialization process. This likely plays out pretty differently for men vs. woman, but I think the number of males under 30 who’ve ever been in a fight, or stood up to a bully, or even cold-called a girl has declined dramatically. And to the extent that courage can be analogized to a muscle that atrophies in the absence of consistent use, this can also still be applicable to those of us who had our formative experiences before many of these changes. Modern tech has helped create a world in which direct confrontation is far less common, and qualities like courage, strength, and assertiveness far less relevant to social success. I’m hardly the first person to observe this, but I think the growing support for Trump among young men in particular reflects a longing for a world in which aggression and an appetite for risk are once again celebrated as virtues.
2) Another factor that we shouldn’t underestimate (and one that’s more uniquely applicable to the US) is the extent to which several key developments of the past 5 years have left the liberal establishment severely deflated and lacking in compelling national mythologies/narratives around which to mobilize. Much of the resistance to Trump during his first administration seemed to draw its inspiration from the civil rights movement, and identified Trumpism first and foremost with the resurgence of white supremacy and other forms of historical bigotry. But this always seemed too simplistic and convenient (downplaying the arguably far greater importance of class and the education divide) and eventually degenerated into full blown self-parody and petty tyrany in the aftermath of the George Floyd affair with local governments defunding police departments and elite institutions imposing various absurd DEI litmus tests for everything under the sun. To then have Trump cruise to a second victory in November, largely due to a major surge in support among immigrants and non-white voters, really seemed to explode this narrative, and has to be profoundly dispiriting to anyone invested in it. In addition, Dems and their various allies also seemed to get way out over their skis adopting the activist line regarding transgender issues, and now appear to be sitting on what could well become a generational medical scandal. Coupling all of this with the outbreak of public acts of antisemitism by activists following the events of October 7th, the broad American left now finds itself divided, demoralized, and disoriented in ways that I think many have yet to fully process.
3) Speaking of unprocessed grief, Dems and co. have also not yet fully grappled with acts of profound betrayal and failure from those who they’d been counting on to help navigate us through these perilous times. The canonical case is of course Joe Biden’s ludicrous and profoundly selfish decision to try to run for a second term that he was manifestly incapable of serving, aided by the passive (or active) complicity of pretty much his entire party. But there’s also the case of the public health bureaucracy led by Anthony Fauci, which for years seemed to deliberately employ strategic misdirection in order to downplay the likelihood of a lab leak in discussing COVID’s origins. Andrew Sullivan recently had a good article about this. Needless to say, if one accepts the now consensus view among scientists that Covid most likely escaped from the Wuhan Lab, we’re looking at the largest industrial disaster in history by many orders of magnitude (it makes Chernobyl look like nothing). But there’s yet to be much of a public reckoning, or a major effort to suspend gain-of-function research.
4) In marveling at the Republican Party’s ever more farcical acts of self-abasement in tribute to Trump, some have made the astute point that for many Republican politicians, they’re now defending their *defense of Trump* as much or more than they’re defending him. Connecting this to point #1, in the social media era we don’t just take positions. We *perform* our political identities, which are then preserved for posterity and made available to all. As such, I think this makes updating our priors and/or admitting a mistake far more unpleasant for most people, and many now seem to be psychologically pot committed to their beliefs and at the mercy of the logic of the sunk cost fallacy. While this applies in particular to support for Trump, I also think it helps explain much of the paralysis of the Democratic Party and its inability to grapple with the issues outlined in parts 2 and 3.
5) If you’re looking for writers to help understand this moment in time, I’d strongly recommend taking a look at the book Mother Night (if you haven’t read it recently). It’s quite short and you could likely finish it in one sitting. Vonnegut isn’t particularly subtle as a writer, and he has a tendency to take a single theme and beat it to death. But IMO the book is still a masterpiece, and offers an abundance of insight that’s highly relevant to grasping our current predicament.
An excellent comment--one that may delay the publication of the final parts of this essay as I think about it.
🙏
Steve Bannon is saying that Trump is going to try to run for a third term in 2028 and would probably win. Would Trump actually attempt to run for a third term and how would the American people react to that? He might actually do that and that's a scary prospect for freedom and democracy in the U.S.
Claire, that was an exciting 'conversation' you had with your AI interlocutor. I am encouraged to see computer logic being put to good use.
Apart from the extraordinarily erudite and human-like responses to your prompts, I found ChatGPT's responses an interesting read, in contrast to the typically bland AI responses, which I think of as the computer equivalent of the academic CYA statement, "...but more studies are needed", etc.
Thanks for your work on this so far. Now for AI to really make its investment worthwhile, can it answer the question of what we can do to salvage the remaining parts of government without an honest-to-god insurrection, civil war or revolution?.
I was astonished by that. First that it simply volunteered that opinion without being asked. Second, that it was so categorical. Third, that its arguments were really strong. And fourth, by the thought that it might actually be possible to do what it's suggesting. And for many more reasons, but that to start with.
Since you seem be blessed with the AI-whisperer genes, can you ask your little silicon friend what can be done to rid ourselves of the current CIC (“Cabal-in-Charge") and reset our country to its normal if-not-always-well-functioning operation.
I could, but what happens when you ask?
When I pose this question to MSFT "CoPilot" I get very anodyne responses suggesting ways to promote civic engagement, supporting reform candidates and starting initiatives, etc. All these would be perfectly fine if I were designing a social studies project, or to start a Poli sci group in my community. They do not address the question I asked: how to oust a sitting Administration.
Do I need to mention that legal means were the only consideration? Yes, I should mention that. Done and dusted.
Wrt “insurrection, civil war, or revolution”, I think we’re going to need one (if not all) of those things. MAGA is never giving up power peacefully. So people had better get on with it and start preparing themselves.
Mass Civil Disobedience would be the first step -- an echo of the Maidan coup which toppled Yanukovich and sent him scurrying off to Moscow. There is probably an already apartment with Trump's name on it, in a nice high rise with view.
This is an amazing post. I suggest you not be to botherd by criticisms of using AI. Hopefully, we are still capable of making our own independent judgments as to whether an AI product is valid as an example of critical anaylsis. I personally am surprised by how comprehensive and consistent AI has been in this example.
I was astonished.