An Analog Soul Living In The Digital Universe

 

I started life as an analog child with a.m. radio, 78 rpm records, and black and white film. Today, that analog life has been replaced with digital 0s and 1s. This is not to lament some loss in quality of the material, on the contrary, I would argue that most digital presentations are superior. On the flip side, we can be nostalgic about the content of old analog sources but that is not the issue here.

The issue is the rate at which all of this has occurred, and that is mind numbing. In my eight decades of observation, the advancements have been spectacular. However much audiophiles may criticize the lack of “warmth” of a digital recording versus a vinyl record played through a tube amplifier, I find quite the opposite. Science is on my side as measurements generally show that vinyl recordings and tube amplification have lower fidelity, higher noise, and more distortion than high-resolution digital audio. It is perception that differs.

But I digress, as I often do. This is about the mind-warping advancements of our digital environment. While our next generation will need to deal with the impact of artificial intelligence, there is one advancement that is here in the present; and it is scary.

Russia has deployed AI-enabled weapons with autonomous functions capable of identifying and targeting humans and objects without human intervention. That is to say, a “robot” can now “decide” who to kill or what to destroy without consultation with its creator. This closely approximates the AGI of Skynet, the theoretical autonomous systems of sci-fi movies like the Terminator series. In those movies the AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) had the cognitive ability to learn, reason, and act across any domain, exceeding the proficiency of humans.

We aren’t there yet. But, as we have seen, who would have thought we would be mimicking Star Trek where a character can just touch a devices and say, “Computer, (insert just about any question or topic here,)” and get a quick and thorough answer or explanation. In the AGI of Skynet fame, it initiated a recursive cycle where it re-writes its own code to accelerate learning. It did this using a “cloud-based” global network hooked into all digital infrastructure across a variety of disciplines.

The perceived indifference within this movie sci-fi scenario is not malice, but it inherently disregards the value of human life. In our world, we only see this when the human guidance of AI is provided by sociopaths. We saw this same dynamic of computational indifference play out in another sci-fi classic, 2001, A Space Odyssey. There, the autonomous AI computer HAL 9000, perceived the humans to be a threat to its mission and made the decision to eliminate the entire crew to prevent its own deactivation.

I guess we can all rest assured that our own AI does not yet have such capabilities. It is controlled by our leaders like Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping. They epitomize only the very highest levels of human morality. On second thought…, the tagline from the movie The Fly seems to be echoing from the old analog universe of 1986. “Be afraid, be very afraid.”

Sleep Deprivation

Getting less than 3 hours of sleep per night causes severe, immediate psychological consequences, including acute cognitive dysfunction, extreme emotional instability, and a high risk of hallucinations or psychosis. Chronic restriction at this level impairs brain function, leading to paranoia, manic-like symptoms, and severe depression. Research shows that psychotic symptoms can manifest after just 72 hours of such sleep deprivation.

I say this after reading that, during an analysis of Donald Trump’s postings on Truth Social, it was determined that he can’t be getting more than 3 hours of sleep each night. As of May 2026, analyses of Donald Trump's Truth Social activity suggest he is getting approximately three hours of sleep, with active postings recorded between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. on over 80% of nights in April. This pattern has raised concerns regarding his health, behavior, and potential for "erratic" decision-making. .

Anyone who follows the president’s posts and daily activities, can see evidence of the psychotic symptoms described in the first paragraph above.

Greed is Good

Donald Trump never met a problem he couldn’t ignore, deflect from, or falsely claim to have solved. That is his skillset. His Mr. McGoo-like vision and foresight have gotten us, and the world by proxy, into another war. Like all wars, everybody loses. Well, almost everybody. The military industrial complex wins. The oil companies win. China wins. Russian wins. The Trump family wins.

The national debt now exceeds the GDP at a level not seen since the end of World War II. Your children and your children’s children will be paying for the largess of this and previous administrations for decades. We crossed the WWII threshold at the end of the first Trump presidency, and the gap between the GDP and National Debt is now over $7 trillion and climbing.

Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, "If you can't solve a problem, enlarge it." By that he meant, trying to solve a complex issue by focusing only on small, restrictive details often leads to failure. Instead, by expanding the scope to view the problem as part of a larger system, new perspectives, constraints, and innovative solutions become visible. That is the vision of a President and Commander-in-Chief who was qualified for the office. Had Trump looked at the big picture before aligning taxpayers with Israel and before poking the hornets nest that was Iran, he might not be in this smoke filled swamp looking for an exit.

President Trump was warned that the Strait of Hormuz could be used as leverage. Trump’s intelligence sources informed him that Iran's control over the chokehold was considered a more potent tool for disruption than a nuclear weapon. Donald Trump has never been one to use intelligence, facts, or valid concerns to get in the way of making a fast buck. Like all Trump gambles, he is playing with OPM, Other People’s Money. His multiple bankruptcies in business were his guide and we are the victims.

On the other hand, he, his sons, friends, and extended family, are all positioned to profit from the war and its extension. He is in no hurry to end the war. He has no realistic chance of running for office again, so this is his last hurrah. His last chance to turn an outrageous profit while others suffer.

As of May 2026, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump have invested in several military-connected companies, focusing heavily on drone technology and defense contracting, particularly companies that stand to benefit from increased Pentagon spending and the war. The grift is on and Trump family fortunes and our national debt are on a similar chart path, “to infinity and beyond.” As a side note, in 2026, 37% of Americans have less than $500 in savings.

So, while gas prices are placing the lower classes at risk of financial ruin, the Trump family is counting their bitcoins. Meanwhile, people around the globe who are dependent on fertilizer for crops, are risking starvation. The Strait of Hormuz remains closed. President Trump tells us that we are winning. This is like Gen. Douglas MacArthur talking about retreat saying, “We are advancing in another direction.”

I mentioned earlier that Trump should have seen his Iranian military quagmire coming and should have considered Eisenhower’s advice to always look at the big picture. I called the president myopic and chastised him for his lack of vision. This could have all been avoided with a bit of planning and foresight.

This of course ignores the fact that this accomplished grifter might be playing the long game. This might be just what he wanted. A protracted war, the loss of military weaponry now in need of replacement, a huge boost in the already-bloated Pentagon budget, and a big win for the companies in which the Trump family now has a vested interest. We do know that the Trump family has already generated an estimated $4 billion in value and revenue since January of 2025. A simple presidential tweet can send stock prices and stock futures bouncing like balls in a Pachinko.

Most of the recent Trump family financial windfalls have been from cryptocurrency ventures, international real estate deals, and licensing fees. He and his family have been leveraging and profiting from his presidency. Their financial gains from the protracted war in Iran will depend on how much money the Pentagon gets to put toward new missiles, drones, and materials. The latter two are of financial interest for the Trump empire as they are invested in drones and the mining of materials with defense applications.

Myopic and clueless, or clever like a “greed is good” Gordon Gekko acolyte. I give you our very own President Ivan Boesky, aka Donald J. Trump, aka Don E. Coyote.

Good for the Goose; Not Good for the Gander

A friend recently posted a story where Tom Jones (British singer living in London) as coming to Trump’s side denouncing “violence” as promoted by Jimmy Kimmel’s “expectant widow” joke about Melania. My reply is included below. I did not bring up the fact that Mr. Jones and Mr. Trump have something in common. Jones bragged about having slept with up to 250 women a year while married to his wife Linda. He called his affairs and infidelity, “fun and games.”

My reply…

Political satire has long been a part of the American landscape. Jimmy Kimmel’s comment that Melania had “the glow of an expectant widow” was made before and not after the violence that took place at the Correspondents’ Dinner. Kimmel had no way of knowing that would happen. At the time the line was delivered, the reference could easily have been nothing more than about the age difference between a 56-year-old former nude model and her billionaire, overweight, almost 80-year-old husband. Jokes about golddiggers have long been part of comedic banter. Taken in context, there was no imminent threat involved and no violent act was suggested.

President Trump has never shied away from violence or threats of violence against others. He regularly uses violence against others as part of his demeanor. If called out later he will often say, “I was only joking.” Trump himself has a long record—singular among American presidents of the modern era—of inciting and threatening violence against his fellow citizens, journalists, and anyone he deems his opposition. At a campaign event on October 31, 2024, Trump said of former U.S. Representative Liz Cheney, “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, okay? Let’s see how she feels about it ... when the guns are trained on her face.” Was he just joking or was he threatening violence?

Trump’s violent rhetoric and use of violence in his speech is part of his personality. He can dish it out, but he can’t take it. He is incredibly thin skinned for someone in politics. He is notorious for his asymmetric retribution against those he deems to have offended him.

Certainly, you remember his claim that he could shoot someone on 5th avenue and get away with it. Was he joking that he could kill random New Yorkers and be found innocent because he is so popular? Should people in New York feel threatened? No, it was political satire or rhetoric.

 The American Holy War

Promoting the war in Iran as an American holy war, is as outrageous as it seems. Claiming this to be a battle of righteousness against the forces of evil, the MAGA savior Donald Trump with Pete Hegseth as his disciple of lethality, are at the forefront. They are embarking on this 21st century Crusade with the full support of Trump’s pastor, Paula White-Cain. Trump’s Easter message to the MAGA faithful was filled with death and destruction rhetoric and a sarcastic closing of, “Praise be to Allah.”

Trump took the admonition of pastor White-Cain to heart when she told him that, “God is using you to defeat evil.” It was this message that perhaps prompted his meme post depicting him as Jesus. Pete Hegseth, not to be outdone, delivered a Bible sermon at the Pentagon where he invoked Ezekiel 25:17 and prayed for those beset by “the tyranny of evil men.” He then vowed to “strike down…with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother.”

That Hegseth quote was not written by a biblical scholar for the King James Version of the Bible, but by Quentin Tarantino for the movie Pulp Fiction. For that movie, Tarantino adopted a biblical manner and created a stylized amalgamation of biblical sounding jargon as a dramatic monologue for the character played by Samuel L. Jackson. Tarantino lifted most of that speech directly from the opening of the 1973 Sonny Chiba Kung Fu film, The Bodyguard. So, not really the Bible at work here, and not a prayerful invocation from Pete Hegseth, the Righteous, but a quote actually from Chiba, the Bodyguard via Quentin Tarantino, the Director.

Our religious daily-double of Trump and Hegseth, is perhaps closer to a creation from a darker entity than it is from any true motivations inspired by the teachings of Christianity. In the Editor’s Letter by Susan Caskie, Executive editor for The Week, she quotes from Hegseth’s Pentagon prayer in the name of Jesus that U.S. soldiers might use “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” He went on to request in his “prayer” that: “Let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation.”

Ms. Caskie then brought up a 1905, Mark Twain short story, “The War Prayer.” In that tale, a stranger comes to a church where a congregation is praying for their boys as they head off to battle. That stranger warns them not to involve God in what they are about to do. He reminds them that they are asking the Almighty to “help us tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste to their homes with a hurricane of fire.” Put that way, it is a tough sell to make war sound holy.

[The graphic accompanying this post has the actual last page of the Mark Twain short story. It's legibility may vary by screen size.]

Late-Night Comedian and Star of Truth Social...

President Trump’s recent attempt at self-aggrandizement projecting himself as a tough guy threatening Iran is not new or original. I first heard the quote in 1966 as the punchline of a macabre joke told by a card-carrying member of the American Nazi Party (ANP). The guy telling the “joke” actively campaigned for ANP founder, George Lincoln Rockwell to run for president. The storyteller was Hank, and he looked like a tall, lanky Abraham Lincoln dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and skinny black tie. He was a talented cartoonist and told the story while drawing illustrations on napkins in a pizza and beer joint. These were my college days, filled with “characters.”

I think we can all safely assume that Donald Trump didn’t create the meme on his post. Anything dealing with intelligence, artificial or otherwise, is a foreign concept. No, someone else developed the graphic and that person just re-invented it for Trump. Perhaps it is fitting that it was first used in neo-Nazi circles telling of an elderly, long-hidden Hitler, hiding in Argentina. In that story, a group of neo-Nazis recognize their leader and try to convince him to return to power. He at first refuses claiming it is a thankless job. He finally relents but on one condition, “This time—no more Mr. Nice Guy.”

Yes, Donald Trump only steals from the best. Any original thought would die of loneliness. He can joke about a war he started and one in which he has been hopelessly outwitted by a much weaker adversary. He can joke about the misery and hardship this war has caused millions of people throughout the globe. He can joke while burning through billions of our hard-earned tax dollars. He can joke while Americans struggle making ends meet from his recklessness. Just don’t let anyone else try to make a joke on late-night television or post a cryptic seashell image.

It can be noted that the phrase in question was also used as the title of an Alice Cooper song on his Billion Dollar Babies album of 1973. I’ll leave you with the lyrics of this early “shock Rock”/glam artist’s song, No More Mr. Nice Guy:

[Verse 1]

I used to be such a sweet, sweet thing

'Til they got a hold of me

I opened doors for little old ladies

I helped the blind to see

[Pre-Chorus]

I got no friends 'cause they read the papers

They can't be seen with me

And I'm gettin' real shot down

And I'm feeling mean

[Chorus]

No more Mr. Nice Guy

No more Mr. Clean

No more Mr. Nice Guy

They say he's sick, he's obscene

[Pre-Chorus]

I got no friends 'cause they read the papers

They can't be seen with me

And I'm feelin' real shot down

And I'm, I'm gettin' mean

The Illusion of Progress

 

In 2015, during a commencement speech at Dillard University, Denzel Washington said, “Don't confuse movement with progress." It is an important message that reminds us that not all activity results in meaningful progress. I find that much of the turmoil surrounding the leader of the MAGA party, is just movement without advancement. His followers rightfully deride the painfully slow progress of a government debating matters ad nauseum without taking any action. The mistake with MAGA is that they then cheer their Yosemite Sam leader when he fires his two six-shooters from the hip and at least hits something. It doesn't matter what he hits. Anything will do. Tear down the east wing of the White House without consultation. Start a war without provocation or imminent danger. Neither extreme represents progress.

This goes to the notion that it is important to plan your action, consider the consequences of your actions, and then execute the plan. Motion and progress are not synonymous. Donald Trump pulled the trigger on Venezuela, captured their leader, and brought about a regime change. One leader in captivity but not much else has changed. It cost taxpayers around $4 billion to do this.

A short time later, Trump pulled the trigger a second time. This time in Iran. There were no pre-announced objectives and the explanations that came later have been conflicting and fluid. At a cost of up to $2 billion per day in military expenditures, taxpayers should be entitled to a reasonable explanation of why the president decided that this was a good idea. Even if prohibiting Iran from developing a nuclear capability was a laudable objective, was this the best way to get there?

Mathematician Kate Ertmann wrote of the chaos theory and how it might explain some of what we are experiencing under Donald Trump. She talks of individual biases that inform our own decisions. A chaotic tuning parameter is when those biases become all encompassing, to the point where an entire administration’s decisions are led by one person’s belief system. She recommends taking immediate action, even a little nudge sometimes, to counter his deviations from legal or accepted behavior. This may not stop something from happening, but even a nudge may redirect its final destination. The Iranians used the Strait of Hormuz to nudge the whole world and Trump’s easy win is now a “clusterduck.”

The term helter-skelter references a state of utter confusion, disorganization, or reckless hasty action. Charles Manson used the term to describe his apocalyptic race war scenario. His psychological profile included extreme narcissism, paranoid delusion, and manipulative psychopathy. In psychology, a "helter-skelter" mindset refers to a state of mind characterized by chaotic, disorganized, and reckless haste. It is a way of operating without order, planning, or methodical arrangement, where actions are taken in a confused, frenzied rush.

This is not to draw direct comparisons between Manson and Trump, but to show some parallels in their thinking that should give us all some pause. With Manson we have charismatic authority and manipulation-check. Manson’s psychological profile included extreme narcissism often exhibiting irritable outbursts-check. Delusional thinking where Manson thought he was a prophetic messiah figure-check. Manson’s followers were conditioned to share his delusion in a cult dynamic where the leader’s distortions became their absolute truth-check. Hmmm, maybe I am making a more direct comparison than I thought. One difference, Manson’s cult killed nine people. The Trump war in Iran…