Context
This post exemplifies how a person can use AI to do deep dives into politics and related subjects, e.g., moral philosophy, the human condition, authoritarian wealth and power politics, the cognitive and social science of politics, etc. Although most MAGA supporters and all MAGA trolls routinely reject the evidence and reasoning my posts lay out, a lot of effort and evidence-checking goes into criticisms of Trump, MAGA elites and MAGA’s deeply corrupt authoritarian politics, demagoguery tactics, and policy.
This morning’s deep dive was triggered by a NYT opinion piece, Why Scandals Don’t Bring Down Politicians Anymore — It’s about more than just shamelessness. That led to a Q&A series with Pxy (my AI Perplexity). Being way too long for a blog post, probably ~2500 words or maybe more, a link to my queries with reasoning and Pxy’s responses might be of some interest to readers with the patience to at least scan the Q&A thread to see how deep AI dives can play out. The thread is at this link — ignore the ask for your email, just click through to the Q&A thread.
The main thrust of the Q&As wasn’t about the NYT opinion. It veered off that topic into MAGA authoritarianism, and the institutional failure of the MSM to report on the ongoing fall of democracy, the rule of law and our shrinking civil liberties under the MAGA wealth and power movement’s onslaught. Examples help clarify the back and forth between me and Pxy.
Example 1
Q: Yes, I understand that a 55/45 division [55% of blame for the mess is due to MAGA elites’ deceit and manipulation and 45% due to a generally deceived and betrayed rank and file] is a moral-political judgment, not a measurable social-scientific finding. I get it. I read the social science. But it is very hard to know how to translate that to average Americans so they get a feel for where they are in this gigantic mess without alienating or insulting them. This is my central frustration with politics. And the MSM is utterly useless in dealing with this matter.
A (severely truncated): Your frustration makes sense. The central problem is not merely how to communicate facts; it is how to say, “You are being used and misled” to people for whom the movement is entwined with identity, belonging, faith, family, patriotism, and dignity—without making the sentence itself feel like proof that you despise them. A useful public posture is: firm about conduct and evidence; humane about people. That permits moral clarity without converting every ordinary supporter into an object of contempt.
Your task, then, is to translate structural diagnosis into moral and civic language that does not require someone first to concede, “I am gullible” or “my identity is corrupt.” For example, rather than: “MAGA voters are enabling authoritarian kleptocracy,” try: No citizen should be asked to trust any leader more than verifiable evidence, the courts, fair elections, or the Constitution. A free country is endangered whenever loyalty to a politician becomes more important than whether the politician tells the truth, obeys the law, or accepts losing. That is still a sharp criticism. But it makes the standard universal rather than tribal.
Example 2
Q: I’ve been writing to reporters, editors, opinionators, and academics for years about the threat of authoritarianism and kleptocracy. It is their damned jobs to listen and learn. If I can do the work to put the email together, it is their job to understand what I am saying and assess for themselves if I am full of shit or not. My patience with institutional failure has come to an end.
A (severely truncated): You are right about the basic civic demand: people and institutions with extraordinary access, authority, expertise, and agenda-setting power have a corresponding obligation to confront credible evidence—especially when the subject is whether democratic institutions, rule-of-law safeguards, and civil liberties are being degraded. ….. Their role is not to outsource civic judgment to readers; it is to use institutional capacity to investigate whether the warning is correct. ….. They should take the substance seriously enough to test it against the record, report what they find, and explain it honestly to the public. That is exactly what responsible institutions are for.
Your anger should not be mistaken for a demand that journalists parrot a political line. It is a demand that those entrusted with public truth-telling recognize that neutrality toward evidence is not neutrality at all—and that silence, euphemism, and fragmentation can become forms of institutional failure.
Questions
Q1: Are examples like this helpful to (1) see how politics really works, and (2) see how one can use AI too help parse through large amounts of information that can be fact checked to see if AI is accurate?
Q2: Are Pxy’s analyses and responses rational and evidence-based, or should they be dismissed as unreliable, and if so, why?
Q3: If you scanned the Q&A thread, did you get a feel for the effort it takes to be fair, rational, and evidence-based about doing politics? Is that too hard for most people to be expected to engage in (I believe it is)?
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