Hispanic Fanatic

OK, I’ve almost finished the manuscript for my upcoming book. But for the final push, I need to take another week off from posting to this website. This really should be the last time.

So in lieu of writing a fresh post, I have asked AI to discuss how to survive a ninja attack.

I’m sure you will find AI’s advice both intriguing and highly relevant. Here it is:

Never look a ninja directly in the eyes. 

Have at least two weapons within arms’ reach in case one gets compromised. 

Hire some professional bodyguards who can protect you from ninjas.

Learn some elite counter-assassination techniques that can help you defend yourself against ninjas.

If all else fails, you can resort to a nuclear explosion to wipe out the ninjas. However, this is a very risky and extreme option that should only be used as a last resort. 

I hope these tips will help you survive a ninja attack. Stay safe and vigilant! 

Americans are huge. Like really big.

We all know this. In places like my home state of Wisconsin, it seems like more people are obese than not.

But we also know that help is on the way. For example, the wonder drug Ozempic has shown amazing results in helping people lose weight. 

And that’s not all it can do. Some studies imply that Ozempic can curb addictive cravings and behaviors. 

Wow, that is some pharmaceutical breakthrough. It just goes to show you how American ingenuity and hard work can…

What’s that? Ozempic isn’t an American drug?

Nope, it is made in Denmark, and it is having such a massive impact worldwide that it is reshaping that country’s economy.

Now, I have no interest in peddling Ozempic. I just find it interesting that this astonishing drug didn’t come from America.

After all, we constantly hear that the reason Americans pay so much for prescriptions is because drug companies need that money to fund their research and development. In fact, Americans spend more on prescription drugs per capita than citizens in any other country.

So all that cash must be funding some life-changing meds, right? Actually, research has shown that there is “no relationship between what pharmaceutical companies spend on R&D and what they charge for new medicines.” The record profits aren’t going to the development of new drugs. They are going to the executives and the companies’ bottom lines.

And Big Pharma isn’t just rifling through American wallets. It’s also raiding the US Treasury. 

Last year, the eight biggest drug companies paid just above 2% in US taxes on a combined $110 billion in profits. Hey, Pfizer even got a tax credit.

So with all that cash, why didn’t any American drug companies invent Ozempic? This medicine wasn’t developed in our uber-capitalist free market (which is really just a rigged economic model for big corporations, with nothing “free” about it).

This drug came from semi-socialist Scandinavia, the supposed failed states of the North Atlantic that conservatives hate.

It’s almost like giving enormous corporations boatloads of money doesn’t benefit the average citizen.

But don’t worry. I’m sure the next time you desperately need medication, the heavily subsidized pharmaceutical companies of America will hand it over to you for cheap. 

And if you believe that, you must be taking some serious drugs.

Perhaps you’ve seen one of those AI-generated images of Trump as a muscular he-man. Frequently, they present our disgraced ex-president as decked out in military gear, or leading a heroic charge of some kind, or just looking all tough and blue-collar.

The caption is usually something like “Liberals are afraid of masculinity.”

Actually, what we’re afraid of is horrible AI-generated art created by insecure bigots who are so oblivious that they don’t recognize their pathetic self-owns.

You see, conservatives have been reduced to creating AI images of their imaginary tough warrior guy—the leader they wished they had—rather than acknowledge that in reality, their hero is an obese golfer who has never even exerted himself. 

What could be sadder than plastering your social media feed with laughably fake images based on your delusional hopes and dreams?

Hey, I dabble with AI images as well. But I don’t insist they represent reality.

For example, here is an image I created based on the prompt “The new superheroes face their toughest challenge.”

OK, that’s damn freaky.

How about we try that same prompt again?

Wait — who are all these Harry Potter-looking dudes, and why are they hanging out with a gun-toting skeleton? 

I have no idea, but it’s pretty cool.

The only thing that’s missing is an AI-generated image of a muscle-bound Joe Biden fighting Nazis with his bare hands.

You know—like in the real world.

There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.

—Kurt Vonnegut

I know the basics about the Middle East. But that’s about it. I certainly can’t speak with any authority about the history, culture, or political issues that roil the place.

But I know America, and I see that antisemites are using the Israeli government’s oppression of the Palestinians as a cover for how much they hate Jews. And I see that Islamaphobes are citing the grotesque actions of terrorists as a cover for how much they hate Muslims.

It doesn’t matter if you live in Jerusalem or New Jersey, we are all subjected to the violent whims of people who insist that their race, culture, or god is the best and far superior to those heathens living next door.

And there appears to be no end in sight to this sociopathic commonality among humans.

There is nothing intelligent to say about it.

So it’s October, and in the spirit of Halloween, I’m going to write something scary.

Ha—you thought I was going to shout, “GOP!” or “MAGA agenda!”

That crossed my mind. But aside from the fact that it’s an obvious setup, I don’t have the time or energy to list all the terrifying ways that Republicans are trying to destroy this country. Also, some of their horrifying ideas are so ludicrous that they veer into black comedy or parody. And believe me, these guys are no laughing matter. 

But the chief reason is because I have to take my monthly break from writing posts to focus on my book, which has a deadline of mere weeks from now.

So instead I present you with this real-life horror show. 

South America is home to the ghost bird, a predator that looks like this:

Again, this is a real animal.

Sleep easy knowing that this flies through the air at night.

I will be back next week with a full post.

By now, you’ve seen the poll that says Trump is leading Biden by 20 points among young voters.

This is, of course, ludicrous. Trump isn’t leading by 20 points in any demographic other than geriatric religious zealots with a penchant for authoritarianism, bigotry, and conspiracy theories.

Aside: watch for the mainstream media’s think pieces on how that demographic could sway the election.

In any case, young voters are not turning to Republicans, and conservatives know it. Why else do you think the GOP wants to raise the voting age and make it harder for Gen Z to vote?

The truth is that “Republicans are losing across the country, even in historically red areas [because] abortion bans, climate denial, gun idolatry, anti-democratic behavior, and extremism has lost them entire generations of Americans.” 

And that is especially true of the younger generation. But it’s not just college kids that are anti-GOP. It’s entire college towns and whole counties.

A recent study revealed that the “growing population in America’s highly educated enclaves has led to huge gains for the Democratic Party.”

For example, my alma mater — the University of Wisconsin-Madison — is located in Dane County, which has such a high percentage of liberal voters that it “has become a Republican-killing Death Star.”

That fact alone is enough to make me shout, “On Wisconsin!”

And my old school is not an outlier, unlike those idiotic polls that Sunday morning commentators are drooling over. You see, research shows that “in state after state, fast-growing, traditionally liberal college counties like Dane are flexing their muscles, generating higher turnout and ever greater Democratic margins.”

One supposes that Republicans might try to reverse this trend by appealing to students and young people. In true GOP fashion, however, they are instead “targeting students’ voting rights, creating additional barriers to voter access, or redrawing maps to dilute or limit the power of college communities.”

Basically, if you can’t beat ‘em, block ‘em.

Republicans are confused about why their demonization of ethnic minorities would bother the most racially diverse generation in American history. They are perplexed over why young people are annoyed that Baby Boomers have hoarded the wealth and now lecture them regularly and vociferously about how ignorant, spoiled, and lazy they are. The GOP is irked that those darned kids aren’t willing to get gunned down in their classrooms in the name of the Second Amendment. Conservatives are flummoxed over why theocracy isn’t popular with people who are the least religious group in the country. MAGA types are befuddled over why Gen Z might be angry about inheriting an unlivable planet and a wrecked democracy.

Yeah, it’s a real puzzler. 

What a time to be alive!

Ha — no, it sucks right now.

But if you live in, say, New England, you will at least get more of this life than your fellow Americans in, for example, Mississippi.

Oh, we all know that blue states consistently outperform red states when it comes to, well, just about everything, including life expectancy.

But did you know that the poorest counties in New England outlive the wealthiest counties in the Deep South and Greater Appalachia by an average of two years?

Yes, if you want to die fast, move to a red state, where “generations of elected officials — most of whom have been Republican in recent decades — have resisted investing tax dollars in public goods and health programs.”

The result is that people in the West Coast’s poorest quartile of counties live 2.4 years longer than those in the richest quartile counties in the Deep South.

Yes, even having money won’t save you in a red state.

But why is this? Well, a recent study implies that conservative, “laissez-faire political leaders tend to create systems that have looser health insurance regulations, leaner Medicaid programs and fewer public and non-profit hospitals.” 

The policies that “can meaningfully change life expectancy” — such as reducing drug overdoses, expanding Medicaid, adopting gun control, and protecting abortion and maternal health — are nonstarters in red states.

Another interesting fact is that in the Deep South, “the region with the distinction of having had the continent’s most repressive formal slave and racial caste systems,” white people have a lower life expectancy than their counterparts in Canada and Western Europe, and they have per capita suicide and psychiatric disorder rates far higher than their Black, Asian or Latino peers.

This is because racist white people “reject policies designed to help the poor and reduce inequality because of animosity toward people of color as well as being unaware that the poor include a great many white people.”

The researchers conclude that “three centuries of formal white supremacy hasn’t served whites very well.”

By the way, we Latinos have much higher life expectancy than whites in America, which researchers call the Hispanic Paradox.

So as a Latino living in California, I am virtually immortal.

How cool is that?

You have to admire someone who takes a moral stand.

We’re talking about people who battle against injustice and refuse to back down. We’re talking about Gandhi, King, and the Dali Lama.

We’re talking about privileged white guys upset about diversity, and…

Hold on. What are talking about again?

Well, it seems that a political group, headed by that slimy xenophobe who slithered around the White House during the Trump years, is trolling corporations in an effort to destroy all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

The group is “morally opposed to diversity” and accuses many firms of “being unlawfully woke.” So they are harassing companies and trying to persuade them to return to the good old days when ethnic minorities wouldn’t even get job interviews.

This sounds like a horrible joke, but as conservatives have reminded us time after time, they have no sense of humor and view every evolution in American culture since 1950 as a deathly serious threat to the nation.

So they are out there, protesting any attempt to acknowledge that racism still exists.

And it’s not just this one ineffectual group.

In our favorite state, Florida, the Disney “governing district — whose current board was hand-picked by DeSantis and took control of the district in February — abolished all of its diversity, equity and inclusion programs,” stating that these initiatives “were illegal and simply un-American.”

Yes, these guys are standing up for American values. See what I said about taking a moral stand?

But maybe these principled warriors are unaware of studies that show “if racial economic gaps for Black Americans alone had been closed 20 years ago, gross domestic product (GDP) in the United States would have grown by an estimated $16 trillion.”

Wow—if America weren’t so invested in maintaining the racist status quo, we would all be a lot better off, economically.

These studies also show that if we had more DEI programs, and if they had succeeded in closing the racial gap for Blacks just five years ago, GDP would have grown by $5 trillion, “which includes an additional $13 trillion in business revenue and 6.1 million jobs created per year.”

Again, those studies didn’t even include Latinos, Middle Easterners, and other ethnic minorities, so the total loss to our economy is likely even higher.

Crunching the numbers, DEI actually seems like a good thing for companies to invest in, assuming that they want to make a buck and not flounder just to appease a bunch of belligerent bigots.

In fact, other studies show that “diversity in a workplace plays an important role when it comes to testing an AI product,” which as we all know, is the wave of the future.

Or it could be a planet killer and destroy civilization — opinions vary.

In any case, research implies that current AI models are prone to outputting racist images and text. However, there are many “clear examples of how diversity within the workforce can improve the efficiency of testing to prevent racial bias in AI,” making a better product and improving the efficiency of cutting-edge technology.

But apparently, all of that is immoral.

Once again, I have no time to post a full-fledged article that bedazzles and delights, infuriates and illuminates. That’s because my book’s deadline is fast approaching, and the pages don’t write themselves.

So I will just note that recent polls show a virtual dead heat in a theoretical matchup between Biden and Trump. And this appalling revelation has provoked many of us to ask, “how can it possibly be … that after everything we’ve been through since 2015, even 5% of Americans, let alone 45%, would consider letting him within a mile of the White House?”

I have no answer to that, of course, because it is complete insanity.

So I will just point out that none of this matters in the long term, because in about 5 billion years, the sun will become a white dwarf and swallow the Earth whole. And everything that ever existed here will be gone forever.

There—don’t you feel better now?

For nearly half a century, Americans have had to endure the phrase “Reaganomics,” which refers to a supposedly brilliant economic system that has the slight flaw of being a total disaster that never worked. Recently, people have been throwing around the term “Bidenomics,” which refers to a governmental philosophy that actually seems to be effective.

But conservatives aren’t happy about lower inflation and record employment, or a much better economy than anything a GOP president has presided over in decades. In fact, they are angry about it.

So Republicans tried doubling down (and tripling, quadrupling, etcetera) on the idea of limited government, which is an empty phrase that means, “Don’t tax rich people.” This approach is not terribly popular with most Americans. And with reason, because this philosophy has led to developments such as lax antitrust laws, which benefit big corporations but cost the typical American household more than $5,000 a year.

Of course, the GOP has never and will never care if their policies are hated. They are now implying, or straight-up insisting, that democracy should be severely limited or even abolished.

And if Republicans now hate democracy and the Constitution, anything is possible. For example, that whole limited-government thing has recently been revealed as the total sham it always was. 

In a massive shift, Republicans are no longer “committed to keeping the government weak to stay out of the way of business development.” Instead, they are now determined to create “a strong government that enforces Christian nationalism.” 

To do so, they must abandon their supposed core principles and embrace big government. You might think this would be hypocritical and anathema to conservatives. But it took very little to convince libertarian absolutists to change their “tune on the free market and state power to keep up with the ‘New Right‘ ushered in by Trump and DeSantis.”

That “New Right,” which is a lot like the old right but louder, consists of theocrats who despise “the secular values of democracy—religious freedom, companies that respond to markets without interference by the state, academic freedom, public schools, free speech, equality before the law—[and] want to restore what they consider human virtue by using the state to enforce their values.” 

And that brings us back to Reaganomics, which was never really about the economy. You see, “Since the days of Reagan, Republicans have argued that people who believe that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, protect civil rights, and promote infrastructure are destroying the country by trying to redistribute wealth from hardworking White Americans to undeserving minorities and women.”

During the 1980s and 1990s, all this was said in code. That façade started crumbling in the 21^st century. And today, conservatives have dropped the bullshit and taken their argument “to its logical conclusion: the country has been destroyed by women, Black Americans, Indigenous people, and people of color, who have taken it over and are persecuting” White Americans.

At this point, the GOP is very much the party of big government. And unless you are a White, straight, conservative man, you will not like what that government will do to you.