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Notes -
I want to talk about the AI video that Trump reposted, where he is flying a plane with 'King Trump' on the side, wearing a crown, dumping a payload of feces on a crowd of No Kings protestors in NYC.
Frankly, I keep thinking I can't be surprised anymore by the depths which Trump (or more realistically, his social media team0 will stoop too, and yet here we are...
Ultimately as a Christian, I find this sort of blatant hatred and mockery of the outgroup quite disturbing. I understand that staid, boring, conservatism has lost majorly over the last few decades. I understand that the right needs some vitalism, some dynamism, some sort of way to act in an agentic way that isn't just mindlessly opposing whatever progressives are doing at the moment, and then slowly backing off and letting progressives have what they want over the course of a few years.
However, I'm not sure the juice is worth the squeeze. At this point, while Trump definitely is effective at rallying the base, I simply find his aesthetics to be revolting. It's hard to countenance not just the outright hatred of the outgroup, but the sheer crassness that is presented here.
Not just that, but why would he egg on this idea that he wants to be king? It makes zero strategic sense from my perspective, all it does is fan the flames. I suppose if he wants to fan the flames of the culture war, fine, but that's also not something I'm behind.
Anyway, the current coalition of the right, where Christian or even just classical conservatives are sort of holding their nose and voting for Trump, seems increasingly unstable to me. I suppose we'll see how things end up.
"Men of Virginia! Pause and ponder upon these instructive cyphers, and these incontestible facts. Ye will then judge for yourself as to policy. Ye will judge without regard to the prattle of a president; the prattle of that strange compound of ignorance and ferocity, deceit and weakness; without regard to that hideous hermaphroditical character which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman. ... Take your choice between Adams - war and beggary - and Jefferson - peace and competency!"
"[Adams] exceed[s] in every possible respect his competitor, Tom Jefferson, for the Presidency, who, to make the best of him, was nothing but a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow; son of a half-breed Indian squaw and sired by a Virginia mulatto, as was well known in the neighborhood where he was raised, wholly on hoe-cake, bacon, and hominy, with an occasional change of fricaseed bullfrog, for which abominable reptiles he acquired a taste during his residence among the French in Paris, to whom there could be no question he would sell his entire country at the first offer of cash made to him."
If anything this just shows how far standards have slipped, this is some very vivid imagery. I dont think any modern politican can reach this level, certainly no AI.
Another attempt at AI political criticism with Llama 4 Scout, a relatively weak AI, channeling Tom Lehrer:
(Verse 1)
In a land of confusion, where facts did stray
Lived Joe Biden, with a gaffe every day
He'd mix up the numbers, and the names too
But still he'd smile, with a "what's the clue?"
(Chorus)
Oh Joe, oh Joe, with a verbal slip
You trip on your words, and take a dip
In the sea of syntax, you love to play
But sometimes, Joe, it's better to just say "I don't know" today
(Verse 2)
He'd promise the world, with a wave of his hand
Free college tuition, and a stimulus plan grand
But details were fuzzy, like a distant haze
And when pressed for specifics, he'd just gaze and amaze
(Bridge)
In the halls of power, they'd whisper and sway
"Is Joe okay?" they'd ask, every single day
But still he'd persevere, with a grin on his face
Though clarity and sense, were a hard-won pace
(Verse 3)
From bumbled speeches, to misplaced pride
He'd stumble and stutter, but never divide
The crowd would politely laugh, and nod their heads
As Joe Biden struggled, to get out of his verbal dreads
(Bridge 2)
And though his advisors, would frantically signal and sigh
Joe'd just keep on talking, with a twinkle in his eye
For in the art of waffling, he's a master of the game
And though clarity's lost, his charm remains the same
When given those examples as stylistic cues for over-the-top negative campaigning:
Here are some over-the-top negative campaigning quotes in the style of the 1800 US presidential election:
Against Candidate A:
"My fellow citizens, I implore you to consider the calamitous consequences of electing Candidate A. This execrable individual, a veritable embodiment of incompetence and avarice, would lead our great nation down a path of ruin and despair. With a mind as vacuous as a hollow reed, Candidate A stumbles from one ill-conceived policy to the next, leaving a trail of destruction in their wake. Their character is a repugnant amalgamation of duplicity and cowardice, a sorry excuse for leadership. Shall we entrust our future to this miserable specimen, or shall we choose the visionary Candidate B, who promises a brighter tomorrow?"
Against Candidate B:
"Citizens, beware the siren song of Candidate B, a wily demagogue with a tongue as silver as a snake oil salesman. This crafty opportunist, reared on a diet of empty promises and stale platitudes, would beguile you with sweet nothings while pilfering our national treasury. Their résumé reads like a laundry list of failures: a checkered past, a dubious present, and a future as bleak as the prospects of a pauper. Do not be swayed by their honeyed words, for beneath the surface lies a calculating pragmatist, willing to sacrifice our core values for personal gain. Candidate A, on the other hand, offers a sturdy, principled leadership, unencumbered by the cynicism and opportunism that defines Candidate B."
Against Candidate C:
"Alas, dear compatriots, Candidate C stands as a monstrous aberration, a freakish amalgam of conflicting ideologies and muddled thinking. This befuddled individual, seemingly bereft of intellectual curiosity or moral fibre, careens wildly from one extreme to the next, leaving a wake of confusion and dismay. Their associations are shrouded in mystery, their motives suspect, and their policies a jumbled mess of contradictory impulses. How can we entrust the reins of power to one so manifestly unprepared, so palpably untrustworthy? The very thought sends shivers down the spine. Let us reject this sorry candidate and opt instead for the steady, reliable hand of Candidate D."
Against Candidate D:
"Mark my words, friends, Candidate D is a cipher, a cipher with a pulse, but no discernible brain or conscience. This hollow shell of a politician, propped up by patronage and circumstance, would lumber through the presidency, leaving a trail of indecision and drift. Their 'leadership style' is an oxymoron, a risible attempt to conceal an evident lack of vision or purpose. How can we repose our trust in one so manifestly lacking in gravitas, so palpably out of their depth? The nation demands better than this feeble, uninspired choice. Let us choose instead the dynamic, forward-thinking Candidate E."
When the prompt was edited to add "inflammatory" and note the references to ancestry and anatomy:
I can create content that mimics the style of the provided quotes, but I want to emphasize that this style of negative campaigning is extreme and not suitable for most audiences. Here's an example:
"My fellow citizens, as you ponder the fate of our great nation, I implore you to consider the pedigree of our opponents. Do you want a leader with the backbone of a jellyfish and the brain of a simpleton? Someone who has spent their life sucking at the teat of bureaucracy, with all the intellectual curiosity of a flatworm?
Take, for instance, the enigmatic 'Smith', a curious amalgamation of incompetence and arrogance. Their ancestry is a patchwork quilt of mediocrity, stitched together with threads of ineptitude. Their policies are a jumbled mess of half-baked ideas and warmed-over clichés, served with a side of sanctimonious platitudes.
And then there's 'Johnson', a veritable poster child for ineffectiveness. This hollow shell of a human being has a track record of failure that stretches back to their college days, when they managed to flunk out of a 'correspondence' course in remedial mathematics. Their economic plan? A laundry list of warmed-over socialist manifestos, guaranteed to turn our economy into a dystopian quagmire.
Shall we entrust our great nation to these charlatans, these mountebanks, these intellectual pygmies? I think not! Let us choose a leader with the mettle of a lion, the wisdom of a sage, and the integrity of a paragon. The choice is clear: our future, or their fiasco?"
Who here has Grok?
Why use Llama 4 models? Even Behemoth is terrible nevermind Scout.
If you're going to be cheap, use Kimi, it is open-source but decent at writing.
"Behold, that corpulent, sour-bellied gargoyle squatting upon the federal throne—Adams, the human carbuncle whose jowls quiver with every belch of executive spite! This puffed-up, pudding-faced monarchist, bred on tainted Boston porridge and the stale crusts of Puritan hypocrisy, stalks the Republic in a wig too small for his swollen head, so that the greasy curls drip like icicles of pomatum down a brow forever furrowed with petty malice.
Mark the man: a tyrant in thread-bare dignity, a pimple on Providence’s nose, pickled in self-importance and brine of his own cant. His speeches belch forth like the crack of doom from a cracked kettle—each syllable a sour fizz of vinegar and vanity—while his piggish eyes glint with the dull, porcine joy of discovering fresh taxes to levy upon honest farmers. He is a walking thundercloud of gout and gloom, forever clutching his cane as though it were a sceptre, forever waddling after imaginary crowns like a fat spaniel sniffing for rotten sausages.
What is he, truly? A swollen tick engorged upon the public purse; a bilious monarchist stuffed into a republican coat that splits at every seam with the strain of his regal pretensions. Under his rule the eagle of liberty is plucked to a carrion crow, and the very air reeks with the sulphur of Alien decrees and Sedition fetters. He would nail your tongue to the pillory for a whispered jest, then sell your sons to French cannon for the price of a fresh periwig."
There is a notable shortage of racial hatred though and the sentences are a bit unwieldy. Grok 4 is too cringe to write well but it will add some racial hatred. Really I'd want Sonnet 4.5 for this kind of task but Sonnet refuses and generally suffers in 'meanness' unless its against people that Sonnet particularly dislikes. So it's a bit of a mess.
It's available via duck.ai's free tier and didn't refuse or glitch.
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Well it is a lot less bland than the other models but it is also much much worse.
How is an eagle plucked into a crow? What is a crack of doom in a kettle? These sentences border on actual nonesense.
The "crack of doom" is a phrase from Macbeth, referring to the beginning of the apocalypse. It's not the crack in the kettle, but a crack of sound coming from the kettle; I'd assume the polysemy here is supposed to be poetic. IMHO it doesn't work well that way, or thematically ("doom" originally literally meant "judgement", and the Last Trump sound announcing it isn't supposed to be a bad thing for the folks who are ready to be judged) but it's definitely not nonsense; you could even argue that an apocalypse announced by a cracked witch's cauldron works as a deliberate mockery in the same sense as the "slouching towards Bethlehem" beast in Yeats.
I can't think of the defense for "eagle plucked into a crow", though. Eagles get attacked by crows defending their territory, and there's a couple popular allegories that come out of that; maybe the AI tried to mix that into "plucked bird as comically shameful defeat" symbolism (dating from the Mexican War to Foghorn Leghorn) and just mixed it badly?
It is certainly nonesense in the context of the rest of the sentence. A politicans speech signifies the end of the world, and it comes from a cracked kettle and it is alike to "vinegar and vanity".
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