From Democracy To Pathocracy
We didn't just tolerate the short slide, we asked for it
Editor’s Note: Have a question about whether Matt has anything to add to Pope Leo’s 43,200-word jeremiad on the perils of AI? Matt doesn’t at this time. The Pope nicely covered it, which pains Matt to say as a Prot. Still, Matt secretly resents the Pope swerving into his lane as a Big-Tech basher. But two can play that game. Which is why you should address any questions about Matt’s coming encyclical on Thomism vs. Ressourcement theology to askmattlabash@gmail.com
Hi Matt,
Just wondering if you think it is time to call it? I am referring to something akin to an election night when the major networks call an election. The “it” I am referring to is.......have we officially transitioned from a Democracy into a Pathocracy?
You seem like the right person to make the official call.
V/R
Steven G.
Let’s just skip the rhetorical foreplay and get right to it. Hell yes, we’ve become a pathocracy. Which I’ve never been more convinced of, at least after looking up what “pathocracy” means. No easy feat, since it’s not in Merriam-Webster or the OED. But my Google AI overview (sorry, Pope Leo) defines it as “a form of government where a ruling elite consisting of individuals with severe personality disorders — most notably psychopathy, narcissism, and the ‘Dark Triad’ — takes control of a nation. It describes a political system where the ruthless and unempathic rise to power, systematically displacing moral individuals and reshaping society to reflect their disordered inner realities.”
Sounds like Google AI has been reading Trump’s and Elon’s and Bezos’s and Thiel’s and Altman’s and any number of others’ mail from the oligarchs-gone-wild genus. I mean sure, after winning Trump’s good-seal-of-corruption approval, Ken Paxton – a man who has hit the corruption cycle, having been accused of everything from accepting bribes to abuse of office to securities fraud to adultery (leading some to wonder why he’s not a cabinet official or the administration’s Ethics Czar) — just won the Republican nomination to be the next U.S. Senator from Texas. Paxton is a man who is not equipped to run a prison commissary, let alone to help make the country’s laws. (Though in fairness, he is fit to be a prison resident.) But it’s too easy to beat up the ruling elite and sundry others within the oligarchic assholocaust. Instead, I’d rather put the blame where the blame is mostly due: