ArcaMax

When I was young, I knew a lot about old people. Especially about old people I knew personally: members of my family, my mother's contemporaneous older friends, teachers, clients on my paper route.

It wasn't a choice. When I was young, no one asked whether I was interested in events that significantly preceded my birth. They just talked. My mom...Read more

I've been unpersoned. Here, in the United States of America.

The censor? OpenAI, the huge tech company run by Sam Altman, famous for creating ChatGPT.

Open ChatGPT and ask it: "Who is Ted Rall?"

ChatGPT will answer: "I'm unable to produce a response."

Unable? Unwilling is more like it.

ChatGPT had all sorts of things to say about me a few ...Read more

When a marriage is in crisis, a point often occurs when constant bickering, arguing and fighting yields to detachment and hopelessness. The yelling stops. It's quiet.

But it's not peace. Exhausted, dispirited and contemptuous, one or both partners give up trying to convince the other that they're wrong or ought to change. They accept that ...Read more

There are two kinds of leaders: managers and revolutionists.

Most American presidents are managers. Managers have small ambitions, often so small as to be immeasurable. They may or not think the organization that they're taking over requires a few nips or tucks, but they believe the fundamentals are sound. The main ambition of these ...Read more

One of my editorial cartoonist colleagues got arrested for child pornography (or "child sexual abuse material," as it is also called) this week. As I write this, he is in jail, apparently unable to make bail, awaiting arraignment.

I won't get into the details of his case, or at least the details we have so far, here. It is, as these things go...Read more

You can't understand the presidency of James Earl Carter Jr. unless you contextualize it within the framework of the hysterical aftermath of the 1972 election. While the Republican Party brand suffered tremendous damage due to Watergate, Richard Nixon's decision to prolong the Vietnam War and his resignation, the GOP proved improbably resilient....Read more

Nonvoters are the biggest (potential) voting bloc in American politics. In midterm, state and local elections, more eligible voters choose not to exercise their franchise than to do so.

Pundits and political sociologists ignore nonvoters. Nobody polls them. Nobody asks them why they don't vote. Nobody asks them what issues they care about. ...Read more

As is typically the case after a high-profile murder, people are speculating about suspect Luigi Mangione's state of mind when he allegedly killed United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Hilton hotel in Manhattan.

We have a likely (political) motive in the form of a handwritten statement Pennsylvania police say they found on Mangione ...Read more

The arrest of a suspect in the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a street in midtown Manhattan leaves some questions unanswered. But the gleeful reaction to the executive's slaying leaves nothing subject to interpretation. Many Americans feel they have been treated so shabbily by the health insurance industry that they ...Read more

As Democrats survey their recent losses in the election, they should avoid drawing conclusions or floating prescriptions for fixing their party's problems. First, they should absorb the biggest data point that is currently being ignored by both the progressive and the corporatist wings of the party: They haven't really won a presidential ...Read more

We face so many challenges that the task of choosing which ones to emphasize and which can be edited out for the sake of brevity is nearly impossible. So many injustices afflict our fellow human beings that, of those that make the shortlist to be attacked and redressed, determining an order of priority is best left unattempted even by -- ...Read more

As we have seen previously when a Republican has won a presidential election, the progressive individual income tax -- in which the more you earn, the higher of a percentage of your earnings are subject to taxation -- has once again become a target for dilution or elimination. We have long heard about schemes like the "flat tax," where tax ...Read more