Where We Are This Week
Birds, boots, and Biden. Fun!
While driving home on Wednesday afternoon on Broad Street, somewhere between the Harley-Davidson dealership, the adult entertainment store, and the International Paper factory, I got a little distracted.
I’ve driven that stretch of road since I got my license and the couple of miles between the first major intersection and the interstate have become so routine over the last fifteen years that it’s all too easy to put your blinders on through that stretch of road.
Wednesday was the first day of November. The temperature was low and the sky was clear - a gentle reminder that winter’s still on its way.
Stretched out, folding in on itself above the road was a flock of blackbirds. Starlings, grackles, or cowbirds, I’m not sure. It’s not me who has become an amateur ornithologist but my brother-in-law and niece. Ask them for the details.
As I watched this amorphous super-organism shapeshift in front of my eyes, each bird trying to get to the center while simultaneously triggering a thousand chain reactions of movement, I was struck with recognition. This one instance seemed to embody a particularly challenging set of characteristics of our reality with which I’ve been contending; its unknowability, unpredictability, and utter randomness.
As I was getting lost in the depths of the avian phantasm ahead of me, the sobering, familiar sounds of Radiohead’s My Iron Lung came through my radio. Music has always rang true to me, and something about Johnny Greenwood’s guitar-playing connects some integral dots to me personally. In a world rife with chaos, how could something so purposed and succinct exist?
Then I realized that the flock of birds doesn’t represent reality, it represents us humans. Weaving through this world together with no plan, no real leaders, just constant action and reaction until a pattern emerges - then suddenly changes. Hurling through space at breakneck speeds, somehow surviving the flapping of appendages and gnashing of teeth, until we disperse and find our own electric wire to perch upon.
And somehow, by the grace of God, we don’t get electrocuted.
These boots were made for walkin’
It’s apparent to me that this newsletter is in need of a little levity. With all the doom and gloom (did I mention the doom?) happening just off our doorstep, it’s important to laugh a little every once in a while. If only to keep from crying.
So, with that in mind, I could talk about the rumors swirling around that Ron DeSantis is wearing boots with heel lifts in them. And while that’s not where this segment will ultimately land, I’ll briefly surmise my thoughts on the matter.
DeSantis wears ugly boots. White boots, black boots, $1000 Lucchese boots, you name it. First of all, the fact that a public servant is wearing a pair of shoes that are worth the median weekly salary of the average American is a slap in the face. Secondly, calling them cowboy boots at that price tag is an affront to caballeros, cattlemen, and roughnecks everywhere.
I know inflation has been out of control as of late but even accounting for it, there’s just no way that John Wayne paid $1000 for his boots before spurs.
In a recent podcast appearance with Patrick Bet-David - who, despite his 1.5 million subscribers on YouTube is still a mystery to me - the Florida governor was asked about his high-heeled secrecy. Boringly, DeSantis pretended to not have heard the accusations and refuted them soundly.
He was then asked how tall he was. “5’11”,” the Florida rancher responded a little too quickly while scrambling to straighten his posture in order to meet the gaze of his interviewer. Height is the second most sensitive subject regarding a man’s physique - maybe we’ll start getting more questions about the first soon! Can you imagine the fibbing, exaggerating, and telling defensiveness we would see from political hopefuls?
I do understand, however, why a presidential candidate would be nervous when asked how tall they were. For starters, they’d probably be so nervous that they’d actually say heighth instead of height, they’d instinctively lie. If we’re honest with ourselves, though, lying about this subject, in particular, is justified when you discover that America does not make a habit of electing men to the highest office of the land who are less than 6’ tall.
Jimmy Carter is the only American president since the end of WWII to be shorter than 5’11.5”. We are a bigoted bunch, aren’t we? Also, Dubyah is listed as 5’11.5”, I don’t know why but that’s impossible to imagine. Dude’s 5’5’’ - tops.
You might think that I’m just projecting my own insecurities on DeSantis to which I would tell you you’re being extremely offensive. I’m only one or two inches or twelve shy of 6’8”.
Regardless, DeSantis refused to take off his footwear in order to prove he wasn’t height-doping, his boots are atrocious, and I didn’t like the smug way he said “5’11””. Conclusion: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis definitely wears high heels. Do you care? How tall are you?
Whoops…
Okay, so that wasn’t as brief as I thought it would be. But as someone who wears a pair of Doc Martens Chelsea boots for 9 months out of the year, I thought it would be important for you all to understand my thoughts about men’s footwear choices.
But I digress.
Even though the war in Gaza has continued to escalate with rockets fired by Hezbollah, the Houthis of Yemen declaring war on Israel, and China removing the Jewish state from the two largest map platforms inside the country, there was one piece of news that stood out to me this week.
Joe Biden, on Monday, signed an executive order on artificial intelligence. The bill is intended to attempt to strike a balance between consumer interests and the technological advancement of AI systems by private corporations. Okay, fair enough, right?
Setting aside that I have as much faith in the Biden administration protecting us citizens from the predations of AI and corporate interest as I do my 1.5-year-old (gasp) putting her own shoes on, let’s take a look at how ill-conceived of a bill this is from the start.
In a particularly telling Associated Press article, it was detailed exactly how the President became alarmed by the growing threat that AI might pose to the security and status quo of American society. First, the article informed us that Biden was ‘profoundly curious’ about the technology since he first was aware of its ascent.
‘Profoundly curious’ has to be the grossest overstatement of the past year. To my knowledge, President Biden is only ‘profoundly’ interested in ice cream scoops and adopted ill-behaved German Shepherds. Of course, it was examples involving himself that triggered his spidey senses. Never underestimate the megalomania required to be commander in chief.
“He was as impressed and alarmed as anyone,” deputy White House chief of staff Bruce Reed said in an interview. “He saw fake AI images of himself, of his dog. He saw how it can make bad poetry. And he’s seen and heard the incredible and terrifying technology of voice cloning, which can take three seconds of your voice and turn it into an entire fake conversation.”
Regardless, the top-tier reporting from the AP - the same organization that leased an office in the same building as Hamas in Gaza but failed to report on it - illustrated the pivotal moment where Biden realized that the specter of AI must be dealt with.
The issue of AI was seemingly inescapable for Biden. At Camp David one weekend, he relaxed by watching the Tom Cruise film “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One.” The film’s villain is a sentient and rogue AI known as “the Entity” that sinks a submarine and kills its crew in the movie’s opening minutes.
“If he hadn’t already been concerned about what could go wrong with AI before that movie, he saw plenty more to worry about,” said Reed, who watched the film with the president.
Regular readers will already know my opinions of presidential vacations - they don’t deserve them, much less the staggering amount of PTO the boss has used since he took office in 2020. As of August, before Biden hit his 1000th day as President, he had spent at least 40% of his time in the Oval Office not in the Oval Office.
“But don’t you see, he’s still working on vacation!” his defenders might protest whilst pointing to the Tom Cruise film as evidence of his dedication to the job. The fact that the POTUS has the leisure time to watch a 164-minute Mission: Impossible film during his weekly routine and I don’t is a hard pill to swallow.
The fact that he’s getting policy ideas from insane plot devices in a self-indulgent, stunt-vehicle for Tom Cruise is enough to choke a horse.
If you’re still living under the notion that our bureaucratic and political elites are capable of steering us away from WWIII (bless your heart), surely, the fact that President Biden is taking cues from popular cinema is cause for concern.
On the other hand, it may be all down to who’s charged with the matinee selection. One perfectly queued feature film may be all it takes to change the course of history. 2001: A Space Odyssey, Apocalypse Now, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, just think of the ideas these masterpieces could conjure inside the addled mind of our geriatric president.
Then again, one screening of Quentin Tarantino’s opus Inglourious Basterds might finally inspire President Biden to assemble a ragtag troop of Jewish Americans to kill Hitler once and for all. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.
How about you? Are you laughing or crying? I can’t tell the difference anymore.
To a better next week,
Cheers,
~FDA
You probably saw starlings! They’re notorious for having really big flocks.
I’m hoping Biden watches Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure so that he can outlaw George Carlin from helping minors abduct important historical figures.
The boots thing! It's a silly thing if a Presidential candidate would wear something inside their shoe to make themselves taller, but I think it's even dumber to ask anyone, especially a Presidential candidate, to take their shoes off. Can you imagine the bad optics that would have caused and how often people would have used that visual against him? That's a lose-lose situation.