Ours is an age in which everyone (online) may look up everything (OSINT) for any purpose evil or good at any time. For years now and living a “life online”, I have asked myself with so much “content” available through a fancy television screen, where to dwell? Add an earnest “why?” In the coverage of conflict–or curiosity about it–from the web’s second row seat to history there are of course the dots between events and places, the inflection points newly minted in a year–or a week or day–and the things a generation may–or must–never forget, e.g., the Rubicon, Auschwitz, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11 of their youth, but what is the choosing, clicking, scrolling point for the mind at the monitor?
For a small portion of the world beyond basic needs–cash flow is good, discretionary time is what we have, abundance in some measure small or great–the point becomes interesting. A modern Muslim woman, Qanta Ahmed asked me on Facebook decades ago (so it feels) after having registered her account, “What now?” My answer had been “Good influence.” I believe she has done her part–and I mine.
What now?
The answer for me has been one person’s diplomacy. The opportunity to read foreign newspapers in English, to make friends nine thousand miles away who would become better known than the neighbor in the apartment on the other side of the office wall–but for whom one could do nothing in a pinch–would build out one’s social media community. That was back in the Facebook uptake era. Then along came everything else and, well, X marked the spot!
And X has been the spot for responding to power and the tensions between the ambitions and attitudes of some wealthy, the arrangements made by power medieval–as well as brutal and unconscionable–and the aspirations and values of a nation blessed with valuing its own humanity and related dignity, freedom, and security. And then along came Donald–and DOGE–and the emergence of fuzzy philosophers dreaming of Tech Bro empires and new relationships between a plutocracy of programmers and the needs and wants of comparatively hapless consumers of “content” and other stuff.
The heady early days seem to me no longer new and novel–not even the “Tube” sites of the flesh trade–and all of the governments in attendance (I’m sure) watching decision patterns and trees for even that.
Ain’t it grand?
It turns out the “second row”–mediated–seat to history may be as well a space cordoned (almost) from life, but then even souls living through their screens have to step away and step out for fresh air and a good restaurant now and then.
Softshell Crab Sandwich, The Grille at Runways, HGR, Hagerstown, Maryland, May 2, 2026
And now what?
X has become a daily battle with bots, trolls, and indefinite fake names weighing in from their VPN locations (no doubt), and potentially for purposes as insidious as their being unknown and possibly unidentifiable. Then too, especially for me, there’s been the hash slung repeatedly toward every pair of eyeballs who didn’t get it — or believe it — on the first round: #AmericaForSale; #AmericaUnderAssault (good entry: welcome to my world!) all the way to where we really are (so I believe): #StateCapture / #StatePiracy. The epiphanies no longer leave me breathless but rather yawning it all back for having been repeated too often for too long.
Shall there be here a “Dining for Diplomats” section for the Washingtonians (who really may be diplomats)? And what happened to the sound track? America . . . Born in the USA . . . The Secret of Life . . . . Everyone of us — Americans — has his own. That’s our freedom . . . our individualism . . . our choice to choose how we grow our persons inside and out. Upstairs? Tabulation. Tell the universe what you want — Amazon will have it slipped into your shopping experience right soon.
With the #PhantomOfTheSoviet playing a fading devil and #IllTrumpolini providing an object lesson in #MalignantNarcissism — and this blog becoming weirdly hybrid with hashtags — Qanta’s “What now” has transitioned fully into two major questions, one public and an echo from history: “What is to be done!?” (Query AI on the famous Russian question). And the other personal: “What am I doing here? What’s my hunt, my role, my mission, my purpose? So I jump (virtually) in the air shaking my fists over my head before a distant, virtual, absent–from my space but not cyberspace– Michael McFaul who has posted a note on X expressing hope that the next President will be different without fully comprehending the challenges posed by having a piratical feudal-medieval mafia chief in the wheelhouse of the American Ship O’ State promising his portion of the Christian base relief from elections forever after: ““It’ll be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore my beautiful Christians . . . in four years you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.”
Putin is an enemy of freedom and a supporter of dictatorship. That's why he invaded Ukraine and is aiding Iran.
The U.S. should be a friend of freedom and a supporter of democracy.
Trump doesn't understand this basic mission for our great country. I hope future leaders will.
While true, “Trump doesn’t understand this basic mission for our great country,” he understands being a chief with his own system of private patronage (#PPS on X) and all the methods attending criminally ruthless power from blackmail, bribery, and intimidation to the promising of generous rewards in exchange for loyalty, obedience, and silence.
What Donald Trump does — and what he has done to take America down — has been as obvious as it has been ugly. Check the list for his large targets or mishaps with tariffs: American agriculture, counterintelligence, election security, health, humanitarian aid, justice, natural resources, etc.
Whine it out on X, fashion the barbs that make the snark, send hints to those who know them, perhaps, but come forward from the curtains keeping the darker realities out of sight, the reckless, unresponsive, upside-down, and surreal Trump and his Trumpian Theater will just get right on to the next dumb move, the sort now paving the way toward national financial arrest, debilitating desperation, probably related crime (we shall see), and the unholy trinity leftover from Soviet post-Soviet Russian barbarity and stupidity: enserfment, gulag, and Soviet-style totalitarian surveillance. ICE will need work; the private prison system may appreciate a little expansion money; and the technology for observing or tracking everyone at all times might well exist —
Creating detailed portraits of Americans based on government data is not just a pipe dream. The Trump administration has already sought access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government databases, including their bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and any disability status.
Mr. Trump could potentially use such information to advance his political agenda by policing immigrants and punishing critics, Democratic lawmakers and critics have said. Privacy advocates, student unions and labor rights organizations have filed lawsuits to block data access, questioning whether the government could weaponize people’s personal information.
Archaic, Criminal, Irrelevant, Medieval
My X-ing has been for some time a routine . . . another program involving a repetitious rollout of arguments, memes, and related talking points. Let’s leave this most egregious of observations here: the above faces defend and reflect in their game-faced hardness an outlook better fit with the worst barbarities of medieval power and related treachery than with anything like modern compassionate, responsible, responsive, and trustworthy governance. Whatever the wreckage each has left or will leave behind, they are together representatives of all that belongs behind us and none of what any should want waiting in the near future.
Whether it’s me or the X algorithms, what should have afforded a lively interactive chatyping has come to shouting into a canyon or spitting into the ocean. Nada. This morning’s sermon from my worn old keyboard: Trump = Criminal.
Shared elsewhere twice this morning . . . and the "package" belongs here too. —#DJT's an underworld boss, a now old man who sees the world looking up from the cold dark world he inhabits beneath the surface of…
Not so long ago–this from the elephant’s memory–one published once and moved on; in this era of “social” networking and related influencing, one finds one’s favored chatyping points plus opportunity to repeat them tirelessly — well, perhaps not quite. #RussiaRussiaRussia? #MalignantNarcissism? #PoliSciPoliPsy? No more, dear God, Nature, and the Universe.
I believe my voice clear, pointed, and persistent but on X (and Bluesky) without efficacy and just lost (or buried) in the high pile and limitless slurry of earnest and outraged statements by all similarly motivated.
Forget the “memory hole”–I’m wondering how to escape the morass.
Badgering Trumpian insults to intelligence take their toll on X as may the wayward convictions of the nation’s far white right bigots and “Christian” nationalist zealots so far sunk in their Weltanschauung as to have imprisoned themselves in archaic principles discarded by the nobility of Europe–and of the American South–centuries ago–reference: Thirty Years War, Peace of Westphalia, American Civil War. After all that . . . the latest Ketaminic Sieg Heil salute to Adolph Hitler and remnant white supremacists worldwide:
Trump is an undisputed poster boy for narcissism. He demonstrates in pure form every single symptom described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) criteria for narcissistic personality disorder, which I wrote in 1978. But lots of successful people are extremely narcissistic without being mentally ill — think most celebrities, many politicians, and a fair percentage of writers, artists, lawyers, doctors, and professors. To qualify for narcissistic personality disorder, an individual’s selfish, unempathetic preening must be accompanied by significant distress or impairment. Trump certainly causes severe distress and impairment in others, but his narcissism doesn’t seem to affect him that way.
On X, I’ve asserted the following for guidance: “delusional, grandiose, messianic ideation absent of normal boundaries and limits, i.e., the parameters of normal conscience.” If that’s not part of the DSM, I’d think the volume inadequate for addressing “Malignant Narcissism”, for every related–and above bolded term–may be searched on the web. Also as regards the narcissism of the healthy, the better natured and reparative in character may deserve or have earned a positive regard for the egoism inseparable from their own quest or struggle for success, i.e., the presence of a reparative narcissism along the lines of Maslow’s healthy competence-seeking behavior and self-esteem. When we’re good–or in the vicinity of excellence in our arts and professions–we many not need the limitless public adoration and validation that defines “Narcissistic Supply” and the neediness of the malign.
For additional curiosity related to Donald Trump’s persistent character, one may have a look into “Sociopathy“. Also worth a gander: “Anomie“; and on the other and brighter side of mental health appreciation, evaluation, and judgment–“Abraham Maslow“; “Positive Psychology“.
Has the United States of America been infiltrated, invaded, overpowered by elements either foreign to it, foreign to its character. or in fact opposed to its American Constitutional ideals and intentions?
American Character and Integrity Matter — Truth Matters
Down every avenue of honest nonpartisan inquiry, one finds President Trump a traitor to the United States of America, a convicted felon who has only evaded trials involving American identity and American national security as indicated by indictments for election interference, classified documents abuse, and attempted election fixing, and yet, as of yesterday, he has once again been handed the immense power of the American Presidency. Now comes a new question: have American governments and more brave and earnest American politicians as well as America’s most spirited artists, community leaders, journalists, investigators–all of whom may prefer American truth to American bullshit–the power to defend American Democracy against an apparent usurper and a tyranny of the “majority”? And Trump is a so-called “American President” who has made this bald promise in effect to all Americans: “It’ll be fixed. It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote anymore my beautiful Christians . . . in four years you don’t have to vote again, we’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote” (YouTube video, Turning Point Action, July 27, 2024).
American Community
Americans should be American in spirit as well as by geopolitical fact, but what an “American” is today appears questionable. Gone: an all-white polity; forgotten: E Pluribus Unum. The latest generations of American Natives and Native Americans may all claim to have been born in the United States of America, and whether happy with that or not . . . that’s just a fact of life. Whoever we are, we are all here. And perhaps now we need a New American Community, one that affirms its ethics, morals, principles, and values–and some of that may need updating and redefinition to suit the full complement of the nation–and one that rejects the racist and religious wet dreams best laid to rest in some dimming recollection of archaic medieval attitudes, beliefs, and practices.
We are Americans, and our power is not all white, nor need it ever be so again. There is no “Great Replacement” . . . .
Ol’ Whitey–and everyone else–“got around”.
So while we Americans think about who we are NOW and what we should be and mean to be–and not what may be engineered and forced on us by coercion, fraud, and force or the MAGAdumb–well, that has been the character of our Convicted Felon in Chief–we might have to accept a little bit of Moscow’s white nationalist crap at the top of what really has been a long dismissed and lost–and good riddance–America.
X Social Network
Countless hours, posts in the thousands (probably–too many for me to count)–for what? A conversation in public; trolling ladies with barely an X-presence; trolling fakes probably making up lists suited to their own derangement; a great lot of follows–really: the best notables in diplomacy and political science and related fields (most don’t know me, but I’m proud to have come to know of them)–and a pretty good base (still under one thousand) of followers–and God bless each and everything one of them. Apart from that “action”, lol, I live alone in a library. Earnest live and evolving conversations seem few to nil and far between or not expected at all.
The Anti-Defamation League and Elon Musk have been sparring over the fate of hate speech on Musk’s “Digital Commons”, so I call it–#DigitalCommons–on X. The ADL appears to believe Musk is a publisher who should be responsible for the content of his web site while Musk appears devoted to the broadest legal freedom of speech concept and feel the obligation to sustain X uncensored. In the way of X, I’ve weighed in. Clearly, Musk neither authors nor edits the platform he administers in his role as a technologist. Forthwith, my opinion at X address https://x.com/JS_Oppenheim/status/1703418994139566319 –>
Single platform publishing has eliminated the boundaries that once sustained mainstream, fringe, and marginal communities in each their own domains. Today, the #DigitalCommons offers all everything at once in one place. That would not be a problem but for #AgitProp #Conspiracy #Disinformation #Incitement and #Recruitment into organizations or movements criminal or once marginalized by paper-based distribution.
Rx. Defenders of laws and within bounds civil behavior may have to go direct to their antagonists. Conspiracy, defamation, incitement (to crime) needs must be fielded, and the #DigitalCommons may not be itself the policing element.
Note: in the United States, not all speech has been protected under the First Amendment. Defamation, libel, and slander may be brought to court by suit or tort; conspiracy to commit crime or incitement to violence may be detected and met by the power of the State through its law enforcement agencies.
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