​Artificial Intelligence versus Artificial Stupidity

By Ed Raymond

A mind that snapped, cracked, and popped at one hundred

I wasn’t going to read a long column called “Centenarian: A Diary of a Hundredth Year” by Calvin Tomkins celebrating his birthday on December 17 of 2025 because it was 14 pages of small type in The New Yorker.But, being a compulsive reader, I started it.

He hooked me immediately because his mind was still young and his word selection was enticing — although with a severe case of macular degeneration (he was legally blind and carried a red and white cane to say so), he spent most of his day in a wheelchair, ached from wounds suffered in five falls over the years, listened to books on tapes, used a phone with large numbers he could feel, used a large magnifier to read labels and instructions, and had to be helped on and off the toilet. Besides, he had divorced three wives and his fourth was a book lover who filled all the shelves with books and piled them in tall columns he often stumbled over in the living room.

Tomkins picked out days of the year to write about. He caught my interest on March 29th because he nails Trump to the cross of AS (Artificial Stupidity) instead of AI (Artificial Intelligence).

“Donald Trump has made remarkably effective use of Artificial Stupidity,” he said. “Even Trump can’t possibly believe he can make Canada our 51st state. AS-Artificial Stupidity means deciding to believe something that has no basis in fact, logic, or common sense. I started using the phrase as sort of a joke, but the breakdown of trust in our government and our social institutions which paved the way to Trump’s second term has made it all too serious.”

In his journal dated August 24th, he cracked me up with Trump’s Air Force One trip to heaven: “I dreamed that Trump died and went to heaven, where he immediately set about changing things. He fired a hundred or more of the busier angels and flew into a rage when they paid no attention to him. St. Benedict, the Angel of Explanation, took him by the arm, ‘There are no jobs up here,’ he said, ‘So you can’t fire people.’ Trump fired St. Benedict on the spot and began to work on a financial system that allotted 17% of Heaven’s assets to Trump. The problem was money was unknown in Heaven. It took him awhile to realize this, and when he tried to will it into existence several angels patted his left arm so sympathetically that it dropped off. Having only one arm was a handicap, and Trump took to raising his remaining arm and shouting ‘fight!’ After many other failures, Trump gave up on Heaven and decided to return to Earth. The angels agreed to help him do this, but nobody on Earth did. ‘Never again,’ the people said, ‘He’s really a sore loser.’”

Every adult should read about and remember death

On June 11th Tomkins wrote: “Do I think about death? Yes, of course. I think about it fairly often, but without emotion. The question was settled by me years ago, when I realized that I didn’t believe in any afterlife. What I believe in is all of us — humans, animals, birds, plants, trees, and so forth — are a part of the same natural world, and that death is essential to life. This, for me, has always been a calming thought.”

“A great many humans believe in higher beings, single or multiple, and their belief has inspired miracles of thought and art, as well as senseless wars and cruelties,” he continued. “I respect believers, but I don’t envy them. As for my living so long, I am grateful for that, and ready to accept death whenever it shows up.”

I want to add my signature to his script and at the same time say “Amen” to those who believe in something. There are scientific and environmental reasons why we look different, but are one race that should live in harmony like packs of wolves, an elephant herd, a flock of geese flying north or Monarch butterflies flying south. Humans are at the top of the Chain of Being and should stop killing each other to keep Earth alive and well.

Will Pope Leo XIV and American Catholics stop deportation plans?

Leo XIV, the new Catholic pope from Chicago, Illinois and Lima, Peru, is sending messages to Donald Trump and Stephen Miller. He is strongly opposed to their deportation plans for 22 million Black and brown people, particularly those who have been in the United States for decades and have become active Catholic members or our communities and economies. He immediately accepted the required resignation of Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, the leader of the second largest diocese in the country at 2.5 million.

If Pope Leo wanted “Trumper” Dolan to continue on the job, he would not have accepted the resignation. Instead, he appointed Bishop Ronald Hicks of Joliet, Illinois to replace Dolan, who often appeared on Fox Lies to support the Trump administration.

At a news conference held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral Bishop Hicks said this about deportation and ICE behavior: “The United States should be a country that upholds human dignity, respect, treating each other well and making sure that anything connected to these policies are connected to due process.”

The pope sent an even stronger message to Trump and his ICE criminals led by Homeland Security Director Kraisy Kristy Noem and Nazi Stephen Miller with his first bishop appointment in the U.S. He selected Michael Pham, an immigrant from Vietnam who came to Minnesota, the first Vietnamese-American to lead a diocese in the San Diego area.

Bishop Pham immediately formed religious groups to patrol courthouses and insist that ICE police follow the laws. He stated his reasons for intervening: “There are people in court who have lived here for 10, 20, 30, 40 years without criminal records. And just imagine they have children, grandchildren, and businesses — now being torn apart.”

Will the active participation of American Catholics be able to control the insane disastrous excesses of Trump’s deportation plans and dump them in the Republican sewer?

Adolf Eichmann and Stephen Miller: Final Solution travel agents

Every time I see or hear Stephen Miller — Trump’s immigration and deportation specialist who became a Nazi as a sophomore in a Santa Monica, California high school — I think of Adolf Eichmann, born in Germany and grew up “struggling” in Austria and joined the Austrian Nazi Party when he was 26. He moved to Germany in 1933 when Hitler was named chancellor and became an expert on “Jewish affairs.”

He supervised the migration of Jews from Germany to Austria in 1938. He did such a good job, Hitler named him to the “Final Solution” committee that met in the Wannsee Conference in 1942 where it was decided to exterminate 12 million European Jews.

As head of RSHA Section for Jewish Affairs, he organized the trains and schedules for the transportation of Jews to extermination camps like Auschwitz. At the end of the war, the Nazis had established more than 4,400 death, slave, work and detainee camps in Europe, killing six million Jews out of the eleven million living in Europe.

In 1944, Eichmann personally supervised the transportation and killing of 400,000 Hungarian Jews. The Gestapo, the Waffen SS, Brownshirts, and German Army troops killed homosexuals and the physically and mentally handicapped to prepare the Third Reich for a wonderful thousand years — for Aryan white Nazis only.

After World War II, Eichmann managed to hide in Germany and then escaped to Argentina in 1950, with the help of a Catholic bishop. Knowing that Eichmann had bragged about killing about five million Jews, the Israeli Secret Service, the Mossad, finally tracked him down in 1960 in Buenos Aries, kidnapped him and brought him back to Israel.

His trial was before a global audience featured his statement, “I was just following orders.” Found guilty of crimes against humanity, he was hanged on June 1, 1962, and his ashes were scattered at sea so future Nazis would not use his grave as a shrine. At every opportunity I watched his trial and listened to the testimony.

Why did Miller start to hate people in high school?

I have suspected Stephen Miller writes 95% of Trump’s posts on social media because they express so much hate and are beyond the capacity, intelligence and vocabulary of the Lyin’ King. Although I have seen him in numerous press conferences and interviews, I have seen Miller smile only once. It was in a photograph of him walking into a White House party.

While participating in interviews and announcements, he always seems to be on the edge of a violent blowout or cursing fit. He has the characteristics of the malignant narcissist, except he seems to hate himself instead of loving himself. Oh, well, I’m not a shrink.

Miller is the one who decided to separate about 5,000 children from their Black and brown undocumented parents years ago. Many are still separated and lost in the crowds.

Recently a six-year-old New York City boy was put in federal custody when his father was sent to a detention center in Orange County to await deportation. This is a White House pressure tactic developed by Miller to get undocumented immigrants to leave the Divided States of America by separating children from their families after they refuse to comply with deportation orders. Fear is a great weapon.

Incidentally, Kentucky-born George Clooney, the famous actor, and his wife and eight-year-old twins have just become citizens of France and moved to a farm they bought in a quiet area. Remember when Trump invited whites from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and South Africa to migrate to the United States? His theme is MAGA wants to become MAWF (Make America White Forever). The Clooney family is migrating to France because they appreciate the French culture. The Clooney farm, a $10 million investment, has 100 acres of grapes, 1,200 olive trees and a huge vegetable garden.

In a Washington interview, Miller said: So you see with a lot of these immigrant groups, not only is the first generation unsuccessful (again Somalia is a clear example here), not only is the first generation unsuccessful. But you see persistent issues every subsequent generation. So you see consistent high rates of welfare use, consistent higher rates of criminal activity, consistent failures to assimilate.

The problem is, he is “consistently” wrong. Ask the citizens of Minnesota.

Miller, in his next disaster, is going to turn hundreds of old warehouses in Trumpistan states to house millions of undocumented detainees waiting to be deported to various “shithole” countries on Planet Earth. What an unmitigated disaster this is going to be. Think of privacy, toilets, bathrooms, showers, heat, air conditioning, food, health care, courts, lawyers — and a thousand other details. Miller should also explain why ICE police have arrested 170 American citizens, 20 of them children.

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