Very good and very bad
Henry Ward Beecher
“Perhaps nowhere in the world can be found more unlovely wickedness — a malignant, bitter, tenacious hatred of good — than in New England. The good are very good and the bad are very bad.’’
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887), Congregational minister, reformer and writer in his 1868 novel, Norwood, or Village Life in New England. His adultery trial transfixed the nation.
Monica Duffy Toft: Eisenhower wouldn’t have agreed with bombastic Hegseth
President Eisenhower delivering his televised farewell address on Jan. 17, 1961.
From The Conversation, except for picture above.
Monica Duffy Toft is professor of international politics and director of the Center for Strategic Studies at The Fletcher School, Tufts University.’
She does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
MEDFORD, Mass.
Hundreds of generals and admirals converged on Quantico, Va., on Sept. 30, 2025, after being summoned from across the globe by their boss, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth, for a session that, as expected, covered what Hegseth often describes as the “warrior ethos.”
Listening quietly, they heard Hegseth promise to make the military “stronger, tougher, faster, fiercer and more powerful than it has ever been before,” and declare that he would fix “decades of decay” in the military.
President Donald Trump spoke for more than an hour in a political speech that derided presidents who came before him. He asserted that “political correctness” would be banished from the military.
The meeting came soon after Trump’s Sept. 5 executive order renaming the Department of Defense the “Department of War.” With that change, Trump reverted the department to a name not used since the 1940s.
The change represents far more than rebranding. It signals an escalation in the administration’s embrace of a militaristic mindset that, in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address, and that the nation’s founders deliberately aimed to constrain.
The timing of this name change feels particularly notable when considered alongside recent reporting revealing secret U.S. military operations. In 2019, a detachment of U.S. Navy SEALs crept ashore in North Korea on a mission to plant a listening device during high-stakes nuclear talks. The risks were enormous: Discovery could have sparked a hostage crisis or even war with a nuclear-armed foe.
That such an operation was approved by Trump in his first term at all exemplifies an increasingly reckless militarism that has defined American foreign policy for decades. That militarism is the very subject of my book, “Dying by the Sword.”
Further, the name change was announced just days after Trump authorized a U.S. military strike on a Venezuelan boat that the administration claimed was carrying drug-laden cargo and linked to the Tren de Aragua cartel. The strike killed 11 people. The administration justified the killings by labeling them “narcoterrorists.”
The U.S. has beefed up military exercises in Puerto Rico during a campaign in the Southern Caribbean against boats suspected of transporting illegal drugs. Miguel J. Rodríguez Carrillo/Getty Images
Abandoning restraint
The Department of War existed from 1789 until 1947, when Congress passed the National Security Act reorganizing the armed services into the National Military Establishment. Just two years later, lawmakers amended the act, renaming the institution the Department of Defense.
Officials disliked the “NME” acronym – which sounded uncomfortably like “enemy” – but the change was not only about appearances.
In the aftermath of World War II, U.S. leaders wanted to emphasize a defensive rather than aggressive military posture as they entered the Cold War, a decades-long standoff between the United States and Soviet Union defined by a nuclear arms race, ideological rivalry and proxy wars short of direct great-power conflict.
The new emphasis also dovetailed with the new U.S. grand strategy in foreign affairs – diplomat George F. Kennan’s containment strategy, which aimed to prevent the expansion of Soviet power and communist ideology around the world.
Kennan’s approach narrowly survived a push to a more aggressive “rollback” strategy of the Soviet Union from its occupation and oppression of central and eastern Europe. It evolved instead into a long game: a team effort to keep the adversary from expanding to enslave other peoples, leading to the adversary’s collapse and disintegration without risking World War III.
On the ground, this meant fewer preparations for war and more emphasis on allies and intelligence, and foreign aid and trade, along with the projection of defensive strength. The hope was that shaping the environment rather than launching attacks would cause Moscow’s influence to wither. To make this strategy viable, the U.S. military itself had to be reorganized.
In a 1949 address before Congress, President Harry S. Truman described the reorganization sparked by the 1947 legislation as a “unification” of the armed forces that would bring efficiency and coordination.
But a deeper purpose was philosophical: to project America’s military power as defensive and protective, and for Truman, strengthening civilian oversight.
The wisdom of this restraint is clearest in Eisenhower’s farewell address, of January 1961.
In less than 10 minutes, the five-star general who had commanded Allied forces in Europe as they swept to victory in World War II cautioned Americans against the rise of a “military-industrial complex.” He acknowledged that the nation’s “arms must be mighty, ready for instant action,” but warned that “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
New enemies, destabilizing regions
The risky North Korean team mission by the Navy SEALs illustrates how America’s militaristic approach often produces the very dangers it aspires to deter.
Rather than enhancing diplomacy, the operation risked derailing talks and escalating conflict. This is the central argument of my book: America’s now-reflexive reliance on armed force doesn’t make America great again or more secure. It makes the country less secure, by creating new enemies, destabilizing regions and diverting resources from the true foundations of security.
It also makes the U.S less admired and respected. The State Department budget continues to be dwarfed by the Department of War’s budget, with the former never reaching more than 5.5% of the latter. And the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, once the leading arm of U.S. soft power as quiet purveyor development aid around the world, is now shuttered.
Today’s Pentagon budget exceeds anything Eisenhower could have imagined.
Trump’s rebranding of the Department of Defense into the Department of War signals a shift toward framing U.S. power primarily in terms of military force. Such a framing emphasizes the use of violence as the principal means of solving problems and equates hostility and aggression with leadership.
Yet historical experience shows that military dominance alone has not translated into strategic success. That’s the mindset that lost the U.S. endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and failed in interventions in Libya and Syria – conflicts that altogether cost trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives while leaving the country less secure and eroding its international legitimacy.
“Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry,” Eisenhower said, can compel the proper balance between military power and peaceful goals.
The very title of my and my co-author’s book comes from the Gospel of Matthew – Chapter 26, verse 52 – that “to live by the sword is to die by the sword.”
Throughout modern history, true security has come from diplomacy, international law, economic development and investments in health care and education. Not from an imaginary “warrior ethos.”
America, I would argue, doesn’t need a Department of War. It needs leaders who understand, as Eisenhower did, that living by the sword will doom us all in the end. Real security comes from the quiet power that builds legitimacy and lasting peace. The U.S. can choose again to embody those strengths, to lead not by fear but by example.
At new museum in Westerly
“Autumnal Landscape,’’ by Harriet Randall Lumis (1870-1953), at the new Westerly (R.I.) Museum of American Impressionism.
At least close to ground
The nearly complete South Station Tower in August. The station building was constructed in 1899 to replace the downtown terminals of several railroads. Today, it’s a major intermodal domestic transportation hub.
— Photo by Kenneth C. Zirkel
“At least when I get on the Boston train I have a good chance of landing in the South Station and not in that part of the daily press which is reserved for victims of aviation.’’
— Ogden Nash (1902-1971), American poet famous for his light verse.
When government is a lawbreaker
Louis D Brendeis (center) in his Boston office in 1916
“Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”
xxx
“[T]he only title in our democracy superior to that of President [is] the title of citizen.”
—Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941), Boston lawyer and civic reformer who was a U.S. Supreme Court justice in 1916-1939.
ICE rule on students would slam education and economy
Northeastern University’s Ell Hall, on Huntington Avenue, Boston. Part of Northeastern success and contributions to the New England economy can be attributed to its drawing so many highly accomplished students from abroad.
Edited from a report by The New England Council
“The council has submitted comments on the proposed rule ‘Establishing a Fixed Time Period of Admission and an Extension of Stay Procedure for Nonimmigrant Academic Students, Exchange Visitors, and Representatives of Foreign Information Media.’
In its letter, the council expressed significant opposition to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) proposed rulemaking due to concerns that the rule would create unnecessary fear, confusion, and procedural roadblocks for international students, exchange visitors, and universities.
“The comment letter further noted that the rule will impede institutions of higher education in New England and across the United States from attracting and retaining the best and brightest minds to study and engage in research for issues and fields critical to our nation’s prosperity and well-being.
“In New England, international students have a significant positive economic impact, totaling $5.148 billion, and supporting 47,425 jobs during the 2023-2024 academic year. During that academic year, 115,086 international students were enrolled at higher educational institutions in the region.
“For more information on this issue or the Council’s Higher Education Committee, please contact Mariah Healy, director of federal affairs at mhealy@newenglandcouncil.com.’’
Putting his fingers on the city
“City Lights” (9000 fingerprints), by Benjamin Archibald, who is showing at Glimpse Gallery, Concord, N.H., Oct. 9-Nov. 9. He’s based in Bristol, N.H.
Downtown Bristol, N.H.
Ken Gallager photo
‘Encroaching on each side’
Babson Farm granite quarry, Halibut Point State Park, in Rockport, on Cape Ann.
User:Chensiyuan photo
“{Cape Ann} is a singular region. If a little orchard plot is seen, here and there, it seems rescued by some chance from being grown over with granite….The granite rises straight behind a house, encroaches on each side, and overhangs the roof, leaving space only for only a sprinkling of grass about the door, for a red shrub or two to wave from a crevice, and a drip of water to flow down among gay weeds.’’
— Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), English writer and sociol0gist
‘Wildly divergent depictions’
“After the Fall” (oil and acrylic on canvas), by Allison Gildersleeve, in her show “Here Somewhere,’’ at the Lyman Allyn Museum, New London, Conn., Oct. 11-Jan. 18.
The museum says:
“Places are not inert; they are repositories for all that has passed through them. In Allison Gildersleeve’s work, time is not sequential and location is not fixed. Gildersleeve picks apart and reassembles the familiar, using the variability of memory as her guide. As she puts the pieces together, her work skips through time at an erratic pace, shuffling the monumental with the mundane and twisting landscapes and interiors into compositional mazes. Gildersleeve grew up in the southeastern corner of Connecticut in a colonial farmhouse surrounded by acres of woods. She returns again and again to the settings of her childhood – wooded areas, home interiors, open highways, back country roads – to show that repeated visits to the same place invariably result in wildly divergent depictions.’’
Embracing grief
“Double Sorrow Double Joy” (double-headed sunflower from farm, planted after 2023 Vermont floods) (embalming thread, resin, dyed ribbon, wood), by Lydia Kern, at Burlington (Vt.) City Arts, in the group show “Do We Say Goodbye?Grief, Loss and Mourning,’’
-Image courtesy Burlington City Arts.
The gallery says the show explores “personal and collective encounters with grief" through the work of artists Peter Bruun, Bethany Collins, Jordan Douglas, Mariam Ghani, Lydia Kern, John Killacky, Nirmal Raja, and Jamel Robinson. Through photography, painting, video, and installation, these eight artists challenge “the finality of loss, inviting us to embrace grief as a shared yet deeply individual journey."
Llewellyn King: Trump policies are threatening U.S. leadership of world science
Entrance to the MIT Museum, in Cambridge Mass. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, founded in 1861, has played a major role in advancing science and engineering.
S5A-0043 photo
WEST WARWICK, R.I.
Pull up the drawbridge, flood the moat and drop the portcullis. That, it would seem, is the science and research policy of the United States circa 2025.
The problem with a siege policy is that eventually the inhabitants in the castle will starve.
Current actions across the board suggest that starvation may become the fate of American global scientific leadership. Leadership which has dazzled the world for more than a century. Leadership that has benefited not just Americans but all of humanity with inventions ranging from communications to transportation, to medicine, to entertainment.
An American president might have gone to the United Nations and said, “As we the people of America have given so much to the world, from disease suppression to the wonder of the Internet, we should expect understanding when we ask of you what is very little.”
This imaginary president might have added, “The United Nations is a body of diverse people, and we are a nation of diverse people.
“We have been a magnet for the talent of the world from the creation of this nation.
“We are also a sharing nation. We have shared with the world financially and technologically. Above all, we have shared our passion for democracy, our respect for the individual and his or her human rights.
“At the center of our ability to be munificent is our scientific muscle.”
This president might also have wanted to dwell on how immigrant talent has melded with native genius to propel and keep America at the zenith of human achievement -- and keep it there for so long, envied, admired and imitated.
He might have mentioned how a surge of immigrants from Hitler’s Germany and elsewhere in Europe gave us movie dominance that has lasted nearly 100 years. He might have highlighted the energy that immigrants bring with them; their striving is a powerful dynamic.
He might have said that striving has shaped the American ethos and was behind Romania-born Nikola Tesla, South Africa-born Elon Musk or India-born and China-born engineers who are propelling the United States leadership in artificial intelligence. The genius behind Nvidia? Taiwan-born Jensen Huang.
I have been reporting on AI for about a decade — well before ChatGPT exploded on the scene on Nov. 30, 2022. All I can tell you is wherever I have gone, from MIT to NASA, engineers from all over the world are all over the science of AI.
The story is simple: Talent will out, and talent will find its way to America.
At least that was the story. Now the Trump administration, with its determination to exclude the foreign-born -- to go after foreign students in U.S. universities and to make employers pay $100,000 for a new H-1B visa -- is to guarantee that talent will go somewhere else, maybe Britain, France, Germany or China and India. Where the talent goes, so goes the future.
So goes America’s dominant scientific leadership.
At a meeting at an AI startup in New York, all the participants were recent immigrants, and we fell to discussing why so much talent came to the United States. The collective answer was freedom, mobility and reverence for research.
That was a year ago. I doubt the answers would be as enthusiastic and volubly pro-American today.
The British Empire was built on technological dominance, from the marine chronometer to the rifled gun barrel to steam technology.
America’s global leadership has been built, along with its wealth, on technology, from Ford’s production line to DuPont’s chemicals.
Technology needs funding, talent and passion (the striving factor). We have led the world with those for decades. Now that is in the balance.
President Trump could make America even greater: beat cancer, go to Mars, and harness AI for human good.
Those would be a great start. To do it, fund research and attract talent. Keep the castle of America open.
On X: @llewellynking2
Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and an international enerygy consultant. He’s based in Rhode Island.
The intersections of disruption
“Les Ocean Melodies’’ (acrylic on canvas), by Serj Tankian, in his show “The Art of Disruption,’’ at the Armenian Museum of America, Watertown, Mass., through Feb. 28, 2o26.
The museum explains:
Inspired by Mr. Tankian’s 2024 memoir Down with the System, this immersive exhibition highlights the intersections of music, painting, and protest that define his work. Best known as the frontman of the Grammy Award-winning rock band System Of A Down, Tankian has also emerged as a powerful visual artist and advocate for social justice, genocide recognition, environmental protection, and Armenian cultural identity.
Chris Powell: Build housing without sprawl; are schools sanctuaries for illegals?
MANCHESTER, Conn.
Supposedly there was going to be a special session of the Connecticut General Assembly in the fall to arrange a compromise on the housing legislation passed by liberal Democratic legislators during this year's regular session but vetoed by Gov. Ned Lamont. Fall is here but neither the governor nor the legislature has issued such a call. It's not clear what's happening.
But in a commentary the other day the Yankee Institute's Meghan Portfolio argued that a special session would not be good for democracy. “Special sessions often operate in the shadows," she wrote. “Bills frequently don't appear until the very day of the vote, sometimes only hours before. Towns, taxpayers, and even rank-and-file legislators are left in the dark. This isn't policymaking. It's ambush politics."
Indeed, special-session legislation can get written by a few leaders without public participation and review. Only after its enactment are the “rats’’ in the legislation discovered -- provisions that never would have been approved if adequately publicized.
Connecticut's housing shortage is an urgent problem, the biggest factor in the state's outrageously high cost of living. But the thrust of the vetoed legislation -- reducing the obstructive influence of suburban zoning and imposing more rent control -- was never going to get much housing built quickly. Mainly the legislation would have let liberals feel better about themselves even as it made them hypocrites on environmental protection.
Many towns that have used zoning to exclude the middle and lower classes don't have the infrastructure necessary for higher-density housing -- water, sewer, and electrical systems, wide roads, and school capacity.
Of course their exclusive zoning was meant to keep things that way. But tearing up the countryside with more suburban sprawl to spite the bigoted snobs will have more disadvantages than it's worth when there is a much faster and more efficient way to build housing.
Connecticut's cities and inner suburbs are full of abandoned industrial property, decrepit tenements, and vacant or half-empty shopping centers. Many are eyesores. Additionally, much office space in the cities is vacant. All these properties are already served by the necessary infrastructure and redeveloping it as housing would do no environmental damage. Most of their neighbors might be glad if something shiny and new replaced the eyesores.
This is where Connecticut's urgent housing effort should concentrate, and that effort should be managed by a state housing development board, empowered to condemn decrepit or underused properties, take others by eminent domain, and option the properties to developers for market-rate housing, with the options withdrawn if developers fail to make quick progress.
A state whose leaders seem to think that the state government has enough money to buy the Connecticut Sun WNBA basketball team, when the state already has two nationally ranked public university teams, should have no trouble finding the money to build thousands of units of housing in a hurry. Or the state could skip the basketball team purchase and just build the housing instead.
xxx
Governor Lamont is right to want federal immigration agents to stop wearing masks and to start wearing badges and clothing identifying them as government agents when they make arrests. Masked and unidentified and looking like gangsters, the agents invite getting shot or stabbed by their targets or bystanders. Connecticut U.S. Rep. John B. Larson has introduced legislation in Congress to stop the gangsterism.
But the governor recently went far beyond the sensible. He held a press conference with school superintendents to discourage immigration agents from making arrests at schools, though there seem to have been no such arrests in Connecticut. The governor said he wants everyone to “feel safe" in school.
Why should people “feel safe" anywhere in the country if their presence is illegal? Why should immigration law not apply inside a school? If, as the governor, state Atty. Gen. William Tong, and many state legislators keep insisting -- that Connecticut is not a “sanctuary state" -- what would the governor make schools if not a sanctuary?
Of course journalists spared the governor the trouble of explaining. When obvious questions are politically incorrect, they can't be asked.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years (CPowell@cox.net).
Mannie Lewis: Boston’s first big dig and big fill
From Wikipedia:
“View (1858) from the State House dome westward along the Mill Dam (now Beacon Street), which separated Back Bay (left) from the Charles River. The Mill Dam and the Cross Dam (in distance, in modern Massachusetts Avenue-Kenmore Square area, with mills barely visible near juncture with the Mill Dam) were part of an attempt to derive mill power from river tides. Trees along north-south waterline represent western boundary (now Arlington Street) of the Boston Public Garden.’’
From The Boston Guardian, slightly edited. Top picture is from Wikipedia
(Full disclosure: New England Diary’s editor, Robert Whitcomb, is chairman of The Boston Guardian board.)
Walking past Newbury Street’s quaint shops or strolling Commonwealth Avenue’s boulevards, it may seem bizarre that Back Bay could be a recent creation. But until the mid-19th Century, the now opulent neighborhood was nothing more than a low tidal marsh.
The conception of Back Bay as a neighborhood first came to Boston as a geographic crisis. By the 1840’s, Irish immigrants made up a substantial portion of the downtown population, which was previously contained on the undersized Shawmut Peninsula, and the need for expansion became undeniable.
The problem was exacerbated by the flight of Brahmin elites. Unable to cope with the practical and cultural demands of immigration, many of Boston’s old families put pressure on the government to find a solution. Smaller areas around the peninsula had already been filled in, but city officials needed something grander, not only to accommodate the immigrants, but also to keep traditional elites downtown.
But ultimately, it took a more concrete crisis to fill Back Bay. In 1814, the Massachusetts General Court (aka legislature) had authorized the Boston and Roxbury Mill Corporation (BRMC) to build a dam across the Back Bay. On the promise of factories and jobs, the dam isolated the Bay from the Charles and further divided it into two basins, deriving energy from the ebb and flow of tides.
Though the dam was never popular, its propinquity to the city would be its undoing. At the time, local sewers were designed to dump their contents at the nearest shoreline, meaning that the isolated basins received a constant stream of garbage and excrement.
Over the following decades, the situation deteriorated to such an extent that an 1849 city committee described Back Bay as “nothing less than a great cesspool, into which is daily deposited all the filth of a large and constantly increasing population.”
To address the health crisis as well as the housing demand, the city established the Commissioners on Boston Harbor and the Back Bay, tasked to fill in the basin and cover the exposed sewage. Soon after, a series of agreements allocated work and land rights between the city, Commonwealth and BRMC.
Money, however, proved to be an enduring obstacle. Because the state legislature barred the project from receiving taxpayer money in 1856, the state was forced to sell land as they progressed. Instead of working west to east, which would have saved time and energy, the state began its work east to west, putting the newest parcels of land on display for wealthy Beacon Hill residents.
As the work dragged on, innovative technology soon came on full display. Shovels, handcarts, and gravity railroads of earlier decades were quickly replaced by the steam evacuator, a massive mechanical shovel that contractors George Goss and Norman C. Munson used.
When a train arrived on site, which happened around-the-clock until 1863, two steam evacuators would dig out a chunk of land and dump it in the car. According to reports, a 35-car train could be filled in 10 minutes, replacing the work of nearly 200 men.
It took several decades, but the neighborhood slowly emerged.
By 1876, the state had finished the majority of its role and replaced $1.6 million in expenditures with a $5 million profit, nearly $90 million today, largely due to their focus on building upper-middle-class residences and preserving the value of Commonwealth Avenue.
Miscellaneous work continued for decades, but the old marsh quickly became a downtown staple. Thousands of residents now call Back Bay home and millions more walk its streets yearly, perhaps the reason many take the old marsh, larger than the Shawmut Peninsula itself, for granted.
Mannie Lewis reports frequently for The Boston Guardian.
‘Kitsch and catharsis’
“Floral Glory” (blown and sculpted glass), by Nancy Callan, in the show “Nancy Callan and Katherine Gray: The Clown in Me Loves You,’’ at at the Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Mass., through March 1. The show is sponsored by Artscope Magazine.
— Photo by Russell Johnson. Image Courtesy of Fuller Craft Museum.
The museum explains:
“A sculpted fusion of kitsch and catharsis, this exhibition marks a dynamic, four-year collaboration in glass between West Coast artists Nancy Callan (Seattle) and Katherine Gray (Los Angeles). In this remarkable body of work, Callan and Gray explore our collective experiences with—and reactions to—clowns. Whether found in childhood memories, in circuses and parades, among those we love, or in our political worlds, clowns are ubiquitous. The artists use traditional Venetian glassblowing techniques to spark viewers associations and emotions, while mining complex social commentaries. It may seem like light-hearted fun, but multiple layers of feelings and realities emerge—is it a tunnel of love, a house of horrors, or a combination of both?
“The artists seek to explore reactions to ‘clowns’ and all that the word entails - ‘whether {they say} found in childhood memories, in circuses and parades, among those we love, or in our political worlds, clowns are ubiquitous.’ The artists hope to elicit associations and emotions, and mine ‘complex social commentaries.’’’
Robert Whitcomb: Fortunes are made in the far-right demagoguery industry
Charlie Kirk, like his Great Gilded Leader Trump, found that demagoguery can be very lucrative, especially as the educational level continues to slide in the U.S.
The very able organizer was making a nice pile as co-founder and CEO of the far-right, marketed-to-young-people Turning Point USA. That was before Tyler Robinson, 22, like Mr. Kirk a son of affluent Republican parents, allegedly shot the 31-year-old to death. Making such gruesome attacks easier is that America is awash in guns, to no small degree because of Republican antipathy to any gun control. (Robinson’s gun was apparently his grandfather’s.) In the past few decades, the National Rifle Association, the gun industry and the Republican Party have essentially merged.
Of course, America has always been heavily armed, but it has reached astronomical levels, with 400 million guns now; of course plenty of people don’t own any.
In any event, it’s been noted that both Mr. Kirk and Robinson came from the same toxic digital/podcast/cable-TV/YouTube ecosystem, in which violent threats abound.
Mr. Kirk’s shows, rife with bigotry, lies and insults, brought him an estimated net worth of $12 million at his death. His salary for running his right-wing machine was $407,000 back in 2021, the last year for which his pay was reported. But then, he was a charismatic leader to his pumped-up followers, most of them young and
overwhelmingly white, and few of whom were interested in researching, let alone challenging, his assertions. We seem to be heading into a post-literate society. Mr. Kirk was aided by many Americans’ staggering willful ignorance about the history of their own country.
Never let the facts get in the way of a story if that brings in more revenue! Just ask the remarkably cynical and amoral Rupert Murdoch, of Fox News, and Mark Zuckerberg, of Facebook, who have made BILLIONS from the lies-and-outrage industry.
The charismatic provocateur Kirk had famously said he didn’t like the word “empathy,’’ preferring the word “sympathy,’’ though in his vitriolic remarks he often showed little of either, though obviously he could be warm and charming when needed.
Here are the standard definitions of two kinds of empathy:
Cognitive empathy: The mental ability to understand another person's perspective, thoughts, and feelings without necessarily feeling them yourself.
Emotional empathy: When you “feel” another person's emotions. What they are experiencing emotionally has an impact on your emotional state.
Here’s one of self-proclaimed Christian Mr. Kirk’s not untypical remarks:
“Joe Biden is a bumbling, dementia-filled Alzheimer's, corrupt tyrant who should honestly be put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America.”
Here’s a bunch of other interesting remarks by Mr. Kirk.
Of course, it will get worse.
Robert Whitcomb is editor of New England Diary.
Adam Nemeroff: We’re drowning in AI slop
In 2024, AI-generated “Shrimp Jesus" images proliferated on Facebook.
Adam Nemeroff is assistant provost for innovations in Learning, Teaching, and Technology at Quinnipiac University, in Hamden, Conn.
He does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond his academic appointment.
You’ve probably encountered images in your social- media feeds that look like a cross between photographs and computer-generated graphics. Some are fantastical – think Shrimp Jesus – and some are believable at a quick glance – remember the little girl clutching a puppy in a boat during a flood?
These are examples of AI slop, low- to mid-quality content – video, images, audio, text or a mix – created with AI tools, often with little regard for accuracy. It’s fast, easy and inexpensive to make this content. AI slop producers typically place it on social media to exploit the economics of attention on the Internet, displacing higher-quality material that could be more helpful.
AI slop has been increasing over the past few years. As the term “slop” indicates, that’s generally not good for people using the Internet.
AI slop’s many forms
The Guardian published an analysis in July 2025 examining how AI slop is taking over YouTube’s fastest-growing channels. The journalists found that nine out of the top 100 fastest-growing channels feature AI-generated content such as zombie football and cat soap operas.
Listening to Spotify? Be skeptical of that new band, The Velvet Sundown, that appeared on the streaming service with a creative backstory and derivative tracks. It’s AI-generated.
In many cases, people submit AI slop that’s just good enough to attract and keep users’ attention, allowing the submitter to profit from platforms that monetize streaming and view-based content.
The ease of generating content with AI enables people to submit low-quality articles to publications. Clarkesworld, an online science fiction magazine that accepts user submissions and pays contributors, stopped taking new submissions in 2024 because of the flood of AI-generated writing it was getting.
These aren’t the only places where this happens — even Wikipedia is dealing with AI-generated low-quality content that strains its entire community moderation system. If the organization is not successful in removing it, a key information resource people depend on is at risk.
Harms of AI slop
AI-driven slop is making its way upstream into people’s media diets as well. During Hurricane Helene, opponents of President Joe Biden cited AI-generated images of a displaced child clutching a puppy as evidence of the administration’s purported mishandling of the disaster response. Even when it’s apparent that content is AI-generated, it can still be used to spread misinformation by fooling some people who briefly glance at it.
AI slop also harms artists by causing job and financial losses and crowding out content made by real creators. The placement of this lower-quality AI-generated content is often not distinguished by the algorithms that drive social media consumption, and it displace entire classes of creators who previously made their livelihood from online content.
Wherever it’s enabled, you can flag content that’s harmful or problematic. On some platforms, you can add community notes to the content to provide context. For harmful content, you can try to report it.
Along with forcing us to be on guard for deepfakes and “inauthentic” social-media accounts, AI is now leading to piles of dreck degrading our media environment. At least there’s a catchy name for it.
‘A little narrow’
John P. Marquand’s house on Kent’s Island, near Newburyport, to Newburyport.
“Sometimes here on Pequod Island {summer place in Maine} and back again on Beacon Street, I have the most curious delusion that our world may be a little narrow. I cannot avoid the impression that something has gone out of it (what, I do not know), and that our little world moves in an orbit of its own, a gain one of those confounded circles, or possibly an ellipse. Do you suppose that it moves without any relation to anything else? That it is broken off from some greater planet like the moon? We talk of life, we talk of art, but do we actually know anything about either? Have any of us really lived? Sometimes I am not entirely sure; sometimes I am afraid that we are all amazing people, placed in an ancestral mould. There is no spring, there is no force. Of course you know better than this, you who plunge every day in the operating room of the Massachusetts General, into life itself. Come up here and tell me I am wrong.”
― John P. Marquand (1893-1960) in his 1937 satirical novel about Boston Brahmins, The Late George Apley. He came from an old Yankee family in Newburyport, Mass.
To honor our trees
In Alan Sonfist’s exhibit “Leaves: The Endangered Species of New England,’’ on the Bellarmine Lawn of the Fairfield (Conn.) Art Museum through June 1, 2027.
The museum explains:
“The leaves installed on the Bellarmine lawn are on loan to the Fairfield University Art Museum for the next year from the American artist Alan Sonfist (b. 1946), best known as a pioneer of the Land or Earth Art movement. These four larger-than-life aluminum sculptures of leaves (only three visible in picture above) were created in 2011 and represent several of New England’s most beloved native trees: the American Beech, the American Chestnut, the Burr Oak, and the Sugar Maple. The sculpted leaves act as reminders to honor and protect the trees, and as a warning that failure to do so could result in their extinction.’’