Call me crazy, call me naïve.  But why not hope that bad news could trigger a good result?   A staggering 42,000,000 Americans struggle to put food on the table every day. So in more civil days, we rallied with a safety net.  SNAP and other support programs were put in place during times when care for our suffering neighbors seemed normal.  But these merciful provisions—and even their emergency backups—are being sabotaged by ruthless members of an administration hostile to caring and...

Just yesterday, I shared my thoughts about the danger to "truth" and "reality" caused by the ubiquitous and growing use of plausible misinformation and AI-generated images and videos almost impossible to detect as bogus. And now today the New York Times does a deep-dive into the myriad ways Trump is using these tools nonstop to create a world in which whatever he says carries inordinate apparent authority. I urge you to read this amazing account from the NYT below to see just how flagrant...

“Believe none of what you hear, and only half of what you see.” If you were a kid back when I was a kid—the thirties, forties, fifties—you heard that advice often from your elders.  They knew that life was routinely corrupted by those with an axe to grind and the means to spread misinformation.  It’s been going on since mass media emerged.  Newspapers were respected and persuasive just by dint of being published, even when the publishers were trying to start a war or ruin a person by lying to...