It’s SUPER TRUTHS DAY — 2024
First the good news....
That’s right, today is SUPER TRUTHS DAY 2024 in America! A cause for celebration from sea to shining sea! Or is it? You be the judge.
But first the good news, especially for those of you who produce your own illustrated content. AI image generator Ideogram.ai 1.0 became available last week.
Why is that good news?
Rightful Freedom used it for most of the illustrations for SUPER TRUTHS DAY, because:
• Ideogram.ai 1.0 does text great, as you will see in the illustrations of this article.
• The free plan is generous, and the paid plans are very reasonably priced.
• The interface is easy to use and offers new features, such as “Magic Prompt” which generates elaborate prompts from your simple ones. You can choose the aspect ratio. Along with other new features.
We submitted this prompt “Photorealistic storefront decorated with banners and American flags celebrating an election with the words Super Truths Day.”
Ideogram.ai turned it into this prompt, “A stunningly realistic depiction of a storefront adorned with colorful banners and American flags, celebrating a vibrant Election Day. The store displays the phrase "Super Truths Day" in bold, patriotic lettering. The atmosphere is festive, with people of diverse backgrounds gathered, chatting, and taking part in the democratic process. The sun casts a warm glow over the scene, while the American flag proudly waves in the breeze.”
It produced:
Now for the Super Truths Day bad news, the truth that hurts.
Super Truths Day — Truth #1
The rulers of the U.S. (whoever they may actually be) are completing the process of converting the U.S. political party system to a 1-Party system, similar to the one the USSR had. The UniParty system.
Is the change to the UniParty system really bad news? Why did we have two political parties in the first place? Or any political parties?
That question was asked by John H. Aldrich in his 1995 book, Why Parties?: The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America .
“Many people... place the political ills of the contemporary scene — a government seemingly unable to solve critical problems and a public distrustful of, apathetic toward, or alienated from politics — on the failures of the two great American parties.”
Aldrich concluded regarding the political party system, “Whatever its strength or weakness, whatever its form and role, it is the ambitious politicians’ creation. These politicians … attain power and prestige. These goals are to be sought in government, not in parties, but they are goals that at times have best been realized through the parties.”
The political parties were used by politicians to get more power.
Did the party system contribute to the growing unaccountability of the U.S. government in the past 100 years? It seems possible, since that system gave professional politicians power in the selection of people who would run in the general elections. But the bad news is that it seems unlikely that the end of the 2-party system and its replacement with the 1-party UniParty system will increase the accountability of government regulators. In fact, it will likely have the opposite effect.
If the political parties were used by the politicians to get more power, won’t a 1 party system give the politicians even more power? It would seem so.
Super Truths Day — Truth #2: The End of the Multiple Candidate Primary?
As of 2024, the Democrat Party seems to be converting to a 1 Candidate Primary system. That is, the primary field will be limited to one candidate. Allowing citizens only one candidate to vote for will avoid the possibility of the wrong person being nominated.
Good News:
We allowed our image using the prompt “A photorealistic image of President Joe Biden stands at a podium outside in an empty field under a banner saying ‘UniParty’” to be public on the ideogram site and within twenty minutes, we got a ‘Like’ for it. Go ideogram.ai!
Super Truths Day — Truth #3: Goodbye Private-Sector
On February 29, 2024 in the story “The U.S. Economy versus the American Economy”, we wrote that a real capitalist economy is a different kind of system than a “command” economy, where the government controls production and distribution of goods. We showed how, in America now, the government regulators are gradually replacing the private-sector with government control. You can see this in the news stories in the financial media where, increasingly, the private sector is called the “real economy” to distinguish it from the actions of the government regulators who are in control of more and more of the financial institutions and our economic activity.
On March 2, 2024 the Substack FX Hedge reported in the story “Houston, the Problem's Getting Worse: The debt isn't just growing - its growth is accelerating” that the U.S. debt is out of control. “Interest on the debt is already at an annualized $1 trillion and rising fast. If we simply maintain current trends, the annualized cost of service the debt will exceed $3 trillion by the fourth quarter of 2030.”
Reader Mike commented, “The point of no return is well in the rear view mirror… The inflation tsunami is that dark line on the horizon. Right now I don't see any way to avoid it short of a depression.”
We replied to Mike’s comment, “You're absolutely right. However, there is another "...way to avoid it short of a depression." Government will simply complete their takeover of what remains of the private-sector and turn the whole system into a "command" economy, like the USSR had. The government and media will go on pretending that the private-sector still exists, that the money is real, and so on. The way that Rome went on pretending it was a republic after it had become a dictatorship.”
The Government Bites
The U.S. government is, essentially, in the process of eating the private sector of the American economy one regulatory bite at a time, and using the calories to grow itself bigger and bigger.
Soon the real economy will be gone, and only the government “command economy” will remain. The U.S. government and the media will go on pretending that we still have a private sector but it will really only be government. We will still have the big banks, but they will really only be branch banks of the government central bank. We will have a Fed central bank digital currency (CBDC) and we will pretend that it is money, but it will really only be government surveillance and a ration system for people to “buy” whatever commodity the government has available to distribute that day (the way that the Soviet system did).
When stock market trading floors were replaced by computers, the TV media still needed video for its stories about stock market trading.
So a set was created where actors walked around pretending to talk into phones. TV viewers were supposed to get the idea that those sets were really the “stock market”. Similarly, the U.S. government and mass media will keep up the pretense of a stock market, but it won’t be real. It will just be more government.
Ideogram.ai, from the prompt: “A photorealistic image of President Joe Biden eating a giant vanilla ice cream cone with the words "Private Sector" on it.”
(Predictably, both Bing and DALL-E2 refused to produce any image from that prompt. Maybe we had said, ‘… a diverse black trans-gender Joe Biden…’? Stability.ai did produce an image, but failed to include the text “private-sector”.)
Super Truths Day — Truth #4: Government regulates AI to stop fake news, while using AI to spread fake news
In the final week of February 2024, Google AI got in the news by creating images of black American Founding Fathers, refusing to create any images of “white people”, and so on. But most other AI companies also create fake news and heavily censor anyone who diverges from the UniParty line of the regime.
But adding serious injury to insult, the government is beginning to come down hard on AI with lots of heavy-handed regulation. Government regulators say they are doing it to “prevent AI from spreading fake news”. While they use AI to spread their own lies and fake news.
Remember, as the years go by, be sure to visit Rightful Freedom annually for all your Super Truths Day needs.
(BTW ideogram.ai does logos.)
We have two real political parties because plurality-take-all elections only work properly for two candidates. If you want more choices, change the rules:
https://rulesforreactionaries.substack.com/p/where-all-else-fails-change-the-rules
"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater."
-Frank Zappa