Grok’s racist debacle, Dems’ violent rage and other commentary

Eye on AI: Behind Grok’s Racist Debacle

Racists and trolls smirked when Elon Musk’s Grok AI was caught “propagating antisemitic talking points, fantasizing about rape, and blaming Mossad for the death of Jeffrey Epstein,” notes Mary Harrington at UnHerd, but the tech-besotted fallacy here is the faith that “a big enough pattern-recognition engine will converge on both truth and consciousness.”

True wisdom is “not just an ability to notice patterns”; it requires “contextual awareness and common sense.” Sadly, we have “bracketed” reflection on the meanings of truth and consciousness, and so “are woefully short of mental tools for parsing these subtle questions.”

Conservative: Dems’ Violent Rage

“We’re just now learning how angry” Dems are about Donald Trump’s 2024 victory, mourns the Washington Examiner’s Byron York, as some “are calling on their elected representatives to engage in violence against Trump’s policies.”

One anonymous lawmaker even said, “ ‘civility isn’t working’ and to get ready for ‘violence . . . to fight to protect our democracy.’ ”

These Dems are past “the defeat-them-at-the-ballot-box stage of politics, and even beyond the protest-by-civil-disobedience stage.”

Atop lionized-on-the-left Luigi Mangoine, the Free Palestine fanatic accused of “killing two Israeli Embassy staff members” and the “Democratic lawmakers or Democratic support groups” involved in the LA riots, “a militant group broadly allied with Democratic views launched” an attack on ICE in Texas last weekend.

“It’s a troubling picture, and nothing on the immediate horizon suggests it will improve any time soon.”

Nobel watch: Trump the Peacemaker

“President Donald Trump is the last person the Norwegian Nobel Committee would honor with its Peace Prize. Yet, it should,” argues USA Today’s Nicole Russell. “Trump has helped end an escalating war between Israel and Iran, a conflict that easily could have engulfed the entire Middle East, with a single military strike. Now, he is pressing for a lengthy ceasefire between Israel and Hamas as a bridge to a more permanent peace.”

The 2024 Peace Prize went “to the Japanese organization Nihon Hidankyo” for trying to rid the world of nukes; “Trump, by heading off a nuclear-armed Iran, achieved that mission tenfold in June.” “Trump’s critics would melt into puddles of outrage, of course, if it were ever to happen.”

But, “if Trump isn’t a peacemaker, then who is?”

Libertarian: The Case for Pardoning Snowden

By pardoning Edward Snowden, President Trump “could really give the finger to the D.C. establishment” and also “do the right thing,” urges Reason’s Zach Weissmueller.

The documents Snowden leaked proved that then-Director of National Intelligence James Clapper “lied in his Senate testimony” in March 2013 when he claimed that the NSA wasn’t “wittingly” collecting data on Americans and “revealed numerous illegal intrusions on the private communications of millions of Americans,” including “the existence of the secret electronic surveillance program known as PRISM, whereby the NSA forced companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple to turn over their users’ personal information with secret court orders.”

Snowden’s actions “inspired Congressional reform and, most importantly, brought public awareness” to the feds’ surveillance. “We owe Snowden an enormous debt, and Trump should let him come home.”

From the left: For Dems, OBBBA Reality Sinks In

Democrats saw passage of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” as “a big political gift,” but that sense “has clearly begun to fade,” observes The Bulwark’s Lauren Egan: “The euphoria Democratic leaders felt is now colored by fear that Republicans may not pay that steep a political price for the bill.”

Dem officials worry “the party has failed to present its own policy alternative” and “may fumble the midterms because of a misreading of this moment.”

Democratic advisers urge party leaders to develop “a new agenda” to avoid “defending the status quo” in a “never-ending doom loop.”

Some Dem electeds may even want to join Republicans “in bringing attention to the benefits” tucked into Trump’s bill.

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board