Democrats’ Outrage Industry

AI adds another question of power. On March 25, Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed a federal moratorium on new AI data centers. On September 23, Sanders and Representative Greg Casar introduced legislation to ban artificial superintelligence, pause advanced AI development and create a cabinet-level Department of Artificial Intelligence. Sanders is an independent who caucuses with Democrats. Their sponsors invoke safety, workers and public protection. The authority they seek is nevertheless substantial: government would decide which advanced systems may be developed and released.

This is an attempt by leading figures on the left to seize control of a tool equal to the greatest inventions of our time yielding the power solve economic crisis, provide medical correlation and guidance for the most deadly of diseases and resolve conflicts around the globe. Americans should examine who would exercise that power, how decisions could be challenged and what useful research might be delayed. The familiar promise to protect the public should not exempt the proposed gatekeepers from scrutiny.

The border presents a different opportunity for emotional messaging. The Fe y Esperanza con Dios caravan left Honduras on September 20 and moved north through southern Mexico. Allen West’s October 5 Townhall column described roughly 600 migrants and argued that its timing could embarrass the administration before the midterms. La Jornada’s October 2 reporting placed about 350 people in Mapastepec and recorded differing destinations: some sought the United States, others intended to stay in Mexico. Its September 27 report included a previously deported migrant hoping to rejoin his family in the United States.

Images of migrants en route to the border can be used to create sympathy and support for Democrats’ fight against the Trump administration’s deportation policies, ICE and the America First border agenda. Compassion for people in hardship does not settle questions of lawful entry, enforcement or sovereignty. This is another familiar political method: make the emotionally compelling image carry the policy argument. We can only currently speculate that Democrats organized or financed this caravan and timed it for the election, however a coincidence of timing that repeats more than twice, is twice as likely to be the truth.

There are documented reasons to ask. In 2017, DOJ described IRS scrutiny and delays that disproportionately harmed conservative organizations. In 2019, its inspector general identified 17 significant inaccuracies and omissions in the Carter Page surveillance applications, including failures involving Steele reporting. Separately, the FEC imposed reporting penalties on the Clinton campaign and DNC for opposition-research payments through Perkins Coie. These are concrete institutional failures and disclosure violations. They do not establish that the DNC directed every agency action; but of course (wink wink), the inspector general found no evidence that political bias drove the decision to open the FBI investigation.

Federal research grants aren’t solely a tool for Democrats and their campaign funding, but interestingly, in 2021 a $3 million NSF grant was provided to UW and Stanford for disinformation research. Its existence establishes public funding, but while it’s not a traced payment for partisan attacks, the connection is stronger when actual abuse is identified.

That standard brings us back to a current example of messaging against Republican leadership. The DNC presented President Trump’s financial remarks as general indifference to Americans’ hardship. The underlying exchange concerned preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon despite economic costs. Voters can reject that tradeoff. They should first be allowed to see it. Instead, the defining context is left behind, kicked to the side, hidden.

That is the objection to this familiar style of political packaging: encourage a sweeping judgment while withholding what would complicate it. Money purchases repetition. Creators lend familiarity. Selective framing can acquire the appearance of widespread agreement. An old method becomes more powerful when the delivery system follows people into nearly every spare moment.

Most troubling is the burden this places on ordinary people. They are juggling work, bills and family responsibilities. They cannot investigate every clip or reconstruct every interview. Their limited time is no excuse for treating them as raw material for campaign messaging.

Republicans spend heavily and frame events for advantage too. That objection deserves acknowledgment. It does not give Democrat’s a messaging exemption with immunity from examination, especially when its producers present themselves as democracy’s rescuers. Buying advertising is lawful. Omitting material context still deserves an answer.