Ari Armstrong's Web Log (Main) | Archives | Terms of Use
Self in Society Roundup 69
Trump corruption, abuses of immigrants, A.I. and security, wealth and power, sexual novelty, and more.
by Ari Armstrong, Copyright © 2026
Trump Watch
Attacks on Journalists: David Graham: "According to a report . . . from MS NOW, the FBI has opened a criminal investigation focusing on my Atlantic colleague Sarah Fitzpatrick, related to an article she published last month about Director Kash Patel." This follows Patel's defamation suit.
Jedeed: Laura Jedeed recently gave a talk at Reed College about American fascism and what to do about it.
Comey Charges: Jacob Sullum examines the absurd, political, anti-constitutional criminal charges brought against James Comey over an internet meme.
Medical Marijuana Reclassified: Okay, so that's good.
January 6 Redux: Matt Lewis: "Freed by Trump, the Jan. 6 criminals are preying on children and others."
Open Corruption: Joe Lancaster: "Trump Settles His Own Lawsuit Against the IRS for $1.8 Billion of Your Money." Walter Olson: "Grotesquely corrupt."
It's a Cult: Tuccile: "The Republican Party Is Nothing More Than a Cult of Trump."
Immigration Watch
Concentration Camps: The United States currently is operating concentration camps where migrants are held in conditions close to, or even constituting, torture. I am amazed by how many people are too cowardly simply to publicly state the obvious, that the United States is operating concentration camps for migrants, and that this is morally shameful.
Lawless: AP: "Trump flouts lower court rulings in unprecedented display of executive power." In violation of the courts, "the administration continued denying detainees around the country a chance for release." It's "funny" how those who mostly loudly tout "law and order" often tolerate and even perpetrate lawlessness.
Lawless ICE: CPR: Senior U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson "ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to go through additional training on how to conduct legal arrests and detentions of undocumented immigrants after finding that Colorado ICE officers haven't been following the law or his previous order."
War on Liberties: Ilya Somin: "Immigration Restrictions Restrict Americans' Liberties."
Arresting Citizens: Reason: "A U.S. Citizen Is Suing ICE for Arresting Him Twice. He Just Got Arrested a Third Time." Propublica.
Deporting the Nonviolent: WaPo: "The Trump administration's vast deportation effort has led to the removal of an unusually high number of undocumented men who have lived and worked in the United States for years. . . . Nearly two-thirds of the men removed since the start of the second Trump administration do not have criminal convictions." CBS: "Trump administration to require most immigrants seeking green cards to leave the U.S. first."
Separating Families: NYT citing the Brookings Institution: "Over 100,000 Family Separations in Deportation Push, Report Estimates." The GOP has morphed into the anti-family party.
Labor Markets: Elizabeth Cox via Cowen: "ICE has not improved U.S. labor markets." (Duh.) More.
Outlawing Work: Wait, I thought we wanted immigrants to be productive and integrate, right? Nope. Stateline: "Asylum-seekers could lose right to work under proposed Trump administration rules."
Undisclosed Detention Sites: Jason Salzman: "ICE held 3,182 people between January and October of last year [in Colorado sites]. ICE detained people, including children and the elderly, in Colorado's hold rooms for weeks, without beds, in violation of ICE regulations."
Prosecution or Persecution? Liliana Segura: "Who decided to indict Kilmar Abrego Garcia over a years-old traffic stop?" Luc Cohen: "US judge dismisses Kilmar Abrego indictment, finding DOJ abused power."
What the Hell Are We Doing? NYT: "Judge Orders U.S. to Return Colombian Woman Deported to Congo."
Federal Violence: Ariana Figueroa: "US citizens shot by ICE beg Congress to rein in federal immigration agents." C. J. Ciaramella: "Reports of Abuse Pour Out of Federal Immigration Detention Centers." NPR: "Deaths of migrants in ICE custody hit record high under Trump."
Anti-Immigrant: NYT: "Trump Is Setting His Sights on Restricting Legal Immigration." This is idiotic. Soon people in the U.S. will be begging for immigrants (see the fertility crisis).
Endangering Russian Dissenters: Ilya Somin: "Trump's effort to deport Russian anti-Ukraine War dissenters is simultaneously unjust, illegal, and harmful to US foreign policy interests."
DHS Lies: Radley Balko: "DHS shamelessly lied after its officers shot an immigrant, tear gassed two kids, and put a bullet in the wall of a child's bedroom."
AI Watch
AI and Security: Brett Goldstein: "New A.I. tools are going to increase how much insecure software you use in your day-to-day life, while giving attackers a new, powerful weapon to exploit vulnerabilities. If you're still being careless about things like the strength of the passwords you choose, you're in for a pretty bad time. If there was ever a time to finally take your cybersecurity practices seriously, it's now." See also Tyler Cowen's recent discussion about Mythos. Here's what I've personally done: 1) Use real-dice-generated, eight-word passcodes based on the EFF word list for core accounts. 2) Set up everything else in Proton's password manager, using very-strong passwords. 3) Set up physical YubiKeys for core accounts for double-authentication. If you do this, you need two keys set up the same way, one for backup. If you leave open other authentication methods that largely defeats the point of the key.
Goblins: WSJ: "ChatGPT Became So Obsessed With Goblins That OpenAI Had to Intervene." This article prompted me to initiate a conversation with ChatGPT that ended up being quite funny. First I had to tell ChatGPT the context (not just generic discussion about goblins), then I had to convince ChatGPT that the goblins were a real problem (it often over-relies on training documents and fails to read current news). In the end I called this the "goblin goblin"; a metaphorical goblin (or gremlin) leading to chatter about goblins. I told Chat that I wouldn't worry too much unless it started talking obsessively about paperclips. It replied, partly in jest (I think), "If I do start inserting paperclips unprompted, that would be a much bigger red flag than the goblins ever were."
AI and Jobs: Michael Humer has a good essay on why we shouldn't worry too much about AI taking all the jobs.
AI and Science: Yes it's promising.
The Pope on AI: So far I've only read the ChatGPT summary (!) of the Pope's encyclical on AI, but it seems important, thoughtful, and partly right. Generally I think the Catholic church has an anti-capitalist bias.
Short Takes
San Diego Murders: NYT May 18: "A mother warned the San Diego police that her teenage son and a companion had taken several guns from her home on Monday, two hours before a deadly shooting rampage at a nearby mosque." NBC: "Amin [Abdullah, a security guard] put himself between the gunmen and everyone inside."
Powell on Liberalism: Aaron Ross Powell and Jason Canon are starting a new podcast, The Inner Life of Liberalism. Meanwhile, Krista Kafer is skeptical of liberalism as a complete philosophy (but I think she substantially misunderstands liberalism).
Zwolinski on Wealth and Power: In a recent essay for Liberalism.org, Matt Zwolinski argues that concentrated wealth really is a problem insofar as people use that wealth to rig the system ("rent seek"). I'm skeptical of one of his proposals, to raise inheritance taxes. I'm on board with his more-general libertarian program: "narrower intellectual property rights, lower barriers to occupational entry, less regulatory interference with housing supply, reduced subsidies for financial risk-taking."
Pluckrose on Cultural Christianity: Helen Pluckrose wrote an important corrective to the view that what our society needs is a heavier dose of Christianity.
Ehrman on Christian Altruism: Bart Ehrman discusses his new book on Christian altruism with Michael Shermer (supportive) and Ben Bayer (more critical). Bayer says he's contributing to a forthcoming book critical of faith-based morality.
Federalizing Animal Cruelty: Krista Kafer: "The House of Representatives agreed to do their [the factory farm industry's] bidding by tucking a provision in the Farm Bill that would abrogate state humane farming laws that ban gestation, veal, and battery crates." This is not properly a federal issue. Also states should be passing these sorts of animal welfare laws. Isn't that anti-libertarian? Yes, if you think that libertarianism is just about protecting human rights. But in this case I think government rightly intervenes to prevent severely cruel treatment of animals. If you think government may stop someone from torturing their dog to death, you agree at least in principle.
Viruses Are Real: Hard to believe people have to point this out.
Torturing Children: NPR: "Wooden boxes were constructed and used to confine elementary school children . . . with disabilities." This was in the Salmon River Central School District in Fort Covington, New York. How have the perpetrators not been criminally prosecuted?
Vitamin K Shots: Duaa Eldeib: "In recent years, parents have started refusing the shot. Although the vitamin K shot is not a vaccine, it has become entangled in the anti-vaccine movement." Some babies are dying as a result of their parents' anti-scientific hubris.
Alcohol: Stat: "Alcohol kills 178,000 Americans each year."
Britain's Exploding Anti-Semitism: Yair Rosenberg.
Sexual Novelty: Someone wrote to Bryan Caplan and Michael Huemer basically rationalizing lying to women to get sex. Huemer does a good job explaining why lying is wrong. Here I want to address the person's claim, "I need novelty to feel sexually fulfilled." This person is not experiencing true sexual novelty; he is always having the same sort of meaningless sex with women he doesn't care about. The type of sex he's having is closer to masturbation than to sex within a loving relationship. The sort of sex he's never having is the most important and meaningful sort: sex with someone who loves you. If you're missing "novelty" in that context you're just not being creative enough or you're not sufficiently appreciating the benefits of loving sex.
American Economic Strength: Luis Garicano (via Cowen): "Divergence with the United States is the strongest evidence for reform in Europe. . . . American cities often have poorer centres and richer suburbs or exurbs."
Phones and Fertility: Via Cowen: The claim is that phone use keeps a lot of kids more isolated, which results in lower teen fertility and higher teen suicides. But Cowen and Elizabeth Nolan Brown are skeptical; fertility was falling prior to cell phones. But Lyman Stone argues the long-term trendlines don't adequately sort out births from surviving children, so I think he's more sympathetic to the phone-fertility thesis as a partial explanation. Similarly, Jesús Fernández-Villaverde (ht Cowen) also thinks cell phones have played a real but minor role.
Opioid Deaths Down: Stateline: "Drop in opioid overdose deaths nears 50% since 2023."
Britain's Cigarette Ban: It is now illegal there to sell "cigarettes to anyone born on or after January 1, 2009." I don't approve of this, obviously. This sort of paternalism is, however, an inevitable outgrowth of socialized medicine.
More Artemis Photos: Amazing.
SPLC: I know next to nothing about the SPLC indictment. Obviously the indictment is political; that doesn't mean it's legally baseless. Tabarrok summarizes Patrick McKenzie on the matter and suggests there may have been actual bank fraud.
Ticketmaster Antitrust: CPR: "A jury has found that concert giant Live Nation and its Ticketmaster subsidiary had a harmful monopoly." Antitrust laws continue to be arbitrary and a violation of people's rights of association. The way to fight companies you don't like is to stop using them and create alternatives.
Recurrence: Mike Huemer doesn't even need Eternal Recurrence to keep talking about it. To summarize my view: I think his basic theory is plausible, but I also think it's possible that the universe never repeats. Let's say there is a future Earth and a future "me." Mike wants to say something like my spirit inhabits both bodies, and the spirit continues to exist between bodies. I totally reject that (see my discussion from last year). (Mike also says that maybe a "spirit" can inhabit totally different bodies.) I think future "me" could be "me" in a nontrivial way, but not because of an eternal spirit. But because (in Huemer's framework) there's no conservation of memories or anything from one "me" to the next, none of this really matters in terms of how current me should act.
Great Lectures: Bryan Caplan has helped make available talks by George Walsh on Marxism, Walsh on Protestant Fundamentalism, George Smith on Puritanism, and more.