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ChatGPT is actually not your friend

I have been deep in conversation with ChatGPT, asking all kinds of questions. Are there direct flights between the U.S. and Queretaro, Mexico? Will Apple give me credit for a 2014 iMac? What color goes with teal? What was France’s GDP in 1998? My fascination with ChatGPT has become a household joke. “All right, Froma,” we imagine Chat saying. “What do you want now? Do you think you’re the only one around here?” But the teal question is where our relationship started cooling. Chat dutifully listed what goes well with the blue-green color and then asked, “Are you thinking ...

Trump to America: Get busy begatting

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth.” (Genesis 1:28) President Trump is going God one better. God told Adam and Eve to start having children. The president is considering adding an incentive - paying couples $5,000 to begat. The fertility rate in the U.S. has been declining for the last decade. In 2023 it dropped to 1.6 births per woman, the lowest in a century. There are many reasons. The most obvious is abortion. The Pew Research Center sites figures from the CDC: “The last year for which the CDC reported a yearly national total for abortions is 2021. It found ...

Trump’s plans for family policy

The animating beliefs of this administration range from dangerously wrong to head-spinningly crazy. Tariffs are in the first tranche, along with the myth that NATO has been ripping off the United States for decades, that immigrants commit more crimes than native-born Americans and that “He who saves his country commits no crime” (just to name four). The beliefs that vaccines cause autism, that fluoridated water is a public health threat, that threatening allies and neighbors enhances national security, and that taxing foreign holders of Treasuries would be a good way to solve the ...

Court warns of values slipping away

Late in the new Broadway show “Operation Mincemeat,” the sparklingly inventive musical comedy based on British Intelligence’s deception of Adolf Hitler about Allied war plans during World War II, the marvelous slapstick pauses momentarily. “If people like us just blindly follow orders,” one of the characters warns, “the fascists won’t need to bash the door down. They’ll have already won.” At a recent performance, the line drew a wave of audience applause that lasted nearly a minute before the actors could continue. One-half of Americans see the daily flood of ...

April is a revolution month

Greetings from the eye of the storm. Is the time right for a second American Revolution? The first broke out 250 Aprils ago in Lexington and Concord. Let’s conjure up Paul Revere’s midnight ride in this dark hour. Our ruler makes the English king, George III, look like a sweet prince. President Donald Trump’s brazen revenge spree is unstoppable until citizens rise and the courts act in concert. On, Wisconsin. Congress, just you wait for the 2026 midterms. A new revolution won’t happen on Zoom. Nonviolent resistance — showing up en masse — goes a long way in the town ...

Tariffs and economic turmoil

President Donald Trump supporters think the President always strategizes ahead of others — like multidimensional chess. Trump critics think the man who beat Democrats twice is too stupid to think, much less strategize. Those closest to Mr. Trump say he is doing what he does best — going with his gut, letting others fight it out in front of him, then deciding and often improvising. That sounds closest to the truth. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen more than one thousand points only eleven times. Four of those times have come after what Mr. Trump called “Liberation ...