US president Donald Trump is preparing to sign an executive order funding research into the possible benefits of ibogaine, CBS News reports.

It will remain a “Schedule I” drug, forbidden by law for you or me to just go pick up at the local pharmacy, but apparently Trump believes it’s worth looking into for use in treating PTSD and traumatic injury among American veterans.

Good move, and good on Trump. It’s about time. Ibogaine’s been used abroad for decades to treat everything from substance abuse problems to depression.

And therein lies a story.  Return with me now to those thrilling days of yesteryear …

In early 1972, US Senator Ed Muskie’s presidential campaign seemed to be going poorly.

Initially considered the front-runner for the Democratic Party’s nomination, he came out of the Iowa caucuses with a win but with US Senator George McGovern — the eventual nominee — hot on his heels.

In February, the Manchester Union-Leader published a letter (supposedly written by Muskie, but apparently faked by pro-Nixon saboteurs) disparaging French Canadians.

A day later, in another article, the paper effectively called his wife a racist alcoholic.

And the day after THAT, Muskie gave the paper’s editor what for, calling him a “gutless coward” in a speech  outside the Union-Leader‘s headquarters … and, according to the journalists covering the speech, breaking down and crying (he claimed it was just snowflakes melting on his face).

Muskie certainly wasn’t doing himself any favors. But if anything sealed his campaign’s fate, it was probably this, two months later:

“Word leaked out that some of Muskie’s top advisers called in a Brazilian doctor who was said to be treating the candidate with ‘some kind of strange drug.'”

The drug, as you might guess, was ibogaine. The writer was “gonzo journalist” Hunter S. Thompson.

Muskie denied using ibogaine, of course (who could have blamed him if he had?), and Thompson later admitted he’d made the whole thing up. Why? Well, he supported McGovern, but it seems his bigger concern was how boring he found the campaign.

As a libertarian, I favor completely legalizing the production, sale, purchase, and use of all drugs, whether for medical or recreational use.

But until we get there, every move in that direction is a  positive.

I look forward to the day when ibogaine is freely available to any politician who happens to find himself in the middle of  mental or cognitive collapse.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

The deadline for filing US federal income tax returns falls (usually) on April 15, a date that’s worked its way into the American vocabulary as “tax day.” That’s really not a very accurate term.

For one thing, most Americans pay all sorts of other taxes (sales taxes, excise taxes, property taxes, etc.) all the time. You can’t swing a cat without hitting a tax … and there’s probably a tax on swinging cats, which I recommend against doing for all kinds of reasons other than potential tax implications.

For another, most Americans pay federal income tax year-round through withholding from their paychecks (or quarterly “estimated” payments). April 15 is just the day when the government demands that you do their paperwork for them to make sure they took as much as they wanted to take from you last year.

And even when you’re not paying up front, you’re still getting taxed.

Last year the federal government took $5.2 trillion directly from US taxpayers, but spent $7 trillion. Congress borrowed that extra $1.8 trillion, promising their creditors that, sooner or later, they’ll get the money, plus interest, out of you or your descendants. It’s still tax, just with payment temporarily deferred.

Not all taxes fall on all Americans evenly, of course.

Because federal income taxes are “progressive,” the top 20% of American earners pay 66.1% of federal taxes, while the bottom 20% of earners pay 0.8%.

State and local sales taxes are, for the most part, income-neutral, but the poor end of the spectrum gets hit harder as a practical matter because they spend more of what they earn to get by, while the wealthier save or invest larger percentages of their own incomes.

Social Security taxes? They’re “regressive” because of lifespan — working class black males, who die younger, subsidize the retirements of middle class white women, who live longer.

Speaking of dying younger and living longer, that’s what taxation is really all about: Draining your length and quality of life to keep government going and make it ever more powerful.

It’s no more complicated than that, no matter how much garbage propaganda you’re fed to justify it.

Taxation isn’t about “helping the poor” or “defending the country” or any other supposedly good cause. It’s about taking money out of your pocket (which to some extent means taking food out of your mouth) and putting it into politicians’ hands. That’s all it’s ever been about.

So happy tax day, I guess.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Are The Terminator, The Matrix and other such films entertainment, or are they prophecy? With the fast progress of artificial intelligence over the last few years, that’s become a real question of real concern to real people.

Out at the edges of the opinion bell curve, we have “doomers” on one end and extreme “optimists” on the other.

The former warn us that AI will eventually supersede humankind, quite possibly enslaving, or even exterminating, us because it won’t like us (or maybe just won’t care about us either way) and because it will be able to do whatever it wants with us. In a word (actually a portmanteau), “AIpocalypse.”

The latter predict an era resembling Aaron Bastani’s “Fully Automated Luxury Communism” in which AI increases production efficiency, reduces resource scarcity, and addresses externalities so well that we’re all free to become full-time artists, philosophers, extreme sports practitioners, etc. (or, if we prefer, veg out on the couch 24/7) with our material needs fully provided for absent any effort on our part.

The AIpocalypse sounds pretty scary. Fully Automated Luxury Communism sounds kind of cool, but only if we naively assume that evil human actors won’t find ways to exploit it in service to their desire for power.

In my view, the real AIpocalypse has already arrived. It’s not fully developed, but we’re already seeing it in action.

The real AIpocalypse is a massive decrease in our ability to know what’s true and what isn’t.

Two of the most obvious manifestations:

First, “deepfake” technology that allows bad actors to “show” us events that didn’t actually occur, put words in the mouths of public figures that those public figures never said, etc. That’s already pretty far along. You may have seen such videos hawking “miracle cures” with deepfake material featuring the likes of Tom Hanks and “Dr. Phil.” It’s only going to get worse.

Second, the wave of AI “hallucination” making its way into areas as important as jurisprudence. We’ve seen numerous cases in which lawyers have been caught submitting briefs that cite non-existent court cases. They had AI write the briefs, then inserted them into court proceedings. Their AI “assistants” simply generated fake “case law” supporting a desired outcome. That’s only going to get worse, too.

The problem with those two examples goes beyond immediate effects. The fake material will inevitably produce (probably already HAS produced) “source pollution.”

Suppose you carefully, intentionally avoid AI and its product, for whatever reason. Maybe you distrust its output. Maybe you just prefer to do your own research, and reach your own conclusions, from primary human-created sources.

But how can you know AI-generated content hasn’t previously “polluted” the human-created sources with “facts” that aren’t true?

You read a claim of fact in an op-ed like this one … or in a chemistry textbook.  The source claims to be human-created. It may even run a disclaimer denying that AI was used in its creation.

But what if, somewhere back along the chain of knowledge transmission, someone DID use AI, and a non-fact worked its way into the body of presumptive knowledge?

The problem isn’t new. People have always lied, and often those lies have persisted and spread, becoming “common knowledge” despite being false. AI, linked to a mechanism of near-instantaneous global spread (the Internet), can produce and distribute lies far faster than humans once did by word of mouth or through print on paper.

We may already be past the point where the only way to even semi-reliably establish truth is to consult printed material published prior to 2018.

Or just learn to love living in a “post-truth” age.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY