Bullet Time

There is something deepling disturbing about those images of people with Apple vision headset on. It is hard to pinpoint why exactly. It is rather a gut feeling than a thought. I think it has to do with the fact that there is a sense of deep disconnection from reality.

But maybe it is also because “vision people” seem to be blocked in a personnal bubble: they are chosing the world they live in. At least they are chosing what they want to see of it. This is as blue pill as it can be. In my opinion it also renders tangible a larger phenomenon that is rampant. Our informational sphere looks like that at many scales. Social media culture is locked in the present and in an eternal run towards the future. We have forgotten the importance of doing situation reports, and to look at the path we have come through to reach today.

Biden’s Memory as an Allegory

The scandal around Joe Biden’s advanced senility is a perfect allegory of our times in this respect. Yesterday the Hur report was released. It was about the unlawful disclosure of classified documents discoverd in unapropriate locations (Biden’s garage to be clear). Let me cite some excerpts in order to have a sense of what we are talking about. Remember this is not a journalist piece, it is a report from the department of Justice of the US.

In addition. Mr. Biden's memory was significantly limited, both during his recorded interviews with the ghostwriter in 2017, and in his interview with our office in 2023. And his cooperation with our investigation, including by reporting to the government that the Afghanistan documents were in his Delaware garage, will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully-that is, with intent to break the law-as the statute requires.

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Mr. Biden's memory also appeared to have significant limitations-both at the time he spoke to Zwonitzer in 2017, as evidenced by their recorded conversations, and today, as evidenced by his recorded interview with our office. Mr. Biden's recorded conversations with Zwonitzer from 2017 are often painfully slow, with Mr. Eiden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries

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In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden's memory was worse. He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended ("if it was 2013 - when did I stop being Vice President?"), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began ("in 2009, am I still Vice President?"). 839 He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died. And his memory appeared hazy when describing the Afghanistan debate that was once so important to him. Among other things, he mistakenly said he "had a real difference" of opinion with General Karl Eikenberry, when, in fact, Eikenberry was an ally whom Mr. Eiden cited approvingly in his Thanksgiving memo to President Obama .

So basically the justice department says that Biden can’t be convicted of wrong doings because he doesn’t get what is going on. Something like irresponsable. Now pause for a minute or two on that. The sitting US president is deemed as irresponsable by its own justice department. Now add to that the list of recent interviews where the president shows signs of dementia: he spoke with Mitterrand (dead in 1995 so almost 3 decades ago), he mixes up the president of Egypt with the one of Mexico while defending of his memory (you can’t make that up), he doesn’t recall the name of Hamas while there is a hot war raging in the Middle East…

So let’s remove the vision googles from our faces for a second. This is not an overnight thing. Already during the 2020 election’s cycle there were concerns about the cognitive abilities of the candidate. Now it is undeniable that he is totally lost. This is just the tip of the tip of the iceberg. How have we ended up here? What does it tell about the institutions? I am not American but the US has the second largest stockpile of nuclear warheads, it can destroy the earth many times over, and the guy nominally in charge of their use is Joe -I don’t remember- Biden. Let that sink in. And it is not like our times are easy ones. Hot wars are raging in Ukraine, Israel and things are heating up in the Middle East in general. Yet the commander in chief of the strongest military force of the world can’t remember when his own son died.

If you are not afraid I don’t know what could make you afraid. We are not talking about climate change and theoretical risks 5 decades or more down the road. We are talking about the fact that the displayed institutions “we are a republic, we follow the constitution blabla” is demonstrably a scam. At this point my daughter could be president of the USA it wouldn’t change a thing. Because Biden can’t decide anything. This is what the justice department just said and published. I wouldn’t let his guy watch over my daughter for 3 seconds. And I am not talking about weird things: this guy is not there. The house could take fire I am not sure he would notice or react appropriately. And this guy is the head of the executive branch of USA ?

As the answer is that Joe Biden is just a puppet of the administration, the next question becomes: then who is in charge? How are those in charge accountable? To whom? Those are the questions that need to be *seriously* discussed. This is an electoral year. 2024 is the largest electoral year in the history of mankind. That is a good time to have this kind of conversation.

But what I see on media, social and mainstream, is focused on the last 5 minutes. Surely the establishment has decided that Biden is toasted so they just have to put him on stage without notes for 3 minutes and they know what is going to happen. On social media memes are going to fill the TLs, jokes will be posted (and I will do my part) and … nothing. Why is it the case ? How have we ended up in such a society that has the attention ability of a goldfish ?

Influencers and Leaders

Leaders are people who have a vision. They don’t need to buy one the shelf of a retail store. This pun is not innocent. There are, at least, two ways to understand what a “vision” is. One is literal, it is what you see (things called facts). The other is more metaphorical, it is a proxy for “will”. Elon Musk has a vision: you may adhere to it or not but he is not merely relying on what he sees. He transforms reality to bend it to his vision. The guys seated on benches with Apple vision scotched to their face are not bending reality nor exercising their will. At best they are influencers. The famous content creators are more often than not people very sensible to the zeitgeist. They produce what the public is ready to consume. Leaders produce what people don’t even know could exist. Now if your administration has Biden as its head what do you think is happening? Are they leading or influencing ?

A mechanical aspect of digital societies is that because too much information is produced, one has to use statistical tools to navigate the deluge of data. But those statistical tools, by their very nature produce averages. Everything that is too groundbreaking will be erased. It creates this idea that there is no alternative because the individuals are crushed by the mean value. So the institutions converge towards an eigenvalue that looks like Biden. The caricature couldn’t be more pronounced : on one hand you have the pure product of the administration: the essence of a statistical product — notice the etymology of statistics lies in “state”, it is not by chance — and on the other hand you have the crazy maverick that has no superego. Because the flip side of this averaging monster is that if you want to be noticed you have to be extreme in the other direction. There is no middle ground left in the digital landscape.