Frazier is an assistant professor at the Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University. He previously clerked for the Montana Supreme Court.
The slow and steady seep of artificial intelligence into every aspect of life means that we all have to be disciplined about staying in touch with reality. Thankfully, that task may be easier than you’d imagine. Here’s one suggestion: Attend a Rotary Club meeting.
Yes, now’s the time to go back to basics.
For those unfamiliar, here's how Rotary International describes its members – they "believe that we have a shared responsibility to take action on our world's most persistent issues." Through their more than 46,000 clubs, the Rotarians strive to "promote peace, fight disease, provide clean water, support education, and grow the economy, and protect the environment." It’s a lofty agenda, but it's a wholesome one: Rotarians don’t have political aims; they aren’t in it to grow their TikTok following; they don’t change their ways just because of a shift in the winds.
The resilience of the Rotarians demonstrates their connection to reality – something we could all use more of these days. I had the pleasure of giving a brief talk to the Milwaukie, Ore., Rotary Club a few weeks back – there was nothing “artificial” about the experience. The members discussed their plans to physically attend the farmer’s market to sell wreaths for charity, to physically host a holiday party for the community, and to physically be in the seats at an upcoming ballet performance at the local school. In short, they had clear plans to stay in touch with reality by being reliable and visible parts of the community.
It’s true that Rotary Clubs have seen a dip in attendance in recent years. The perception of Rotary Clubs as vestiges of the past is not entirely unjustified. Having attended a few meetings, there’s surely a need to diversify and expand membership. Yet, the Rotary and similar organizations may be one of our best chances for not getting too distracted by AI.
If the Rotary isn’t for you, that’s fine. But if we’re going to prevent AI from disconnecting us from our shared humanity, we all need plans for being physically there for our communities. It’s a heck of a lot easier to follow through on those plans by finding a group that will hold you accountable for actively participating in community affairs.
The need for a dose of reality is especially true for younger folks. The Americans who grow up in the Age of AI may soon become accustomed to AI being a part of every aspect of their lives. As we’ve seen from social media, the unchecked and unlimited role of technology can have severe consequences on our individual and communal health. History will repeat itself if we let AI invade every part of our day-to-day activities. The best way to prevent such negative outcomes is to encourage our kids to save space for reality and to serve as role models by being physically connected to our communities; Rotary Clubs are one option to do so but there are plenty of others.
So as the new year approaches, resolve to make reality a priority for you, for your loved ones and for your community.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.