In this edition of #ListenFirstFriday, we hear from John Noltner who shares stories of hope, healing and transformation in overcoming the differences that divide us as a nation.
Rev. Jesse Jackson announces his candidacy for the Democratic Presidential nomination, 11/3/83.
The death of Rev.Jesse Jackson is more than the passing of a civil rights leader; it is the closing of a chapter in America’s long, unfinished struggle for justice. For more than six decades, he was a towering figure in the struggle for racial equality, economic justice, and global human rights. His voice—firm, resonant, and morally urgent—became synonymous with the ongoing fight for dignity for marginalized people worldwide.
"Our father was a servant leader — not only to our family, but to the oppressed, the voiceless, and the overlooked around the world,” the Jackson family said in a statement.
Jackson Sr. died on Tuesday at the age of 84. His family announced that he passed peacefully, surrounded by loved ones, after years of declining health linked to progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a degenerative neurological disorder he had lived with for more than a decade. Jackson had also publicly disclosed a Parkinson’s diagnosis in 2017.
Born in Greenville, South Carolina, Jackson came of age in the segregated South, where he quickly developed a passion for activism. He attended North Carolina A&T State University, earning a degree in sociology before pursuing divinity studies at the Chicago Theological Seminary. It was during this period that he became deeply involved in the civil rights movement, joining demonstrations and organizing student support for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Jackson participated in the historic 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march and soon joined the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), working closely with King. He rose rapidly within the organization, eventually leading Operation Breadbasket, the SCLC’s economic empowerment initiative. King praised Jackson’s leadership, noting that he had “done better than a good job” in advancing the program’s mission.
Jackson was present at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis when King was assassinated in 1968—an event that profoundly shaped the rest of his life’s work.
“He taught me that protest must have purpose, that faith must have feet, and that justice is not seasonal, it is daily work,” fellow civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton wrote in a statement.
What made Jackson different from many of his contemporaries was his instinct for building coalitions. He understood that the fight for civil rights could not be waged solely within the Black community. His founding of People United to Save Humanity (PUSH), later known as the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, in 1971was an attempt—radical for its time—to unite the poor, the marginalized, and the politically alienated across racial and ethnic lines.
Jackson’s political influence grew further when he launched two groundbreaking presidential campaigns. In 1984, he became the second Black American to mount a national presidential bid, winning more than 18% of the primary vote. Four years later, he expanded his coalition, winning 11 primaries and caucuses and demonstrating the electoral potential of a multiracial, progressive movement.
His campaigns helped reshape the Democratic Party, pushing issues of poverty, racial justice, and foreign policy into the national spotlight. Jackson proved that a multiracial, progressive coalition was not only possible but powerful.
Rev. Jackson secured the release of Americans detained abroad, including U.S. soldiers held in Yugoslavia in 1999, a U.S. Navy pilot captured in Syria in 1984, and hundreds of women and children trapped in Iraq in 1990. President Bill Clinton awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000 for these efforts.
His humanitarian work reinforced his reputation as a global advocate for peace and justice.
In his later years, Jackson remained outspoken on issues ranging from voting rights to economic inequality. He criticized political leaders across the spectrum and continued to champion progressive causes, endorsing Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2020 presidential campaign.
His health began to decline significantly in the 2010s and 2020s. PSP limited his mobility and speech, and he spent periods hospitalized before transitioning to outpatient care in Chicago. Despite these challenges, he continued to make public appearances and remained engaged with Rainbow PUSH initiatives.
"His longevity is part of the story," said Rashad Robinson, the former president of the seven-million-member online justice organization Color of Change. "This is someone who had so many chances to do something else. And this is what chose to do with his life."
Rev. Jackson's critics often accused him of being too ambitious, too outspoken, too willing to insert himself into the spotlight. But ambition is not a sin in the fight for justice. Outspokenness is not a flaw when silence is complicity. And visibility is not vanity when the issues at stake are life and death for millions.
Jackson’s life was defined by a simple but profound conviction: that America could and must be better. His voice may be gone, but the movement he helped build continues to echo through the ongoing struggle for equality.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of The Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network.
I. From Statements to Bodies
When a New Hampshire bishop urged his clergy to "get their affairs in order" and prepare their bodies—not just their voices—for public witness, the language landed with unusual force. Martyrdom■adjacent rhetoric is rare in contemporary American clergy discourse, and its emergence signals a tonal shift with civic implications. The question is not only why this language surfaced now, but why it stands out so sharply against the responses of other religious traditions facing the same events.
In Minneapolis, where clergy were arrested during immigration■enforcement protests earlier this year, the images of faith leaders in collars being detained quickly circulated through civic and religious networks. Their arrests raised immediate questions about what clergy owe their communities when enforcement, authority, and vulnerable populations converge. The responses that followed—across denominations—reveal how unusual the Episcopal rhetoric truly was.
Across traditions, religious leaders confronted the same moment of civic strain. But only one invoked the possibility of bodily risk for clergy themselves. The contrast reveals not just denominational differences, but a deeper shift in how responsibility, witness, and danger are being framed within American religious leadership. The Episcopal language stands out precisely because other traditions responded with restraint, institutional protection, or pastoral pragmatism—making the martyrdom■adjacent tone an outlier worth examining.
II. The Episcopal Signal: Explicit, Clergy-Facing Preparation
The Episcopal response is the clearest expression of the tonal shift—directly invoking bodily risk in a way no other tradition matched.
The clearest example came from A. Robert Hirschfeld, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire. Speaking at a vigil after the Minneapolis arrests, Hirschfeld addressed his clergy with unusually direct language about preparation and risk.
"I have told the clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire that we may be entering into that same witness. And I've asked them to get their affairs in order—to make sure they have their wills written, because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable," Bishop A. Robert Hirschfeld said at the Renee Good Vigil in Concord, New Hampshire, on Jan. 9, 2026.
The remarks were notable for both tone and audience. Hirschfeld spoke inward, to clergy themselves, rather than outward to congregants or the public. NPR's coverage amplified the comments, which circulated widely for their invocation of bodily witness and personal readiness.
Such explicit, clergy-facing guidance is rare in contemporary American religious discourse. Hirschfeld framed the moment as one that could demand physical presence and personal risk from ordained leaders—a posture that diverged sharply from other traditions responding to the same events.
III. Catholic Leadership: Moral Framing and Restraint
The Catholic response highlights the contrast: where the Episcopal bishop invoked personal preparation, Catholic leaders emphasized moral clarity and de■escalation rather than bodily risk.
Catholic leadership responded with a different emphasis. Rather than issuing clergy-specific preparation directives, U.S. bishops and Vatican officials focused on restraint, peace, and the protection of human life.
After fatal shootings involving federal immigration agents, U.S. bishops released public appeals urging calm and de-escalation. Vatican News highlighted calls for prayer, dialogue, and respect for human dignity—framing the moment as one requiring moral clarity, not internal mobilization. These themes echoed recent Angelus messages from Pope Leo XIV.
Senior Vatican officials reinforced that posture. Secretary of State Pietro Parolin called the violence "unacceptable," underscoring the Holy See's emphasis on de-escalation rather than confrontation. International reporting has described Pope Leo's broader approach to U.S. tensions as cautious and deliberately nonpartisan.
Absent from Catholic statements was any directive urging clergy to prepare for bodily risk. The Church's response remained outward-facing and pastoral, addressing the public rather than clergy alone.
IV. Seventh-day Adventist Leadership: Practical, Pastoral Action Plans
The Adventist guidance underscores how unusual the Episcopal rhetoric was, replacing any notion of personal danger with operational, congregational care.
A different model emerged from the Central States Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, which issued a formal statement and action plan addressing concerns about immigration enforcement affecting congregations.
The guidance acknowledged fear within immigrant communities and outlined concrete steps for pastors: how to engage with ICE agents on church property, how to coordinate with local authorities, and how to support affected families. The emphasis was on de-escalation, legal compliance, and congregational care.
The tone was directive but measured—providing tools and responsibilities rather than invoking personal danger. In contrast to the Episcopal call for embodied witness, the Adventist response framed preparation in operational terms: safeguarding congregants and maintaining order.
V. Southern Baptist Responses: Protection of Worship and Authority
The Southern Baptist framing further distinguishes the Episcopal tone, centering institutional protection rather than clergy vulnerability or embodied witness.
Southern Baptist responses reflected yet another posture when civic unrest entered the sanctuary itself. In January, protesters disrupted a Sunday service at a Southern Baptist–affiliated church in Minnesota after learning that a pastor associated with the congregation also worked for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Denominational leaders condemned the disruption, emphasizing the sanctity of worship, the protection of congregants, and the right of churches to gather without interference. While some acknowledged concern for migrant families, the dominant framing centered on defending worship spaces and institutional authority.
Leaders did not urge clergy to prepare for bodily risk or physical intervention. The emphasis remained on order, protection, and the boundaries between protest and religious practice.
VI. Jewish Communal Leadership: Security, Solidarity, and Ethical Framing
Jewish leadership's focus on security and continuity illustrates another contrast: preparedness without martyrdom language or clergy■specific risk.
Jewish leadership approached the moment through longstanding concerns about security, continuity of worship, and communal safety. Without a centralized clerical hierarchy, guidance flows through national organizations, rabbinical associations, and local federations.
In response to intensified enforcement and associated violence, national Jewish organizations issued statements condemning violent tactics and calling for nonviolence, due process, and human dignity. These statements drew on Jewish ethical teachings about protecting the stranger—without offering clergy-specific instructions about preparation or risk.
Institutionally, Jewish leadership emphasized synagogue security, coordination with local authorities, and continuity of communal life. This posture reflects historical experience and organizational memory rather than moment-specific escalation.
VII. Muslim Communities: Decentralized Leadership and Interfaith Solidarity
Muslim leaders emphasized solidarity and pastoral presence, offering yet another model that diverges sharply from the Episcopal invocation of bodily witness.
Muslim communities—particularly in Minnesota, home to a large Somali-American population—operate within a decentralized leadership structure. Mosques and Islamic centers are autonomous; no national authority issues uniform guidance to clergy.
In the wake of enforcement actions and unrest, Muslim leaders participated in interfaith vigils, protests, and public statements emphasizing solidarity, nonviolence, and pastoral support. Their responses focused on community protection, mutual aid, and collaboration with other faith traditions rather than internal clergy-facing directives.
The absence of centralized guidance reflects structure, not disengagement. Leadership is exercised locally, shaped by congregational needs and historical exposure to surveillance and discrimination.
VIII. Why the Differences Exist: Context, Not Motive
These contrasts help explain why the Episcopal rhetoric stands out: it emerges from a structure capable of issuing inward■facing directives, unlike many other traditions.
The divergent tones across traditions are best understood as products of institutional context. Leadership structure, congregational composition, historical exposure to risk, and proximity to enforcement all shape how clergy are addressed when civic pressure intensifies.
Hierarchical traditions can issue inward-facing guidance quickly, as in the Episcopal example. The Catholic Church's extensive institutional footprint creates different constraints. Jewish communities prioritize security and continuity; Muslim communities emphasize local pastoral care and interfaith solidarity.
In each case, leadership posture reflects lived experience and organizational reality as much as theology.
IX. What the Tone Shift Reveals
Taken together, the responses show that the Episcopal language is not just different—it marks a rare moment when clergy are addressed as potential actors in physical confrontation, not merely as moral voices.
Across traditions, the divergence is less about belief than about how responsibility is understood when faith intersects with enforcement, protest, and public risk. Some leaders prepare clergy for confrontation. Others work to shield congregations, preserve worship, or de-escalate tension. Still others engage publicly through moral framing while keeping internal guidance diffuse.
The shift is clear: clergy are being addressed not only as voices, but as actors situated within increasingly contested public spaces.
X. Transparency and Reporting Notes
Requests for comment were sent to leadership representatives of the Episcopal Church and the Catholic Church. No responses were received by the publication.
This article is not an exhaustive survey of religious responses to immigration enforcement or civic unrest. Examples were selected based on national visibility and documented public statements. The analysis focuses on tone, structure, and leadership posture rather than theological judgment or institutional intent.
Linda Hansen is a writer and the founder of Bridging the Aisle, a nonpartisan platform fostering honest, respectful dialogue across divides and renewed trust in democracy.
Donald Trump’s call to “nationalize” elections raises constitutional alarms. A deep dive into federalism, authoritarian warning signs, and 2026 implications.
I’m well aware that using the word fascist in the headline of an article about Donald Trump invites a predictably negative response from some folks. But before we argue about words (and which labels are accurate and which aren’t), let’s look at the most recent escalation that led me to use it.
In Trump’s latest entry in his ongoing distraction-and-intimidation saga, he publicly suggested that elections should be “nationalized,” yanking control away from the states and concentrating it at the federal level. The remarks came after yet another interview in which Trump again claimed, without evidence, that certain states are “crooked” and incapable of running fair elections, a familiar complaint from the guy who only trusts ballots after they’ve gone his way.
It’s been a while since most of us took a civics class, so a quick refresher. Under the U.S. electoral system, outlined in the Constitution, states run elections for a reason. Decentralization makes it harder for any single national authority to decide who votes, how votes are counted, or which results are allowed to stand. Congress can tinker around the edges and set some rules, but election administration has historically stayed with the states. It’s a design choice meant to keep political power from pooling in one set of hands, especially when those hands belong to a mentally unstable would-be strongman who has already tried to overturn one election and operates openly on an agenda of ego, retribution, and revenge.
For decades, “small government” Republicans have defended this arrangement as a core element of federalism. States’ rights arguments have anchored conservative opposition to federal overreach, particularly in voting, education, and law enforcement. In theory, anyway. In practice, not so much, especially when it comes to civil liberties that belong to someone else. But I digress. The desperate hypocrisy from these backsliders would be comical if it weren’t so dangerous.
Like most things authoritarian movements do, this latest sideshow is rooted in fear. Rather than calling for national standards to expand access or improve election security, Trump is arguing for federal control because some states are producing outcomes that frighten him and threaten his “legacy.” Legal scholars and election law experts have noted that such a move would face serious constitutional obstacles and go against long-standing norms governing elections.
Or maybe this is just another Trumpian sleight of hand, the latest intentionally outrageous distraction designed to pull attention away from unresolved scandals, most notably the Epstein files, millions of pages of which were just released, with significant material still withheld. Who knows.
But the comments come against the backdrop of several high-profile special elections that defied Republican expectations, most recently in Tarrant County, Texas, where Democrat Taylor Rehmet, an Air Force veteran and union leader running for public office for the first time, defeated MAGA-aligned activist Leigh Wambsganss by a decisive 14-point margin in a state Senate special runoff, flipping a seat in a district that Trump carried by 17 points in 2024.
Rehmet was out-fundraised 10-to-1 by big-money donors backing his opponent, yet still won by a double-digit margin in a district Republicans had controlled for decades, after his message clearly connected with working-class voters. Trump gave Wambsganss his “complete and total endorsement,” publicly touted her as a “great candidate” and a “true MAGA Warrior,” and repeatedly urged Texans to support her in the runoff.
It’s possible Wambsganss lost on her own, but that seems unlikely. She embraced the same rhetoric that helped Trump cruise through Tarrant County just over a year ago. It’s hard to read her loss as anything other than a rejection by some Texas voters of Trump himself. His constant lies, a faltering economy, broken foreign-policy promises, and an immigration agenda that appears less focused on the border than on masked agents operating deep inside the country, ignoring constitutionally protected due process, and branding American citizens as “domestic terrorists” after federal goons shoot and kill them in the street.
Whether that rejection holds through the 2026 midterms remains to be seen. But Trump’s latest call to “take over” elections suggests that he’s afraid it will.
Trump has a long history of questioning the legitimacy of elections that don’t go his way, dating back well before 2020. That particular effort escalated into direct pressure on state officials and an attempt to overturn certified results, which in turn sparked the violent insurrection at the Capitol, resulting in deaths and widespread injuries to law enforcement. The push to centralize election control follows the same trajectory.
No formal proposal has been introduced, and Trump hasn’t offered a realistic legal pathway to concentrate electoral authority at the federal level, not that something being “illegal” has ever stopped him from trying. Even with a Republican-controlled House and Senate, such a move would face immediate constitutional challenges from states across the political spectrum and would almost certainly stall in the courts. Election administration remains a state function by design, and dismantling that structure wholesale would be politically radioactive. But of course I’m pretty much done pretending that Trump or his diehards care about political optics anymore. They seem determined to pursue their fascist agenda by any means necessary.
Alright. Let’s go ahead and talk about that word for a minute. Fascist. I personally know a few people who don’t necessarily support Trump or his policies but still bristle when some of us use that word, or draw comparisons to 1930s Germany. Fine. In some cases, that’s a debate about strategy, and I’m willing to have it. But there are moments when the comparison isn’t rhetorical overreach, and this is one of them.
Fascism, noun: an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.
I think people make a mistake when they recoil from that word or comparison. “Fascist” isn’t defined by the worst crimes at the end of the timeline. Hitler didn’t come to power in 1933 and immediately start rounding up Jews and sending them to the gas chamber on day one. It was a gradual consolidation of power, marked by attacks on the press, the scapegoating of minorities, the portrayal of political opponents as internal enemies, the erosion of legal norms, the push to concentrate power in the executive, and repeated efforts to undermine or bypass democratic institutions, all justified as temporary, necessary measures to “save” the nation.
Trump and his movement have checked those boxes repeatedly, and he’s checking another one now with open talk of seizing control of elections themselves. We don’t need to reach the point of mass extermination to make valid historical comparisons. The past is the only scaffolding we have for interpreting the present, and history is clear about what happens when warning signs are dismissed simply because the worst outcomes haven’t arrived yet. The intent to drag this country away from a constitutional republic and toward an authoritarian state is plainly there, and even if I’m overestimating their ability to pull it off, I’d much rather overestimate an existential threat than underestimate one.
And I’m not pretending this is some uniquely original insight. People far more educated than me, including neuroscientists and senior fellows at the Brookings Institution, were reluctant to use this label for years before the evidence became impossible to ignore.¹
So, no, in short, we aren’t living in the final stages of some historical Nazi nightmare, and pretending otherwise would be dishonest. But it would be equally foolish to ignore how closely the early patterns resemble ones we’ve already seen. To paraphrase Theodor Reik, history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.²
Most “states-rights” Republicans, and more than a few fence-sitting independents, seem content to ignore that rhyming for now. A sitting president casually floating the idea of “taking over” the voting process should not be treated as business as usual. A small handful of Republicans, including Senate majority leader John Thune, have at least acknowledged that the idea runs headlong into the Constitution. But beyond those limited objections, party leadership has largely responded with silence, deflection, or nervous hedging, unwilling to risk Trump’s approval even as the foundations of democratic governance are questioned out loud. When people in power decide that loyalty to a leader and personal ambition matter more than the Republic they’re sworn to defend, history has a way of rhyming even more clearly.
And if any of this sounds alarmist, good. There are moments when an alarm is warranted. If your house caught fire and the flames started spreading, you wouldn’t sit around debating whether the thing that looks, smells, and sounds like a fire technically qualifies as one yet. You also wouldn’t cross your fingers and hope that, even if it is a fire, it might just go out on its own. Even if your own house has never burned down before, you already know how this ends when no one intervenes. You’d rely on that history, recognize the pattern, and act before there was nothing left but ash and people standing around afterward saying, well, shit, I guess that really was a fire.Nick Allison is a college dropout, combat veteran, and writer based in Austin, Texas. He’s not a journalist or a pundit—just a political independent, unaffiliated with any party, who still believes the Constitution is worth defending. Nick’s essays and poems have appeared in HuffPost, CounterPunch, The Chaos Section, The Shore, Eunoia Review, New Verse News, and elsewhere.
For many people, the current anxiety about artificial intelligence feels overblown. They say, “We’ve been here before.” Every generation has its technological scare story. In the early days of automation, factories threatened jobs. Television was supposed to rot our brains. The internet was going to end serious thinking. Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano, published in 1952, imagined a world run by machines and technocrats, leaving ordinary humans purposeless and sidelined. We survived all of that.
So when people today warn that AI is different — that it poses risks to democracy, work, truth, our ability to make informed and independent choices — it’s reasonable to ask: Why should I care?
The answer is not that AI is evil, or has its own agenda, or is plotting against us. The real concern is quieter and more subtle. AI changes how judgments are formed, and it does so at a scale and speed no previous technology has reached.
Most fears about AI focus on dramatic outcomes: mass unemployment, autonomous weapons, runaway systems. Those are serious issues, but they miss a more immediate shift already underway.
AI doesn’t replace human judgment by force. It replaces it by being effective, fast, confident, and coherent.
To see why, it helps to look at how we’ve traditionally answered questions.
Years ago, if you wanted to understand a topic, you went to a library. You found a few relevant books, read them carefully, compared arguments, evaluated sources, and slowly formed your own understanding. The process was time-consuming, but judgment — deciding what mattered and what made sense — was entirely yours.
Then computers and search engines arrived. With Google, you could instantly find thousands of related sources. But you still had to choose which ones to read, decide what was credible, assemble the facts, and form your own conclusions. The machine found information, but humans still did the thinking.
Now enter AI.
You ask a question once. The system reviews thousands — or millions — of sources, past discussions, data points, and arguments, and then almost instantly delivers a coherent answer that often makes remarkable sense. You can accept it, refine it, or go deeper, but the first draft of your understanding — your judgment — is no longer yours. It arrives already assembled.
Judgment isn’t just opinion or instinct. It’s the cognitive process of weighing evidence, context, experience, uncertainty, and consequences in order to decide what to believe or what to do.
Judgment is demanding. It requires grappling with uncertainty, weighing tradeoffs, and accepting responsibility. It’s also where accountability lives: when things go wrong, some person or body owns the decision.
AI doesn’t eliminate this process. It changes when and how it happens.
Instead of forming judgments from raw material, humans increasingly review judgments that have already been synthesized — often fluently, confidently, and persuasively.
That shift matters.
AI systems feel “smart” not because they think like humans, but because they can absorb and organize enormous amounts of information — far more than any individual could manage — and present it clearly and quickly.
Ask about a legal issue, and the system draws on statutes, cases, patterns, and prior interpretations. Ask about policy, and it references history, comparative examples, and arguments on all sides. The result is often impressively accurate, or at least plausibly so.
There’s nothing mystical about this. But the effect on humans is powerful.
When an answer is:
…it feels authoritative. It reduces uncertainty. It saves effort. It saves time.
And that creates a quiet temptation: Why wouldn’t I trust this?
What makes this shift especially powerful is that AI can be engaged the way we engage other people.
Search engines require you to think like a machine — keywords, fragments, trial and error. AI lets you think like yourself. Like you're talking to a friend. You can explain your situation, add nuance, express uncertainty, introduce complications, or explore alternate ideas. The system understands what you’re saying, no matter how complex, and follows the thread.
For the first time, a machine doesn’t just retrieve information — it participates in the process of reasoning. It talks back, suggests, and discusses with you.
That matters because humans trust explanations that feel conversational and attentive. We trust fluent explanations. We are influenced by tone, coherence, and responsiveness. When something engages us conversationally, it doesn’t feel like an external tool. It feels like an extension of our own thinking or input from a friend.
At that point, the line between assistance and influence becomes thin.
This is not a sudden takeover. It’s a progression.
First, AI provides information.
Then it provides analysis.
Then it offers recommendations.
Eventually, people defer — not because they are forced to, but because ignoring the system starts to feel inefficient or even irresponsible.
Judgment doesn’t disappear. It atrophies.
And when something goes wrong, accountability becomes blurred:
That’s not tyranny. It’s drift. No one takes control from us; we slowly hand it over because it works.
A single biased person can influence dozens.
A biased book can influence thousands.
An AI system can influence millions — instantly, continuously, and adaptively.
Now imagine not one AI system, but thousands. Built by different companies, trained by different people, optimized for different goals — profit, engagement, persuasion, efficiency, ideology.
Some will be careful and transparent. Some will not. Some will be neutral. Some will be highly motivated.
Two people could ask the same question and receive different facts, different framing, and different conclusions — all delivered with confidence.
At that point, disagreement isn’t just about opinion. It’s about perceived reality itself — what facts people think exist and which ones they trust.
Societies and individuals are stressed under those conditions.
We must also understand that AI doesn’t respect borders. A system trained in one country can shape opinions, decisions, markets, and political discourse far beyond where it was built.
For other global risks — nuclear weapons, climate change, pandemics — we eventually recognized a basic truth: if the risk is global, oversight must be global.
While our efforts with these global risks have been imperfect, the essential international coordination that allows institutions that monitor risks, share information, and establish norms has caused us to pause, reflect, and develop strategies, guidance, and cooperative efforts.
With AI, that coordination barely exists.
Private companies largely mark their own homework. Governments are regulating unevenly. And a competitive race dynamic discourages restraint, transparency, and caution. No country wants to fall behind. No company wants to slow down. The result is fragmentation at exactly the moment shared standards matter most.
This is especially dangerous for open societies. Democracies depend on shared facts, public trust, and slow, deliberative institutions — precisely the things AI systems place under the greatest pressure. When judgment is accelerated, personalized, and scaled globally without common rules, the foundations of democratic consent begin to erode.
Markets are excellent at optimizing for speed, convenience, and profit. They are not designed to optimize for shared truth, civic trust, or democratic stability.
Left entirely to competition, the incentive is clear: build systems that keep people engaged, tell them what they want to hear, and do it convincingly.
That doesn’t require bad intentions. It only requires misaligned incentives.
History shows that when powerful technologies reshape how people understand the world, coordination matters.
Not because AI will suddenly take control.
Not because humans will become irrelevant.
But because we may be slowly delegating the first draft of our understanding to systems we did not collectively design, govern, or agree upon.
AI isn’t dangerous because it’s evil.
It’s dangerous because it’s so convenient and fast.
And once we notice how much judgment we’ve handed over, it may already be beyond our control.
And all of this is unfolding not within shared global rules or institutions, but through a fragmented international race involving governments, companies, and systems that operate far beyond any single country’s control.
Jeff Dauphin is currently retired - Blogging on the "Underpinnings of a Broken Government." Founded and ran two environmental information & newsletter businesses for 36 years. Facilitated enactment of major environmental legislation in Michigan in the 70s. Community planning and engineering. BSCE Michigan Technological University.
