General
Countering ‘Psychic Numbing’ in the Trump Era
More from our inbox: Thieving ChatbotsCredit…Will Matsuda for The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “The Most Dangerous Phase of the Trump Era Is Now,” by M. Gessen (column, June 1): M. Gessen does us a powerful service. It comes under the category …
More from our inbox:
- Thieving Chatbots
Credit…Will Matsuda for The New York Times
To the Editor:
Re “The Most Dangerous Phase of the Trump Era Is Now,” by M. Gessen (column, June 1):
M. Gessen does us a powerful service. It comes under the category of alerting us to what I have called “malignant normality.” Falsehoods are put forward as facts of nature, both all-consuming and inevitable. Terrible events become commonplace and fuel our tendency toward psychic numbing.
Combating this numbing requires witnesses, and M. Gessen has called it out in both Russia and America.
Witnessing is a necessity for recovering truth and stirring active resistance.
Robert Jay Lifton
Truro, Mass.
The writer is a psychiatrist and the author, most recently, of “Surviving Our Catastrophes: Resilience and Renewal From Hiroshima to the Covid-19 Pandemic.”
To the Editor:
“‘I Even Believe He Is Destroying the American Presidency,’” by Thomas B. Edsall (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, May 20), should be required reading for every member of Congress.
I vote in every election. I affirm what was suggested in the article: that we didn’t vote to destroy the government of the country we love.
My friends and neighbors didn’t vote to stop American universities from leading the world in science innovation. We didn’t vote to stop medical research. We didn’t vote to decrease SNAP benefits and make neighbors hungrier.
Nobody voted so that weather and disaster relief experts would be underfunded. We didn’t vote to tear Medicaid apart, to cut funding for nursing home care or to stop safely delivering babies in rural hospitals. We didn’t vote to have trade wars with the whole world. We did not vote to purge competent people from the government.
We were proud of our leadership in global affairs. We didn’t vote for tuberculosis to spread unchecked and AIDS to kill more people. We did not vote to let food and medicine rot so babies would die. We didn’t vote to embrace dictators and insult allies. We didn’t want our nation to stand apart from other prosperous countries in shame and diminished freedoms.
Nobody voted to give a mandate to the cruelty and incompetence we are seeing in this “big, beautiful bill.”
Congress seems to acquiesce to the lie that we voters wanted this destruction. Put them on notice: We did not vote for this.
Lynne Patalano
Beaumont, Calif.
To the Editor:
The Republican Party has collapsed into submission. It no longer serves the Constitution; it serves Donald Trump. Even as he violates principles meant to guard against corruption and foreign influence, G.O.P. leaders stay silent. Why? Because they fear him. They fear being primaried, losing their jobs and being targeted by the radical fringe of Mr. Trump’s cultlike base.
This base, though a minority, is loud, aggressive and blindly loyal. It dominates Republican politics and has turned the party into a hollow vessel for one man’s ambitions. We’re not dealing with two true parties anymore; we’re dealing with one party of law and another of fear and obedience.
But Americans are waking up. Mr. Trump’s popularity is falling. The path forward is clear: Organize, vote and take back Congress in 2026. A Democratic House and Senate are the only ways to restore accountability.
I know that many dislike politics, but politics built and preserved this democracy. As Ben Franklin said, we have “a republic, if you can keep it.” Keeping it means speaking out, showing up and voting.
Arnie Moskowitz
Sarasota, Fla.
Thieving Chatbots
Demis Hassabis, the chief executive of Google DeepMind, said the company was trying to preserve traditional search while adding new A.I. capabilities.Credit…Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times
To the Editor:
Re “Google Introduces A.I. Chatbot, Signaling Big Changes to Search” (Business, May 21):
The author of this article explains that chatbots often “lift” information from websites and deliver it directly to users conducting searches, “upending the traditional search model.” What isn’t explained is that when a chatbot “lifts” writing from authors and publishers and republishes it without asking for permission, without providing compensation and without crediting the copyright creator, it is theft — intellectual theft.
Tech writers in the future may look back at how they helped normalize this wide-scale theft, possibly of their own original work, and wonder, “Was it worth it?”
Steven B. Krivit
San Rafael, Calif.
