I never imagined, 60,000 posts ago, that our country would be in so much trouble today.

[highplainsdem]

We certainly had challenges, back in 2004. We had a lot of incompetent - and in some cases evil - people in office. There were lots of reasons why we Democrats looked for likeminded people online, and I was very happy to find DU among the liberal websites.

I'm even more grateful that it's still here. My thanks to EarlG and to everyone here for keeping this site going.

I still believe we'll survive the challenges, even though they're worse now. I doubt any of us would have believed in 2004 that Trump could ever be elected president, let alone be elected a second time after losing an election, orchestrating an attack on the US Capitol, and being impeached twice. I doubt any of us in 2004 would have imagined the rise of social media being so harmful. Or the development of AI creating the monstrosity that is generative AI. It's a safe bet that if anyone could go back in time to 2004 and tell the science fiction writers at the worldcon that in a couple of decades the most-hyped tech would be hallucinating AI trained on stolen intellectual property, with those AI models never trustworthy but still being forced into government and education and every part of society, they'd laugh and think the messenger from the future had to be drunker than anyone else at the convention. They'd REALLY think that if told that Donald Trump was elected president in 2024, for a SECOND time, despite being impeached twice and attempting to block the transfer of power.

Our world seemed saner, in 2004.

There we were, now here we are
All this confusion, nothing’s the same to me

Those are Oasis lyrics, some of the lyrics to Columbia, one of the tracks on their first album. If you've read very many of my posts here since last summer, you've seen a lot about Oasis and their reunion tour, and the amazing reviews and articles about the tour, which from July through November was one of the few bright spots in a year of mostly overwhelmingly bad news.

I hadn't planned to mention that song or any other, but those lyrics came to mind while I was writing this.

We're a long way from where we were. A long way from where we need to be. And at times now it seems like everything is confusion - chaos swirling around the despicable wannabe dictator in the White House.

But we will get through this. And for those on this board, DU will be part of that survival. I'm not sure exactly what will be necessary to save our country, or those our country is currently a threat to because of the malign administration and its enablers and supporters. There is undeniable confusion these days - not about the goal, but how to get there from here, given how evil many of our opponents are.

I'm hoping that by the time I need to post another of these milestone posts we'll have seen much brighter days, with the second Trump admin crumbling under the backlash it deserves from US citizens and the world.

[SheltieLover]

1. Congrats on 60K!

[highplainsdem]

9. Thanks, Sheltie!

[applegrove]

2. Way to go 60,000K.

[highplainsdem]

10. Thank you! And oh, how I love those smilies, especially the

[dalton99a]

3. Congrats!!

Confused and Nauseous says this too shall pass

[highplainsdem]

11. Thanks! And yes, Confused and Nauseous would probably describe most of us these days.

[BoycottTwitter]

4. Beautiful post! Thank you so much for writing and sharing!

I believe we'll get through this too but we must be strong and determined!

What we must do is keep going on the offense against Republicans and Trump. Stay focused on protecting the integrity and fairness of the elections and winning the midterm. Try to stop Trump's most horrible and irreversible impulses. Be prepared for what we'll do when we take back the house and senate. What project 2025 showed us is that having a plan in place ahead of time and executing on it with determination could accomplish a lot of bad. But imagine this: what if we had our own plan that's designed to do good instead of bad and we move fast on it while staying united and focused. We could do so much with even weak margins in the house and senate.

[highplainsdem]

12. Thanks! And yes, we definitely need a plan for recovering/repairing our democracy and society.

[livetohike]

5. Congratulations on 60,000 posts! I've enjoyed

your Oasis posts .

[highplainsdem]

13. Thanks! I'm glad you liked the Oasis posts. That was a very significant tour for rock music. I saw so

many articles pointing out that it would mean renewed popularity for guitar rock, and also inspire a lot of people to form bands. A change that's really needed after too many years of the charts being dominated by solo pop artists.

Live music is also the perfect antidote to the soulless, meaningless, anti-human slop that is AI music.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/music/music-features/oasis-gallaghers-met-life-concert-1236358264/

Oasis Just Glitched the Algorithm
Unruly, undigital, and fiercely communal — the Gallagher Bros.' U.S. swing is everything our techno-entertainment world isn't. Which is exactly why we need them.

By Steven Zeitchik
September 1, 2025 7:57am

-snip-

What may not have come up as often in those reviews is what the band is doing beneath the surface — what was coming across subtextually even in lesser-known hits like “Little By Little” and “Acquiesce” and “Whatever” — and, more important, the sense of possibility that subtext was evoking. This was a deeply human experience at a time, with its seething algorithmic outrage and a dawning AI, when we seem in danger of losing that humanity.

-snip-

That was one of many great reads about the tour.

[Moostache]

6. Congrats on a posting milestone!

That is fantastic!

James Cameron sort of predicted the AI scenarios we're living back in 1983's "The Terminator"... but even he never envisioned a human disaster like Trump or the toxic combination of anti-social media, propaganda and 'influencers'.

We're in a mess that can't be resolved easily now. We have a storm on the horizon for sure. But it remains a comfort to see any long-time poster staying active and in the fight too!

[highplainsdem]

15. Thank you! And I agree that Cameron did a great job warning of a possible AI dystopia. Fortunately

AI development isn't at that level yet. It's incredibly stupid for anyone to even be trying to develop AI that can outsmart humans. But we do already have too much horribly flawed generative AI being used in lots of places it doesn't belong. And given all the ways generative Ai can go off the rails, the attempts to develop humanoid robots with genAI brains is batshit crazy. Yet we have AI bros babbling about the joys of a near future with billions of robots.

Elon Musk: 10 billion humanoid robots by 2040 at $20K-$25K each
https://www.reuters.com/technology/elon-musk-10-billion-humanoid-robots-by-2040-20k-25k-each-2024-10-29/

You're right that Trump's a human disaster. Social media combined with AI is very harmful, too. It's a mess we never wanted, and that many of us might be tempted to completely tune out. And both Trump and the tech lords would like us to either fall for their insane propaganda, or at least let ourselves be distracted from how harmful genAI is by their genAI toys spitting out text, images, video and music, and as chatbots telling us how talented and perceptive we are, so we'll get more and more ensnared in their AI spider's web.

[sheshe2]

7. Thank you!

And congratulations 0n your 60K post.

[PJMcK]

8. Remember the Bush/Cheney years?

Seems like good times these days, doesn’t it?

[highplainsdem]

16. Oh, yes. And we thought they were a nightmare at the time. But we never imagined how much worse

nightmares could get with the Trump kleptocracy and the craziest tech lords.

[MustLoveBeagles]

14. Congratulations 👏🎉

On your milestone.

[highplainsdem]

17. Thanks! I'm hoping that someday - not too far off - we can all celebrate milestones on days when we're seeing

Democratic and progressive victories both here and around the world.