Category: Opinion
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By Miranda Devine Australia’s Oct.
Russia is out of the human spaceflight business — for now
The situation has ramifications for both the ISS and Russia’s future as a space power.
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By The New York Post Editorial Board Gov.
POST OP-ED: Blame Dems for Fueling New York’s ‘Affordability’ Crisis With Their Green-energy Insanity
By The New York Post Editorial Board In the latest warning that New York’s Climate Action Plan is a slow-rolling disaster, the pragmatic liberals at the Progressive Policy Institute have called out the absurd green-energy law as an “undeniable” failure.
POST OP-ED: Venezuela and the World Will Be Far Better Off With the Maduro Regime GONE
By The New York Post Editorial Board Exactly what Team Trump intends to do with (or to) Venezuela is far from clear, but it clearly wants the Maduro regime gone ASAP, and with excellent reason.
POST OP-ED: NYPD Needs to Quash Violent Car-meetup ‘Street Takeovers’ IMMEDIATELY
By The New York Post Editorial Board It’s outrageous that Saturday night’s 40-car “street takeover” in Queens devolved into arson and assaults on residents who dared intervene, but it’s also horrific if a 911 dispatcher told callers that the vehicular melee was a “quality of life” non-emergency, so they needed to call 311 .
POST OP-ED: Zohran Mamdani is Reviving the Worst of the de Blasio Years
By The New York Post Editorial Board Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s latest rumored hire may fit his vision of a dream team, but for the rest of New York, it promises to be a recurring nightmare.
Riot, repeat: How America’s unrest became a bad rerun
History doesn’t just move forward — it echoes. Karl Marx once said history repeats itself, “first as tragedy, second as farce.” He meant it as a jab at 19th-century France, where Napoleon’s nephew attempted to replicate his uncle’s revolutionary drama not on the battlefield but rather through bureaucratic spectacle. Nevertheless, Marx’s insight fits modern America. Our cycles of unrest and outrage have become predictable theater — each act beginning with moral panic and ending in absurdity.
The summer of 2020 was a national trauma. The killing of George Floyd was a tragedy that radicals turned into revolution. Riots swept through more than 2,000 cities, torching businesses, destroying neighborhoods, and leaving dozens dead. Egged on by the race-baiting activists at Black Lives Matter, mobs looted stores, assaulted police, and terrorized communities.
The line between tragedy and farce is thinner than ever — and this time, we can’t afford to play the fool.
Media outlets downplayed the carnage as “fiery but mostly peaceful.” Political leaders joined the chorus, afraid to confront the mob. Corporate America rushed to signal its virtue by taking the knee, pouring billions into “racial equity” schemes that enriched activists but divided the country.
The real tragedy wasn’t just the damage — it was the betrayal. Spineless mayors and governors surrendered their cities. Police were handcuffed, budgets gutted, and criminals emboldened. The riots hollowed out public trust, replacing civic order with cultural resentment. America’s guardians became scapegoats, and justice itself became negotiable.
From riot to parody
Five years on, the rebellion has devolved into a pathetic sideshow. Antifa’s latest “resistance” — a handful of masked agitators harassing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents as they carry out long-overdue deportations — feels less like revolution and more like performance art.
Their vandalism is designed for TikTok, not for change: laser pointers at officers, graffiti on walls, choreographed scuffles for social media. It’s a boutique insurgency — staged in deep-blue enclaves, broadcast for dopamine hits, and forgotten the next day.
The chaos of 2020 burned cities. The tantrums of 2025 barely dent a precinct wall. The tragedy has become farce.
Still, both movements spring from the same poisoned root: a left-wing ideology that despises America’s foundations. BLM targeted police as enforcers of “white supremacy.” Antifa brands border agents as fascists for upholding immigration law.
Both rely on the same tactics — decentralized mobs, anonymous online organizing, and emotional manipulation amplified by social media. Both seek power through grievance, not through persuasion. And both reveal how progressive rage, unmoored from reality, becomes self-parody.
In 2020, rioters burned precincts and seized city blocks. They demanded “defund the police” and got it — along with record crime rates and broken neighborhoods. In 2025, their heirs spray-paint slogans and livestream tantrums. Their only victory is visibility.
The digital theater of rage
Social media turned riots into content. In 2020, doctored clips of “police brutality” fueled nationwide hysteria, empowered anti-cop lunatics, and enriched grifters. Today, the same algorithms push Antifa’s posturing, turning vandalism into viral spectacle.
These platforms profit from outrage. They amplify emotion, suppress context, and reward hysteria. The result is a feedback loop of performative politics — activism as cosplay.
After years of indulgence, government crackdowns have finally returned. ICE operates under firm executive backing. Local police departments no longer hesitate to enforce the law. The radicals, once protected, now find themselves exposed and outmatched.
But even as law enforcement regains its footing, the left’s playbook remains unchanged. The grievances are repackaged, the slogans recycled, the media coverage predictable. It’s cultural Marxism with a TikTok filter — ideology as entertainment.
Farce doesn’t mean harmless. Every protest turned stunt still corrodes civic life. Each viral act of defiance feeds distrust in law, borders, and the rule of order itself.
The radicals thrive on illusion: fake oppression, fake urgency, fake rebellion. Meanwhile, real Americans bear the cost — higher crime, divided communities, and institutions too timid to defend themselves.
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Photo by serazetdinov via Getty Images
The lesson we refuse to learn
The tragedy of 2020 proved that surrendering to the mob invites ruin. The farce of 2025 shows that ridicule alone isn’t enough to defeat it. Both demand resolve — the courage to confront lies, restore order, and defend the institutions that safeguard freedom.
History doesn’t stop repeating itself; it stops being repeated. Whether America ends this cycle depends on whether its citizens choose firmness over fear, enforcement over appeasement, and truth over spectacle.
Enough with the doctored outrage porn. The burning question is whether we’ll tolerate this clown show recycling into catastrophe or crush it with resolve that honors real American values.
The line between tragedy and farce is thinner than ever — and this time, we can’t afford to play the fool.
AI can fake a face — but not a soul
The New York Times recently profiled Scott Jacqmein, an actor from Dallas who sold his likeness to TikTok for $750 and a free trip to the Bay Area. He hasn’t landed any TV shows, movies, or commercials, but his AI-generated likeness has — a virtual version of Jacqmein is now “acting” in countless ads on TikTok. As the Times put it, Jacqmein “fields one or two texts a week from acquaintances and friends who are pretty sure they have seen him pitching a peculiar range of businesses on TikTok.”
Now, Jacqmein “has regrets.” But why? He consented to sell his likeness. His image isn’t being used illegally. He wanted to act, and now — at least digitally — he’s acting. His regrets seem less about ethics and more about economics.
The more perfect the imitation, the greater the lie. What people crave isn’t flawless illusion — it’s authenticity.
Times reporter Sapna Maheshwari suggests as much. Her story centers on the lack of royalties and legal protections for people like Jacqmein.
She also raises moral concerns, citing examples where digital avatars were used to promote objectionable products or deliver offensive messages. In one case, Jacqmein’s AI double pitched a “male performance supplement.” In another, a TikTok employee allegedly unleashed AI avatars reciting passages from Hitler’s “Mein Kampf.” TikTok removed the tool that made the videos possible after CNN brought the story to light.
When faces become property
These incidents blur into a larger problem — the same one raised by deepfakes. In recent months, digital impostors have mimicked public figures from Bishop Robert Barron to the pope. The Vatican itself has had to denounce fake homilies generated in the likeness of Leo XIV. Such fabrications can mislead, defame, or humiliate.
But the deepest problem with digital avatars isn’t that they deceive. It’s that they aren’t real.
Even if Jacqmein were paid handsomely and religious figures embraced synthetic preaching as legitimate evangelism, something about the whole enterprise would remain wrong. Selling one’s likeness is a transaction of the soul. It’s unsettling because it treats what’s uniquely human — voice, gesture, and presence — as property to be cloned and sold.
When a person licenses his “digital twin,” he doesn’t just part with data. He commodifies identity itself. The actor’s expressions, tone, and mannerisms become a bundle of intellectual property. Someone else owns them now.
That’s why audiences instinctively recoil at watching AI puppets masquerade and mimic people. Even if the illusion is technically impressive, it feels hollow. A digital replica can’t evoke the same moral or emotional response as a real human being.
Selling the soul
This isn’t a new theme in art or philosophy. In a classic “Simpsons” episode, Bart sells his soul to his pal Milhouse for $5 and soon feels hollow, haunted by nightmares, convinced he’s lost something essential. The joke carries a metaphysical truth: When we surrender what defines us as human — even symbolically — we suffer a real loss.
For those who believe in an immortal soul, as Jesuit philosopher Robert Spitzer argues in “Science at the Doorstep to God,” this loss is more than psychological. To sell one’s likeness is to treat the image of the divine within as a market commodity. The transaction might seem trivial — a harmless digital contract — but the symbolism runs deep.
Oscar Wilde captured this inversion of morality in “The Picture of Dorian Gray.” His protagonist stays eternally young while his portrait, the mirror of his soul, decays. In our digital age, the roles are reversed: The AI avatar remains young and flawless while the human model ages, forgotten and spiritually diminished.
Jacqmein can’t destroy his portrait. It’s contractually owned by someone else. If he wants to stop his digital self from hawking supplements or energy drinks, he’ll need lawyers — and he’ll probably lose. He’s condemned to watch his AI double enjoy a flourishing career while he struggles to pay rent. The scenario reads like a lost episode of “Black Mirror” — a man trapped in a parody of his own success. (In fact, “The Waldo Moment” and “Hang the DJ” come close to this.)
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Photo by imaginima via Getty Images
The moral exit
The conventional answer to this dilemma is regulation: copyright reforms, consent standards, watermarking requirements. But the real solution begins with refusal. Actors shouldn’t sell their avatars. Consumers shouldn’t support platforms that replace people with synthetic ghosts.
If TikTok and other media giants populate their feeds with digital clones, users should boycott them and demand “fair-trade human content.” Just as conscientious shoppers insist on buying ethically sourced goods, viewers should insist on art and advertising made by living, breathing humans.
Tech evangelists argue that AI avatars will soon become indistinguishable from the people they’re modeled on. But that misses the point. The more perfect the imitation, the greater the lie. What people crave isn’t flawless illusion — it’s authenticity. They want to see imperfection, effort, and presence. They want to see life.
If we surrender that, we’ll lose something far more valuable than any acting career or TikTok deal. We’ll lose the very thing that makes us human.
Artificial intelligence is not your friend
Half of Americans say they are lonely and isolated — and artificial intelligence is stepping into the void.
Sam Altman recently announced that OpenAI will soon provide erotica for lonely adults. Mark Zuckerberg envisions a future in which solitary people enjoy AI friends. According to the Harvard Business Review, the top uses for large language models are therapy and companionship.
Lonely people don’t need better algorithms. We need better friends — and the courage to be one.
It’s easy to see why this is happening. AI is always available, endlessly patient, and unfailingly agreeable. Millions now pour their secrets into silicon confidants, comforted by algorithms that respond with affirmation and tact.
But what masquerades as friendship is, in fact, a dangerous substitute. AI therapy and friendship burrow us deeper into ourselves when what we most need is to reach out to others.
As Jordan Peterson once observed, “Obsessive concern with the self is indistinguishable from misery.” That is the trap of AI companionship.
Hall of mirrors
AI echoes back your concerns, frames its answers around your cues, and never asks anything of you. At times, it may surprise you with information, but the conversation still runs along tracks you have laid. In that sense, every exchange with AI is solipsistic — a hall of mirrors that flatters the self but never challenges it.
It can’t grow with you to become more generous, honorable, just, or patient. Ultimately, every interaction with AI cultivates a narrow self-centeredness that only increases loneliness and unhappiness.
Even when self-reflection is necessary, AI falls short. It cannot read your emotions, adjust its tone, or provide physical comfort. It can’t inspire courage, sit beside you in silence, or offer forgiveness. A chatbot can only mimic what it has never known.
Most damaging of all, it can’t truly empathize. No matter what words it generates, it has never suffered loss, borne responsibility, or accepted love. Deep down, you know it doesn’t really understand you.
With AI, you can talk all you want. But you will never be heard.
Humans need love, not algorithms
Humans are social animals. We long for love and recognition from other humans. The desire for friendship is natural. But people are looking where no real friend can be found.
Aristotle taught that genuine friendship is ordered toward a common good and requires presence, sacrifice, and accountability. Unlike friendships of utility or pleasure — which dissolve when benefit or amusement fades — true friendship endures, because it calls each person to become better than they are.
Today, the word “friend” is often cheapened to a mere social-media connection, making Aristotelian friendship — rooted in virtue and sacrifice — feel almost foreign. Yet it comes alive in ancient texts, which show the heights that true friendship can inspire.
Real friendships are rooted in ideals older than machines and formed through shared struggles and selfless giving.
In Homer’s “Iliad,” Achilles and Patroclus shared an unbreakable bond forged in childhood and through battle. When Patroclus was killed, Achilles’ rage and grief changed the course of the Trojan War and of history. The Bible describes the friendship of Jonathan and David, whose devotion to one another, to their people, and to God transcended ambition and even family ties: “The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David.”
These friendships were not one-sided projections. They were built upon shared experiences and selflessness that artificial intelligence can never offer.
Each time we choose the easy route of AI companionship over the hard reality of human relationships, we render ourselves less available and less able to achieve the true friendship our ancestors enjoyed.
Recovering genuine friendship requires forming people who are capable of being friends. People must be taught how to speak, listen, and seek truth together — something our current educational system has largely forgotten.
Classical education offers a remedy, reviving these habits of human connection by immersing students in the great moral and philosophical conversations of the past. Unlike modern classrooms, where students passively absorb information, classical seminars require them to wrestle together over what matters most: love in Plato’s “Symposium,” restlessness in Augustine’s “Confessions,” loss in Virgil’s “Aeneid,” or reconciliation in Shakespeare’s “King Lear.”
These dialogues force students to listen carefully, speak honestly, and allow truth — not ego — to guide the exchange. They remind us that friendship is not built on convenience but on mutual searching, where each participant must give as well as receive.
Reclaiming humanity
In a world tempted by the frictionless ease of talking to machines, classical education restores human encounters. Seminars cultivate the courage to confront discomfort, admit error, and grapple with ideas that challenge our assumptions — a rehearsal for the moral and social demands of real friendship.
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Is classroom practice enough for friendship? No. But it plants the seeds. Habits of conversation, humility, and shared pursuit of truth prepare students to form real friendships through self-sacrifice outside the classroom: to cook for an exhausted co-worker, to answer the late-night call for help, to lovingly tell another he or she is wrong, to simply be present while someone grieves.
It’s difficult to form friendships in the modern world, where people are isolated in their homes, occupied by screens, and vexed by distractions and schedules. Technology tempts us with the illusion of effortless companionship — someone who is always where you are, whenever you want to talk. Like all fantasies, it can be pleasant for a time. But it’s not real.
Real friendships are rooted in ideals older than machines and formed through shared struggles and selfless giving.
Lonely people don’t need better algorithms. We need better friends — and the courage to be one.
Editor’s note: This article was published originally in the American Mind.
