People suspect the real Trump died years ago, or maybe is being cared for, but whatever, the AI Trump is not the real Donald Trump.
So is Sam Altman really running things? Or OpenAI? Or Elon Musk? Or Stephen Miller? The AI Trump truths a lot, in the TRUMP “Style”. He truths videos of himself. He gives speeches, does rallies even, but it’s not clear whether or not people’s memories of what they saw can be relied upon.
Everyone has neuralinks in 2035, you see. Everyone who can afford them. They’re great! You can do anything. You’re sitting in the cockpit of a plane but you don’t know how to fly a plane. You don’t just get the knowledge, you download the memories of someone who has flown a plane and imprint them into your memory. You’re super human. You don’t have to get on some device like the poor folk do to ask their chatbots something.
Or like they did back in the 20s. Back then, when Trump was still the real President Donald J Trump, some activists tried to infiltrate Republican-run town/council meetings to get them to do ever more ridiculous but obviously fascistic things like putting up posters of Trump and statues. The goal was to convince the public of what to them was glaringly obvious: Trump was a fascist.
It had some success, but then councils all over the country were doing it, competing with one another to put up the largest statue, or the most impressive. One made a statue of gold. Not solid gold of course. Gold plated. Or they’d name things after him. Main Streets became Trump Boulevards. Many had arches at each end. That became the standard. The arches were often sponsored by McDonald’s. One was called Main America Great Again Street, with the “Main” and the “Street” in a much larger font than the “America Great Again,” but Trump didn’t like that one; he thought it was disrespectful, so that town didn’t get the funding for its hospital.
It was mostly women doing the infiltrating. Almost entirely in fact. They’d attend MAGA rallies and meetings, or they’d show up at town hall events. When they spoke they’d make it very clear they were MAGA. They were Trump’s biggest supporters. They’d loudly denounce anyone who spoke out against him. Some took it further. One married a hardcore MAGA guy. They made a pretty good film about her a few years later, starring Jessie Buckley. The film took some liberties though. It suggested she got pregnant and had an abortion, but the real MAGA infiltrator denied that ever happened. Strongly denied it ever happened. She sued the production company, unsuccessfully, thanks in large part to the testimony of her former husband.
Jessie Buckley takes one for the team, quipped one reviewer.
She won a BAFTA but not the Oscar. That went to an AI actor that year. It was the first time a non-human actor had won best male or female actor. There was some controversy over whether an AI could be considered female, but it was playing a female character, and it had been modelled on a number of female actors, though not closely enough on any one actor that it could successfully be sued. Some saw a likeness to Charlotte Rampling, others to Meryl Streep, others to Marlene Dietrich. It was a stunning performance. Did it matter that it wasn’t human?
Which is exactly what people in 2035 are saying about the president. Not in public though. Such things aren’t talked about openly. That would be considered disrespectful.
For those old enough, it’s hard to draw a line between public and private. People’s news and data is supposed to be private, but there’s no way of knowing whether or not it actually is.
Interestingly, in the past five years Trump has never had an in-person meeting with anyone who is unconnected. That’s what they call those without neuralinks.
About a third of Americans and a quarter of Europeans are unconnected. It’s been reported that a majority of Chinese citizens are connected, but official figures aren’t available. The leading political figures of most developed nations are connected. Being unconnected puts you at a huge disadvantage, particularly in interviews and debates. If you can’t rattle off data and statistics you come across as stupid.
The trouble with being connected is you can’t fully trust your memories. Not in the way that the unconnected just seem to remember things. You have no trouble remembering things, you just can’t be sure that they’re your own memories. When people report having seen Trump in the flesh, and that he seemed to be fit and well, whilst they may well believe what they’re saying, they might be reporting on something that actually happened to them, or it could be that someone else’s memory has been installed, a memory from several years ago perhaps, or it may be an entirely manufactured memory.
These videos we see of Trump shaking hands with a CEO, and him with foreign leaders – did they really happen or have they been manufactured? Does it matter? As someone probably once said, reality is the dream you dream most often.
Reality is simply what furthers your own interests.
Beliefs can be downloaded and installed. Not just for those who are connected. It’s easier of course when you’re connected, but for those still connecting through devices, beliefs can still be downloaded and installed.
Jessie Buckley did a very convincing Tennessee accent. She apparently lived in the state and kept up the accent for six months before shooting started. Many have suggested she has a neuralink, but she’s always insisted she’s unconnected. No one has ever been able to detect her connection, though Body Area Networks (BANs) can these days be almost impossible to detect, even when you’re in physical contact with the person.
The woman Buckley’s character was based on died in prison three years ago. The coroner’s report said she most likely took her own life.
The MAGA infiltration movement had some notable successes in its early days, but it was ultimately unsuccessful. In the 20s, the idea that Trump was in any way a fascist was generally dismissed as hyperbole:
Yeah, sure, he’s bad. He’s an authoritarian, but he’s not Hitler, is he? That’s just silly.
It didn’t help that the activists had been calling everyone they didn’t like a fascist for ages. The word had lost its clout.
If you could just nudge a few of his followers into adopting extreme measures, get them to show who they really were and who he really was, then the normies would come to their senses. But whenever something crazy was done like naming something after Trump, or erecting a statue of him, after a bit of grumbling, the odd demonstration here and there, it just became the new normal. We have statues of other presidents, the Trump apologists would say. Look at the Lincoln Memorial, or Mount Rushmore. Why all the fuss then when cities decide they want a statue of their favourite president? Are you against free speech?
The populists were right on at least one count: their thing about the elites. With neuralinks, you really do have elites. If you’re connected, you’re an expert in everything. You’re vastly more employable. Why would anyone employ someone who is unconnected? Unless it’s to do some kind of menial physical labour, which there’s still a need for as robots can’t do everything. But even for something like plumbing, where human manual dexterity will have the edge over robots, wouldn’t you rather have a connected plumber than an unconnected one? Of course you would, which is why they can charge more.
If you’re unconnected you’re pretty much useless. Just another mouth that needs feeding. There are exceptions of course: some creative types like actors and musicians who strive to hold onto their human authenticity, but how many of those who claim to be unconnected actually are? Certainly no more than half.
If you’re one of them, it’s not easy to explain to you what being connected is like. It’s not really like anything as such, and it depends what you do with it. Some people say it’s a bit like reading. Reading is a way of getting ideas and information directly into your brain, in a way that’s far more efficient than oral cultures were. Reading changes you, but how it changes you depends very much on what you choose to read. Being connected needn’t mean you’re opening up your brain to the sewers of the internet. You have choices.
But when it’s all there, so readily available, it takes some willpower not to connect to it. Why wouldn’t you?
It becomes like accessing your own memories. Distinctions become blurred. That could happen with reading or with films though.
Reagan often confused films he’d seen or acted in with actual personal experiences – he once recounted how, during the war when he was working for the Army Air Forces’ First Motion Picture Unit, he personally shot footage of the Nazi concentration camps as they were liberated, but he wasn’t actually there. It’s likely he did work with the footage when it had been brought back to America though.
Which just goes to show.