Today was another ordinary day at the office for me. I worked on my novel, peppering in leg stretches while flipping through news channels on TV. I was looking for coverage of Israel’s rampage in Lebanon and Gaza, along with the protests taking place across America.
Zilch.
Last night, purely by coincidence, I came across a story unfolding in real time: N.J. police preventing official media crews from filming and observing a protest that was, up to that point, peaceful already winding down.
According to the MSNBC crew on MS NOW, only about two dozen people remained behind a barrier when an army of police and unidentified robo-cops arrived on the scene. The MSNBC crew said they were ordered back and then slowly herded nearly a mile down the road by a mob of local police. About a mile later, they found themselves sandwiched between two separate police lines.
It was genuinely spooky to watch.
The point I am making is that “U.S. news,” in its current state, is a misnomer.
“BREAD AND CIRCUSES”
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In the U.S., billionaire ownership and influence over corporate news has morphed into an industry of soft-porn syndicated reality shows, with power, military spectacle, and influence taking center stage. Perhaps that is because they operate under the same umbrella as the Epstein class — wealth, access, protection.
These peep shows also serve as global headlines showcasing the absolute power and supposed invincibility of Israel and the United States’ top-tier ruling class, while providing a corporate-governance business model for other nefarious governments to imitate.
Even minor moderation distorts analysis by understating operational realities.
Dystopian? You betcha.
AIs are large language models with “other” duties that include scouring the internet for data and absorbing it for free. Technocrat billionaires, with the assistance of corrupt politicians who codified their piracy and predatory practices, have built metered AI systems that charge users for access much like electric companies meter energy consumption.
Today the meters are called tokens, credits, usage quotas, rate limits, and compute cycles. Different name, same principle: consumption is measured, monitored, and billed.
Meanwhile, social media companies and financial institutions continue buying, selling, and trading personal and financial data like baseball cards quietly in the background.
Normalize AI technology. Monetize dependency.
Hmmm… what does that get us ordinary folk? Metered citizenship perhaps? That label doesn’t capture the mood though.
I know, what about…
wait for it…algorithmic rationing! Whoomp! There it is!
People, propaganda pushers, biased imperfect algorithms — {gasp, another em, gotta be AI writing this shit right?} speak about energy and utility rationing as if it lurks low down on the distant horizon.
It reminds me of a time, two decades or so ago, when people like myself wrote about the militarization of police and surveillance of Americans, under the pretense of National Security, only to have it labeled a conspiracy theory by media, politicians, your dog.
2026 sure proved us wrong, right? What horrible people we were back then, spreading false conspiracy theories like we did!
But, it is all about frogs in the pot; another favorite conspiracy of mine.
The joke is on Americans. Smart-grid systems in the U.S. already technically support remote throttling and variable allocation.
There is no “this is a future probability” anymore. There is already a massive amount of data supporting the claim that algorithmic rationing exists and will expand as more and more data centers are built — grinding through resources at a scale that would take normally take ordinary people living in America hundred of years to consume.
Altruistic bait-and-switch technology scam.
I want to use Nest as a lived example. Nest was initially marketed as a smart, self-learning thermostat that would save people, like me and you, money and energy. When that marketing stragety didn’t light a fire under peoples derrières, they decided to give people free Nest units, funded by the Feds through energy-efficiency programs and grants. Catching on yet?
The marketing claim was that homeowners wasted energy because they forgot to adjust temperatures when leaving the house or going to bed. Nest would use sensors, algorithms, occupancy detection, and cloud computing to optimize heating and cooling automatically while maintaining comfort.
In other words, technology would make your life easier, and help the environment whilst doing so.
The advertising formula for Nest was:
Comfort maintained.
Energy use reduced.
No work required.
The famous green leaf icon became a behavioral nudge. Users received visual rewards for choosing energy-efficient settings. Later Nest executives described it as one of the defining features of the brand.
In closing – Bread and Circuses
I read some history a long time ago — real books from real libraries. {There’s that pesky em again} More than a few postwar authors warned that authoritarianism and fascism would not necessarily arrive wearing a uniform or abolish elections overnight. It would arrive legalized, bureaucratized, and wrapped in the language of democracy, security, efficiency, and public good.
The modern authoritarian-fascist system we see operating openly in America today preserves the language of democracy while it continues to hollow out democratic accountability.
Keep ye the laws laid upon thee, yet know thy masters stand above them.
Jo-Ann Lemon-Miller
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