Deseret Magazine October 2023

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Utah State will leverage its expertise to drive innovation, nurture strong partnerships, and develop ethical leaders and a skilled workforce to meet the challenges of the modern digital era.

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Students, Faculty and Staff Proudly Welcome Elizabeth R. Cantwell to Where the Sagebrush

Grows

“I feel like I got stuck in a situation. I’m this close to going back to Kabul.”

Picture yourself winning. PER SISTENCE

Misty Copeland

“I have feared bedtime since my earliest memories. I slept with a baseball bat. I fixated on the burglar alarm.”

Peters is the María Rosa Menocal Professor of English and professor of film and media studies at Yale. A media historian and theorist, he is the author of several books, most recently, “Promiscuous Knowledge: Information, Image, and Other Truth Games in History,” coauthored with the late Kenneth Cmiel. His commentary on what artificial intelligence tells us about ourselves is on page 19.

Phetasy is a writer and standup comedian. A columnist and contributing editor for The Spectator, her work has also been published in Tablet Magazine, The Federalist, the New York Post and New York Daily News. She hosts the “Walk-Ins Welcome” podcast and YouTube program “Dumpster Fire.” Her essay about post-40 motherhood is on page 24.

Kix is a deputy editor at ESPN.com and the author of two books: “The Saboteur” and “You Have to be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live,” which was published in May. His work has also appeared in Esquire, GQ, The New Yorker and The Atlantic. His feature story on the bond between a soldier and his interpreter from Afghanistan is on page 36.

An advocate of religious diversity, Patel is the founder and president of Interfaith America, which works with governments, universities and private companies to make faith a bridge, not a barrier, of cooperation. He has written five books, including, “We Need to Build: Field Notes for Diverse Democracy.” His essay titled “The Paradox of Privilege” is on page 70.

Ortega is a graphic designer, illustrator and art director from Colombia based in New York. He previously worked as a designer for Milton Glaser, Sagmeister Inc. and Penguin Random House. He is the recipient of several prestigious honors, including multiple best illustrations of the year awards by The New York Times, and was named NBC’s Top 20 Latino Artists to Watch in 2021. His work is on page 70.

Bassos is a photographer whose portfolio spans corporate portraits, families and weddings, editorial, commercial and documentary work. Her work has appeared in ESPN, The New York Times, Travel + Leisure, Refinery29 and Chicago Magazine, among other publications. She divides her time between Denver and Chicago and her photography is on page 36.

JOHN DURHAM PETERS

PAUL KIX

STEPHANIE BASSOS

BRIDGET PHETASY

NICOLÁS ORTEGA

EBOO PATEL

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FACING THE FUTURE

Iwas a freshman at BYU when my friend Drew asked me if I wanted to go check out this new thing called the internet.

“What’s that?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Let’s go find out.”

As I recall, we went to the Tanner Building, where BYU holds most of its business classes, and sat behind his brother for 45 minutes while he downloaded a picture of Kurt Cobain.

“The internet’s dumb,” I said as we walked back to the dorms.

Drew told me I didn’t get it.

I spent the next two years on a Latter-day Saint mission in the Amazon, where most people didn’t even have a phone (not the kind you hold in your hand and check every 2 minutes for email; the kind you plug into a wall). When I got home, I felt like Rip Van Winkle. Everyone had dial-up internet. Everyone had email. Drew was right: the internet certainly wasn’t dumb, and you could do more with it than download pictures of Kurt Cobain.

The internet changed our world in ways I could never have imagined in 1995. It rendered much of what I once loved — bookstores, magazines, mix tapes, Blockbuster Video — either obsolete or nearing extinction. Maybe that’s why I’ve always been a late adopter of new technologies and highly skeptical of the hype around them. I’m a Luddite at heart. Or I just don’t want the world to change.

I thought of my first experience with the internet this summer, when my brother was telling all of us siblings that artificial intelligence was going to take our jobs, and make us, well, obsolete. I

looked at AI-generated art and snickered. I read emails composed by ChatGPT and scoffed at the notion a machine could ever replace a writer.

“AI is dumb,” I typed to my brother. Before I hit send, I paused. I was composing the message on a smartphone, which corrected my misspellings in real time, and if I changed the settings, could predict with frightening accuracy the word I planned to type next.

There’s no denying the internet has completely reordered our world. And I suppose if past is prologue, so will AI

Whether the world is better before or after the Internet is a column for another day. What seems clear to me is that there’s no escaping it. I’ve been back to the Amazon half a dozen times since my mission on reporting trips. The last time I was there, in a place you can only get to by boat or airplane, it seemed everyone, even the kids, had a smartphone and that it occupied their attention the same way it does ours.

If there’s no escaping a world reshaped by technology, how do we live in it? That’s the driving question behind this month’s cover story, The Future is Here: How AI will remake the world. As Yale professor John Durham Peters writes on page 19, the question isn’t whether machines will replace us, or even if they present unprecedented challenges. As Peters notes, the challenge we’ve faced as humans has always been the same: to transcend who we are, to be something more.

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OUR READERS RESPOND

Our JULY/AUGUST annual Constitution issue featured a collection of essays about ongoing threats to the ideals in the nation’s founding document. Deseret Magazine Executive Editor Hal Boyd hosted a conversation between four leaders in the legal, religious, academic and media arenas (including Robert P. George and Coleman Hughes) about challenges to the ideal of pluralism (“E pluribus disunion”). “On one level, this article is somewhat amusing. When you peel away the layers of race, language, culture, history, religion, we’re much more alike than we are different. People get fixated on the superficial and lose out on the opportunity to really learn,” reader Mark Oberg observed. And reader Mickey Roach questioned, “Is there no longer room for the concept of a singular truth and light to which most people can gravitate to? If not, perhaps we are unalterably doomed to going off in all the various directions discussed.” Notre Dame law professor Stephanie Barclay wrote about a conflict over protecting the sacred lands of Oak Flat in Arizona from copper mining to show how understanding the beliefs of others can heal cultural rifts (“A shared commitment to freedom”). Reader Michael Cleveland reflected that both sides of the Oak Flat dispute should be respected as sacred. “The earth is for the benefit and creativity of mankind. There is no reason why the ‘Sunrise Ceremony’ can’t be preserved while using the God-given benefits of our world. It’s a matter of communication, sharing and using common sense.” John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, explored how calls to remodel the Constitution could spell its doom (“The Constitution in Crisis”). Reader Mark McPherson agreed: “I believe our goal should be not to trash the Constitution but to follow it.” Reader John Mill added, “America is even more of an idea than it is a geographical entity. Once people shared a common set of basic principles — and even when they disagreed about their application, they agreed on the ideals. I am not sure that exists anymore.” Two constitutional scholars, William B. Allen and his daughter Danielle Allen, a professor at Harvard, discussed the promise of the Declaration of Independence (“Can the American experiment survive?”). Reader Tyler Boulter commented, “Most things can survive if they’re willing to adapt to new environments. Those that can quickly adapt can even thrive. Trying to keep the components of the experiment static are errands of fools.” Ethan Bauer reported on CNN’s struggle to rebrand itself as a medium for impartial news, and it included the termination of the network’s CEO Chris Licht, which happened just prior to press time (“Journey to the Center of the News”). On X, the platform previously known as Twitter, Rich Shumate, a journalism professor and a former CNN editor and senior writer, praised the piece as “nice background on the #ChrisLitch era at CNN.’” Reader Kevin Labrum added, “It’s a refreshing breath of fresh air to hear that a news organization is committed to unbiased, fact driven, middle-of-the-road news reporting.”

“It’s a refreshing breath of fresh air to hear that a news organization is committed to unbiased, fact driven, middleof-the-road news reporting.”

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AM I A MACHINE?

HOW ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TESTS OUR HUMANITY

BY JOHN DURHAM PETERS

Modern thought begins in doubt. René Descartes decided to doubt everything, even his own existence, before he hit bedrock: If doubting is going on, there must be a doubter. So there is something real, i.e. the doubter. I think, therefore I am. Boom! He had found a sure foundation. And build upon it he did. He was a mathematical genius who anticipated most STEM fields today. Descartes is a symbolic launch-point for modern science and technology, a forerunner of the digital age.

Less well known is that Descartes also doubted people were actually human. Looking out his Amsterdam window at passersby in their hats and coats, he wondered if they might just be cleverly constructed automata. He lived at the dawn of a mechanical age. Clockwork and lenses were cutting-edge technologies. Automata could look uncannily alive. Good ones could move, talk and soon even seemingly eat or play chess. Lenses revealed impossible new sights beyond the reach of the unaided eye, the craters on the moon and the flapping tails of spermatozoa. Telescopes and microscopes breached bounds of sight and knowledge that fenced in all previous mortals.

For four centuries since, we’ve been worried. What if the machines, with their obviously superior capacities, took over? How can we defend what is uniquely human from their threat? Do our devices pass divinely given limits and threaten our humanity? Previous generations worried about Frankenstein, robots and assembly lines; today we worry about AI and the large language models that power ChatGPT. It’s a legitimate question. But maybe it’s also the wrong one.

At least, we often go about trying to answer it the wrong way. Ridley Scott’s dark 1982 sci-fi film “Blade Runner” portrays a drizzly neon-lit Los Angeles in an indefinite cyberfuture where renegade “replicants” mingle undetected with the human population. These

are artificial humanoids whose engineered identity can be revealed only by complicated tests. Some of them even think they are human. A former cop, Rick Deckard, played by Harrison Ford, is hired to hunt them down and “retire” (i.e. kill) them. Throughout, the film drops subtle hints, however, that this bounty hunter, too, might be a replicant. He’s named Deckard: Get it? (Descartes!) The question the film raises is not just whether the machines will take over but a deeper one: Am I a machine, too? What would it take for me to be human?

Artificial intelligence, no doubt, gives reasons to worry. The First Industrial Revolution, powered by steam, replaced physical labor, to some degree, by machines. Goodbye shovel and scythe, hello backhoe and combine. The Second Industrial Revolution, powered by electricity, replaced mental labor, to some degree, with automation. Goodbye telephone operator and reference librarian, hello automated switchboard and Google. Technological change has never been smooth: Workers always have strong opinions when made redundant. The recent Hollywood writers strike, for instance, is partly about guaranteeing a place for human talent when computer-generated scripts (and potentially actors, as well) are cheap and easy.

But let’s ask the deeper question: Does AI threaten what it means to be human? The annals of thought are littered with fallen defenses of what is uniquely human. Reasoning? Back-and-forth conversation? Empathy? All have wobbled. Ironically enough, we are regularly quizzed online whether we are human. We have to pick out the bicyclists, fire hydrants or crosswalks from an array of photos and then check a box attesting “I am not a robot.” Such CAPTCHA tests fend off spam and bots, while also mining valuable data for self-driving car developers. Declaring you are not a robot is an online open sesame!

But being a human is much harder than checking a box. Descartes stared out his window at the passing crowds and wondered if they were human beings. We stare at our screens and might sometimes have the same thought. We appear as avatars or “profiles,” a word once used mostly for criminals. Online we are all “replicants,” indistinguishable between android and human. In cyberspace, we are creatures of pixel and type. Maybe this is one reason the online world breeds so many bounty hunters out for the kill.

Will humans be replaced? This question assumes too much — that we are already human. A quick survey of online behavior will suggest: Perhaps not. Humanity is not what we have; it’s what we need. A frequently administered test of our humanity would show us sometimes mechanical and lacking in empathy! (How we act online and off may be precisely such a test.) Science fiction is full of humanlike androids who yearn to be human. In this they are actually very much like us: To be human is to strive to transcend what we already are. Smart machines do not unfurl unprecedented challenges; they remind us of the oldest test of all, how to be humane.

JOHN DURHAM PETERS IS THE MARÍA ROSA MENOCAL PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AND OF FILM AND MEDIA STUDIES AT YALE UNIVERSITY.

WHAT IS WOKE?

HOW A BLACK COLLOQUIALISM BECAME A CONSERVATIVE BYWORD

Gov. Ron DeSantis calls his state the place where “woke goes to die.” Fellow 2024 Republican presidential hopeful, Vivek Ramaswamy, wrote an entire book denouncing so-called “Woke, Inc.” And according to a national poll conducted by HarrisX for the Deseret News, being labeled “woke,” will get you less support among voters. Nearly half say they’re less likely to support a “woke” candidate, while 24 percent say the opposite. In Republican circles, being labeled “woke” is almost certainly a political pox. When Time magazine dubbed Utah’s Spencer Cox “The Red-State Governor Who’s Not Afraid to Be ‘Woke’,”: he denounced the headline and said, “Being kind and trying to bring people together is very different than being ‘woke.’” But what is “woke”? And why are so many Republicans talking about it in the run up to the 2024 presidential election? Here’s the breakdown.

DEFINED

The term woke has its origins in Black vernacular — a shortened version of woken — the past tense of wake. The term suggests an awareness — an awakening — regarding issues related to race and social justice. In the 2010s, the term’s usage expanded to include an array of progressive causes and ideologies. Soon, as one British journalist put it, the term became shorthand for an “overrighteous liberalism.”

# STAYWOKE

The first known use of “woke” was a spoken warning from Huddie Ledbetter, the blues musician known as Lead Belly, appended to this 1938 song about nine Black youths falsely accused of rape in rural Alabama. The 1931 case would become a spark for the civil rights movement, and each defendant was later exonerated or pardoned. But Ledbetter offered pragmatic advice to Black travelers in a

region that could be hostile. “Best stay woke. Keep their eyes open.” In 2014, the hashtag #Staywoke coalesced as a watchword against police brutality as

protesters used it along with another hashtag that launched a movement: #blacklivesmatter.

BLOWBACK

On the right, and even within pockets of the left, some soured on certain progressive reforms as crime and lawlessness increased in places like San Francisco and Seattle. Others grew tired of big brands leveraging serious social

issues to market everything from sneakers to tech gadgets. Even “Saturday Night Live” mocked the commercialization with a sketch on “Levi’s Wokes” — unappealing jeans described as “Sizeless, style neutral, gender non-conforming denim for a generation that despises labels. Levi’s heard that if you’re not woke, it’s bad. So we made these.”

HUDDIE LEDBETTER

I LOVE NAPS

During the 2017 Women’s March, a nationwide demonstration that drew more than 1 million people, an Asian American toddler in North Carolina wore a hand-drawn sign: “I ♥ naps but I STAY WOKE.” A photo went viral, shared online by celebrities like Ariana Grande. Within two weeks, the boy’s father applied for a trademark to use the phrase on hats, pants, socks, sweaters and T-shirts. His application was abandoned, but the slogan took off among largely white mainstream liberals.

“The woke movement was supposed to be about people of color not getting opportunities, the at-bats that they deserved, finally making that happen. And it was about that, for about eight seconds. And then somehow white women swung their Gucci-booted feet over the fence of oppression and stuck themselves at the front of the line.” — Bill Burr, a notoriously abrasive comedian, on “Saturday Night Live” in October 2020

“THE IDEA OF PURITY AND YOU’RE NEVER COMPROMISED AND ALWAYS POLITICALLY WOKE — YOU SHOULD GET OVER THAT QUICKLY. THE WORLD IS MESSY. THERE ARE AMBIGUITIES. IF I TWEET ABOUT HOW YOU DIDN’T DO SOMETHING RIGHT, I CAN SIT BACK AND FEEL PRETTY GOOD ABOUT MYSELF, BECAUSE MAN, DO YOU SEE HOW WOKE I WAS? I CALLED YOU OUT. THAT’S NOT BRINGING ABOUT CHANGE. IF ALL YOU’RE DOING IS CASTING STONES, YOU’RE PROBABLY NOT GOING TO GET THAT FAR.”

Former President Barack Obama

WOKE CAPITAL

Coined by New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, this term describes brands that cast themselves as forces for social change on issues like racial justice or transgender rights, wrapping candy in rainbows or disassociating from troubled entities like the NRA.

Others called it “woke-washing.” But the concept has also evolved into investment frameworks that consider how a company handles environmental, social and governance issues, or ESG (see The Notorious ESG on p. 28).

WOKE-LASH

As Douthat predicted, conservatives often feel besieged — by woke beer and M&Ms, but also call-outs by “woke mobs” on X (formerly Twitter). That might explain Fox News’ obsessive pushback, compiled in a recent montage by news watchdog Media Matters. Those labeled “woke” include:

AMAZON

BANKS

BOY SCOUTS

CHICK-FIL-A

CIA

COVID-19

DATING APPS

DELTA AIRLINES

DISNEY

EMOJIS

FEDERAL RESERVE

GOODYEAR TIRES

LEGO THE MILITARY

MY LITTLE PONY

MICROSOFT

NASA

NIKE

REAL ESTATE

WEBSITES

WALMART

WOMEN’S HISTORY

MONTH

THE WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION

YELP

WORD POLICE?

40% INSULT

50% INFORMED

39% TOO P.C.

Today, 40 percent of Americans see “woke” as an insult. About a third take it as a compliment, more among adults under 34. More than half of that cohort define woke as “informed, educated on and aware of social injustices” while 39 percent believe it means “overly politically correct and policing others’ words.” Seniors are more likely to say they don’t know what it means.

FLORIDA GOV. RON DESANTIS EMBRACES AN ANTI-WOKE MESSAGE AS PART OF HIS CAMPAIGN FOR THE GOP PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION, SAYING HIS STATE IS WHERE “WOKE GOES TO DIE.”

MEASURED JUSTICE

THE DEBATE OVER SUPREME COURT REFORM

EXIT

THE SUPREME COURT is having a rough go. In theory, justices on the nation’s highest tribunal are shielded from the political fray, so they can interpret the law without regard to the currents of a given moment. But today they find themselves at the center of Beltway maneuvers and troubled times, from politically charged confirmation hearings to the premature leak of its decision on abortion and ethical questions about unreported gifts. The court’s approval rating has hit an all-time low of just 40 percent, according to Gallup. Some have called for reform, largely focused on term limits or expanding the court. But does the court need fixing?

CHANGING WITH THE TIMES IF IT’S NOT BROKEN, DON’T FIX IT

The Supreme Court is a global outlier, with a politicized nomination procedure, lifetime terms and uncommon power. That reach is a problem, argues Jay Willis, editor-in-chief of “Balls & Strikes,” a progressive news site focused on the courts. “It has an insane amount of power relative to the Supreme Courts of almost every other country,” he told Foreign Policy last year. “It is one of the few high courts that has the unilateral authority to look at a piece of legislation passed by two independent, politically accountable branches of government and be like, ‘Nah, not allowed.’”

Judicial review has been well established since 1803, but some argue that Congress can limit the high court’s jurisdiction. This was explored in the final report from the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court, issued in 2021, along with moves like court expansion and term limits. But without a constitutional amendment, the court itself could simply strike down any legislative reforms. “If adopted by statute,” writes Rosalind Dixon, law professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia, “it would come before the Supreme Court for review — and the court might well reject the argument.”

While there is historical precedent for court expansion — President Joe Biden opposes the idea — term limits may be the most viable path for reform. In 2021, 17 House Democrats co-sponsored a bill that would establish 18-year terms for Supreme Court justices, who would be appointed every two years. Senior justices could continue to work but would no longer decide cases. The bill would also waive the Senate’s advice and consent authority if the body does not act on a presidential appointment within 120 days.

Reform could have a surprising ally, if Chief Justice John Roberts stands by a memo he sent to the White House in 1983. “Setting a term of, say, 15 years would ensure that federal judges would not lose all touch with reality through decades of ivory tower existence. It would also provide a more regular and greater degree of turnover among the judges. Both developments would, in my view, be healthy ones. Denying reappointment would eliminate any significant threat to judicial independence.”

Perhaps the Supreme Court is doing precisely what it was meant to do. Each justice in the conservative majority was nominated by a Republican president and confirmed by the Senate when each seat became vacant. The court’s decision overruling Roe v. Wade reflected the nation’s political divisions over the issue of abortion. The third branch of government remains separate but equal. Even the basis for judicial review is found in Article 3 of the Constitution.

While Congress has the power to change the number of justices, it hasn’t done so since 1869, settling at nine following a period of upheaval. The last president who sought to expand the court was Franklin D. Roosevelt, which is largely seen as an effort to secure judicial imprimatur for aggressive economic programs in the New Deal. Congress rejected that legislation, which still resonates as a hand-slap to executive overreach. That may explain Biden’s reluctance to cooperate with the more activist wing of the Democratic party.

Term limits are also not a new idea. But the Founding Fathers chose to grant lifetime seats, in part to protect judges from being swayed by financial need. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in The Federalist Papers, No. 79, “Nothing can contribute more to the independence of the judges than a fixed provision for their support.” Article 3 provides that judges “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour.” So they can be removed through impeachment, just like a president. That last happened in 1804. In practice, limiting turnover also helps to make the court more consistent over time.

Some fear that term limits would have the opposite of the desired effect. Writing for The Washington Post, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals contends that term limits would only exacerbate the court’s perceived faults. “They will make the institution appear more, not less, political in the eyes of the public. Confirmation battles will become more numerous but no less feverish, because 18 years is long enough to inflame partisan confirmation passions, especially if the court is closely divided.”

MATERNAL INSTINCTS

BECOMING A MOTHER POST 40, AND THE ANXIETY OF KNOWING TOO MUCH

BY BRIDGET PHETASY

Ibecame a first-time geriatric mommy at age 42. If you laughed at the term “geriatric,” so did I, but it is commonly applied to any woman over 35 who gets pregnant. Although the medical world is moving away from using geriatric, with its connotations of blue hair and walkers — the new PC term is “Advanced Maternal Age” and isn’t much better, in my opinion. I prefer something cool, like Vintage Baby Maker.

New parents, old and young, are bombarded with a torrent of information and options from the minute they find out they are expecting. For me, it first came from the doctors in the form of dozens of optional, nerve-racking genetic tests and scans that may or may not be necessary (or reliable).

As I started asking friends and family for advice, everyone offered a different opinion. Once the almighty algorithm discovered I was pregnant, it chimed in, too — Instagram flooding my feed with relatable preggo content. Some of it was useful. Some of it preyed on my worst fears. All of it was conflicting.

I’m told parenting wasn’t always so fraught with anxiety and filled with often completely opposing child-rearing options.

This is the product of the mediated, consumerist world in which we now live. (Don’t get me started on the baby registry — that’s another essay entirely.)

In his book “Mediated: How the Media Shapes Your World and the Way You Live in It,” author Thomas de Zengotita talks about observing kids with their bike helmets that

IMAGINE MY SURPRISE WHEN I FOUND OUT YOU SHOULD HAVE A BIRTH PLAN AND IT ENCOMPASSES A LOT MORE THAN WHAT I HAD IN MIND.

“could deflect a bazooka shell” and finds himself feeling nostalgic for the simpler times when kids were free range. “No one ever heard of a bike helmet, and injuries of all kinds were the assumed risks of childhood,” de Zengotita writes.

However, he notes that if he were a parent of a young child today, what he would do is completely different. “Now that I know

about bike helmets, now that they are an option, it would be downright irresponsible not to strap one on little Justin’s head,” he explains. “Justin’s Helmet Principle” is what he labels the process by which “you end up opting for these options because, on balance, it’s better than not opting for them.”

Motherhood starts when the child is in utero and some of the choices I had to make felt existential: Do we find out the sex or decline? Should we get the genetic tests they recommend (especially for us “geriatrics”) or let the chips fall where they may? Traditional OB-GYN or go the midwife/doula route? Maybe some combination of all three? Home birth? Hospital birth? Pool in the woods under a full moon?

Imagine my surprise when I found out you should have a birth plan and it encompasses a lot more than what I had in mind. My bar was pretty low: Mom and baby live through the experience of childbirth. Lots of women, however, set their expectations very high. They want a magical experience with a photographer and a playlist and twinkly lights because that’s what their favorite YouTube influencer told them they deserve

NOTHING IS MORE FRAUGHT WITH EMOTION, AIRS OF SUPERIORITY, AND CERTAINTY ABOUT THE WAY YOU SHOULD BE DOING THINGS THAN HOW AND WHERE YOUR CHILD IS SLEEPING.

— baby crowning, mother pushing with a full face of makeup and perfectly done hair.

There was more. Did I want interventions? Fetal monitoring? Drugs? When the baby comes do you want skin-to-skin immediately? The hep B shot? The eye drops? Should I bank the cord blood? Stem cells seem important, right? What if she needs them in the future and I could have saved her life, but I didn’t want to pay a storage fee to keep them on ice? How guilty will I feel?

Worst of all, what if, in the near future, they have the technology to let mere mortals dodge death — if only I had banked the cord blood. I imagined my then unborn daughter, a teenager, shaming me for being cheap. “All my friends are gonna live forever, Mom.”

For those of you wondering — I had a scheduled C-section because of my vintage age; we got the eye drops; we delayed the hep B shot; I didn’t bank the cord blood (sorry, honey, eternal life on Earth seems exhausting).

It never ends, either. Once our daughter was born, we discovered even more options to navigate.

Cribs versus Montessori floor beds. No screens for the first two years, even though the grandparents are scattered all over the country and the only way your child has a relationship with them is FaceTime. The only thing my child wants is my phone. She screams when you take the black mirror away or try to hide it from her. I’d already failed before she turned one.

My husband and I learned pretty quickly that the gold standard by which all your parenting skills shall be judged is sleep. The first question veteran parents asked us when we started taking our daughter for walks around the neighborhood was, “Is she sleeping yet?”

Nothing is more fraught with emotion, airs of superiority, and certainty about the way you should be doing things than how and where your child is sleeping. Everyone’s method is the best because it worked for them — and you will hear from everyone.

Things change quickly in the science of sleep. When I was an infant, the best

practice was to put babies to sleep on their stomachs. Even in the 14 years since my sister had her last child, she marvels at how different everything is for her siblings and our kids.

“I feel like a grandmother,” she said to me recently. “They can’t have blankets! All my kids had blankets and bumpers and cozy cribs.” Now the prevailing wisdom is swaddled kid (or kid in a sleep sack) in an empty crib or bassinet.

Co-sleeping is also in. If you mention cry it out, half the people will tell you they did it, the other half will tell you you’re psychologically damaging your child. Dr. Gabor Maté has spoken out against the practice of cry it out and said, “Encoded in her cortex is an implicit sense of a noncaring universe.” Seems dramatic. I don’t want her to think the universe doesn’t care about her (even if I can’t prove that it does) and I don’t want her to believe no one is coming (even if that’s kind of true, too). I also don’t want to coddle her every whim and create a monster with anxious attachment. If I don’t let my daughter cry it out, will she be gluing herself to a work of art in 20 years?

Mistakes will be made. So much of parenting is winging it, trying to figure out what works best for the child within the entire family system in the moment. What you’d like to do and what you can realistically do are often not compatible. What you want to do and what is best for the child are also often not compatible. Being stern but fair seems like what is required to be a good parent who raises children with boundaries and manners and aren’t spoiled rotten, running the house.

The list of decisions goes on and on, it never ends, but especially as a first-time parent, the stakes feel so high. It’s enough to make you completely neurotic, if you let it.

Navigating these options is Justin’s Helmet Principle in action — but it’s not always black or white. How do you make sense of all the new information and balance it with the prevailing wisdom? How do you know if you’re making the right decision?

You don’t. But that’s parenthood.

THE NOTORIOUS ESG

WHAT IS ‘ESG’ INVESTING, AND HOW DID IT ADVANCE TO THE FRONT LINES OF THE CULTURE WARS?

BY ETHAN BAUER

The senator first heard murmurs in early 2022 from concerned citizens and industry experts alike. By fall, the murmurs had become conversations with representatives of the banking industry, members of both houses of Utah’s legislature. These stakeholders formed a working group to tackle “ESG” standards that are turning corporate America “woke.” GOP state Sen. Chris Wilson, whose district includes parts of Cache and Rich counties in northern Utah, came out of the working group determined to act on ESG when the legislative session convened in 2023.

If you find yourself confused at this point about what ESG is, you’re not alone; most Americans aren’t familiar with the term — perhaps by design. Consider a rule taught in journalism schools called the “alphabet soup” principle: Unless an acronym is universally recognized, like FBI or NAFTA, avoid using it out of respect for your readers, many of whom won’t know what it means.

Politicians have, at almost every possible opportunity, ignored that wisdom when it comes to ESG, which stands for environmental, social and governance-conscious investing, but has become a largely meaningless buzzword for Democrats who’ve used it as a crutch after failing to address many ESG-adjacent issues through policy,

as well as a bugaboo for conservatives. Even the people tasked with making laws regarding ESG often have a hard time defining what it is or what it does — a fact that does little to temper their enthusiasm either for or against it.

It’s become a particularly popular talking point on the right. Ben Lewis, a professor of strategy at Brigham Young University who has studied ESG for many years, first noticed its explosion into the mainstream political consciousness when brochures

IN SIMPLE TERMS, IT ARGUES THAT A COMPANY’S SINGULAR RESPONSIBILITY IS TO MAXIMIZE VALUE FOR ITS SHAREHOLDERS.

for a county-level candidate started showing up at his house with ramblings about how ESG was a Chinese Communist Party plot to infiltrate America. Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has also made criticism of ESG a cornerstone of his campaign (he’s currently polling at about 8.3 percent). But controversy over the concept is actually much older.

It arguably goes all the way back to a foundational economic principle introduced in the 1970s called the Friedman Doctrine. In simple terms, it argues that a company’s singular responsibility is to maximize value for its shareholders. That school of thinking inspired a school of pushback coined by World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab as “stakeholder capitalism,” which argues that companies have a responsibility to anyone their decisions impact; not just shareholders. The term ESG came around in 2004 in a United Nations report that recommended the integration of ESG issues in “asset management, securities brokerage services and associated research functions.”

“Part of ESG, in and of itself, is trying to make companies aware of those different stakeholders and pay attention to their issues, beyond just the financial stakeholders,” Lewis says.

The idea mostly simmered, unnoticed, until 2016. Then Donald Trump was elected president and addressing issues like climate change at a more individual, personalized level suddenly became appealing, argues former investment banker and well-documented ESG critic Tariq Fancy. “If you’re a progressive, and you want to do something about climate change, Trump gets elected and makes it fairly clear he

doesn’t plan to do anything about it,” he explains. Four years, those progressives argued, was far too long to do nothing about climate change. So many of them started asking if they could invest their 401(k)s in more climate-conscious ways, or buy more

climate-conscious products. “That’s what gave (ESG) its rise,” Fancy says.

It exploded even more late last year, after the Biden administration directed the Department of Labor to allow retirement plan fiduciaries to consider ESG factors when

making investments. That rule went into effect in January and was challenged by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, as well as Senate Republicans and two Democrats — Jon Tester of Montana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia — who

in March sent a resolution to Joe Biden’s desk calling for a reversal of the rule. Biden vetoed it, with both sides accusing each other of the exact same financial crime, almost verbatim. “The Biden administration’s recent ESG rule would pose further risk to these retirement funds by forcing fiduciaries to use Americans’ hard-earned money to advance social causes rather than investing to get the best returns,” Sen. Mitt Romney said in February. “The legislation passed by the Congress would put at risk the retirement savings of individuals across the country,” Biden said about a month and a half later, following his veto.

A group of 25 states, including Utah, have since signed onto a lawsuit challenging the rule in court. “Permitting asset managers to direct hard-working Americans’ money to ESG investments puts trillions of dollars of retirement savings at risk in exchange for someone else’s political agenda,” Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said in a press release announcing the lawsuit. The effort is being spearheaded by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose press release announcing his opposition calls ESG a “direct threat to the American economy, individual economic freedom, and our way of life.” And Wilson, during Utah’s 2023 legislative session, sponsored two bills (both became law) targeting ESG investing in the state — a common refrain in Republican-controlled legislatures across the country. In March, he took to the pages of Cache Valley’s Herald Journal to defend that legislation, arguing that “the Biden administration issued a rule that would place millions of Americans’ retirement funds at risk by allowing retirement plan fiduciaries to consider ESG factors when selecting investments and exercising shareholder rights.” But he also quoted Romney, who said the rule would be “forcing” them to do so. “I don’t have a problem if people are allowed the freedom to invest in ESG funds. But I do have a problem when … ESG has to be used in all investments,” Wilson says. “Biden’s (rule), from what I understand, was that they needed to use ESG standards.”

That understanding, it turns out, is not

entirely correct. Allowed is a better word than forced. “As much as I admire Senator Romney,” says Lewis, who has voted for Romney three times, “I believe he is mischaracterizing the intent of the ruling when he states that the (Department of Labor) ruling would ‘force’ fiduciaries to take ESG factors into account.” All the rule did was clarify that fiduciaries were allowed to consider ESG factors as part of their investing strategies, ensuring that doing so would not result in lawsuits alleging that the investors had failed to seek maximum returns. Lynn Rees, a professor of accountancy at Utah State, argues that despite having no personal affinity for ESG as an investment strategy, the DeSantis-led effort to overturn the Biden administration’s rule

“I DON’T HAVE A PROBLEM IF PEOPLE ARE ALLOWED THE FREEDOM TO INVEST IN ESG FUNDS. BUT I DO HAVE A PROBLEM WHEN … ESG HAS TO BE USED IN ALL INVESTMENTS.”

is ironic in that it claims to be pro-freedom while really accomplishing the opposite. “I do make my own investing decisions, and at no time have I really considered ESG factors,” he says. But nevertheless, he adds, “I don’t think it’s the government’s place to tell capital managers what they should and should not consider (investing in).” At the very least, he says, you could make a reasonable argument that considering ESG is good for profits (research on this has resulted in mixed findings), and fiduciaries should be allowed that option. And if investors are unhappy with those decisions, they’re welcome to invest elsewhere.

Fancy, who worked at investing giant BlackRock before quitting to become something of an anti-ESG whistleblower, has a different take on the recent political

blame-slinging. He left BlackRock because he came to believe that ESG standards were, essentially, nonsense. They accomplished absolutely nothing for climate (and other) goals, ultimately allowing companies to use faulty, nonstandardized metrics and subversive investing strategies to portray themselves as committed to social responsibility while still doing exactly what they’ve always done and will continue to do: Maximize profits. “The political right is beating (Democrats) up,” he says, “by pretending the greenwashing is real.”

Democrats, he says, are passing the buck to private companies to make a difference on climate change and other progressive causes when their policies aimed at doing so haven’t become law. They’re looking for help wherever they can get it, he contends, but investors just aren’t wired to prioritize causes in the way a government can. Maybe they can move some money around to more ESG-aligned investments, but ultimately, they will never do so unless they think such a decision will maximize profits. Insofar as investors use ESG, it’s already in the service of maximizing financial return.

Fancy also argues that Romney and Wilson aren’t 100 percent wrong about Biden’s rule “forcing” companies to consider ESG Investment firms like BlackRock can indeed exert a huge amount of pressure on companies in which they own many shares of stock by pressuring them into making certain social decisions, like increasing diversity and inclusion. The rule still does not make them do so, but it does allow investment firms to do so more freely. Which is why Wilson argues such policies are still bad for Utah. “To try and force companies to avoid or boycott a company, just because they’re in timber or mining or agriculture or firearms, to me is discrimination,” he says, “and it’s wrong.”

But at a time when most Americans still don’t even know what ESG is, and their political leaders are often further obfuscating their understanding, Fancy has a name for the politics around the current debate over ESG. “I call this the stupid debate,” he says. “There’s no other word for it.”

A PLACE TO GROW

IN LONGMONT, COLORADO, A HOUSING PROGRAM FOR LOW-INCOME AGRICULTURAL WORKERS REVEALS AN INDUSTRY IN FLUX

BY ETHAN BAUER

Inside Casa de la Esperanza’s kitchen, a metal table overflows with “fixins”: bottles of chamoy, Tajín and squeezable butter; a drum of mayonnaise and a bag of cotija cheese; and a bowl of freshly boiled, yellow corn cobs. Kids, teenagers and adults alike carry their elotes through the hallways, holding them like oversized lollipops. The savory smell of the spices and butter collides with the sweetness of strawberry syrup bubbling atop the shared stove, destined for shaved ice. Everyone gathers round and takes part — the perks of a food-sharing program in action, and just one of the benefits for families living here.

When Casa de la Esperanza opened in 1993 in Longmont, Colorado, it represented an innovative solution to a problem that had long plagued agricultural communities across the West. Immigrants from Mexico and Central America formed the backbone of America’s agriculture industry (and today, still making up 73 percent of the nation’s agricultural workforce). But given the industry’s often-low wages, workers couldn’t afford rent in many areas near work. Casa de la Esperanza, which translates to House of Hope, opened in response — and quickly filled up.

Sixteen families live here now, and rent starts at $635 per month. To be eligible, families need to have at least three members, fall below a certain income threshold

(families of four, for example, need to make less than $90,000), and the head of the household needs to be a documented agricultural worker. “It’s purposeful,” the center’s program coordinator, Vanessa Arritola, says. “You’re helping people.” And that’s a big deal at a time when decrepit housing situations endure for many low-income agricultural workers, from New York to Florida to California. And yet, today Casa de la Esperanza is only about half full.

Longmont’s agriculture industry is fading, too. It’s been chewed up — like most

“ONE OF THE BRAGGING RIGHTS OF AGRICULTURE IS THAT IT GOT MORE EFFICIENT. WE NEED A LITTLE LESS LABOR TO PRODUCE THE SAME AMOUNT WE WERE PRODUCING HISTORICALLY.”

urban-adjacent farmland across the country — by suburban sprawl. And the nation’s agricultural workforce is changing, too. It’s smaller, older and more temporary than it once was, with seasonal workers increasingly filling the void of the industry’s constant labor challenges. Now, Casa de la Esperanza’s future is in question. Its fate,

to some extent, mirrors the old ways of agriculture in the Mountain West.

ONCE ONE OF the largest farming communities in Colorado, Longmont is now enveloped by suburban sprawl. Casa de la Esperanza straddles a very literal line of this force; sitting between a self-storage facility and a field. “As has happened in a lot of fast-growing urban areas, housing can always offer a better price point for land than farming,” says Dawn Thilmany, a professor of agricultural economics at Colorado State University. “So we’re gradually seeing more and more of that farmland transition into homes.”

Today, the town’s population stands at over 100,000. More people means more neighborhoods and shopping centers and parks. Urban sprawl has gobbled up rural land across the nation for decades, and among Colorado’s 64 counties, Longmont’s home of Boulder County ranks in the top 10 statewide for open land lost to sprawl between 1982 and 2017. But sprawl is only part of the story. Alongside the changing landscape is a changing workforce. Back in 1950, the U.S. had nearly 10 million farm workers; today, it’s down to just over three million — even as yields trend upward. Boulder County produced $27.8 million worth of crops back in 1997; the most recent USDA data, from 2017, shows that

number has swelled to $38.3 million. Even accounting for inflation, Boulder County’s crops are worth about as much now as they were nearly 30 years ago. So even with less land, crops have maintained their value. However, farming doesn’t require the same number of workers it once did.

“One of the bragging rights of (agriculture) is that it got more efficient,” Thilmany says. “We need a little less labor to produce the same amount we were producing historically.” People were replaced with robotic harvesting, self-driving tractors and “automated farming,” which uses a combination of drones, computers and automatic watering and seeding devices. People got replaced — and the people who do remain are increasingly transient.

The H-2A visa program allows foreign workers to reside in the U.S. temporarily for seasonal jobs, largely in agriculture. “There’s a very prescribed amount of weeks that they’re allowed to work (in a particular place), and then they move to their next job in another state,” Thilmany says. “Those people would never want to sign leases with or live in a housing situation like (Casa de la Esperanza) because they know they’re going to be leaving.” The H-2A visa program has grown exponentially over the last decade, with fewer than 100,000 visas issued in 2013 compared to 300,000 last year.

Boulder County itself doesn’t have many registered H-2A visa holders, according to the most recent data from the American Immigration Council, but neighboring Adams and Weld counties rank second and third in the state, respectively. Many of the agriculture jobs adjacent to Longmont are going to workers who will only be there for a short time, and therefore wouldn’t have interest in a long-term lease in affordable housing programs. It’s not often that in a time of housing crisis and extreme inflation that affordable housing would be at risk simply because tenants are too hard to come by, but that’s the case for Casa de la Esperanza.

ROOMS STAND EMPTY. Fewer children run through the halls. Maybe, Arritola has

begun to think, the program needs to change with the times.

Thanks to $350,000 of recently acquired funding via the American Rescue Plan, the county plans to move away from traditional USDA loans to open Casa de la Esperanza up to all low-income applicants, not just agricultural workers. Which, Arritola admits, would be strange at first. The agricultural adjacency of the people who live here has helped bond the community and informed its culture. Nevertheless, “I want to see the units filled,” she says. “There’s such a huge housing need. And if that’s the last resort, then I’m all for it. … It’ll change a little bit of that dynamic, but we’re OK.” And maybe it doesn’t even need to change the dynamic all that much.

And Longmont has become too expensive for many of them. “The working poor are just falling right out of the safety net. There is no safety net for them,” she says. “Incomes are not matching what people need to sustain themselves and have a livable wage.”

“THE WORKING POOR ARE JUST FALLING RIGHT OUT OF THE SAFETY NET. THERE IS NO SAFETY NET.”

Per the most recent census data, about a quarter of Longmont’s population is Hispanic or Latino. As of 2020, about 11 percent of residents are also foreign-born, but that number has been dropping. Back in 2015, around 10 percent of residents were not born in the U.S., mirroring the average for communities across the United States. Longmont’s foreign population still ranks several percentage points higher than Colorado’s average, and it also beats out neighboring communities like Boulder and Greeley. That sizable population and its first-generation children may not be as keen on working in agriculture anymore, but they often still work low-income jobs, says Donna Lovato, executive director of a Longmont-based immigrant advocacy group called El Comité. Jobs in hotels and landscaping and restaurants, for example.

Lovato was already working in Longmont’s immigrant community 30 years ago, when Casa de la Esperanza was founded. But over time, she says, she’s seen the trends reflected in the statistics: the sprawl; the reduction of farming jobs; the new visa programs. And, more recently, the extreme housing cost increases that have afflicted many mountain towns across the West. “People used to come to Longmont from Boulder,” she says. “Now they’re leaving Longmont, too.” Casa de la Esperanza, she says, is well situated to address this issue. “I have heard they want to change it,” she says, “and if they focus on first-generation, low-income immigrants, I think that would be perfect.”

Before that happens, though, the program must make a final effort to bring in agricultural workers. Over the summer, local newspapers published stories about the vacancies. Boulder County also issued a press release, advertising the openings at Casa de la Esperanza. Places like Casa de la Esperanza exist because communities and their leaders have decided that certain jobs are so essential that they must be subsidized. When it was founded, it made sense to continue subsidizing the local agriculture industry. But even as far back as the 1970s, Richard Nixon’s secretary of agriculture told farmers to “get big or get out.” Headlines, politicians and studies have lamented the downfall of the small American family farm while bigger players continue to increase profit and product. Indeed, America’s agriculture industry writ large is humming right along, but if you define the industry by the way it used to be — with regional producers and local economies — you’d think that it’s now nonexistent. Instead, it’s simply moved on. Places like Longmont and Casa de la Esperanza will need to decide if it’s time to move on, too.

THE FINAL MISSION

DURING THE WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN , MOST LOCAL ALLIES WHO HAD SHOWN UNSHAKABLE LOYALTY TO U.S. TROOPS WERE LEFT TO FEND FOR THEMSELVES AMID A BLOODY TALIBAN TAKEOVER . THE BOND BETWEEN ONE SOLDIER AND HIS INTERPRETER WAS TOO STRONG FOR THAT | BY PAUL KIX | PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEPHANIE BASSOS |

AHMAD KHALID SIDDIQI WAS AN INTERPRETER FOR U.S. TROOPS IN AFGHANISTAN AND LATER A CEO HELPING RESHAPE THE COUNTRY, UNTIL THE FALL OF KABUL IN 2021.

SCOTT HENKEL TRIES NOT TO FIXATE ON THE NEWS FROM AFGHANISTAN ,

like the story describing how the Taliban has taken Zabul, a southern province where he once built roads and schools and an almost-tactile camaraderie between the Army troops under his command and the Afghans his unit was meant to serve. The memories of 2006 and ’07 overlaid now against the reality of 2021, in the final chaotic weeks before the U.S.’s September 2021 deadline to withdraw all American military forces from Afghanistan — Henkel tells himself he’ll focus instead on his life stateside, here in suburban Denver, where he’s transitioning from one cybersecurity firm to another. He tells himself he’ll help guide his wife and two teenage kids through the complexities of the pandemic, everybody living and working on top of each other. Life itself tries to keep him occupied, and yet the Taliban pincering the rural outposts like the one where Henkel spent good portions of his young adulthood — his work gone, undone, just poof — also shows how life does not unfold in the manner we tell it to.

Because there, on the news, other provinces, poof. The Taliban overruns a prison housing Taliban militants in Kunduz. These jailed fighters, freed from their cells, join their Talib brethren on the streets and like that they rampage on.

Like that, Kandahar falls. Kandahar! The second-largest city in the nation. Just overwhelmed August 12, 2021, by the suddenly swarming Taliban.

Like that, Kabul is invaded. The capital, the last line of defense. Henkel sees it all over his Google News feed.

He puts his head in his hands. He has soldiered through life: the rail-thin high school football strong safety who surprised everyone with how hard he hit, keeping a ledger on Friday nights of the opponents he knocked out of games; the walk-on to the Colorado State track team who became a four-year letterman; the commissioned

officer who, after 9/11, endured inadequate training for the nation-building civil affairs units where Army brass expected leaders like Henkel to be both fighters and diplomats. Henkel and his men had somehow still carried out 400 missions beyond the wire. Because Scott Henkel soldiered through life.

But he can’t soldier through Kabul’s fall. He feels “complete hopelessness,” he’ll later say.

His wife Heidi sees it. Scott with his head in his hands, his shoulders drooped, his face like he’s seen a ghost, because he has: The return of the war. It haunts his cul-de-sac’d air-conditioned home, a mocking ghost. Why were you there? Why were any of you? What was the point of the last 20 years?

When Henkel talks, it’s through tears. One soldier from his tour is in Afghanistan now, less a soldier to Henkel than a brother. And as the Pentagon and State Department and Biden administration finger-point whose exit plan is to blame for the last few weeks’ disastrous collapse in Afghanistan — one hell of a way to end America’s longest war, with tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of wartime allies looking for a way out of what can only be called a failed state — Scott Henkel thinks of this brother, and this brother alone, the one whose life has for 15 years been intertwined with his.

Ahmad Khalid Siddiqi.

The one he called Kevin.

The wing man. Henkel’s eyes and ears and often his mouth, and a soldier so fiercely loyal to a free Afghanistan he’s remained there even beyond the point it’s free. That tears at Henkel. There is no Scott Henkel without Kevin, not anymore, and any story he tells of his life means a commensurate one must be told of Kevin. He’ll say this to anyone who asks. But he can only say now, through tears, what he knows of their intertwined lives: The Taliban will track Kevin down. Henkel is sure of it. The Talibs will find Kevin, Scott tells Heidi Henkel, and they’ll force Kevin’s wife and daughters into

CAPT. SCOTT HENKEL WORKED CLOSELY WITH AHMAD KHALID SIDDIQI DURING HIS U.S. ARMY TOURS IN AFGHANISTAN.

sex slavery and probably kill Kevin’s son before his eyes and then execute Kevin, too.

“Kevin’s going to die,” Scott tells Heidi. He bawls some more.

Because what can he do from Denver to prevent it?

AHMAD KHALID SIDDIQI drives south through Kabul while cars, buses and people on foot flee in the opposite direction, north. Every face seems panicked. News has spread today, August 15, 2021, of the Taliban’s approach on the city through its southern outposts and of President Ashraf Ghani already abandoning Kabul and fleeing the country. Khalid doesn’t doubt these reports’ veracity but has business he must resolve today near the advancing Taliban.

So he fights the deluge of traffic heading the opposite direction — cars not even obeying one-way-street signs — and glances over at his 16-year-old brother, Omar, sitting nervously in the passenger seat.

It may seem reckless for his youngest brother, a minor no less, to accompany him, but to Khalid’s mind it’s shrewd. If Khalid’s captured, the Talibs will likely spare the

boy. Omar can then flee to the rest of Khalid’s family in northern Kabul and tell their parents and siblings and Khalid’s wife that Khalid has been killed.

At least that way they will know his fate.

Khalid drives his Toyota Corolla, “his low-profile car,” as he calls it, and not his Lexus. He’s also left his bodyguard back at his compound. The Lexus, the bodyguard — they would have only signaled Khalid’s high status and importance in Afghanistan.

Today they would have only put a target on his back.

He and Omar at last arrive at their point of business, the district in Kabul known as Traffic Square, its anchor the city’s department of motor vehicles. They park and get out. Terror-stricken faces, the distant boom of RPGs, smoky plumes of war on the southern horizons. It is chaos. It is also, at least for the moment, free of Talibs. Khalid motions to Omar to keep up, each of them in flowing Afghan garb to further blend into their surroundings as they approach their destination:

The travel agent’s shop.

When Kandahar fell, Khalid had given this travel agency his family’s passports in the hope that the agency could gin up visas to Uzbekistan for Khalid and his four children and wife. Khalid doesn’t know if the agency’s promise of new visas is real.

He’s here to find out.

Khalid walks into the shop. Packed, with everyone wanting the same thing: a way out of Kabul. Khalid sees his agent, an agent-liaison named Salim, and motions him over. Where are the visas? Khalid half-shouts over the din.

Salim says he doesn’t have them. If Khalid will wait just a bit longer, Salim can deliver everything Khalid wants.

Khalid doesn’t have time. Not today. So he recalibrates his plan.

“I need my passports then,” he tells Salim. He needs some form of identification if things keep getting worse.

Salim’s not sure where those are either and disappears for a moment and, ultimately, leads Khalid to the agency’s owner, and

the office in the back.

The panic in the shop, on the streets, the uncertainty of even the passports’ whereabouts — it puts Khalid on edge.

“Listen to me,” he says to the owner, a small man he doesn’t know. Khalid’s voice in its deep baritone edges into malevolence. “Don’t (expletive) with me.” He’s worried this shopkeeper has lost his passports, or sold them, or perhaps given them to some Talib as a way to curry favor.

“You better give me my passports!”

The shopkeeper, scared, opens a drawer.

The passports.

The owner hands them over and Khalid shuffles through: His three daughters’, ages nine to one; his son’s, age eight; his wife Horia’s; his own. A photo of his close-cropped hair and beard, his slight shoulders and skinny neck, next to his name:

Ahmad Khalid Siddiqi.

The man who offered 20 years of service to the Americans as a cultural adviser, interpreter and soldier. The man who tolerated some of his favorite Americans, like Capt. Scott Henkel, who could never pronounce the guttural Khalid correctly, and had settled on something easier: Kevin.

The man who has, above all, remained calm across those two decades. And so he tells himself he can remain calm today, through the collapse of his country, armed with little more than his family’s passports and his reputation.

Khalid tells himself he’s calm as he and Omar hop back in the Corolla and join the heavy sludge of traffic heading north. When the sludge becomes too thick, he exits the road and parks the Corolla at his father’s cousin Bashir’s, who agrees to take the car and hide it if only Khalid will leave. “It’s not safe for you here!” Bashir says, fully aware of Khalid’s two decades serving the Americans and United Nations and what that service means on a day like today.

Khalid tells himself he’s calm as he and Omar set out on foot, walking through a Kabul that is a bit more desperate — people looting stores — even as more people join the streets,

FROM HIS HOME IN COLORADO, HENKEL WAS WRACKED WITH HOPELESSNESS DURING THE BOTCHED TROOP WITHDRAWAL FROM AFGHANISTAN.

until foot traffic is itself a heavy sludge.

Khalid tells himself he’s calm when he drops off Omar at his parents’ apartment and his mother bawls, “What will happen to you now?”

He comforts her and his wife Horia phones, terrified of what’s happening in their well-off neighborhood. Everyone is armed and paranoid, she says. Khalid tries to quiet Horia’s concern, too. He’ll be back soon, he says.

Khalid tells himself he’s calm as he walks to his luxury apartment in his high-rise neighborhood, his nose and mouth wrapped in a scarf so that only his eyes show and no Taliban scout might identify him.

Khalid tells himself he’s calm when he enters his complex, across the street from the Ministry of Interior and, moments later, unlocks the door to his penthouse apartment, his four kids rushing into his arms, crying.

When he and Horia put the children to bed, Khalid says he’ll figure out a plan for tomorrow.

Horia can’t sleep, though, and he and Horia peer from one window and then another in their five-bedroom high-rise, looking for Talibs on their street. They hear the battle: the report of high-powered rifles, the blast of artillery.

Their street itself remains still, as calm as he likes to tell himself he is.

Khalid walks through this apartment, the reward of his key insight in life, the one he learned 17 years ago interviewing terrorists for U.S. Special Forces: To not just interpret what people were telling him but provide the context of what they meant. Americans loved this broader context, this richer story. It led to a story Ahmad Khalid Siddiqi told himself. He could better his life by relaying the full story of his country. So out on missions and even in firefights alongside Army leaders like Capt. Henkel, Khalid described the narrative of why events around them unfolded. The stories he relayed from his native Dari and Pashto into an increasingly flawless English indebted him to Henkel, and other Army leaders, and ultimately to its high brass, interpreting Afghanistan

for people like Gen. David Petraeus. As the years passed, Khalid went from telling the story of Afghanistan to shaping it. Working for various U.N.-affiliated organizations until, in 2018, Khalid became the CEO of a contracting firm with a budget as high as $260 million per project — and as many as 200 employees per project — that looked to rebuild Afghanistan as he and partners like

the U.N. saw fit.

In this luxury apartment, Khalid has told the story of a free Afghanistan and his work crafting it to members of Parliament and the minister of justice and foreign journalists.

In this luxury apartment, though, by the following morning, the story of Khalid’s life after 20 years of shaping it begins to unspool

IN THE CHAOS OF THE U.S. TROOP WITHDRAWAL, AHMAD KHALID

SIDDIQI SPENT DAYS TRYING TO GET HIMSELF AND HIS FAMILY OUT OF THE COUNTRY, ALL WHILE THE TALIBAN HUNTED FOR HIM.

AS THE PENTAGON, STATE DEPARTMENT AND BIDEN ADMINISTRATION FINGER-POINT WHOSE EXIT PLAN IS TO BLAME FOR THE DISASTROUS COLLAPSE IN AFGHANISTAN, SCOTT HENKEL THINKS OF THIS BROTHER, THE ONE WHOSE LIFE HAS FOR 15 YEARS BEEN INTERTWINED WITH HIS.

beyond his control, beyond his authorship.

The Taliban are on his street with a list of names on a sheet of paper, looking for the car or apartment that belongs to Ahmad Khalid Siddiqi. Where is he, the Talibs ask? Because they’ve been following his story, too. Khalid’s son takes a video on Khalid’s phone of the Talibs searching the street, trying to find which apartment is the Siddiqis.

Khalid sends the video over WhatsApp to one of his closest contacts, Capt. Henkel. In the message beneath the video, Siddiqi will later remember typing to Henkel, “I might not live any longer.” And then, ceding that he is no longer the author of his story: “Do whatever you can do to help get me out.”

HOW TO RESPOND to that? For a while, Henkel doesn’t. He and Kevin have shared those 400 missions and then the birth of kids — messaging, phoning long after Henkel’s tour — and then the raising of families and now a mutual aging into midlife. Henkel remembers them talking often of their dream, of the Siddiqis moving to Colorado and the families living next to one another, as true friends might.

As a friend and father, then, Henkel tries to imagine the pain Kevin feels now.

“I know it’s scary,” Henkel will later recalls typing. “Try to stay strong for your family.”

What an inadequate response. That video proves Henkel’s worst fear: Kevin’s forthcoming death.

The fear slows Henkel. He sludges through his house in suburban Denver. “Completely depressed,” he’ll later say. This depression is worse than what happened after the worst day: When a convoy that dropped him off at the airport for his

mid-deployment leave in October of ’06 got blown up by an IED as it returned to its base. That explosion leveled a whole city block in Kandahar and sent three of Henkel’s soldiers to the hospital with life-threatening burns. I should have been in that Humvee, Henkel had thought at the time. I should have kept my guys safe.

The guilt he felt for the bombing in Kandahar endured for years, well after his tour. It took Heidi Henkel telling Scott, over and over, that it wasn’t his fault.

The humvees his unit drove didn’t have the necessary armor at the beginning of Henkel’s deployment. Henkel hadn’t abided that. So he’d gone above his own boss to high Army brass and demanded his team be outfitted with equipment in keeping with its ambition, its 400-plus missions beyond the wire.

Henkel got his humvees their additional, and flame-suppressant, protection before Henkel’s mid-deployment leave. And that protection saved the lives of the four people in the Humvee the IED blew up in Kandahar. “You protected them that whole time,” Heidi had said.

One of Henkel’s noncommissioned officers, Robert Benton, says Henkel had an almost “fatherly” sense of protection on tour, unique among captains.

But now that familial duty is the cause of Henkel’s depression. Because now he can’t get Kevin out. Now he can’t keep Kevin safe. As with his mid-deployment leave, now he’s not there when Kevin needs him most. The despair grows worse, and not even Heidi Henkel can reach him.

Jeff Long tries. Long was one of Henkel’s soldiers; in fact, one of the men in the humvee the day the IED blew up. Long suffered

80 percent burns on his body but all these years later he’s fully recovered and working as a cop.

He phones Henkel not long after Kevin’s first despairing messages from Kabul. They both know Kevin had applied over a decade ago for something called a Special Immigration Visa. This would give him, due to his service to the U.S. military, a new life in America. But the Trump administration’s Muslim ban and then the xenophobic fear of people with brown skin and names like Ahmad Khalid Siddiqi entering the U.S. meant Kevin’s SIV application was refused. And not once, or twice, but a third time just weeks ago.

If the U.S. government won’t formally allow Kevin to enter, Henkel says, what can veterans like Long and Henkel do?

“Let’s try,” Long says. “Let’s just try to get him out.”

Something in the way Long says it — imploring him to be the motivated team leader one last time — awakens Henkel. The war is over, the war is lost, but if they can get Kevin out, all will not be.

“I’ll do whatever I can,” Henkel says to Long.

THERE ARE ALMOST too many people to kill. Under the Taliban’s new reign, the Talibs have to keep moving to find all the infidels. The Talibs with the sheet of paper asking about Ahmad Khalid Siddiqi leave to go on the hunt for other traitors, in other neighborhoods, with the promise to return later.

Peeking outside their windows, Khalid tells Horia that because the Talibs are after him, he’ll hide separately from her and the kids. He tells her to leave with the four children to her father’s home in Kabul.

ONE LANDLADY BACKED OUT OF LEASING A HOME TO KHALID AND HIS FAMILY BECAUSE SHE WORRIED THAT THE TALIBAN MIGHT BLOW UP THE RESIDENCE — IN SUBURBAN DENVER.

He’ll be in touch.

When Khalid emerges from the apartment building, his head once more wrapped in his scarf so only the eyes show, he goes first for his uncle’s house. Khalid stays a few hours before moving onto his father’s. A routine develops. A new safe house every three to five hours.

He must keep moving. He must keep his wits about him. A colleague at the United Nations will later say more remarkable than Khalid interpreting and shaping the story of Afghanistan is the way he reveals his intelligence. “He has deep, deep, deep insights” into the human condition, the colleague says. Khalid’s life has been occupation or war. By the time of Kabul’s collapse, then, he carries an acumen about humanity most people never develop. He moves to a different safe house whenever his spidey sense — informed by chatter he hears on the street or some urge he feels within — tells him to.

This wiliness complements a separate intelligence, too. Because Khalid’s childhood was the Soviet invasion and Afghanistan’s civil wars, his grandfather helped to raise him when his parents couldn’t. Khalid’s grandfather had been a federal judge before the Soviet takeover in 1979. He had a keen mind. When the formal education system collapsed as the country did, Khalid’s grandfather impressed upon a young Khalid the imperative to read. It will free your mind and liberate your future, he told Khalid. Khalid moved through book after book, in Dari, in Pashto and eventually in English. Khalid came to love what his grandfather did: the poetry of Rumi, the 13th-century Persian poet and Islamic scholar. Lines like “You were born with wings/Why prefer to crawl through life?” were not only beautiful

but profound to him.

The aspiration within them led Khalid to translate for the Americans after 9/11 and, just as important, drew more Westerners to him. Be they Army captains like Scott Henkel or United Nation careerists, these people saw in Ahmad Khalid Siddiqi an ambition for life greater than his surroundings and an intelligence to rise above them.

That’s why they were as loyal to him as he was to them. That’s why, now, with Kabul descending into a nightmare, he can call his contacts from around the world. Career U.S. diplomat Jim DeHart, charged with helping to get Americans out of Afghanistan. Veterans like Scott Henkel. Europeans who know British special forces in Kabul.

The 16th of August becomes the 17th and then the 18th and every message to Khalid becomes the same.

If you and your family can get to the airport, we can help you get onto a flight.

But the airport is in the same neighborhood as Khalid’s apartment, where Talibs continue to look for him. The airport is also a series of Taliban checkpoints leading up to its gates. Stories surface of pregnant Afghan women beaten with chains or Afghan men burned alive just outside the U.S.-established perimeter of the airport, where Marines and Special Forces attempt to evacuate all Americans before the August 30th deadline.

Day after sweltering day, Khalid sneaks from his hideouts and sees checkpoints and more chaos close to the airport. Thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people begging for seats on the dozens of remaining flights out. They walk around and sometimes over the bodies of certain “traitors,” shot dead and bloating in the August sun.

In his 20 years of service, Khalid has never witnessed anything like it. He tries to remain calm for Horia, who grows ever more concerned when she calls and worries they won’t find a way out.

He tells her they will.

He carries a pistol with him though. The truth is, it’s getting worse every day. The truth is, he won’t be able to hide forever. He has to consider all options.

He settles on a contingency, one as ruthless as it is brilliant. It’s a plan he shares with no one.

If he is found, he will take his gun and unload. If there are more Talibs than there are bullets in his chamber, he will ensure his family is never discovered.

He will save the last bullet for himself.

WITH SO LITTLE time before the Americans in the country leave Afghanistan with any wartime allies they can evacuate, every moment becomes a question Scott and Heidi Henkel must answer.

What else can we do right now?

They can phone members of Congress. They call their representative in suburban Denver, Joe Neguse. They call Congressman Jason Crow, an Afghan war vet serving a district in the Denver metropolitan area. They contact senators, diplomats, anyone and everyone at all hours of the day and always sharing the story of Kevin. How Scott Henkel armed Kevin with his own AK-47 during their tour. How often Kevin fired it. How Kevin once threw Afghan National Army soldiers fleeing a battle scene back into the flatbed of a truck alongside him, so that they all could fight as he did.

These stories emphasizing his service — and these just from Henkel’s tour — also relay Kevin’s need to get out of Afghanistan:

The Henkels know that the Taliban knows these stories too. Elected officials in the States and diplomats across the world assure the Henkels that Kevin’s name has moved onto a U.S. Embassy database of people to evacuate from Kabul.

This assurance means little, though. Scott and Heidi watch the news from Kabul and the whole of the country looks like it’s fleeing. Afghans so desperate they literally break onto the tarmac at the Kabul airport and climb onto the wings of one departing plane.

“We are doing a massive disservice to our brothers,” Henkel thinks.

On Facebook, on Instagram, in group chats on WhatsApp, Afghan war vets gather to say how this evacuation is a sham. If this had been a military operation instead of a civilian one, if this had been overseen by the Army, Navy and Air Force instead of the State Department, if the U.S. had evacuated from the military base in Bagram instead of the commercial and now chaotic one in Kabul, “Everyone would get out,” Henkel says. The evac is so broken it’s falling to the military to salvage it anyway. Scott and Heidi watch as the message boards and group chats morph into maps of the Kabul airport and logistics of how to evacuate brothers in arms — every vet has his Kevin — and rumors of what will happen once these Afghans make their approach on the airport’s gates. Scott and Heidi spend days trying

to suss out who has helpful information to share, and who on the ground in Kabul can get to Kevin.

No one can.

They relay that message back. “I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die,” Kevin says in response to the Henkels. To the Henkels he talks about his anxiety of being separated from his family, his fear of endangering someone else when he moves to a different safe house, his despair of his nation falling apart and dying alongside it and never fulfilling the dream he and Scott have talked about for 15 years, of their families mingling together in America, breaking bread together in America.

Within the week of Kabul’s fall, Fox News producers contact the Henkels and ask if they would share their and Kevin’s story.

Neither Scott nor Heidi watch Fox, but they see this appearance as their last shot at Kevin’s freedom. Via satellite from a Denver television station, Scott and Heidi appear on “Fox and Friends” on Sunday morning, August 22. Kevin is “somebody who I trusted with my life. … He has earned his freedom,” Scott says.

“I have a unique view, I understand also what it’s like to be a military wife,” Heidi says. “I feel heartbreak for my husband and also heartbreak for Kevin’s wife, knowing that she’s also scared for Kevin.”

“We have no time,” Scott says. “The Taliban is all over the streets. They’re going door to door … looking for Kevin. … We demand action. We must have action now from our elected officials.”

On the drive home, still in bleary shock from a national TV appearance, Scott and Heidi get an email from a former U.S. Special Forces operative.

He’s seen them on Fox. He says he has a team on the ground in Kabul.

He says he can get Kevin out of Afghanistan.

HOURS LATER, A man who calls himself Hassan contacts Khalid. He does not give a last name. He says he’s aligned with a group of Special Forces who worked alongside Khalid in Afghanistan in 2004.

“Never tell anyone we contacted you,” Hassan says. “Go home. Grab your kids. Grab a backpack. Head to the airport.”

The conversation ends.

Is this legit?

Khalid messages the Henkels. Scott says to “trust” this man. The Henkels have just heard from a Special Forces operative in the States.

Khalid also knows that a former colleague at the U.N. with separate contacts within the Special Forces world has been working on his behalf.

Khalid and his contact within the U.N. next join a WhatsApp group Hassan creates, alongside three other names.

Khalid next sees a map of the Kabul airport. Hassan tells him the destination is the Abbey Gate, to the airport’s southeast, controlled by the American Marines and Special Forces.

To get to Abbey Gate, Khalid and his family must get through a Taliban checkpoint. Hassan says his contacts will meet the Siddiqi family at Abbey Gate at 8:10 p.m. By that point, Hassan will also provide to Khalid via WhatsApp the Special Immigration Visas he and his family need to board a flight. These are the same visas Khalid has requested for the last 10 years and been refused by the U.S. government. In the next few hours, Hassan says, these visas will be approved.

The whole trip, in other words, seems to be magical thinking. How will this work? He messages the Henkels how uncertain he is.

“Stay strong,” Heidi writes back. “Hug your little ones for me and tell them Aunt Heidi and Uncle Scott love them. … Hugs to you and your wife, too.”

This is, as he and Scott discuss, Khalid’s “one shot” at freedom.

He picks up his wife and family from their safe house. In their low-profile Toyota Corolla, and in traditional Afghan clothes, the Siddiqis hit the road at 5:30 p.m. The trip to the airport normally takes 10 minutes.

With tens of thousands of people crowding the streets, it takes hours.

When Khalid reaches the Taliban

HEIDI AND SCOTT HENKEL AT HOME IN COLORADO.

checkpoint, he tries, as always, to stay calm. He has hidden his family’s passports and other necessary paperwork within a secret pocket in his backpack. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if the Taliban search his phone.

A Talib motions to him to roll down his window.

“Where are you going?” the Talib asks. Khalid’s whole life has been stories, so Khalid breathes out and relays another. “Our house is here but because of all these people” — the chaos around them — “we want to move. We want to get out of this place.”

The Talib nods: There are too many people around. Should he stop the flow of traffic to search this one family in this one Toyota Corolla?

The Talib lets them through. Khalid exhales.

Then Hassan calls.

His unit is rescuing another family. Can Khalid head to a separate location? It would mean going back through the same Taliban checkpoint Khalid just passed. What?!

But Khalid does it. He has no choice.

“Hey, hey. Where are you going?” the Talib at the checkpoint asks.

“I forgot something. I have to go back.”

The Talib looks suspicious, but lets the Siddiqis pass through again.

As soon as Khalid is on the other side, Hassan phones again. Now Khalid needs to go back to Abbey Gate.

“Are you trying to get me killed?!” Khalid screams.

Hassan says the new location — too many people already there. These rescues are fluid situations and it’ll be better at Abbey Gate.

By the time he has backed the car around out of the Talibs’ sight lines and reentered the flow of traffic, Khalid is convinced the Talibs will search the car. “Why me?” he thinks.

When he’s back at the checkpoint, he shows none of this despair. Just motions with his thumb that he’s good, that he’s picked up what he needs. Hundreds of cars stretch behind him and thousands of people pack the streets. A handful of guards

watch everyone here, as dusk approaches.

Through the grace of Allah, Khalid passes through again. They park the car and head out on foot.

Now it’s nearly 8:10 p.m. Now those thousands of people streaming through present a new obstacle, on this side of the checkpoint. They stand in the way of Khalid and his family reaching Abbey Gate.

The line toward it is perhaps 600 meters long and packed with thousands of people.

To the west of Abbey Gate is a long fortified wall with barbed wire overhead. But to the west of this wall, down beneath it, Khalid sees a sewage canal. This sewage

canal leads all the way to Abbey Gate, too. Should he?

He tells Horia to wait here with the kids.

He jumps in the sewage canal. The sludge comes up to his chest and the smell gags him. He keeps his phone in his hand high above him and starts moving through the river of excrement.

Some of the Afghans seem amazed at Khalid’s desperation. Some see him as clever.

A few others jump in.

Khalid focuses only on the Marines in the distance.

It’s tough going. Uneven surfaces

THOUGH KHALID AND HIS FAMILY ARE SAFE IN COLORADO, LIFE AS A REFUGEE IS FILLED WITH ENDLESS CHALLENGES. “I’M THIS CLOSE TO MAYBE GOING BACK TO KABUL,” HE SAYS.

BRING THEM ALL HERE, SCOTT HENKEL AND THOUSANDS OF VETS LIKE HIM SAY, THROUGH A BILL NOW BEFORE CONGRESS, THE AFGHAN ADJUSTMENT ACT, WHICH SEEKS TO EVACUATE THE 200,000 REMAINING WARTIME INTERPRETERS AND SOLDIERS.

underneath. He slips and nearly falls many times. He’s also exhausted. He hasn’t slept since August 15th.

But he wades on, through urine and feces and trash.

It’s nearly dark when he reaches the Marines.

“Where are you going?” one barks.

“I work for you guys!” Khalid shouts back.

The Marine doesn’t believe it.

Khalid phones Hassan, and ultimately Khalid hands the Marine his phone so the Marine may speak with Hassan directly. This Marine then retrieves his commanding officer inside.

Go back and get your family, the Marines say.

Khalid does. He wades back through the river of poop. He puts his oldest daughter on his shoulder and then heads back toward the Marines. They take her and Khalid walks back through the feces for the next child.

On and on until it’s pitch black and he at last holds out his hand so Horia can step down into the sewage. She does, wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Together they wade to the Marines.

When they reach them and the Marines hoist the couple up, Khalid asks for his phone.

His first message is to Scott Henkel.

“Sir, I’m across,” he types.

IT’S MID-MORNING IN Denver and Scott Henkel has returned from a trip to the grocery store when he sees the message from Kevin.

A knot of tension dissolves in his chest. He has to sit down in a chair.

His son Connor unpacks groceries and looks over. “Dad, are you OK?

“Buddy,” Scott says, “I’m better than I’ve been in a long time.”

THEY WOULD HAVE that big shared meal. The Siddiqis would even settle in a home minutes from the Henkels, with no rent for a year, thanks in part to Heidi’s fundraising efforts in the greater Denver area. But to tell a story rooted in Afghanistan is to expect no bow-tied Hollywood ending. First off, there are too many other stories, too many other Kevins. Over 200,000 wartime allies have been left behind in Afghanistan. Left for slaughter, for something like genocide. “My friends shot dead,” Khalid says in a recent interview, his eyes welling with tears.

Survivor’s guilt is as real as America’s ongoing fear of Ahmad Khalid Siddiqi. One landlady backed out of leasing a home to him and his family because she worried that the Taliban might blow up the residence — in suburban Denver. She’s not the only ignorant American. Despite the professional headshot the Henkels arranged and a resume which shows Khalid working as the CEO of contracting firms aligned with the U.N. or Afghan military, overseeing a staff of 200 and with some project-based budgets over $200 million alone, Khalid can find only menial work here. Jobs well beneath his expertise. For the whole of his adult life, he shaped his story and now, “I feel like I got stuck in a situation,” Khalid says. “I’m this close to maybe going back to Kabul.”

“There’s no Afghanistan to go back to,” Scott says in a recent interview. “And I’ve told him that multiple times.”

Through red eyes, Scott sees his friend suffer and weigh a return to a place that only exists in Khalid’s mind. In some sense,

Khalid is still walking through that sewage canal. Undignified work, culture shock for his and Horia’s children, the memories of 20 years of war on a loop in his head.

What do we owe Khalid?

Scott Henkel has posed this question a lot over the last two years. We owe him “empathy,” Henkel says. After the collapse of Kabul, the relief of America, sure, but “starting from absolute zero. No Social Security card. No credit. No money.”

We owe Khalid and people like him more than that, too, he argues. They stood beside Scott and other U.S. troops when American leaders wouldn’t. Distracted by a second front in Iraq, uncertain what winning in Afghanistan even looked like — the irresponsibility of that, the thoughtlessness, it grates on Henkel. Two decades and trillions of dollars and millions of affected lives and now one endless question.

For what?

Scott Henkel thinks he has an answer. “Bring them here,” he says.

The wartime allies who remain in Afghanistan, and still hide from the Taliban — evacuate them as we evacuated our Vietnamese allies after Saigon fell. Bring them here and help them as we did those boat people in the ’70s, and watch as Afghans thrive as Vietnamese have. Bring them all here, Scott Henkel and thousands of vets like him say, through a bill now before Congress, the Afghan Adjustment Act, which seeks to evacuate to the U.S. the 200,000 remaining wartime interpreters and soldiers and their families.

Because that is what we owe them: The respect they gave us. The trust they gave us.

“Bring them here,” Scott Henkel says, and watch, after two decades of war, as a peaceful and shared story unspools.

AI PROMISES TO REMAKE THE WORLD. IN MANY WAYS, IT ALREADY HAS. DO WE LIKE WHAT WE’VE CREATED?

N

THE OPENING SCENES OF WALT DISNEY’S

“PINOCCHIO,” GEPPETTO, A LONELY WOODCARVER, PUTS THE FINISHING TOUCHES ON THE EPONYMOUS MARIONETTE PUPPET, WISHING THAT IT MIGHT — HE MIGHT — COME TO LIFE.

Geppetto’s wish is granted, and chaos ensues. Despite a wise cricket standing in as an acting guide to better consciousness, Pinocchio learns as he goes, often going the way of danger and trouble. Man and puppet are reunited in the belly of a monster, tasked with saving themselves — and, perhaps, one other — in a quest to become “real.”

As artificial intelligence becomes more present in our lives, have we found ourselves in the belly of a monster? Or are we still at the part of the story where we marvel at our handiwork and fall asleep wishing for more?

One thing we know for certain is that AI isn’t just the stuff of lore anymore. Pandora’s box is open. Everywhere you look or click, there are headlines. There are social media posts. There are algorithms bringing us headlines describing the AI issues we’re trying to talk about. Some might say it feels like an invasion. Maybe it’s what the myths, stories and Hollywood warned us about. And yet we created the invasion ourselves. AI isn’t the first time we’ve been promised

Story by Deseret Magazine staff

Opening illustration by Harry Campbell Other art: Midjourney & Dall-e AI, generated with very human prompts

that technology is going to make things easier, so it’s OK to harbor skepticism this time around. Technology has a tendency to outpace our understanding of it, and cultural convention encourages us to create, utilize said creation and then figure out the consequences later. But what if we can learn from the past?

There are big, philosophical questions billowing around AI right now. Can or will machines become sentient? Could they replace humans? Will our souls be distinguished from machines or lost to them? But through the culling of these pages, we found that the bigger question may be: Will we allow ourselves to find out? The only way to know the answers to our biggest questions is to move forward with developing this technology … or not. Right now, we are at a crossroads where humanity can draw lines in the sand, morally and legislatively. AI is an undeniable force in the global human experience. And it’s not on its way. It’s here. This is the time to question. To explore. To learn. And to decide — perhaps not so much what AI is, but what it isn’t.

Living in a world of AI

Artificial intelligence isn’t a new technology that — seemingly out of nowhere — makes it possible for machines to think and do the work of humans. In reality, AI has been around for decades in the form of machine learning.

That learning process allows a computer to analyze data sets, such as images or phrases, and observe patterns to predict what the expected outcome will be in a new scenario.

Carolyn Penstein Rose, professor of language technologies and human-computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the Generative AI Innovation Incubator, says that machine learning hasn’t allowed AI to completely mimic human learning, but “that doesn’t mean that it can’t do something useful; it’s just that doing something useful doesn’t require human intelligence.”

Most people around the globe are already familiar with (or using) AI to some degree. It’s present in the social media algorithms that give you a new recipe for dinner, the facial recognition technology that opens your phone and the targeted ads that suggest the perfect gift for your kid’s birthday. Regina Barzilay, distinguished professor at the MIT School of Engineering for AI and Health in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, points out that “there is a lot of AI in various industries that we just don’t even see. They are just part of the technology we are provided with.”

In the world of AI, everything is a data point. “So for example, Google, they serve a lot of ads. ... Every time someone clicks or doesn’t click, that’s a data point,” says David Wingate, associate professor of computer science at Brigham Young University. Those data points are what artificial intelligence uses in order to create better apps or better recommendations in an effort to improve a user’s experience. So when we define AI, we are not talking about a new technology that thinks for itself. It’s a tool

that’s been in development for decades and it allows computers to observe patterns and learn from them. “You can use AI to help and to make our life better, to solve problems that we cannot solve for ourselves. But on the other hand, it can also result in very bad outcomes,” says Barzilay. “So the question that we, as a society, need to decide is what are appropriate uses of AI? And what is inappropriate?”

THABATA NUNES DE FREITAS

The human labor powering AI

For a decade, Venezuela has endured ceaseless financial turmoil. The often-desperate state of affairs has made the South American nation an ideal recruiting ground for a type of labor seldom discussed amid the explosion of generative AIs like ChatGPT and DALL-E: A phenomenon called “ghost work.” For DALL-E to understand what a cat is, it needs to parse thousands of images of cats through a process called “deep learning.” This process is made possible by ghost workers, who manually label those pictures of cats, among many other things. They’re often based in the “global south” — places like Venezuela, India and Pakistan, as well as in rural America. Ghost work is often unregulated and unguaranteed, which makes it ripe for exploitation.

In Kenya, a Time magazine investigation found the company behind ChatGPT paid laborers less than $2 per hour to sift through harmful imagery in order to purge it from the platform. “My knee-jerk response to (that investigation) is, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t use AI,’” says Angela Wentz Faulconer, an assistant professor of philosophy at Brigham Young University. Her expertise is medical ethics, and she sees parallels. Consider the moral implications of selling a kidney; how many people would do it if there are other ways to make impactful amounts of money? In the case of ghost

work, that leads her to conclude that the work in itself, however horrible, is not morally wrong. The difficulty comes in that no one should be in a position where they do not freely consent to doing the work. And are the people in Venezuela really free to choose ghost work?

Ghost workers have been around since at least the turn of the millenium, when a nascent Amazon hired them to help sort the information it had scraped from the web about books. Newer products like ChatGPT, Julian Posada, a member of Yale Lake School’s Information Society Project, says, “would not be possible” without ghost workers. Saiph Savage, director of Northeastern University’s Civic AI Lab, is trying to build tools to help improve their working conditions while also promoting labeling infrastructure so that AI users can better understand how the technology really works — and how it’s made. “The platforms have freedom in being able to manipulate and harm workers,” she says, because there’s no regulatory infrastructure. “You have this big industry pushing a narrative that AI is mystical, that it’s an existential risk, and that we should direct more funding toward that, instead of paying people more,” Posada adds. “That’s what I think people should reflect on.”

ETHAN BAUER

GEOFFREY HINTON:

The ‘Godfather of AI’ looks back on his life’s work

He’s been called a godfather of artificial intelligence, but Geoffrey Hinton has mixed feelings now about his life’s work, which focused on machine learning and neural networks, among related fields.

Neural networks in computer systems are based on how the human brain learns, allowing deep learning that is layered and builds on experience. In 2018, Hinton shared Turing Award honors — a crowning achievement in the computer science world — with two others for work on computer deep learning. Artificial intelligence has improved dramatically in part because of his work.

The cognitive psychologist and computer scientist quit Google Brain this year, citing both his age (75) and the desire to be able to speak freely about the dangers he believes AI run amok could pose. “I’ve come to the conclusion that the kind of intelligence we’re developing is very different from the intelligence we have,” he recently told BBC.

“So it’s as if you had 10,000 people and whenever one person learned something, everybody automatically knew it. And that’s how the chatbots can know so much more than any one person.”

In other interviews, he has expressed concerns that the result of AI-focused competition between Microsoft, which incorporated a chatbot into its Bing search engine, and Google could be harmful — an unstoppable competition that could lead to an internet flooded with fake images, videos and text, what’s true being obscured. “I was not convinced we would always be in control, but I thought it would be 50 to 100 years before digital intelligence was smarter than us,” Hinton told Deseret. The recent dramatic pace of AI development has shortened that timeline.

He’s also openly worried about what could happen with AI as a tool for unscrupulous people. Hinton, in fact, is the first of more than 180 signers of a one-sentence statement tech and other leaders issued about AI’s potential harms: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

__LOIS M. COLLINS

With AI advancements reaching the general public and threatening to upend entire industries, the U.S. is lagging behind the rest of the world when it comes to regulating Big Tech and AI

Prompt:_robot

HOW WE GOT HERE

1637

French philosopher René Descartes publishes the seminal epistemological work “Discourse on Method.” It contains his famous phrase, “I think, therefore I am.” For possibly the first time in philosophical history, Descartes grapples with the idea of artificial intelligence or “automata.”

1726

The idea of artificial intelligence enters the popular imagination thanks to Irish satirist Jonathan Swift and the publication of “Gulliver’s Travels,” featuring “the engine,” a sort of super-computer that

allows “the most ignorant person, at a reasonable charge, and with a little bodily labor, (to) write books … without the least assistance from genius or study.”

1921

Czech playwright Karel Čapek introduces the world to the word “robot” in his play, “Rossum’s Universal Robots,” about a factory that produces replicant humans.

What’s the problem with humans making AI?

Sen. Richard Blumenthal opened the first judiciary hearing for Oversight of Artificial Intelligence in May with a party trick. He stared ahead, into the Capitol chamber, at witnesses that included AI pioneers and scholars, then spoke. But he never opened his mouth.

“We have seen how algorithmic biases can perpetuate discrimination and prejudice, and how the lack of transparency can undermine public trust,” he said, as if telepathically, while swallowing a smirk. “This is not the future we want.”

After fooling most people in the room, the Connecticut Democrat revealed his remarks were not his own, but a script courtesy of ChatGPT. The source of his disembodied voice was a cloning software trained to mimic the senator’s cadence. The scene was made to sound trustworthy. Reliable. But it wasn’t. That was the problem he had set out to address. Can flawed humans create flawless AI systems?

Algorithms and technologies that make actions like imitating politicians possible

are crafted by humans, trained by humans, used by humans. Which means they can also regurgitate human biases. As the National Institute of Standards and Technology demonstrated in a 2022 report with a proverbial illustration of an iceberg, statistical and computational biases — errors caused by skewed math or insufficient data — make up only some (the tip) of biases found in AI. The majority come from the humans and institutions behind the technology. “Part of the issue here is that it’s difficult to disentangle the biases in the AI system from the systemic biases in society,” says Cynthia Rudin, a computer science and engineering professor who directs the Interpretable Machine Learning Lab at Duke University. She received the most prestigious AI award — the Squirrel AI Award for Artificial Intelligence for the Benefit of Humanity — last year. Rudin points out some algorithms have already been found to carry human faults. Amazon’s AI recruitment tool discriminated against women applicants. The Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, an assessment tool used in courtroom sentencing, misclassified Black defendants as high risk about twice as often as their white counterparts. Social media algorithms amplified hate

speech in Myanmar that helped fuel genocide. And the risks, already mighty, may continue to compound. A statement published by the Center for AI Safety in May, signed by hundreds of scientists, professors and politicians (including Geoffrey Hinton, as reported), suggests flawed technology could even prompt human extinction. Yet there is an opportunity for course correction. Scientists are beginning to stray from “black box” models — algorithms with processes that cannot be traced or understood by humans — toward more interpretable and controllable methods. “There were no centers for AI safety or AI equity at all until recently,” Rudin says. “It used to be a free-for-all where companies could impose black box models with almost no oversight for high-stakes decisions. We’ve definitely wised up since then.”

We know AI that rivals human intelligence is possible. We know the risks associated with it. What remains unclear is whether we can create technology that understands fairness and objectivity better than we do, as well as what we will chance to get there. As Stephen Hawking said in 2016: “In short, the rise of powerful AI will be either the best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity. We do not yet know which.”

NATALIA GALICZA

1949

American computer scientist Edmund Berkeley publishes “Giant Brains, or Machines that Think,” which explores the emerging field of “mechanical brains.” Echoing Descartes, Berkeley concludes, “A machine, therefore, can think.”

1950

British mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing publishes “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” A key idea in the book is “the imitation game” — a scenario in which a person and a machine are both interviewed by an interrogator, whose job is to determine which is man and

Prompt:_alan turing

which is machine. This became known as the “Turing test.”

1964

Daniel Bobrow, a Ph.D. student at MIT, publishes his thesis: A computer program called STUDENT, which can solve high school-level algebra word problems.

1966

MIT computer science professor Joseph Weizenbaum creates ELIZA, a chatbot therapist. Many people, he observed at the time, had trouble accepting that they were not, in fact, interacting with a human.

1968

Stanley Kubrick’s pioneering sci-fi film, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” introduces the world to Hal, a computer with superintelligence designed to assist a team of human astronauts on a space voyage. Hal deduces that it must kill the human crew in order to give the mission its greatest chance of success. One astronaut

DATA MINING: How much do we really understand?

We talk a lot about AI — the numbers show it.

Interest in AI has more than doubled since 2017.

Googling AI yields over 10 billion results.

In 2010, around 90,000 articles about AI were published. By 2021, that number jumped to 293,480.

But as we attempt to learn about it, it is also learning about us — through data points acquired in email spam filters, GPS navigation systems, online recommendations and even the ads we don’t click on.

A poll from Pew Research conducted last year asked Americans how they felt about the increased use of AI in daily life. It seems that we’re not sure how we feel.

How do Americans feel about increased used of AI: 18%: more excited than concerned 37%: more concerned than excited 45%: equally excited and concerned

ALEXANDRA RAIN

Prompt:_hal, 2001

manages to defy Hal’s murderous plan and shuts it down, even as Hal pleads with him: “I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it.”

ANDREW YANG: A forward party leader calls for a halt

When tech industry experts launched a letter to get companies working on artificial intelligence to pause so regulation can catch up, some big names signed. They included Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, Tesla and the chairman of X (formerly Twitter); Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple; and Andrew Yang, the tech-savvy former presidential candidate and co-chair of the Forward Party.

The letter cited “widely-endorsed Asilomar Principles,” which note: “Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on earth and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources.”

Yang, in particular, has been outspoken on his concerns. “The development of AI will bring many unforeseen consequences and our institutions are largely unprepared,” he told Deseret in an interview conducted on X. “These tools are very powerful and in the

1970s

AI enters what scholars call an “AI winter,” in which mainstream sentiment toward the technology sours as promises of its potential are left unfulfilled.

1973

British mathematician James Lighthill authors “Artificial Intelligence: A General Survey,” concluding that “in no part of the field have the discoveries made so far produced the major impact that was then promised.” The British government defunds AI research.

wrong hands could lead to rampant identity theft and other problems.”

Some AI industry leaders have promised voluntary safeguards. Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI (the maker of ChatGPT) promised the White House they’d identify images AI created. Some of those same companies (along with others) have formed the Frontier Model Forum, described by The Washington Post as seeking to “advance AI safety research and technical evaluations” to manage emerging, increasingly powerful AI. But Yang is doubtful this could be a meaningful solution. “Companies self-regulating is not a viable approach in an environment that will reward competition and adoption,” he says.

He supports creating “an agency dedicated solely to AI and a Cabinet-level official similarly dedicated.” Without oversight, “photos, videos, audio recordings — all of them can be reproduced and replicated by AI,” which can lead to widespread issues like this summer’s writers and actors strike in Hollywood. It’s an ironic example, as Yang warns that without regulation, the consequences could look a lot like a silver screen script. On Fox’s “Cavuto: Coast to Coast” he said that “science fiction-type scenarios are here with us.”

LMC

Prompt:_arnold schwarzenegger

1984

Arnold Schwarzenegger brings “The Terminator” to the silver screen, launching one of the most successful AI-centered franchises ever.

Prompt_jeff bezos_books

1994

Jeff Bezos founds Amazon, which begins by selling books on the World Wide Web. Since 1998, Amazon’s recommendation algorithms have been powered by AI

The politics of AI

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in May, Sen. John Kennedy questioned AI leaders on how the United States should attempt to regulate the industry. “This is your chance, folks, to tell us how to get this right,” Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, said. “Talk in plain English and tell us what rules to implement.”

With AI advancements reaching the general public and threatening to upend entire industries, the U.S. is lagging behind the rest of the world when it comes to regulating Big Tech and AI. Currently, there is no comprehensive federal legislation dedicated solely to AI regulation.

That isn’t to say there are no levers in place — it’s just more of a hodgepodge of sector-specific laws. Self-driving cars would fall under the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, for example. Or if AI was being used in relation to an oil pipeline, it would be the Department of Energy.

The recently released White House Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights — which outlines a set of principles to help guide the design and use of artificial intelligence — may signal government action to come. Seven leading AI companies (including Google and Meta) also agreed to voluntary safeguards on the technology’s development at

2009

Facebook begins using algorithms to sort posts appearing in users’ feeds, rather than presenting them chronologically.

2011

Siri, the first digital virtual assistant, is released. Apple quickly buys the rights and ushers in an era of intense competition in the digital virtual assistant marketplace — from Google Now to Microsoft’s Cortana to Amazon’s Alexa.

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

a meeting with President Joe Biden in July.

But Frank Pasquale thinks it could just amount to a PR move for the companies. A professor at Cornell University, he also currently serves on the U.S. National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee, which advises the president.

“The question becomes: Where is the penalty if the companies deviate? As soon as it becomes a compelling business proposition to defect, they probably will and we’re back to square one,” Pasquale says. “The real answer here is regulation by established agencies rather than a voluntary commitment.”

U.S. reluctance to regulate Big Tech is nothing new. “The U.S., for better or worse, tends to take a pretty hands-off approach to business except in certain categories when it gets big enough that it requires notice,” says Steven M. Bellovin, a distinguished professor of computer science at Columbia University and a public policy expert. “It’s a

particularity of the American economic and cultural legal system.”

In 1990, the Federal Trade Commission first opened an investigation into Microsoft. A decade later, a federal court ruled the company engaged in unlawful monopolization. So Microsoft simply amended some of its business practices. More recently, a handful of bills attempting to curb the anticompetitive business practices of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google ultimately failed last year.

Could things be different with AI? Bellovin is doubtful. Unlike stem cell research or election reform, legislation against big tech has implications for an industry that contributed nearly two trillion U.S. dollars to the country’s GDP in 2022. “A push against new regulations is seen as a huge economic driver. Most of the big tech companies are American,” Bellovin says. “Why kill the goose that lays the golden egg?”

__JAMES WALKER

2011

IBM Watson, a computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language, beats all-time “Jeopardy!” greats Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, winning $1 million.

AI-centered cinema reaches an apex >>>

2013

The premiere of “Her,” in which Joaquin Phoenix’s character, Theodore Twombly, falls in love with an operating system voiced by Scarlett Johannson; in the end, the O.S. leaves Twombly.

2014

“Ex Machina” explores the more nefarious side of AI through an eccentric CEO, who has built an artificially intelligent robot named Ava. When an engineer is summoned to administer the Turing Test to Ava, she goes murderous

Prompt:_joaquin phoenix

DATA MINING:

Where are the women?

We know that data biases exist in AI, so how do these significant biases create wider gender gaps? A world already shaped by largely homogenous leadership is currently shaping another, with one study from the Journal of Global Health concluding that algorithms used in health care may not only reflect back inequities but may worsen them.

Female authors only account for 13.8% of AI research papers.

Facial recognition programs correctly recognized white males but failed to recognize dark-skinned women 20-34% of the time.

Genderify, an AI program, identified names with “Dr.” as a prefix as having a 75.9% likelihood of belonging to a male.

Women account for only 26% of data and AI professionals.

“We’re not at the level where we can ensure that our AI systems will always keep us safe.”

Google Translate demonstrates a default to male pronouns for CEO positions and STEM jobs, failing to reproduce an accurate distribution of professional women.

and absconds into the real world, blending into a crowd of people.

2015

“Avengers: Age of Ultron” leaves out any ambiguity, placing a rogue artificial intelligence as an unequivocal villain intent on destroying the world.

2014

A computer program simulating a 13-year-old Ukrainian boy, called Eugene Goostman, becomes the first AI to pass the Turing Test.

2014

The Associated Press begins publishing articles using Automated Insights, a company that could write up very basic stories about cut-and-dry news items like quarterly earnings reports or final scores in sports.

2017

On Nov. 6, Andrew Yang announces his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president. His platform centers around forthcoming technological advancements and the disruptions they will cause for workers and the economy.

Prompt:_andrew yang campaign

He argues for a policy of universal basic income to help American families make ends meet when their labor no longer would.

Is this the beginning? The end?

It’s both.

It’s a classic Hollywood plotline. Artificial intelligence becomes sentient and goes rogue — spelling disaster, or even human extinction. There’s “Blade Runner.” “Westworld.” “Ex Machina.” “I, Robot.” The list goes on.

Recent rapid advancements in generative AI — hat tip to ChatGPT, in particular — have thrust that idea into the limelight. Is AI the beginning of a new era of human evolution? Or could it actually threaten life as we know it?

Nisarg Shah, a professor of computer science at the University of Toronto who signed the industry open letter previously mentioned, is of two minds. “My view is that we don’t fully understand these AI systems yet. … Today, we’re not at the level where we can ensure that our AI systems will always keep us safe,” he says. This is where that “threat of extinction” that so many people are discussing comes into play: AI could soon be making more and more critical decisions — including at nuclear power plants — where a mistake could be so terrible that it’s irreversible. “There is a serious potential of AI doing something so terrible, not because it was trained to, but just because it kind of saw that as the right way forward. And because of the incorrect data that it was fed. Then it actually leads to

serious disaster.” This is where the fallibility of human creators (and our biases) can create unintended consequences.

But it’s also AI’s ability to improve our lives that should be under the microscope, adds Shah — from already automating routine tasks like booking flights and paying bills online to helping doctors diagnose diseases and offering treatments based on patient history. “(A) capable system is going to come with just as many benefits as potential harms. So the main goal is to keep the benefits without having those harms,” he says.

Professor Brent Mittelstadt, director of research at the University of Oxford’s Internet Institute, thinks that focusing on the existential risk of AI in the distant future may prevent us from addressing its disruptive dangers to society today — including mass surveillance, its potential for bias, and, particularly, the threat it poses for industry and replacing people’s jobs. “Every new technology tends to be disruptive,” he says. “It transforms existing jobs either by using the technology in tandem, or by making that job irrelevant. With AI, I think we will see both happen.”

And as for which industries will be impacted, few seem entirely safe.

A research report from Goldman Sachs predicts that AI systems could expose 300 million full-time jobs to automation worldwide. In the U.S., they estimate that roughly two-thirds of all occupations are also

“A push against new regulations is seen as a huge economic driver. Most of the big tech companies are American. ‘Why kill the goose that lays the golden egg?’”

exposed to some degree. Not even doctors are secure, to the chagrin of patients across the country.

Earlier this year, Google unveiled an AI medical diagnosis program that can diagnose medical conditions with incredible accuracy. A Swedish study this year from Lund University also found that an AI program could spot breast cancer at a “similar” accuracy of two radiologists.

Perhaps, then, the risk AI poses is more like Disney’s “Wall-E.” With AI taking our jobs and catering to our every whim, we slowly degenerate into helplessness, cocooned in a spaceship as the world below us turns into a desolate wasteland.

But what does ChatGPT think about all of this? Well, when asked a variety of questions as to whether it believes AI will turn out to be a positive or negative development in the history of humanity, one quote stands out: “AI is a tool created by humans, and its development and use are under human control.” __JW

2022

AI models using “deep learning” burst into the mainstream consciousness via platforms like DALL-E and ChatGPT.

One Google engineer (who was later fired) claims that the company’s AI has gained sentience.

2023

OpenAI releases GPT-4, the most powerful AI system ever released.

An open letter is signed by hundreds of the biggest names in tech, including Elon Musk, urging AI labs to pause the training of powerful

new systems for six months, saying that recent advances present “profound risks to

The “AI Spring” begins (arguably) >>>

NEITHER INFINITE, NOR BEYOND

PIXAR ANIMATION STUDIOS IS HAILED AS A HOLLYWOOD GOLDEN GOOSE. THAT COULD BE CHANGING

By Natalia Galicza | Illustration by Eliza Anderson

WHEN JOHN LASSETER STRODE ONSTAGE

at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to accept the 1996 Academy Award for special achievement, he carried with him a Buzz Lightyear action figure and a Woody doll. At the glass podium, he set the iconic spaceman and cowboy toys face down beside his Oscar, then described “Toy Story,” the world’s first computer-animated feature-length film, as a labor of love for his then-fledgling studio.

The director and Pixar executive spoke with a steady timbre indicative of someone aware he’d forever altered the course of entertainment. “‘Toy Story’ carries a human spirit that shines even brighter than its computerized glow,” he said before walking off stage and leaving, curiously, the award and toys behind on the podium. Soon, the characters, just as they do in the film, stirred to life on an enormous screen. Woody stood to thank the Academy with his trademark concoction of charm and arrogance; Buzz beamed his laser at the Oscar statue in a predictable attempt at heroism. The audience laughed and cheered as if the two were of flesh and blood. Such ardor might appear overdone in another context. Here, it risked understatement.

“Toy Story” reimagined what animation could be. It pioneered computer-generated features and proved the use of technology didn’t have to sacrifice storytelling or soul. “You can see the filmmakers are not talking down to the audience,” says Jake Friedman, an animation historian at New

York University and the Fashion Institute of Technology, of “Toy Story.” “There really are no child characters in the movie. They are all adult characters who have these quirks and their quirks can be summed up in a sentence or two. … These are all about human relationships people can relate to.” Walt Disney Studios helped produce the film in partnership with the newly minted Pixar, and it became the highest-grossing picture of 1995 — earning almost $400 million in worldwide ticket sales, worth about $800 million in present-day dollars. Nothing else quite like the film existed at the time, and its success signaled people wanted more. Disney forged an agreement to produce five additional movies with Pixar, an agreement that would later lead to an unprecedented repertoire of hits and Disney’s eventual purchase of the company. From its very first attempt, Pixar had evinced a novel approach to storytelling. Each subsequent creation would build upon that approach and rival it. At least ideally.

In nearly three decades since, Pixar has released a total of 27 features. Among them are titans like “Finding Nemo,” which revolutionized how the ocean is animated in cinema; “Up,” which struck such a chord with families that one Utah couple built their own Disney-authorized replica of the movie’s rainbow-hued house; and “WALL-E,” which secured recognition as one of the nation’s most important modern films by the Library of Congress. It is now expected of

Pixar that every one of its films will similarly resonate and produce hundreds of millions — sometimes billions — of dollars at the box office. The studio is lauded as the gold standard for animation, a level of praise last extended to the Disney of yore. But that golden standard now shows its first signs of tarnish.

Pixar’s latest release, “Elemental,” which premiered in June, is a romantic comedy about two personified beings of fire and water, a tale of diversity and acceptance that’s been interpreted as the studio’s take on an immigration story. The film endured the worst premiere day box-office numbers Pixar has ever seen. Of its $200 million budget, it earned back $44.5 million in global box-office sales on opening weekend. And Pixar’s previous film didn’t fare much better. Debuted in June 2022, “Lightyear,” a science fiction story about the fictional astronaut who inspired the Buzz Lightyear toy, barely broke even, grossing just under $227 million in ticket sales worldwide out of yet another $200 million budget. The downward slope could not have arrived at a more inopportune moment. Pixar, which refused a request to comment for this story, is still reeling from pandemic-induced theater closures that robbed its prior three films of proper screenings. These include Academy Award-winning productions that

topped the charts on Disney+, their home platform, yet failed to generate impressive ticket sales.

“The problem with the American animated feature, as opposed to a live action feature, is that we’re never allowed a small film. It has to be a blockbuster or all these execs are disappointed. … That’s why you have these $250 million disappointments,” says Tom Sito, a veteran animator whose 32 film credits include “The Lion King,” “Aladdin,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Little Mermaid.” Though pandemic and streaming woes are easily explained, Pixar’s most recent struggles occurred despite reopened theaters. The cratering earnings point to a possibility that the studio and its intended audience are growing apart. So far apart, it’s unclear whether the two can expect a reunion. “There was an old animator who worked on ‘Snow White’ who once told me the state of a studio is two flops from disaster,” Sito says. “One flop and they go ‘well, OK, we’ll learn from this.’ Second flop they go, ‘OK, time to reevaluate.’ And that means get your resume in order.”

Disney laid off 7,000 people the first half of this year, as part of a more than $5 billion companywide budget slash. For the first time in 10 years, the eliminated included Pixar employees. Among the 75 people let go were Angus MacLane and Galyn

“ELEMENTAL,” WHICH PREMIERED IN JUNE 2022, HAD THE WORST OPENING DAY BOX-OFFICE NUMBERS IN PIXAR’S HISTORY.

Susman, legacy studio employees who each played vital roles in the creation of “Lightyear” — MacLane as the director, Susman as the producer. Whether intentional or not, the decision to let go those who oversaw one of the studio’s latest disappointments sent a clear message: A new era for animation has emerged yet again. Though Pixar is no longer at the forefront.

PIXAR’S ORIGIN BEGINS with “Star Wars” creator George Lucas. The filmmaker launched a computer division of his production company Lucasfilm in 1979 with the intent of shepherding computer graphic tools into cinema. Lucas tasked computer scientist Ed Catmull to head the team, which later grew to include animators like Lasseter. In 1984, they animated the division’s first short film. The project, “The

ANIMATOR JOHN LASSETER AND COMPUTER SCIENTIST ED CATMULL, INSTRUMENTAL TO PIXAR’S EARLY SUCCESSES, ARE NO LONGER WITH THE STUDIO.

would carry their productions. Instead, the studio pursued heavy-handed themes of life, death and family. Catmull described Pixar’s mission in a 2008 issue of the Harvard Business Review as one “to build a studio that had the depth, robustness, and will to keep searching for the hard truths that preserve the confluence of forces necessary to create magic.” It helped that it did so largely outside of industry pressures, a privilege impossible without the financial resources offered through Disney’s partnership. But once a final change of hands took place, in 2006, when Jobs sold Pixar to Disney for $7.4 billion, it reshaped the studio’s entire foundation.

DISNEY

7,000 PEOPLE

Adventures of André & Wally B,” featured a mysterious baby blue biped of unknown species who runs from a vengeful bumblebee with a gargantuan stinger. The short film only amounts to a little more than a minute of silent content. It looks rudimentary compared to today’s standards, yet has all the hallmark characteristics of advanced animation: three-dimensional figures, hand-drawn textures, motion blur. But only when Steve Jobs purchased Lucas’ computer division in 1986 did the pursuit of compelling stories, more than technological advancement, materialize.

Jobs established Pixar as its own entity, but from the outset it collaborated with Disney to create CAPS, the Computer Animation Production System that made the industrywide switch from entirely hand-drawn to computer-generated films possible. But Pixar had other elements missing from Disney’s own animation studio.

Unlike the Disney princess films and other past feature-length hits, Pixar’s leadership decided no love stories or musicals

What had made Pixar successful, as told by its founding fathers, was the ability to operate independently of Disney’s oversight. Catmull recalls in his book “Creativity, Inc.” that Jobs sold the studio to Disney under CEO Bob Iger because he came to view Iger as “a man of action … he was willing to buck the knee-jerk, industry-wide trend to oppose distribution of entertainment content on the internet.” That, and an agreed-upon caveat: Lasseter and Catmull would head both Pixar and Disney’s animation studios, to ensure outright autonomy.

Though much has changed in the 20 years since the acquisition. “I think Pixar’s biggest problem, at least if they’re wanting a better box office, is they got totally handicapped by Disney,” says one Pixar layout artist who was let go during the recent layoffs. He spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid backlash, and added most employees are left in the dark about the inner workings of the Disney-Pixar relationship. “Pixar basically carried Disney throughout the pandemic. Animated content made by Pixar on Disney+ is viewed so much more than any other Disney product. So Disney pushed Pixar into doing a lot of Disney+ stuff,” he says. “We have no idea whether it’s Pixar management, or it’s Disney forcing it. We’re almost always stuck in limbo.”

When Iger announced the launch of Disney+ in 2019, a $3 billion venture, he called it “a bet on the future of this business.” The streaming service offered a home for

STARTING IN MAY 2023, INCLUDING LEGACY PIXAR EMPLOYEES WHO PLAYED VITAL ROLES IN THE CREATION OF “LIGHTYEAR.”

WHEN STEVE JOBS SOLD PIXAR TO DISNEY FOR $7.4 BILLION, IT RESHAPED THE STUDIO’S ENTIRE FOUNDATION.

Pixar productions that would otherwise have been held for years due to the pandemic. But it also taught audiences — particularly families — to count on streaming for a cost-effective viewing experience. Statista reports the percentage of Americans who preferred streaming movies to watching in theaters was 30 percent in pre-pandemic 2018, but skyrocketed to 56 percent by the summer of 2020. And to Pixar’s detriment, that preference shows staying power. Pixar’s current chief creative officer Pete Docter told Variety in June the studio has inadvertently “trained audiences that these films will be available … on Disney+. And it’s more expensive for a family of four to go to a theater when they know they can wait and it’ll come out on the platform.”

Even with pressure on Pixar to continue feeding the streaming service, Disney+ has lost more than 11 million subscribers this year alone. It’s only expected to become remotely profitable by the end of next year. And while Pixar remains a critical component, it’s safe to assume its current business model could soon become unfeasible. The studio releases about a film a year, each averaging a budget of around $200 million. But as recent box-office performances prove, streaming has overtaken theater screenings to the point where these films are barely profiting from ticket sales. More studio failures could mean less incentive to approve another big budget picture.

All this arrives as the studio is left to grapple with internal changes. The team that first charted out the course of the company no longer exists. Jobs died in 2011. Lasseter left Pixar in 2018 after facing allegations of inappropriate touching and Catmull retired soon after. As the studio’s new generation vies to find its voice, in an era when animation feels more competitive and diverse than ever, that voice, it seems, fails to register.

“It’s just become more and more unsettling for a lot of people at the studio,” the anonymous ex-employee says. Feelings of wariness and confusion, he attests, have become pervasive for current and former staff. Likely because there’s no clear solution in

sight. “It’s a struggle to diagnose truly what the biggest problem is with Pixar, because it’s not that the films look worse. It seems to be purely how the stories are speaking to people.”

BEYOND PROBLEMS POSED purely by the streaming age, Pixar’s recent films have fallen under harsh scrutiny for changes in themes and content. The last two releases, “Elemental” and “Lightyear,” were each picked apart by conservatives as alleged arbiters of “wokeness.” “Elemental” included Pixar’s first-ever nonbinary character and “Lightyear” featured a scene with a same-sex kiss. “Disney works to push a ‘not-at-all-secret gay agenda’ and seeks to add ‘queerness’ to its programming. … Parents should keep that in mind before deciding whether to take their kids to see ‘Lightyear,’” conservative pundit Ben Shapiro tweeted. “Children are not adults. What may be appropriate for adults is not appropriate for children. That this must be said demonstrates that our society is in a state of moral collapse.” Parents chimed in on Facebook, noting their “kids didn’t even recognize Buzz” and “nothing stays

original anymore.” “No child should watch this movie. Mine definitely won’t,” another commented. “Watched it with my kids and grandkids. We all hated it and were sorely disappointed.”

Some lump the nonbinary character and same-sex kiss together with the films’ lapse in financial success. This “get woke, go broke” mindset views companies that embrace progressive politics as alienating, charging them with virtue signaling — familiar ground in the culture wars that have consumed everything from beer advertising to curriculum bans in classrooms. So it’s no surprise when some on the right celebrate poor performances by progressive Pixar films, not in an America that’s this polarized. Pew Research Center reports the extent of this divide is exceptional when compared to other democracies.

Audiences are shifting in other ways, too. “I think today’s audiences, modern young audiences to be specific, are not as nostalgic about Pixar as millennials and Gen Xers who have been growing up on it for close to 30 years, and instead, they’re gravitating toward different types of animation, different studios, different brands,” says Shawn

“LIGHTYEAR,” PART OF THE “TOY STORY” FRANCHISE AND STARRING CHRIS EVANS (RIGHT), PREMIERED IN JUNE 2022 BUT FAILED TO CONNECT WITH SOME OF PIXAR’S TRADITIONAL FANBASE.

Robbins, chief analyst at Box Office Pro.

The first movie to surpass $1 billion in worldwide box-office sales this year, for example, was Universal Pictures and Illumination’s “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” (which, perhaps coincidentally, was venerated on the right for being “anti-woke” by casting a non-Italian to voice the Italian brother duo). “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” produced by Sony and Columbia Pictures, also became an out-of-the-gate blockbuster. The “Worth It or Woke?” website — which rates films on exactly the parameters you’d think it does — gave the movie about an Afro-Latino superhero an overall score of 81 percent, pointing to right-wing approval. For context, the same website rated “Elemental” an abysmal 39 percent. “For a long time, Pixar finely walked that balance of pushing the envelope creatively from a narrative standpoint and writing-wise but still being friendly enough to most kids,” Robbins says. “It was inevitable it would kind of run into an ebb and flow in their evolution as a studio as more competition started to come around.”

Barring politics and competition, there remains a question of quality. The commentariat is littered with ruminations ranging from lukewarm to frigid for the infamous “Lightyear” and “Elemental.” Even Pixar’s own Pete Docter has notes for “Lightyear.” He told The Wrap in February that the meta storyline about the fictional astronaut movie that inspired the Buzz Lightyear toy — rather than the toy itself — “asked too much of the audience.” Jessica Winter expressed a similar sentiment in her dissection of “Elemental” in The New Yorker, where she reduced some aspects of the film’s execution to “remedial echolalia.” It’s a love story, while also an immigration story, while also, in Winter’s view, a less thorough example of world-building. She suggests that Pixar themes have shifted from heavy-hitting to just confusing. And that shift eats away at the studio’s strengths, once defined by universal appeal and accessibility.

And yet, though “Elemental” failed to resonate on the day of its debut, it’s since sprouted legs. The modern take on

tearful and tactful storytelling recuperated in box-office sales by slowly crossing the threshold of $400 million in July. Those sales offer hope for the future of a studio that doubles as an animation bastion. At least one more original film is set to roll out next year, but if all else fails, earlier this year Pixar announced a fifth installment of the tried and true “Toy Story,” albeit without a release date.

When Woody and Buzz Lightyear accepted their first collective Academy Award three decades ago, spectators applauded as if the two were alive and aware of their praise. It’s not that the computer-generated renditions of plastic playthings appeared humanoid. Rather, they reflected qualities viewers could see in themselves, then saw them magnified on colossal screens. Their stories persist even while the grandeur of their stage shrinks down to laptop screens and television sets. But should Pixar’s success continue to idle, more is at risk than the studio behind the cowboy-spaceman duo. The loss of its characters and stories means the loss of a way to see the world and, in some cases, to see ourselves.

THAT THE STUDIO AND ITS INTENDED AUDIENCE ARE GROWING APART.

“I discovered a land of legacy in Daniel and Steven's homeland.”

“Daniel and Steven focused on insights and not only sightseeing”

A UNIFIED FRONT

CAN THE GOP’S WARRING FACTIONS MAKE PEACE?

BY JOSH HAMMER

The alliance between the pro-business Republican Party establishment and its populist working-class voting base has never been more tenuous. The fragility of that uneasy alliance is likely to come into sharper focus over the next six to eight months as the Republican presidential primary advances. But the two-party system in America is a blunt reality, and fiscal conservatives and populist-inclined "New Right" conservatives will have to find a way to make peace with each other, lest their fratricide prevents their ability to defeat a mutual foe: a Democratic Party that has gone ever further left.

The return of Donald Trump to the campaign trail to seek, in Grover Cleveland-esque fashion, a second nonconsecutive term in the White House has led many to rethink, and at times relitigate, Trump’s shocking breakthrough during the 2016 election cycle. Over the course of his tumultuous Republican presidential primary victory and general election triumph, Trump managed to repeatedly offend the delicate sensibilities of the Republican Party’s “Conservatism Inc.” establishment wing.

From an institutional perspective, Trump in 2016 was a genuine outsider who had never paid any heed to, donated to, or

seemingly been molded in any way by, Conservatism Inc.’s sprawling constellation of flagship journals and Beltway think tanks. From an intellectual perspective, Trump ran an explicitly nationalist-leaning campaign that rejected many of the putatively inviolable tenets that defined the post-1950s “fusionist” conservative movement — namely, cultural traditionalism, laissez-faire econom-

FISCAL CONSERVATIVES TEND TO EXALT THEORETICAL ABSTRACTIONS AND LET THE ECONOMIC CHIPS FALL WHERE THEY MAY, WHILE POPULIST CONSERVATIVES ARE GUIDED BY EMPIRICISM AND PRAGMATISM.

ics and (anti-Communist) foreign policy assertiveness.

That fusionism culminated in the 1980s-era presidency of Ronald Reagan. In 2016, Trump took a wrecking ball to that consensus: In particular, he did not shy away from confronting stale Republican orthodoxies pertaining to immigration,

foreign policy hawkishness and fiscal conservatism.

As president, Trump often did not govern in the manner in which he had campaigned; his two signature pieces of domestic policy — the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and the First Step Act passed one year later — amounted to a standard Wall Street Journal editorial board-style supply-side tax cut and an ideologically libertarian “criminal justice reform” initiative. But over the course of Trump’s first term, many "New Right"-leaning organizations arose to put some intellectual and policy meat on the bones of his 2016 electoral earthquake.

The erudite quarterly journal American Affairs, founded in 2017, publishes many long-form essays on industrial policy, the need to re-shore or “ally-shore” supply chains, and the manifest failures of the neoliberal consensus. The think tank American Compass, founded in 2020, focuses on similar communitarian themes, including white papers on what a robust family policy might entail and how to unwind decades of the pernicious financialization that has hampered genuine economic productivity. (As a disclosure, I have contributed multiple times to both American Affairs and American Compass.)

Now, more than eight years after Trump’s infamous descent down the gilded Trump Tower escalator, the political Right continues to debate just how much its policy consensus has, in fact, changed and, more importantly, whether it should continue to evolve, moving forward. In no area is this conversation livelier than that of economic policy, given the yawning chasm between the more ideological laissez-faire priorities of the Republican Party’s donor class and the more empirical and nationalist sensibilities of the GOP’s middle- and working-class base. The nature of the relationship between old-school fiscal conservatism and the intellectually ascendant forces of national conservatism and the other strands of the so-called "New Right", moving forward, is thus ripe for analysis.

IT IS IMPORTANT to first define terms — namely, what constitutes “fiscal conservatism.”

Fiscal conservatism could be defined narrowly as a prioritization of deficit reduction, debt minimization, fiscal austerity and balanced budgets. That’s how the term would normally be used in European countries. But in contemporary American political discourse, fiscal conservatism invokes a much broader and wider-ranging suite of roughly related policies and ideals: not only slashing wasteful and excessive spending, but also opposition to most governmental transfer payments (especially since the New Deal), a zeal for supply-side tax cuts for both individuals and businesses, a general favoring of business deregulation and lax antitrust enforcement, a permissive approach to deregulation without paying heed to either supply chain resilience or economic distribution concerns, and a neoliberalism that touts the benefits of globalization and the free international movement of labor and capital. Thus, fiscal conservatism in America might be used interchangeably with “economic libertarianism,” or perhaps simply “classical liberalism.”

It is this broader, American conception of fiscal conservatism — a mishmash of anti-government free-market

fundamentalist impulses — that is most important to assess when it comes to the more nationalist- and populist-inclined “New Right,” and the future of the American Right more generally.

It first must be conceded that the two camps — fiscal conservatives, on the one hand, and national and populist conservatives, on the other hand — really do prioritize different things.

Fiscal conservatives tend to exalt theoretical abstractions, such as Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” or David Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage, and are content to obediently accept the consequences and let the economic chips fall where they may. American Compass founder Oren Cass apt-

NO AMOUNT OF MONEY POURED INTO ROUNDTABLE SEMINARS ON ADAM SMITH OR F.A. HAYEK’S THEORIES HAS CONVINCED REPUBLICAN VOTERS TO BLINDLY ACCEPT THE WHIMS OF THE FREE MARKET.

ly calls this approach, which is favored by the GOP donor class and the journals and think tanks of Conservatism Inc., “let the market rip.”

On the other hand, populist conservatives are driven less by blind fealty to abstract dogma than they are guided by empiricism and pragmatism. Accordingly, national conservatives and many of their “New Right” fellow travelers believe in a prudential economic statecraft that takes seriously such concerns as supply chain durability, family formation and support, and social solidarity. Fiscal conservatives tend to prioritize the primacy of the individual, presumed to be rationally self-maximizing, whereas national conservatives and the “New Right” tend to prioritize the primacy of the common good of the polity.

These are very serious differences. They

might even seem to be unbridgeable. But the inescapable political realities of America’s reigning two-party system demand that old-school fiscal conservatives and new-school national and populist conservatives find a way to move forward together. Given how far left the Democratic Party has moved both economically and culturally, especially in the years since Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential victory, it is extraordinarily difficult for either fiscal conservatives or populist conservatives to countenance openly working with the political Left. In other words, fiscal conservatives and populist conservatives are stuck with each other, whether they like it or not.

SO, WHAT KIND of a path forward is possible?

The answer to that question depends primarily upon the ability of fiscal conservatives to engage in sober introspection, recognize the unpopularity of many of their ideas even within the Republican fold and to adjust and make concessions accordingly. And the answer depends secondarily upon the ability of national conservatives and “New Right” fellow travelers to recognize that some of the fiscal conservatives’ ideas are sound, perhaps even indispensable — namely, those pertaining to the general desirability of market-oriented public policy solutions and, above all, the imprudence of profligate spending and the recklessness of massive budget deficits.

In June 2017, the political scientist Lee Drutman published a much-read study on the political beliefs of those who had voted in the 2016 presidential election. The study included a two-axis scatterplot, where the X-axis divided voters along economic belief lines (from “economic liberal” to “economic conservative”) and the Y-axis divided voters along social/identity belief lines (from “social/identity liberal” to “social/identity conservative”). The results were, in some ways, shocking: 44.6 percent of the 2016 electorate was “liberal” (liberal on both economic and social issues), 28.9 percent was “populist” (liberal on economic issues but conservative on social issues), 22.7 percent was “conservative” (conservative on both

economic and social issues) and a paltry 3.8 percent was “libertarian” (conservative on economic issues but liberal on social issues).

It thus seems likely that, in order to counter the consolidation of the “liberal” quadrant, Trump consolidated “conservatives” and also won most “populists” and many “libertarians” (numerically inconsequential though that group is). But without the “populists,” the math simply would not have added up for Trump: While 26.5 percent of the electorate identified as conservative on economic issues, 73.5 percent identified as liberal. A cursory glance at the scatterplot indicates that the most notable and compact cluster of all Trump voters was economically centrist — but socially/ culturally conservative — voters.

The unmistakable truth is that no matter how much money Conservatism Inc. and the GOP’s donor class have spent trying to sell Americans on untrammeled laissez-faire and free-market fundamentalism, the voters themselves are simply not buying it. Additional recent polling further clarifies just how far removed Republican voters are, in crucial ways, from the era of the party’s Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan 2012 presidential platform.

On immigration, Gallup reported in July on a poll it conducted from June 1–22, 2023: “73 percent of Republicans … want immigration decreased, while 10 percent want it increased, meaning their net preference for more immigration is -63.” Similarly, NBC News described some pertinent findings of a July 31, 2023, New York Times/Siena College poll: “69 percent (of Republicans) say America has lost out from increased trade because of job losses, versus 17 percent who think the U.S. has benefitted from increased trade,” and “59 percent (of Republicans) want to keep Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are, versus 29 percent who say it’s more important to take steps to reduce the budget deficit.” These findings ought to make libertarian-leaning fiscal conservatives run for the hills.

The Republican donor class and Republicans’ (dwindling) corporate boardroom

constituency may be neoliberal when it comes to trade and immigration; dogmatic in their pursuit of maximally deregulated markets and indifferent to supply chain offshoring, trade deficits and income inequality concerns. And they may be upper-class. But typical Republican voters are increasingly none of these things: They are nationalist on issues such as trade and immigration and pragmatic about the utility of free markets, viewing them as convenient only when they help secure their livelihoods and provide for their families. They support prudential regulation of Big Business and more robust antitrust enforcement. They are concerned about income inequality; and they are middle- or working-class.

WHEN IT COMES to issues where individualist liberal instincts are at loggerheads with the more populist communitarian concerns, it is incumbent upon fiscal conservatives and the Republican donor class to meet Republican voters where they are.

Given the unpopularity of libertarian economic thinking, fiscal conservatives should have a natural self-interest in moderating their convictions to remain viable actors within the GOP tent and precluding their one day being written off as a doctrinaire “fringe” or as curmudgeonly “cranks.” Fiscal conservatives must face coalitional reality: No amount of money poured into roundtable seminars on Adam Smith or F.A. Hayek’s theories has convinced Republican voters to blindly accept the whims of the free market, no matter what the domestic or global results may be. Republican voters are empirical, not ideological, on matters of economic policy; they do not view family policy support payments or expanded child tax credits as crypto-socialism; and they do not accept the inevitability of emerging woke corporate tyranny in America.

However, fiscal conservatism still retains some key insights that the “New Right” ignores at its own peril. Above all, the single most important lesson in all of fiscal conservatism — that deficits do matter — has been thoroughly vindicated in recent years. The blowout spending of the final years of

the Trump presidency and the first years of President Joe Biden’s presidency has resulted in the highest inflation in four decades — reaching over 9 percent on an annualized basis at its summertime 2022 peak.

It is important that those on the Right who may be inclined to go full populist, to again borrow from Drutman’s research, instead settle for something closer to ‘two cheers for capitalism.’” Fiscal discipline is still important. Market solutions should generally be preferred, except when efficiency-maximizing market outcomes deviate from the national interest. And prudential efforts simply must be taken to pare down our massive national deficits and skyrocketing national debt. But excising the “scourge of a woke and weaponized bureaucracy,” to borrow from Trump’s former Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, is a more politically promising place to start than the nonstarter that is “entitlement reform.”

The sooner fiscal conservatives and national/populist conservatives reconcile their differences and reach a stable and mutually acceptable equilibrium, the better off conservatives will be. Indeed, the current backdrop of the unfolding Republican presidential primary is an ideal time to strive to reach that equilibrium.

The benefits of such a unified Republican Party would be myriad and consequential. A Right less riddled by constant intellectual dissension and enmity within its own ranks is a Right that stands on firmer ground. It is a Right that can stand before independent, moderate and persuadable voters more confident in its convictions and its proposed solutions.

Ultimately, both sides will need to make compromises. Some of those compromises will be easier than others. But a path forward is indeed possible. Pragmatic economic nationalism with a dash of deficit-mindedness is the rough recipe. Now we just need some statesmen up to the task of making it a reality.

JOSH HAMMER IS NEWSWEEK’S SENIOR EDITOR-AT-LARGE AND A RESEARCH FELLOW WITH THE EDMUND BURKE FOUNDATION.

THE PARADOX OF PRIVILEGE

WHAT DIVERSITY TRAINING GETS WRONG

BY EBOO PATEL

Last fall, I was the facilitator of a Zoom-based diversity workshop at a liberal arts college. It opened in a familiar way. A student started by stating her gender pronouns and went on to describe herself as straight, white, middle class, Christian, American and of European heritage. She explained how each one of her identities gave her privilege and power, and how she’d known mostly people like herself growing up. In college, she hoped to be an ally to people who came from different identities and had different experiences.

Most of the other students on the Zoom screen (also white, American, Christian and mostly middle class) nodded gravely. They had detected the confessional tone in the speaker’s voice. Everyone knew what was meant to come next.

Everyone, apparently, except for the student who unmuted herself and spoke. She wore a hijab, had a foreign accent and an enthusiasm that burst off the screen.

She, too, began by naming her identities: Muslim, an international student from Egypt and from a family that values education. And then she said that each one of those identities are privileges. But she didn’t seem embarrassed about it. She seemed proud.

She continued.

Being Muslim, she had the Quran and the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad to guide her life and to give her strength.

Being Egyptian meant being part of an ancient and glorious civilization.

Being from a family that valued education gave her an opportunity to study in the United States.

And all of us, she concluded, because we are getting such a good education, will become powerful enough to achieve our dreams.

“Masha’Allah (Thanks be to God),” she said, “for these privileges and opportunities.”

Near total bewilderment crossed the faces of the other students in the diversity

THIS STRANGE ALCHEMY TAKES PLACE AND WHITE CHRISTIANS ARE MAGICALLY NO LONGER THE OPPRESSORS, THEY NOW GET TO CALL THEMSELVES ALLIES. MEANWHILE, THE MINORITIES, WE’VE ONLY INCREASED IN OUR FRAILTY.

workshop. They just didn’t know what to do with this. The silence lasted so long, and was so uncomfortable, I unmuted myself to say something, and then quickly muted myself again.

Because you know what was about to come out of my mouth? I was about to say to

the Egyptian Muslim international student:

“You’re doing this diversity workshop wrong. When a middle-class white American Christian says that her identities are all associated with privilege, in that particular confessional tone, during a diversity workshop … that’s a cue for someone of your particular constellation of identities. And your lines go something like this:

“Being Muslim means being oppressed by Christians; being Egyptian means being oppressed by Western civilization; being brown means being constantly subject to white supremacy.

“And then you’re supposed to say that it’s good that there’s a group of white American Christians willing to do the work of reckoning with their own power and privilege, but if they truly wanted to ‘see’ you they still had a long way to go.”

So now you know why I muted myself. Because when you make the invisible script of diversity work explicit you kind of realize how ridiculous it sounds.

Think about the stock characters the script requires us to play. Straight white Christian men are assigned the part of “the guilty.” Racial and religious minorities, and gay people and women, are relegated to the role of “the fragile.” To feel less guilty, the “dominant group” has to aid the minority group in feeling more frail. Then this strange alchemy takes place and white Christians are magically no longer

PEOPLE ARE NOT TROPES, THEY’RE POEMS — INFINITE IN THEIR PARTICULARS. WE SHOULD BE MAKING APPRECIATIVE INQUIRIES INTO PEOPLE’S MAGNIFICENT

INDIVIDUALITY, NOT DOGMATIC DECLARATIONS ABOUT THEIR ASCRIBED IDENTITIES.

the oppressors, they now get to call themselves allies. Meanwhile, the minorities, we’ve only increased in our frailty — we are so fragile, we can’t even help ourselves.

WHY ARE WE doing this? I mean, what purpose does it serve?

For the record, if you truly believe your various group identities automatically make you an oppressor, and you feel the need to confess your guilt, be my guest.

More importantly, if you feel vulnerable based on your identities, and it’s totally reasonable that some people at some times will, you should feel absolutely free to say so, and seek the assistance you need.

But neither declaration should be assumed, and neither role should be forced.

Part of the reason I say this is to uphold the dignity of the individual. People are not tropes, they’re poems — infinite in their particulars. We should be making appreciative inquiries into people’s magnificent individuality, not dogmatic declarations about their ascribed identities.

But part of this is actually about how we understand diversity work about group identity. Dogmas are most dangerous when they’re wrong.

I think it’s wrong to say that every white person is best described as an oppressor who ought to feel guilty.

But that’s actually not the part of the diversity script that bothers me most. The part that I find truly galling is how the whole production requires racial and religious minorities like me to violate the substance of our core identities.

I experienced racism growing up. It was ugly and I wouldn’t wish the experience on my worst enemy. But my family taught me a different story, a story of pride in identity. “You come from a glorious culture,” my mom would stress. “The most delicious food, the most colorful fashion, the most complex music. As far as your skin, people spend countless hours and thousands of dollars sitting in the sun to try to get your skin color. Be proud God gave it to you for free.”

Of course you seek to defeat other people’s bigotry and prejudice. But you don’t define yourself by its effect on you.

The message: Your culture is more powerful than their prejudice.

The pride was especially instilled with respect to religious identity.

The Quran teaches Muslims that all humanity is given the breath of God, and commanded by the Most High to be his deputy on creation. It is an honor that God does not even give to the angels.

What greater privilege could there be than knowing that we carry with us God’s breath? And how powerful does it make us feel that God endows us with the capacity to guide creation?

Everybody should have the privilege of declaring themselves privileged — and powerful. And then we ask the all-important question: What is your responsibility?

Too often the invisible script of what we call DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion, work requires that we narrate virtually the opposite story. It asks us to emphasize how we have been victimized by Islamophobia rather than inspired by Islam. Playing that role puts us in danger of violating our faith.

THIS FALL, LITERALLY tens of millions of people will go through some form of diversity work. The invisible script of DEI work will be handed out and read aloud in elementary schools and high schools, colleges and universities, companies and organizations.

DEI has become standard operating procedure.

And I think that’s a good thing.

Good DEI work is absolutely essential to the American project. The United States is the first attempt at a mass-level multiracial, multiethnic, interfaith democracy. For centuries, political philosophers believed that a country like ours could never be. After all, we humans are wired to prefer people who look and pray like us and to be suspicious of those who don’t. We live in an impossible

nation. What we have in the United States is to be cherished and strengthened.

We do that by exercising the muscles of engagement across difference: to expand the knowledge base, to learn the skills, to nurture the qualities of diversity work. Bridges of cooperation don’t fall from the sky or rise from the ground — people build them.

The question is how do we do this?

I think the way that Egyptian Muslim international student flipped the script of DEI work is worth reflecting on. She heard the word “privilege” associated with being American, Christian and of European heritage, and she assumed that the speaker was making a positive comment. After all, why wouldn’t you be proud of what you believe and where you’re from? So she responded in kind, speaking with pride from the content of her tradition rather than somebody else’s social construction of her identity.

After the momentary confusion passed, something remarkable happened. The other students started following the script offered by their classmate. People spoke about trips to their ancestral villages in countries like Italy and Croatia, and learning the stories of what their great-great-grandparents built and why their great-grandparents emigrated. One said that she had started attending Bible study at the Lutheran church her grandfather had built and was feeling a deeper connection to her faith.

AND THAT, I think, is what DEI work ought to look like.

So let’s be clear: It’s not a melting pot. That’s the metaphor I grew up with. And not just in my history books, but also in my life. When I was in high school, my family started making biryani for Thanksgiving. Turkey is a feast food of American culture. Biryani is a feast food of Indian Muslims. Do you know how many people I told in school what we had for Thanksgiving? Zero. That’s the melting pot. You hide your distinctive identity, and melt your uniqueness away so that you can

blend with everyone else. No one wants to go back to that.

The dominant metaphor of diversity work right now is a battlefield. We are meant to tend to the wounded and be angry at the aggressors. But people are aggressors based on their actions, not their identities. And if you only focus on your wounds, you forget that you have muscles, a spine, a brain. As my friend Trabian Shorters likes to say, a whole constellation of assets and aspirations is really the core of who people are. Why would we encourage people to only tell the story of their hurt and pain?

THE WHOLE PRODUCTION REQUIRES RACIAL AND RELIGIOUS MINORITIES LIKE ME TO VIOLATE THE SUBSTANCE OF OUR CORE IDENTITIES.

That is inviting them to be in a conspiracy against their own agency.

And if you only focus on your wounds, your natural inclination is to wound others. You follow the old line from Ani DiFranco, “Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right.” But what’s the wisdom in that? Tools build things, weapons hurt people. Why would you want to spend your time hurting people rather than building things?

So what should we be building, and what metaphor should guide us?

I think the Egyptian Muslim student I spoke about earlier has a lot to teach us here. In confidently stating what made her proud from her own culture and faith, she implicitly invited others to do the same. Everybody started sharing their strengths. It reminded me of a potluck. You assume people are contributors — that they have a wonderful dish to bring to the table.

Barriers do exist to people making their contribution: racism, misogyny, Islamophobia, antisemitism. These things need

to be called out and defeated. But they do not define the contributors to the potluck.

We cannot create the false sense that the barriers to participation are more important than the beauty of people’s cultures.

A good potluck requires us to welcome the distinctive contributions of people’s diverse identities. Potlucks don’t exist if people don’t bring their dishes, or are hindered in bringing them. They are boring if everyone is from the same identity and brings the same thing. When the invitation is right, a diverse community of people bring their best dish.

Potlucks create a space that facilitates inspiring conversations and creative combinations. When someone’s crusty bread just goes perfectly with someone else’s spicy dip.

And they’re fun. Diversity work should be fun.

Diversity work in our institutions could look like this: Rather than people feeling the need to present their wounds, they are invited to make their contribution. Rather than forcing people to read from the invisible script where some are guilty and the others are fragile, we think of the creative combinations and enriching conversations that take place when a genuine diversity of dishes and identities are in the right space together.

Respect. Relate. Cooperate. What if this is how we thought about diversity work in the United States?

You can bring a dish to the American potluck. You can invite other people to join. You can host the event yourself.

You can nudge the nation toward more than it is and closer to what it might be — not a melting pot, not a battlefield, but a potluck. Where everyone is invited. Everyone is valued. Everyone is a contributor. Where our best dishes are made better by other people’s best dishes. Where we invite people to the common table of our collective contributions so the whole nation can feast.

THE SILENCE OF THE LAND

FACING OUR FEAR OF THE DARK

BY ETHAN BAUER

Bending over a fresh fire pit, I tuck dryer lint beneath a stack of sagebrush and juniper logs I’ve gathered from the surrounding land. Sometimes I prefer more primitive means: char cloth, steel and a strip of magnesium. But today I’m playing it safe to calm my nerves.

I press a brûlée torch up against the kindling and flick the starter. Click. Nothing. Click. Could it be out of fuel? Click. Sweat trickles down my neck. Click. Whoosh. Finally the lint bursts into a fireball. The sagebrush crackles, the logs blacken. Now I can wait for night to come, with a little comfort.

This trip is an experiment. I chose this spot to confront a fear I only recently discovered: I’m a 27-year-old man who’s afraid of the dark. Few places get less ambient light than an isolated valley in Utah’s west desert. I’m camped about 10 miles from the Dugway Proving Ground, where the Army has stored and tested chemical and biological weapons since 1943. A test went sideways in 1968, killing about 6,000 sheep in nearby Skull Valley. Their remains were buried in an unmarked plot that, as far as I can tell, lies directly below my tent. The only visible cue is the absence of flora, besides the quackgrass that sways in the wind like a metronome.

The fire sizzles and time moves slowly. I

keep reaching for an empty pocket, but I’ve left my phone in the console of my Subaru Forester to soften this exact temptation. I don’t want to distract myself or numb my feelings tonight. There’s something resonant, within our deepest human impulses, about facing what makes us afraid. So I survey the land and wait. When the sun falls

I HAVE FEARED BEDTIME SINCE MY EARLIEST MEMORIES. I SLEPT WITH A BASEBALL BAT. I FIXATED ON THE BURGLAR ALARM.

below the horizon, I pull a pimento cheese sandwich and something to drink out of the cooler. At just the right angle, the wind whistles across the bottle’s open mouth, producing a delicate, sustained hum.

HOW MANY CLASSIC horror movies start with a camping trip? From “Friday the 13th” to “The Evil Dead,” unsuspecting characters leave the safety of civilization

seeking solitude and freedom, only to find themselves living a nightmare with nobody around to help. Pop culture frightens us for fun, stimulating our adrenal glands with psychopaths, monsters, aliens, dolls, even a drug-addled bear. We seek out similar feelings at haunted houses and corn mazes, or on dark hikes through the mountains, just as we love to tell ghost stories around campfires. But why?

Aristotle believed in catharsis, the idea that we can purge negative emotions if we experience them by proxy, mainly through characters portrayed in the arts. Centuries later, the German enlightenment thinker Gotthold Lessing expanded on that line of thinking: “In real life, men are sometimes too much addicted to pity or fear, sometimes too little; tragedy brings them back to a virtuous and happy mean.” So rather than purging those feelings, we learn to regulate them. But neither had much to say about confronting these emotions in real life. So instead, I turned to my wife.

Much of her clinical work as a doctoral student of psychology at Brigham Young University involves unrest and helping clients to overcome their fears. Her treatments are rooted in a name I remember from high school: Ivan Pavlov, who discovered classical conditioning. In a familiar experiment,

EXPOSURE THERAPY IS MEANT TO HELP PEOPLE TO “UNPAIR” THEIR FEAR FROM THE CORRESPONDING STIMULUS BY FACING IT.

he rang a bell every time he fed his dogs. After a while, the dogs would hear the bell and begin salivating, even if there was no food present. They had learned to associate one stimulus with another.

A few decades later, researchers at Johns Hopkins University sought to prove that conditioning affected humans in the same way. Their “Little Albert experiment” involved a 9-month-old infant. First, they exposed him to a variety of stimuli, including a white rat; he was unafraid. Then they exposed him to the white rat again — but now, whenever Albert touched the rat, the researchers smacked a hammer against a steel bar to produce a loud, sharp sound. Albert began to cry. After a while, Albert began to cry at the sight of almost anything white and fluffy, including a Santa Claus beard.

Mary Cover Jones, who was eventually known as the mother of behavior therapy, reverse-engineered that experiment, with a twist. Rather than using classical conditioning to pair two stimuli, she used “direct conditioning” to deprogram fear. Her findings led to the development of exposure therapy. Consider, my wife tells me, a child who is pathologically afraid of spiders. In this form of treatment, the child would be exposed to spiders gradually — first through pictures, then videos, seeing a live one, eventually touching a spider and so on.

The undergirding theory of behaviorism is that all fear is learned; that even seemingly innate fears — of loud noises, for example — only take shape after hearing loud noises for the first time. Exposure therapy is meant to help people to “unpair” that fear from the corresponding stimulus by successfully facing it. That makes sense to me, though I do spot one pitfall. “What if you’re exposed to a rattlesnake and it bites you?”

I ask. “Exposure works,” she tells me, “only as long as the person is safe.” If not, it has the potential to make the problem worse.

WHILE THERE’S STILL enough light to see, I take a little walk. I’ve spotted what looks like a small cave on the side of a rocky hill, and my mind conjures up images of mountain

lions. In the spirit of my mission, I stomp that way over tangles of nasty, prickly weeds. The cave, it turns out, is just a dark indentation about the size of a window. All I find there is a rusted can specked with bullet holes. As I trudge back down the hill and stumble toward my campfire, I hear the wind whistle through an open bottle. The sound is haunting.

I can’t point to a moment when I learned to associate darkness with fear, but I have feared bedtime since my earliest memories. This is common in children, whose minds run wild with the decline in visibility and the accompanying silence. In evolutionary terms, we’re certainly more vulnerable at night. But behaviorists would argue that the fear only sets in after a child sees something scary or overhears a news story about a murder or kidnapping. Soon they’re imagining scary creatures hiding under their bed or in the closet, like the protagonists of “Monsters, Inc.”

The threat I always feared was from other humans — lurking in the shadows, breaking into our home. My parents recall that I used to invade their room at night because every creak and pop echoing through the house made me panic. For a while, I slept with a baseball bat. I fixated on the burglar alarm. My dad didn’t want me to know that he owned firearms, so he tried to reassure me by saying he kept a bow and arrow under his bed.

I started learning to cope around the third grade, when my parents let me have a TV in my bedroom. At first it was off limits after bedtime except for the Golf Channel — a kind of white noise to drown out night sounds. It worked, and I still fall asleep watching television to this day. On a recent night at a Super 8 motel without TV, I used the Hulu app on my phone, then woke up in the middle of the night to turn it off. The fact that hotel remotes offer sleep mode tells me that I’m not alone in this practice. This system works well enough — except when I go camping.

Out here, the cracks and hums are amplified in the dream-like haze of a poor night’s

sleep. On the floor of a tent that’s always too hot or too cold, my imagination spirals. That slithering sound must be a rattlesnake, coming to sneak in and kill me. Those thumping sounds must be footsteps that can only mean a person is snooping around. Eventually, I pass out, but with the inevitable rustling of nylon the process starts over again. By morning, I’m cursing the sun for not rising faster. That’s why my phone is in my car. “Never turn your back on fear,” wrote the journalist Hunter S. Thompson. “It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.”

MY FIRE IS dying down, but I’m in no hurry to climb into my sleeping bag. My dad used to say his favorite part of a campfire was the end, when all that remains are glowing embers. It’s the best setting for ghost stories, dark enough to startle kids with a flashlight beneath a man’s chin, when orange waves of heat seem to flow through the smoldering cinders in coordination with the words. This phenomenon is as ancient as human civilization.

Legends have been passed down orally, from the Navajo tales of skin-walkers to Latin American stories about the chupacabra. Greek mythology abounds with specters and hauntings, divided into subcategories in an attempt to explain them. Roman Emperor Hadrian believed he was haunted by his dead lover, and his accounts inspired artists to depict the experience. Much later, terror joined our modern literary canon in novels and short stories like Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein,” Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” and Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” A French filmmaker named Georges Méliès made the first horror movie in 1896, called “The Haunted Castle.” Aristotle would probably relate.

The beauty of horror shows and haunted houses is that no matter how frightening they seem, we still experience them with some degree of separation. The movie is fictional, and so is the guy with the chainsaw. You can feel the terror — but you can also swallow it. Even in real life, much of

what we fear is imaginary, including most of what I fear about the dark. And even existential terrors — of disease and war and hardship — require surrender. I can’t control those things. If they ever come my way, I’ll fight. But for now, all I can do is let the fear wash over me — and do nothing.

I’m about to extinguish my coals when I notice a light on the northern horizon. Then a second light. One is orange and twinkles like a star — a fire. The other, perfectly parallel, is white and unflinching like Venus — perhaps a lamp. They stare back like mismatched eyes, disappearing and reappearing every few minutes. I’m not as alone as I thought, and if I can see them, they can probably see me. I toss the rest of the lint on the coals and watch it flare against the night sky. Then I dump what’s left of my drink on the campfire and bury the coals.

Lying on a sleeping pad inside my tent, I stare out through the mesh roof. The clouds have cleared, and the Milky Way shimmers. What a beautiful night. But a rustling sound interrupts my reverie, triggering the instinct that brought me here. Are those footsteps over dry grass? Something is crawling. Something is trying to get inside. Someone is watching. But for some reason, this time, the feeling passes. It’s just the wind flicking the nylon tent, I tell myself. Sitting up, I take one last look at those twin lights. They’re no bother anymore, either.

Within minutes, I’m fast asleep.

THE SUN IS out and it’s past 7 a.m. by the time I wake up. For the first time, I’ve slept through the night while camping. As I pack up, a herd of mule deer clomps through the grass where the sheep are buried. I wonder if they know. I wonder if they realize how easily they could wander onto Dugway and encounter some new form of death juice. I wonder if they worry about mountain lions stalking them from the caves. They turn and stare at me with black eyes, but quickly turn their attention back to the morning forage.

A RUSTLING SOUND TRIGGERS THE INSTINCT THAT BROUGHT ME HERE. ARE THOSE FOOTSTEPS OVER DRY GRASS? SOMETHING IS CRAWLING. SOMETHING IS TRYING TO GET INSIDE. SOMEONE IS WATCHING.

AN ODE TO MASKED STRANGERS

A TRICK, A TREAT AND A GROWING SENSE OF COMMUNITY

BY ALEXANDRA RAIN

Night falls and children in costume scurry along tree-lined streets on Salt Lake City’s east bench. I’m 10 years old, dressed as Alice in Wonderland, walking with my younger sister (as Cinderella) and cousin (as root beer) from one midcentury home to the next. My aunt follows, reminding us to look both ways before crossing streets, but hangs back as we approach each door. There’s one house in particular that frightens me, a Tudor home with pointed gables, creepy trees and a man I know only as the phantom. The walk to the porch takes forever. I reassure the other kids, saying there’s nothing to fear. Bracing myself, I ring the bell.

Every year, we’d trick-or-treat in my aunt’s neighborhood, where nice strangers in big houses would hand out king-sized candies and ask about our costumes. These were rare interactions with adults we didn’t know but knew to be safe, because they were part of our community. My aunt didn’t feel the need to check our hauls at the end of the night for razor blades and compromised wrappers. But this house was different, the man a mystery, appearing just once a year. When I read “To Kill a Mockingbird” the next year I understood why Scout was terrified of her own enigmatic neighbor. Still, I kept going back.

children have it easy, mobs of Buzz Lightyears and Iron Mans, Belles and Beasts in the parking lot of a school or a church, taking candy from grown-ups they know. And soon, kids will skip the whole charade, instead snatching favorites from a bowl left outside with a handwritten sign: Take one. But getting a treat from this house requires an act of bravery.

THERE’S ONE HOUSE IN PARTICULAR THAT FRIGHTENS ME, A TUDOR HOME WITH POINTED GABLES, CREEPY TREES, AND A MAN I KNOW ONLY AS THE PHANTOM.

Watching the door with bated breath, I try to inhabit Alice’s fearlessness along with the blonde wig, sky-blue dress and my favorite pink trench coat — an adaptation for the cold. Somewhere, other

The door swings open. Out leaps a grotesque figure with leathered skin, a furry face, bloody fangs and glowing wicked eyes, growling and gesticulating and roaring like a beast. A werewolf! We scream. We can’t shut our eyes fast enough, can’t hold each other tight enough. We can’t run, either, paralyzed with fear and obligated to endure. Just as suddenly, the act is over. The phantom removes his mask to reveal an ordinary man: fair skin, graying hair, kind eyes. He teases us a little and offers a bowl. I choose sour straws: chewy, bitter and coated in sugar. In my memory, he apologizes sweetly for causing some tears, but I see it differently now. He joined us in a child’s game, a committed actor who made our experience a little more profound. It wasn’t easy for us, but it’s important to try hard things — and meet our neighbors. These days, we seem to have forgotten that, fearing even simple exchanges with benign strangers. I was fortunate to have the phantom in my life, my own Boo Radley. Like the shadowy figure in Scout’s story, he turned out to be on my side.

STEVEN VAN HASTEN

JAKE WARNER

FREEDOM TO DISSENT

MEET THE LEGAL MIND FIGHTING FOR CREATORS’ RIGHT TO SAY ‘NO’

BY LOIS M. COLLINS

Jake Warner has had a great seat to ponder recent Supreme Court decisions on what government at different levels can and cannot enforce when it comes to free speech and freedom of religion. Often, the two overlap or intersect, says the senior counsel for the appellate team at the Alliance Defending Freedom. The organization was founded in 1993 by attorney Alan Sears, psychologist and author James Dobson, pastor D. James Kennedy, radio personality Larry Burkett and evangelist Bill Bright — all outspoken Christians. Based in Scottsdale, Arizona, the firm has now won 15 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, including the recent 303 Creative decision.

The group’s focus has largely been defending the right of Christians to exercise and express their faith without government curtailment. But Warner points out that their victories defend everyone’s rights — including atheists’. The court recently ruled in favor of Lorie Smith, a graphic artist and web designer in Colorado who didn’t want to design web pages celebrating same-sex marriage, though she was not opposed to serving same-sex customers. “It’s always about the what, never the who,” says Warner.

In 303 Creative v. Elenis, the court ruled

6-3 that Smith can’t be forced into creative expression that contradicts her sincere beliefs. Experts say that ruling settles a question the court didn’t address in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission in 2018. Instead of answering the free speech claim when cakemaker Jack Phillips declined to bake a wedding cake celebrating same-sex marriage, the court decided in his favor based on the “impermissible hostility” Colorado officials showed toward his religious beliefs.

“THE GOVERNMENT CAN’T FORCE YOU TO SAY THINGS YOU DON’T BELIEVE. THIS DECISION PROTECTS YOU IF YOU ARE AN ATHEIST MUSICIAN OR A MUSLIM PHOTOGRAPHER OR A CHRISTIAN CAKE ARTIST.”

Warner, 38, was on the Masterpiece Cakeshop legal team. He got his law degree at Regent School of Law in Virginia Beach, Virginia, in 2011 and joined Alliance Defending Freedom in 2017. Before

that, he was a judicial law clerk to senior U.S. District Judge Malcolm J. Howard in the Eastern District of North Carolina. He was also previously in private practice as a criminal defense lawyer in state and federal courts in North Carolina.

Deseret asked him about the intersection of free speech and religious freedom and what those court decisions mean.

WHAT WILL THE 303 CREATIVE DECISION DO?

It was a big win for free speech. Lorie Smith wanted to expand her business to create custom websites promoting God’s design for marriage between a man and a woman. But she saw Colorado officials had prosecuted Jack Phillips all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, trying to force him to express messages that went against his faith. She wondered, could this happen to me? After talking with her pastor, she contacted ADF and we advised her that her rights were at risk. That put her in a difficult place. She could change her belief, curb her business or challenge an unjust law. She decided to advocate for the right of all Americans to say what they believe, without fear of government punishment. She lost her case at the trial court and again at the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. But

the Supreme Court declared that Colorado could not force her to express messages that go against her deepest belief. It doesn’t matter what you believe about marriage or any of life’s biggest issues. The government can’t force you to say things you don’t believe. This decision protects you if you are an atheist musician or a Muslim photographer or a Christian cake artist.

HOW IS THAT DIFFERENT FROM MASTERPIECE CAKESHOP?

In that case, the court had the opportunity to answer the question it answered in 303 Creative, but instead found that Colorado had acted with impermissible hostility against Jack and his faith. That was evidenced by two things: Colorado officials had compared Jack and his faith to that of Nazis and slaveholders. More than that, a religious man had gone to three secular cake artists in Denver requesting a custom cake bearing Bible verses promoting a biblical view of marriage. All of them declined, citing their objection to that cake’s message. The religious man filed discrimination complaints against them. But instead of prosecuting them, the state said these artists had the right not to create custom cakes promoting messages that go against their beliefs. When the U.S. Supreme Court learned that, they said, “Look, Colorado, you are discriminating against Jack Phillips; you can’t deny him a freedom that you freely offer other cake artists who share different beliefs.”

WHERE DO FREEDOM OF RELIGION AND FREE SPEECH MEET?

Jack’s case raised both a free exercise claim and a free speech claim. But there is plenty of overlap there because as in so many cases ADF litigates, the government is trying to force religious artists to convey speech that goes against their beliefs. At least when applied to compelled speech, they violate both the free speech clause and the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. We have always raised both arguments to defend the artists. It’s important

to know that the Supreme Court decided only to hear our free speech question once 303 Creative got up there. Because the court ruled that Colorado officials could not force Lorie to create custom websites promoting messages that go against her faith under the free speech clause, it didn’t need to also say that conduct violated the free exercise clause.

WHAT’S NEXT IN THIS AREA?

We are encouraging courts around the country to apply the decision in 303 Creative to protect other artists who are being coerced to say things they don’t believe. But past that, what we have seen in recent years is government trying to misuse the law to force people to say other kinds of things that go against their beliefs. In university settings oftentimes instructors will be coerced into using certain pronouns to describe students and other people against their beliefs. It’s likely that 303 Creative means that governments cannot misuse similar laws to coerce teachers and professors to say things that go against their beliefs. Whenever government tries to force speakers to say things they don’t believe, it’s likely that 303 Creative is going to come in and stand for the principle that governments can’t do that.

CAN OTHER NONGOVERNMENTAL ENTITIES?

Even with private action, sometimes there are laws that can help those who have religious concerns. For example, Title VII ensures employers must give their employees a reasonable accommodation if part of their work causes them to have concerns with their faith. They can request that their employer relieve them of certain responsibilities if they might conflict with their faith, and the employer has an obligation to try to reasonably accommodate those requests.

WHAT OTHER ISSUES ARE SIMMERING?

There are other cases in which the government is trying to restrict speech it

opposes. For example, ADF represents a counselor in Washington state where state officials are trying to regulate conversations he has with clients. He helps people who are struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction. But the state has said counselors can’t have these conversations. ADF is dissenting, saying the government has no business being in the counseling chair. It should not dictate what conversations are happening between counselors and clients. We are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh in on that case.

DO THE CHRISTIAN AND CONSERVATIVE VIEWPOINTS YOU REPRESENT WORK FOR OTHERS?

Absolutely. Free speech is for everyone, so 303 Creative protects not only Lorie Smith, but for example a website designer who identifies as LGBT. The government cannot force that designer to create custom websites promoting views of marriage that go against their beliefs. It doesn’t matter what your viewpoint is. What’s critical to understand is that it doesn’t matter who you are, what your background is. These artists make decisions based on what they are asked to express through their custom speech. There’s been some misconception about that in the media, but they serve everyone. They just cannot express every message through their custom art — and the First Amendment protects them.

ANY LAST WORD?

It doesn’t matter what you believe, the government should not be trying to force you to change your beliefs or to say things that go against that. Free speech is essential for a pluralistic and just society. The nations that protect free speech are, in general, more democratic, they have more economic freedom and they better protect the vulnerable. So when we look around the world, the nations that are most committed to freedom — and free speech in particular — are the vibrant nations that are protecting all people, including those who are most vulnerable among them.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY WESTON COLTON

9TH AND MAIN GARAGE BOISE, IDAHO

“Engaging

zones, is life without great meaning.”

— Jon M. Huntsman Sr.