Sacrifice Your Christmas Tree to Support AI Industry, Fox News Urges Viewers
Originally published via Armageddon Prose:
“A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.”
-Oscar Wilde
(Of course, the above quote is slightly inapplicable to the subject matter because, in addition to knowing the value of nothing, cable news economists also often fail to grasp basic economics. See: perennial failure Jim Cramer)
In the context of effectively urging the government to seize private property, including a Christmas tree farm, in order to construct an AI power line through Maryland, Fox Business host Dagen McDowell recently admonished viewers to opt for plastic trees this holiday season instead of real ones.
Via Futurism:
“Dagen McDowell, a co-host of the “The Big Money Show” on Fox Business, recently flaunted her zeal for AI — and her distaste for holiday cheer — by declaring that a beloved local Christmas tree farm should be sacrificed to make way for data center infrastructure.
McDowell was defending a proposed plan for a 67-mile long transmission line running through Maryland that would bring more power to the booming AI data centers in northern Virginia. The $424 million Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project is facing opposition from farmers and other property owners whose land is in its path, including the owners of a Maryland Christmas tree farm. Critics argue that Maryland would be acting as an “extension cord” for the AI data centers, seeing no real benefits from the infrastructure while enduring a massive eyesore…
“I think that the United States of America would gladly just saw off Maryland and kick it into the Atlantic Ocean if you don’t like it,” McDowell said. “If there is a need for electricity generation and a conduit like power lines to bring electricity to a densely populated area of business and growth like northern Virginia, then it’s not about AI, it’s actually about economic growth for the United States.”
“Number two, it’s a tree farm! Not growing food,” McDowell continued. “The alternative would be some liberal’s gonna put some giant solar panels on that land, and you’re not gonna be growing any Christmas trees either.”
Amid McDowell’s Scrooge-esque screed — which seems stunningly hypocritical coming from a network that has long accused liberals of waging a “war on Christmas” — the poor tree farm had at least one sympathetic voice among the Fox co-hosts. “This farm is going to lose all of its aesthetic appeal as a result of this,” Brian Brenberg argued, saying he’s seen the “gross-looking” transmission towers in person.
“There will be transmission lines that have to go through developments and farms,” McDowell decreed. “That’s the very nature of a growing economy. Everybody needs to get on board.”
“You know what?” she said, eliciting groans from her co-hosts. “Buy a fake tree!””
VIDEO
Sacrifice your traditions — and, in the end, even your essential humanity — at the altar of nascent AI-mediated utopia!
Related: Chinese Communist Party Literally Names Its Domestic Surveillance Program ‘Skynet’
To the extent that it’s still in business, buoyed by pharmaceutical ads for diabetes injections and erection pills, the Fox News conceit of folksy nationalism apparently still enchants what remains of its dwindling and rapidly aging viewership.
But the reality is that the producers and on-air talent, such as it is, are almost all millionaires living in the lap of luxury in Washington or Manhattan.
Insofar as any of them actually came from the flyover country they now professionally pander to, they left that world a long time ago, and in so doing abandoned any real affinity they might have once had for it.
The amount of soul-selling one must perform — in addition, for the bimbos in miniskirts, to sucking Roger Ailes’ decrepit penis back when he was still around— to get oneself a slot on a Fox Business panel!
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Had that segment aired on MSNBC or whatever other outlet coded “liberal” — if a neon-haired progressive goon in a septum ring and not a Fox News host were demanding people give up Christmas trees to support some pet industry or social engineering project like Climate Change™ — the righteous conservative reaction would obviously be blind rage.
But when Fox Business does it, that’s apparently… what?
Hard-nosed pragmatism?
Which was the true conservative in “It’s a Wonderful Life” — George Bailey or Mr. Potter?
The oligarch ruling class, and its mouthpiece Sean Hannity and Co., would have you believe it’s the latter.
Perhaps I misinterpreted the entire message of the movie.
As for me, although I don’t have an army of lobbyists like the AI industry does, if I did, I’d vote with my bribes (campaign donations) for more trees and less AI data centers rather than the other way around.
Call me a starry-eyed Luddite.
Benjamin Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile (now available in paperback), is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.
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