Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, November 16, 2024
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49 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
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Despite the surge of new users on Bluesky and prominent people leaving Xitter, IMO the latter won’t be done until the bots start leaving in droves.
I deleted my Facebook account one week ago today. I was down to a few family members, some remaining non-MAGA friends, and a few co-workers from before I retired 6 years ago.
But mostly ads, and Russian bots feeding me outrage bait. “Why don’t these pictures ever trend” with AI-generated, vaguely uniformed, white-skinned, military-looking people, often holding puppies or children who are also uniformed in the same non-country-specific garb.
Needless to say, I don’t miss it any more than Twitter – which I deleted the day Elon took ownership of it.
The bad news for y’all is that I have been here a bit more often.
I quit Twitter in January 2022. Why? In the fall of 2021, I did an experiment on myself. For about a month, I was off Twitter for a week, then on Twitter for a week. I discovered that I was happier off. This is the pernicious effect of social media on the brain. As for Facebook, I do use it because so much neighborhood news is on it. And friends and family. And they tend to just stick with friends and family stuff and don’t comment on things outside of that. Other than that, I don’t interact with it much.
The headline of the day- New Hampshire shelter faces enor-mouse problem after man surrenders nearly 1,000 rodents
It’s Saturday, so where am I?
I’ve been on the road for 10 days.
I remember the Elliot Gould character in Capricorn One challenging Karen Black to tell him the difference between Holiday Inns in Houston and Cincinnati.
The furniture in the rooms are the same
The music playing in the elevator is the same
The woman in the coffee shop with too much makeup on is the same.
In my case it is Mariottts. Today is Tuesday, it must be Provo or Today is Thursday and it must be Tacoma.
Except today is Saturday.
I have avoided the fate of having a maid wrap one of those toilet seat things around me. You know the ones they put on the seats for your protection.
Anyway I will be home in 6 days. I have no idea how many books I’ve signed. Turnout has varied from location to location.
Back home in Florida, somebody where I live jumped from the third floor. Yikes! Have no idea if they survived. All I know is they are Bernie’s son. I don’t even know who Bernie is at my building.
Time to wake up my nephew and go get some breakfast.
@Scott:
My only time spent on twitter or facebook is related to my book writing. Otherwise I almost never use those social media.
I was never on either Facebook or Twitter. I had to be on LinkedIn for work but one year ago (yay, full retirement!) I bailed on that too. Social media – without having a solid need to be on them like promoting your work or a charitable cause – is a major time suck. And even on LI where my firm advertised job vacancies I was constantly amazed in a bad way at how illiterate people are: bad spelling, bad grammar (OMG the grammar!!) and the general inability to converse.
My wife has lymphoma. Last night was the annual walk for the LLS Foundation, a national fund-raising event with the proceeds going to research. Before the walk, they bring families up on the stage to talk about their experiences. One was a little three-year old girl who was celebrating her first anniversary as a survivor. As they were going through the program, I was thinking about RFK, Jr. being Trump’s choice as head of HHS. The head of HHS oversees the NIH (national institute of health). I have met several top doctors from NIH through activity with another charity. These doctors are neuro-ophthalmologists, and are literally world-renowned experts in their field. They are the epitome of dedicated professionals working for the public good. And RFK, Jr., a science-denying know-nothing will be their boss. And the gutless Republicans will rubber stamp his cabinet choices, just as they would have approved Hitler’s actions if they were back in the 1930’s.
Lakoff on what happened:
“Lakoff”
etc., etc.
@charontwo:
I am reaching the conclusion that Trump’s cabinet picks are simply another version of flood the zone with shit. While it would be simple and noncontroversial if the Senate peeled off one or two problematic nominees, deep sixing four or five (or more) is obstructing his mandate, making the action existential to his administration. This is a very purposeful confrontation – with the Senate Republicans. I am crossing my fingers, but I am not optimistic.
@Joe:
Made far worse by Trump’s demands for recess appointments and circumventing the standard FBI background check process.
I initially thought this was performative payback for these individual’s fealty on the campaign trail. Nominate them, checking off the “I’ll nominate you for xyz position,” and then shrugging it off when they inevitably hit a Senate confirmation wall. Nope. By going around the formal background process–using private security firms instead, who I am *sure* will not allow the fact that they are getting paid to do this work interfere with their assessments–he’s signalling that he actually wants these buffoons in these positions. Putin and Xi must be thrilled.
@Joe: I think a bit of the reason for the in -your -face racist, traitor and nut job picks is to test us, the American people, too.
@Bill Jempty:
My wife volunteers at that shelter and this past Monday she was at the reception desk when the man came in with a bin of about 300 mice, which was only the beginning. The story he told, was that his wife adopted 10 or so mice about a year ago, but didn’t keep them segregated by sex. The gestation period for mice is 20 days…
Edit: This has been a year for animal horders in the state, in the spring, another state shelter took in ~400 Boxer dogs.
We nearly adopted one but the timing was wrong, but my niece did get one.
@becca: The American people have already failed the test. And now experience, which always gives the first,* is ready to teach the lesson.
Conservatives are always telling me they “believe in consequences.” Consequences this then.
* In the old adage.
In case you missed this:
OK State Supt. Ryan Walters mandates schools show video of him inviting students to pray
The Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office released this statement:
BTW, I was tempted to put this in the Hegseth discussion. It is all of one piece in my mind.
@Scott:
How can an office of religious “liberty” require students and their parents to do anything? Doesn’t that contradict the meaning of liberty?
@CSK: To the Christian nationalists religious freedom is the freedom to impose their religion on everyone else.
@just nutha: I meant, in the sense of civil war. Pretty sure that’s part of the end game. Didn’t Hegel say The Terrors were necessary?
@charontwo:
“The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley”
@Scott: This is, sadly, exactly true.
@Scott:
Will any kind of Christianity suffice to fill the requirement? Episcopalianism? Roman Catholicism? Methodism? Lutheranism? What?
@Scott: SPI is an elected office in most states. They, the people can speak their minds at the next election or start a recall.
Laissez les consequences roullez.
@CSK: @Scott: Exactement!
@becca: I wouldn’t think that civil war is Trump and company’s intent, but if you think it is, then you’ll need to decide whether you’re giving your children and grandchildren to the cause.
And which cause you’re willing to sacrifice them to.
Good time to be old
and childless.
@CSK: No one’s thought that far ahead.
And many in independent Evangelicalism don’t consider most of the denominations you’ve named Christian to begin with.
@just nutha:
I figured as much.
“Gaetz”
snip
Louis XV: Après moi, le déluge
Trump: I am the deluge
I have been approached by citizens who advocate for prayer in public schools over the years. I always ask them if they will let me write the prayer.
When they say that they want to hear my prayer I tell them that I am not going to submit it to them for approval. I’m going to write the prayer and those kids are going to say it.
Other times people have asked me if I believe in prayer. I tell them that I do not presume to tell God what to do.
Has Dr. Pepper been nominated for Surgeon General yet?
@Kathy:
No, but Dr. Dre has.
@CSK: As I said yesterday, good think Dr. Mengele is dead.
@Mikey:
Oh, yeah. If not, he’d be at the top of the list.
@CSK: @charontwo: above quotes George Lakoff on why Dems lost. Lakoff wrote a whole book, Whose Freedom, on the idea freedom doesn’t mean the same thing to everyone. He observed that for conservatives freedom means being able to do their duty, as they see it. And their duty, as they see it, includes making you do your duty, as they see it.
@gVOR10:
This is so interesting to me, because my experience of New England Republicans/conservatives (an e’er dwindling number) is that “mind your own business” is/was a sacred tenet with them. Nobody gives a damn if you’re gay or trans or have an abortion. It’s no one’s business but your own.
@CSK: Well, as America’s Bard expressed it,
The times, they are a changin’.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Oh, surely they are. But I still think that there are far worse places to live than New England if you’re LGTBQ.
@CSK:
And that Dr Cagliari was fictional.
@CSK: I expect that there are worse places to live no matter who you are.
@charontwo:
My conclusions from initial polling data re “movable votes”:
(NB: none of this reflects my personal opinions, just my judgement of what US voter motivations seems to be.)
1) Inflation
2) Inflation
3) Immigration & border
4) Inflation
5) View of Dems as obsessed with “identity politics” and Harris as “unqualified”
6) Inflation
7) Inchoate existential angst
8) “Woke wars”
9) Media effects
10) Inflation
Did I mention inflation?
I forget things these days.
😉
IF this is accurate, and IF there are no deeper drivers operative, the Trump administration is set for major political problems in a couple of years.
Because a lot of their policy positions look set to drive inflation up, and in non-economic policy, liable to fail quite badly.
How far can performative politics take the MAGA-ized Republicans?
Less far than some of their rather inane “strategists” might hope, I suspect.
Let’s just hope they don’t collapse the entire post-ww2 world order as they thrash about in frustrated rage in the interim
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
@CSK:
Apart from the weather in winter time?
@JohnSF:
Eggs cost too much, and Snow White isn’t white, so we have to collapse the entire post-ww2 world order and end American democracy. This from the people who fancy themselves spiritual descendants of the pioneers. From, ‘Waaah, I survived the Donner Pass,’ to, ‘Waaah, I can’t find my 10% off coupon for Skippy!’
The blood of Númenor is all but spent. Actual human men label themselves as ‘involuntarily celibate,’ and still, somehow, think they’re alpha males.
I booked an appointment with an emigration law firm.
@CSK:
A similar attitude to a lot of “old England” conservatives.
By and large, do what you want, as long as you don’t encroach upon others.
An over-simplification, of course: they at various times also upheld, and still do, socially repressive positions. But socially, both the old aristocracy and the working class tended to be quite tolerant of divergent behaviour.
The most judgemental and “conventional” have often been the lower middle class, especially those with an “non-Conforming Protestant” background.
A thought occurs: is the New England vs others divergence in “morality policing” perhaps due to the greater influence in other regions of German-style “community conformance” traditions?
Or perhaps the New Englanders having had a belly-full of presbyterian predominance during the colonial period?
@Tony W: I’ve never had that happen on my Facebook page. I get friends and family feeds, recipes, animal videos, and household gadgets for sale. Then again, I never post anything political on my FB page (although I do sometimes respond to other people’s political posts), because I look at it as a way to stay in touch with people I know. I save my political posts for Twitter, I mean Threads, where most of the folks I interact with are people I don’t know personally.
@JohnSF:
If you’re used to snow,it’s not that bad. In any case, spring, summer, and fall up here are quite pretty.
@Michael Reynolds:
Indeed.
On Xitter, discussions various:
“Prices are up! It’s Biden’s fault!”
But prices are up across the entire world due to post-Covid and post-Ukraine war effects, plus monetary response to same.
“Don’t know. Don’t care!”
Would you rather have had recession?
“Don’t want either! Biden’s fault!”
US inflation is now at 2.5%, growth at 2.8%, best in OECD!
“Don’t care! When is my grocery bill coming down?”
Do you want deflation, you dimwit?
“Yay, prices falling! Also tariffs! Also trade war! Also no more alliances! Also we rulz forevah! Also as ordained in the BIBLE! Also, you are pinko-commie euro-weenie! Where your gunz? Hah, pwned you libz, go cry!”
OFFS.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
@JohnSF: I dunno. I’ve always liked living in a 4-season climate. Even the cold weather in Korea (much colder than Seattle, or even Spokane, where I lived a couple of years) was a nice change when it came.
@Mikey: bhmversusmengele.tumblr.com I recommend tweeting me with whatever you conclude but please first see what else you can find out that may be new information at beachhutman (the Tim Baber one) on X (Twitter). You are welcome and yes, I am still claiming I met Mengele but it took some years to contradict what I found out minutes after the contact in 2002. The luxury Villa Almarin in Mougkins, Cannes France is relevant. ©free to all, no problem with any kind of feedback in the spirit of librarianship…my refuge and legacy if Incant give this stuff away. TB