Christmas Eve Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, December 24, 2025
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24 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).
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“Bah! Humbug!”
Ok. I don’t celebrate Xmas. I like working half a day on the 24th and taking off the 25th. but it’s past 3:30 am and we’re still working. I’ll come in tomorrow (aka later today) and Thursday as well, and possibly the weekend, too.
On the other hand, we did get a turkey from the corporate overlords rather than a piece of pork leg like last year (both are traditional here). I still want to first dismember the cadaver and then cook it. Perhaps around May when I’ll have some free time (not kidding).
Anyway, here’s an Xmas carol from the 30th century.
Tomorrow we celebrate the idea that the God of Love, with his three superpowers – omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience – was so pissed off at the creatures he himself designed and created, that he was itching to push the button for the zoocide of homo sapiens, and the only alternative he could come up with was sending his soon to be tortured to death.
The human race fucked around, and was about to find out that when God says, ‘stop beating off,’ he means, ‘on pain of death’. Sure, he could have just shrugged it off, or maybe sent us to our room, or taken responsibility as the Creator, but once Jehovah’s blood is up there’s gonna have to be some torture and judicial execution. In this he modeled responsible parenting.
We’re celebrating a divine psychopath by going into debt to buy useless crap for our ungrateful kids. But I do like the lights.
Merry Christmas!
Kill a tree for Jesus’ birthday!
Yesterday I mentioned der Trumpenfuhrer’s announcement of shiny new Trump class battleships. Farley at LGM quotes Tom Nichols with, I think, the correct take on this:
Question for Gentiles:
Why do some of you say “tshanukah,” but none of you ever say “tshristmas”?
Merry Xmas all
From A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens
If everything is national security, then nothing is.
My Christmas present has arrived. After many delays, Four Roses Single Barrel. I now have a guy in Lisbon looking out for more.
USS Neversail – the beautiful new battleship concept. Not mentioned are the power requirements (not going to be nuclear in defiance of the law from ~2006 that could be changed of course – but lead time and cost) that means it would be tethered to refueling ships. Nothing strikes fear like an aesthetic warship! Look shiny object!
https://www.csis.org/analysis/golden-fleets-battleship-will-never-sail
The Babylon Bee has a great take (it comes with gaydar and a golden Trump figurehead on the bow
https://babylonbee.com/news/check-out-these-amazing-features-on-the-new-trump-class-battleship
@Richard Gardner:
Imagine the cost and size of the bigbeautiful golden bath tub El Taco will build so he can play with it.
Maybe that’s why he really wants the Panama Canal
Well, I knew they existed, but the batshit Eyes Wide Shut interpretations and related conspiracy theories have bubbled to the surface over the last year.
The inciting incident? No surprise there, a Joe Rogan episode with Roger Avary.
The appeal of life as a hermit increases daily.
@Kylopod:
That’s the pronunciation they give “Chanukkah.”
@Richard Gardner:
I’m pretty sure we don’t even have the capacity to build this asinine vanity project. The Pentagon will slow-walk it and when we get a real president it will quietly disappear.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown:
When I was a little kid, I wondered why Jesus didn’t get a cake and candles.
@Michael Reynolds:
I’m not convinced that being sent to one’s room is an effective punishment for beating off.
And with omnipresence, it doesn’t even have the “just not where I have to see or hear it” aspect.
Let that be a lesson to us all — don’t create a species that does things you find icky in ways that you can’t avoid watching if you can’t just get over yourself.
It doesn’t sound particularly applicable in day to day life, but my cat reminds me that she is a wild animal brought into a house and had no say in the matter, so she’s going to lick her butt in the center of the living room, so I think that counts.
Anyway, don’t play God, because He doesn’t seem entirely happy with the whole situation.
And Merry Christmas, I guess.
@Richard Gardner: When he’s lost the Babylon Bee…
Also, the Babylon Bee didn’t work in an “identifies as an attack helicopter” joke. They’ve found another joke. They have found another joke! Conservative humor is expanding! It’s still not funny, but they’re trying. Either that or they have gone woke.
@Kurtz: what are the Eyes Wide Shut conspiracy theories? Is it actually a documentary?
I vaguely remember that in ends in a shopping mall. Is it a Christmas movie?
@Michael Reynolds:
The important thing to remember: If we do not sin, Jesus died for nothing!
Merry xmas
@Gustopher:
Yes, I have seen the phrase “this is a documentary.”
There are several different flavors of the claim that Kubrick was murdered, because he refused to edit scenes that show an elite pedophile ring of Illuminati/Freemasons/Satanists.
I don’t think all make the claim Kubrick was murdered, but most come to the same conclusion about his intent.
The ‘evidence’ varies.
-That there were 20 minutes of scenes that the studio cut from the film and subsequently destroyed.
Some claim that they cut a scene depicting child sacrifice. One claim I saw was that Kubrick had tricked members of the actual cabal into appearing as the masked figures at the orgy, and that some scenes would have unmasked them.
-The score during the orgy scene is Romanian priests performing an Orthodox liturgical chant. It’s played in reverse, so Satanism.
-recurring images of 5-pointed stars and pentagrams. Including in the final scene at the toy store. One of the toys has one on its packaging. More on that scene later.
-A decoration consisting of an arc of Christmas lights that has two candle-like lights attached to the top. Resembles horns of the devil. It is seen twice:at the opening dinner party at Ziegler’s (Sydney Pollack) house. And in the hallway leading to the sex worker’s apartment.
-one of the claims about deleted scenes is that during Harford’s tour of the orgy, he would have entered a room with a giant pentagram on the floor. Can’t remember if this was the child sacrifice scene.
-the MC at the orgy, the one with the red cloak moves in a counter-clockwise direction during the ritual.
-the exterior shot of the orgy locale: it was a house previously owned by a member of the Rothschild family.
-the final scene implies that Alice and Bill Harford traded their daughter for their own safety. This has a bunch of interpretive dances done to justify.
There is one claim I saw that eschews the elaborate dance. Rather than make the wild claims about a bunch of deleted scenes, one guy argues that only one scene needed to be changed to eliminate a direct reference to their daughter being given up to the cabal.
He thinks that the letter given to Harford when he returns to the orgy house was altered to the vague threat and ‘final warning’ language from one that directly threatens Harford’s young daughter.
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Naturally, many YT comments I saw on debunking videos employ the usual conspiracism language and invective. We know where that goes. I did not see any juice box emojis, just intentional misspellings and substitution of triple chevrons instead of triple parentheses.
@dazedandconfused:
Absolutely.
Whereas a life full of depravity, mean-spiritedness, crime, greed, sexual assault, and so on, like, for instance, the ugly orange Taco slowly decaying in DC, gives Jesús a lot more bang for his self-sacrificial buck.
Silent Night
On Truth Social, Trump has wished everyone a Merry Christmas, including “the radical left scum.”
@Kurtz:
I really have no desire to watch that deviation from my reality (science and engineering type here), but I also recognize the perception of reality is also important – and I do not like South American Magical Realism and I’ve read 100 Years of Solitude, meh. Ditto Sjalfsteið Volk (Independent People – I do like some of Laxness’ other books) – miserable dysfunctional family under land serf rules (most readers don’t get that land slavery subtext). Several times I’ve told Icelanders regarding the great book, “would you invite Bjarter (the greatly flawed lead character) to a party? Would you name your child Bjarter?” Um, no. All perceptions of reality (without taking mushrooms, ha).