Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, June 27, 2025
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83 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.
The Sports headline of the day- Wander Franco, one-time Rays star, convicted after underage sexual abuse trial
Some literary news
From the San Francisco Chronicle–
Is this behavior hypocritical when supporters of trans rights howl in protest when transgender literature is removed from libraries? Let people buy or borrow books they want to read is my opinion.
Dear Wife and I leave for the British Virgin Islands on Monday. We will be gone a week. The purpose of our trip is my researching an upcoming book of mine that will be set in the BVI. One of my previous books had a brief scene there*. It will be better if I familiarize myself with the place before setting a whole book there.
Part of our time will be spent in the USVI. DW and I will be celebrating the 4th of July there.
Just yesterday, DW asked why I can’t set the book somewhere else. She isn’t much interested in the BVI. I asked where she thought I should set a book. One of the places DW mentioned was Germany. So I told her- wouldn’t you rather visit Germany for Oktoberfest say next year**? DW likes that idea.
I have a partly written 1970s Cold War story*** saved to Onedrive. Most of the story is set in Germany. A trip to Germany, like this year’s trip to the BVI, would be most useful before setting out to finish the book.
Our church got a phone call Wednesday. Somebody was saying there will be ICE activity in our part of Palm Beach County next Monday and Tuesday.
*- All of which took place in a souvenir store.
**- It would have to be next year. DW and I will be in Italy during Oktoberfest 2025.
***- The story is alluded in an espionage book I wrote over 5 years ago. Some of the characters in that book would be in the next one also.
A meat and potatoes post:
Pentagon formally unveils $961.6 billion budget for 2026, with reconciliation help
Apparently, there is basic incompetence is building the yearly and outyears budget plan:
Adding in the $400B Veterans Administration bill, the $30B National Nuclear Security Administration budget, the $82B National Intelligence Program budget , we are looking at a $1.4T bill for national defense.
Whether such budget numbers are needed, appropriate, or allocated properly is another discussion. But most people do not understand the scope of what we spend on defense. And that is the first step.
@Bill Jempty: A bookstore that sells books is very different from a public library. While I’m a big believer of let people read what they want to, but ultimately, as a unit of government, a library has different obligations to preserve access than a bookstore, which is a private business and can choose which books it wants to sell and which it doesn’t.
Note that Trump’s default outrage is directed at Democrats for divulging facts about the Iran mission contradicting his lies, not that they themselves lied. Trump, having been “prosecuted” multiple times now evinces a persecution complex, and reflexively reaches for “prosecuting” his opponents at every turn. Maximum leadership with NPD plus a side order of persecution complex. No way to run a modern democracy or any hope of a functional society.
@Bill Jempty:
I think Rowling is making the same mistake the transgender rights movement made: overreach. She is fostering a hate group and women may participate in hate groups, but they don’t power them.
It is usually a bad idea to pick fights you don’t need to pick. What the trans rights movement needed was access to facilities and the normal rights afforded all citizens. The pronoun fight was unnecessary. The attempt to pretend that biology was irrelevant and gender was a mere social construct was overreach and unnecessary to the goal. Overreach, as General Robert E. Lee learned at Gettysburg, and General Montgomery learned in the Netherlands, and Hitler learned on the road to Moscow, is a mistake.
A female hate group is unnecessary to Rowling’s stated goals. It’s hubris. It’s overreach. I came across this succinct quote from an Oxford don (by way of Canada):
Just stop, JK, you’re making a fool of yourself and in the end you’ll destroy what you built.
As predicted:
Christian parents sue to stop Ten Commandments requirement in Texas schools
At least 4 of the commandments are strictly religious in nature and that is a big problem. And given the “parental rights” movement, the commandment not to commit adultery is subject to the same arguments far right parents use on other matter of sexuality.
Though it would amuse me to see students of all ages struggle with the language of the mandated King James Version of the 10 Commandents.
@Bill Jempty:
I’m not familiar with protests over libraries removing trans literature but I’m sure it’s happened, and understandably so–its a public resource paid by taxpayer funds and should have very tight guidelines over censoring materials.
I think a better counter example would be Christian bookstores refusing to sell LGBTQ content, which is quite common.
@Jen:
The bookstores have the right to sell or not sell whatever they want but if they are also protesting libraries restricting what people can or can’t read, it isn’t consistent.
Trump administration expands military’s role at the border to the southern tip of Texas
This is largely private property. I wonder if the 3rd amendment to the Constitution applies here.
@Scott:
Hmm….–
How does that apply? The article makes no mention of anyone being quartered there.
@Bill Jempty: Maybe not. Troops temporarily assigned will probably stay in motels. A property owner may provide some land for temporary use. There is always eminent domain. Third amendment hasn’t had much exercise in the courts. Is it just restricted to quartering or is it expansive to include any kind of confiscatory use of property.
It is my contention that any deficit reduction plan that does not include increasing taxes, in some way’ is totally unserious. Well now we have proof. Yes, tariffs are a tax and it looks like it it is bringing in revenue. Consumers of course are largely paying this tax, businesses to a lesser extent all the while the ultra-rich and large corporations are benefitting for the tax cutting. Wouldn’t it be great if we just did the exact opposite?
Cutting taxes on the rich, and even more broadly, has been tried in every Republican administration since Reagan and it never, ever worked. It didn’t work for Reagan, and not for Bush, it was an unholy disaster in Kansas when Sam Brownback tried it: but here we go again. It didn’t work for Trump I and it’s not going to work for Trump II even with the influx of the consumer tax money that are the tariffs.
The strategy of mixing tax increases with speeding cuts did work (to some extent) in California when they when through a budget crunch. Are we that innumerate in this country? I guess we just have to live with simple answers that are wrong over complex answers that no one seems to want to understand.
However, unless something changes I have a feeling that tariff revenue will go down as more of the price increases get passed along to consumers. And in all of this we still have large corporations getting million in subsides and cute doges such as the “carried interested” loophole for finance companies.
Trump tariff revenue soars 78%. Who’s paying them?
@Bill Jempty: It’s not hypocritical, because it’s not the same thing at all.
Apparently these bookstores have been selling the Harry Potter books for years even as Rowling became more and more vocal in her hate for trans people and her political work to eliminate them from society. Which means they were not using politics to determine which books to carry.
They are pulling them from the shelves now because Rowling has announced that HP royalties would be donated to a fund dedicated to eliminating any protections for trans people. Which makes every sale into a political donation to a cause they find hateful, and they are deciding — no doubt at a considerable cost to their own businesses — that they do not want to contribute.
@Bill Jempty:
One is a matter of access to taxpayer resources and the First Amendment, the other is about what a private business chooses to sell, and ultimately as @wr notes, how that translates to financially supporting Rowling’s opinions. If you think those two situations are equivalent, I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise.
Since we let the bottom lake front revert to habitat (we did throw in some wildflowers) all sorts of creatures showed up. I see quite a few fireflies lately, too.
There are birds, birds, birds everywhere! Too numerous to name, even if I could identify all of them. Butterflies and hummingbirds, too.
We have a bumper crop of snapping turtles this year. They come in all sizes, from just a couple inches long up to two feet or so for the great granddaddies that are
the apex predator on the lake. Except back when some people up here ate them. Didn’t make soup, but fried the legs. Does not sound tempting.
Sadie goes to the shoreline and digs for turtles. If she gets one, she brings them up on the small lawn and tosses them into the air, like a ball. This isn’t behavior we encourage, but so far she hasn’t hurt one. I take them to the water and toss them back in and they swim away. Traumatized? Sure, but otherwise intact.
I love nature.
This makes me want to puke Florida edition of the headline of the day- Port St. Lucie man accused of abusing, killing kittens he adopted from shelters
@Scott: My understanding is that it’s not about quartering, it’s about having the military act the way ICE is currently — no ids, no warrants, just go onto private property and detain whoever they want. Because at some point the locals are going to insist that the local police take some action against masked heavily-armed people who won’t say who they are.
@wr: @wr:
The SF Chronicle article I quoted, doesn’t say that. It does say however-
We don’t know anything but we’re angry! How many times have people like that been belittled around here. Jan 6 rioters…….
One other point about the Harry Potter books. I don’t think anyone is objecting to the content of the books, in contrast to LGBTQ+ book bans. They are objecting to the avowed use of the profits.
Indeed, Rowling’s position on trans people contrasts quite sharply with the ideas in her books, it seems to me. Her books celebrate people that are not quite “normal” in a way that was a great joy to me.
Trumpists want to suppress speech that shows queer people in a positive manner.
Liberals want to suppress speech that shows queer people in a hateful manner.
@Rick DeMent: “Are we that innumerate in this country?”
Unfortunately, yes, many of us are. And selfish, and gullible, and unable/unwilling to learn from even recent history. “You say no tax on overtime (or tips, or social security benefits)? That’s for me!” And now the White House is running ads claiming that “families will see an average increase in take-home pay of over $10,000 per year,” which makes me wonder what kind of dollars and what year they’re talking about… Taiwan dollars? In 2035?
@Rick DeMent: Tax revenue increased under Reagan. The Democratic Congress reneged on the budget cuts.
@Bill Jempty: “We don’t know anything but we’re angry! How many times have people like that been belittled around here. Jan 6 rioters…….”
Incorrect. They don’t know the details, they do know her intent, and they’ve already seen her push recording women in bathrooms.
Long past due. May he succeed and many more follow. Defamation and lies are a de facto form of censorship especially when coupled with the Right’s “flood the zone” media and social media activism. This tech-charged echo chamber phenomenon exploits democracy’s benevolent nature and undermines our sustainability. We simply have to draw a line in the sand.
@Mister Bluster: Well, there goes the ballgame. What little was left of brakes on Trump/Miller and Project 2025 is now effectively gone.
May the fates have mercy on us.
@Chip Daniels:
“Liberals want to suppress speech that shows queer people in a hateful manner.”
Wrong. Liberals want to not support speech which insists on hurting people.
@Barry:
It’s fair to say that liberals want social censure on those who refuse to accept queer people as equals.
Trumpists want social censure on those that do.
@Jay L Gischer:
By “her books,” I assume you mean Harry Potter. Since her 2019 descent into anti-trans madness, she’s started writing books under the name Robert Galbraith, which by total coincidence happens to be the name of one of the founders of gay conversion therapy. One of those books is an over-1000-page screed about someone who gets harassed and eventually murdered by a mob of SJWs. I am not remotely joking.
Apparently Eric Trump, like his older brother DJT Jr., has presidential ambitions.
@Kylopod: Yes, I meant Harry Potter. No, I did not know that.
Wow. Just wow.
@Bill Jempty:
Well, not exactly, no. It did say, however,
But I support your Constitutionally guaranteed right to cherry pick your own citation to justify whatever lie you want to tell yourself and to believe that lie. So, I’m stepping away now. My job here is done.
@Mister Bluster: It’s telling that Barrett is interested in the history and legality of universal injunctions, but Sotomayor is more focused on what the impact will be. Liberals always claim conservatives back out their reasoning from their desired rulings but you can watch the dissent do it and the majority opinion do the opposite.
@Michael Reynolds:
Now, as is often the case, I can’t actually tell whether I agree with you or or not.
In particular, I am not sure what you mean by “pronoun battles”. I use feminine pronouns with reference to my daughter. I slipped up sometimes. It upset her. I gave her a nerf gun to shoot me with when I slipped up, and everyone felt better. Was that a “battle”?
When political figures use male pronouns for a trans woman, it is a political act. It is not ignorance, nor is it accidental. Is that a “pronoun battle”? How do you respond to deliberate insults? I mean, I try very hard to not get baited into certain conversations, yes. I think many other commenters on this blog could stand to think harder before they respond to someone in anger, but it’s pretty common to not do so.
I have avoided the “trans women in sports” conversations. I just think they are super low impact, as compared to anti-transition laws, and can be used to frame the idea of “trans people are up to something”. And I have attempted to redirect any conversational attempt in that direction to the issue of anti-treatment laws.
You seem, to me, to be commanding the tide to not come in. I assure you, I am often tempted to do so these days myself. I try not to, though. I try to spend energy where it might help things, where it might help someone.
I read some trans people who are unhappy with politicians for not being – scrappy enough – I can understand the disappointment (especially with Newsom, he could have done better than that), but I don’t expect politicians to lead on this.
We need to lead. We need to tell our story. We need to figure out how to make it punch through, to reach people who need to hear it, and tell it in a way that is accessible.
So, I think we agree, but I would encourage you to spend more of your focus on what needs to happen, and less on what is in the way. It takes a lot of effort, but I think you are capable of great things.
One of the things a lot of people don’t get when it comes to Rowling is that she isn’t simply misguided on one particular issue–she’s made it her fucking life. Contrast that with, say, George Lucas, who was rightly criticized for using coded racist and anti-Semitic stereotypes in some of his alien characters in The Phantom Menace. To my knowledge nobody tried to organize a boycott over it. And for that matter they didn’t for Rowling herself back when some people started finding the hook-nosed Gringotts bankers a bit suspect. Being imperfect when it comes to bigotry is not the issue. Rowling has crossed a line in recent years that Lucas never did, and that has real-world negative consequences. It’s not purity-testing to point that out.
The New Republic on Nancy Mace. It’s paywalled, but a few excerpts will suffice to get the gist:
“TNR”
…
…
The current US President doesn’t know when the Civil War ended, but we’re supposed to believe that Biden’s decline was somehow more significant.
@Fortune: “Tax revenue increased under Reagan. The Democratic Congress reneged on the budget cuts.”
I’ve seen this before. Regan’s administration spanned from the bottom of a serious recession to the top of a recovery. And included tax increases.
@CSK: “Apparently Eric Trump, like his older brother DJT Jr., has presidential ambitions.”
That’s reasonable, from their point of view. They are Swamp Monsters, who have vastly enlarged the Swamp. They have pulled in many, many millions, and are basically above the law. They have celebrity in a celebrity political system.
@Jen:
What’s his estimate? 1945?
@Jay L Gischer:
Harry is literally in the closet when he’s at home.
But such an observation would assume that Rowling is making intentional choices about her writing that are reasonably well thought out.
@Fortune: “It’s telling that Barrett is interested in the history and legality of universal injunctions…”
This is the SCOTUS who said that Dem President Biden could not waive some student loan payments, because that was beyond his Constitutional powers.
Then said that Trump’s attempt to overthrow the Government was maybe within his powers.
These are not honest people.
@Fortune:
Most cases before the Supreme Court are about balancing competing rights, rather than simply determining the extent of a right.
It’s probably more telling that the conservatives pretend not to look at the impact, while ruling in a way that always somehow has the impact they are ideologically predisposed to.
@Fortune: If you’re taking the position that trickle down economics work, you’re a bigger dumbass than any of us thought.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tax-cuts-rich-50-years-no-trickle-down/
@CSK: He did manage to get the right century (1800s) by saying it was “1869 or whatever.”
@Jen: He got within 5 years. That’s more than close enough unless he is trying to pilot a Time Machine.
A bigger question is does he know who won, and is he happy with that result?
And his thought on Reconstruction and the abandonment of it, but I’m not sure he is aware of that.
@Daryl:
Point of order: I don’t appreciate you underestimating how much of a dumbass I think he is.
@Jen: You think Trump ever knew the timeline of the Civil War?
@Jen: @Gustopher:
http://www.goacta.org/2015/04/survey_half_of_americans_dont_know_when_the_civil_war_took_place/
@Chip Daniels:
My Google skills aren’t up to finding the quote, but Matt Taibbi wrote that both liberals and conservatives want to restrict speech of which they disapprove, but only conservatives are open and honest enough to do it through the law. Which is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read, but does describe the situation.
Social obloquy has always been used to enforce social norms. What conservatives can’t accept is that while they were once the arbiters of social norms, they are now the targets of social scorn and derision. Liberal attitudes have largely prevailed in society and conservatives wish to reverse that by law.
@Michael Cain:
“it’s about having the military act the way ICE is currently — no ids, no warrants, just go onto private property and detain whoever they want. Because at some point the locals are going to insist that the local police take some action against masked heavily-armed people who won’t say who they are.”
I am somewhat surprised that I haven’t seen a case yet where the person ICE was seeking to detain didn’t pull out a gun and start shooting. It could make an interesting test for some states’ Stand Your Ground laws.
@Gustopher:
Phil Leotardo!
In seriousness, she was never especially subtle about what the war against mudbloods was supposed to represent. But that doesn’t mean there was anything notable or profound about it. Fantastic racism is fine for a kid’s book, but it’s long struck me as a very surface-level way of teaching lessons about bigotry, and even problematic to a degree since it’s almost always the case that the fictional “races” are different in non-superficial ways, which implicitly reinforces the notion of inherent characteristics. That’s why it’s not surprising to occasionally see cringey stuff like the Gringotts goblins or Watto creep in.
@gVOR10:
The reason I phrased it so bluntly was to demonstrate that cries of “free speech” are always conditional and have assumed boundaries which are hidden from view which only invites abuse and bad faith.
Everyone, without exception, holds that there are certain categories of speech should not be protected from government suppression (E.g., slander, threats) and categories which should not be protected from private action (publishers rejecting certain text, employers forbidding certain types of speech) and categories which should not be protected from social censure.
So it isn’t really about Free Speech versus censorship, but a battle over whose values are given censure and whose are not.
@CSK: Reiterating my theory that the electorate are a box of rocks. Perhaps in some cases it is wise to defer to experts, who actually know something.
@Jen: What “case” was Trump babbling on about that was started the day the war ended?
Decades ago I read an analysis that stuck with me of one of those periodical professional society rankings of presidents. The author looked at the top ten prez or whatever and saw two common threads, not universal, but common. One was that they had been career politicians, coming out local politics where compromise was understood and everybody got a piece of the pie. The other was at least a serious amateur interest in history, which provided examples and perspective. Obviously neither applies to Trump.
@gVOR10:
The case was birthright citizenship. I think Trump is saying it was only intended for the former slaves and their descendants.
Remember the crash of China Eastern flight 5735? A final report on the results of the investigation hasn’t been published, and now it seems none will ever be.
Notice the reason given to suppress the report is “Disclosure may endanger national security and social stability.” There seems to be reasons to believe the plane was deliberately crashed.
Isn’t this swell. Mike Lindell has planned a reporter in the WH Press Room.
http://www.rawstory.com/2020-election-2672446941/
Trump stretches “Big Balls” tenure, hangs it on Social Security post.
19 year old phenom holds fate of senior citizens and disabled in his young hands.
For our fellow commenters who prefer astrophysics to the news of the day (a reasonable survival mechanism), I offer this article on a website I’ve never heard of, bigthink.com, with a super click-baity title.
It was rebskyed by Katie Mack, who is a real astrophysicist, so I assume this is decent info, not flat-earther astrophysics or something.
Busting the top 5 myths about the Big Bang
But what really interests me is how much this looked like trash when initially viewed
https://bsky.app/profile/startswithabang.bsky.social/post/3lsjgv5gvxk2x
And how much the endorsement of an authority will get me to change my mind. If Katie Mack got brain worms, I might believe 5 true things about the Big Bang had been disproven.
And that gets me thinking about SSL/TLS and how we — well, our browsers — trust a small set of certificate authorities who assert that a website is who they say they are when we use https. (That’s very dumbed down, and the mechanisms are complex).
And that gets me thinking about current politics, and how the fuck does RFKJr. become a source of trust to anyone. The man is clearly a loon. The whale head story alone should call his judgement into question.
Not to mention Donald Trump. Or JK Rowling.
@Gustopher:
Ah, yes, the whale head. Not to speak of dumping the bear carcass in Central Park.
@CSK: That’s actually a workable enough argument that I’m pretty confident that he got it from someone else. Not very many people think deeply enough into the question to get to that argument, I suspect.
@CSK: Pillow TV has a news department? Heh. Who woulda imagined?
@Gustopher:
Interesting link, thanks.
“New Yorker”
Susan B. Glasser
etc.
@just nutha:
Yeah, it’s called “Pillow Talk.” Just joking!
@Fortune: “It’s telling that Barrett is interested in the history and legality of”
I almost left a lengthy response demonstrating why this poster is completely full of shit, and then I realized it was just Fortune, and he doesn’t mean a word he says and doesn’t care if anything is true and will never engage with anything close to an idea. He’s just a parasite.
@Barry: “These are not honest people.”
If I may crib from old F. Scott, I think he pretty much nailed the Republican majority on the Court:
They were careless people – they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.
@charontwo:
I dislike what Rutte said, but I can understand why he said it.
We (that is, Europe) needs time, and must play for it.
@Gustopher:
Just been reading John Gribbin’s “The Universe: A Biography”.
What’s remarkable is how concepts and observations from astronomy, particle physics, and mathematical cosmology and physics have, generally, been able to combine to to make up a reasonably coherent picture of the universe and its laws and processes.
It really is one of the most remarkable achievements in human itellectual and technological history.
And beacuse it’s based on collective endeavour, rational hypotheses, precise mathematics, and tests against observed reality.
Not silly dogmatic assertions.
Anyhoo, having a fun evening drinking wine and watching Glastonbury on the BBC.
Some excellent music, and the Glastonbury crowd always cheers me up.
@wr:
Do you suppose they serve that kind of fortune cookies at Mar a Lardo?
Speaking of which, upon opening Edge today I was presented with Copilot Vision. The gist is, when active, will “see” the webpage you’re on, and you can ask it questions about it. First thing it tells you is “make sure your mic is enabled and the volume’s on.”
Ok. So my first reaction was to mute the microphone in the Vision bar at the bottom of the screen. The second was to find out how to disable the mic, or at least prevent Edge from using it (I’m not sure I did this, so I disabled the mic altogether*). The third was to find a way to shut down the Vision bar.
I’m puzzled, too, because the Copilot sidebar has always been perfectly capable of telling you about stuff on a web page. I just tried it now, to check, and it did.
Though it’s getting too familiar now. Here’s a reply from the test: “Of course, Kathy! The page you’re on now introduces Microsoft Copilot in Edge, your AI-powered sidekick built directly into the browser.” I don’t recall it ever addressing me by name before.
And apparently this Vision thing will also be, or already is, a feature for the Copilot app on Win11. I’m not sure about that because I still run Win10 at home (can’t upgrade officially), and am still on vacation so I won’t see the Win11 laptop until Tuesday (I’m not sure it runs the Copilot app at all; it’s administered by IT).
And stay tuned, as these things get even more intrusive: Copilot Actions are coming.
In a way, that’s partly what may make LLMs useful for everyday (and every time) tasks. But, right now, do you trust one of these to correctly fill out forms? What about using your credit card numbers?
*I realized I’d no idea if my desktop PC even had a microphone, since I’ve never had to use it before. Turns out it does.
@JohnSF: I believe there is a quote of Napoleon, probably apocryphal, of “If I need something from a man I kiss his ass, and don’t make too fine a point of it.”
Currently my partner has been binge-watching Russian series on Catherine the Great’s early years. Mostly about the court politics of Imperial Russia, and she finds the nuances fascinating enough to get through what is, to our eyes, a glacial pacing of the plot. The acting is quite good though.
One of the aspects is the highly refined Russian art of sucking up without being fawning. One of the net results of this refinement is the Empress got to the point where she only trusted those who argued with her, as “Those who speak their mind are not a threat.” I saw this same thought echoed in HBO “Chernobyl” series, where the head of the secret service let up on the scientist after the scientist pretty much cussed him out, judging (probably correctly) that no one who was a secret enemy would do that. What a dangerous game play, with the very highest of stakes!
Trump is a rookie, he absolutely loves fawning, and we Westerners have much to learn about living under a dictatorship.
@Bill Jempty: Are these trips deductible business expenses? Can you also claim DW’s expenses?
@dazedandconfused:
It probably depends if the monarch concerned is intelligent or not.
Also monarchies varied a lot, from the parliamentary monarchy of England, via French “traditionalism”, the German rechtsstaat, Russian “nominal absolutism”, to “law-free” despotism.
An interesting thing about Catherine (and later Elizabeth) was that she was actually German by origin, as was much of her court and many senior officials.
Given Trump’s evidenced thin-skinned narcsissism, obsequious flattery may be optimal for others.
Trump’s obvious flaw is that it is decidedly sub-optimal for both himself and (if he cares much) the United States.
My personal opinion is that Trump’s evident animus toward Ukraine in general. and Zelensky in particular, relates to Kyiv refusing to “do him a solid” over the “Biden corruption” nonsense in his first term.
As I say, Europe needs time for its current re-armanent to come online.
And then to see how much post-Trump MAGA continues to shape US policy.
Reconstructing full strategic autonomy is not something that can be achieved overnight.
@CSK: Yes, I know what he intended to say, or would have intended if he understood anything. But birthright citizenship wasn’t a “case” and it didn’t start the day the war ended. The point is not to finish his sentences for him, the point is his ignorant incoherence.
@JohnSF:
We are, collectively, so good at so many things. But we can’t seem to govern ourselves worth a damn. What a piece of work is man.
@gVOR10:
Oh, I know. That is why I said that I thought that was what he was referring to, but it’s hard to make sense of his witless babble.
@gVOR10:
Well, maybe its just me, but despite the recent far-right challenge, Europe seems to have established a reasobable system of both domestic governance and international co-operation.
See the GDP per capita figures for Poland.
Back in 1990 they were on a par with Iran, and below Russia.
Now they closing in on Japan, while Iran has stagnated, and Russia also fallen behind.
The reality is even worse for both Iran and Russia, because so much of nominal per capita GDP is actually sequestered by oligarchs and/or the regime elite.
It’s a similar pattern across much of central/eastern Europe.
And, to take a longer time-base, much of western Europe also.
The US is, arguably, even better at internal economic dynamism.
But perhaps less so at avoiding areas of entrenched deprivation, and “zero-sum” politics.
otoh, give the idiots like AfD, Reform, RN, Fiesz, PiS, etc the chance and doubtless they could do plenty of damage.
Scientific knowledge advances; political wisdom perhaps not so much.
@JohnSF: @JohnSF: Elizabeth preceded Catherine. Elizabeth was also German but seems to have had little love for them. it was Elizabeth who arranged the marriage of Catherine to her nephew, Peter III, whose reign lasted only a few months before Catherine deposed of him by military coup.
@dazedandconfused:
Yep. Derp.
Usually my Russian history memory is better than that.
I studied Russian history under Ronald Kowalski at Worcester.
One of the best teachers I’ve ever had.
Though the focus was on post-1890, so I have that, rather feeble, excuse.
(mea culpa, Ronnie)
@Jay L Gischer:
It’s a matter of simple politeness to address people as they prefer to be addressed, as male or female. It is a mistake to demand it, to attack or demean those who resist, or to try to enforce it in law.
It was a ridiculous mistake to insist on the singular ‘they.’ Never worked, and it never will. I have repeatedly posed the question: “How do I write an action scene involving several characters while using the singular they?” No one has ever answered, because it doesn’t work. You end up either tagging every character by name or by title and that makes for very clunky writing, and you actually lose the use of the word ‘they’ entirely. It can’t be ‘they’ charged, it has to be, “Tom, Dick and Mary charged, and then Tom, Dick and Mary fell down, and Tom, Dick and Mary were bruised. They, however, stood aside.” So, who is they? One of the other characters?
The smart move was not social media bullying, the smart move was to leave it as a matter of politesse and let time do the rest. Let it evolve naturally, as language does, as it is meant to do. Forcing neologisms on people is irritating, divisive and counterproductive, it makes something naturally flexible into something rigid and ideological thus creating backlash.