Ides of June Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, June 15, 2024
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46 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a 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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Only in March, May, July, and October do the Ides fall on the 15th. In other months it’s the 13th.
As you can see, I like being a pedant.
Taking the family to the beach for two weeks, so my posting will be sporadic for a while.
@James Joyner: Enjoy.
People ruin everything.
@James Joyner: Travel safe and have fun!
@drj: I find it hard to believe that the first full moon of the month falls on exactly the same date for any given month year after year, but I’ve never made a study of it. The innertubes tell me that it usually falls between the 13th and 15th, so I guess it’s possible.
@just nutha:
It does on a lunar calendar.
The first seder, the first day of passover is always the same date – 15th of Nissim – and always on a full moon.
ETA: Some years have 12 months on the Hebrew calendar, others have 13. (I.e., leap months to stay roughly in sync with the solar seasons).
@just nutha:
Despite being originally based on the lunar cycle, the Ides were fixed days in each month of the Roman calendar.
Music for the weekend, Ludwig Waltz No. 1 by Alma Deutscher
I’ve seen the conductor play the violin in a smaller orchestra, mostly in chamber music. I’d never seen one play the piano.
wsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1801745770082599386%7Ctwgr%5Ec3767d23dbc8946c5968adeaf0aed0ccc66abadd%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fsport%2Farticle%2F2024%2Fjun%2F15%2Frory-mcilroy-rides-a-rocky-road-but-stays-in-us-open-contention”>U.S. Open@usopengolf
ACE ON THE LAST TO GET INSIDE THE PROJECTED CUT!
@F_Molinari
with the ultimate do or die moment!
@Kathy: In a chamber orchestra, the conductor is sometimes a pianist, but traditionally, conductors have been string players, usually violinists. The theory seems to have been that violinists were the most numerous section, so replacement of a violinist is easier. But when a pianist is the founder of the group he or she will usually conduct, too.
When I was studying music in college, I said I wanted to be a conductor, and one of my teachers said that if I was good enough to become a symphony player, that it was unlikely that, as an oboist, I would ever be considered as a conductor or music director.
@OzarkHillbilly: Link fail. Try try again. So this happened yesterday:
Square profile picture
Of the hordes of toadies who publicly wished TFG a happy birthday yesterday, Melania Trump was notably absent from their number.
@drj: I will admit to learning something new and for falling prey to trying to find some different way of writing the Forum title.
Damn Romans.
Hope Desantis never sees this. Looks like they’re all in drag. Or maybe they are wearing man dresses.
Maybe Ron is distracted these days.
Last I heard he was asking his subjects “How long can you tread water?”
@Kathy:
I’ve seen both Leonard Bernstein and Daniel Barenboim conduct from the piano.
I was thinking just this past week that I’d like to hear some of Alma Deutscher’s orchestral compositions. The novelty of a composer who thinks music should be beautiful is worth pursuing.
@Steven L. Taylor: IIRC, Isaac Asimov used the obscure fact that the ides of some months falls on the 13th in the plot of a murder mystery.
Nicholas Kristof writes today about the failure of West Coast progressivism, differentiating it from the East Coast version. It’s long past time for California and Oregon progressives to start admitting their abject failure on homelessness.
I found this a useful perspective since I am almost always with progressives on issues, but find ideological lockstep thinking to be a form of self-harm. To oversimplify: Ideals good. Ideology bad. Ideals are goals to work toward. Ideology is a box you’re required to stuff your brain into, and if it doesn’t fit, you just slice off a little here and a little there. You achieve a goal by pragmatic, realistic means. Ideology is not pragmatic or realistic.
I think part of the problem is that a pragmatic pursuit of a goal is hard work, sometimes very hard, often over long periods of time, sometimes across generations. Ideology isn’t work at all, it’s just conformity. Parrot the right talking points and pat yourself on the back despite having accomplished nothing. Hashtag Defund: easy. Doing something about police abuses: hard. Social media encourages everyone to play purity police while requiring no one to actually do anything to make the world a better place.
Zooming out I have been concerned for a long time that the iPhone and social media and reality TV were making every life a performance. People don’t engage, they take pictures. They don’t do anything, they just strike poses. Look at me! is the slogan of the post-iPhone world.
That said, in the interests of full disclosure, I’m not on social media claiming virtues I don’t practice, but I’m also not showing up at city counsel meetings, or knocking on doors, or poring over proposals, or manning a phone line. There are people here in the commentariat who do those hard things, who commit, and show up, and stick to it year after year. But I am never part of a community because I’m always moving on to some other place. So, I write checks, which I freely confess is the easy thing.
@just nutha:
Music is like an alien language sometimes.
Have to agree with Michael. It reminds me of my DEI struggle. I think diversity is important and practiced it in my hiring, but all of the actual DEI programs I looked at either offered no success metrics or had poor ones. I am encouraged that some of our new people like the mayor in Philly and the governor dont seem quite so engaged in purity rituals and want to actually address issues like crime and education and basic housekeeping stuff like street cleaning. .
Steve
@DrDaveT:
I love her violin concerto.
Here’s the link to her Youtube channel
I am still having a bit of trouble believing the SCOTUS decided bump stocks are legal and I have been advocating for the idea that the court is really just part of MAGA Inc. With 600 people killed or wounded in Vegas in a few minutes you would think it pretty clear why they are bad.
Also, it occasionally surprises me when I realize I have forgotten how bad things will be if when the court overturns laws as part of its ongoing MAGA efforts. They decided we get to keep Mifepristone due to a standing decision (guess that was too blatant even for them) however that just means it will come back sponsored by a state or some contrived group and they will run win their favor. That means we go back to 2000 rules where in order to get the drugs for a medication abortion you needed to have 3 in person medical appointments with the provider. 3? You might not get that many if you are having major heart surgery.
Steve
@steve: Interesting. I’ve always looked at the problem you’re identifying as liberals paying lip service to progressive notions but not being willing to embrace the world those notions could create. But where I’ve lived there are as many liberal NIMBYs as conservative ones.
If you’re about ideology, you’re done as soon as you memorize the party line. No need even to ask yourself whether you’ll accomplish anything real, because you’ve already achieved your narcissistic goal. If it’s about real world goals, you’re likely never to fully achieve your goal, the best you can do is get a bit closer to it. But it’s that latter course that makes the world a better place.
A related issue has to do with ratios. In the good ol’ days the ratio of writers etc, to professional critics was probably 50 to 1. Now the ratio is reversed: far more critics than writers, or directors, or musicians. Critics are therefore less knowledgeable, less invested, and given the competition for eyeballs, more superficial, more prone to clickbait. If you’re a creative and complain at all, the rejoinder is, ‘What, you think you’re above criticism?’ To which I might answer, ‘Not at all, just above the critiques of ignoramuses.’
When the sole basis of criticism is ideological, whether to do with politics or art, the result is destructive. Just as it is 1000 times easier to be an ideologue than an effective agent of change, it is 1000 times easier to criticize a movie, TV show, book, song, podcast, comedy show, etc…, than it is to create something. This isn’t a red/blue thing, it’s a 21st century thing.
@Michael Reynolds: Looking at the HUD data from January 2023, there is a very strong correlation between the fraction of homeless who are unsheltered and how cold the weather gets. With one exception, all of the cities with the highest rates of unsheltered homeless are in warm places. Florida has historically averaged more than 60% unsheltered for the state as a whole (currently 50%). In contrast, NY has about 5% unsheltered.
The exception is Eugene, OR. I wonder what’s going on there. I’d also love to know where the people who would be homeless in the bay area are housed in Florida.
@Mister Bluster:
South Florida has seen heavy rain and flooding for 4-5 days. The part of it I live in, has seen no flooding according to the person caring for the cat Dear Wife and I have. Remember we’re in Australia right. Perth to be precise.
DW and I will be home Friday night. The trip has been great but we’re tired of living out of a suitcase for 3 weeks.
Back home DW and I lost a person we owed much to. One of our parishioners who sustained us financially while I battled cancer and our finances were horrible. There were others who gave us great help, Terry and Dominic in particular, but Eleanor was hard to forget. She would call me multiple times a week to check on how we were doing when things were going bad, and didn’t stop calling after my health returned and my book business took off*. Eleanor was a wonderful lady and I won’t forget her. She passed away at age 97 on June 6.
The Florida Panthers are one game away from winning the Stanley Cup and I’m not home to watch it.
Other than the Panthers and South Florida flooding, I haven’t kept up too much with current events while away.
Dear Wife will be celebrating our 35th church wedding anniversary** tomorrow.
That’s enough. Room service will be bringing breakfast soon and DW is beginning to stir. Two Mondays from now I should be back around OTB.
*- Till at least 2019 or 2020 when Eleanor’s own health began to decline. DW would bring Eleanor weekly communion from then till her passing away.
**- DW and I have a civil wedding anniversary also. It is May 30. Our cat also turns 17 tomorrow.
@Michael Reynolds:
I appreciate that you flagged your oversimplification:
If I am understanding your point, you appear to be saying that people with the most extreme ideologies will be less likely (the least likely?) to participate, organize, march, etc. on behalf of their professed cause.
If that is indeed what you’re saying (I trust that you will correct me if I have misrepresented your position), it appears to be counter to the research literature on this topic.
Here’s an extensive study on the topic: The Politicized Participant: Ideology and Political Action in 20 Democracies
In case you or others can’t access the paper, here’s the setup:
And later in the paper, when discussing their findings:
When I consider this topic, I can readily conjure up the loudmouthed, side-line sitter who is capable of putting real skin in the game but who prioritizes voice over action. And I assume that these people illustrate the real and pervasive association between ideological extremism and political action.
The data, however, throw cold water on my assumption. Availability heuristic wins again.
@DrDaveT:
Um… can you point to that HUD data? I’m having a hard time believing that over half of Florida is homeless.
I’m also not finding anything like that. I think you are either misreading data, I am misreading you, or you wrote something you didn’t mean to.
I’ve also generally heard that homelessness tracks with rent as a percentage of income, rather than weather, but am perfectly willing to believe that hard winters cause migration.
@Michael Reynolds:
I would put Washington on that list. I haven’t spent time in east coast cities lately, but NYC had a problem 25 years ago.
The housing shortage is probably one of the biggest failures of urban politics in ages. It drives the drug crisis and mental health crisis, as homeless folks will turn to whatever escape they can find and the stress of homelessness is corrosive to mental health.
Mind you, attempts to address the housing shortage are always painted as a War On Suburbs by the usual folks on the right, and our state legislature is barely Dem, with a lot of conservative Democrats — with the Republican drag on policy, we would need 85% Democratic support for anything substantial.
If I were Dictator of Washington, I would add a hefty property tax surcharge for anywhere that is zoned single-family, so people want to be rezoned (for freedom!). If we can relax the artificial restriction on supply, the market might be able to take care of a lot of it.
I am such a Neoliberal Toadie.
More on Southwest. Now it seems it may want to acquire Breeze Airways (spoiler alert, as the video doesn’t mention the mystery competitor SW may acquire until rather late in the video).
I don’t know. I’ve confirmed the union has hired a law firm in anticipation of a merger. I’ve also come across a few mentions of Southwest setting its eyes on Breeze, but they all mention the same Leeham News article about the matter (which is behind a paywall).
The video argues SW has excess seat capacity in its fleet, and needs more smaller aircraft. Breeze has the most smaller jets close in size to the 737-700 and the MAX7*, but that translates, as of now, into 25 A220-300s. SW’s fleet is around 900 planes. Of course, Breeze has 66 more on order. And the A220 is certified and in production, unlike the MAX7.
*Of any US airline that SW can afford to buy. Air Baltic has more A220s, but, come on. Delta has 26 A220-300 (and orders for 70 more), as well as 45 smaller A220-100s. I don’t think SW has or can get the money to buy Delta.
@Mimai:
I’m referring specifically to symptoms of social media in the current age. For one thing there’s not really any way to judge the actual intensity of belief of people who communicate via social media. It can range from 0% performative to entirely performative. People who are primarily looking for attention or validation may choose to espouse any number of ideologies.
But okay, let’s assume they’re sincere in believing in a particular ideology. The example you gave above, re Lefties:
Most of those words don’t really mean anything, and I assume these must be self-reported. So Lefties believe they are essentially communicating, and believe they’re having some effect, but tend to be less interested in doing something concretely useful: voting. They do things in public, then tend to crap out when there’s no opportunity to attract attention. That’d be one interpretation. But honestly the study – at least what you quote – looks too vague to mean much.
I’m contrasting the talk-the-talk with the walk-the-walk, while confessing that I just talk-the-talk and buy shoes for the walk. Or something like that. I apologize, but I have to go get a shot which is my one phobia and I’m a bit distracted.
trying this again, with block quote corrections
One can be performative AND hard-working. Some are even performative in their hard-work.
In your most recent comment, you wrote:
Voting can be concretely useful. Other times, less so. Depends on the context. I do push back on the implication that those other things (see * below) are not useful and/or are lesser useful than voting.
I think you agree, at least based on what you wrote in an earlier comment:
Elsewhere, you wrote:
To which I reply (with 25% snark), compared to what? Or (with more snark), who?
As is typical in any such large-scale study (from the article in question: “In our hierarchical analyses, we exclusively focus on the 20 longstanding Western democracies in our data set. Because we have data on two parliamentary elections for 7 countries, our data set covers 27 elections. The total number of respondents of 18 years and older is 47,902.”), precision and nuance are often in tension with scale.
Nevertheless, as a good study would do, they operationalized their terms. They also called their shots, performed robustness checks of their results, and used other best practices. Thus, I’m rather inclined to put some trust in the reliability and validity of these data.
More importantly, all the best with your shot. I do recall such things being especially aversive to you, so I hope this one is relatively less so.
*The words you are referring to are: “contact officials, campaign, persuade others, cooperate, and protest; yet, they are less likely to cast a ballot.”
argh, above comment was in reply to @Michael Reynolds:
I have no idea at all about why Fox News interviewed this guy, but it is an interesting discussion of the pending election and he presents a dispassionate analysis of whether Biden should drop out. All y’all can decide for yourselves what to think (got no dog in that fight), but if Dr. Taylor decided to weigh in, his response would be interesting to me.
@Michael Reynolds: When I was in college studying literature including a lot of literary criticism, I considered the line “I think that I shall never see/a poem as lovely as a tree” and concluded “I think that I have never known/a critique as lovely as a poem.”
@Mimai: Believe it or not, I was able to figure this point out based on the post from you immediately before it. And I stop reading Reynolds posts as soon as I see a phrase like “what’s wrong with “X” is…” (if not before), so I had no idea you were talking about him other than your previous comment did.
As of 2022:
9 of the 10 poorest states were traditionally red states. 93 of the 100 poorest counties were largely Republican. 9 of the 10 states with the highest homicide rates are traditionally Republican. The homicide rate in Jim Jordan’s conservative Ohio district was three times higher than in New York. 10 of the 10 states with the highest gun death rate were Republican states. Traditionally Republican Jacksonville, Oklahoma City, Lexington, Tulsa, Bakersfield and Fresno all had murder rates much higher than Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York.
I wonder what’s causing the homelessness, poverty, rampant opiod/meth abuse, housing shortages, and crime in rural and conservative states and jurisdictions — free as they are from the horrific ravages of progressivism or West Coast liberalism or whatever.
At any rate, California is 3+ million housing units short (its anti-liberal areas included). As leaders of a wealthy, populous warm-weather state, Californica officials need to get much, much, much more aggressive in bullying NIMBYs and cutting red tape to get housing built.
@DK:
The Los Angeles area is fully built out, lots of small incorporated cities full of homeowners whose wealth consists largely of their residences. The city governments control zoning and respond to their voters.
So what’s your plan for getting homeowners to stop worrying about their property values?
@Gustopher:
Sorry, to be more clear: more than half of the homeless in Florida (typically) are unsheltered. As opposed to the 5% of the homeless in NY state that are unsheltered.
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2023-AHAR-Part-1.pdf
@charontwo:
As someone domiciled here since graduating from USC, I call BS.
One, there are plenty of empty and undeveloped lots in Los Angeles. I walk and drive past them every day.
Two, there are always single-story houses, aging business parks, and old, small apartments being torn down — or ready for sale and tear down. The problem is when too many of those properties are either alllowed to sit empty forever, or are replaced with single-family McMansions and new, small apartment buildings — instead of buildings that would grow our housing density.
In West Hollywood where I live, the Sunset Strip sees a near constant influx of new hotels. How many unoccupied hotel rooms do we need? That could be housing. Not to mention the Pacific Design Center boondoggle, a gigantic complex on multiple acrerage that has *never* been fully occupied. That could be housing. Also, the Beverly Center, a huge and dying mall of empty space…that could be housing. And that’s just my one neighborhood.
How to force property owners to get with the program, I don’t know. Bribery? Coercion? Rezoning? This is what officials get paid for, to come up with solutions. But to pretend there’s no solution, I don’t buy it.
Yet it’s the property owners and homeowners who do most of the whining about homelessness and the blight it brings. Well, why don’t they look in the mirror at their own selfishness? Everybody wants to have their cake and eat it too. They block dense housing builds, they block homeless shelters, they price gouge renters…but are the first in line to complain about the homeless.
Make it make sense. Solving homelessness will require property owners and developers to act with a modicum of social responsibility – instead of insisting nothing matters except the bottom line and “the market.”
Target (my Momma) has been acquired, and all settled in with her fancy dialysis machine that talks to her and apparently has it’s own satellite modem. (sayyyy whaaattt Emoji 😉 )
It is so good to see her. She kicked me out of her house, said go home and wrangle the kids, she’s fine and wants to watch tv and go to bed.
My heart is so full. I wish I could post pics on this forum, but it is what it is.
Also, fuck Idaho Falls, Idaho, and their surface streets. I’ve never seen a town grow so big without any “planning” as far as how to convey cars going from one side to the other without having to deal with driving where the stoplights are.
And the roundabouts on major intersections. It’s a suicide mission. There’s absolutely no way for pedestrians to get across that shit. 4 wheeled vehicles barely escape unscathed.
@DK:
You have not answered my question by disclosing your plan for causing that to happen. Platitudes about what the players should do accomplish what, in your opinion?
@charontwo:
Yes I did. I said that probably owners and homeowners need to act with more social responsibility if they want to fix the problem they bitch and moan about. People’s actions are caused by their own decisions.