Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Monday, October 21, 2024
·
31 comments
OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.
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.
Stuck in Nice – K has the same thing I had a few days ago. Of course, stuck in a suite overlooking the Mediterranean cuz of upset tummy is not stuck with Bubonic plague in 17th century London hovel, so sympathy is not solicited. They still delivered my morning coffee and viennoiseries. We will power through this, somehow.
I had a thought which I suspect I’m about the millionth person to have. It’s this: we aren’t just divided, we are not united. Not the same thing. The institutions that used to actively hold us together have all failed or at least been severely weakened. The most obvious being religion. But also, shared military experience. Social groups like Masons or Odd Fellows. Campus Greek societies. Or just small town life.
Sebastian Junger has the theory that PTSD is not so much about the horrors of war, but rather it’s the sudden loss of comradeship. One minute you’re with guys you see as brothers, and the next minute you’re wearing an orange apron at Home Depot.
Even entertainment was once unifying and is no longer. As recently as the 90’s there was Friends. And vast numbers of Americans watched it, at the same time, on the same day. People who didn’t watch it, knew it, would get the references. We had three, then four channels of TV, and then, overnight, dozens and even more suddenly, an infinite number. Time and date and location – the living room – were no longer relevant.
Things not actively held together, fly apart. (Einstein? Sure, why not.) Even the family shrank. We distanced ourselves from extended family, literally and then, inevitably, emotionally. We don’t even have a common enemy. No Nazis, no Commies. Even Middle School and High School saw multiplying options. The workplace became increasingly non location-specific.
I never really thought about any of this because this is my core character and seems normal to me. I don’t have a circle of friends and I actively avoid extended family. When I jumped bail I shed all contacts and felt little but relief. I ran away from education and indeed any form of association with other people. I’ve had more addresses than I’ve had years of life. I forget people literally minutes after I’ve met them.
And all of this made me happy. Really. I’m a surprisingly happy guy, not jumping up and down happy, but reasonably pleased. But you don’t build a civilization out of people like me. People like me are useful, but only in very small numbers. 330 million people living like me? No wonder the country is self-destructing.
I’ve been looking at a number of substacks since the summer; none of them are professional journalists or pundits. And I’m noticing that while all of them criticize Trump, there’s an increasing amount of “what the hell is wrong with his followers?” threading its way through the discourse. Finally!
And look at this – Elon Musk’s mom encourages voter fraud:
“The Democrats have given us another option,” she said. “You don’t have to register to vote. On Election Day, have 10 fake names, go to 10 polling booths and vote 10 times. That’s 100 votes, and it’s not illegal. Maybe we should work the system too.”
Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-maye-musk-twitter-trump-voter-fraud-b2624842.html
@Not the IT Dept.:
I think it’s the same thing I was prosing on about upstream. You join a cult when you need to join something. When you can’t seem to attach yourself to anything else. I now think it’s why men are drawn to him – men are tribal animals, they need to be told, and they have an innate need to obey. Probably very useful when you’re hunting wildebeest in the Serengeti, and it’s going to take a pack to bring down your dinner.
@Michael Reynolds:
Google “persistence hunting,” a hunting style usually performed by individuals.
And consider hairless creatures with vastly greater ability to reject body heat by sweating than any other mammals. In light of evolution, the inference is apparent.
Probably very useful to raiding parties when looting the neighboring tribe’s villages and stealing their women. (Subsequent to dispatching the enemy men, obviously).
Today is the first day of early voting here in Texas. Polls opened at 0700 and will be open until 1900. My wife and I went at 0730, prepared with our printed out sample ballots and with 75 (!) ballot choices filled in. The community center that was our closest Voting Center had about 50 machines. It was busy but not crowded. No line yet had formed. I expected it to be mostly older retirees like myself but it was quite a mixture of folks. I have no conclusions (or even deep thoughts) of what it may mean. Just glad we are done and can get on with the business of nagging our adult children to get out and vote.
Good news, everyone! Mike Duncan’s sort of back.
He has not launched the new podcast he announced back in 2022 (more on that shortly), but he’s added a new season to Revolutions, telling the story of the Martian Revolution.
Huh?
He doesn’t explain. Whether he’s taking a known work of science fiction and analyzing it as though it were history, or whether he made up his own and does the same, I’ve no idea. He does say he’s been working/developing the idea for years, all the way back when he made the French Revolution season, but gives no more details.
He dropped three eps last night. A short update on his career, an intro to the new season, and ep. 1 of the Martian Revolution. in typical Duncanese fashion, the beginning is before the actual beginning to lay down the historical context (his Russian Revolution season begins sometime in the XIX century).
He does say he has been working on the new podcast with Alexis Coe, and that they’ve even managed to record a few eps already. He did not say when they will come out or what the podcast will be called. As I recall, they were going to discuss history books.
@Not the IT Dept.:
I always liked the bumper sticker- Don’t follow me I’m lost.
If accurate, this could open up possible paths to the future.
@Michael Reynolds: I agree with your thesis. I think of it as the “Bowling Alone” thesis. Having a group of people who like and benefit from what you do is something most people like. I would note that the way I described it above applies even to you. People read your books and like it. They appreciate it. You don’t hang out together because that’s not what works for you, but the connection is still there.
I’d like to share and observation that I made as a result of attending my 50th high school class reunion. I hadn’t talked to most of those people in maybe 45 years. There were a couple of exceptions. Also, there were 63 of us who graduated. We were surprised by a couple of names that aren’t on the list of “people who graduated”, because we had gone to school with them for years.
About half attended, and maybe 15 classmates had already passed away.
The energy of this event was amazing. And positive. People whom I could swear had never said a word to me were happy to see me. I think it’s because the internet has eroded the kind of social connection we had, and covid drove a big sense of isolation.
But what do I mean by social media? I have been a member of several groups online over the years, some of which were rich social experiences, with strong bonds. And then, overnight, they disappeared. Usually because the platform disappeared. The blogger stopped blogging. The whole website had the plug pulled. The MMO we were playing did some changes folks didn’t like.
And so the groups disappeared. And here I am back talking with folks from high school. The basis for this connection – what formed it – was geographic and historical. Like I said to Sarah A. “we went to kindergarten together”. We know a lot about the people who weren’t necessarily our besties. Just from history and proximity.
Then there is the historical connection: My great-grandfather homesteaded in the area in 1872. Other families, with kids in school, had similar histories, or had been there multiple generations. We not only knew the kid, we knew the family, and what kind of stuff they might have done.
There was a big Icelandic community – which I was not a part of – but they all knew who was and who wasn’t. My mom’s sister married one of these Icelanders.
And because of all this, we were able to pick up these conversations which had been on pause for 50 years. People are both different and not different.
Really, it was an amazing time, with some crazy things being said to me.
@Michael Reynolds:
One year you’re writing dung beetle fiction, the next year you’re wearing a Home Depot orange apron.
Oops that describes me from May 2015 to March 2016. My book business** was bringing me in a grand plus a month back then but I didn’t yet feel secure in that business and I had medical debts since coming out of bankruptcy. So I worked* for the neighborhood store.
*- Why didn’t I go back to medical radiology work? It is a long story involving me giving testimony in a medical malpractice case that didn’t make my employer too happy.
**- It is almost ten years (October 27 to be precise) to the date since I published the book that has made me the most money. I don’t consider it better than middle of the road of all the work I’ve written.
For the popular vote aficionados, here is a unique map dividing US states by 50/50 population starting from most dense and working out. It creates an interesting picture. I was reminded of this when I saw Harris’s stops for the day that were from yellow to yellow in WI, MI, and PA. Skipping the purple mountains majesty. That’s not a slight, just an “ah ha” moment. Of course, a national popular vote would skip over a lot of the country in favor of NYC/LA, etc.
The creator’s methodology
@JKB:
I’m curious why you think those maps tell us anything meaningful about the popular vote. It also isn’t particularly accurate (including the decision to force the yellow areas to be contiguous).
That talking point really doesn’t hold up to serious consideration:
Ultimately, as States, CA and NY are only approximately 18% of the population, and the 100 largest cities make up less than 20%. Also, both CA and NY contain a LOT of rural voters (more so than some of the Red States combined. Why should those voters effectively be disenfranchised by the electoral college?
Surprisingly the chicken stew went rather well yesterday, considering I cooked really late and I tend to rush and make mistakes when that happens. It helps I’ve perfected Lan Lam’s technique of caramelizing onions using water (steam) to wilt them first.
Next I want to try caramelized cabbage. I ran across a video looking at Lan Lam’s technique, and that one explained how to do cabbage using wine instead of water.
I cook cabbage weekly for dinner, mixed with onions, soybean sprouts, and carrots. I don’t season it much, because for dinner I mix it with lime and hot sauce. Though I like it, it’s mostly steamed as filling a large pot with all these things doesn’t leave much chance for anything else (sometimes the bits at the bottom brown somewhat if I don’t stir often enough.
For all that, the usual problem is finding a small enough cabbage. I end up asking a store employee to cut one in half, unless I find one already cut. I figure if I want to make a side dish with thoroughly browned, a whole cabbage would be adequate for that and dinner.
Pro-life. Riiiiggghhttt…
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/10/241021122755.htm
@Jay L Gischer:
I think my closest analogy would be when I worked at Middleton Tavern in Annapolis. There was a vaguely family feel going on there. If you define family broadly to mean I slept with a couple of the waitresses and a bus girl (open relationship at that point) and actually went on a trip with a co-waiter to do white water rafting. (!) And we built the outdoor cafe. (I held the hammer.) But we did pool tips, so there’s that. It was a strange crowd. I was the only waiter without a college degree. Also, I believe, the only one using a fake name.
It was there that I received some meaningful advice. End of the night I was bitching (What, me complain?) about the weeded night and another guy, patiently, not irritated, said, ‘Frank, sometimes, just take a beating.’
Take a beating. It was his catch phrase.
I suspect I’ll be taking a beating on election day. Except – and I feel bad about this – the male backlash thing might actually help me professionally. Gone is about the only dystopian series with boys at the top of the call sheet. And I’m just wrapping up a boy-centric book. I may just catch the wave, again, and about time since the wife has been paying the bills. (Odder – NYT list for 88 weeks, IIRC.)
@Michael Reynolds:
Let me concur.
That's really good advice. And it will only land on you if it comes from somebody you have some kind of solid connection with.
I have no prediction for election day. It’s too murky. There are things that scare me, and things that give me hope.
The talk above about cities reminded me of just how weird American cities are. For most of them, we set the boundaries somewhere between 100 and 300 years ago, and then never changed them regardless of the facts on the ground. What does this mean in a practical sense? Well, I lived in Shanghai, one of the largest cities in the world with about 22M residents at the time. And I’ve spent a lot of time in NYC, which has population of “only” 8M. Yet it feels larger and more densely populated to me than Shanghai. (Don’t get me wrong – Shanghai is a big F’ing city!) Once you realize that Shanghai, which was a small fishing village at the time NYC’s boundaries were set in stone, has grown with its population. Towns and villages are incorporated and become neighborhoods. This used to happen in the US, too, but not for a long long time. Recently I got curious and found that if you expand NYC outward just through it’s most populous surroundings, you reach 22M in an area one third the size of Shanghai. Heck, when I commuted from my home in the center of PuXi (the older side of Shanghai) to work on the southern PuDong side, I travelled past huge farms, albeit fewer and fewer each year I did it. Can you imagine passing farms on your way from Manhattan to White Plains or Jersey City? Heck, I worked in Mahwah NJ and it was essentially contiguous neighborhoods all the way through the boroughs and deep into Long Island and Connecticut.
@Jay L Gischer:I’m coming up with a list of red-line events that will trigger emigration on my part. Trump ordering the military to attack Americans is one. As a U.S.government employee, requiring me to take a loyalty oath to Trump would be another. Etcetera.
What is the red line for people like Lindsey Graham? Or will they continue to find excuses for Trump even as Trump puts U.S. citizens in concentration camps and tries to shove his “enemies” into Gitmo?
I’m afraid that too many Republicans are too terrified of Trump’s supporters to stand up and enforce the guardrails against Trump’s grab for power.
@Grumpy realist:
The might not be one.
During Stalin’s terror in the 30s, many committed communists, most members of the party, were arrested and sent to a gulag. Most of them, if not all, were innocent of any wrongdoing. Many decided that if the party required them to be branded enemies of the people and thrown into brutal labor camps for years, then that was what the party needed and they would serve the party this way.
I’m not saying brave people like Graham would do this. They’re more likely to fall on their knees and beg the Weirdo for mercy, then thank him profusely when they’re only disgraced and ostracized. But they won’t turn on him.
If they weren’t, they’d have held the second impeachment trial before the inauguration and voted to convict.
@Jay L Gischer: same here. Anecdataly, we just tried to early vote here in the Memphis ‘burbs and it was an hour wait. The parking lot was crazy. This is not normal. Hard to tell which way the wind was blowing, but not a single trump sign, quite a few Harris-Walz. We couldn’t find place to park, vehicles were just circling the lot of about 100 spaces. We will go back tomorrow prepared to wait.
@becca:
Bring lunch and a thermos of coffee.
The Wins The Internet quote of the day from JV Last at The Bulwark:
@becca:
There was a lighthearted cartoon I came across some years ago, about how people behave when they go on trips on long weekends. One panel showing a massive traffic jam was captioned, “you leave very early to beat the traffic, along with everyone else.”
In Mexico, pretty much everyone votes the same day (always a Sunday), Last June’s election, I had the bright idea to get there first thing in the morning to beat the rush. I found no place to park. I let my mom off, then circled for 30 minutes and picked her up. I wound up walking there mid afternoon. I should have driven. there was plenty of room for parking. While the distance is not great, the walk back is up a very steep slope.
Meanwhile in Europe:
Moldova referendum approves continuing EU membership process.
Despite large scale attempts at bribery.
Meanwhile in Russia:
Russian air force officers getting permanently, and messily retired.
Ukraine says “Who? Us?”
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: Russia is going to have a problem with an enemy prepared to deal in “wet work” on a level similar to the KGB, or Mossad in a bad mood.
Meanwhile in Burma/Myanmar:
Military government continues to falter; China may well be looking at another deal to secure its strategic Yunnan-to-Indian Ocean port rail-link project, which offers a bypass to the Straits of Malacca.
Meanwhile in the Middle East:
Looks like Israel is now embarking on a major effort at wrecking the Hezbollah financial arm.
@JohnSF:
And a Russian oligarch close to Putin has mysteriously fallen 110 feet from a window in Moscow.
@Michael Reynolds:
I believe our fate was sealed the day a group of monkeys figured out that if they hung together they could have their pick of the fruit trees. We are hard-wired to seek a tribe. The lack of one, or some other generally unifying force, renders us somewhat more vulnerable to demagogues.
I don’t know why anyone who’s being objectively honest doubts the reality of Greedflation by companies. That’s the phrase used to describe companies jacking prices far beyond “increases in supply chain.”
Sure, Matt Yglesias poo-poos this idea… but friends don’t let friends read Matt Yglesias anyway.
Go listen to a single corporate earnings call.. and you’ll not be shocked to hear that each and every time since 2023 the basic concepts of “greedflation” is exactly what they say when describing how they price goods. Kroger, Albertsons, Home Depot, etc.
Note that by federal law, execs must accurately detail their pricing strategy on those calls or.. they’re admitting to federal securities fraud.
So, every time you hear anyone [especially Matt] ridicule greedflation… understand that person is at the same time expecting you to accept that execs have been committing securities fraud for over a year.
Or.. Could it be possible corporations and their media hangers-on just don’t want you to think it’s possible that companies could still be keeping prices high while their input prices have been steadily decreasing.. just because they profit?
Meanwhile in Texas:
For a long time, that was my sole objection to the death penalty (since I’ve acquired many others*). You literally are powerless to correct the mistake once you’ve executed someone in error.
I’m surprised even that is a factor in any way with any Texas Republiqans.
*With some exceptions. I’d no qualms that Saddam was executed. And I’d argue it would be justifiable to execute people like Stalin, hitler, Pol Pot, etc. slowly and painfully over many, many days. If it were not for what the infliction of that kind of cruelty on a living being would do to damage those who would carry it out.
@JKB:
Even noting that Matt already addressed this solecism, I will note that you misspoke. A national popular vote would skip over a lot of the dirt. It would exactly represent the people. Can you explain why you think that people who live close together should get less of a vote per person than people who live far apart?