Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, September 6, 2025
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24 comments
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
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BlueSky.
Notes from rehab: The physician who ministered unto me yesterday is surnamed…Voltaire.
@CSK:
Henceforth, I want only French writer/philosophers tending to my medical needs.
@CSK:
Hugo over Moliere! 😀
I cancelled my Audible subscription after 12 years.
While cancelling, the system offered me to keep the subscription with a 49.8% discount for three months. I had heard of large subscription services that would offer discounts under such circumstances, but had never run across one.
In any case, it’s over.
The other thing is I realized I don’t have to subscribe to a replacement right away, seeing that my backlog on Audible is huge. I’m supposed to still have access to titles I purchased regardless of subscription status, excluding the “Audible Plus” titles.
@Kathy:
Mais oui, naturellement.
It is finally raining. We really needed it. The boat was so low at the dock it made coming in trickier. I can usually just step off the bow onto the dock, but lately is more like jumping up onto the dock to catch a cleat. Not at all elegant.
My daughter called me yesterday needing to vent. She’s worried sick about the cost of health insurance going up this fall. She is also hearing noises in the local business community of not offering health insurance any more. Her husband is COO of a small business here, so that rumor could have merit. With a cancer survivor husband and a little one that catches every infectious disease in her airspace, she should worry. Of course, I worry right along with her.
Thanks, GOP.
Who would have guessed this?
Exclusive: Bill Pulte accused Fed Governor Lisa Cook of fraud. His relatives filed housing claims similar to hers
(Answer: Everyone. Everyone could have guessed this, because EVERY ACCUSATION IS A CONFESSION WITH THIS CROWD. See also–probably the tip of the iceberg.)
ETA: Pulte homes don’t seem to have sterling reviews.
@Jen:
Reassuring to know these people are morally congruent! It’s good that our national leadership lives their faith! /s
Apparently the “sacred space” of our 250 year old liberal democracy isn’t “sacred” enough for their own pocketbook for them to ensure its “sustainability.”
Interesting:
They were born into the iPhone world that I believe contributed a great deal to rattling and confusing the older population. They may have an immunity to the addictive poison of the small screen.
@Michael Reynolds: Small screen mobile device movie viewing is, as you note, ubiquitous. The really big screen of a movie house elevates the experience to something that is “special” but is also of a different quality of experience. Many movies just impact differently on the big screen, even (especially) older ones). Can’t imagine watching Lawrence of Arabia or 2001 Space Odyssey on a phone. I’d rather read a book with that time spent.
@Rob1:
I watched the most recent Superman not on my phone but on my laptop. It is a different thing, but it works for me because my interest is generally in the script – the characters, the dialog, the plot – and less on the spectacle. I don’t enjoy the theater experience much. I’ve walked out of movies a couple times because I couldn’t stand the bombastic audio. However I did see The Fantastic Four in theater with my basically son-in-law because ‘the ladies’ were shopping and I had time to kill.
I found when I tried 3D when that was a thing, that I sort of didn’t register the movie, didn’t focus on it or retain it. Similar with all CGI-heavy movies. I’m too aware that I’m just seeing code and nothing ‘real,’ so it doesn’t stick. I think my brain just dismisses it as not worth wasting neurons on.
I welcome this study in part because it bolsters an instinct I’ve had that we’d be seeing a return to human contact. I don’t personally crave human contact, but I thought the yutes might feel that atavistic urge.
One of RFK Jr.’s medical “advisors” told Junior that the Covid vax gave Charles and Kate cancer.
See http://www.thedailybeast.com for thrilling details!
Music for the weekend: Entry of the Gladiators by Julius Fučík is supposed to be a serious military march.
El Taco should definitely have it played at his next desultory parade.
Humans are complicated, convoluted, and compartmentalizing beings. It’s truly a wonder that some hold onto the “anti-Christ” mythology while supporting its surrogacy in their political commitments. And Thiel likely considers himself a rational man.
Perhaps it’s not too surprising that both Thiel and Musk find personal reference, justification, and reassurance from tidbits of literary fantasy subcultures, with which they then embellish their lives. Are these artifacts of lonely, dismissed childhoods? Do we all have to “pay a price” for that?
@Michael Reynolds: @Rob1:
interestingly, tv shows are deliberately taped/filmed/whatever to come across/look better on a small or smaller screen.
There is no Antichrist on the way
From David Brooks in the NYT. Is it really that simple?
Why I’m Not a Liberal
@Rob1:
“He’s not the antichrist, he’s just a very silly boy!”
Start off at radical libertarianism, end up enabling totalitarianism.
Such are the ironies of idiocy.
@JohnSF:
They favor freedom for themselves, not for everyone.
It’s like the Gasden flag — the key part of “don’t retread on me” is the “on me” part. They don’t care of you are tread upon. They might actually favor it.
@Gustopher:
Liberty for me, but not for thee.
Such a common hope, yet so often disappointed.
See: much of human history.
I often wonder how familiar techbros are with the basics of actual, as opposed to fantasised, history?
“Don’t reverse over me” 😉
@Ol’ Nat: per Brooks:
The harsh means testing lot of our programs can often make earning too much money a net negative.
And the amounts of money in the direct cash assistance programs he is talking about is not a lot. His main point is bemoaning research that says that giving people $500/mo does not change the education scores of their kids — $500/mo is enough to give a little breathing room, not enough to change someone’s life, unless they’re really fucking screwed. I think I would have to carefully examine the people in the study before jumping to conclusions — but this feels like an excuse to justify doing nothing.
We also spend more money on our pets today than the GDP of 1969, and our pets have still not eaten all the brown people. (Not checking the numbers, maybe we will have to move that year back)
It’s shit like this that always reminds me that David Brooks is a stupid, worthless hack who should be ignored, if not thrown down into a well and pissed on.
@Ol’ Nat:
@Gustopher:
My lord, but the USian misuse of the term “liberal” is really grinding my nuts, lately.
It’s not “liberalism”, Brooks, you dimwit, it’s just normal state welfare policy, as pioneered by such “liberals” as Otto von sodding Bismarck.
ftlog.
The entire history of the modern West indicates that if you provide decent education, a basic welfare system, and reasonable enforcement of order via civil police, you can expect reasonably beneficial outcomes.
Of course, the immediate next generation may be more conditioned by parental environment; but that changes over time.
If it did not, we’d still be living in a medieval culture of illiterate and custom-bound peasants.
All of European history indicate that once the basics of education, welfare, opportunity and reasonable equity are in place, you can expect considerable social progress.
Just look at the changes in much of rural Europe, in western part since c.1945, or the eastern since 1990.
Brooks talks about the cultural diffrences of Swedish poverty, but then does not ask WHY those diffrences emerged, beyond some appeal to some inherent “culture”.
So why has much of Europe converged on the Swedish levels of poverty since 1945?
Because they are all fans of ABBA and IKEA, perhaps?
@Gustopher:
I commented at NYT that Brooks offered no hint of a plan to address poverty his way. I added that he’s not a liberal because if he were NYT would not keep him on as a token conservative long after his use by date.
Yes to all of that.
Adding that Conservatives in the US have been spending all of their time and energy trying to beat down the underclasses, so any gains Liberals make are tempered by equal and opposite drives to remove or taint anything that might help.