Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, September 13, 2025
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30 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
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BlueSky.
Reading the news reports about Tyler Robinson is leading me to the conclusion that we’ll soon find out that Robinson was trending toward a major psychiatric breakdown. Late teens and early 20’s is prime age for the onset of major mental illnesses and when they occur it is typically traumatic but seldom life threatening. Here we are again, undiagnosed/under treated mental illness and easy availability of guns and someone else is dead.
@Sleeping Dog: “Reading the news reports about Tyler Robinson is leading me to the conclusion that we’ll soon find out that Robinson was trending toward a major psychiatric breakdown.”
Which is exactly why this nation must immediately start throwing anyone who expresses and anti-Trump opinion in jail!
NATO launches Eastern Sentry, ramping up defenses after Russian drone incursion (Breaking Defense)
What is Putin up to?
I have heard and read several reports on the very different reactions from the left and the right regarding Kirk’s murder.
Not a lot of bothsiding, instead a stark contrast was drawn. The right wing, from the top (Trump) on down, immediately blamed the left before any facts were known, demanding war or bloody revenge. Prominent lefties, including former president Obama, denounced any and all political violence immediately, only the fringe elements blowing raspberries.
Of course there are exceptions, but the general feel is that the GOP comes off as very excitable and maybe even hysterical, while dems remained the calm adults in the room.
Also, looks like Kash is joining Boingobingo in the crosshairs of regret and reconsiderations.
Sometimes there is a silver lining.
@DK:
I do not think Russia can take the Suwalki Gap. Even with our traitor president sitting on his hands, non-US NATO airpower is too much for them. I suspect this is Putin’s little red sports car. He’s feeling impotent, tired, disappointed by his lot in life, and like any 72 year-old he’s desperate to look tough and virile. But his army just cannot get an erection. So he gathers up his parade soldiers from the Moscow oblast and puts on a show. A bluff.
Putin cannot control the skies over Ukraine. His planes can’t even fly into Ukraine. But he’s going to take on the Poles, French, Brits, Germans, Swedes, Canadians et al? When you attack you typically want a 3 to 1 advantage. There is no way Russia can even get close to that.
I think and hope that Putin has made the same mistake he made in Ukraine. He dismissed the whole idea of Ukrainian nationhood, sneering that they weren’t a country at all. Well, after he attacked they sure as hell became a country. Europe has far more more money, a far larger population, better gear and better training. What they don’t have is some of the logistics the US dominates – satellites, mid-air refueling. But in a defensive air war refueling is not a major issue.
To appropriate a probably apocryphal quote attributed to Japanese admiral Yamamoto, I believe all Putin has done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.
@Michael Reynolds:
Not to forget that for Putin to defend Kaliningrad he needs to rely on Belarus and while his puppet is president, there is no guarantee that the Belarus military will follow blindly along. It has been speculated that the reason Putin didn’t pressure Lukashenko into joining him in Ukraine, was that the military said no.
@Michael Reynolds: Do we dare to dream of a Europe willing and able to punch at its weight?
Poles flock to military training (Reuters)
Poles Surge Into Military Training Amid Russian Aggression Fears (StratNews Global)
Hope Western Europe step up too, the Slavs and Scandinavians can’t do all the heavy lifting. The decadent fecklessness is unsustainable. I wish no country had be more militaristic, but the reality is what it is. Seems Putin really does want to recreate the Soviet Union, or something like it.
So, Dartmouth graduate Dinesh D’Souza thinks college was bad for Tyler Robinson:
“I’d like to know the names of the professors who radicalized this young man,” posted right-wing author Dinesh D’Souza on X. “I wonder if they too could be charged with abetting this political assassination.”
Nice try Dinesh. Somehow an Ivy League education didn’t “radicalize” you. How much less likely would that be in a tier 2 college in Utah? (Which Robinson only attended for one semester a few years back)
I find it implausible that anyone would buy this bullshit except maybe in the sense of thinking, “Hey, that’s a nice line of bullshit, I think I’m gonna use it.”
The governor of Utah on the capture of the person who shot Charlie Kirk: “I was praying that it was an immigrant.”
What a truly disgusting remark.
@becca:
I just finished watching an interview with Tony Gilroy (show creator for Andor) and one of the contributors at The Bulwark which really resonated with me. One section in particular speaks to this stark contrast you are calling out.
Knowing that one of this site’s hosts is a professed geek, I thought it might connect with commenters here. Check it out.
Around the 29 minute mark, Gilroy speaks to the political moment and makes the case that the divisions we are grappling with aren’t “ideological” – at least as he is defining the word. It isn’t Republican/Democrat, right/left, progressive/conservative. He contends that it isn’t political in the sense that it isn’t really about policy. Instead, he believes we’ve gone past that to a divide between truth/lies, moral/immoral, freedom/anti-freedom. I believe this has it about right.
Even though there’s a strong argument that these dichotomies split pretty cleanly between America’s two parties today, I think this is sort of beside the point. The reactions to Kirk’s assassination that you describe make this clear. There are those who are calm & together and those who are Us vs Them – a choice between right/wrong that should be crystal clear for anyone who wants a civil nation.
I’ve come to believe this contrast is a way to peel away some support for Trumpism. As Steven has demonstrated frequently in his response to local trolls, seeing what is in front of our noses ask yourself what side you’d be on if you could let go for a moment how you identify with a political affiliation.
@Scott F.:
One could argue whether policy has anything at all to do with politics, but I agree Gilroy is essentially correct.
It helps explain my contention that the western European countries in the 1930s most like the Soviet Union were Germany and Italy (and their smaller imitators). Even historians make a big deal about the communists making deal with the fascists. But when you see both sides engaging in censorship, repression, forced conformity, indoctrination in ideology, forced labor, etc., the differences are revealed to be far more superficial.
@Scott F.: Of late I have come across a lot of discussion of how the mind works, unconscious/conscious, intuition/reason. In the decades since the Dixiecrats bailed it seems to me the political divide has evolved into intuition/reason, which ~= faith/reason, ~= deontology/consequentialism.
Reynold’s likes to identify religion as the driver of conservatism, I have disagreed, but only to say it should be broadened to faith, religious or not, which is to say intuition. At the base of both parties, voters don’t think much about politics and both bases are largely intuition based. They believe what they believe because they believe it. Above the base we seeDemocrats, for one example, opposing tariffs because almost all economists say they will cause bad results and Republicans acting out their new found faith that tariffs are the right thing to do. I concede, as GOPs do not, that there’s also a level of “tariffs are a regressive tax replacing the nominally progressive income tax” but I don’t see that going much beyond a lizard brain recognition of what’s good for me short term without thinking about long term, societal consequences.
Per the Guardian, Illinois lawmakers demand answers in Ice killing: ‘A traffic violation should never amount to a death sentence’
Why is ICE even doing traffic stops? Is there any evidence that a random person in a car is an illegal alien?
I think Illinois should be doing more than demanding answers — they should be prosecuting the ICE officers involved, and if ICE officials will not name them, prosecuting those ICE officials with obstruction of justice.
We may no longer be a nation of laws, but many of our states and municipalities still have laws.
This is a totally normal thing for a government to be doing.
@Gustopher:
SCOTUS ruled they don’t need evidence. All that’s necessary to shake someone down is that they appear to be Hispanic.
Also per the Guardian:
Given that travel to and from the UN is generally considered sacrosanct, and that Netanyahu would be offered all diplomatic protections by the Trump administration, I think Mamdani is promising something he cannot deliver, and which is needlessly divisive at this point in the campaign.
He currently has a 15 point lead, but that could shrink real fast if the people favoring corrupt public officials and the people favoring sex pest former governors who resigned in disgrace, and those who prefer a right wing podcast host who supports vigilante justice manage to consolidate around a compromise candidate — perhaps Adams can begin sexually harassing his staff while dressed as Batman?
Mamdani could have, and really should have, waffled slightly with an answer about the limitations of the office of Mayor, while saying that Netanyahu belongs at The Hague. Government officials speaking about the limits of their power are in rare company these days.
@Gustopher:
Yup.
Heads of state, current and former, usually travel on diplomatic passports, too. I don’t know if this menas they have de facto diplomatic immunity or not, but it complicates things. Same goes for major officials in the executive branch (ie cabinet ministers, heads of major agencies), and probably some legislators as well.
That aside, a city mayor cannot legally extradite even a common criminal without diplomatic immunity to another country or to the ICC. That is a federal matter.
So, Mamdani can have Bibi arrested, no question. but then he’d have to be released a short time later with an apology and much contrition, when the federal authorities demanded it.
@gVOR10:
A reality that kind of snuck up on me. I assumed that liberals were liberals for the same reasons as I, and that they reached liberalism from a rational assessment of the best way to achieve the greater good, while still remaining devoted to the core rights of all humans – life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Not necessarily the case.
There is a very strong strain of ‘teacher’ in liberals. Democrats got very accustomed to winning court battles and losing elections because we forgot how to market. We forgot how to talk to people in something other than, ‘teacher voice.’* And liberals are very often no more willing to engage in open debate than our opponents are.
Meaning no offense to anyone here, we are a party defined by lawyers and academics, and that is not an army to take to war, unless it’s war by brief and syllabus. We do litigation and condescension. Our opponents do rabble-rousing and threats. Short-term at least, they are more effective.
*Somewhat conflicted on this because my family is dependent financially on the support of teachers. But even when I was in school I could not stand that ‘voice’. It triggers my oppositional defiant disorder.
@Gustopher:
What a stupid goddamn thing to say. As @Kathy: points out: No, Zohran, you won’t. You’ll be a mayor, with no more legal standing than the mayor of Tulsa, and this kind of pandering is not helping anyone. Do something about the cost of rent and kill some rats. Then you can be president some day and do foreign policy.
@Jay L. Gischer:
Regarding Tyler Robinson’s one semester at the far left Utah State University back in 2021, have they identified the course(s) that radicalized him to leave behind his years of family MAGA indoctrination?
I’m going to guess that it was Introduction to Gender Studies, or Diversity Equity and Inclusion Studies, both courses for prospective engineering majors. /s.
@DK:
@Michael Reynolds:
imo, Putin is just probing again.
Hoping to test limits, hope to generate political discord, hammer on the wedge between the US and Europe that Trump has inserted, and MAGA are thoughtlessly enabling in their desire for unilateralism and/or isolationism and/or performative kayfabe trollery.
Similar to the ongoing, but scantily reported, Russian “implausible deniability” operations in Europe: sabotage, cable-cutting, airspace incursions, jamming, assassination plots, etc.
Given the destruction of much of the modernised Russian field army during 2022, and the comittment of the reconstituted infamtry-heavy army to a grinding offensive in Donbas, it seems unlikely that Russia can generate a force capable of taking on NATO battlegroups with any hope of prevailing.
The worrying scenario is, if Putin realises Russia is incapable of realising his victory conditions in Ukraine, that is, of forcing Ukraine to capitulate and become a Russian dominated satellite.
And then, rather than accept defeat, decides to “roll the iron dice” again, and mount a “limited” attack, probably against the Baltic states, in a hope of forcing a crisis in NATO that will enable him to impose terms.
As was seen in the initial invasion of Ukraine, Putin has a dangerous capacity to believe his own bullshit, and accept the most optimistic projections the FSB and the army command serve up to him, out of sycophancy.
If a “limited” incursion gets hammered into the ground by NATO, there is always the temptation to escalate again, and again, in hopes that victory will pop out of the magicians hat, if only the wand of war is waved hard enough.
@Michael Reynolds:
I think that is an extremely important point – winning battles, losing wars and all that.
These days in the US, we are at a nadir of truth. While I have no clue how long it will take for us to come out of the darkness, I’m confident reality will assert itself eventually. So even if I am living in a time/place where intuition and belief hold sway, such that the liars are winning, I still prefer to ride with the intellectuals and technocrats. Movements built on demagoguery and mendacity are fragile and require constant effort.
@Lucys Football:
There seems to be a considerable element of the Right, in the US, the UK, and Europe, that has difficulty with the whole concept of “don’t say the quiet bit out loud.”
@Scott F.: I agree that reality will triumph. What worries me is that it took 12 years for reality to smack Nazi Germany up aside the head, and it smacked them really hard. ETTD. I fear the only hope I see is his incompetence.
@Michael Reynolds:
This seems to be a problem with any party dominated by the section of the upper middle class for whom words ARE reality, and perfomative social poses are more significant than political reality.
The UK Labour Party is perhaps rather more linked to the economic and social perspectives of the working class than are US Democrats, simply because it originated as a pragmatic working class, trade union based, movement to get middle class Liberals to wake up and smell the coffee.
Of course, the “middle class left” have mounted various attempts to hijack the Party to serve their own ends of ideological purity:
See Corbyn, J.
Also Benn, A. W.
@Michael Reynolds:
It’s as stupid as if Mayor Sadiq Khan was to announce he was to order the Met to arrest the Israeli Ambassador.
Khan may have his failings, but being an utter fool is not one of them.
@gVOR10: That spawned a thought that’s been in my head for some time, and has been mentioned by someone here a month or so ago, that the attitudes instilled in our youth are very difficult to change, and there is a whole generation of young adults today that has been raised in households in which FOX has been the source of “news”.
The embedded message of FOX? “Ideology is more important than truth.”
It has been said that Charlie Kirk was converting college aged kids but I suspect he was mainly preaching to a choir, a generation raised by FOX. They are different from the conservatives who attended college in the mid-20th century, the young “conservatives” of today have been weaned on “us v. them” thinking and are far better conditioned to ignore truths. It is a matter that can’t be fixed by simple tweaks to the “messaging”.
@dazedandconfused:
This may be new to the US middle class of recent history.
But generally speaking, it’s nothing unusual.
Political alignment has often related more to social bases than to rational argument, sadly enough.
And those social bases can often seem, objectively, rather odd in retrospect.
See the long continuity of “working class conservatism” in the UK, and other European countries.
Sometime over the summer I vaguely remember hearing a news report on the radio that Illinois drivers over 75 would no longer have to take a behind the wheel drivers test to renew their drivers license. Since I will be 78 in January 2026 when my DL is set for renewal I was not sure what that meant for me. Three years ago I got a letter from the Secretary of State that advised me I would need to visit the Drivers Service Facility and take a vision test to renew my DL. I went in before the renewal date, signed the forms, paid the $5 fee, they took my picture and gave me a new license. I kept my mouth shut about the vision test that they never administered and walked out the door.
Today I got a letter from the Office of the Secretary of State-Driver Services Department.
I know that there have been times over the years when I went in to renew my DL and have been administered written and/or vision tests. If I have had to take a behind the wheel drivers test since I first got an Illinois DL in 1965 I don’t remember it.
@JohnSF: Khan has also been in government since Mamdani was a toddler. That can help with things like this.
@Gregory Lawrence Brown:
I had to renew my licence last month, because being over 65.
Fortunately my doctor had not decided I was not nuts, which shows how much he knows. 🙂
So, I do get to drive my pretty new(ish) Mazda.
I’m on the road again.
I rather miss the manic bullet that was the Ibiza, but such is life.
You can’t be a hooligan forever.
(Though if I’d got that deal on the Honda Civic R?)