Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, December 8, 2024
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29 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor 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).
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Tulsi Gabbard’s favorite ME dictator has left town.
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cwy8xzxe0w7t
On other good news, a Connecticut state court upheld the verdict against one Alex Jones.
I wonder how all the different factions in Syria will settle their own differences. I think the map of the Middle East is going to go through some dramatic changes(again).
Goodbye Sykes-Picot!
Has anyone looked for Assad at Gabbard’s house?
Harry Littman on his resignation from the L.A. Times —
https://harrylitman.substack.com/p/why-i-just-resigned-from-the-los
My DuckDuckGo-fu has failed me – what does Trump mean when he says the US is subsidizing Canada and Mexico?
(I’m trying not to listen to the unchallenged boasting and lies he’s spewing on Meet The Press by distracting myself)
@Jay L Gischer: I write this to you late yesterday on the thread about how we should talk about Trump:
before the election, you said you had some thoughts you wanted to share about what’s happening with young men today and what can be done about it. When you have a chance, would you mind sharing that? I’m interested.
Some such conversation today reminded me of something that happened a few years ago. A coworker and I were working late, and both our high school age children were at home. She had another meeting to go to after work, and was lamenting the fact that she needed groceries but had no time to stop to buy them.
I said, “Text your son a shopping list and Venmo him some money. That’s what I do with my daughter.”
My colleague laughed. “Expect my son to go grocery shopping for me? Ha! He’ll forget all about it and spend the money on something else.”
When I got home, I told my daughter this story as an amusing anecdote, but she erupted in frustration. “Boys are never held to any expectations! That’s why they never live up to any!”
I share this not to slight my colleague, who I think is a fabulous person. I’m also aware that a huge part of my success in parenting is due to having a very responsible kid, and everyone is not so lucky.
But I want to point out that my daughter is still a representative of her generation, and that’s her impression: that boys are not being held to expectations.
Anyway, looking forward to reading whatever you might share.
@restless:
In his mind, Canada and Mexico are vassal states that should be paying tribute to the US and the fact they’re not means they’re being “subsidized”.
This debate between Sarah Longwell and Jonathan Last is worth watching. The topic: making sense of the statements of focus group participants, talking about their reasons for not voting for Harris. Or, more succinctly, how “unserious” are Americans?
https://youtu.be/A1RzoRT0cx0?si=bzeqeR0kTW-7chx_
I should have put a warning label on that video: You will be infuriated by what you hear Trump voters saying. It almost doesn’t matter whether they are expressing sincere sentiments, or as Last says, just pasting an alibi on what they wanted to do anyway.
Fun presentation on Carlo Cipolla’s book about the impact of stupidity.
https://youtu.be/OIqd8ABi6YA?si=LVmkglSdAc2pwa89
@Monala: There’s a lot more about what’s happening with men. But the short answer is that your daughter is correct.
Except in the armed forces, we do not give any responsibility to young men as a culture. We do not hold them accountable.
Meanwhile, in the dojo where I taught for 20 years, we would give young men a partner and have them trade arts back and forth. They were responsible both for being a training partner for someone else to learn, for falling correctly for the sake of their own comfort and safety, and for holding the safety of their partner in their consciousness.
The responsibility increased slowly, and was gated by behavioral signs that we could observe. They start holding some responsibility, they get more. If they refuse the idea of experiencing some discomfort for the sake of themselves, let alone other people, they get stuck and do not progress.
One of the ideas our founder espoused was ‘leading young men is the essence of judo’. (The martial art was jujitsu, and at the time the terms were interchangeable).
As it turns out, such a program works readily for young women, too. And in fact, it works out well for human adults of all ages.
The corporate world has no time for such things. So they mostly ignore young men, or readily dismiss them at the first sign of difficulty.
But leading them in this way means that you must expect some failure and build in a way to recover from that failure, and for them to experience the failure first hand. They need to have an experience of “that hurt me” or “that hurt someone I care about” rather than “I am being scolded”.
I think this connects in some dark way I don’t understand to the increase in spree killing. We just don’t understand how to connect to young men, especially 18-25. How do we make them feel they are of value?
I hope you can understand that I don’t think this is a zerosum thing. I think we can and should continue to build up young women as well. I have been proud to participate in that. Some need the same thing as above, we just seem more willing to give it to them. Some have very different needs.
Some young men have very different needs. We had a young man in once who was unable to raise his voice. He could not shout. This troubled me. We would have worked on it, but he stopped coming, probably at the behest of his family. There’s only so much we can do.
We did manage to turn around one other young man. His nadir came when he got sent home from summer camp for violent threats and behavior. His issue was he was too impulsive, and we eventually got him to slow down. My biggest battle was convincing his mother (!) that what he said and did was actually a problem. (He was making hyperbolic threats). I asked her if she wanted him to be one of those people on the internet who posts death threats to women speaking up. “NO!!!” was her response, finally getting the clue.
Improving things the way I describe is not easy, which is why we aren’t doing it. It takes some resolve, and some planning. It takes some expectation that things will not always go correctly.
I mean, if you send him the grocery list and he ignores it, then what does he eat when he comes home? Connect the dots for him, and suffer with him. Demonstrate that when he fails, he AND OTHER PEOPLE suffer. Do it in small, survivable ways at first. Young men who are not pathological will respond to this.
Desert weather is strange. It is currently 56 degrees in Las Vegas. I have two balconies. One faces roughly south, and the other roughly north. On balcony number one the direct sunlight is so hot I strip off my shirt. Then the sun goes behind a building opposite, and immediately I need a sweater.
The other balcony is either perpetually chilly (no sun) or, in summer, so hot I can dry a sopping wet comforter in an hour just by draping it over my hammock.
It’s not just a dry heat, it’s also a dry cold.
@Jay L Gischer: @Monala:
I’ve heard/read people talking about masculinity in three roles: as protector, provider, and procreator. I write for young adults, ~12-17. (So, procreator is off the table, ditto provider.) I could not write a book where a male character protected a female, unless I instantly balanced it by the female protecting the male. Boys are not allowed to have any distinguishing characteristics based on their sex. Male and female must be effectively interchangeable, but leaning toward females. This leaves males with no unique role as males. And this is the reality in our society.
This is a mistake. Males are bigger and stronger, they should be taught (as I was) that the purpose of that size and strength is protection. Every woman alive has at one time or another been threatened by a male. There should be dozens of men ready to protect that woman for every predator. That predator should be looking over his shoulder worried that some other guy is going to step in. That is the proper order of things.
A given man may never have occasion to act as protector, but a given soldier may never go to war, yet they prepare for it. A creature like Weinstein was known to many men as a predator, and none stepped in.
A man should have stopped Weinstein. But I don’t think we teach young men that anymore. (And please, no lectures about paternalism.) When my wife was attacked, the attacker was a man, and it was two men – my landlord and me – who saved her. It is the job of good men can stop bad men.
@Michael Reynolds:
Not just in the desert. That pretty much describes winter weather in Mexico City.
My car in the morning is cold enough (between 8-12 C) that I have to drive to work with the heat on. Then it sits out in the sun in the parking lot for hours, and it’s like the inside of an oven by noon.
@Kathy:
Assad’s reported to be in Moscow.
I was close.
@Jay L Gischer: thank you for everything you wrote. Very insightful.
@restless: It’s that he’s a moron and has no idea how trade deficits work. He believes if we’re running a trade deficit with a country, they’re somehow taking advantage of us.
I’m sure someone has tried explaining this stuff to him, just as I’m sure someone has tried to correct his utter shrieking imbecility on tariffs. It will be to no avail, of course, since he’s stupid but believes he’s a genius, so he will refuse to listen.
If you haven’t figured it out Annabel and Merlyn are bots for some AI detection apps, the moderators could block them.
@Sleeping Dog: Not AI detection apps, AI detection blocking apps. Quite different.
ETA: And based on the last post, of Russian origin, which the pitch itself didn’t reveal.
@Michael Reynolds:
Often by males who claim the threat is necessary to “protect” the woman they’re threatening.
@Kathy:
Do we know that Tulsi is not now in Moscow?
@al Ameda:
No, but she might leak info to Assad in Moscow.
http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/democrats-republicans-congress-worried-gabbard-might-leak-information-rcna181316
@al Ameda:
We know her heart is.
@Mikey:
He’s referring to trade deficits? Really? I thought that there may have been some international aid programs I hadn’t heard about.
I wonder if some interviewer could ask him about his “trade deficit” with McDonalds?
@CSK: If Republicans in Congress are worried, they know what to do: Beg the Democrats to spike the nomination and then blame them for Trump not succeeding in Foreign Policy arenas.
@Michael Reynolds:
There were three or four men who could have put an end to Jerry Sandusky. Mike McQueary saw Sandusky abusing a boy. Does he step in? Call the police? No, he goes to Joe Paterno, talks to his father, and speaks to a doctor at PSU. School officials and Paterno do nothing. Sandusky was allowed to continue abusing for over a year more.
Oh and that Utah nurse incident. For around a half hour she’s on the phone with superiors as Jeff Payne is threatening her and she tells them what is happening. Does any of them come to her aid? No.
When Payne arrests Alex Wubbels, a hospital security guard opens a door for the scumbag cop instead of planting his big ass in front of the exit button. Not just men not doing anything to stop the abuse of a woman but giving aid to them also.
@Michael Reynolds:
But, no man did. Men have abandoned the role of protector, rather than having it taken away.
You’re not wrong that men, particularly boys and young men, are effectively having an existential crisis. The role of Provider has been wiped out by the destruction of the middle class (most people who think they are middle class are actually working poor except with cellphones). Procreator isn’t really a role, as it takes two to tango and the man steps out of that dance pretty early — that role is a fiction.
Young men do need something, particularly with women now being able to vote, own property and have jobs. But trying to reach to the past, when women were in a much more secondary role in society, isn’t it.
I can’t avoid Patriarchy, as part of the existential crisis is the loss of —sigh— privilege (or more reasonably, dominance)
@Gustopher:
As the Sarkeesian Quote says, “In the game of patriarchy, women are not the opposing team. They are the ball.”
“Protector” isn’t about actually protecting women, it’s actually about defining their relationship with other men, and the women are just the props for their fraternal psychodrama. The reason no men stepped in to stop Weinstein is because none of the men in Weinstein’s orbit were trying to change the nature of their relationship with him: they all willingly acceded he was in charge.