Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, February 23, 2025
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37 comments
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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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Ruh roh! Musk, probably inspired by the TPM reports in the movie, “Office Space”, launched his latest, ketamine-fueled, brain fart of a directive to all federal workers. And now he’s is getting ‘disregard that email’ pushback from even the craziest Maga agency heads.
Gotta feel sorry for the IT group managing the reply-to email account that Musk provided, or the poor schmuck tasked with importing & analyzing the TPM reports received.
Musk demands Fed employees justify their employment via e-mail. “What did you do last week?”
1. Not give in to autocratic bullshit.
2. My job, as specified.
3. Not being an asshole.
4. Mind my own flipping business.
5. Ask “do you want me to deprioritize my current task list”? (I’ve actually used that line on a contract gig.)
6. I didn’t have 13 kids with 6 mothers.
It’s like in Office Space where you have to meet with the consultant Bobs to justify your job. And add Musk on top.
Yes, I have seen the memo about the new cover sheet about TPS reports. Ask yourself “Is this good for the {government agency}?”
The goal is to eliminate professional civil service employees and replace them with political MAGA drones.
One of the indicators of a stable government is an apolitical civil bureaucracy. Musk, Trump and his minions are actively killing that now in real time. On purpose. Because they want to.
These people are idiots.
In my lifetime there have been two R Presidents who were, imo, not actively shitty – Gerald Ford and GHWB. I’m 61.
I guess I might be little c conservative. Don’t think it’s okay to wreck things that already work fairly well because just out of spite. I’m cautiously incremental. I highly value incremental improvement through time.
Rs accuse Ds of being radical.
Baby, bath water, bathtub, bathroom, that whole corner of your house, the concept and practice of plumbing, gravity.
I have lived long enough to see where it would lead. Trump.
Republicans and conservatives, your multi-generational apotheosis is Donald Trump.
Six bankruptcies. Multiple sexual assaults. Dumb as a stump. Wears make-up. Arguably a Russian asset.
Imagine you tried to manifest a conservative, Republican “savior” and you got Trump? He’s currently “married” to an immigrant. He has anchor babies. He has outsourced his job to a dumb-ass rich guy (purportedly illegal) immigrant from Africa.
How is what anything that Trump is doing now in any way conservative?
R’s: you backed the wrong horse. Gonna bite you in the butt. The only way this doesn’t end in utter, absolute disaster is if his minions find a way to mitigate and smooth out his worst impulses.
We’re betting our country’s future on whether Trump’s minions having a small sense of decency.
@de stijl:
I don’t think they are idiots. Not as smart (or dumb) as some people seem to think? Sure.
But they are doing this because it benefits them, whatever their goals may be.
It helps to remember that with enough money, they are mostly insulated from actual impacts of instability–political or economic.
Economic instability has always presented an opportunity to accumulate wealth if one already has enough to withstand the initial crash. And with modern financial instruments, one can make gains from both the crash and the recovery. Especially if they have non-public information.
Rank and file, particularly of the lower economic brackets, MAGA? Yeah. Many of them are dumb.
But there are a lot of the American Libertarian set, and MAGA people who are engineers, physicians, other professionals. It’s hard to call them idiots. More like arrogant. That arrogance causes them to think they can pick up difficult subjects by reading on the weekends. That is a recipe for reinforcing biases and surface understanding of complex issues.
@Kurtz:
I think I stand by “idiots”. They’re damn smart, but they think it’s like a company, not a government. They act like it’s a start-up. Break things, act fast, be disruptive.
In this instance we’re not consumers or customers, but citizens. Or residents.
Expecting like, or treating citizens like they are customers is idiotic. Wrong conceptual frame.
And do they not understand there will be backlash, sagging polling, the distinct possibility their party loses the next election?
DOGE civil servant purge will contribute very largely in Trump’s future declining polling numbers.
They think that gutting federal bureaucracy is efficiency. And good. Look, I’m all for efficiency in every format. Efficiency is good.
I made basically all the money I have by increasing efficiency. It was my job. Was contractually obligated to do so.
How they are doing it is really dumb. DoE or Treasury or DoD isn’t a start-up.
Let’s eliminate the Department of Education. What could possibly go wrong?
They have no idea what they’re “breaking”. Utterly uneducated. Ignorant.
Idiotic idiots. I didn’t even vote for them, and now it’s going to be our problem to resolve / fix in a few years.
…
5. I did 20 percent less work than normal last week because Monday was a federal holiday.
@de stijl:
Oh, I agree with that. But I chalk it up to a combination of ignorance (of government in general, political theory, classical liberalism as more diverse than advertised) and arrogance.
Okay, okay. Maybe we can use idiots as a fair descriptor.
Jan 6th insurrection was no big deal.
People yelling at town halls this week is hysteria.
Gaslight Nation
@Argon: My non answer would be: Talk to my supervisor. He gives me my assignment and tracks my work and accomplishments. That’s his job, not mine.
We’re waiting for the SCOTUS shoe to drop. Will they stand up to Trump’s paralegal actions or back him up. Paul Campos at LGM has, I think, a pretty good handle on it:
Campos title is, ” Will John Roberts stand up to Donald Trump?” To ask the question is pretty much to answer it.
February is Black History Month
W.E.B. Du Bois born on this date in 1868.
Post submitted Stardate -297853.74210426176
@Kurtz:
We consistently give people high marks across the board when they may only be accomplished in a narrow skill set.
That’s for IQ. EQ is a whole different matter, but it can determine how the IQ is expressed. Given the complex range of human expression and capability, deficiency is likely.
I have known people who might be consistently average or above average, across a wide range of skill sets, but taken together as a whole, the effect of that broad consistency results in extraordinary output and accomplishment.
So yes, high achieving professionals might also be mired in a form of idiocy. Take Tommy Tuberville for example. Or RFK Jr. Or even Musk.
@Kurtz:
Idiot is easier to type out than ignoramus.
They are certainly not dumb. Smart, by metrics.
Canceling all contracts and firing 40% of staff on the first day you have the authority to do so is incredibly idiotic. You have no idea what is going on.
“I, DOGE appointee, know better than you, you civil service professional proles!”
The arrogance! Ignorance.
The first job of a consultant is to consult – to seek out information. Why, how, when, with what? You absolutely do not know anything first day unless you talk to the users and the producers. WHAT and HOW was my key. WHY is their job. (I mostly did dashboards and reports – SQL stuff and front end presentation.)
It was important enough that you decided to hire somebody. I can’t do the job properly unless I consult, especially on WHAT (management) and HOW (fte staff that produce). WHY is your business.
I can’t make the dashboard production process better / more efficient without that. It is a necessary step.
The consultation process makes that producer person way less efficient (and management needs to know that up front.)
I encountered so many gifted people who provided critical information to decision makers and they had no training or background, but they just figured out a way anyway. Some people are just genius. I loved that!
I was there to automate and consolidate their hard work. Essentially eliminate their job, so I also mentored when I could and if I could.
It was always sweet if I could recommend to the project sponsor or manager that B (initial producer) is the best person to manage this process going forward.
I always wanted to leave the gig where no one lost their job, and at least two people got promoted and/or pay bump.
@gVOR10:
He might be right about Roberts “two bin” approach, but I suspect that the Cuttlefish bin is really the humiliation bin. Trump doesn’t just want to win. He needs to win and humiliate. The second Roberts does something that doesn’t look like full capitulation, Trump is going to take a full on shit in Robert’s lap; just to prove a point.
@Beth:
Cruelty is the desired outcome.
@de stijl:
Loved working with people like you. Organize, improve structure, increase productivity. Win-win-win!
Unfortunately for America and the world, that’s not the apparent underlying goal.
I’ve been called in for projects where management’s stated goal was to cause the department to fail so ending it is justified. That’s what this whole fuster cluck feels like.
@Rob1: People compartmentalize. I’ve met, for instance, business people who were coldly rational wrt/ their business, but totally intuitionist about other things, including politics. Any number of people have noted high IQ makes it easier to rationalize intuitive opinions.
Meanwhile over at CPAC:
Insert modifier here : “My mind is a ______storm.”
@gVOR10: Yes, they “compartmentalize” their idiocy from their more functional parts (but not always).
Or the idiocy of decimating one’s own stable, productive society.
Calling these persons’ behavior an expression of “intuitionism” seems too kind, although I grant you, it doesn’t issue forth from what is generally accepted as rational process grounded in data. Idiocy works pretty well here, because of the apparent disregard for known data and resulting counterproductive results.
@Flat Earth Luddite:
Bad projects suck.
Sponsor / management wants big outcome as cheap as possible. Scope is huge and resources lean.
Very often it is an outside vendor selling unsuitable hardware, software, or data vendors. Some idiot in house gets enamored (or a backdoor bribe).
I once witnessed a huge mortgage lender trade customer data to a huge data broker. Mortgage bank got additional customer data, a bullshit “analytics” “suite” and their proprietary customer typing tranches. What is a mortgage lender going to do with that additional customer data? The un-thought out thought was they could parter with movers, gardeners, vrap you would need when moving. They ended up doing absolutely nothing with the data they bought.
Data Broker got all their allowable customer data.
Do you know how much information you have to give to your mortgage lender to get a loan and how much stuff they store forever? The data broker got the best end of the deal on that by heaps.
End of the project the data broker on-site manager tried to recruit me. I graciously declined, but in my head “yeah, no. You people are parasites and leeches.” Didn’t say it out loud. No need to burn bridges. Year later they were bought out by LexisNexis (parent Reed Elsevier) – mega-uber parasite and leech company. Yeah, no.
I have a bunch of credentials on my resume that say I am a very smart person. More than Elon Musk does. I doubt his mind is any more genius than mine or James’ or Stevens. Or perhaps several other people who post here. I’m not into ranking, but I do have the credentials.
Musk does some things that I think are positives in life. He takes action. This cannot be underestimated. I have so often looked at some successful work, and thought, “Geez, I could have done a better job than this.” The thing is, I didn’t do it. They did. They took the action and made the thing.
If you want to know things, and to do things better, you need to incorporate the idea that you aren’t perfect as you are into you daily process, and into your psyche. You need to get that some people who may be “dumber” than you are still know things that you don’t, and those things are valuable. If you think you know it all already, you will never learn anything at all. This is both Trump’s and now, it seems, Musk’s issue. (Well, they have several issues. This is one of them.)
The Soviet Union leaned hard into “figure out who the smartest person and just do what they say”. I think current Russia does that a lot, too. There is a pretense that Putin is the smartest, but I think he probably isn’t, but taps people who are smart in a domain. He certainly isn’t dumb, though.
So, “my mind is a storm” is not a good thing. It’s ADD. I’ve had some experience with this thing. There are a lot of self-interruptions. I thought it made my performance on most tasks worse, and I’ve worked hard to quiet it down, so that it could have more focus.
One of the great lessons of a STEM career is that common sense is frequently dead wrong. The universe is a much stranger place than we thought, and the obvious answer is frequently wrong. If you are humble enough to actually look at the world, you will be enriched.
If you just spew out the storm that is within your mind, there will be gems, but there will also be chicken coops and straw, and refuse blown by the wind.
@Jay L Gischer:
and this:
Totally.
@Rob1: “Intuitionism” is a reference back to me citing Enchanted America”, one of the books in the “liberals are from Venus, conservatives from Mars” genre. I find their breakdown of intuitionist v rationalist quite explanatory. They actually narrow the definition of “intuitionist”, not just believing the easy, comfortable explanation from intuition, but doing so when there is a readily available rational explanation, which is to say not only intuitive, but magical, thinking.
@Jay L Gischer: The authors of Enchanted America mention “common sense” quite often as an alias for intuitive thinking. Given Pete Hegseth’s experience as a grunt, his common sense tells him being a “warrior” is what’s most important to the military. Reason, and a bit of history, might lean a bit toward technical and managerial skills.
Y’all are overthinking this. The goal, and they’re executing it perfectly, is to complete Khrushchev’s project for Putin.
Both Trump and Musk are Putin’s useful idiots. And they have the working class angry as hornets and convinced that everything they’re being told is the absolute truth. $100’s of Billions in fraud, from which they’ll get their $5,000. That 150 year olds are getting SS checks. And that Trump and Musk are not Putin’s henchmen but true American heroes.
So, it seems Musk and Vance efforts and wishes for the AfD to lead in Germany went “kaputt”
The conservative CDU/CSU union, Merkel’s party, will lead the country.
Merz, the candidate for the Union, has already ruled out any coalition with the AFD.
Kash Patel has instructed his employees at the FBI and ATF to blow off Musk’s memo about justifying their jobs.
@Daryl:
https://www.mediaite.com/news/cnns-jake-tapper-confronts-top-trump-official-with-stunning-clip-of-russian-state-tv-praising-trumps-total-alignment-with-putin/amp/
@Daryl:
well, Trump is totally aligned with Putin, isn’t he?
@CSK:
And someone funded the $44 B Musk paid for Twitter but we don’t know who.
Also there’s this…which rears it’s head every so often.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/donald-trump-secretly-recruited-kgb-211249598.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACsFmeLpGBtn8oplXGoDmGj061YWWPyf5GNl4f0b80UbQs6MXZkSau7i4vq9P0CylWVOytnL066oB5608mdmS4r2QZeSq85Hww_XPnYYUjpFGbp-1QFtrqZg72MqsMl09rvA9BLLeIg8EOgsmF9R7Nr2dmZnVGZ4JE7oq9cvqq_u
@Daryl:
I doubt Trump is an actual spy. An asset, sure. But he’s too loudmouthed, gullible. easily swayed, and vain to be a spy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stupidity
How one views any of this —- Trump, Putin, hard right turn in American leadership —- depends upon whether one accepts these elements as purely “organic” in nature.
@Rob1:
And that goes back to the Tea Party and whether you believed they were grassroots, or Astro turfed by the Koch bros.
@Daryl:
We don’t know who funded it? I thought it was like 15% from unknowns, but the rest was banks?
@CSK: I wish I didn’t have the personal experience of having received a similar instruction only to have the same supervisor offer my following of his instructions as grounds for dismissal (leaving out the “I told him to do this” part).
They’re all wedged into “God’s little acre, East of the rock and West of the hard spot,” but I still wouldn’t trust Patel any farther than I can throw a potato chip.
@Mister Bluster: I think you really don’t understand what’s going on right now. Nobody cares when when you posted your comment. There are people who will lose their jobs right now. Dr Joyner might lose his job because you’re pissed your comment didn’t post at the right time. Get the fuck over yourself.
Who hosts this website? It ain’t you.
That said, I will miss this site, but I totally understand if Dr. Joyner has to shut it down.
I am tiedyejax at most of the email places.