Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, July 6, 2025
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40 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).
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Josh Marshall posted a pretty frightening letter from a reader/political scientist:
I thought last year that the USA was somewhat protected against any similar coerceive authoritarian takeover by its federal structure, given state and local government rights to control most U.S. police powers (I presented this argument in my Madison lecture for the Sept 2024 American Political Science Association).
But now I see that the Miller-Trump ethno-authoritarians have figured out a devilishly clever workaround. Immigration is an area where a U.S. President can exercise virtually unchecked legal coercive power, especially if backed by a Supreme Court majority and corrupted Department of Justice. Now Congress has given ICE unprecedented resources – much of this windfall to be used for graft with private contractors Trump patronizes, but lots of to hire street agents willing to mask themselves and do whatever they are told against residents and fellow American citizens. The Miller-Trumpites are not interested only in rounding up undocumented immigrants. They will step up using ICE and DOJ enforcements use to harass Democrats, citizen critics, and subvert future elections if they can.
They know exactly what they are doing…
Ah, all the jobs immigrants steal from the real Americans!
I did those jobs.
In middle school picking potatoes for local farmers for 6 or 7 dollars a day in the fall holiday week. Lying on your knees or bending over for hours – great!
Then in High School, cleaning the local gym, with locker rooms and showers, brilliant! (Don’t skip the hair in the drains, kid!)
As a student, working construction for a bank to create a safe vault in the basement, taking down the old brick walls with a sledgehammer before carrying those bricks up the stairs and over to the truck.
And three summers in a row, mechanical workshop as an apprentice to earn some fuel and dating money: Taking a steel bar, cut it, (watch that rotating saw), then sand the edges off with the spinning sanding band (one broke and hit me in the face with no dating success for a couple of weeks as a result). Next clean out the steel bar (but not too long, the fluid will take your skin off), then stamp the holes in the bar in the two ton machine, and finally sink the holes to not get the bolts stand out on what was going to become a hospital bed. (Watch that drill, one of your co-workers has a 10-inch scar up his arm after getting caught in it….) Rinse and repeat from 7 am to 1615 pm. With no ventilation, so a finger in the nose came back out coal grey. Something to yearn for, you young Americans! Forget that Yale-dream, we’re shutting that and go back to manufacturing! Real producing stuff! Non-union Right to Work and 7.15 an hour, of course!
My own experience in the backbreaking businesses lasted from 1972 to 1984, my kids hardly believe me, but I guess there are some old-timers here who remember those glorious good-ole days and those jobs that now “the real Americans” will flock to, right? (Sarcasm font wanted). Best wishes from Norway.
@ScandiLib: I have observed that the Venn diagram of people complaining about the cost of produce and the lack of available labor, and those who complain about immigration is pretty much a circle.
County leaders offer relief amid canyon bathroom closures apparently mired in federal red tape (KSLTV – Utah)
‘It’s gone too far once it negatively affects my life. Me me me.’
– average conservative in 2025
This —
And then this —
The lies and obfuscations come so easily from this Trump crew, flowing like rising water that drowns.
@DK:
In the hermetically sealed echo chamber of rightwing media, there is only the self. Interdependencies do not exist. Only greed and resentment.
Yesterday we were having a discussion of how language intersects politics, and today Marcy Wheeler posts a piece about that very topic:
This is why I don’t bother to debate certain people here. They aren’t here to debate. They are here to disrupt and demoralize. Perhaps to frighten. To impose language.
You see this in phrases like “It’s all fake news!” I doubt that’s an expression of belief. I think of it more as a way to end a conversation that they would find uncomfortable. Because everyone knows that Trump lies constantly.
No arguments. I do tell my truth. I’ve been doing that for a long time on blogs, not gonna stop now.
@Rob1:
At least 51 people have died in the Texas flood. No trace yet of the 27 missing campers. This is a nightmare.
@Rob1: Bear in mind that the way their information system works, the only bad news about Trump they hear about and are willing to believe is the bad things that happen to them.
The rest of it was all liberal lies.
@Jen: Comments on Outside the Beltway complain about food prices regularly, often blaming the lack of available labor.
ETA: Also, the breed of nationalist conservative who would complain about immigration and prices wouldn’t complain about lack of labor, and the internationalist conservative who would complain about lack of labor wouldn’t complain about immigration. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone complain about all three.
@Rob1:
My understanding is that they’ve already doubled their order of Sharpies.
@ScandiLib: I worked at picking berries – mostly raspberries for about two weeks at age 14. Never wanted to do that again. Some folks did better. Frankly, the 6 months I spent, at age 16, cleaning toilets was a lot better.
@DK: “I want smaller, more efficient government, not smaller, less efficient government.” – average conservative, 2025
“Hypocrite! Selfish! Authoritarian!” – average leftist, 2025
@Fortune: You are really not good at this.
@Fortune: “I want magic, flying pigs, and unicorns. My magical thinking extends to my very stupid insistence that voting for indiscriminate mass layoffs, draconian cuts, and trillions more deficits via tax cuts for billionaires will somehow magically make government more efficient. And I’m such a believer in small government that I vote for Trump Republicans to ban books, control pregnancies, dictate which bathrooms people can use, harras private colleges, build concentration camps, saddle the market with blanket tarrifs, deploy US troops to US cities, militarize the Southern border, and spend billions building a secret police force to detain US citizens in error and persecute non-criminal migrant workers. Such small government efficiency! My ideology is super logical and consistent. I ignored liberals’ prescient warnings, and now that I’m negatively affected by the inevitable consequences of my poor political judgment, please listen to me whine. ”
– average American rightwinger 2025
“You make no sense, are all over the place, and honestly sound like a dumb, childish lunatic — not unlike your rapist owner Trump.”
– anyone with a brain across the entire planet 2025
@Fortune: That whistling sound is the point, flying right over your head.
Most of the folks on OTB understand the link between immigration, labor, and prices. Not everyone seems to make the connection.
The pied piper of incels and JD Vance squeeze Curtis Yarvin is suggesting some sort of domestic servitude may alleviate our labor shortage of farm workers and the like once all the deportations take their toll. Hint: it’s slavery. I knew the day would come when “they” start trying to resurrect the practice.
‘I want my vote back’: Trump-voting family stunned after Canadian mother detained over immigration status (The Guardian)
It’s not smart to support Trump in any case, because he’s a rapist, felon, liar, and thug who incited a terror attack on Congress, worsened COVID death and destruction, colluded with Russia, and publicly sexualized his daughter. He is obviously unqualified, incompetent, corrupt, and morally unfit for the presidency (and for most jobs).
It was especially stupid for the partially-undocumented Olivera family to support a xenophobic racist promising mass deportation, over the party making it legal for Cynthia to work. I pity them in their self-inflicted ordeal.
@DK:
I don’t:
Karma sucks sometimes. Get over it, Francisco and Cynthia. You got what you voted for. You should be happy. And there are worse places to be sent to than Canada.
@becca: Don’t worry, I’m sure we will call it a “guest worker program.”
And Trump has been making some rumblings about agricultural workers, and maybe if the farmers were responsible for the workers…
MAGA doubles down on its death cult status.
I never thought I’d reach this point but I’m ready to talk about a “permanent divorce” from these bozos. We’re already two countries.
@just nutha: I feel like I want to make a distinction. I want to tease two things apart.
I do not regret the pain that they are feeling. It is definitely a consequence of their own choices.
AND, I do feel some empathy for them in the sense that I have been fooled before. In a way that cost me in a substantial way. And when I realized I had been fooled, I also realized that it wouldn’t have been all that hard to *not* be fooled.
Finally, this kind of thing is what’s going to unravel everything. Lots of people who voted for Trump are not going to believe you and me, but people who know Francisco and Cynthia will believe them. So I don’t regret it either, other than wishing we had taken a different path.
But we need to socially welcome people like that, not push them away by mocking them. We need more votes…
@just nutha: “And there are worse places to be sent to than Canada.”
True, and from the story…
She should hope that she isn’t transferred to a detention center in south Florida for an indefinite stay.
(I’m not kidding.)
They can keep my “tax cuts” and fully fund the National Weather Service, maintain our commitment to Ukraine, and support authentic “freedom” for our people instead.
These MAGA bozos run on and on with their “freedom” memeing, their knee-jerk faithful reflexively responding to that trigger, totally clueless to the vacuousness of their own sentiment. They are the ones truly “fake” even as they constantly bury facts, data, and honest discernment behind that very slur.
@Rob1:
This demented bitch makes Trump sound lucid.
Should have said this in my last comment: My admiration for the immigrants is sky high after actually having had their typical jobs. Working the fields and orchards is sapping your strength and often boiling you, doing manual construction, often in spaces too small for machines, is absolutely backbreaking, cleaning peoples sweat and toilet residue is disgusting, and in a subpar workshop every installation can kill or maim you. And don’t get me started on slaughterhouses and meatpacking…. This is what many immigrants do. They’re tough as leather, working hard as hell every day. I had a school and University to go back to and my admiration for the people who do these jobs for life has not waned. Compared to let’s say some politicians they are truly the Salt of the Earth.
@becca:
Debtor prisons will make a comeback.
From LGM, a great Onion piece from 2013
https://theonion.com/when-youre-feeling-low-just-remember-ill-be-dead-in-ab-1819584806/
@Rob1:
The tragic consequences of this flood are looking more and more to be the result of poor communication. That is, the communication of warnings that were issued by the NWS to local officials and to the public in a way that would result in them taking prompt action. This also depends on organizations having plans in place to respond to these warnings.
From your linked AP article…
There already had been second-guessing by state and local officials on Friday, according to reporting (Independent):
So rainfall forecasts from two days prior were exceeded, which of course is not unusual. But what about the NWS warnings that were issued hours before the flooding became catastrophic? The article goes on to say…
@DK:
I have no pity for Trump supporters tasting the lash of their own whip. They can claim no victimhood or innocence.
Rather I pity those who did not support Trump and are now punished by the grossly inhumane policies of a hallucinating narcissist. Actually, pity is not strong enough, it’s outrage.
@Eusebio:
There are “holes” in the chain of response to be sure. And this tragedy certainly is not without precedence in that area of Texas. A lot of precedence. But these things only get worse under the negligence and malfeasance of Trump policies.
More on communication of flood warnings, which start with the NWS… As reported by CNN,
@Rob1: I feel a full-blown empathy for those who opposed Trump and are now in the crosshairs of his incompetence or cruelty. I have a strong urge to try to help them, however possible. Lost in all the noise about “the working class” was this factoid: the very poor supported Harris. She won households with income under $25-$30K. There’s nothing wrong with championing the working- and middle-classes, but liberals should be outraged over the ongoing suffering inflicted on America’s poor, which Trump Republicans intend to worsen.
For Trumpers who voted to harm themselves, I feel no great sympathy. I do look on them with pity, tho.
As Floods Hit, Key Roles Were Vacant at Weather Service Offices in Texas (New York Times)
Musk’s disastrously deadly DOGE cuts and indiscriminate mass firings should be halted and reversed. The Trump regime’s stupidity and incompetence endangers lives — gutting critical government functions, just as warnings predicted.
DOGE was complete wasted effort anyway, since Republicans chose to add trillions to the debt via the Big Ugly Bill’s corporate socialism and tax cuts for billionaires.
Per CNN, the Texas death toll is now at 68.
NBC says 70.
@Jay L Gischer: Keep in mind, that the people that fund and direct RW media also understand their audience is motivated by self interest, resentment, and greed. The entire genre is built around these emotions.
They also have assumed, and correctly so to this point, that Moderate and Left Wing competition would never “write music” in a minor, dissonant key. Will they adjust? I believe the young generation is looking to take the gloves off…a promising sign. But I also don’t believe the Schumer Pelosi grip will be quite so easy to dump. Nor will the Dem culture of age/tenure over talent go quietly.
@Fortune: Prompt your programmer to web crawl some other forums than ours then Bot.
@Fortune: “Sock it to me Orange Daddy!”
FortuneBot and MAGA drones: 2015-present
@just nutha:
Abducting people at their regular immigration check-ins is one of the particularly evil things this administration is doing.
I would assume it’s meant to scare others into noncompliance, except if they are abducting people at regular immigration check-ins noncompliance is obviously not a serious obstacle to deporting them.
It doesn’t even work particularly well to overwhelm the individual so that by the time they realize they should call a lawyer they’re out of the country already — immigration rights groups are preparing people before their check-ins now.
No reason to not ask them to self-deport and then follow up. At least with countries like Canada where the human rights concerns are minimal.
@Jim X 32: Interestingly enough, I’m visiting my sister now. We were reminiscing about some “relatives” we have known, and boy, oh, boy, were those guys motivated by greed, probably resentment, too.
But the biggest factor is that they were people who were not very smart, who did not realize that they were not very smart. Always getting conned. Getting fired for stealing, because it hadn’t occurred to them that there would be other ways to check on them.
I’m thinking of one guy in particular, who is dead now. Geez, what a piece of work. His wife has remarried (and to a much better guy), but is known to us as someone who wanted to kiss people inappropriately. Also for chiseling. (Again with the greed.)
And yeah, I’m sure she’s MAGA. She had a terrible mother, too.