Thursday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Thursday, September 11, 2025
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20 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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Couldn’t sleep, got up for a cup of hot chocolate and a couple aspirin. I’ve been glancing at the news, including a few conservative sites, and checking some history.
Political violence in the U. S. continues to be primarily a RW thing, most recently the June killing of a MN state representative and her husband and shooting of a state senator and his wife. Since the attempts on Trump were unsuccessful, Kirk is the first real chance since Scalise in 2017 for Republicans to wave the bloody shirt, and they’re going to make the most of it. Don’t expect much talk of toning down the rhetoric on both sides or condemnation of any but supposedly left violence. As always, conservatives will want the country to come together by joining them. I fear this is going to get bad.
Trump:
Trump would politicize a weather forecast, claiming a “radical leftist” meteorologist directed Mother Nature’s wrath*. For him to attribute Kirk’s death to rhetoric is beyond hypocrisy. It’s a stunning lack of self awareness coming from the most divisive politician EVER.
*Yeah, he did the Sharpie adjustment of a hurricane’s path, and we can’t forget MTG’s “Jewish space lasers.” But it’s “radical lefties” who wind up in the cross hairs of our mentally disordered president. Charlie Kirk – R.I.P….Donald Trump – FY!
“They did to us what we’re doing to them. Unfair!”
@Charley in Cleveland:
Offer a suggested edit:
For him to attribute Kirk’s death to Democratic rhetoric is beyond hypocrisy.
I can understand that people might have a natural inclination to lionize Kirk, however pronouncements (by Kirk) that ” Democrats love (or believe in) every thing that God hates” is the type of rhetoric that radicalizes his followers and incites reaction by those that vehemently disagree.
Earnestly I say, may Kirk rest in peace, but I will not be sending flowers.
Leaving my higher angels of Michael’s thread, but I assume now we will be sending the National Guard into Utah, right?
The answer is obvious.
The party of non-stop rhetoric of violence has a choice: step back from their methodology of incitement or use this occasion to take a another hit of their drug of choice, self-justifying animus.
Unfortunately, the odds favor the latter.
Inflation climbs in August as grocery and gas prices jump (NPR)
Don’t know much is price gouging vs standard market forces over which politicians have little control vs bad MAGA policy on tariff taxation, deporting migrant labor, and gutting cleaner/cheaper energy projects.
But Republicans and their media lapdogs set the standard for blaming inflation on the president. So turnabout is fair play; Trump deserves to be held to his own blame-game standard.
@DK:
Indeed. Plus, I wouldn’t normally blame a prez for the economy in his first year, but Trump has taken specific, abnormal, actions that do seem causal, even within the short time period. He owns this.
The risk is he’ll pull a Reagan, have his recession early and run for reelection, or whatever he’s planning, on the recovery.
The NYT thinks the weapon in the Kirk assassination was a Mauser 30.06, a bolt action hunting rifle. Odd in that it is apparently quite an expensive gun. Speculating that it’s the kind of weapon owned by a collector, or stolen from a collector. It’s not the kind of thing you buy at the local gun shop on a whim.
On a completely different note, I’m sitting at PDX awaiting my flight to EWR. Fifth annual Man Up To Cancer retreat in the Poconos.
My topics are “long term survivor guilt” and “our friend social security disability.”
First time in a plane since 1982-ish*. Boeing 737-900 nonstop (dawg willing).
My first indicator was getting to the airport at 3 1/2 hours early (because I light up the metal detectors like a pachinko palace on Friday night in tokyo. Much to my surprise, there was no one in line ahead of me at TSA (including the full body scan retinal examination and not invasive body scan) took less than 5 minutes. All in all, good times.
*Adventure/nightmare, potato/po-tat-ooooh.
@Charley in Cleveland:
We also can’t (or shouldn’t) forget Trump’s proposal to nuke a hurricane.
The idea that weather is being secretly controlled by a group of elites. who may or may not be lox-eating bankers with oversized schnozzes, has been in the conspiracy ether for a long time. Aside from MTG’s space lasers, a while back a lawmaker in DC suggested weather was being controlled by the Rothschilds. But this sort of thing is at a level of absurdity so great it only surfaces on occasion.
It’s not that far from Flat Earthers–who also seem to be gaining in visibility in recent years. I’m old enough to remember when flat-earth beliefs were only heard about when someone wanted to make a point about how stupid they thought someone else’s beliefs were (I remember a chapter from a James Carville book titled “Flat Tax, Flat Earth”). It’s getting harder and harder to use that kind of rhetorical device, because it often seems like there isn’t any belief so obviously ridiculous that you can get much mileage out of comparing someone’s claims to it. You hear a politician talk about the rigged 2020 election, and you say, “That’s like saying last week’s quake was caused by George Soros trying to upset the infinite turtles upon which the flat disc of the earth rests,” and the politician says, “What’s wrong with that idea?”
@Flat Earth Luddite:
I mean, Luddite is in your handle, but this is shocking.
America, explain.
@DK:
My employer sent me on a 2-3 day insurance photo shoot. Seattle to Anchorage. Anchorage to Kodiak. Kodiak to King Salmon in single engine float. Late December. Return 3 weeks later because weather closed in. Traveled with AWOL bag and camera gear.
At the time, KS was a fish plant. Now a resorty kinda place, I think.
Also, wack-job crazy Luddite’s aren’t typically welcome at TSA. Just pulled aside for enhanced screening. Joy.
@Michael Reynolds: I can buy a Mauser 18 in 30-06 springfield right now for about $700 plus tax/fees. It’s not a rare or hard to find gun and 30-06 is a popular hunting round that was developed for the military over a 100 years ago.
I doubt they used a rare old Mauser that was converted to 30-06.
I would caution you against taking anything the NYT says that is gun related at face value. The staff doesn’t seem to care about accuracy..
I got a ton of work dumped on me mid-morning, with more right now. So I’ll be unable to comment much the rest of the day.
one thing I’ll expound on later concerning yesterday’s events:
Political violence, including assassinations, is likely to shoot up for one simple reason. Finding redress against government abuse, which was never easy for all too many, is becoming impossible. On the one hand, the Taco so-called administration blatantly flouts court orders. On the other hand, the Fixer Court keeps allowing ongoing abuses to continue, while they think of some rationalization why the Bill of Rights is unconstitutional, or does not apply to certain groups.
When all legal avenues are closed, violence inevitably follows.
GOOD NEWS EVERYONE!
El Taco Pequenininho (aka Jair Bolsonaro) has been convicted, with 4 out of 5 Supreme Court judges having voted him guilty so far (apparently they vote during an interval of several days, so one more vote is still to be cast). Sentence is expected tomorrow.
The US should take note. Brazil managed to do this in a little over 2 and a half years.
I hope the sentence will be “rot in prison until you’re dead.” Modern history is littered with tragic outcomes from failed coup plotters who were let off easy. See Germany in the 1930s, or Venezuela from the 90s onward.
Got it wrong. Sentence was passed today, 27 years (long enough). his co-conspitators were found guilty too. The vote to convict the would-be emperor was 4-1.
Rejoice.
I have reached the “fork in the road” status in my lifetime. It’s a fork I chose. I cannot pay my brother off to buy out my family ranch with cattle, without starting an OnlyFans channel. I am faaarrrrr too past my prime for that. 😉
Tomorrow I head for Oregon, to look for somewhere else to live. I no longer wish to live in Wyoming.
Luddite, Cracker, we might be neighbors. In the same state, at least.
@Jax: you’re always welcome at our table. Cigars, old fashioneds, and mockery of the world on most Wednesdays