Tuesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
·
Tuesday, December 9, 2025
·
22 comments
OTB relies on its readers to support it. Please consider helping by becoming a monthly contributor through Patreon or making a one-time contribution via PayPal. Thanks for your consideration.
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
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
********************@
In yesterday’s Open Forum I offered a long – but hardly complete – list of things going wrong. In today’s sermon I want to look at the future and how we survive it. I believe the current model of civilization is failing, and I don’t think it can be saved. We either descend into a sort of dark age (we’re gonna need more monks!) or we adapt and build something new.
Politically we have two parties, both fighting to perpetuate the past. MAGA wants to bring back the 1950’s, or possibly 1930’s, or maybe the 1860’s. The Democratic Party looks to the 60’s and 90’s and the oughts.
MAGA wants to revive the age of the Alpha male at a time when such nostalgia is simply pathetic. Our forefather Alphas fought the Iroquois Empire, the British Empire, the Spanish Empire, the Comanche Empire, not one but two German Empires, and the Japanese Empire. They didn’t so much fight as outlast and outplay the Soviet Empire. Our more current forefathers fought, sigh, Saddam and the Taliban.
Who are the Alphas of the Trump era taking on? Well, armed with only a single aircraft carrier and its 80 or so strike aircraft, multiple destroyers and at least one nuclear sub, they are bravely subduing Venezuelan speed boats. The real warriors, the ones who matter, the killers, are armed with joysticks. And we are historical milliseconds away from turning even that job over to AI.
There is no market for Alpha males. Indeed bioengineering is, again, just historical milliseconds away from obviating the need for males period. Insofar as we need more humans at all, we can get by with maybe 10,000 males in the entire world. That should be plenty of genetic diversity, and even that may be unnecessary.
The market for muscles and cocks is about as viable as the market for whalebone corsets. The only way to salvage that market is to bring on a complete collapse of civilization, and I’m not sure nostalgia-poisoned old farts in Florida retirement communities, or the basement dwelling incel gooners, or the steroid-jacked gym rats are really up for that.
That’s enough for today. Tomorrow, I’d like to talk about my team, the Democrats.
They’re coming. They have read Michael’s comment and decided this is the time.
New NASA data reveals 3I/ATLAS is one of the most mysterious comets ever found
This is pretty toothless and ineffective. And won’t prevent corrupt and/or incompetent legal scribblings.
Pentagon would have to explain future JAG firings under NDAA provision
JohnSF can and should weigh in. Unspoken is the new unreliability of the US.
Britain close to losing the Atlantic, First Sea Lord warns
Trump’s current approval ratings are roughly the same as what they were at this point in his first term:
RCP 12/8/2017: 37.4/57.6, or -20.2
RCP 12/8/2025: 38.1/58.2, or -19.1
But his approval ratings on the economy, which remained even-to-positive throughout his entire first term (even at the height of Covid when the economy really was in freefall), have utterly collapsed:
RCP 12/5/2017: 45.4/46.7, or -1.3
RCP 12/4/2025: 40.8/56.2, or -15.4
@Scott: This another instance in which matters that hadn’t even been considered before Trump took office now have to be addressed. For over 200 years it was assumed that competent and ethical professionals would populate leadership positions in the federal government. Now, because of Trump, no such assumption can be made and guardrails have to be put in place. Whether they will hold is another matter, seeing the cows have already left the barn.
Rep Jasmine Crockett jumped into the Democratic Primary for Texas Senator.
Posted on X a video of Trump insulting her.
Now I like Talarico’s style much better and I definitely won’t vote for Cornyn because while he once was a more moderate Republican, he basically will do what Trump wants and brags about it.
However, this kind of in your face push back that Crockett exhibits is welcome.
Jon Stewart was en fuego last night.
@Scott:
Crockett’s a fighter. I don’t know if she will be able to win this fight, but she’s going to enter the ring with fire in her belly and glass shards stitched into her gloves.
@Michael Reynolds:
We also need spiders killed and furniture moved.
@Michael Reynolds: I think you are representing a common mindset quite well. I have had conversations FTF with men that kind of go this way.
AND, I reject this thinking entirely. What is changing, what is becoming useless, is a particular masculine identity. A way of presenting one’s self.
This has nothing to do with what you look like, but with how you navigate through society.
Fact is, I mostly rejected that identity as a teenager. I was assisted by my father, who didn’t really carry it either. His brothers did, but he didn’t. Probably because when he was young, he was very sick, and his mother, who’s only daughter (so far) had drowned in a rain barrel, took him on, and he helped her around the house.
He did not present himself in a feminine way, but there was very little of the familiar masculine behavior. I loved him, so I imitated him, further supported by Third Wave feminism ideas I absorbed.
I do not think men are useless. I am not useless. You are not useless. Steven and James are not useless. We now live in a world where being bigger and stronger doesn’t mean very much, since physical capability has been mostly taken over by machines. That doesn’t make us useless, it makes us more equal.
@Michael Reynolds: I’ll go with monk. Brother Cadfael will be my model.
I was just served an ad on Facebook. It is an NIH post, listing TWELVE open directorship positions that reads “Interested in joining NIH leadership? We’re looking for exceptional applicants for Director level positions. Applications due by December 12.”
They are advertising on FACEBOOK for DIRECTOR-LEVEL positions. At NIH.
We are so very, very cooked.
@Scott:
Well, good for Sir Gwynn.
It’s about damn time someone laid out the hard truths.
We are entering a period of graver potential peril than at any point since the depths of the Cold War; possibly since the Second World War.
And the Atlantic Alliance is tottering further on its foundations every time Trump opens his mouth on the subject.
And, frankly, Vance worries me even more than Trump.
Fortunately the RN rebuilding programme commenced some time back.
It needs to be stepped up again, which will probably require more shipyards being put back in commision ie a lot of money. Plus all the support manufacturing and expansion of the naval manpower establishment.
Plus more martime patrol aircraft, and not from Boeing either.
Probably the Airbus A321.
Taking all that together with the need for reinforcing the RAF and at least a divisonal scale army force for Poland/Baltics and it means we need to go to 3% GDP right now, and 5% asap.
It would/will require both tax increases, and budget cuts.
But that would/will raise holy hell in Parliament.
The only place the budget savings can realistically come from is the disability welfare expenditure AND the pensions “triple lock”.
At which point parts of the Labour backbenches will see massive eruptions and tantrums, and likely many Conservatives refuse to do anything to annoy the pensioner vote or to raise taxes.
While Reform, the Greens etc will both try to peddle their different brands of snake-oil from their booths on the sidelines.
The Parliamentary vote maths could come down to will the Conservatives split, or alternatively collectively come to their senses (hah!), and government be able to force through a “war preparations budget” based on Labour loyalists, Conervative centrists, and the LibDems.
Won’t happen imminently; but might be unavoidable, perhaps next year.
Bloody 1930’s all over again, dammit.
Well, needs must when the devil drives.
Incidentally, an historical footnote:
General Sir Gwyn Jenkins is the first ever 1SL/CNS not to be an admiral; he’s a Royal Marines general. 🙂
Paramount offered a competing, hostile merger bid for Warner Bros, paying more per share than Netflix.
And then an HB Max (if it’s still called that), filed a class action lawsuit against Netflix challenging the merger. Apparently the law allows this.
Some large company may be out a few billion$ in failed merger fees, and a bunch of lawyers are due for a big payday.
Meantime, after reviewing my streaming subscriptions, considering what I feel like watching, and the very little time available during Hell Week season, I think I’ll just keep Netflix and cancel the rest (which by now should only be HBO if my memory is correct).
I’ve also been thinking about air fryer meatloaf.
I usually cook mine in sauce rather than glaze. I mix some of the sauce with the ground beef, then stick it in the oven in a baking dish with the rest of the sauce. I’m thinking of browning it in the air fryer first.
@Michael Reynolds:
There’s a case to be made that, for most of history, “alpha males” were, from the pov of the general population, mainly a monumental pain in the arse.
Also, from a sociobiological perspective, Homo sapiens are not really much at all like wolves (the orignof the “alpha” concept), and not all that much like Pan troglodytes either.
Humans can be highly hierarchical, depending on social-cultural context, but also highly cooperative.
And organized cooperation generally beats willy-waving.
Even in the supposed “utimate alpha” domain of warfare, put a mob of Fench medieval “ultra alpha” knights against a coperative bunch of English archers, or Flemish pikemen, or Swiss halberdiers, then go count the corpses.
Peasants 100 Aristocats 10.
Peasants win.
A lot of the current social-cultural presumptive model still, imho, derives from the post-neolithic bronze-age pattern of the kings by divine right, the warrior hero etc.
(Have I ever mentioned how much I despise Homer?)
However, humans, including male humans, being eminently adaptable, I suspect a less authoritarian/heroic model will suit well enough.
After all, it generally suited the majority of humans for most of human history.
However, just because the US is inclined, out of Power luxury, to war at distance, does not mean that war “up close and personal” is necessarily done with.
See eg Ukraine.
(Also, there are possibly interesting differences between the Russian tendency to hierarchial domination defaults, and failures, and apparent Ukrainian attitudes which appear rather more cooperative. But that really needs much more intensive study than just my “vibes”)
The woman who ran as a Democrat against a Trump endorsed man has won the Mayors race in Miami. First Dem to win in decades and in the city chosen to host the Trump Library and all its crayons. Pretty shocking in the last significant election before the midterms.
@Michael Reynolds:
If there is “no market” for shamelessly blustering Alpha males, how do we account for the election of Trump?
The administration’s anti-DEI zeal has landed on Calibri at the State Department. From Reuters, Times New Roman ousts Calibri:
Perhaps Rubio would find the pages of OTB to be to his liking, what with this woke-defying Times New Roman-like font (headings excepted).
@Eusebio:
Yeah, he just wants a font that’s Roman, because Romans something something alpha something something…
What if Microsoft were to rename the font New York Times New Roman?
Damn, I’m working too late. I seriously wonder what they were all doing about this project last week. I got my part done last Thursday.
@Jen: it isn’t as if the people they are looking for read the position availability ads in Cell
@Jen:
@Erik:
Hey, finally there’s a use for all those Facebook medical degrees!
Next the DOJ should advertise for lawyers there. No use letting all those Facebook law degrees go to waste.