Wednesday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Wednesday, December 10, 2025
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54 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).
Follow Steven on
Twitter and/or
BlueSky.
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Yesterday I promised (threatened?) to write about my team, the Democrats, and I want to discuss briefly where I think the party is, and where it needs to go.
The core of the party, the Chuck Schumer party, still thinks it’s the 1960s and 70s and we’re all marching for Civil Rights and passing legislation that will do good things for minorities, including the female minority with its bare 51% of the population.
The progressive wing of the party, centered not in Congress but on social media, is already nostalgic for the 2010’s when they were inventing grievances and crying about microaggressions, all centered around the idea of identity politics. Their weapon of choice wasn’t legislation or marches, their tool was shame – the dreaded cancel culture.
Identity politics was, in a word, stupid. In a country where 60% of the population is white, minorites, some quite tiny in numbers, are not going to win that contest. Openly trashing the 60% was, in two words, fucking stupid.
Now, let me be clear. If someone breaks into your house and steals all your stuff: that’s the bad guy. But if you left your windows open and your door unlocked: you’re the dumbass. On just about every issue, progressives were the dumbasses and they’ve lost all their stuff.
Our future is not about the walking dead, the cobwebbed septua and octogenarians of the Schumer party. And it’s not about the dumbasses of identity politics. Because, as Bob Dylan wrote, the order is rapidly fadin’ and also the times they are a-changin’.
AI is coming, and it will accelerate another disruptive technology, bio-engineering. The steam engine changed the world. Airplanes and cars changed the world. The internet and the iPhone changed the world and we’re still not able to manage that revolution. Technology defines the playing field. Homo sapiens is about to experience a set of dramatic changes, and nowhere on that near-future landscape do zombie speeches to C-Span cameras, or chanting and sign-waving crowds, or social media scolds play a major role.
Now, do I know how to cope with what’s coming? Nope. I am not Nostradamus. But I know what’s obsolete. Had I been on the beach at Kitty Hawk watching the Wright Brothers I would not have been able to predict 747s or F-35s, but I would have known it was time for a major rethink. You don’t need a weather man to know which way the wind blows.
Our future as a party cannot be about great-grandmother amending the next omnibus bill, and it cannot be about inventing the next grievance. We are dinosaurs noticing a funny light in the sky. It’s adapt-or-die time. We need a party that is loose enough, fast enough, smart enough to at least manage not to be swept away in the coming tidal wave.
How exactly to adapt? Not sure, not at all. But I am quite certain that the past is done, and we need to be able to convince voters that we believe in the future, that we intend not just to survive it but profit from it. We need to find ways to make the future work so that we are not just serfs on lands owned by our tech overlords. We need leaders who are smart, flexible, principled, and facing forward not back.
Perhaps the single biggest obstacle to this is us: Democrats. The change in perspective has to start with us. The divisions are now between two irrelevant, outdated party factions. We cannot be about servicing this or that special interest. We cannot be about this or that identity group. We have to focus on the future. We have to insist on weaning ourselves off Big Money. We have to reject the narrow focus on ‘getting ours.’ We cannot be the party of ‘restoration’ after Trump is gone. He’s the past, we have to be the future.
We can’t stop the tidal wave, but if we are smart, and agile, and keep our balance, eyes wide open, we can surf it.
TL;DR: fuck Chuck Schumer and Ilhan Omar, too, they are both relics of the past and the next stage of civilization is already here.
The Florida headline of the day- South Florida Postal Service employees participated in $600,000 credit card theft operation, feds say
@Michael Reynolds:
The problem is not that the times they are a-changin’/the future is now (or however you want to put it), the problem is that people aren’t going to jail.
Trump? Should be in jail.
Musk? Jail.
John Roberts? Jail.
Hegseth? Jail.
Miller? Jail.
Etc., etc
And I fully realize that (especially) Roberts did not do a single illegal thing. And that is exactly the problem. The real scandal is what’s legal.
If corruption has zero consequences, society becomes corrupt. Nothing to do with AI or social media, just a tale as old as time.
Qualified immunity should have been the canary in the coal mine. But it wasn’t because, for the most part, only “those” people got shot.
If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be almost funny that the legacy of slavery is now impacting the white middle classes, too.
@drj:
Do you think voters give a single fuck about putting Pete Hegseth in jail? Do you think a Blue Revenge message is going to woo anyone to our side?
People are far more scared for the future than they are upset about the past. We have to move past letting Trump set the agenda and dictate the action. People can’t afford rent. They can’t afford health care. And they are at least dimly aware that AI is coming for their jobs. Three years from now there won’t be a single human driving for Uber. And all the people who were urged to get into coding because it was the future? Their jobs are on the block as well.
Our billionaire tech overlords are working feverishly to obsolete vast swathes of the human race. Fight the coming threat, not the last war.
@Michael Reynolds:
You can try to woo voters any way you want, but things won’t get structurally better unless there will be consequences for those who engage in open corruption.
That’s all.
I’m not even pretending to know how to sway voters
@drj:
Me either. I may know how sway book readers not voters.
Do I know how to sway book readers? I’ve sold over a million copies of two wildly different books. What I did right, I still don’t know.
@drj:
Things won’t get structurally better because as Professor Taylor frequently points out: the structure makes structural change impossible. When you can’t win the game, play a different game.
Punishment is often necessary, but it doesn’t make for structural change. I was a criminal, and I didn’t stop criming because I was afraid of The Man. I quit criming because I fell in love. Paradigm shift. Open a whole new Overton Window with a better view.
If anyone cares
Dear Wife and I got back from our 7 day cruise Sunday morning. It was ok*.
I spent 3.5 hours in JFK Hospital**’s ER Monday afternoon. While DW was out shopping, I lost my balance and hit the living room floor nose first.
Luckily for me I had my cell phone nearby. I called dw, our condo president Maria, and 911. Maria because the front door was locked and our HOA has a key, DW was at least 10 minutes away, and I didn’t feel safe getting up. Because I take blood thinners, I was bleeding heavily. Maria, the paramedics, and my wife all arrived within a five minute span
Luckily again for me, I didn’t break anything or suffer any mentionable injury except a messed up nose. My face is now a bigger disaster post fall than it was pre. I always said if me and the Frankenstein monster were the only contestants in a beauty contest, I may not win. Now those chances are even slimmer.
JFK’s ER was packed when I was brought in. So I spent my entire time there, out in a hallway. A cat scan was done and the results were good. A WTH moment- An xray technician*** came to do both a pelvic and a chest x-ray. Huh? I refused them. The same bloodwork was performed on me. Twice. My nurse inquired if I had been drinking****.
My last couple of visits to JFK haven’t been impressive. That’s the short story.
Over the years, I have purchased several hundred videos through Amazon Prime for viewing on my television. Some of them are now incredibly hard to access. Amazon prime video don’t sell them anymore and if a customer in the past bought them, we are forced to wade one by one through our libraries to find these films. Normal Amazon Prime searches or Continue watching (Say you stop watching and exit Prime for a while. Normally you restart Prime and you’ll see the program or movie you stopped watching featured under continue watching. Not for these purchases. You’re forced again to wade again through all your purchases) features don’t work for them.
Now back to your regularly scheduled open forum.
*- Our travel destinations- Nassau Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, Dominican Republic- didn’t particularly interest me before the trip and after visiting them my feelings are much the same.
**- My former employer of over a decade
***- My profession for over 20 years
****- For about 20 years, I didn’t touch alcohol once. Over the last 18 months, I have drank a glass of wine three or four times with dinner while DW and I have been traveling. Some family members of mine have had substance abuse issues of some sort. Not me.
@drj:
That is so much our current problem. Trump is massively violating the emoluments clause. But because earlier presidents more or less complied, there’s no specific legislation, no precedent, and no effective enforcement mechanism. Similarly, the CO ballot access case was decided for Trump largely because there’s no effective legal mechanism for defining and addressing what he did on J6. And it’s the DOJ that’s charged with prosecuting and he’s corrupted the DOJ.
Even if we tried to impeach Trump smirking John Roberts would preside over the Senate trial, knowing that he himself opened a channel for legal bribery as long as no one writes down a quid pro quo, that he himself immunized Trump from criminal prosecution, and that GOPs won’t break ranks.
Trump is the result of decades of Republicanism, not a break, but in terms of crime he’s pretty much sui generis, profiting from a lack of precedent and experience in how to deal with him. And don’t get me started on Mueller and Garland.
Yes, the major issue in the near future will be preventing corporate/oligarchic serfdom. Also AGW and the massive immigration it will drive, but in practice that’s a subset of corporate serfdom. But the box of rocks electorate don’t know that. The next elections will be won or lost on affordability, health care, and immigration. And probably the best tactic is to ridicule the GOPs, something they make easy.
Well, dems flipped two more gop seats.
Some people are saying the Senate may be in play. Seriously, people like Yglesias, who never misses a chance to beat up on dems.
Note to the world: If you are taking any prescription meds in which you are advised not to consume alcohol, there is one other thing you probably should avoid that you might not be thinking about: grapefruit juice.
@Bill Jempty: So glad you’re OK and still with us. Just went through the whole comprehensive cardio routine myself. Mainly because I’ve been feeling light headed recently. Been on beta blockers for PVCs (preventricular contractions) for about 15 years now. It was time for a rebaseline of the condition. Two week holter test, nuclear stress test, etc. BTW, don’t plan to fly for about a week after that because you’ll set of the TSA screening at the airport. Concluded my heartrate was too slow (down to 42 while in deep sleep), cut the dosage in half. Still a little monitoring going on.
Stay healthy, my friend.
Is carrier Wi-Fi distracting sailors? Jet mishap probe raises concerns
The report goes on to assess causes and blame:
My take is a little different. This report puts the blame on the sailors. I would put the blame on leadership and also acknowledge the addictive nature of the internet, aided and abetted by phones and wifi.
@Kylopod:
You’re absolutely right about grapefruit juice. It can cause you real problems if, for example, you take Lipitor.
As a PR professional, I probably pay more attention than most to the mechanics of messaging. I’m curious about the “why” of it, and wonder whether or not it is landing with the intended audiences, and if so, what it is about the messaging that is resonating.
So, when the administration repeatedly blames “immigrants” for the lack of affordable housing, I really am curious who is buying this line. You’d have to be dumber than a box of used chewing gum to think that people who are coming into this country with nothing more than the shirts on their backs to work sub-minimum wage jobs are the ones making the housing crisis drag on, but HUD secretary Scott Turner was just on FOX repeating this very, very obvious lie.
WHO IS BUYING THIS? Seriously. The lack of affordable housing is caused by many things in many different regions of the country. Here in New England, new construction faltered after the 2008 housing collapse and hasn’t recovered. The lack of supply has pushed prices up, so much so that even small-ish bog-standard new construction homes of 1,800-2,000 sqft. are selling for $600K and up. In other parts of the country, people (or private equity firms) are buying homes just to Air BnB them.
It’s not immigrants swooping in to buy half-million dollar homes that is causing the housing crisis. It’s just so…bizarre to me that this even needs to be said.
@Kylopod:
If your medication doesn’t’ mix well with grapefruit, it often also does not mix well with pomegranates, pomelos, or sour oranges. Though those last two are rarely used in the states.
On Thanksgiving I was complemented on my cranberries, and informed everyone I made them with pomegranate juice. My sister promptly got up, went to the bathroom, and induced vomiting. Apparently it can cause her anti-rejection meds to…not anti-reject.
@Jen:
Propaganda works. Period. Full stop. Fox ‘News’ has the biggest cable news audience by far, and it takes GOP/Trump talking points and recites them ad nauseum until they become an article of faith. Because the legacy media ignores what Fox is doing, to wit, “catapulting the propaganda,” the folks who watch Fox swallow the bullsh*t whole and repeat it to their friends and relatives who likely don’t have a counter response other than, “That’s ridiculous.” E.g., the Springfield “They’re eating cats and dogs” nonsense that JD Vance admitted was a fabricated rabbit hole for the media to dive into. Rather than pointing out that Vance and Trump were shameless and divisive bigots, reporters went to Springfield and inquired about the local pet population while Trump and Vance and Fox moved on to the next piece of propaganda. Lather-rinse-repeat. Trump’s clown car cabinet members do not get pushback from the Fox propagandists, and the audience (not surprisingly) assumes what they are hearing must be true.
@Jen: Nothing is going to change until politicians, authorities, journalists, etc. who go on these shows just call BS to these people’s faces. No politeness of questions like “how would you respond to…?” “What about people who say..?”. Just go on Fox News and call them propaganda and liars to their face. Don’t let Karoline Leavitt or Tricia McLaughlin get away with their BS. When a factual type statement is made, demand the written proof. So you risk losing access. Better than losing your face and respect.
Yay, another working weekend looms.
Upper management just doesn’t get how much work we do. Nor how fatigue affects the quality of what we do.
But at least this time it’s for an actual proposal, not another effing market price study. I hate those things passionately.
And I still need to get the flu and covid shots… I think I’ll go for extremely simple cooking this week, something like burger patties and fries, not even a topping
@becca:
Most who take Matt Yglesias’s opinions seriously are other other out-of-touch dudes who’ve never won an election and wouldn’t if if they ran.
Substack is one of the biggest grifts going. Like most pundit class loudmouths, with notable exceptions here and there, Yglesias will swing wherever the “vibes” go. There is no there there with most of these guys. Women substackers tend to be much more thoughtful and intelligent tbh.
@Jen: Housing prices is all the Feds doing. In fact the inflation of anything financed through debt is their bag. Mortgage Rates from 2012-2022 were between 3.5 4.5 percent that entire 10 year period. All the Fed did was cause asset inflation. Now they need to do the same at 6.5 7.5 for the next decade to try and fix their way too long ZIRP policy.
@Michael Reynolds:
Yawn. “Identity politics” = anything reactionary men and their handmaidens don’t like. (See also “woke.”)
All politics is identity politics. Every modern president that’s ever been elected was elected on identity politics. It’s just the men who decry “identity politics” (like it’s 2012) think their identity is the default so they fail to recognize their politics as identity politics.
After a decade of Trump, it’s clear identity politics — including and perhaps especially reactionary white male identity politics — will outlive everybody here. That should be obvious to everyone whose political language isn’t stuck in pre-2012.
Pay more attention to values and ideas promoted by the Democrats actually running and winning elections than to us comments section blowhards and Substack grifters who haven’t won anything but want us to love the sound of their own voice as much as they do. We/they are not the political geniuses we/they think they are and most of us/them don’t have a clue what we’re/they’re talking about when it comes to strategy. Hence why 99.99% couldn’t be elected dog catcher.
@Michael Reynolds: for Dems every win is a perceived referendum and they then go too much too soon, particularly on social and identity politics. They need to get back to identifying to blue collar base. They need to be on economic reform, tax, Medicare, social security etc….social equity is a pursuit to be chipped away at over time, slowly, especially until all the boomers die. Otherwise you get what we got, a major backlash by that same generation, resulting with unserious clowns in control of important things just because we pushed too many things that make ignorant older people feel icky, and in the process also spark new interest in those old ideals (i.e. white majority control importance) to the current generation
@Jen:
“We won with poorly educated, I love the poorly educated.” – Trump
“Smart people don’t like me.” – Trump
@DK: I haven’t paid much attention to Matt in years. Krugman I have followed for decades. He’s the only Substacker I read.
I almost never read Vox, either. Ezra and Matt are peas in a pod, in my mind.
When I saw on Memeorandum the story trending Matt’s piece on a potential blue flip of the Senate, I didn’t read anything but the headline. Just him putting it out there made me think there’s something of a change in ether.
25 dems-0 gop
That’s the score for seat gains in special elections this year.
That’s not nothing.
The dem party, lots at the local grassroots, is focusing on state legislatures and it’s paying off. My biggest criticism of the dem political machine is how they let ALEC run the table for decades. Better late than never, let’s just hope it’s not too late.
I’m not sure if Sleeping Dog is around…this is for you!
Back when we had NH elections, IIRC you wondered why we bothered to vote separately for library trustees. I pointed out then that it was a protective measure, to keep libraries independent of the whims of others. Here’s an example of why it’s so important to keep trustee elections separate. I’ll admit that I’m biased…as an elected trustee. 😀
@Michael Reynolds:
I cannot stress enough how important I think this is. It ties into how the “murder alleged drug runners on the high seas” just doesn’t help slow down the drug trade, by the way. It articulates why we need to do a lot more than “Trump bad”. We need to offer a different story for America. A story they can latch on to and say, “yeah, that’s what I want!”.
If Kathy’s First Law stating that “this time it’s NOT different applies to 99% of all cases,” is true, then that means the emergence of a large middle class, widespread education, affordable healthcare, affordable housing, low levels of illiteracy and malnutrition, and a lot more, which were seen as progress through much of the 20th century, are in fact an aberration because this time it’s NOT different.
I’d like to argue against this notion, but we’ve already seen healthcare become unaffordable even for people who have insurance. And look at housing these days. Then there’s the whole matter of food deserts, pharmacy deserts, etc.
A large middle class has hardly been the norm, but there were periods here and there when one existed, like Roman farmers who owned their land in the early centuries of the republic. More commonly, there’s been a small middle class, largely made up of people who serve the upper classes (think scribes, physicians, artisans, etc). I think we’re moving back in that direction.
We wither make it so this time IS different, or we’ll see our living standards deteriorate further. Things might last for those in their fifties and up, but what about your children?
@DK:
Baloney. I’m sorry, but Identity Politics was a term deliberately coined by progressives. That’s who I heard it from. So was woke, by the way, I didn’t invent it. Now, having crashed and burned progressives want to pretend it all never happened.
What? Identity politics? Us? Woke? Us? Don’t rewrite the history I lived through. What else didn’t happen? Defund?
All politics is absolutely not identity politics, that’s utter b.s. Where’s my identity politics? You want to reduce everything to male/white/older I mean, seriously? Lazy-ass labeling? Reductio ad absurdum? If I voted my ‘identity’ I’d be a Republican.
You’re very smart, but you are out of touch and do not understand politics. You’re still defending Joe Biden, the zombie candidate, FFS, and pretending he’d have won because: white. You railed about this calling everyone traitors and insisted he was fine, fine, like an unfunny parody of the Monty Python parrot sketch. You were just flat wrong but you lack the honesty to admit it. And frankly, people like you, who are incapable of facing reality, are the problem.
You know, I think we need to figure out how to stop fighting each other, blaming each other, when it’s the other team that is doing the really bad things.
And Michael, I feel like your complaint about Chuck Schumer amounts to complaining that an orange is not an apple. We need apples, we want apples, Chuck Schumer is not an apple, he’s an orange. He has always been an orange. He will always be an orange. He is where he is because he’s a really good orange.
Yes, we need to find apples. We need to promote them. This is tricky, since a really good apple might get him/herself elected president, and political jealousy is a thing. A universal thing.
A couple days ago I linked to a very good NYT editorial about the failings of our military. Today they posted the second installment, Fixing the Pentagons Golden Fortress. (Gift link) It opens with the Army’s 16 year, 350 pages of specs, effort to buy a new pistol. It goes on to explain Congress’s role in procurement dysfunction.
They appealed to Trump to fix procurement, which strikes me as insane.
I highly recommend The Beast In Me on Netflix. Great not run of mill plot line. Claire Danes is intense.
Pluribus is very good. Apple TV. Down Cemetary Road is good, too. Emma Thompson is the coolest.
We watched Caught Stealing, which is dark slapstick with lots of violence. I am ambivalent, but the cast was so eclectic. Some young nice looking kid is the star, but Carol Kane, Regina King, Vincent D’Onofrio, Liev Schreiber, Griffin Dunne and Bad Bunny also too.
@Jay L. Gischer:
Because Chuck has actually run successful campaigns, while Michael runs nothing but his egomaniacal mouth online.
@Michael Reynolds:
You in the ageist Fk Joe Biden crowd insisted, over the objection of black voters, that we had to replace Biden or else we would lose. We replaced Biden lost, just as black voters feared.
Only an Amerikkan white male would look at this scenario and confidently proclaim “I was right and black people were wrong” with zero equivocation. And it’s because of y’alls signature a) bloated egos and b) penchant for failing up, despite demonstrated mediocrity.
An honest person would say we don’t know whether any Democrat could’ve won in 2024 lost given the fundamentals. (and admit all politics identity politics, no matter the origin of the terminology). But you lack both honesty and humility so you are incapable of any stance more nuanced than overbaked, overly certain, ham-fisted declarations based on you know so much better than people who’ve actually won elections. The hubris is astounding.
There’s no evidence anywhere you understand how to win better than me, or Schumer, or Omar, or most. So if you had a higher EQ, you would offer your opinions with a healthy dose of doubt. But you don’t, so you don’t.
The idea I should genuflect before someone with these cognitive deficits, or subordinate my judgment to his, is funny. Modesty is a virtue. And if more American men taught their sons this, fewer would vote like lunatics. I’m part of demographics that vote 85%+ for sanity and progress, in every election up, and down the ballot, while you and yours are running around screaming “Fuck Joe Biden.” You’re not. Of course you — who refuses to listen to and learn from us — can’t identify “the problem.”
@Jc:
Can you expand on this a bit? I don’t really agree, I think there are a lot of aspects of housing prices that are purely local, and have nothing whatsoever to do with the Feds. For example, here in New Hampshire, there are conservation groups that are both purchasing available land, and having property donated to them for permanent wilderness. I love the idea of keeping areas wild and wooded, and preserving rural character. But this does come at a cost, because it further restricts the areas on which you can build homes. New Hampshire communities have gotten so good at this that Republican legislators have tried to restrict the ability of local communities to pass these “no build” ordinances and protected areas, because it is undeniably having an impact on new construction. Then there are other forces, like weather, that impact when you can build, the shorter the building season, the fewer homes can be built. And there’s labor–because it is getting so expensive to live here (because of home prices!), labor is harder to come by.
Maybe I am misunderstanding your point, but I don’t think that housing prices are solely driven by the Fed.
On her substack yesterday, Heather Cox Richardson shared the following anecdote:
I don’t think I believe it. LLMs are spotty when it comes to recognizing names, even famous ones, and just as often get rather obscure references*. Since they can search the web, they should “know” the clown car currently pretending to run the US government.
I’d like to see the article Morris was fact checking, or what prompt he used. I’ve tested claims like this one when armed with such things, and I often do get similar results.
The one thing that aroused my suspicion, though, is simple: who uses a chatbot to fact check anything?
*One time I asked it where could I buy palladium online, and directed me to some online game that uses a currency called something like Pallium. Another time I made an offhand reference to The Omnilingual, and it correctly identified it as an H. Beam Piper story set on Mars.
Looks like Fatso has captured a Venezuelan oil tanker. No word on the legal basis for the action.
This is the actual quote;
So, now they’re seizing oil tankers.
I don’t even ask why, because I’m sure the reason will be wrong, stupid, insane, ridiculous, or even worse. What’s concerning is that oil shipped out of Venezuela is bound to some other country. This is not just an escalation, but also widening the conflict to involve third parties that have nothing to do with El Taco’s pointless obsession with “drug boats.”
The involvement may include several countries: wherever the tanker was headed, wherever the tanker is flagged, wherever the actual owners reside, and such ships tend to have multinational crews as well.
In FIFA Wold Cup news, “Iran and Egypt have complained after FIFA scheduled a World Cup match between the two nations in Seattle to coincide with the city’s LGBTQ+ Pride festival. ”
“Iran would bring up the issue at a FIFA Council meeting in Qatar next week.”
OMG, get out the smelling salts. I’ll note that this game was only assigned to Seattle last Saturday. Seattle Pride occurs every year in late June.
@Kathy: it’s the oil. It’s always been the oil. Looks like Trump got sweet talked into regime change in Venezuela. The new aluminum tubes and wmd is narco-terrorists and bloodthirsty immigrants.
There are a lot of holes in this plan.
And Venezuela oil goes to China, so, no worries, amirite?
@Daryl:
@Jen:
This is spot on. (Un)affordable housing cannot be reduced to a single causal factor and certainly not to immigration.
So too, people’s impressions and beliefs are determined by many things. Many many things.
Lack of intelligence sometimes plays a role. And even then, it’s rarely a large, much less the largest, causal factor.
@Daryl: I’ve seen a couple of articles referring to “embargoed” oil. A quick Google shows numerous sanctions against Venezuela and several individuals, but no oil embargo. WTF? Who was the customer? How is the ship owned and flagged? Was it in international or territorial waters? The latest at NYT is just, “President Trump said the United States had seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela, without providing any additional details.”
Is this technically an act of war, theft, or piracy? (I am enjoying a mental picture of USS Ford flying a Jolly Roger.)
As Jon Stewart pointed out, Maduro does resemble Saddam.
@Michael Reynolds:
I tend to agree; we are are moving into another period of technological step-change.
Humanity arguable screwed up the first two big ones (neolithic agricultural, and early industrial) and allowed elite capture of much of the benefits and consequent social power.
First time by monarchy/aristocracy/priesthood.
Second time by the capitalists driven by market logic.
Fortunately, the later 19th century saw the end of slavery and the tendency to broadly based representative govenment.
So the benefits of the “second industrial revolution” (electricity, oil, etc) became more widely shared, particularly after the 1930’s/WW2 with the conscious efforts of Roosevelt/Truman Democrats in the US and Social Democrats/Christian Democrats in Europe to do so.
We are now in the middle of a third industrial revolution which commenced c. 1980s
This is seeing the inevitable end of the hydrocarbons power phase, and the continuing impact of computing, and its applications to, among other things, designed materials, chemicals and biochemistry, information retrieval, industrial robotics, etc
The two main tasks in prospect to ensure a humane future are that this time round we do not revert to revolutions #1 and 2 failure modes, and allow elite capture of ownership of the benefits and means of production.
Whether in the form of muti-billionaire individuals, or of remorselessly “return on capital” focused corporate “entities as legal-persons”.
One aspect of which being the desire to privatise and commoditise all information and knowledge.
Another being the desire to maximise returns of otherwise moribund property rights by continuing fossil fuel maximisation.
(Actually probably far better, used as chemicals feedstocks in any case)
I suspect at least part of the current tech-bro enthusiasm for authoritarian-populist politics is to ensure they get a lock on emergent property rights before the chance passes.
Their folly is in not realising that would leave them ultimately with a choice between a authoritarian state a protector, which historically often becomes a predator.
Or an emergence of radicalism redistributism among a mass population excluded from prosperity and justice.
The best hope is that there are, as has generally been the case since about 1860’s, sufficient of the all groups, including the wealthy, sensible enough to perceive enlightened self-interest when it becomes obvious.
@becca:
Some years ago, while visiting a supplier, I saw a Venezuelan official negotiating prices for grains or beans. he wore a cheap suit, plus enough gold rings, chains, and bracelets to stock a small jewelry store.
He had with him sample boxes they’d want for shipment. Each featured a drawing of the late, unlamented Hugo Chavez on one side, and Simon Bolivar on the other. It seemed disrespectful to Bolivar to use him in such propaganda. Picture El Taco on the same shipping box as Lincoln or FDR
A few years earlier, we received an invitation to supply food or food services to Venezuela’s state oil company. payment would be in USD, and the proposals were to be presented in Houston, Texas. I was actually curious to learn why. Alas, the owners declined to take part.
@Jen: maybe we could get Americans off the McMansion thing. Tiny homes are cute and all, but maybe we could split the difference. Another prong in the affordability problem.
Petey the War Guy just 4 days ago;
But capturing an oil tanker proves Fatso is only interested in Regime Change and bombing fishing boats is just a part of that effort.
How does regime change in Venezuela help Americans? How does this, as Petey said, “…put our nation’s practical, concrete interests first.”
@Daryl: Trump has asked on several occasions why we didn’t just take Iraq’s oil after we invaded. He apparently thinks it was stupid not to.
Well, now he has the chance to take the oil from the country with the most.
@gVOR10:
Based on what we know at the moment…all three.
@Jen:
@becca:
What’s the aversion to putting up apartment buildings in the suburbs? They’d increase housing stock without requiring new real estate.
@Daryl:
The question is how it benefits El Taco, and the many oil companies that threw tons of money at him.
Hint: Venezuela has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. American refineries are better suited to refine the sour, heavy crude prevalent in Venezuela.
@Daryl: @Kathy: @gVOR10: @Mikey:
Did they find any drugs?
@Kathy: The fundamental issue with increasing density is traffic. Also other services get very strained. Quality of life tends to degrade. People moved to the suburbs to experience lower density, so they resist the change.