Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, March 27, 2023
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68 comments
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor of Political Science and a 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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This is what it means to be a trumper. The Criminal in Chief bragged at his fascist rally that his bizarre song recorded with Jan 6th criminals was #1, beating out Taylor Swift and Miley Cyrus. Since Trump usually has some starting seed for his ramblings I was curious where this originated. It turns out Billboard has a category for songs only released digitally (or at least I think that’s what it is).
Continuing the Waco thought…
It just sems like it isn’t being said explicitly enough…Trump essentially held an pro-domestic terrorism rally over the weekend…going to Waco on the 30th anniversary of the shit-show that would also inspired McVeigh in OK City…to celebrate the January 6th insurrection. To celebrate the criminals who stormed the Capitol on Jan 6 in support of Trump’s attempt to illegally stay in power.
I know it’s just far easier to ignore the noise. We cannot. The crowd in Waco, swimming in the orange kool-aid, made that clear.
If only Republicans had the character, the principles, and the cojones to stand for what is right.
The Washington Post’s long article about a long gun, the AR-15, and its rise to becoming an icon, is worth reading:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2023/ar-15-america-gun-culture-politics/
@Kingdaddy: I happened to just read an excellent piece in Atlantic, possibly paywalled, on Florida and DeSantis. The author is a Brit, so on visiting Florida she decided to immerse herself in Florida culture. She went to a gun range.
If you wanted to launch a toothpick to Alpha Centauri and have it reach its destination in 10 years using chemical rockets (that is, the rockets we are able to produce right now), there isn’t enough oxygen and hydrogen in the solar system to provide such an acceleration (taking into account the rocket equation).
The moral of the story is: chemical rockets are very limited, and who the hell wants to spend a fortune to send a toothpick anywhere?
On other things, I’ve been re-watching The Big Bang Theory.
I swear on the first go-round I didn’t notice a drop in quality for the latter seasons, say from the fifth one onwards, as I still found the show to be funny. But seeing it all at once now, it kind of gros less funny overall as things progress.
The characters change a lot, too. Leonard becomes less pedantic, Raj more confident, Howard less creepy, Penny more cynical (and develops a “drinking problem”*), Bernadette much meaner, and Amy more normal.
* I’m a little tired of using substance abuse as a running joke.
@Kingdaddy: That’s a good piece. A couple things stood out to me.
One, all the times gun industry reps and companies didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Two, when referring to the mass shootings in Newtown and Parkland, the authors did not use the killers’ names.
It was interesting to see how the AR type of gun has reached such prominence, although I wasn’t surprised by any of it. This is America, after all. Overall, though, I came away feeling much less hopeful for any substantive change. When the slaughter of 20 first-grade kids didn’t result in change, nothing will, and 11 years (and innumerable mass shootings) later, nothing really has.
Some words and phrases I would like never to hear again:
1. Rally
2. Witch hunt
3. Many people are saying
4. Owning the libs
5. Trump won
6. Nobody is treated more unfairly than me (sic)
Feel free to add your own.
@CSK:
Thoughts and prayers.
Especially, today, after three children died in yet another school shooting. After I posted that link to the article about the AR-15. (No idea whether that was the gun used in this latest atrocity, but I don’t have to belabor the connection.)
@Kingdaddy:
This was a private Christian school for grades K to 6. Little kids.
The shooter is dead.
@Kingdaddy:
“Thoughts and prayers” is one of my least favorite sayings, but I was thinking along more Trump-specific lines.
@Kingdaddy:
Another sacrifice of children by Republicans to their NRA/Gun Lobby overseers.
The pro-life party…and the well-regulated militia party.
But they will go to the mattresses to protect this…
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/18/pregnancy-weeks-abortion-tissue
I struggle to think of a sitcom that ever was ever really good after its fourth or fifth season. Not necessarily better than the seasons before it–that’s too high of a bar–but a show that still remained a really solid, compelling sitcom after half a decade.
Doh. “It’s Always Sunny” probably fits that description. Still, very rare.
@Kingdaddy:
@CSK:
BTW – Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is in the top 20% of GOP Senators taking NRA money with over $1.3M thru the 2020 election cycle.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
Seven people are now dead: three children, three adults, and the shooter.
The shooter appears to be a teenaged female. She was armed with 2 assault rifles and a pistol.
I know this isn’t on the level of yet another school shooting or the gun lobby, but I am just so mortified about that story out of Florida (because of COURSE, it’s Florida) that saw a principal resign over Michelangelo’s David.
It’s embarrassing.
@Jen:
She was forced to resign.
What cracks me up is that these religious zealots don’t even get that this sculpture IS BASED ON THE BIBLE!!!
SMFH…
We have to start seeing the pictures of these massacred children who are likely damaged beyond recognition…as they were at Uvalde.
Only by making the carnage real, and visceral, do we make it indefensible.
@Neil Hudelson:
Jokes tend to get repetitive, some running gags get dropped (My mother had me tested), others may be added, etc. But in essence what I’m seeing is the first few seasons feel new and fresh, even if the setting itself isn’t.
Later seasons no longer do. That’s when we see characters getting married, dying, moving away, having children, etc.
Except Seinfeld. But that was about broad social interactions and trends in its era, largely among amoral characters. So a bunch of rather well-mannered sociopaths. That doesn’t get old.
@CSK:..Some words and phrases I would like never to hear again.
…god, guns and guts…
…and Trump…
@CSK: 19th school shooting of the year, in the 12th week of the year. Fucking christ.
@Neil Hudelson: “I struggle to think of a sitcom that ever was ever really good after its fourth or fifth season. Not necessarily better than the seasons before it–that’s too high of a bar–but a show that still remained a really solid, compelling sitcom after half a decade.”
I’d say Frasier, Cheers, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show managed.
@Kathy:..I’m a little tired of using substance abuse as a running joke.
Good for you. I was married to an alcoholic. There’s nothing funny about it.
@Neil Hudelson:
There’s two things that work against long running sitcoms remaining effective:
1) whatever the unique premise of the sitcom was gets fully mined for humor and the show is left with generic relationship comedy that’s indistinguishable from any other sitcom
2) characters tend to become “flanderized”: any complexities or nuances to the characters are abandoned and one or two characteristics keep becoming increasingly exaggerated until all the characters are just two dimensional stereotypes
@Neil Hudelson:
The Simpsons.
@Kylopod:..The Simpsons.
The first time I saw The Simpsons was on the Tracy Ullman Show in 1987. Today Bart is still 10 years old and I am still 39.
@wr:
I might add Parks and Recreation to your list.
I watched on Netflix and it feels like the show ended while it had still not completely worn out its welcome.
For most sitcoms, and I might also add hour long dramas/procedurals, anything past 6 or 7 seasons and you start to notice diminishing returns.
Offered without further comment…
https://twitter.com/NoLieWithBTC/status/1640416688163176463
But JFC…we are starting to see survivors of a mass shooting going thru another one, again.
THIS is the world the GOP wants us to live in.
@daryl and his brother darryl: And, of course…since we’re talking about them too, The Simpsons got there first.
@Jon: @daryl and his brother darryl:
The 28-year-old woman had been a student at the school.
@Stormy Dragon: That’s an insightful diagnosis. I was trying to think of a mechanism that could describe both what happened to, say, Hot Lips in Mash and, well, every character on Kim’s Convenience. The actors are as good as they ever were, but the characters become two dimensional. I think you hit the nail on the head.
@Mister Bluster:
Ah, so you are the same age as Jack Benny…
The despair around school shootings, yet again:
https://youtu.be/SYjsyFSZlAA
Not just the woman in the clip, but also the people in the ABC News studio.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
We won’t see any will on the right to make any changes, not even those popular among mainstream GOP voters, until they specifically suffer their own gun massacre. Say if someone shoots up the GQP convention, or big NRA event, or a Benito rally.
Even then, they’d be far more likely to restrict freedom of movement, assembly, and speech, than the right to carry a military rifle around.
@MarkedMan:
Sadly I can’t take credit for the concept: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization
@daryl and his brother darryl:
Quoted from Meidas Touch
@MarkedMan:..Jack Benny…
And I was born in Rochester…
I’m curious. At the recent Trump rally in Waco, did they allow people to carry firearms inside the venue?
Here’s the TN Gov. signing “Permit-less Carry” into law.
https://twitter.com/SawyerHackett/status/1640410242520608769
@Slugger:
Is the Pope Muslim?
@Slugger:
Good question. I haven’t seen anything to indicate yes or no.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
Here’s Chris Christie saying that there are enough gun laws…like in TN where permit-less open carry is legal.
https://twitter.com/NikkiMcR/status/1640443411894247453
Lot’s of reporting that the shooter is a biological female, who identifies as He/Him.
This is the kind of detail that tends to shake out over days or weeks, and is often wrong on the day of….
Won’t make a damn bit of difference to anybody but the parents and families of those children who will be traumatized all over again knowing their children are being displayed all over the internets like lambs at the slaughter.
The only thing that will get the attention of the gun nuts is the very real loss of someone they love, and I have doubts even that would work. Maybe if we made the NRA personally responsible for the body recoveries at mass shootings.
@Mister Bluster: Me too, tho her addictions extended beyond just alcohol. Ended up doing 6 yrs in Chillicothe. Pissed off the wrong prosecutor.
@daryl and his brother darryl: We in Misery have had that for several years now.
@CSK: @Slugger: No. Ex President, Secret Service and all that.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
The shooter was identified as Audrey Hale.
@CSK:
The police chief said Hale identifies as a man. There was a map and a manifest about the attack, and it was targeted.
The three children killed were 9-year-olds.
@CSK:
FFffffffuuuudddggggeeeee
Well, this is going to be terrible.
@Beth:
What can we do?
@daryl and his brother darryl:
As if the WaPo was reading my comment…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/interactive/2023/ar-15-damage-to-human-body/
Meanwhile, since our limited monkey brains are daily thrown into the news blender, and someone pushes the Frappe button, here’s something that needs way, way, way more attention.
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/03/trump-sings-a-song-of-sedition/673535/
I’d venture to say that it’s a lot less important for news outlets to feature stories about the last season of Succession, or the political leanings of people who go on cruises, or whether the Marvel Cinematic Universe has lost steam, as long as we have this existential threat with its teeth at our throats.
@Kingdaddy:
Good piece.
@CSK: The shooter used to attend the school, it’s a Christian school, and it had a pedophile problem. So there are a lot of potential motives. And Tennessee has been passing some particularly awful anti-trans legislation.
I’m seeing lots of conflicting reporting on the shooter’s gender, possibly because of Fox and Fascists wanting to misgender them. But everyone thinks they are trans, or “identify as trans” as the right wing likes to say.
Luckily the shooter has a manifesto, so perhaps all these questions will be answered.
If this is a chickens coming home to roost situation with Tennessee making it real easy to get guns and real hard to be trans, and Christian school trauma, I think something like this was inevitable but that there were much better targets than children.
Anyway, thoughts and prayers. Maybe we can make these things less inevitable.
@Gustopher:
That’s interesting and appalling about the pedophile scandal at this school. Where did you learn that?
Good news to drive Elon and other great replacement morons wild: Global population might peak at 8.8 billion and then decrease.
Of course there will be environmental issues, major ones. Immigration will continue to be a problem for decades yet.
I wonder, though, what happens when the global population shrinks. Not to the population. that’s more or less evident: it goes down to some equilibrium and will fluctuate around it, absent major catastrophes like an asteroid impact or a supervolcano eruption.
But what happens to the all-important economic growth?
@Stormy Dragon:
Honestly nothing. I’m hoping that’s just bs, but it’s still going to be bad. I’m going to have to go on a restrictive info diet.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
Also how they go on and on about Western culture, and don’t want students to learn about its highest artistic expressions?
@CSK: I heard about it on Twitter, and then I googled the name of the school and pedophile, and found a bunch of articles confirming with a quick skim. (And it may have been the associated church)
We don’t know what years the shooter was at the school, though, so who knows how relevant it is.
@Gustopher:
I couldn’t find anything school-related, so possibly it was the church itself.
@daryl and his brother darryl:
Ok, I guess I lied. This has bothered me all day and I couldn’t put into words why.
I believe the term you are looking for is “cisgender female/woman”. I mean, I’m trans, I’m not a cylon. I’m just a biological as the rest of the women here.
The reason I was able to figure out why this upset me so bad was I realized I was getting my period. I want to cry so bad for no reason, I have a headache and my stupid stupid no fucking uterus guts have decided they need to start cramping.
@inhumans99:.. For most sitcoms, and I might also add hour long dramas/procedurals, anything past 6 or 7 seasons and you start to notice diminishing returns.
I confess to a Law and Order addiction. Primarily the original and Criminal Intent. As far as I’m concerned episodes with Steven Hill, Jerry Orbach and Jesse L. Martin are the best. I’m also a fan of Vincent D’Onofrio. His relationship with Rita Moreno who plays his schizophrenic mother comes close to home as my mom was diagnosed schizophrenic when I was very young.
@Mister Bluster: I love the ones with Vincent D’Onofrio. We watch a lot of SVU, as well. My new favorite is FBI.
@Beth: I’m not sure what term he is looking for — the reporting has been all over the place, and might need a few days to settle down.
Earlier, Fox News website was saying “transgender woman” citing the local police, and their commenters were all saying that meant the shooter was really a man. (I was curious as to how quickly they were ginning up the hate, so I checked in there.)
I *think* they managed to double misgender the shooter and land on the shooter’s gender. (Lots of “no mass shooters are women, that just proves he’s a man”)
As a touch of a sociopath, I find this very funny.
As a somewhat decent human being I hope your period thing works out quickly, it sounds unpleasant. I would have thought your hormone levels would be consistent and this wouldn’t be an issue. I’m confused.
@inhumans99: “For most sitcoms, and I might also add hour long dramas/procedurals, anything past 6 or 7 seasons and you start to notice diminishing returns.”
Absolutely. Because all series are based on a set of central conflicts that serve to reiterate a theme. And at some point those conflicts have to be resolved one way or the other. That means a series has its expiration date built-in, just like the replicants in Bladerunner. Sometimes a really popular series will keep going even after it’s exhausted its franchise, but then it’s pretty much coasting on the audience’s fondness for the characters, and those are the episodes that look so weak in retrospect.
@Mister Bluster: ” I’m also a fan of Vincent D’Onofrio. ”
He was great. I also really liked Jeff Goldblum in the lead… but unfortunately his arrival coincided with a switch in showrunners, and the quality of the writing plummeted right then.