Friday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Friday, January 15, 2021
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67 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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Headline of the day? The last days of Pompeo: secretary of state lashes out as reign comes to an end
and the sun still rises in the east, water is still wet.
US set for flurry of ‘Christian nationalist’ bills advanced by religious right
Rust never sleeps.
Why is it that so many Yankee-loathing southerners are so enraptured by a loudmouthed, ultra-churlish New Yorker?
‘Kids can handle hard truths’: teachers and their students reckon with capitol attack
SEDITION! – A Randy Rainbow Parody.
@CSK:
Because he prefers the Mets.
@OzarkHillbilly: I love Randy Rainbow. But there’s one thing that annoys me about his videos, and that’s that he never identifies what song it is he’s parodying. I know this particular song of course (Fiddler is one of my favorite musicals), but I can’t always figure it out, especially when he goes beyond classic musicals and into modern pop, where for the most part I’m totally lost (I barely know any music from the past decade). A while back he did a parody of “The Jitterbug,” the song famously cut from Wizard of Oz. I recognized it, but I wonder how many other people did–the only reason I’m familiar with it at all is that I was able to find it on Youtube some years back. And “Sedition” is hardly the first time he’s parodied the same song multiple times (in this case “Tradition” from Fiddler). As I was going through his videos, I ran across two entirely separate parodies of “Cell Block Tango” from Chicago. I just wish he would name the original song in the video description.
One conservative voice, Jaime Herrera Beutler, laying out the case against Trump, as to his role and responsibility for launching the insurrection.
https://threader.app/thread/1349959275922206721
Well done.
A$$holes just love other a$$holes…it doesn’t matter where they come from…
An example. Not Antifa at the insurrection, but the (remarkably bloodthirsty) kind singing teacher down the street.
https://www.tampabay.com/life-culture/2021/01/14/tampa-bay-singer-finds-her-voice-screaming-during-capitol-riot/
She seems nice.
@Kylopod:
Oh, very funny.
@An Interested Party:
Well, that’s true as far as it goes, but Trump is the quiddity of everything southerners claim to hate about northerners. He’s loud, vulgar, rude, money-grubbing, and low rent.
My local semi-pro newspaper reports that in our part of FL with a few new registrations, but mostly registration changes, the number of registered Rs has declined, D registrations are up slightly, but most are going no affiliation or Independent.
Is this going to be like the end of the W era? A lot of new “libertarians” who didn’t want to be Ds, but really didn’t want to be associated with Rs anymore? (This always reminded me of Bruce Catton’s account of Union soldiers in the siege line at Petersburg sounding like fishermen while speculating about Confederate deserters, “Looks like there might be a good run of Johnnies tonight.”)
GOP deserters seem awfully reluctant to be called Democrats. I think most of this flows from decades of demonization by GOPs and FOX, but I wonder what Ds can realistically do to look more appealing to marginal Rs.
@CSK:
Grasshopper, people are in comprehensible.
@CSK: movies and tv shows
@gVOR08: Time. That’s about it. The first step is realizing you’ve been riding the crazy train. It takes a while to process that. Only then can they start to evaluate what it means for their place in the wider world.
@CSK:
Redditor DankNastyAssMaster had an analysis far more astute than his username would suggest:
And in a subsequent clarification:
Thanks, CSK, for my word of the day. I understood it immediately (though looked it up to confirm). I have never seen that word before and I have seen a lot of words.
“Claim” being the operative word there…perhaps it is for other reasons that southerners hate northerners…
Just saw a comment at NYT that perfectly expresses Trump and Republican faux populism.
@Mikey:
Thanks. That makes a great deal of sense.
@Joe:
You’re welcome. I first ran across it in graduate school, in some early 17th century text, I think. Maybe earlier.
@An Interested Party:
Well, they’ve never gotten over losing the Civil War, that’s for damn sure.
@Mikey: That is as nice a concise analysis as I’ve ever seen.
No wonder so many of them are Trump supporters…
@Mikey: While I agree with much of that analysis, I would describe this kind of voter as the Archie Bunker voter. It’s funny–pundits used to use that term all the time, but as the original viewers of that show have grown older and the memories of it have faded, it’s increasingly seen as an arcane point of reference, even though it fits the Trump era better than any other. Archie was the prototypical Trump supporter. He wasn’t from the South, and he wasn’t rural. He was a blue-collar guy from Queens who never graduated high school. He’d almost certainly have loved Trump if he’d lived to see him. Carroll O’Connor in an interview once described the character this way:
“I think probably the most stupid of all conservatives and right-wingers are the poor. No conservative government ever did anything for them, in England or in the United States. The Republicans — it’s not the poor man’s party! So Archie…was a dumbbell. He didn’t know why he was conservative…. He thought that they would keep the country racially pure.”
Andrew Yang is running for Mayor of NYC. I hope he wins.
He’s still enough of a political newbie to try to implement some form of UBI, but he’s also smart enough to know he can’t just start handing out all residents money indiscriminately. In fact, he has a plan to start small(ish).
A high profile UBI program, be it experimental, or a demo, or a first level from which to build up gradually, will answer many questions about the matter, which smaller and more limited trials have not. It will also focus attention.
Speculation is fun, and trying to predict outcomes can uncover problems ahead of time, but at some point we have to stop talking and start testing to see whether, and how, it works.
Analysis over at WashPo of the demographics of Trump support. Diding the GOP into those who characterize themselves as “Traditional Republicans” v. those who call themselves “Trump supporters, ” those less educated are “Trump supporters” v. the more educated predominately “traditional Republicans.” Also, the elderly are predominately “Trump supporters” while the younger are “traditional Republicans.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/14/demographic-divergence-that-helps-explain-perceptions-capitol-rioters/
@CSK: @An Interested Party: After my father-in-law passed away my wife and I came across some of her old family related documents. One of these is a booklet prepared for a family reunion in 1968. Included along with the lineage are the following two anecdotes of family history:
Grandpa B (Margaret’s father) had slaves so loyal to him that when they were freed they tried to stay with him. Many never did leave.
After the negroes were freed, Mrs. S was fearful of a negro uprising. When left alone with the children one night she heard a terrible noise outside the home that she knew was that very thing. Later they found out that it was a chivaree for a young married couple.
I’ve come across many other similar stories in fiction and non-fiction works I have read, as well as seen portrayed in movie/TV productions. My wife’s Aunt once told us a similar story dating from the late 1940s. Her family was moving from the Fort Worth area to Tennessee where her father was taking a job as a welder. Their car broke down one evening and her father walked to find help. Her mother was alone in the car with the three children (ranging in age from eight to a newborn) in the dark. A group of African Americans (a crowd that the then five year old Aunt thought must have numbered at least 100) came walking along the along the road. She remembers her mother crying in abject fear, whispering that she loved them, sure that they would be murdered, mutilated and robbed. The group walked past the car and kept on walking, nothing happened, but that Aunt to this day is deathly afraid of anyone who doesn’t “look like her”.
This cultural conditioning is rooted deep, and significantly predates Lost Cause lore.
@Kathy: there is a documentary about the mayor of Stockton, CA who has been doing a number of innovations, including experimenting with UBI.
Yang’s campaign is not off to a good start, btw. He explained that he doesn’t live in NYC because living in a two-bedroom apartment with two kids would make remote learning and working impossible. This ignores that there are probably hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers having to do just that.
The reincarnation of Molly Ivins:
https://margaretandhelen.com/2021/01/13/if-i-had-5-minutes-with-donald-this-is-what-i-would-say-resign/
Trust me. Read it. It will make you laugh so hard, tears will come to your eyes.
@Monala:
I’ve heard about that one, and a few other UBI experiments here and there (which limit outlays so much they contradict the U in UBI).
A UBI experiment in NYC would produce headlines every day, and draw economists, psychologists, and other scholars to research all aspects of it.
The same would happen in any other major city, like LA, Houston, Atlanta, Cleveland, Philadelphia, etc.
@Joe: Quiddity: Thanks for the tip. I looked it up too and was sort of surprised at the definition.
I’d thought it had to do with resembling the remains of chewing tobacco while still in the cheek as opposed to the sidewalk.
@gVOR08:
Leave it to the Turks to come up with such a Proverb. This made me smile because my Mom grew up in Turkey (but she is Sicilian) and my Aunt still lives in Turkey. Love it.
@JohnMcC:
Perhaps I shall change my screen name to “Quiddity.”
When I saw “quiddity,” CSK, it brought to mind “quotidian” which, of course, means every day in the sort of monotonous, repetitive sense. (It is/was also the name of a good cafe just south of Central Park in New York.) Though I think quiddity’s actual etymology is rather different, it struck me as meaning something basic and essential, which is approximately what it means.
@dmichael: I love it!
@Joe:
“Quiddity” is pretty much a synonym for “essence.” When I first stumbled on it, I was so charmed by it that my fellow students and I started using it every chance we got. I don’t think I’ve used it since those days. I wonder what Trump would make of it.
Trump plans to fly out of D.C. to Mar-a-Lago early in the morning of January 20 so he can take one last ride using the call sign “Air Force One.”
@dmichael: Good. But honestly not Molly Ivins funny. Gawd I miss her.
@Mikey:
Interesting analysis. Except I’d advise the writer – delete: “socialism” replace:”welfarism”.
@Joe:
Ask, and ye shall receive:
quiddity (n.)
“a trifling nicety in argument, a quibble,” 1530s, from Medieval Latin quidditas “the essence of things,” in Scholastic philosophy, “that which distinguishes a thing from other things,” literally “whatness,” from Latin quid “what,” neuter of indefinite pronoun quis “somebody, someone or other” (from PIE root *kwo-, stem of relative and interrogative pronouns). Sense developed from scholastic disputes over the nature of things. Original classical meaning “real essence or nature of a thing” is attested in English from late 14c.
@JohnSF:
From the point of view of the Trump supporters, they are synonymous.
@Mikey:
True. But the confusion of terms grates on my pedantry.
Interesting parallel: the Afrikaaner Nasionale Party was fine with welfarism, and some sections of with with socialism, as long as the beneficiaries were the Boers (well, and the English South Africans, at a pinch).
As a research sort of question, I am interested in “Under what circumstances might 38 of the 50 states agree to a partition, and amend the Constitution accordingly?” Is it a crime? Would it be a crime if I decided there were circumstances under which it could happen and work towards them?
@dmichael:
Hee hee. Awesome.
I know a lot of OTB regulars also check out Kevin Drum over at Mother Jones and he just put up a post that he is leaving MJ at the end of this month:( He will contribute some articles on occasion to MJ but otherwise will be hanging out his own shingle on the web which will let him put up blog posts whenever the medication he is taking has not knocked him for a loop.
It will be weird for me not to hit MJ multiple times a day to see if Kevin had put up a post.
@Michael Cain:.. Under what circumstances might 38 of the 50 states agree to a partition, and amend the Constitution accordingly?
Please name the 38 States that have Legislatures that you think will vote to violate this clause of The United States Constitution.
I’ve been thinking about realignment lately.
It seems to me the criteria for establishing states and provinces, not just in the US, is peculiar to its time, and in many occasions highly arbitrary as well.
Consider Mexico City. At the time of Independence in 1810, it was the capital of the Vice-royalty of New Spain, and part of a province called Mexico. At that moment it became the capital of the Empire of Mexico (I kid you not*), and it was excised politically from the State of Mexico, making it a kind of modern city-state (within a state). Much like Washington DC was carved out from a larger state. Indeed, for most of its existence, Mexico City wasn’t even called Mexico City (that happened just a few years ago). it was called, formally, Mexico Distrito Federal (Federal District), and until 1993 it was governed through the presidency.
Things like that are rife all over. That’s how you get oddly shaped states int he US Northeast, vs square-shaped ones out West. Sometimes they follow natural contours, like rivers and mountain ranges, sometimes not. You also get huge tracts of land with fewer than a million people, and small patches of land with millions of inhabitants.
All this distorts the economy and the politics of a nation. So, i wonder, whether it would be desirable, or even possible, to redraw states every few decades to conform to practical realities.
Probably not. But it passes the time to think about it.
*Mexico didn’t last long as an empire. but it became one again in the 1860s when Napoleon III’s troops took over and installed Maximilian of Habsburg as emperor. He got to reign over a civil war, made longer than it needed to be because a certain Mr. Lincoln was distracted at the time with troubles of his own.
@Kathy: I have a half-formed novel concept (alternative history) in my mind in which the Confederacy wins the Civil War, Maximilian remains Emperor, and a whole series of actual historical developments converge, culminating in a Confederate invasion of Cuba, which ends disastrously. I’ve never written alternative history, but I might give this one a shot if I have enough years remaining.
@Mikey:
Thanks for that analysis. Instead of defaulting to the the simplistic “racism” when trying to understand why poor white people vote Republican, I’ll now use the analysis you shared.
—-
@Kylopod:
Depending on your age and where you grew up either term could apply to the analysis.
@Kathy:
And how many people recall that Empire of Brazil only ended in 1889?
And possibly because Napoleon III couldn’t be bothered?
Alternative history:
“Just before the election of 1864, President Breckenridge declared war on France. Under General Cooper, Generals Lee and McClellan led the expeditionary forces which were defeated at the battles…”
Amusing thread, loaded (pun intended) with puns about the NRA’s declaring bankruptcy.
@JohnSF:
I mentioned this in the Covid section, but I’m just so gob-smacked about the complete fuster-cluckedness of the whole situation. But as long as you and yours aren’t actually looking forward to getting your vaccine…
@SC_Birdflyte:
Sounds good.
there’s a lot of alternate history involving a counterfactual USCW, though. Harry Turtledove did three trilogies on the matter, plus one extra novel, about that. Turtledove is good, but a bit unimaginative and repetitive. He replays WWI in North America (Germany, USA, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman empire on one side, UK, France, Italy, Japan, and the CSA on the other). On the third trilogy it’s WWII, with black people in the Confederacy being murdered by the millions.
His much-maligned “alien space bats*” series where WWII is rudely interrupted by lizards trying to conquer the Earth, was much better. Probably his best idea was a counterfactual where instead of Mars, there’s a bigger world, called Minerva, with oceans, atmosphere, and sentient life.
I haven’t delved much into Civil War counterfactual literature, though. I prefer much older history.
Go for it, just be mindful of the crowded field. A new spin on it would be a big help to the genre’s devotees.
*”Alien space bats” is a derogatory term in alternate history circles, where the divergence or point of departure involves an outside agent, like invading aliens, or wizards, or gods, instead of mere different historical developments.
@JohnSF:
And held on to slavery nearly as long.
You know, France meddled twice in Mexico’s affairs, and both were turning points in Mexico’s history. Both were also caused by the Bonapartes. The first time was when Napoleon took Spain, which led to Mexican independence. The second was when the lesser Bonaparte enthroned his pet Austrian noble, which led to the resumption of the Juarez dictatorship, which in turn gave rise to the Díaz dictatorship.
I can’t wait to see what they do eventually for a third act 🙂
@Jen: Yes, for those who want to pull out the Smallest Violin, the NRA has filed for bankruptcy….
@Mister Bluster: No, no. 38 states don’t have to violate it, they can simply amend it out. (34 states can call a convention to propose amendments, 38 to ratify.) The only thing the Constitution says explicitly can’t be amended is equal suffrage in the Senate. Which, if I remember correctly, was added at the last minute to appease one delegate. There have been lots of debates down the years about how far that can/can’t be stretched. Ditto for arguments about whether a convention could propose an amendment like, “Strike all the existing text and substitute the following…”
Whether they can do it is a different question. Are there conditions under which 38 would want to do it?
@Mikey: Revisiting your link from yesterday to the six worst Trump moments, the one that I think should have been on the list (and that people have forgotten too quickly) is this one:
I do not understand why Democrats have not hammered this one even harder than Republicans beat on “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” Especially since it was followed by immediately giving up. Permanently.
Retired Airforce Col. Larry Brock Jr. who stormed the Senate floor with zip cuffs, and dressed in full tactical gear, was just released.
Haven’t seen anything about a bail amount.
Wonder if he even had to post one?
https://www.newsweek.com/larry-rendall-brock-jr-capitol-rioter-zip-ties-freed-1561939?amp=1&utm_term=Autofeed&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter&__twitter_impression=true
@ImProPer: @ImProPer:
He’s been charged. Probably has no record and not much cash so the judge may have let await his impending trial with no bond, just home confinement (spiffy new ankle jewelry), restricted his internet activities and a warning he’s on a very, very short leash.
@ImProPer:
Well, is it worth bothering?
Maybe a little, to seem credible.
Let him walk about. Let him chat.
Just keep *staring*
Seriously, he’s come to the attention of the security system now, and I doubt he will ever be free of it.
I got a laptop at the office today.
I don’t quite get why.
It wasn’t my idea, one of the managers ordered it. I think he wants me to try it out and see if it’s worth keeping it as a replacement for the desktop PC I have now. Said desktop machine is 95% ok, it just goes sloooooow when dealing with the printers; but it’s been that way only since they replaced the HP office printers with Xerox* ones.
The one good thing is it will run the accounting (expenses) programs I call BLUESCREEN and BLUESCREEN 2, so I can manage petty cash form home on busy workweeks (of which there are 52 per year, give or take), instead of coming to the office on weekends.
But I like a big monitor, an adult-sized keyboard, and a mouse. If there is a Hell (there’s not), it will have a special spot reserved for the people who invented touch pads. Maybe one of my two dead wireless mice will deign to revive, but at least wired mice are cheap. If I keep it, I’ll keep the desktop monitor and keyboard.
*If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Xerox first heard of copiers and printers last week, and hurried some crappy products to market. I do know the brand of the earliest copiers, but I stand by the rest of my corporate slur.
@Michael Cain:..No, no. 38 states don’t have to violate it, they can simply amend it out.
Well, OK. That just got a lot easier.
What do you mean by partition? Two new countries divided by the Mississippi River (for instance). With Democrats on one side and Republicans on the other? Or is there to be four new countries to accommodate the Libertarians and the Greens? Maybe political preference will not be the determining factor but there will be new countries based on race or religion.
Once this partition has taken place how will inhabitants of the current 50 States be relocated? Voluntarily or by force?
The only thing the Constitution says explicitly can’t be amended is equal suffrage in the Senate.
Who cares about that. Any new Independent Sovereign State will draw up it’s own Charter won’t they? New Montanaho can install Trump as Perpetual Emperor if they want to. He will be looking for a job soon.
Whether they can do it is a different question. Are there conditions under which 38 would want to do it?
Ask a statistical sample of the inhabitants of 38 States. Start with me. I’ll go for the New Country that has reasonable restrictions on citizens owning firearms. “A well trained Militia…”
Looking for Mister Editbar.
DAMN! That worked!
@Kathy:..I do know the brand of the earliest copiers,..
That would be Haloid Xerox. Like Eastman Kodak.
I was born in Rochester NY in ’48 and spent my grade school years on the shores of Lake Ontario. My dad worked for Kodak and a neighbor worked for Xerox.
@dazedandconfused:
@JohnSF:
Confusing times for me. Criminal justice reform is imo, the biggest issue I hope we tackle as a society. I know that being extra harsh on Mr. Brock, or any of the rioters won’t help at all,
the sufferers of said injustice. In fact it would actually be a set back. He deserves his day in court, just like anyone else, but if a bail in his case isn’t warranted, then there are very few cases where it is.