Monday Morning QB Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, February 8, 2021
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130 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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So… is Tom Brady really head and shoulders above the likes of Montana, Manning, Favre and Marino or is he just an excellent quarterback who has been lucky when it comes to the management, coaches, and players around him? Football is very much a team sport and even with all of his Super Bowl rings I have a hard time attributing his success to mental and physical skills that surpass the other greats in the field. He can’t be *that* much better, can he?
This was the kind of game that would have been better had both teams shown up 😉
@Paine: I’d say his principal advantage over them is modern medicine and supplements.* The greats all were amazing and played with amazing talent around them. he is indeed great but his actual skills aren’t what sets him apart from the other legends. His longevity does.
_________________
*His father, just yesterday, indicates he takes 45 pills a day.
@Paine: Tampa Bay record:
NE Patriots record:
I think it’s safe to say he’s a difference maker. I think it’s safe to say he knows how to work within a system to make it better than it would otherwise be. I think it’s safe to say he knows how to get the most out of his teammates. Just looking at that NE wiki page is rather stunning. I don’t think there has ever been a sustained run at the top of the league like it. Give Belichik his due but do not discount Brady’s contributions every year, whether he won the league MVP (3 times) or the SB MVP (4 times)(now 5) or not.
Brady’s competitive fires burn very brightly indeed and I think that is what has made him so good for so long. Most talented? No. Strongest arm? No. Fleetest runner? No. Slipperiest scrambler? No. Greatest of all time? Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I’m pretty sure the beholders of all those AFC/NFC Championship and Super Bowl rings think them plenty beautiful.
Love him, hate him, the numbers speak for themselves.
Although, watching the game, the difference maker and stand out was the Tampa defense. They gave Mahomes no time and prevented him and his receivers from getting any kind of rhythm. I thought Brady had a good game, but the Tampa defense sealed it up pretty tight.
@Joe: I knew that Kansas City was working with an O-line they had been forced to sort of patch together, but was there a play in the second half where it didn’t look like at least one Tampa D-lineman just wasn’t blocked?
A ‘uniquely American whale’: new species discovered off southern US coast
@Paine: Brady and Peyton Manning are/were by far the best in the modern game at reading defenses and then communicating to their receivers what they should do. Rodgers is in the same group for reading but can’t match them for communicating it to his receivers.
Looks like Andy Reid reverted to his choking ways. The Chiefs gameplan made absolutely no sense. This was a game to run it down the Buccaneers throat and force one of their linebacker of safeties to cover Sammy Watkins in the slot. All of Tampas opponents this post season average 5+ yards per carry…but sparsely ran the ball.
Hats off to Brady but his primary skill is being in the right place at the right time. I would argue that had not the Jacksonville Jaguars not waived a stud running back like ‘Playoff Lenny’ we wouldn’t be talking about another Brady superbowl. He played well enough to keep Brady from having to make long completions.
Over the last few weeks it has been pleasant to wander here to OTB for discussions on books, TV shows, movies and sports, while our hosts are producing essays on policy and politics, rather than the latest rage tweet or outrage by he who must not be mentioned.
Also the resident cultist have disappeared, since they lack anything cogent to say.
After reddit banned the Donald subReddit for having too much hate speech, a 41-year-old dude put up a site with all the content from that thread at a place called TheDonald.win.
He has just taken the site down, because aside of being tired of dealing with people he euphemistically refers to as “ethno-nationalists”, after he griped about the misbehavior at the Capitol he started getting harrassed and death threats. Oh and he became aware that some people had used his site to coordinate their behavior at the Capitol, and the FBI stopped by to have a nice chat.
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/02/08/0616231/why-the-owner-of-thedonaldwin-finally-pulled-the-plug
@Sleeping Dog: speaking of TV shows if you have Apple TV you have to check out Ted Lasso.
@Paine: I am not a fan of Brady’s (and I was rooting for KC yesterday), but while fully allowing for the team sport aspect of it all and the acknowledgement of luck (Archie Manning, for example, would have loved to have played for a better team), I think at some point if you amass the records and the rings, you are what your record says you are.
Jamies Winston would not have led this exact team to the SB this year, for example.
@Joe: I agree Tampa’s defense was on point, but one of the things that stands out to me about Brady is that at the end of any major win, it seems every one of his team-mates comes up to him, and their interactions look personal. From my limited perspective through the camera, most “teams” look like groups of specialists who don’t seem to interact with anyone outside their primary concern.
@Joe: @owen: I do agree, BTW, that the TB defense was the difference maker in that game. They were relentless and kept Mahomes off his game the entire time.
This links to an NPR story with some really interesting graphics:
https://twitter.com/V2019N/status/1358487285289807873
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/06/964527835/why-the-pandemic-is-10-times-worse-than-you-think
That headline is misleading, if you read the piece total infections about 3 or 4 times reported infections.
Apples v. oranges – piece estimates people are infectious for about 3 or 4 days on average.
(The model estimate that for entire U.S, 36% of the public has been infected vs. 8% reported).
I have seen other models that also estimate total people infected about 3 times reported.
Dax Shepard explaining why he and Kristen bell started going to couples therapy before they were even married:
“people usually try to go to couples therapy after the implosion has happened, that’s like trying to get an oil change after your engine blows up”
@Michael Cain: I think there were several plays when someone came unblocked. I couldn’t believe how frequently and how quickly they got Mahomes with his back to the receivers. By the 4th quarter, I wondered whether Mahomes was having a little concussion flashback when he just watched two defenders running straight at him and couldn’t get rid of the ball. While that’s exactly what I would do in that circumstance, it was not what Mahomes normally does.
@charon:
What worries me is what new variants may have arisen and gone undetected. The US still lags in testing, and in sequencing viral genomes tos creen for variants.
The more a virus replicates, by infecting more hosts, the larger the chances of new variants. Now, not all will be worse. Some may be pretty much the same from a human standpoint. Some might be less deadly, some more deadly, and so on.
The South African variant seems to render the AstraZeneca vaccine less efficacious, for instance. Even with that vaccine, you’re still likely to catch COVID. It does seem to still protect against serious illness. This last sounds good, but it means the vaccine fails to prevent transmission.
The bottom line is there likely are new variants circulating in the US, but we don’t know what they are like. It’s even possible some of the variants first detected elsewhere actually originated in America.
Jennifer ‘Never Trump’ Rubin:
She also quotes:
So, a cult of personality that is now a ‘hot mess of nuts and cowards,’ and ‘insane.’ Hmmm, Rubin, Sasse, Pitney and Sabato sound an awful lot like me. But I’m sure someone will be along shortly to tell me I’m being too hard on Republicans by calling them nuts, cowards and insane, and insisting that Trumpism was a cult all along.
Kathy;
https://twitter.com/carlzimmer/status/1358446744313470981
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/07/health/coronavirus-variant-us-spread.html
@Michael Reynolds: I still don’t like the “cult” frame. It is too colloquial and, in some ways, lets them off the hook. Although, and I have been consistent about this, the QAnon stuff specifically has real cult-like qualities.
I think it is actually more serious and concerning to point out that the party is moving in an illiberal, anti-democracy direction, and that it is specifically embracing white supremacy is more accurate than just calling them “insane.”
We tend to think that “crazy” people don’t have full responsibility for their actions. The “insane” need treatment and not accountability.
I don’t think that Ted Cruz and Josh Howley are insane. I think that they are quite calculated in their behavior.
But, yes, Kevin McCarthy and many others are, absolutely, cowards.
It never stopped them before, I doubt it’s stopping them now. I suspect it’s just simple embarrassment that has them hiding.
@Teve: Having just gone through divorce, I’ve been wondering why nobody teaches us how to have and maintain a relationship. Have we all just assumed that it would be instinctual? There should be required high school or college courses on this type of thing, at the same level as civics and financial management (another sorely needed subject).
@Just nutha ignint cracker:..another word…
If you remember the sixties you weren’t really there…
Maybe I need to simply reformulate our ongoing debate as follows: if you want to use colloquial language, that’s cool. I just think that that language does not contain within it an actual explanation of the situation.
I have no doubt that that is what Sabato is doing. I don’t think he thinks that Republicans are literally “insane” but I do 100% agree with “The Republican Party is unsalvageable as a center-right party,” says Sabato. “You can’t treat the situation as normal.” But then again, I don’t think anything I have written over the last 4+ years would contradict that.
My husband pointed me to this story. When he first described it, I thought he must have misheard some aspect of the story–who the heck gets COVID-19 and is sick for 5+ months, infectious the entire time? Turns out, this guy.
According to the world o meter we have had 27,613,713 cases in the US. If the actual number of infections we had had was 10 times that amount we’d be approaching herd immunity.
(yes, I am oversimplifying it and the actual math would probably be far more complex but still, I ain’t buying the 10x greater factor)
eta: and now I see your second comment, 3 or 4 times sounds much more reasonable.
I went looking to see what the party breakdown of Qanon support is and I found this at CNN
QAnon is lunacy, and way more popular with Republicans than Democrats, but not a majority thing.
Of course the whole 3%er bullshit is based on the idea that it doesn’t take a lot of people to cause havoc.
@Teve:
Excepting a couple of episodes of Mad Men and a handful of Portlandia when we subscribed to Netflix, I haven’t watched a anything on TV except movies, either DVD or streamed for at least 20 and maybe 30 years. I do watch the occasional basketball or baseball game, but that is about it.
Heh, I like. Some typos* speak louder than others.
*it was a typo, correct?
@OzarkHillbilly: It was 😉
@Steven L. Taylor: I thought so. You are a careful, professional writer who does not stoop to gratuitous insults.
Unlike that asshole in my mirror.
@OzarkHillbilly:
That’s not what the piece said. It said the number of currently infectious is 10 times the number of new cases announced that day.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Yeah, the problem with such people, is they never calculate quite right. They think a position of power and influence will keep them safe when they unleash or support violent, fanatical elements, with an eye to increase their power and influence.
They forget what happened to Louise Philippe Duke d’Orleans, or to Maximilian Robespierre. Both ended their days on this world executed by the forces they supported.
Or just ask Mike Pence.
@charon: OK, what makes that day so special?
@Kathy: That, of course, is a wholly different problem.
You also hit on a key element of this “cult” conversation that is missed when we focus too much on those words: the difference between elite (and yes, I know a lot of people get hives from that word) and mass behavior (leaders and followers, if one prefers).
And even discussion of masses as @Teve notes above ” it doesn’t take a lot of people to cause havoc.”
@OzarkHillbilly: currently not cumulatively is I guess what they mean. The US had 90,000 new cases yesterday so that would mean 900,000 currently infectious people. And it’s an estimate, there’s nothing about that particular day necessarily.
@Michael Reynolds:
@Steven L. Taylor:
Saw this earlier and it is pertinent to your exchange: The Dangers of the Derp State. From The Dispatch, another anti-trump hive.
The interesting implication of that quote is that the Trumpkins, Qanon believers and militia members did not matriculate from what we generally consider failed schools, i.e. inner city, minority dominated or in poor rural areas, those folks grew up in middle class suburbs and went to what were considered good schools and often off to at least middling colleges.
Think about that.
@Steven L. Taylor:
We’re used to thinking in small numbers, when we live in a large world of large numbers.
If a disease affects 1% of a population, is that a big deal? It depends. If you’re talking about a small village, it may be one or three people. If you’re talking about the whole world, it’s 70 million people.This we’re living through right now (the total number of accounted for COVID cases is about 1.5% of the global population; the real number may be as high as 5%).
So, only a small percentage of the population need engage in destructive behavior in order to pose a threat, given the large US population.
@Michael Reynolds: I thought this quote from the Rubin piece was right on:
Since Gingrich the Republican Party has abdicated actual governance. You want to scream at each other about gay rights, or the confederate flag or cancel culture? The Republican Party has your back. You want to accomplish something meaningful. Better hope for Democratic Control of all three branches and a long and lengthy slog through the courts before it reaches the Republican Supreme Court.
@Teve:
I think there are some Trump supporters who simply don’t want to acknowledge that QAnon exists. They find it very disconcerting (not to say embarrassing) that they share their affinity for Trump with a bunch crackpot conspiracy addicts.
I’ve heard this from some Trump fans: “I don’t know anything about QAnon. I never really heard about it.” Truly? It’s all over the news.
@Teve:
One would think that a deranged conspiracy theory like Q Anon would be so preposterous, that it would find few adherents. Other conspiracy theories have a kernel of logic. perhaps the US would not spend the money needed for the Apollo program, at a time when it was fighting a war in Vietnam, or perhaps powerful interests used Oswald as misdirection in JFK’s assassination. That needs to be backed up by evidence, but they are not outrageous claims on their own.
However, remember the Satanic Panic of the late 80s and early 90s? That wasn’t an organized conspiracy theory, but a moral panic. Still, it shows the potential to believe such lunacy is well built-in.
@CSK:
TBH, I suspect most people don’t know what it is in any detail.
It is my experience, as a professor, a university administrator, and a blogger that it is best to assume that people are paying less attention than you think they are (or that they ought to be).
And there can be no doubt that the broader public knows less than you think they do. (And that they rely on long-existing frames and half-understandings to understand the present).
@Kathy: D&D and heavy metal were going to destroy the youth of America!
I remember being told in elementary school about how the P&G logo was an example of satanist infiltration into corporate America.
@MarkedMan: You quote the Rubin piece,
But that’s not right. Elite GOPs do have policy positions: cut upper income and corporate taxes (and by implication cut spending), reduce regulation, for Gawd sake do nothing about AGW, and appoint pro-corporate judges. They just have no policy they can talk about honestly and openly. The mass, the base, are into culture issues the elites don’t give a damn about, except as they can be exploited. The Party is deeply schizophrenic.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I agree about the broad range of people not being terribly aware.
But–and I should have made this clearer–I was speaking of people who do pay attention to the news, and I think their claim to not know anything about QAnon is disingenuous. I can see why they’d disavow any awareness of it. Would you want to advertise your membership in a group with the Q Shaman as one of its most visible exponents?
Over the weekend I saw “Mank,” a kind of biopic about Herman Mankiewicz, best known for writing the screenplay of “Citizen Kane.” It’s on Netflix
IT’s been described as having much to do with the Kane writing, but that’s misleading. I think most of the movie is told in flashback, and deals with Mankiewicz’s interactions with William Randolph Hearst, Louis. B. Mayer (the head of MGM), and Marion Davies, Hearst’s mistress (who is not one thing like Kane’s mistress in Citizen Kane).
It was pretty good, and the acting, especially by Gary Oldman as Mankiewicz, is first rate.
One thing puzzled me. Early in the movie John Houseman, who is supervising Mankiewicz, mentions something about a contract Mankiewicz signed, which precludes him from receiving credit for his work. Near the end (not a spoiler), Orson Welles meets Mankiewicz, and the latter tells him he wants credit, because Citizen Kane is the best thing he’s ever written. What puzzled me is that Welles goes ballistic, literally. he yells, he makes threats, he throws things.
I know credit is a touchy subject in movies and TV, far more than just having one’s name appear on screen at the beginning and/or the end of the movie or show. I get that some royalty payments either apply or don’t depending on what credit(s) one has.
But this whole thing involving a contract and Welles’ reaction was, IMO, too extreme even for that.
@CSK:
That’s fair.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Did you also get all the nonsense about secret Satanic messages being encoded in rock music by being recorded backwards? “Hey, look, if you spin Led Zeppelin 4 backwards you can hear ‘MASTER SATAN’ in Stairway to Heaven!” How the subconscious mind was supposed to “hear” this when the record was played normally was never adequately explained.
@Mikey: Oh yes, that too.
@Steven L. Taylor:
One of the key bits of a cult is to take people away from their support network, and convince them that they cannot trust anyone other than the cult.
As I watch my brothers slide further and further away from reality, I’m thinking that even Fox News level Trumpism with a sprinkling of Facebook has that technique down, although they’re beginning to dabble in more exotic news sources, as Fox is clearly just a gateway drug. They like to “do their own research” which has nothing to do with lab coats and control groups, and a lot to do with finding people who are telling them what they already believe, but more so.
It’s worth noting that they both have a bit of the internet troll personality type — they like to irritate people for fun, and will argue dishonestly, and then believe their arguments. They’ve always been that way, and they really are easy marks for this type of stuff. I’m a little surprised they’re not further along.
They don’t believe in a global pedophile ring that rules the world, but the Clintons were awfully close to Epstein…
I don’t think “cult” is the right word, but there’s some cult-like aspects to what is going on.
I’m just glad they’ve found something they can believe in, and a community where they can feel a real connection. And they have each other. It’s kind of touching.
@Gustopher:
I don’t disagree with that.
And more some people than for others.
Mostly I don’t accept that notion that it explains all 74+ million votes for Trump, or even ongoing support for Republicans in office. Or that it is really especially helpful in framing the overall state of American politics.
@Mikey:
Helpful tip from the internet; if your dough is not rising well during a proof, throw it into the microwave for 3 or 4 minutes at the lowest power setting.
@Mikey: One issue about backwards lyrics was that you could only play the vinyl backwards (by manually spinning it) on certain turntables. Most turntables had the needle set to “drag” at around a 45 degree angle. Trying to go backwards on one of those would likely snap the needle right off. You needed a perpendicular needle, which was pretty rare, but my buddy had one.
There was an ELO album that had some occluded vocals that when you played them backwards very clearly said, “The music is reversible, but time is not. Turn back, turn back, turn back.” That was pretty wiggy to us at 15 years old. As you can see, it left an impression.
Over the past few years I’ve been seeing a quote by Sartre passed along in social media:
“Do not believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
When I first saw this quote, I wondered if it was for real. It turns out that it is–but it seemed to carry the signs of one of those made-up quotes from a historical figure that are constantly being sent across the nets. I often have been able to pick up clues that a quote is fake, and a common red flag is anachronistic terminology–like that fake Teddy Roosevelt quote bashing liberals. (The term “liberal” existed in TR’s time, but didn’t have the meaning this quote infused it with.) So with the Sartre quote above, a red flag for me was the sentence, “They delight in acting in bad faith.” There are a number of terms and phrases that have become extremely trendy in modern political culture despite being much older–for instance, the term “gaslighting” (which is rapidly becoming simply a synonym for “lying”). The phrase “in bad faith” is another one of those terms. Its appearance in the Sartre quote above felt somehow anachronistic to me when I first saw it.
Sartre was talking specifically about anti-Semitism, but his insight can be applied to a lot of things today. The whole alt-right, 4chan troll culture seems practically built on this principle, to the point that it’s been adopted as a defensive argument, like Milo claiming the alt-right isn’t really racist, just trying to mess with liberals. It often feels like right-wing conspiracists are engaged in some kind of absurdist arms race–the more absurd their claims, the better. We’ve spoken before about suspecting the entire Q business started as a prank, and it still often feels like that continues to be true to this day, like those claims we talked about yesterday about how Trump will soon be sworn as the 19th president because the US became a corporation in 1871. The trouble is, whatever the motivations of the people coming up with theories, there are still plenty of people out there who are open to accepting them in earnest.
It’s interesting to me, though, that anti-Semitism still continues to be actual part of these belief systems, not just an analogue–which makes Sartre’s observation seem even more prescient. Anti-Semitism has long had an absurdist quality about it that can be seen all the way back in the Middle Ages when Jews were accused of stealing wafers from churches in order to torture the body of Jesus. What’s amazing is that this kind of thing survived the Middle Ages when the sociological conditions underlying medieval anti-Semitism are basically obsolete. Jews no longer live in ghettos (apart from the self-imposed ghettos of Hasidim), and they’re largely assimilated into modern society. Yet anti-Semitic beliefs persist, and they often feel like non sequiturs appended to other beliefs. The guy who shot up the Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018 was motivated by hatred of the supposed caravan of migrants–which he blamed on Jews. Anyone remember the 1990s terrorist attack on a train in Tokyo? It came from a death cult that, among other things, held anti-Semitic views. In Japan of all places.
You could say anti-Semitism is the original Chewbacca defense.
In America’s ‘Uncivil War,’ Republicans Are The Aggressors
@OzarkHillbilly:
Or you could substitute the daily rate from the 7-day rolling average.
@Kathy:
It must be easy to generate this stuff over pedophilia, pediatric cannibalism etc. – this sort of thing goes back at least as far as the “Blood Libel” wielded against Jews.
@Joe:
There were also the “Paul is dead” backwards messages allegedly on some Beatles’ albums. I recall trying this out on one, but not which one. I think if you didn’t know what the message allegedly is, you might hear something very different.
As to why have backwards messages, this was also peak “subliminal messages” in advertising. This, too, was way overblown.
@Sleeping Dog:
“The interesting implication of that quote is that the Trumpkins, Qanon believers and militia members did not matriculate from what we generally consider failed schools, i.e. inner city, minority dominated or in poor rural areas, those folks grew up in middle class suburbs and went to what were considered good schools and often off to at least middling colleges.
Think about that.”
I find that this does make sense. Being gullible is a luxury more afforded to the better off. As a former “problem child” with a very meager public education, I spent many of my formative years in juvenile, and adult facilities. As a result most of the kids I grew up with were from poorer schools, and inner cities. I couldn’t see many of them growing up, hungry to bite on what ever bullshit is socially popular.
@Sleeping Dog:
They could have gotten that idea from the James Comey announcement re the Weiner laptop emails.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Some of the techniques cults use to dominate or influence people are also used by other players, they are common to authoritarianism e.g. fascism and elsewhere. And the GOP coalition has an assortment of parts some of which at least resemble cults, even if not outright cults like QAnon..
@Steven L. Taylor: I don’t really have a dog in this fight but I think it is simplistic to say that Trumpism isn’t a cult because not all 74M Trump voters are part of the cult. The reality is that 70-80% of any group is along the for the ride and not fully vested in it. Using that basic fact of human nature to wave away the true believers isn’t useful since I could say the same about any large movement in human history.
@Kathy:..As to why have backwards messages, this was also peak “subliminal messages” in advertising. This, too, was way overblown.
You may have known about this:
@Kylopod: What’s amazing is that this kind of thing survived the Middle Ages when the sociological conditions underlying medieval anti-Semitism are basically obsolete.
@Kylopod: I read somewhere that many flat earth people don’t believe it, it’s just a game, the challenge of coming up with a counter to whatever argument is made for a round earth. But they don’t act on their belief.
@gVOR08: I don’t know, I saw a clip from a documentary about those people and one small group of them spent thousands of dollars on a professional gyroscope, because if the earth is rotating and you’re in the northern hemisphere the gyroscope will precess by 15°/ hour clockwise, and if the earth isn’t rotating the gyroscope won’t precess, and they seemed really stressed out when the gyroscope precessed.
It’s probably like all conspiracies, some Con Men, some marks.
@gVOR08:
There isn’t much chance to act on that belief. Under most normal circumstances for most people, the Earth may as well be flat. Things get complicated in long distance travel over water or through the air.
Over land they would, except there are roads people follow already. And that goes for plenty of other infrastructure that depends on the world being a spheroid rather than a disk, like GPS systems. The seasons will progress as usual regardless of one’s belief on the Earth’s shape or trajectory (why not return the world to the center of the universe?)
I had a physics teacher who liked to provoke his students to think and find proof. So one day he stated the Sun circles the Earth, without presenting proof. He wanted us to prove otherwise.
That was at the time I’d watched and read Sagan’s “Cosmos.”I knew about planets moving in apparent loops, Ptolemy’s epicycles, etc. When I tried to state this, he told me to allow the rest of the class to find the right answer.
Well, that was no fun. But throughout the day I saw several classmates ask the geography and math teachers whether the Sun circles the Earth. That was fun.
There are many ways to prove what the Earth’s shape is. A simple one is to see a Lunar eclipse, where one can see the Earth’s shadow corresponds to a sphere and not a disk.
Called the county health department. No vaccines for “at least a 6-8 week waiting period.”
@Owen:
I am well aware that the economic side to anti-Semitism has its roots in the Middle Ages when Jews started to become money-lenders. But part of the reason that happened in the first place was that Jews were forbidden to own land. And while people could point to individual examples of Jews who became extremely wealthy, the vast majority of Jews at the time were economically disadvantaged and subject to severe discrimination and persecution.
Today in the United States, institutional discrimination against Jews is essentially dead. American Jews overall have a high average income, tremendous professional success, and are disproportionately represented in the media, government, and other spheres of power and influence. A lot of people look at this and think of anti-Semitism as a sort of excessive reaction to these conditions, but in fact the trope of the rich Jew pulling the strings long predates a time when most Jews had any wealth or power to speak of. The endurance of these medieval beliefs in the present day involves adapting them to very different sociological conditions than existed at the time those beliefs began. I almost get the sense anti-Semitism fulfills a kind of need that’s always there when it comes to social resentment. There has to be some alien other to blame for society’s ills (this may be why John Carpenter’s They Live is so popular in neo-Nazi circles even though I don’t believe for a second that’s remotely what he had in mind). If it isn’t Jews, it’s someone else, but the cultural image of Jews fit nicely into that narrative.
@gVOR08:
I remember reading a discussion on Wikipedia about the Flat Earth movement, where they were to trying to figure out whether a particular website was parody or not. This website not only claimed the earth was flat, but that gravity didn’t exist and that the only reason we aren’t floating off into space is “inertia.”
@Kylopod:
@gVOR08:
@Kathy:
A reason, small town, rural folks suspect/believe the world is flat, is that people leave town and never come back.
Thank you Robt. Earl Keen for that insight.
@Steven L. Taylor:
At the risk of sounding like I’m trying to join your cage match with Michael, I disagree on this point. It is more serious and concerning that the party is moving in an anti-intellectual, anti-truth direction. That is much harder to fight, and harder to recover from. An advantage of the analysis of the current GOP as a cult is that it not only explains this anti-fact shift, it predicts it.
(And I suspect that “cult” is a much more concrete descriptor for some of us than it seems to be for you. I know what a cult is much more clearly than I know what a party or a faction is.)
@Owen: Actually, the Days of Yore contain a fair amount of scapegoating to raise money. The formula is something like this: King finds himself heavily in debt because of ill-advised wars, with a currency being debased by the day and the nobles growing more and more dissatisfied. He locates a relatively small group of people who have access to a lot of cash-equivalent capital. Doesn’t matter whether they are powerful or not, so long as they are small in number. The Jews were a favorite go-to primarily because since they weren’t allowed to hold property their capital was in items more easily converted to cash than the land rich nobles. Top that off with the notion that gentlemen didn’t get involved in filthy trade and most especially not banking and you ended up with a cash-equivalent wealthy out group. Perfect for the final step: demonizing them and taking all their possessions to pay for those wars.
But I know of at least two non-Jewish groups who suffered the exact same fate: The Knights Templar and the traditional Catholic hierarchy under Henry the 8th. Henry in particular showed a masterful ability to understand and seize a moment. When he assumed the throne the Church was impossibly strong and much too dangerous to try to tax, much less seize their assets. But by throwing in with the reformers (which he truly seemed to think was the religiously correct thing to do) he gradually, year by year, decade by decade elevated their power and rank over the traditionalists. But even after all that time the traditionalists still controlled the vast majority of church assets and were more loyal to the Pope than to Henrys. By tossing them out and seizing their land and property, then immediately putting into their place the reformers, he was able to take most of the wealth of the church, because whatever fraction he left to the reformers was more than they had to start. They supported him absolutely after that.
@Franklin:
I’ve been re-reading Graydon Saunders’ “Commonweal” books to date, and one of the things that clearly marks them as fantasy literature is that all of the characters take it for granted that everyone got lots of curriculum in school on how to work with other people, how not to be stupid about love and/or sex, etc.
So… My hand-me-down car died at the end of last week. Took it in for an oil change and the mechanic (who’s a friend of the family, and whom I trust explicitly) basically said “Don’t drive any farther than you’re willing to walk”.
I’ve picked out a used car from a local dealer (not much on the lots these days), and contingent on a good test-drive, I’m good to go.
My sister let me borrow her car to get to work today (I have no idea what it is, I didn’t pay attention), and …. if this is the future of driving, I’m going to need rob a bank so I can get a farm where I can hide a red Barchetta.
From the very start: I get it, turn it on (push-button), and… turn the blinkers? Wash the windshield? Where the fuck is the shifter?! There isn’t one. There’s a fucking KNOB on the console! You dial your gear.
I manage to get the seat far enough back, but… My head is hitting the roof. I’m 5′-10″ (180cm) and every little bump has me smacking my head on the roof.
The windshield is about 12″ tall. And looking to the right half, it’s at least 30% blocked by a massive “mirror” that has very little actual mirror in it.
Don’t even get me started on the “infotainment system”. I just want to adjust the damn heat. Knob and buttons people! They make me use a knob for the shifter, but take away the knobs on the heater?! WTF?!
{We now return you to your regularly-scheduled politics and football}
@DrDaveT: (Alas, no edit button…)
To put it differently: I think calling them “insane” or similar epithets is informal language — but calling them “a cult” is using a precise technical term in its correct technical sense.
@Sleeping Dog:
At the risk of sounding even more like Michael, I’ve been saying here for years that the relentless GOP championing of local control of education and opposition to national curriculum standards is not an accident. The GOP is the opposite of Sy Syms — an educated consumer is a threat to their influence.
psycho Pamela Geller gets booted off twitter
@Kylopod: I think we are looking at this from different angles. From many perspectives there are noticeable changes in the sociological conditions of modern Jewry, but to the believer, there is no difference in their eyes between a distant ghetto in 15th century Krakow (that they would have never visited) and the perceived ghettos of distant Hollywood, Washington DC and New York (that they also likely have never visited).
@Teve:
Only about several years too late. I’m not giving Twitter as much credit as I should for de platforming some of these people because they should have done it long, long ago.
I joke that it’s like finally convicting someone for manslaughter when they’ve been a serial killer and have a pile of bodies out in open in their backyard.
@EddieInCA: oh I know, they’re never going to truly back down for the same Fox News isn’t going to back down. Engaged plus enraged equals $$$$.
@MarkedMan: And the scapegoating is more easily attained by creating myths about the victims. The Templars were widely accused of homosexuals orgies as part of Satanic worship. Henry VIII and his cronies accused Abbots and Abesses of much the same.
Likely both the purge of the Templars and many pogroms against Jews were used as cover to erase debts.
Wikipedia’s definition of Cult of Personality includes several elements we saw with Trump and his party:
“[..]when a country’s regime – or, more rarely, an individual – uses the techniques of mass media, propaganda, the big lie, spectacle, the arts, patriotism, and government-organized demonstrations and rallies to create an idealized, heroic, and worshipful image of a leader, often through unquestioning flattery and praise.”
Rings a bell or two, doesn’t it?
I submit this is what trump tried to accomplish, but in his chaotic, disjointed, instinctual, disorganized way, leaving a lot of work for others to do. He also suffered by the lack of control of the media, even such media was was on his side. and much was carried out by others, too. Trump did not come with the conspiracy theories that anointed him as the savior, for example.
Putin’s been called “Stalin Lite.” Think of Trump as “Staling Lite and Lazy.”
@Mu Yixiao:..I’ve picked out a used car from a local dealer…
Did you find one that you needed to crank to start it?
You know that turning a key is for pussies.
@Kathy:
Some of the Trumpkins wore t-shirts with the legend: “I’d Rather Be Russian Than A Democrat.”
@Mister Bluster: I don’t know when Citroën stopped providing them (or if they have), but my grandfather’s 1982 Citroën GS came with a crank access in the front, designed for the handle from the jack. The owner’s manual recommended hand cranking the engine over a few times if it had been sitting for more than a week. Hand cranking the car to start it was recommended “only in emergencies”. We hand started it once, to my grandfather’s horror. He regaled us with stories of broken arms and such from the good old days, then warned us to never do it again.
@Mister Bluster:
My parents owned a Renault R-12 sometime in the late 70s. It had most of the non-driving controls on levers or handles mounted on the side of the steering column. Things like the lights, the high beam, the horn, the wipers, the turn signals were there.
Today many cars have the lights, wipers, and turn signals there, but they didn’t in the 70s. Lights were turned on by pulling a knob on the dashboard to the left of the driver. The high beam used a foot switch on the floorboard left of the brake (or the clutch). I recall some wiper controls using a knob on the dashboard to the right of the driver.
Things change.
A few years back my brother loaned me his car. It has no key slot, and no key. You start it by having the fob inside the car,pressing on the brake, and pushing a button labeled “engine start.”
It took me years to stop pressing on the gas pedal when starting the car. You can still do it with today’s models, but it’s not necessary. I don’t know if I’d ever get used to pressing on the break first.
@Mister Bluster:
How does one “crank” a horse?
And I don’t know what all the fuss is about this “hands-free driving” stuff. Everyone knows on the way home, you can just drop the reins and let the horse go home on their own. Then you and your lady can use your hands for other things. 😉
@Kathy: Could I possibly add something to your amazing fund of knowledge about the ancient world? Surely you know that Eratosthenes measured the diameter of the earth…checks wikipedia…in 240BC.
@Mu Yixiao:
Standing to one side of the horse, never directly behind it. You never can tell when a horse will decide its had enough and let loose a kick.
@JohnMcC:
That was on “Cosmos.”
As I recall, his figure wasn’t too far off the most precise measurements of recent times. Something under 3% off.
Asimov in one of his many essays, wonders whether Euclid would have developed calculus, millennia ahead of schedule, had he simply had Indo-Arabic numerals.
Overall, the ancients were first rate astronomers, considering they had neither telescopes nor advanced mathematics, and not even a clear picture of the universe around them. Perhaps because astronomical predictions, like eclipses, could often be tested.
@MarkedMan:
Well, indeed. I agree, on balance.
And we could sort through all the comments we would find me telling MR that I would be more comfortable with the cult frame for MAGA hatted rally attenders, just not as a general explanation for his election or for the behavior of all Republican voters. I have repeatedly tried to point to the power of partisanship and several key structural factors.
I have even in this thread stated that I agree that QAnon is cultlike.
But my problem is (and has been) the notion that we explain Trump’s votes as simply being the result of a cult of personality.
@DrDaveT:
I would consider that an amplification of what I said, rather than a correction.
Here’s an account of the QAnon belief that Trump will be inaugurated this coming March 4:
http://www.newsweek.com/qanon-march-trump-president-1567525
@Michael Reynolds: You won’t hear that from me, but you will hear what I was saying while I was still in Korea–Trump isn’t the disease, he’s merely a symptom. Cult, cancer, insanity, don’t know, don’t care. The system is broken no matter what you call Trump and the continuing development of “the troubles.”
@Mu Yixiao: I hate the dial-a-gear arrangement. Always afraid I’ll grab the wrong knob and shift into neutral when I’m trying to tune the radio.
@Teve: That’s more information than my state’s DoH (again, no pun intended) is giving. They’re merely saying “there are no appointments at this time; please check back at a later interval.” They’ve been doing that for 3 weeks now.
@Kathy: “I don’t know if I’d ever get used to pressing on the break first.”
That’s interesting. I was taught in driver’s training “don’t start the car if your foot isn’t on the brake.” The process was 1) put the key in the ignition 2) step on the gas pedal to set the automatic choke 3) move foot from gas pedal to brake pedal 4) turn the ignition key.
Why aren’t the Trumpers here to give us updates on Hunter Biden’s various laptops? Three months ago it was the most important story in the world.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Really? I was taught to set the parking break, if it wasn’t set, then step on the gas and turn the key.
BTW, medical update:
I had a video call with the hematologist. We went through my medical history (I think I’ve a very boring one), family medical history (as best as I could recall), he asked some questions about symptoms and about the hernia. He said it could be inflammation, or “something else.” He prescribed some blood tests, and he tells me the results would indicate whether or not a biopsy would be necessary.
At least he was very open to my suggestion that the surgeon could take a biopsy while repairing the hernia (he seemed surprised, too).
So, if the lab near my place ever picks up the phone, I’ll likely get blood drawn tomorrow morning. If not, it will likely be tomorrow evening. Then who knows how long the tests take (a day or two, I should think, but you can’t hurry biology much).
That’s it for now.
@Kathy:
Thanks for the update. Sending you my best wishes, as always.
@Kathy: My car has the same fob and pushbutton arrangement and if you’re not stepping on the brake, it won’t start at all. Pushing the button without stepping on the brake just turns on all the electrics, like turning the key to the first stop does in a key ignition.
The car does “know” exactly where the fob is, though–if you lock the car, get out, open the trunk, throw the fob in the trunk, and try to close it, the car makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like scolding and the trunk pops open on its own. You can’t shut the fob in the trunk. But if the car is unlocked, you can shut the fob in the trunk, but you can’t lock the car. It’s Mikey-proof! LOL
@charon:
“Some of the techniques cults use to dominate or influence people are also used by other players, they are common to authoritarianism e.g. fascism and elsewhere.”
Western Democracies aren’t spared from this in the least, nor do it’s citizens seem to be particularly immune. Our inheritance of this is owed more to the works of Edward Bernays, and Walter Lippmann, than their more Famous students and the various death cults they inspired. That these techniques have so much value to literally anyone with a product or ideal to sell, no matter how good or bad their intentions, makes them likely to dominate the cultural psyche for the foreseeable future. A serious attempt at a remedy, would disimpower lots of folks, besides the obvious players that are the current topics of concern. The one positive takeaway that I see, is we seem to be at a very low point as a country, and low points tend to lead towards change.
@Mikey: Hahahaha….I remember when GPS was still new and the guy’s voice was soooooo disgusted when I missed the turn he told me to take….”ReCALCulating”. I imagined that same voice when you said it scolded you for the keys being in the trunk. 😉
@Kathy: Best wishes from this lurker also.
My wife and I both enjoy your comments.
@Mikey:
Sounds like a challenge to me.
@CSK:
@Bob@Youngstown:
Thank to all.
I don’t expect you’ll get rid of me easily (or at all if they have WiFi in The Good Place).
@Steven L. Taylor: Clearly stated. I agree with your assessment. I normally think of people as being in the cult or out, but am beginning to realize how often cultish beliefs wreck havoc on society as a whole even when the number of true believers is relatively small.
@Kathy: I’m guessing that I learned to drive about 20 or so years before you did (1967), so procedures might have changed over the years. Good thoughts for your continued recovery and a successful surgery without a biopsy necessary.
Time lapse of smartphone locations in Washington DC on January 6
LOLOLOLOL Fucking nimrods.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Why are you assuming there is just one disease? There are myriad problems, and Trump exploited some and magnified others. American Carnage indeed.
Trump is a parasite, taking advantage of a weakened host, and leaving the host weakened further. One of those mind-altering parasites, like toxoplasma gondii, except rather than leaving us with a fondness for cats, leaving us bitterly divided with half the country barely able to see reality.
Hmm. I wonder if we could modify toxoplasma gondii to make people like each other rather than cats? Would that be ethical? Oh, no, definitely not. But would it be a very good thing to do? Well… yes.
@Teve:
And every single one of them, if they manage to pass, runs smack into the hard cold fact that Arizona is a referendum state. If enough voters sign petitions, the laws are put on hold until they are approved at the next general election. In a state that has passed by ballot initiative, over the last several years, independent redistricting, increased minimum wage, mandatory family leave, and legal recreational marijuana. Where the voters love their mail ballots, with >80% signing up to receive them. And the state party has pissed off Gov. Ducey by sanctioning him for following the law and certifying the vote. The last time I looked at the list of many state legislators signing up to speak on the overturn the voters bill, it’s running 5:1 against the bill. And when that independent redistricting commission looks at the new population, there will be fewer rural districts and more urban/suburban ones.
The AZ Republican Party is following those of CA and CO and diving down a fantasy rabbit hole.
@Kathy: My car has the fob and push-to-start. Before I had it, I didn’t see the point. I now love it. Absolutely love it.
@Kathy: Good luck with the medical woes. I hope everything goes well.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Little bit before my time.
But I learned to drive on a 75 Dodge, which was old by then, with a stick shift in the steering column.
AS to a biopsy, since surgery is already necessary, perhaps it would be best to just do both and not bother with PET scans or blood tests.
@Gustopher:
It surely wouldn’t be wise. You’d piss off all cats, and that’s never a good idea.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Thanks.
Oh, this is too good. Trump’s Washington hotel tripled some rates for March 3rd. and 4th.
We already knew a g}fool and their money are soon parted. But read the piece above, the hotel also raised rates, even more, for January 5th and 6th.
My second new ride was an 1985 Datsun pick up. It was the first vehicle I owned that had the light controls on the steering column along with the wipers and turn signals. The salesman was a guy I had known for several years before he started selling trucks and cars. He told me this arrangement would minimize the amount of time that the drivers hands would be off the steering wheel when operating those features.
I remember hearing a retired cop on some radio interview back in the 80s talking about how in “the good old days” of the 50s and 60s he would answer calls to investigate minor fender benders only to find dead infants and children impaled on the radio and heater controls that stuck out from the dashboards of the carsall the time.
@Kathy:
Well, given that no one wants to buy the damn place, I suppose they have to rake in as much money off it as they can before it goes out of business.
Another Trump Triumph.
@Kathy: Ha!!! My youngest daughter and I just had a conversation yesterday about how the human race should be grateful that cats don’t have opposable thumbs and we cannot understand their plans for world domination. 😉
@Kathy: Thinking about you, hoping all goes well.
@Gustopher: Your take is certainly another way to look at the question that I hadn’t considered before. My view is certainly more limited given that I’ve considered myself effectively disenfranchised at least 20 years, so I’m not as inclined to look at the problem beyond the most cursory investigation. It’s enough for me that I’m aware that the system (and the party) was broken long before Trump.
@Jax: I had a cat with thumbs. Polydactyl, but would pick up kibble between the extra toe and her paw, so some rudimentary control over it.
She would drop half of each kibble on the floor after she ate the other half and the remainder slipped from her grip. She would not eat the food from the floor, of course, nor would she deign to eat kibble without picking it up, so there was usually a pile of her leftovers. The other cat would sometimes eat it, but preferred the whole kibble — she was an animal, but she wasn’t an animal.
The cat with the thumbs could also pull on the lamp’s pull chain to turn the light on and off.
Her companion once ran across my keyboard, and whatever she did was autocorrected to “we’re vehement” — I assume it was the start of a manifesto. The companion would also hurl herself at light switches to turn the lights on and off.
We’re all lucky that they were both female (and fixed) as the genius kittens with thumbs would have killed us all by now. Not maliciously, just for play.
Yes, both cats played with lights. The one with the thumbs just saw something dangling and pawed at it until her paw got caught on the pull string. The other one knew what she was doing.
@Monala:
Thanks.
For now the blood tests will take an extra day. Turns out the lab requires no food for 10 to 12 hours. I knew not eat before going in, but it had been only 9 hours.
So, tomorrow morning.