Monday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Monday, June 14, 2021
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65 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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Kevin Drum:
Virtually all hospitalized Covid patients have one thing in common. They are unvaccinated.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Tempting as it is to believe those tickets to the Trump reinauguration this August actually exist, they’re probably a photoshop.
Then again, there were people making hotel reservations in Washington D.C. back in October 2011 for Sarah Palin’s inaugural in January 2013.
@CSK: It’s hard for me to believe that somebody, somewhere, isn’t trying to monetize off of this. It seems inevitable.
When the subject of racist, sexist, or genderist language comes up, I often feel like there is an elephant in the room that doesn’t get mentioned. The boundaries are often drawn between those who are truly offended by certain words and phrases and those who feel they are less important. (I’m only talking about people with good intentions here. Obviously, racists and misanthropes have a different and toxic view.) An example from another era: Growing up, the word “Mick” was never uttered in my Irish immigrant parent’s household. Some of my parents immigrant friends thought it was okay for one Irishman to say about other Irishman, some of them thought that as long as it wasn’t said with ill intent, even a non-Irish could say it. And I can imagine that somewhere, someone was pointing out that the word itself merely stemmed from the propensity of Irish names to have the “Mc” preface, which merely means “Son of”, and therefore it shouldn’t be considered an insult, despite the fact that it was obviously used as an insult by many.
So, two groups. My father (and perhaps my mother) who was truly offended by it, and those that thought there was no point in being offended by a word, but rather intent was paramount. But in any debate such as this, there is a third group, one that I think causes the most disharmony and strife: the Holier than Thou. Sometimes known today as the Purity Police, these are the people within the group that are constantly on the watch for any deviation from their interpretation of the rules and are quick and vicious in calling out any failures they perceive. This type of person exists not just in racial and ethnic groups, but in ALL groups. Old JC described them well in his description of the Pharisees, which of course is religion and they are very common in that field, but I’ve had personal dealings with them in things like writing requirements documents and whether a band falls into the “Blues” category or not. They are not people who are primarily motivated by bringing harmony into the world, but rather by a mean joy in finding fault with others and publicly castigating them as deficient.
As I said, I think this third group is the one that causes 90% of in-group strife, and I’m surprised it doesn’t get discussed more often.
@Kylopod:
Oh, I’m sure more than one person is, including Trump. But the methods might not be quite as blatantly phony as this.
@MarkedMan:
A lot of ethnic and racial slurs have seemingly “innocent” origins. “Yid” is nothing more than the Yiddish word for Jew, and it’s still used regularly today in yeshivas around the world–yet in the broader English-speaking world it’s considered an anti-Semitic slur. (It’s also the basis of the Russian variant, Zhid.) Superficially that may make it seem a bit like the N-word–members of the group can use it, outsiders can’t–except the N-word (which began simply as a variant pronunciation of Negro) wasn’t something invented by blacks and then appropriated by whites; it was something coined by whites and imposed on blacks at a time of extreme white supremacy when blacks weren’t even viewed as human.
The power of slurs often has less to do with their etymology (especially since a number of common slurs are of unknown origin) than with a sense of who owns the word.
is it really too late to learn new skills?
Reposting this because I think there are some valuable lessons in it. There are a few things I do that I will never be an expert at. I cook Doro Wat and curried lentils even though I will never be Heston Blumenthal. I spend a few minutes every day trying to make my cursive look a little prettier, even though I’ll never be a master calligrapher. I go to the gym and I work out as hard as a middle-aged man can without snapping tendons, though I’ll never be Matt Fraser. Even if you’ll never be great at something, there is value in the effort.
@CSK:
Again, I find it hard to believe. The Trump movement really does seem to go for the lowest common denominator–Nigerian prince territory. Even if Trump himself isn’t doing it, somebody else almost certainly will.
@Kylopod:
I’m not really disagreeing with you. Didn’t Bannon set up a phony send-me-your-money-and-I’ll-build-the wall scheme and rake in a considerable number of bucks?
I do think it’s possible that this particular ticket to the Trump reinaugural on August 15 was photoshopped.
@Teve:
Systemic racism clearly exists (and actually in probably every country in the world). The definition of race is fluid — for instance until after WW2 the Germans considered Slavs to be a different race (and as low or sometimes even lower than blacks and Asians on their particular hierarchy), but systemic racism (ie favoring those in power) has always existed, even if the dividers change.
However, blaming a race as a class seems problematic. Does that mean that every time someone from a particular race does something awful that everyone in that race is responsible for it as well? Does it go the other way too — if someone from a race does something wonderful is everyone in that race responsible for it? Are all Germanic people (considered a race until recently) simultaneously responsible for Hitler’s atrocities and Beethoven’s music? Are they all evil fascists and genius composers? Is every white man responsible (as a class) when a white man goes on a mass killing spree? Is every Muslim responsible (as a class) when a Muslim does the same? How about when a white man or a Muslim wins a Nobel Prize, is the good shared along with the bad?
Most individuals do enough evil by themselves that holding them responsible for their individual acts (and that includes the evil of not trying to change things) suffices. Holding individuals responsible for beings with whom they share no neural connections (ie no consciousness) is simply silly. A German who wasn’t alive during Hitler’s reign or Beethoven’s life shouldn’t be held responsible for what Hitler did, or credited for what Beethoven did.
@George:
Did I ever say otherwise?
@Kylopod: The evolution of a group name into an insult is a pretty constant phenomena. But there are two instances I can think of in my lifetime where this was short circuited: “Queer” and “Nerd”. In both cases the out-group ended up embracing a word that was always meant to be an insult and turning it into a prideful moniker.
Insulting names can also just disappear as the groups become richer and more integrated. I can’t remember the last time I heard the term “Mick” or “Wop”.
I sometimes think that the least effective way to combat bigoted categorization through naming is to champion a name change. There was a Bloom County comic strip back in the 90’s (80’s?) that poked gentle fun of (newly woke) Steve Dallas and his mother when she referred to someone as a “colored man” and he castigated her for that. She went through the progression of all the different ‘correct’ ways to refer to what we now term African Americans as it evolved through the years, until she reached the then preferred nomenclature, “People of Color”. “That’s what I said! Colored People!” In the seventies and eighties the AA community seemed to be embracing “Black” and, at least to my young ears, making it a positive. “Black Power” and then “Black Pride”. But that fell by the wayside.
@MarkedMan: I mean, there could be, but I’m not aware of any Black Americans who are bothered if you call them “black”. Unless it’s accompanied by a lot of bile somehow, of course.
I think “People of Color” is meant to broaden the category beyond African Americans to Columbians and Haitians and Mexicans and maybe even Filipinos, and so on. People who are recognizably different from white people and whom people would probably not describe as “white”.
I don’t know that “Colored People” ever meant anyone other than African Americans.
@Teve:
No, but Kevin Drum seems to think its something to be considered, at least that’s how I read:
@Jay L Gischer:
Its meant Indigenous people as well, the Redman (a group treated as badly as Blacks, so I suppose it fits).
@MarkedMan:
“Queer” is indeed an interesting case, since there are plenty of examples of groups trying to appropriate a slur (e.g. lesbians using “dyke”), but it rarely has the effect of taking away its status as a slur, let alone making people forget it ever was a slur–yet that seems to be what has happened with “queer.” And it isn’t like the N-word where only queer people are “allowed” to say it; it’s actually the preferred term in academia today.
As for “nerd,” I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s and therefore I lived through the change in that word’s meaning, and yet up to now I never thought of it as an example of a slur that gets appropriated. That’s partly because nerds aren’t something the left normally thinks of as an underprivileged or persecuted group, though nerds have long thought of themselves as being persecuted in a sense. But another difference is that nerds, unlike queers or blacks, are an extremely nebulous category to begin with, and it wasn’t just that the term shifted from negative to positive, the very definition changed; someone called a nerd today would not necessarily have been called one in the ’80s, or vice versa. Nowadays it often means little more than “person who likes to collect trivia about a topic.” It’s lost much of its connotation of social awkwardness that was once thought to be built into the definition of the term.
Maybe there is hope for us.
@George:
Worse. We didn’t kill 90% of Blacks with “guns, germs, and steel”. And while we treated Blacks abysmally after the Civil War we didn’t exile them to land no one else wanted.
@Kylopod: I’m curious about your age and profession. I’m 60 and have been interested in technology since I was a very young child and I can tell you that “nerd” meant exactly the type of person I was and it was most certainly an insult, along with “four-eyes” and “geek”. The movie “Revenge of the Nerds” didn’t come out of nowhere. What has changed is that people with such interests have become respectable. I think the primary reason was that very obvious nerds such as Bill Gates became fabulously wealthy and others, like Steve Jobs, became iconic. They didn’t pretend they weren’t nerds, instead they simply asserted their Alpha status.
I’ve been really impressed by the speed with which vaccines were developed and, at least in certain countries including the US, distributed. It’s made me optimistic. But this article is a bit of a downer. I knew Pfizer had finally submitted their vaccine for full approval at the end of May but hadn’t realized it would take so long to get it. The article is talking about 6-10 months out. Given that they are free to distribute under the EUA, why should this matter? Well, I’ve talked to several acquaintances in the past month who are vaccine holdouts but not anti-vaccine in general. All of them have highlighted that the vaccine hasn’t been full tested and that it hasn’t been fully approved. My impression was that, however bad their information was, they really did intend to the get the jab once the vaccines got general approval.
@MarkedMan: I was born in 1977. While the term has been traced to the 1950s, much of what we think of as its “classic” meaning–the four-eyed social misfit, often with tape across his glasses–existed throughout the 1980s. I think the shift in meaning began in the 1990s. I remember watching a TV movie in the early ’90s featuring a scene where a (rather cool-looking) teenage boy boasts to a girl he’s macking on about how he’s a nerd. At the time I found this scene rather weird, but it wouldn’t have sounded out of place a decade later. It wasn’t just the successes of Bill Gates or Steve Jobs that inspired the transition, I think it was also that a lot of the things nerds were supposed to be into–computers, comic books–became seen as increasingly less niche as they percolated into mainstream culture. Nowadays where you have teens considering it an essential part of their social life to upload videos to TikTok from their pocket computers, it’s something that would have been hard to comprehend in the ’80s. It’s not that the technology wasn’t predicted–there was stuff like it in sci-fi for decades. But most people didn’t envision how ubiquitous and accepted it would become for regular people in the general culture.
@MarkedMan: I suspect that one of the problems, as Mr. Reynolds discovered yesterday, is that when one raises such subjects one is staring into the abyss–and the abyss is smiling and waving at one. Don’t know how to solve the problem, though. I could suggest using the Golden Rule as a guide, but considering its antecedents, that’s just another gaze down into the abyss, n’est pas?
@Teve: No. NKKKLAAAAANGGGS will still be getting it and boomers already have Medicare and don’t want it turned into some socialized medicine scheme.
In other (marginally related) news, Washington State will, apparently start collecting a new payroll tax–exemptable by showing proof of having purchased “an approved long-term care policy.” Apparently, the state can see into the future, but I will still note that my parents spent roughly one million dollars over a 20 or 30 year period to buy about $300,000 of actual coverage. For most people, paying the tax will be the better deal, so I hope the insurance commission’s pencil was nice and sharp.
This, of course, should surprise nobody.
Enough of this shit. Expand SCOTUS now, before the 2022 election, and fill the new seats with the youngest, most liberal judges qualified for the position. Ram them all through in eight days like the GOP did with Barrett. It’s time for Democrats to finally understand how power works, and how to use it.
@CSK: O learned a long time ago, never overestimate the stupid.
@OzarkHillbilly:
True. Also the irrational. The mistake I invariably make, and I know I’m not alone in so doing, is to look for rational explanations for people and things that are by definition fraught with irrationality.
@just nutha: FWIW, I’ve developed a kind of modus operandi for internet discussions over the past 40 years.
First, I take it for granted that there are things that I could easily take as insulting that are not really meant that way but I deliberately assume good or at least neutral intentions and chalk it up to the difficulties of getting your point across remotely. Example: Someone says “I think it is silly to do X”. Now, if I do X I could take it as a personal attack. Or I could just lump it into the category of saying “I don’t think it is productive for me to do X. YMMV.” If I notice it at all, I deliberately chose the second path. I find that it’s correct more often than not but even if incorrect, it is the path that is about 100x more likely to result in an interesting discussion rather than a pissing match.
Second, there are (rarely) things that come from people who have an interesting perspective but who delight in antagonizing their correspondents. In those cases I skim their comments and if they are adding light I’ll think about them and maybe even respond but if they have gone into full on troll mode I ignore them for the remainder of the thread. Lounsbury is a good example here. (Lounsbury – correct me if I’m wrong but haven’t you admitted to gleefully stirring the pot on more than one occasion?)
Third are people whose name I recognize and have never had anything worthwhile to say. I ignore those, and ignore any answers to those, and if the thread becomes more than 50% of such a dialog I drop the thread. Life is too short.
Finally, there are people who feel I am committing heinous offenses and want to call me out on it. If I disagree and it’s something I’ve given a lot of thought to, I’ll make my counter case once, may clarify a second time, and then I’ll end with something like “I don’t really think we are going to get any farther on this”, and then I drop off. If on the other hand it’s something I haven’t really considered before, I’ll try to take the gist of what they are saying and think about it, trying to ignore the vituperation and insults. I’m actually pretty good at that.
@Mikey: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says now on Hugh Hewitt’s show that it’s “highly unlikely” he would allow Biden to fill a Supreme Court vacancy in 2024 if he’s majority leader
He also would not even commit to allowing Biden to fill a Supreme Court seat in 2023 if it was open. There is no reason on earth for Biden to ever “negotiate” when it comes to judges. The only judges McConnell would approve are those men and women who would have been comfortable being judges in Germany in the 30’s and early 40’s.
HOLY. SHIT.
@Mikey: On the other hand…
There is a pictured excerpt of the relevant section of the communique’ attached to the above tweet.
https://twitter.com/Kevinliptakcnn/status/1404519526495141895?s=20
@Teve:
I’ve noticed that if this fact is brought up on threads on various sites it’s presumed to the speaker is younger and thus being greedy since “you’re not entitled to an inheritance!!!11!”. This is usually followed by the complainers noting how they personally didn’t get anything (read this as large amount of $$$) and thus GenX/ Millennials/ Gen Z shouldn’t expect to get anything they haven’t earned from their elders. Inheritance has gone from being something that happens since “you can’t take it with you” to a a dirty word since it’s your money you should blow before you die or else it’s a waste.
Nevermind this flies in the face of centuries of social expectations that something should be passed down to the next generation if at all possible, there’s also this underlying assumption it’s got to be either a ton of cash or really valuable things like real estate in order to count. Since their Grandma didn’t leave them 50Gs (just the hundred she had under the mattress), their grandkids shouldn’t be expecting money either. It’s…. odd that Boomers seem dead set on leaving their kids a ton of mass-produced tchotchkes nobody wants but when it comes things of value, the youth are greedy for thinking there will be a wealth transfer.
@KM: It doesn’t fit the facts either, most wealth is inherited. And with a lot of the boomers, even if they didn’t inherit much they stole it forward, they got incredibly low tuition and infrastructure and then home loans backed by the government and union jobs and pensions and then voted for the next generation not to have those things so they could save on tax money.
(Don’t know how cut and paste work on a Chromebook, sorry.)
NOW, I’ve seen everything. Rand Paul is claiming that the idea of majority rule is goes against American Democracy. Why you ask?
(Wait for it….)
Because majority rule is how we got Jim Crow laws.
WTFF??? The guy who said he’d have opposed 1965 civil rights legislation opposes majority rule because Jim Crow laws??? I can’t take it anymore! I weep for the country. Is it any wonder that Kentucky’s unofficial motto is “Four million people, 5 last names.” DAWG!
@Teve: This is why WE’RE the “greatest generation” not those pikers who won WWII. We’re burnin the sucka to the ground as we speak. Did our fathers do that? Nooooooooooooo! They weren’t able to; only we could.
@sam:
Lovely.
@Teve:
[citation needed]
Man, if only we could get rid of Nunes, Gym Jordan, and Mitch McConnell like we got rid of Rohrabacher.
https://www.pressherald.com/2021/06/14/ex-rep-dana-rohrabacher-now-a-mainer-marched-on-the-capitol-jan-6/
I normally walk early or late, but today I combined taking an amble with going to the grocery store.
I walked streets I normally don’t (uninteresting residential blocks) in the mid-afternoon, but I did happen upon a kid selling lemonade and did my normal schtick that “your price is too low” and paid him $5 for a $1.50 lemonade. Made my day.
Plus, my new favorite cashier told me three extremely dark jokes because we were both bored and no one else was in earshot.
Pulled pork on onion rolls when I got home.
That was a really good day, but too hot.
Interesting day today. I substituted for a teacher who is at home awaiting the results of his Covid test. Hmmm… Additionally over the past two weeks, I’ve observed 2 things that have been consistently true about maskhole students. 1) The most common complaint about wearing a mask is that when it’s covering your nose it fogs your glasses. 2) The students most likely to NOT be covering their noses with their masks also DON’T wear glasses. Again, hmmmm…
@de stijl:
I bet you made the lemonade seller’s day a great one.
@Mu Yixiao: I was off by a bit, The percentage of household wealth that was inherited is not 51%, Brookings says it’s ~40%. Still easily large enough to counter the people KM mentioned.
@Kylopod:
Afaict, “queer” is now the preferred term for non-straight, non-cis folks as a catch-all. In academia, too.
It is one of those “captured and turned” words. Like Ni-Clang in certain environments.
I find these turn-abouts fascinating and thrilling. The abused turn the tables on the abusers.
Make a word meant to dismiss and demean yours as a totem. Find it fascinating and heartening.
As to “nerd”, I own that completely. Born that way.
@Teve:
Even they realize they have nothing of worth to say.
@de stijl:
My point was that it’s not like the N-word. The N-word is only considered acceptable for blacks to use. “Queer,” in contrast, is now regarded as acceptable for anyone to use (in its modified meaning, of course). I can’t think of another slur that this has happened to, and it took me aback when I first encountered it in college.
@CSK:
I try. Highly recommend.
Everytime. It is my normal reaction. One day I am gonna get caught short of smaller bills and will have to go with a full $20 for a lemonade. Whatever, I chose that path decades ago.
Do it yourself. It feels good.
Last summer I had to do a Target trip because of an exigency, and I was waiting for the taxi I noted a gent scrounging butts out of the outdoor ashtray. Obviously homeless and living rough.
Went over, introduced myself, gave him a full, clean Marlboro not just a stub with some rando’s DNA on it. We chatted. Smoked. Bullshitted a bit.
When my taxi came I gave him an almost full pack and a twenty and my lighter. That is not an always thing. But, I did do it it that day.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I can say with certainty a mask can and does fog your glasses. But it is not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Yes, it can may make real life blurrier and more difficult to cope with than normal.
@de stijl: There are several tricks around the foggy glasses problem. The simplest is stretching the upper part of the mask so that it sits under the glasses. (Check Google for more options.)
FWIW, nerd and geek are different. Nerd has an air of social disability, while geek is more of an Otaku vibe. For instance, I know a guy who is currently bow hunting Axis deer in Texas, does your more intense workout routines, usually has a 9 mm jammed down the front of his jeans, and when he talks about his compound bow he phrases it as geeking out. He would not refer to himself with the word nerd.
@Kylopod:
I under-qualified. Queer became universally acceptable, quite quickly.
I attempted with “in certain environments” to cover more than that flabby phrase is capable of conveying.
Not available to be used but by the in-group. Even then, by the in-group, judiciously and or artfully.
I am a nerd.
I am a geek.
@de stijl: This is pretty much the theme song for those of us geeks and nerds who came after your generation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFkzRNyygfk
ALSO…..I had a Hamm’s beer commercial earworm. 😛 I did not spot “swanky dude”, but when it comes to The Substitutes….which one are you? I guessed the tall guy against the wall. Or the guy with the big wine glass. 😉
@Teve:
This reminds me of discussions over the difference between morality and ethics. You can find a distinction that’s valid as far as it goes, but you ignore the fact that the vast majority of the time, people use the two terms interchangeably. And this may also be generational. Back in the ’80s, both terms were often applied to the same characters in movies and TV. Look around and you’ll find the Revenge of the Nerds characters described as geeks, and the Anthony Michael Hall character “The Geek” from Sixteen Candles described as a nerd.
It’s odd that people would come to think of “geek” as the term that doesn’t imply social disability, when you consider the term’s origin where it referred to a carnival performer that bit the head off a chicken.
And yes, arguing about the distinction between geek and nerd is exactly the sort of thing a geek or nerd would do.
@Jax:
Dudette, you just cited, like, the touchstone of outsiderhood. Creep is crucial.
You are very savvy. That is waay, waaay outside your wheelhouse. My appreciation of your savviness rose abrubtly.
I would not have predicted “Creep” from you and it was absolutely spot-on perfect. You have depths beyond measure. That was awesome.
Hamms, it was 1982-83 or 81-82. I was dancing poncily with a gorgeous young woman. The budget suggested a local only thing. My tux was rented from a joint designed towards lower middle class weddings. I had to go for a fitting. Best guess it was local only. The budget was austere. I had no idea what to do or when or how.
The Suburbs, btw. Awesome effing band. Really great for then.
Will not say who. I was one of the poncey, genteel idiots. Which was kinda against type. I had normal hair then because I would get booked more often. But I am not/was not genteel.
That was fun. The Suburbs rock.
I held this back. I as an actor have a bit role in a Jayhawks video. Two, actually, but the other as part of an undistinguished fawning crowd. Doesn’t really count.
@Kylopod:
Anthony Michael Hall was neither. He was socially inept, but proto geek jock.
@Jax:
Love, you need like a billion likes for the Creep ref. That was so spot on.
Song 2 by Blur hit me like a hurricane when I first heard it. A compact force of fury.
I was in Dallas or Fort Worth or suburbs between, no idea where – following a printed Mapquest map to a DB2 training seminar.
Heard it and rocked out so hard.
@de stijl: My bad, the Suburbs! I still think I maybe spotted you.
Ohhh, now, see?! Song 2 by the Blur was also my jam in high school. I didn’t get much radio back then, but Sunday night was Radio Free America. That’s how I found the Blur. Also….Sheep on Drugs. And a bunch of other rave shit that was waaaaay outside of Wyoming’s wheelhouse.
One of the coolest bits of Song 2 was being obliterated. You would be smooshed if you rejected. It was a very direct song.
Rancid has Ruby Soho. A beat and an ethos. Fools get smooshed.
Under A Red Hot Moon
@Jax:
You’re so fucking special. I wish I was special.
@de stijl:
Idiot abides.