Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, November 12, 2022
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87 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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Reading the news and thinking over the past few days, I am persuaded that we peaked as a society in 2014.
In retrospect, those were some great days.
Wrapping up a month long trip with a couple days in London before heading back to LA on Tuesday.
Santorini: absolutely gorgeous, good food, but I can see where summer would be a nightmare.
Florence: been there, done that, and going back was a waste of time. I didn’t love it when I lived there, still don’t.
Barcelona: hallucinogenic weirdness alongside excellent city planning. Great food, great vibe.
Lisbon: lives up to the hype, a beautiful, engaging city with fado but so-so food.
San Sebastian: Stunning in every dimension, a perfect convergence of natural and man-made beauty. I love this place.
London: I’ve been to London something like a a dozen times. Greatest large city on earth. Have I run out of things to see and do? Puh-lease.
Worst thing about going back to LA? The sheer, brutal ugliness. The homeless tent cities. The eye-stinging air and the sky that’s seldom blue, and never, ever the blue of San Sebastian.
Best thing about going back to LA? Weed delivery, our newly-installed hot tub, and the fact that we are making progress on getting a TV show.
@Tony W:
Betting against the United States is like betting against the Yankees. We often seem like we’re done – Civil War, the Great Depression, riots in the 60’s and Vietnam, 911, Trump – but it’s foolish to count us out. The burned out Boomers are fading, Gen Z is coming. Keep hope alive.
@Michael Reynolds: Thank you Brother.
@dazedandconfused
Thanks for the link. I’m reading it with great interest.
Kevin Conroy, who voiced Batman in The Animated Series and many other animated shows, movies, and games, passed away yesterday. He was gone too soon at 66.
IMO, he was the best Batman.
Yesterday Trump claimed he saved the 2018 Florida campaigns of Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott by sending the FBI down to Broward County to stoop Democrats from stealing votes.
That never happened according to multiple spokespeople from the DOJ.
Oh, and Trump is suing the DOJ to block the effort to have him testify before the Jan. 6 Committee on November 14 (purely coincidentally the day he’s going to make his big announcement).
@Michael Reynolds: The kids are alright.
@CSK: You mean he lied??? Why I never!
@OzarkHillbilly:
It gets better. He’s also bitching that he didn’t get nearly enough “congratulations and praise” for the stunning midterm victories of his endorsees.
Trump is really, really going nuts today. Now he’s bellowing that there has to be another election in Arizona immediately because Mark Kelly only beat Blake Masters by cheating.
Both of them.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Well, even he must know his demand for congrats is a joke, or why else would he be flipping out about Blake Masters?
@CSK:
Figures. He’s run out the clock.
I’d go into why America, and the world as well, requires he be indicted and tried post haste, but we know that probably won’t happen. What we have left is NY AG Letitia James. She’s the only one with the courage and the authority to actually do something.
From Cryptocurrency exchange FTX files for bankruptcy protection in US
My Fruede has been thoroughly Schadened.
@CSK:
Senile dementia, cognitively impaired. He is losing his grip on reality.
You can see the impairment in the increasingly wild and stupid stuff he now says.
And on top of being cognitively impaired, he’s a malevolent churl. Not a great combo.
I see people speculating lately that Trump is starting to clearly show signs of dementia based on some of the deranged stuff he posts. How is it any different than the past seven years? But if it is true I look forward to hearing that he’s drooling into his oatmeal as Eric, Don Jr. and Ivanka argue over whose turn it is to “change the Donald”.
@senyordave:
He’s really ramped it up the past few days.
@senyordave: The difference is that they now anticipate a sliver of opportunity to get rid of him.
They have missed some of these opportunities in the past, and it has bitten them in the backside. I expect that the whisper campaign will begin in earnest soon.
@Michael Reynolds:
I’m reminded of the Churchill quote about how Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing — after they’ve exhausted all the other options
It’s the nanny’s turn. Always.
@senyordave:
They pay people to change him. They probably are fighting about who gets the money. I haven’t watched Succession but what’s going on at Mar a Lago is probably darker and funnier.
@Michael Reynolds: I won’t be around to see it but the Generation after Z is probably Americas next ‘Greatest Generation’. These kids seem like adults in Children’s bodies and have extremely high emotional intelligence.
Better late than never.
@gVOR08:
The old man on Succession still has all his marbles, a lot of the show’s dynamic is him playing the kids off against each other. The show is a bit like King Lear except the old guy is not going nuts.
Alex Jones ordered to pay $473M more to Sandy Hook families
I think Alex Jones could work to pay his debt to society off by working at Federal Prison Industries.
Trump wrote that the “electron” was stolen from Blake Masters.
@Michael Reynolds:
This is a big reason why I never took the “end of democracy” rhetoric very seriously. Our institutions and national culture are not as fragile as is claimed, and we’ve endured far worse.
Also, you skipped over Gen-X and Millenials. Once you boomers die off, we’ll be the ones running things. Unfortunately, our generations have a lot of turd politicians too, so I’m not expecting any miracles.
I’ve been reading and following Alexander Dugin for close to 20 years. If you don’t know who he is, Google is your friend. This is a pretty big deal:
https://twitter.com/Tendar/status/1591308229333905409/photo/1
@Kathy: And even she’s only prosecuting the company last time I paid attention. (Which I must admit isn’t recently.)
@gVOR08: I would think that they have to know there’s no “money” after he’s dead. At least Ivanka knows. Don Jr. and Eric may not–especially Eric, he’s not the sharpest little spoon in the silverware drawer.
@CSK: WA! I am the king of typos and not even I can do that one. “I” and “R” aren’t even close to each other.
Well, Mo Brooks just dumped a bucketful of warm feces on Trump’s head:
http://www.al.com/news/2022/11/mo-brooks-says-trump-dishonest-disloyal-incompetent-crude.html
@CSK:
And so it finally begins.
I expect more.
@Andy: Something tells me Dugin is going to be disappointed.
@Jen:
The intra-party warfare is going to be epic.
@Andy:
Try Aleksandr Dugin.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
No, there are three letters between them. At least he didn’t say “erection.”
@CSK: @Jen:
So says “the outgoing congressman from Huntsville.”
When a GOP who wants a career in Congress says it, then it might mean something. Right now, they are all looking at Cheney and Kinzinger and saying, “Nope, not me.”
@Andy: Fascinating link, especially if you have some vague idea of what Dugin is, and I have some vague idea. Apparently he’s decided he’d rather be Putin’s successor’s brain than Putin’s brain. Have you really been reading Dugin for twenty years? And retained sanity? And why?
Dugin’s daughter was killed in an attack often assumed to have been by Ukranians targeting Dugin himself. Personally, I wouldn’t discount it being some internal schism within Dugin’s followers, or even Dugin himself. If it was the Ukranians, maybe they’re now glad they missed.
Dugin says Russia needs an ideology, one Dugin would be happy to provide. My reading list has included Brad DeLong currently and Karl Popper lately. They both mark ideology as the enemy of everything good. (Popper under the broader term “historicism”.)
@OzarkHillbilly:
Something tell me the bomb that killed his daughter was meant for him.
@Tony W: Why 2014? I mention Brad DeLong above @gVOR08:. I’m reading Slouching Toward Utopia. He speaks of a “long 20th Century” of economic progress, an era in which Malthus is wrong and we have enough and progressively more, starting in 1870 and ending in 2010. Still reading, but I believe he sees ending it in 2010 as a bit arbitrary.
As Marcy Wheeler observed,
I predicted that anything fewer than a 6 seat majority would be a clusterfuck. And remember that at least a handful of incoming MoCs are or were under criminal investigation.
Boehner had difficulties managing his caucus when he had a 30 seat majority (when Freedom Caucus was differently constituted). Numerous times he needed Pelosi to count votes for him (as Paul Ryan had needed too). There’s no reason to believe McCarthy will do better
Please pass the popcorn.
@Kathy: I have always thought the bomb was just as likely to have been planted by Putin as by the Ukrainians. Maybe more likely.
@Kathy: He wrote a story for the DC Pride comic book about how he immediately understood the dual nature of the role because of his years living in the closet. It’s available for free online at the DC comics thing, and has been liberally quoted in a bunch of other places.
It’s pretty good and worth hunting down. Not worth registering to DC’s website to legally get the free copy though, but what it worth another registration.
He was great in the role, and I’ve never heard people say bad things about him personally (unlike that dick Gallagher). I’m not sure he was the best Batman, but he definitely was the yardstick by which all Batman portrayals would be measured.
(I have a fondness for the more comedic versions — Batman ‘66, or The Brave And The Bold. Conroy was the best of the darker portrayals, by far.)
@Stormy Dragon: @Jim Brown 32:
I have a certain parental pride in Gen Z. About a million of them have a teensy, tiny bit of my intellectual DNA in them. I had an instinct early on that they were not to be lectured or condescended to. I treated them as peers. My readers at least have always been a lovely bunch of humans. Better than my generation.
@OzarkHillbilly:
That was my implication.
@gVOR08:
We binged Succession several months ago, for myself it was curiously addicting even though in the first few episodes I had decided every character was someone I would probably break their nose if I ever had to deal with them.
The reason we watched it was my niece, who is a sound engineer in the movie biz. She says the guy, Nick Brittel, who did the score is a bona-fide gifted musical genius, perhaps of the generational variety. Movie producers are stunned to find he is capable of banging out scores in a week for whole movies.
She told us Brittel has been constantly begged by the classical music world to produce a symphony, but, being a multiple Oscar nominee, hasn’t found the time and/or considers hopping off the golden gravy train currently riding to be financially most unwise. Probably right about that, alas. However an examination of his work in Succession reveals 26 original compositions which appear linked musically in a way that makes them something of an outline for a symphony, so the hopeful got hope.
It’s damn good stuff.
@CSK:
Are you a transliteration nitpicker? 😉
I’ve always gone with “Alexander” because it’s more phonetically correct in my view and was the norm when I was getting my education in Russian history and language.
@gVOR08:
I got my degrees in Russian and Eastern European History in the early 1990’s. I’ve been reading about Russia most of my life. After I joined the Navy and become an intelligence analyst, I first heard of Dugin, and it was clear by the late 1990s that he was becoming a leading intellectual of the reactionary right in Russia, which was a growing concern in Washington.
I read him and about him because it tied into my job at certain points, but also because of my interest in Russia. And if one wants to understand what’s going on in another country, then one needs to pay attention and understand people like Dugin – actually, not Dugin personally, but the ideology he promotes.
That said, he’s just one intellectual and doesn’t have as much influence as he once did, but he’s still someone important people in Russia listen to.
I saw a guy on a motorcycle this morning. It was then a 14F windchill for people just standing still. Him, on a motorcycle, was facing far worse and he seriously underdressed. I was wearing my serious winter coat and hat and I was a bit cold.
That dude was either very motivated and had no other choice on transport and really needed to be somewhere in a damn hurry like a hostage payment drop-off, or he was a frostbite loving masochist.
It was an odd sight. He was wearing jeans, ffs!
@Andy:
I tried your link and it didn’t work for me. I could, however, find it under “Aleksandr Dugin.”
@Kathy: Whoosh! Right over my head. I’d say “great minds” and all that, but in this case you might be in trouble.
I believe Dugin is among those who advocates for what amounts to genocide. If you read Novosti occasionally you certainly find the sentiment that the country should be dismembered and everyone who is a Nazi should be killed, with a lot of writers defining Nazi as anyone who takes on European values.
Steve
@Andy:
Any idea who Dugin’s patron is?
I’ve seen contradictory reports.
Maybe his daughter’s death has sent him outside normal bounds?
Finally cleared my veg patch today.
Been too wet last few weekends; my word, it’s warm for November in England.
Must have been 17C today; forecasts for 19C tomorrow in SE.
Sweetcorn crop was hopeless this year.
The varieties on sale here are bred for UK conditions; this years hot and drought did them in.
I got about three teensy cobs off about a dozen plants.
OTOH onions and jerusalem artichokes did well.
@CSK: That wouldn’t make any sense at all. He doesn’t speak ‘Murkan with a Japanese or Korean accent.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Well, he was in love with Kim Jong-Un, so maybe he picked an accent from Kim.
@JohnSF: My kiddo and I are trying to clear the greenhouse rows. I’ve got cantaloupe out the wazoo!!! And they’re GOOD, the sugar content would probably hurt a diabetic, but they’re ripening faster than I can sell them or eat them, so I started dehydrating them.
The smell of drying cantaloupe is freakin amazing. Dehydrated cantaloupe themselves, though….wow, that’s different. It’s very pleasant, at first, like fruity sugar, and then KA-POW, that cantaloupe taste punches your tongue and it’s….weird. Very strong. Cantaloupe-y. And chewy. 😛 😛
I bet honeydew melons would taste better dehydrated. Definitely gonna try some watermelon this next week, all my watermelons should be ripening by then.
Dad died 10 years ago today.
Or, more accurately: his body died. Dementia had already killed his personality, and that took years. Then dementia killed his body, too young.
I’m still not sure how I handle this, even a decade on. My wife says I have never really grieved for him, but how does one grieve a death that takes so long? Did I trick myself into believing the long process of his dual deaths allowed me to grieve gradually? I don’t know.
Anyway, he’s been gone 10 years or 20, depending on where one starts the count. And there are still days I miss the man he was, and even the man dementia left us at the end.
Now I’m going to my social medias and will post some bland remembrance because I can only say this stuff from behind the veil of anonymity.
That probably means my wife is right.
@Jax:
Still harvesting?
Stopped here in October; you’re in the SW aren’t you IIRC?
In UK harvest traditionally ends late September to mid October, depending on local crops.
Apart from pumpkins, LOL.
Usually we’re getting mild frosts by mid-November.
At least I’ve got longer to divide and move perennials; got some heleniums that started swamping a rose bush this year.
Things are growing weird, I tells ‘ee, Mr Frodo.
When does the weather turn wintry in your parts?
Elon wheels!
The saga continueth!
This is, erm, interesting:
Pharmaceutical corporations, so well known for their light-hearted and frivolous approach to reputational libels and liabilties relating therto.
Oopsie.
@JohnSF: The winter is already wintry here. 1 degree Fahrenheit for the last 10 days at night. I leased a level at a commercial greenhouse in the area and we’re trying to get it all cleared out so we can quit paying rent!
@Mikey: My old man suffered from Alzheimers. I have no words of wisdom. I know that he and I had a fractious relationship and that the first time I knew he was happy to see me I was 24 yo, at 11,000′ and he had lost a trail in the mountains. I loved him dearly, but I never got that from him in return. Except a little bit in later years.
I cried at his burial, especially when they played Taps. It wasn’t for the loss of my father so much as the father I’d always wanted. My mother once said, “You have to remember, he just got off the boat.” Very Slovenian.
@Jax:
Ah, oops, missed “greenhouse” in your post.
Teach me to try actually reading what people write.
Again, differences: in UK most non-commercial growers cleared out greenhouses by start of November.
Reason being, day length rapidly gets too short to ripen what’s left, even if temps are viable.
Daylight now is 10 1/2 hours; sun at 20 degrees over horizon at noon.
Intersting how some plants don’t mind, as long as the frost holds off.
Dahlias, some roses, and some salvias are still blooming.
@Mikey:
My Grandpa died from dementia and my Jewish Mom* will. It was and is horrible to lose someone to that. My only comfort with my Grandpa was he always knew me. His brain would put us into also sorts of weird places, but he knew it was me. Dementia sucks ass.
*she’s my Jewish Mom because she once told me that I was the child she miscarried and that she loved me and was proud of me.
Gosh, ya think?“Legendary TV personality Jerry Springer doesn’t consider himself the grand daddy of reality TV, he’s just sorry for ruining the culture.”
I think he’s taking too much blame/credit. Much like another famous cesspool from the political realm, Springer simply ran with and monetized on who we are.
@Jax: I envy you. The hardest thing to find in the supermarket is good quality melons. Part of the problem is that if you wait until they’re fully mature, they don’t ship worth jack’s shirt, so it’s hard to find melons that are mature.
@Mikey: My condolences for your continuing loss. My dad’s been gone almost 10 years, too, but in my case, he was so frail that I grieved for him still being alive and suffering the pain and weakness he endured. For me anyway, his death was a relief.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: When you cut my cantaloupe, the juice runs slow, like syrup, and it stinks up the whole house. 😛 I’ve honestly never had a “good” cantaloupe, until now. What most people can get at the grocery store is a green imitation that kinda ripened in transit.
Also why that KA-POW on the tongue when you eat a dehydrated piece that ripened on the vine is so weird.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
That’s one reason I’d have moved to France: the quality of the melons and peaches in French supermarkets is just wonderful.
For some reason, in English supermarkets they may look good, but taste like soggy cardboard.
If there was a revolutionary mob for French supermarkets in England, you can pass me a pitchfork!
@Jax:
You vex me!
You vex me and I shall have my revenge!
😉
@Jax:
One of the great status symbols of an English country house from the 18th/18th centuries were fruit houses that could grow melons to full ripeness.
Also peaches, apricots etc.
@JohnSF: We can’t grow much here outside, at 7,000 ft elevation.
The guy I leased my level from planted all 2 acres of his greenhouse in organic sponges (loofah’s) after he got caught growing weed when Colorado legalized it. Cuz you never know when that loofah market might really hit the big time! (eyeroll)
I could feed all 6,000 people in my county if I had that greenhouse all to myself.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I wonder how it is that the French are so competent at handling ripe fruit?
I was at a French market v. early one morning, when they were unpacking, and noticed a lot of the fruit seemed to be packed in cardboard divided crates, stuffed with straw.
Maybe that’s the trick?
But also, a lot of French markets are selling fully ripe produce picked within last 12 hours.
Have I said I love French supermarkets? 🙂
Paging Mike Reynolds and Harvard Law.
@Jax:
Loofahs?
LOL.
Funny thing, this year on Gardeners’ World Monty Don was growing loofahs.
If you can’t eat it, drink it, or smoke it, and it ain’t pretty, why bother?
😉
@JohnSF:
@Jax:
We had a little joke about what you CAN do with a loofah.
🙂
@Jax:
Another sad impact of Brexit: not a few allotment owners with greenhouses were buying certain seeds from certain Dutch seed merchants.
Not on a vast scale, but enough for friends and family.
Of course, now such wicked dealings are impossible, all is well, and the gangstas aren’t stepping in.
Of course not.
How daft do you have to be to be a politician?
I’ve seen Alzheimeimer’s three times up close. Grandmother, uncle, mother. All three ended ugly. I never want to be there, in that situation, like them. It is a mockery of life, heartbreaking. The person suffering becomes pathetic. They are no longer them.
I did not even like my mother very much, but it stung hard watching her pass. And then I had to clean up her house. There were dozens of used syringes discarded in the oddest places. Some were full. She unpacked an insulin shot, forget what it was for, and tossed it away. Months of unopened mail piled in a box. Rotting garbage in bags stacked up against the wall in the kitchen. She forgot how to function. Her house stank like a landfill.
I have seen what it looks like, what it is, and I want no part of it. That is a path I absolutely will not walk down. Nope! My genes are front-loaded towards that path way more than average. No guarantee, obviously, but quite likely. I sincerely hope not, but it isn’t in my control.
And that path, if it were to be the one I start to walk down, will be short because of an alternate off ramp I choose freely and eagerly. Nope, I refuse. I have seen the outcome, the result, and I want nothing to do with that at all. Ain’t gonna happen. Alzheimers is ugly, and shitty, and horrible.
In Ukraine: some “expert commentators and analysts” were saying it will be difficult for the Ukrainians to attack across the Dnipro.
Or then again, perhaps not.
@OzarkHillbilly:
No worries, man. It helps just knowing I’m not alone feeling this way.
@Beth:
I don’t know if Dad knew who I was or where I fit, but whenever I’d visit, he’d break out in a huge grin and say “It’s so good to see you!”
I mean, he said that to everyone, but still. He was just so friendly near the end.
If there was any mercy in all of it, it’s that he almost never really had any insight into his condition. Maybe at the very onset, he’d say “my mind isn’t working like it used to,” but before long he just didn’t know.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I get that. For us, it was my brother who felt the relief, he had been Dad’s caretaker for the last few years. I would take over for a few days from time to time to give him some respite, and it was so hard.
After Dad passed, the rest of the siblings gave our shares of the house to that brother, it was small recompense for what he’d had to deal with but at least he never has to worry about a place to live.
@JohnSF: What I learned from the cantaloupe is they need turned regularly. You can’t just harvest and put them in a box and expect them to ripen properly. Somebody’s gotta be turning them if you want to sell them at a fruit market and such!
I’d like to see how they harvest commercial melons. I suspect they just cut them off the vine when they’re big enough, and hope for the best.
@JohnSF: I worked in wholesale produce in Seattle during the 70s and 80s. The closest soft fruits ever came from was about 8 hours away when they were coming from Eastern Washington. Most melons came from 3-5 days away–except when they weren’t that close.
@Jax: “I’d like to see how they harvest commercial melons. I suspect they just cut them off the vine when they’re big enough, and hope for the best.”
Ayup. Pretty much. 🙁
@Mikey:
Alzheimer’s reveals the true self.
You wake up every morning in a new room. You don’t know where you are. Strangers crowd in offering drink and food. You don’t know who you are. You remember names and times long past.
I don’t know if this is universally true, but in my experience, in people suffering it is the oldest memories that are the last retained. I have been addressed as and treated as a childhood friend, by name often, or as a relative I never met many, many times.
My uncle was cool as a cucumber, chill as fuck almost everyday. ” Hey! Nice to meet you you! Who are you?” Super chill. My grandmother and mother raged against the new now. Cantankerous, petulant, annoyed, disdainful. My mother would bolt if no one stopped her. How does a demented old woman in a hospital gown get outside the hospital twice? Bad security and an incredible force of will. Once she got outside she had zero idea where it was, but she definitely wanted to go home. She desperately wanted to go home. She wanted to be left alone. I feel you, mom.
My grandmother forgot how to to chew. That devastated me. She forgot how to fucking chew food in her mouth. Holy crap, that was spooky!