Saturday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Saturday, September 9, 2023
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56 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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Some of the recent discussion has me thinking more generally about the tension between pointing out problems, weaknesses, etc vs. proposing specific alternatives, solutions, etc.
On the one hand, I see the appeal of “don’t engage in the former unless you also address the later.” We might call this the “STFU!!! doctrine.”
Left unchecked, focusing only on the problems/weaknesses can lead to unproductive bitchfests, wallowing, etc. It can even exacerbate the very problems/weaknesses under consideration.
And yet the STFU!!! approach could be taken too far, inspire complacency* and avoidance, and otherwise preemptively shut down productive conversations/pre-mortems.
So the** alternative is to engage in unbridled stress testing. Focus on the weak points, address them from all perspectives, etc. We might call this the “Red Teaming doctrine.”
Realizing that I am a motivated reasoner, and that I will inconsistently appeal to one doctrine or the other for “reasons,” I’m wanting a principle that can put some guardrails on my thinking.
I’m interested in how others think about this.
*This notion of inspiring complacency tickles me.
**I realize this is not THE only alternative — I’m merely trying to present the poles.
Now that Mimai got the ball rolling. It’s been a while since James did one of his “woke up this morning no saw a stupid story in the paper” posts, so I’ll do one. I didn’t read a story in yesterday’s WAPO because the headline was just, paraphrasing, “5th Circuit Upholds Another Stupid Ruling”. Kevin Drum points out a) I malign the 5th Circuit because b) that’s not what happened. Drum quotes the Post’s article,
The 5% of the order that remains says four of the ten agencies may not,
(The other six agencies can coerce against Constitutionally protected speech?)
Doesn’t seem to justify the WAPO headline,
as opposed to maybe, “Even Trumpy 5th Circuit Won’t Uphold Most of Lower Court Order Supporting Fake News”.
@Mimai:
Where I think the distinction should be drawn: if someone is pointing out the existence of a problem so as to raise awareness, but isn’t sure what to do about it, that is a useful discussion. What isn’t useful is pointing out problems with a proposed solution to a problem without providing another proposed solution, because then the implicit alternative solution is to just ignore the problem.
Basically what it gets down to is even if there are problems with a proposed solution, absent a better solution, it’s still the best solution.
@Mimai:
In the real world, your theory WOULD/SHOULD be the way problems are addressed. However, in THIS real world as currently constituted, it’s difficult to have any reasoned conversation when the majority section of one group of people (Republicans) have chosen to ignore reality – literally. They literally believe bullshit. It’s impossible to have well-reasoned, honest, articulate, policy based discussions when one can’t even agree on a simple idea like “group masking and social distancing will help slow the spread of a global pandemic”, or “Fossil fuels are the main driver of the climate change we are currently experiencing”. or “gasoline prices are controlled by worldwide oil production supply and demand. There is nothing a president can do about it.”
So as long as one set of people chooses to ignore objective reality, and instead want to “own the libs”, there is no way to have reasoned disagreements or compromise.
@Stormy Dragon:
To give a concrete example: all the Republicans constantly blithering about their “just asking questions” about trans healthcare don’t have any proposed ways of improving that care, because they don’t want trans people to actually have good care. So they’re pointing out the “problems” in bad faith in hopes that the result will be trans people being forced to pretend to be cis people. It’s not a useful area for debate because even with any problems, the current solution is still the best solution.
@EddieInCA:
I often read conservative sites. It started as inquiry into whether they have something useful to say, which is how I started reading OTB back in it’s Republican days. But I fear I’ve allowed it to become enemy recognition and point and laugh. The vitriol against masking is incredible. They would prohibit anyone from masking.
One could have an argument about the efficacy of masking. There are studies that say it’s ineffective. Really more that mask mandates were ineffective than masks don’t work. But they’re impervious to even a simple cost/benefit analysis that masks may not be great, but they might help and cost next to nothing. And don’t even try pointing out red states show more COVID deaths. “You can’t trust deep state statistics. FL is full of old people. Doctors were forced to write COVID on death certificates.”
I take it as a sign of Manichaean personality. Everything must be sorted into good or evil, no in between. And evil in any form must be opposed.
@Stormy Dragon: Kevin Drum recently had a chart, but I repeat myself, showing the number of “gender surgeries” performed in the U. S. The data is sparse, but Drum infers there are about 500 such performed on minors per year. And likely almost all of them are “chest/breast’, not genitalia.
This is a common, and successful, rhetorical technique. If carefully parsed the claim is effectively, “Teachers and others might be pushing genital surgery on kids, which would be awful.” But the moralistic* skip past the implied “might be…would” to “that’s awful”.
* George Lakoff observed that conservatives are able to think through complex causation, but they default to analyzing everything through simple morality. I keep citing this at OTB because I think it’s an important insight. They literally do not think like we think.
@gVOR10:
I know anecdotes are not evidence… BUT….. Since 2008, I’ve averaged 80K air miles per year on American, (and another(20K per year on Delta) with several years over 125K miles. Pre-pandemic, I would estimate I got sick about 50% of time within 3-4 days of a flight. That was a pattern for 10+ years. Post pandemic, I’ve not been sick once after a flight. Not once. I’ve said it before, but I will never ever fly again without a mask. I’m currently in Miami, and headed to Atlanta tomorrow. And I might be the only one on the plane masked, but I will be masked.
I like not being sick. I’ve seen first hand, how wearing a mask has kept me from getting sick for over three years. I’ve not even had a head cold or sinus infection, which I also used to suffer from regularly. I like not getting sick.
I had one right wing asshole at DFW ask me “Why you wearing a face diaper, libtard”. To which I gave him my normal response, “Your mom likes the way it makes me look.”
Yeah, I’m an asshole.
@Mimai: One of my concerns with this idea of proposing problems/solutions is that it’s difficult to get conservatives to agree on desired outcomes.
Back in the day we all generally agreed that equal opportunity was a good thing, and that people ought to be loyal to the country, and that selfishness and greed were undesirable traits, and that people who break the law should have their day in court and pay for their misdeeds.
But now those ideas are somehow controversial. So when you identify a problem, and you’re attempting to find common ground on a solution, you can’t even agree that the problem is a problem.
So perhaps the first step is to work on re-establishing our common ground, our unifying purpose, and our collective interests.
@gVOR10:
That explains conservative support for an amoral scumbag like Trump, who repeatedly made gross comments about wanting to bang his own daughter: modern conservatives aren’t conservative.
@Tony W:
I don’t think we can re-establish our common ground until Trump is out of the picture. And even then, the MAGAs will be looking for a replacement for him.
@EddieInCA:
But I’ve seen an awful lot of people with that exact same anecdote.
By the grace of God, and a box of good dust masks I had in the garage when you couldn’t get N95s, I and my wife are still COVID virgins.
@DK:
No, they aren’t conservative.
Social media has connected different people who would not normally be connected. Going back to that Yglesias thing about compromise, gay rights in the 90s might have played much differently had ACT UP been on twitter instead of being a very effective but militant group of activists. We could have had endless, endless moaning about nobody respects the free speech rights of poor Jesse Helms and how terrible it is to block the doors of government buildings and how the White House should be ash-free. And yet their tactics worked–the CDC gave activists huge amounts of access.
Because social media has shown what it’s like to be free and interesting, there’s been a definite campaign to turn liberal tolerance into something that’s solely about rigid bigots and absurd anti-intellectualism rather than new things and different experiences. You really can’t have that as your ideology in life. It’s miserable. You should be able to get along with people, I suppose. But spending copious amounts of time trying to get inside the heads of anti-vaxxers or anti-trans bigots is just a travesty. That’s now how life should work.
@CSK:
We cannot establish common ground as long as a segment of the population see FOX, and their even worse imitators, as reliable news sources.
The root problem is not Trump. The root problem is that the GOPs are still the party of their plutocratic funders. Said funders realized decades ago they could not run on an honest platform of tax cuts for themselves and no regulation of their corporations, so they lie. A lot. What we see now is not so much because of Trump, but the cumulative effect of decades of lies. The party may split, but only if the base make populist demands, like say better health care, that would actually cost the plutocrats money.
Watching clips of Trump’s South Dakota Rally. He sounded scared and shrill and looks really sick, bloated, beatdown, and tired. The stress of his legal problems are definitely taking a toll. Trump is not healthy at all.
@CSK:
Found. Kari Fake, Huckster Carlson, and Vivek Ramalamadingdong.
@gVOR10: Ha. I just wrote such a post independently of this comment. A storm last night agitated one of the dogs, so I didn’t get much sleep so I’m late to the party.
@gVOR10:
But there’s no anti-Biden bias in the corporate media that seeks to frame Biden-related news in the worst possible way.
@gVOR10:
@CSK:
With yet another hat tip to Kevin Drum, here’s what the current GOP believes:
Trump won the election.
COVID came from a lab leak.
Climate change is a hoax.
Joe Biden took bribes from Hunter’s clients.
Masks don’t affect COVID transmission.
The FBI is engaged in a partisan war against Republicans.
How does one find common ground with this…? Asking seriously.
@DK: OK, Vivek Ramalamadingdong is the internet win of the day. Actually laughed out loud.
@EddieInCA:
These people all believe (or say they believe) that everyone is exactly the same. They say that everyone lives in the same bubble and has the same epistemology. It’s just not true. And that’s a harder nut to crack than being wrong about where Covid came from. We’re talking about homeschooling/cult people who teach their kids that everything is indoctrination.
@DK:
Well, they’re all trying very hard to be replicas of Trump, I’ll grant them that, but there’s something uniquely appalling about him that no one can really duplicate.
@EddieInCA:
The answer is that you don’t find any common ground with this.
Apparently only one percent of Trump fans want Marge Taylor Greene to be his V.P. The overwhelming choice is Ramaswamy.
http://www.newsweek.com/marjorie-taylor-greene-suffers-polling-calamity-1825432
On a completely different note, I’m not in my hometown at the moment, but it appears to have been semi-wrecked by yesterday’s incredibly violent afternoon thunderstorm. Huge trees down all over, blocking most major thoroughfares. As far as I know my place is intact, happily. One family had to be hospitalized when a tree took out their house.
@CSK: Hope you and yours remain safe
@MarkedMan:
We’re all fine; thanks for asking.
@gVOR10: I still haven’t gotten Covid (although I suspect I may have gotten RSV once), but I ascribe my success at staying free of the infection from being misanthropic as much as I do from being a masker. But I leave for Korea on Tuesday, and given that everyone I know who has had Covid since the pandemic “ended,” about half a dozen people, got Covid either after a plane trip or having attended at Trade Show/convention/large-scale job fair, I’ll be masking on the plane.
It seems like a no-brainer to me.
I don’t fly very often (like hardly ever) but my pre- and post- pandemic experience mirrors yours. Yes, I mask, and no, I haven’t been sick in 3 years.
@gVOR10:
There’s a theory out there which is not without merit, that masking works not by eliminating contact with the virus but by lowering the dosage of the infection. Dosage is an important factor in infections. It’s one thing to have, say, a single virus infect one cell and quite another to have millions of cells infected simultaneously. The first give the immune system much more time. Time is a key factor as is scale of the response. Sometimes the scale of our own immune system response is what kills us, particularly with COVID.
I keep vaxed but deliberately do not mask. I want my immune system constantly getting exposed. These exposures function as booster shots. Isolation encourages the system to reduce the particular defense to a specific invader to minimum.
@CSK: Yes because one pathological liar in the White House isn’t enough.
@Mimai:
I’d say this is exactly what happens with the “Biden is too old” complaints.
The power of incumbency is very strong. There isn’t a solution out there that is so much better than Biden that it matches that power of incumbency. And no one else is interested in running anyway, not even putting out feelers.
And our old man will be running against their old man, but relatively few people seem to notice this right now, so all the complaining does is weaken our old man.
I would like to see a fake “grassroots” thing appear positioned on the right about how Trump is ancient and “we” need more young blood.
@OzarkHillbilly:
To be fair, I have also noticed a significant decrease in post-flight respiratory symptoms, and I generally do not mask any more. I suspect that at least part of the change is improved sanitation and air filtration in commercial aircraft.
@DrDaveT: Yep, I suspect so.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Interestingly, in that survey, Ramaswamy at 30% was followed by “Don’t know” at 17 % followed by Mike Pence at 12%. All the others are way down in the single digits.
Odd that Pence should be so relatively high on the list. As far as the MAGAs are concerned, Pence is the lowest kind of pusillanimous backstabbing traitor.
@EddieInCA:
@OzarkHillbilly:
Same here, as I think I’ve mentioned a few times. Not even sniffles in 3 years. Maybe we can start a club.
Pre-pandemic, flying or not flying, I’d get 2 or 3 colds every year. Since early March 2020, absolutely nothing.
@Kathy:
I contracted double pneumonia in June 2019. Nothing since then, except a symptomless Covid case after a plane trip last Christmas. I only found out about that because I was tested.
@Gustopher:
Exactly why my rejoinder is always: Yes, Trump and Biden are old.
Point noted.
So…now what?
@DrDaveT:
When smoking in airliners was eliminated most companies sought to decrease fuel usage by decreasing the need for by-pass air scavenged from the engines for cabin air refreshing. This was done by closing down the vents, so less air was needed to maintain pressure. COVID ended that practice and brought HEPA filters into the system. Cabin air now is fresher and cleaner than it had been in the past. Perhaps ever, as far as jetliners go.
Missed this yesterday.
Forty nine years ago.
@DK:
@Gustopher:
And right on cue…. The Young Turks…
President Joe Biden has had a long and historied career in American government. He rescued us from the possibility of a second Trump term and we appreciate his service to the country. But at this point in time, we must have a strong, healthy candidate to make sure we avoid a fascist takeover of our government. Dear Mr. President, please do the right thing and bow out with dignity, so we can move on to the next generation of Democratic leaders – and so that we can defeat Donald Trump and the radical Republicans.
As of this evening, the petition had a whopping 1500 signatures.
Oh, and Cenk… GIVE ME A NAME.
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/progressive-cenk-uygur-says-the-thing-no-one-else-is-willing-to-say-on-the-left-about-intensely-selfish-joe-biden/
@EddieInCA:
Muhammad Li
@EddieInCA: Ain’t nobody paying no attention to Cenk Uygur. His anti-Hillary screeds after she mathematically-eliminated Bernie were an in-kind donation to Trump.
There’s nothing new about Uygur doing what he’s best at: simping for the far right by undermining its opponents.
@Stormy Dragon: @Gustopher: Thanks for these responses.
@EddieInCA: I’m not sure how to respond. I didn’t propose a theory. Nor did I indicate my affiliation with the STFU vs. Red Teaming doctrines. Nor did I frame this in terms of discussions between Republicans and non-Republicans.
I was/am truly interested in how folks think about this issue of identifying problems vs. identifying solutions. Based on the discussion, I suppose that folks think about it like they think about many (most?) things. An observation, not a judgment.
Trump is getting increasingly sloppy. Saw the word “hero” in the headline and re-posted something that damned him. Oops.
All these legal cases may be starting to affect him. Must have a dozen lawyers pelting him with questions and demanding decisions, tough decisions. I wonder what his blood pressure is.
@dazedandconfused:
Trump saw the words “idol” and “hero” in the headline and that’s all that registered with him.
@OzarkHillbilly: Ramalamadingdong is what, then? A non-pathological liar?
I think this is a case where
sexisma cigar is justsexisma cigar.@dazedandconfused:
Rudy claims Benito is upset that Navarro was convicted.
You’d think he of all people would know the trick of dipping the pacifier in bourbon.
I had better luck with Lan Lam’s water browning technique. It helps to follow the directions in order. I did set the burner lower, half heat and low heat, rather than high heat and medium heat. So I didn’t get fully caramelized onions. I expected that, because I was making balsamic onions. It does go much faster.
@EddieInCA: Meh… “Biden should step down” is another of those situations I think of as wanting to want something rather than wanting to have something. If Biden were really too old and significant numbers of people wanted someone else to run, they’d figure out who to get behind and force the issue.
The same holds true on the GQP side regarding Trump. If they really wanted Ted Cruz, DeSatanist, MTG, Ramalamadingdong or somebody else, they’d get that person nomed and elected. What they want (and this is a “both sides do it” thing) is to complain about the poor choices available. In 2028, the Democrats will discover who they want next–or lose (maybe both, who knows?).
@dazedandconfused: In the header photo for that article, Trump and Melania are standing in an empty sanctuary in front of a crucifix that is facing the wrong direction. Anyone got a theory, symbological or otherwise?
(More than one “Oops” here?)
@Mimai:
I am entirely conditioned to immediately propose solutions, or at least solution approaches. My degrees are in Operations Research, which essentially turns “story problems” into an academic discipline. I have found that people trained as economists (or physicists, somewhat to my surprise) have the same predisposition.
That said, I am mature enough now to understand that when my wife tells me about her latest problems at work, she really wants me to sympathize with her and validate her frustration, not to propose solutions.
For political problems, I tend toward the AA twelve step view. If part of the problem is that people aren’t admitting that there is a problem, then there is value in highlighting the problem even if you don’t yet have a solution in mind. If people are disagreeing about exactly what the problem is, it is valuable to illuminate that disagreement and either try to reach consensus or find the irreconcilable point of disagreement.
Is it always wrong to criticize someone else’s solution, even when one has no better solution to propose? The Hippocratic Oath seems appropriate here — “first, do no harm”. If the proposed solution would make things worse, it’s a good idea to point that out. Otherwise, it’s probably best to be constructive where possible — “here’s something that would make your solution even better”.
I hope that wasn’t as incoherent as it seemed when I was typing it.
@dazedandconfused:
So, you backed him when you knew he was a contemptible lying rapist con man, but won’t now that everyone else knows too? Stay classy, Albert.
@DrDaveT: I very much appreciate this. Thoughtful and coherent. Thank you.
I especially appreciate your reference to predispositions — self and scholarly/occupation. Facilitating story and understanding vs. problem solving and change. This tension is central to my clinical work (somewhat adjacent to the topic at hand but that’s where my brain went).
@CSK:
I also want Pence as Trump’s running mate. At a certain. Point, you just go for the hilarity.
@DK: ding-ding-ding we have a winner.
Cenk Uyghur is just a Grade A shithead. This should not be news to anyone who pays any attention to his Young Turks nonsense. (As a rule of thumb, I would simply not name my punditry podcast after the perpetrators of the Armenian Genocide… he’s not hiding his assholery.)
I’m not a huge fan of the horseshoe theory, but there are certain people who are just shitheads, who will migrate away from the center (because they’re “iconoclasts”), but don’t really have a lot of concern about which off center part they are on.
They tend to end up on the right-wing in the end, but less a horseshoe and more a “who will put up with a shithead”. There’s usually misogyny and racism involved, sometimes anti-queer bigotry.
Uyghur will join Matt Taibbi, Glenn Greenwald and Bill Maher as a useful idiot who just hates lefty people more than right wing policies.
After all, no one on the right is going to tell them that hating women, trans people, Black folks or gays is wrong.