Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, December 20, 2020
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69 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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Rest easy kiddies, Christmas is a go:
He doesn’t mention vaccinating the Elves. Why is it nobody ever thinks of the Elves? What those guys need is a union.
@OzarkHillbilly:
The elves cannot catch it. They are half-human and half-reindeer, and the fewer questions asked the happier everyone will be.
@Gustopher: That’s what Republicans say. 🙁
You have to read this yourselves. I haven’t consumed sufficient coffee yet to synopsize it:
http://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/19/us/politics/trump-sidney-powell-voter-fraud.html
We’re at the strawberries and marbles moment…
Powell, Flynn, oy vey
We’ll be very lucky to get to 1/20 w/o even greater damage to the country and its interests.
If Russia wants to grab the Baltics and Ukraine or China, Taiwan, now’s the time
@CSK: You know how Trump has been playing golf for decades and has never really gotten any better at it? The same is true of his term as President. You’d think after nearly four years, someone as genius as he claims he is would have picked up on the most basic aspects of what is and isn’t Constitutional, but no, he still wanted to do half a dozen things any American middle school student who watched 10 minutes of Schoolhouse Rock could tell you aren’t allowed.
31 days until this boil on America’s ass finally gets lanced.
@Sleeping Dog:
Even Giuliani now seems to think Powell is nuts.
@Mikey:
He doesn’t/can’t read. He refuses to sit still for briefings. He’s told us repeatedly he “goes by what his gut tells him.” He’s literally incapable of learning.
@Mikey:
And speaking of asses, the only thing about Trump that’s grown in office is his.
@CSK:
Hades, trump fired her. The only reason to appoint her special counsel is to ratf#ck the country. It will be interesting to see if Rosen folds on this or how many acting AG’s there are before trump finds his Bork.
@CSK: His gut tells him he wants another Bic Mac.
In news that will surprise absolutely nobody:
White House Blocks a Statement Acknowledging Russia’s Role in Cyberattack
@Sleeping Dog:
Not meaning to split hairs, but Trump’s campaign fired her. Obviously, she was too crazy for them, but not too crazy for him.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Supersize that, please.
And now for some comic relief:
http://www.rawstory.com/melania-christmas/
@CSK:
I stand corrected :), but it really is a difference without a differentiation.
That trump is doubling down on staying in office raises the question, why? A few thoughts.
1. He’s been convinced that he can’t pardon himself. The supremes won’t uphold it.
2. He doesn’t trust Pence to follow through and pardon him, if he resigns.
3. Without the pardon, he knows that he faces jail time. While we wonder and doubt that Biden will actively pursue an investigation of Trump, Trump can’t believe that he won’t.
4. If he resigns with or without a pardon, it makes his, running in 24, scenario less tenable and will make it more difficult to
hold on tokeep fleecing the cult.5. He knows he can’t live at Mar-a-Lago, the neighbors will fight it.
@Sleeping Dog:
Yes. Any and all of those things could be motivating him. It’s also possible that he enjoys being president for the following reasons:
1. It’s an easy, easy job, consisting of rage-Tweeting and watching t.v. all day, with at least two days per week on the golf course.
2. He’s addicted to attention, and now he’s the most famous person in the world. The spotlight is on him every single day.
3. He can fleece the rubes to his heart’s content.
More on how “the crazies are turning on the crazier” in the Trump administration:
http://www.nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/12/trump-coup-sidney-powell-martial-law-michael-flynn-meltdown.html
@CSK:
Judas Iscariot on flaming roller skates.
2017 New Yorker article on how the Sackler family made billions of Ameros creating millions of addicts
@CSK:
But we’re prevented from prosecuting him by an Office of Legal Counsel opinion that was based on the idea he’s vital to the nation and the nation’s work keeps him so busy that any distraction would harm the country. The opinion also depends on the idea that he’s not therefore above the law because he can be prosecuted later, after he leaves office. So let’s demonstrate we actually believe in the rule of law and prosecute his lazy, stupid, and capacious, arse.
@CSK:
One fine day Fred Trump calls his son into see him.
“What’s with your lousy grades, dumbass,” Fred says lovingly. “Are you ignorant or apathetic?”
“I don’t know, dad, “One-Term Loser says, ” and I don’t give a damn!”
I have an epidemiologist friend who has passed out from shots before. It’s just vasovagal syncope. You’re perfectly fine in 10-15 mins.
I present a Grand Unified Theory of Trumpism. There is a single word that encompasses virtually every Trumpist: Loser.
1) Males have lost their special status. Losers.
2) Whites are losing ground in terms of status. Losers.
3) Christians have lost ground to secularists. Losers.
4) Rural and small town America is emptying out. Losers.
5) Rolling legalization of drugs and protests against police brutality have weakened law enforcement. Losers.
6) Strong, forward-looking corporations are D, Coal, heavy manufacturing is R. Losers.
7) The education gap between college and non-college is widening. Losers.
8) And of course age, as always, loses to youth. Losers.
Losers. That’s who supports Trump. Democrats have a hard time seeing this because we encompass so many out groups who see themselves as losers. But in relative terms they can easily be seen as winners. And the socialist bent of many Democrats blinds them to the division within the business community. Amazon may be nasty to their employees, but the fact is they are on the blue team.
The love of losers extends to passivity in response to Russia, because there is no greater loser in the western world than Russia. And hatred for the Chinese, who are looking like geopolitical winners.
“I love the less educated.”
@OzarkHillbilly:
Please. That would be: “I love the poorly educated.”
Trump is one of the few people who can grossly insult his fans to their faces, and they’ll love it and come back for more.
@CSK: Dammit! Figures I’d get it wrong.
eta: I’m pretty sure they think it’s a compliment.
@CSK: when Trump said, “I Could Stand In the Middle Of Fifth Avenue And Shoot Somebody And I Wouldn’t Lose Any Voters”, he wasn’t complimenting them…
@Michael Reynolds:
My impression, at least as a foreigner, is that a lot of Trump’s supporters are simply grifters who see a way of making a fast buck by selling out the country. You could say they’re losers in the morality department, but they seem to be doing pretty well in the financial department.
For instance, a lot of the analysis I’ve seen claims that most of the Republicans in Congress and Senate who publicly support Trump will say in private that he’s an idiot — but they see an advantage to themselves in pretending otherwise. And I can think of a lot of words to describe the GOP senate leader (mostly centering around cynical and willing to harm his country for personal gain), but I’m not sure “loser” applies (at least not in the normal sense of the world).
@Northerner:
You’re talking about the parasites and predators who feed on the weak. The weak antelope attracts the attention of the lioness. The sick antelope invites disease. The dead antelope is home to maggots. But the initiating event is the antelope’s weakness.
@Northerner:
Or to put it another way, the problem is not the cult leader but the cult members. This is what scared me on election day 2016 and still scares me, not the predators and parasites like Trump or Mitch, but the 74 million losers so depraved that they joined that parade.
There are exactly three ways out of this. 1) The losers rise up and throw down the winners. 2) The winners crush the losers. 3) The losers settle into a morass of impotent self-pity.
My guess is option 3. The thing about losers is that they expect to lose. They are secretly most content in self-pity. Losers tend not to be terribly active or determined, which is of course one reason why they’re losers. And fortunately for us the guy who’d love to turn the losers into his own private army is himself is lazy, unfocused, emotional, paranoid and stupid. IOW: a loser.
74 million Americans voted for this weak-ass loser, but how many actually show up at the angry protests in defense of the Loser in Chief? Handfuls.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Which is weird, given that Trump is partial to boasting about his “Ivy League degree.”
@Teve:
The poor things don’t understand that Trump is rabidly contemptuous of them, as only a failed social climber can be.
@CSK: He’s boasting that he is better than them, and they don’t seem capable of understanding that.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Maybe it becomes comprehensible if you look at it in these terms: They regard Trump as their savior, and saviors are always superior to those they save.
@Teve:
Of course. And yet they loved him even more when he said it, because they live vicariously through him and his “owning of the libs” as they see it.
Remember, the term for Limbaugh fans, “dittoheads,” wasn’t a term invented by Limbaugh’s critics to insult them, it was a term the fans themselves coined as a proud self-descriptor.
There’s no shame within a cult from being a devoted cult member; quite the contrary.
@CSK: Undoubtedly photoshopped, but who cares? Who’s going to get an “Official” WH Christmas Card that isn’t going to roundfile it before the tinsel garlands have been taken off the tree and stored?
“So let’s demonstrate we actually believe in the rule of law and prosecute his lazy, stupid, and capacious, arse.”
Not gonna happen. And “rule of law” is a slogan, not a belief. Just like “fiscal restraint” and “limited government.”
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Presumably the Trumpkins would be thrilled to find them in their mailboxes (you should have seen the ecstatic response the image got over on Lucianne.com). Pity they won’t be receiving any.
@CSK: My point exactly. 😉
“Amazon may be nasty to their employees, but the fact is they are on the blue team.” Which is why I’m not inclined to believe the blue team is going to do anymore toward addressing economic inequality than the red team does. Corporatocracy forever!
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Capitalism is like gravity, there’s no getting rid of it.
Capitalism works because it is good anthropology, it understands human beings as they are, not as an elite wishes they were. Communism was and is absurd and doomed to fail because it begins from the premise that human beings will sacrifice for a common good and set aside their own needs for status. That’s not what humans are. In that sense communism is like pacifism, an idealistic notion that crashes and burns once you recognize that it relies on humans behaving. Capitalism OTOH relies on the facts: humans are selfish, greedy and determined to rise in status. And humans are differentiated, we aren’t clones, we have individual levels of ability.
Human greed and hunger for status combined with differing levels of ability means that homo sapiens produces its own parasites and predators. This is us. It’s always been us. It will always be us. Any system hoping to supplant capitalism will have to be even more in tune with fundamental human nature.
@Michael Reynolds: Nobody in the conversation right now, not even Bernie or AOC, is trying to get rid of capitalism.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Of course they do. The man’s a billionaire who lives in gilded penthouses. Flies around the world in his own jet (before Air Force One). But he’s willing to tell them what they want to hear. “The world used to be a better place for you! It was <take your choice: whiter; more Main Street friendly; a man could make a living with a high-school diploma>! We can turn the clock back! I can turn the clock back!”
The Asatru Folk Assembly — White-supremacist nordic pagans — now have a church in Minnesota.
@Teve:
If I saw the name Asatru Folk Assembly in passing, I might assume it was a dance troupe.
And I would be wrong.
@Kylopod:
Nobody in elective office is looking to supplant capitalism, but they’re among the supporters of Bernie and AOC etc. Periodically, I wander over to Naked Capitalism to see what’s being discussed there. There is a fair amount of discussion about some sort of post-capitalist nirvana, sometimes in a main post, but often in the comments.
@Sleeping Dog:
So?
I don’t think Trump gets his due as the GOAT of con-men. I struggle to find anyone who deserves to be in the same sentence with him. Election to POTUS as both buffoon and shameless liar would be enough to earn the title, but losing the office in disgrace and STILL milking $200 million-and-counting from his marks? I doff my hat to unmatched greatness.
@Michael Reynolds: Oh, I absolutely get that. But it’s still why I’m not inclined to believe that team blue fights for the interests of the citizenry any more than team red does. They’re probably less offensive to your sensibilities–not a high bar to jump in the age of Trump–but it’s still all “government by our betters” with “better” being scaled materially. I got no problem with it, but I hold equity in the economy, so the leaders are going to do what’s “best” for me no matter who it is. The rest is window dressing.
@Teve:
The grotesqueness doesn’t surprise me in the least.
@CSK:
But imagine the possibilities for amusement as a fat daft nordic nazi attempts a paso doble
there are some funny replies
@Teve: My gawd, Trump’s behavior is so outrageous it’s shocked Rich Lowry into near rationality. Now, if he and Ponnuru could get ahold of the idea it ain’t just Trump…
@Teve:
Gee, when I was a really little kid I thought that if I swallowed an apple seed, a little tree would grow in my stomach. You mean to tell me that doesn’t happen?
@JohnSF:
That is not a mental image that I wish to entertain.
ETA oops wrong website 😛
Oh dear.
UK govt. announces serious increase of lockdown restrictions due to new virus mutation.
France shuts down the the Dover crossings. Oh oh.
@Michael Cain: what I should have said is they don’t have the self respect to say, “No you aren’t.” Literally, they have zero self respect. He lies lies and lies to them and in unison they all say, “Thank you sir, tell me another.” I don’t get it. I really don’t get it. We all tell ourselves little lies, and accept the convenient obfuscations from others, but he pisses all over them and they are happy to call it rain.
@JohnSF:
And Johnson may attend a COBR emergency meeting tomorrow.
If the lazy fat fuck has sobered up and can be got back from Chequers where he’s doubtless buggered off to for the weekend.
Am I annoyed? Perhaps even a tad peeved?
Perhaps.
@JohnSF:
Awful.
I’d take this a lot more seriously if these 2 hadn’t been carrying water for him the past 4 years.
And just for the record, the woman had 3rd degree burns.
@OzarkHillbilly: yeah. I spent years working in half a dozen coffee shops. You don’t give someone 190° coffee through a drive-through window. Especially after 700+ customers already complained about getting burned. But, stupid conservative talking point that’ll never die.
@CSK:
No, no, no. You’ve merely not recognized their stumbling around, espousing hatred for [others] as the best dance these graceless oafs can perform in public. Now, under cover of night, it’s likely to be a whole nuther thing.
@JohnSF:
If they weren’t so reminiscent of most of my male relatives (to my chagrin, I come from people whose menfolk mostly failed the “loot & pillage, THEN burn” pop quiz), I’d be angry about the whole Nordic meme surrounding them. But then again, I KNOW that I’m wrong to imagine them dancing at the end of a rope.
Yeah, after so many years, that one is really tiresome. Gotta get my bitch on.
Twitter is publicly declaring Joe Biden the winner of the US election — on Trump’s own tweets
Twitter has kicked up the disclaimers a notch. 😀
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
Everything is by your betters. Government is by your betters, but so is the military, Wall Street, the professors at your university, the media, music, entertainment, medicine, architecture, the manager at your job. . .
This is the human condition and always has been. It comes with specialization. There is a hierarchy of ability and skill.
And this is a good thing. The problem we have right now is that government is by our lessers. We want a meritocratic hierarchy. I hope my doctor and lawyer know more than I do.
But you’re wrong that Democrats don’t care any more than Republicans do. We do genuinely give a fuck. Only Democrats vote to impoverish themselves for the greater good. That’s not just a difference in degree, it’s a difference in kind. I’ve personally voted away tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars. We are not them.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yes, but now we know that tort reform can safely be added to the list of conservative “principles” they only espouse when it benefits them.
I once had the “honor” of working on drafting implementing regulations for a piece of back door tort reform hidden inside the Homeland Security Act. Working with the oh-so-credentialed attorney’s from W’s white house gave me an entirely new appreciation for Ivy League Sleaze. They literally didn’t care what the law actually said; they wanted regulations that essentially ignored the Democratic amendments that had enabled the law to be passed in the first place.