Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, October 24, 2021
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59 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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Rained in Los Angeles this morning. That’s newsworthy.
We’re expecting another deluge of about 0.04 inches of rain Monday.
We might have to close the city.
@EddieInCA: Meanwhile, in northern California…
It’s all a hoax tho.
Murder, missing money and cover-up claims: South Carolina family mystery grips America
I’ll say:
They’re dropping like flies.
If this was turned into a book, people would swear it was fiction, and way too farfetched.
@OzarkHillbilly:
How does Suzy explain the fact that Maggie’s and Paul’s corpses were found if they’re not dead?
@CSK:
Magical thinking.
The Murdaugh story happens in the same region as ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil’.
Movie oriented community here. Thought I’d point that out. As always, the book is better.
This story is going to fuel bunches of books. I bet crime writers are shoving each other aside to get to South Carolina ‘low country’.
@JohnMcC:
Midnight was set in Savannah, Georgia, I think.
The new surgeon general of Florida, Dr, Joseph Ladapo, who previously has questioned the efficacy of vaccines and masks, refused to put on a mask in State Senator Tina Polsky’s office, despite her request and informing him that she had a medical condition (breast cancer, for which she will soon beginning radiation treatment). Eventually Polsky asked him to leave. The Senator said before going, Ladapo remarked, “Sometimes I try to reason with unreasonable people for fun.”
Like Trump, Ron DeSantis only hires the best people.
@senyordave:
Ladapo graduated from Harvard Medical School and also has a Ph.D in health policy from The Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; he received the Daniel Ford Award for health services and outcomes. Prior to going to Florida, he was a clinical fellow in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess in Boston.
It seems he has impeccable credentials. I’m…puzzled.
@CSK: Fake corpses?
@OzarkHillbilly:
Oh, indeed. And somehow the cops, the medical examiner, whatever EMTs or hospital personnel were involved, and the funeral home people all happily went along with this charade. Plus the reporters who covered it.
Holy shit. Some of it looks too good to be true, but it does appear to be AZ dessert.
@CSK: People who can swallow the 2020 election being stolen, will believe anything if the right people tell them to.
@CSK: Yep. Regionally pretty much the same low-country, IMHO.
All shall tremble and bow down before the mighty Sklor.
@JohnMcC:
I think Hampton’s a little too far inland to qualify. The low country and Savannah are coastal.
@CSK: Amongst other things, Harvard teaches people to be ambitious and there’s a clear route to success in FL public health under DeSantis.
@gVOR08:
Success at what price?
@CSK: None that Dr. Lapado isn’t willing to pay, apparently.
@CSK: I doubt it’s his soul, he probably sold that to get into Harvard.
@gVOR08: @OzarkHillbilly:
Apparently he’s a big proponent of hydroxychloroquine.
Yesterday, Steven and I went back and forth for a while about a subject we haggle on from time to time, and towards the end it became apparent that at least some (but not all) of the disagreement was caused by the different meanings we have for a common term. I won’t go into it here, but instead will give another example of this type of argument that occurs here with some regularity: whether Trumpers constitute a cult. I have no dog in that fight, but as near as I can tell all of the very passionate arguers believe the same general things about Trumpers and how they behave, so 90% of the argument is actually caused by everyone’s different understanding of the word “cult”. According to their own definitions, their arguments were sound. According to their opponents definitions, those same arguments were obviously wrong. What is fascinating to me is that the discussion never, and I mean never, turns to what I think is blindingly obvious – that the disagreement isn’t about whether Trumpers are a cult but what the definition of cult is. No matter how long the argument goes on, and no matter how many times each participant describes (in passing) their definition of cult, the argument never shifts to the definition itself. I’ve watched this play maybe a half dozen times, and even pointed it out a few times myself, but it has no effect.
I don’t know what to make of this, but I see it everywhere. It’s a common occurrence in all walks of life. It is one of the reason that academics, scientists and even engineers spend a lot of time on the precise meaning of the terminology they use. Even auto mechanics have to do it. If a layman walks in and says “My engine is knocking”, a mechanic knows it could be clatter, or lash or many other things. But if one mechanic says to another, “This engines is knocking”, they know it means precisely that the piston fuel burning pattern is incorrect on one or more cylinders. It definitely does not mean clatter or lash.
@MarkedMan: My sense, listening from the distance I have from the pseudo-dispute, is that you’re both talking past each other. Maybe from the beginning.
@Just nutha ignint cracker:
I think there is a lot of truth to this, but I still think that Steven and I have a real disagreement on how much politicians can influence a debate on something that arouses great passion among their constituents.
One thing I suspect we agree but hasn’t come up, is that if someone out of step with the majority of the electorate is elected by a fluke (say, Doug Jones / Roy Moore), that person only has a chance of retaining that seat if that majority they are out of step with is only a slim one. Even changing a political system to more fairly represent the voters will only cause change if the real majority favors that change.
I don’t disagree at all with what Steven has to say about political systems and parties. To the contrary, I find it very interesting especially given his extensive knowledge of these things. I am just less optimistic that changes can have a significant impact on quality-of-life outcomes unless it is accompanied by a change in culture. And as difficult as it is to change political systems, changing culture is much, much harder.
@MarkedMan:
Laynes Law.
You wrote:
Yes, this is because they are presumably interested in pursuing truth etc. [before anyone comes back at me, please note my use of the modifier]
By contrast, in most other “discussions,” the participants are more (exclusively?) interested in winning than in being correct, learning, etc.
Relatedly, skin in the game sharpens the mind and the arguments.
Just to add to the evidence that politicians have little effect when the public is against them, this article in The Hill talks about the growing frustration of Putin as Russia is closing up again because people are refusing to get vaccinated. In Putin’s case, he can to some extent abandon normal politics and use despotic means to get people vaccinated. That hasn’t happened yet, but I suspect that is more due to the disfunction of the Russian medical apparatus then anything else.
@Mimai: I have a whole mental catalog of “types of arguments”. Most casual arguments are of one type though. However they start they soon become a competition to see who can make the other side concede wrongness and hail the opponents correctness. This outcome almost never happens in real life, but that doesn’t stop anyone. I usually try to drop out of these arguments pretty quickly, as they are simply not going to go anywhere. Some might say my discussion with Steven falls into this category, but I’m not really trying to change his mind, and the discussion has helped me hone my own views very well. And he has changed my mind about several things during this discussion, at least in part by educating me about things I didn’t know.
There are other types of arguments though, and each type is fascinating in its own way.
@Mimai: By the way, thanks for the link to Laynes Law! It’s perfect. I’ll paste it below:
Layne’s Law of Debate:
Every debate is over the definition of a word. Or
Every debate eventually degenerates into debating the definition of a word. Or
Once a debate degenerates into debating the definition of a word, the debate is debatably over.
( please don’t change the way these are written — LayneThomas )
@CSK: Fair enough. Who’s got time to argue about that?
@MarkedMan:
True, thankfully. My single biggest concern over Trumpism is that it would change the broader culture. If it has, it’s worked to the advantage of liberals. We retain control of Hollywood, music, fashion and publishing. The proof that we continue to dominate the culture is the fact that the big public-facing corporations almost always come down on our side, because they can count.
As for the definition of a cult, I’d specify that we’re talking about a cult of personality. In this case, it’s the cult of Trump. I think it’s absurd to deny that a cult of personality exists around Trump. Is there a rival to Trump on the right? No. Can any political figure on the right oppose Trump and survive? No. Are all conservative politicians required to openly praise Trump? Yes.
If Trump shot someone dead on Fifth Avenue would he be rejected by Republicans? No.
How is this different than Stalin’s cult of personality? Or Hitler’s? Or the Hubbard/Miscavige cult? Or the Jim Jones or Asahara or Koresh cults of personality? The object of veneration is always an alpha male, generally cruel, and always an unabashed liar. The price of membership is a sort of intellectual auto-castration, slavish submission and in the end, self-harm.
A political party has ideas. The Trump cult has no ideas, it simply accepts whatever Trump says, even when he openly contradicts himself. So, for example, a political party could not get away with simultaneously claiming credit for creating a vaccine while also claiming it’s a plot by the deep state. Political parties demand at least some consistency, cults of personality only require submission to the cult leader.
Easy test: If on a given Monday every Republican in Congress said ‘A’ and Trump said ‘B’, what do you think the position of the party would be a week later? That’s right: B. And it would be unanimous. Exactly the same outcome as if we swapped the North Korean Communist Party congress for the Republican caucus, and Kim Jong Un for Trump.
And that is a cult of personality, not a political party.
@MarkedMan:
Yes, it is very telling how infrequently one sees anything approaching “you’ve changed my mind” or “I hadn’t considered that before” etc.
Your ongoing discussion with Steven has been interesting. I appreciate how you both have engaged it as well.
You also regularly lament the media and its surface-level (at best) coverage of geopolitical events. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to be calling for the key media figures and institutions to do better – ie, to go deeper, go wider, etc.
Is this different than the position you take in your discussion with Steven? In that discussion, you argue (again, correct me if I misrepresent you) that politicians are, in effect, powerless. That they are merely expressions of their voters and thus cannot (will not) do different or better.
But wrt the media, your position seems to imply the opposite – that the media leaders can and should do different and better. But aren’t they too mere expressions of their viewers?
The politicians who do different will not be re-elected or won’t be elected in the first place. Likewise, the media leaders and institutions who do different will lose viewership (revenue) or won’t ascend to prominence in the first place.
Perhaps these are apples and oranges, so the expectation of consistency isn’t fair. Either way, I’d be interested in your thoughts.
@Mimai:
I only claim this in a very narrow but important sense. 99% of politicians cannot remain in opposition to things that a majority of the most impassioned voters care deeply about. They most certainly can have big impacts on things these voters aren’t going to get worked up about: roads policy and unemployment insurance and health insurance regulation and on and on and on. These things have much more impact on the citizens of a state then many of the things these highly motivated voters care about.
@Michael Reynolds:
In August 2019, when asked about the trade war with China, Trump looked heavenward and said:”I am the chosen one.”
Wayne Allyn Root, admittedly an extreme crackpot, called Trump “the second coming of God.”
Back when Sarah Palin was garnering headlines, one of her acolytes said: “I await Sarah’s marching orders.” This person no doubt now worships Trump.
@MarkedMan:
This is indeed an important distinction. If I understand correctly, you contend that these things originate with the “most impassioned voters” as opposed to elsewhere (eg, politicians, media). Yes? And because of this, politicians must follow (or be fellow travelers) and must not express alternative views?
@Mimai:
Not quite. I think quite a lot of it originates in the media. But not politicians. I think for the most part politicians are followers rather than leaders on such things. As time goes on more and more of them are elected from the ranks of true believers, but the whole right wing zeitgeist is such a festering garbage heap of every looney half formed idea that “true belief” can warp and mutate as needed to suit the whims of the mob.
Quite a good article from a long time evangelical Christian at the Atlantic. Almost a cry of despair.
@MarkedMan:
I was just about to post this. Thanks for saving me the trouble. 🙂
Wehner does sound despairing, doesn’t he?
@OzarkHillbilly: The sordid Murdaugh saga begs for the pen of a Flannery O’Connor. I’d tackle it, but, alas, I lack the talent. Having lived in SC for 33 years, things like this no longer surprise me.
@CSK: Actually, the Lowcountry begins when you cross the line into Hampton County, heading toward the coast. The town of Hampton is only 45 minutes’ drive from Beaufort, SC.
@SC_Birdflyte:
Well, I defer to you as a resident of the turf. All the reading I’ve done heavily implies that the low country is Charleston and its environs, plus, I guess, Sullivan’s Island, Isle of Palms, etc. Pat Conroy raves about it as if it’s sacred ground.
You say potayto and I say potahto. Do the pols drive the voters or voters drive the pols? Yes, they do. But there’s also the poteeto, conservative media.
CRT is instructive because it’s recent and relatively well documented. If, a year ago, you asked a GOP pol whether grade schools should teach CRT, he would have replied, “Whut?” But IIRC the story, a conservative activist and hustler saw some corporate training loosely associated with CRT that he thought was crap. (Which it probably was, being corporate training.) He got some exposure on FOX. It evolved that they could bundle anything they wanted under the heading “CRT” including anything said in school related to race that some mother objected to. This generated a lot of anger and resentment, i.e. exactly what FOX wants to drive their viewership. So FOX pushed it hard for some months. And now every GOP pol fiercely opposes CRT. (Although they still have no idea what it is.) FOX drove both the GOP voters and the pols.
@MarkedMan: I did not see your last comment on that thread until this comment tipped me off (I have responded, but yes, I think usage of the word “political”/”politics” is key in that discussion).
@MarkedMan:
Indeed.
I think I end up coming across as pedantic in many interchanges here because the definition of terms is really important (and inherent to my profession and to the way I think about things).
@MarkedMan:
We do not disagree about this.
What I think we disagree about is how much influence politicians have in shaping what the voters care deeply about. I think it is far more synergistic than I think you think it is.
I also think that media is part of the process, not outside of it (or part of some separate process).
Elites, voters, and media all take cues from one another to create the current politics of the moment.
@MarkedMan:
I think this is the heart of our disagreement. While I agree that politicians often do follow mass opinions (see, e.g., Kevin McCarthy and his minions as it pertains to 1/6). But there is a vast literature that shows us that masses do, in fact, also follow elite cues.
Look, the very existence of the parties illustrates this fact. Most voters vote D or R due to the signal that the label sends.
@gVOR08: This is an interesting case (CRT). So, as I recall, Trump saw it criticized on FNC and then made a big deal about it and the whole thing snowballed from there.
Now, being a bit simplistic I will allow, is this a case of FNC being the origin story, or is it Trump for amplifying it and making into a GOP thing?
After all, FNC gripes about a million things a day, but not all of those gripes get elevated by the President.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I agree. It took some time before that was clear, as we had terminology, scope and other misunderstandings along the way.
Is there any literature that shows that the masses follow the elites when it would call for a positive cultural change on the part of the masses? Because while it seems obvious that the political elites in, say, Jim Crow Mississippi could steer the mob to Lynch a Jew, an Irish Catholic or an Asian rather than a Black man on any particular night, I would be surprised to find individual politicians that are successful in turning the mobs towards their better natures. Washington comes to mind, and Gandhi and King and, to a lesser extent, Obama, but that last is the only one in my memory. (I think maybe JFK too, but I was too young to remember him and grew up in an Irish Catholic household that viewed him as the greatest President America ever had, and a saint to boot, so my judgement is suspect on that.)
It brings me back to the George Wallace analogy. Could George Wallace have had a significant positive impact on this country if in the months before the election he had recanted his Klan and Jim Crow views and embraced the Civil Rights movement? You may say yes and I am much more doubtful. But I’m certain that if Wallace was the type of person who could have done so, he would not have had one tenth of the support he did, and so would never have been in such a position. Racism is too deep and too primal a part of white Southerner culture.
For some reason Covid denial has become as foundational to the so-called conservative, so-called patriot as racism. It seems to have found a perfect niche formed by Fox News, Facebook and Twitter’s algorithms, and Russia’s and North Korea’s malevolence. However it got there, it got there. And even in places where politicians tried to buck the tide, they had little to no impact. Just ask Kay Ivey.
@Steven L. Taylor: Just to be clear, I’m calling out Covid denial as a special case. One of the ways I’ve adapted my views because of our mutual discussion is to narrow my scope in saying that “politicians” can’t change fundamentals and rarely try. I no longer feel confident of that as a broad statement, however much I feel it is true of Covid denialism and racism. And of course, I’ve always felt that political leaders can have a major impact for good or bad on welding the levers of power that the masses are less passionate about.
@MarkedMan: Indeed, the many of the various business enterprises that have formed to provide the economic and legal structures under which “church” happens are struggling right now. And the marketing system that describes itself as “evangelicalism” has come on hard times. And it continues to be true that whenever and wherever the church aligns itself with politics or the state, the church changes and the politics don’t (or at least not measurably). Maybe the new generation will find its way to a workable and viable faith in the US, but if that doesn’t happen, God is not going to throw up his hands in despair proclaiming “Alas! I’ve lost the US!! What will become of my plan now?”
Mr, Wehner. Breathe easy. God is still on his throne and the sufferings of this moment are simply like the passing of the night into the morning–just without the US in a staring role (which it never had in the first place 😉 ).
@Steven L. Taylor:
Trump amplified the CRT thing not because he cares–or even understands–what it is, but to get attention for himself. He wants to be the top story every day, and now that he’s gone from being “the most powerful man in the world” to just another old fat geezer golfing in Palm Beach, he has to make a ruckus so the press will cover him.
Re: Stevens quote from yesterday
If you are defining culture as a subset of politics rather than the other way around, then I have no choice than to agree with the above statement. Still, I find it difficult to define Tucker Carlson as primarily a politician.
@MarkedMan: I loved the Atlantic piece on evangelicals you linked. I was only in that scene for maybe 10 years, and it was a long time ago, but the writer says all the things I’ve been worried about.
And when I took a class on the history of Christendom, one of my conclusions was that when the Church gets involved in politics, it’s always bad for the Church. Always.
Of course, I came up in a dissenting denomination.
@MarkedMan:
It also leads to a hypercorrection error within those communities, on those relatively rare occasions in which trying to arrive at a common definition for a term is counterproductive.
Example: I do a lot of work these days having to do with “artificial intelligence” and “autonomous systems”. I have found that the fastest way to derail a workshop, symposium, conference, or standards committee is to start by trying to define exactly what is meant by “artificial intelligence” or “autonomy”. It can’t be done, for historical reasons. The different research and development communities participating in the field at the moment have very different — and fundamentally incompatible — working definitions. Worse yet, those definitions change over time, because for some of those communities “autonomy” becomes “automation” as soon as you understand how it works and can predict how it will behave.
All of the productive meetings start with “we’re not going to agree on definitions of these terms, so for the purposes of this meeting we are talking about systems with these properties: [list]. If you don’t think those are necessarily AI or autonomy, that’s OK — we still want to hear your opinions.”
@Steven L. Taylor:
I agree that this is the heart of the disagreement. My own take (as expressed here before) is that Steven’s position, which is well-documented, used to be true. Once the Republicans adopted the Southern Strategy, and became increasingly dependent on appeasing the deplorables in order to win elections, the influence of the elites waned steadily. You can ride a wave, but you can’t redirect it.
…unless you are Rupert Murdoch. Fox News can, and did, forge and redirect the opinions of the deplorables, in ways the GOP elite could never have managed. Eventually, the GOP became a tool in service of Fox News, rather than the converse. This could not have happened in the days of Walter Cronkite, or even Dan Rather — but it was perhaps inevitable in the current media climate.
That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it. 🙂
@Jay L Gischer: Sadly, the only difference that I’ve found among dissenters (and I will note that there are obvious exceptions to my observations to account for the “but what about the…”s) is that many of them (again, not all) are mostly frustrated about not being able to be in charge of the whole of Christendom. Hence the evangelical/free church groups “taking over the neighborhood/city/county/state/nation/world for Jesus.”
@Michael Reynolds:
Counter argument: if Trump were found dead on his toilet tomorrow morning, would things slide back to normal?
Sure, there would be a cycle of battling for a successor, cult of personality or not. But let’s say Josh Harley beats Trump Jr to death with an illegal immigrant (or vice versa), does the rest of the party fall in line?
If Marjorie Taylor Green beats the victor of that battle to death with a same sex wedding cake, will the party fall in line? Let’s say she campaigns on breaking up pedophile rings, jailing Hunter Biden, increasing the carried interest exemption and lining the wall with the heads of brown immigrants on spikes… does she get the nomination, endorsement and votes?
I’m thinking yes. And that means it’s not quite a cult of personality, even if it has some elements of that on the frothy surface.
@CSK: True. But some of my writer friends are now shining the light on neglected aspects of Lowcountry life, i.e., the Gullah-Geechee culture.
@DrDaveT:
There seems to be a misunderstanding the I am asserting that elite cues are only positive, or that they are somehow pure (as in not influenced by other factors) elite action. This is not the claim.
Moreover, things like the southern strategy and Nixon’s “law and order” campaign are very much situations in which elite cues might be relevant.
To take a more contemporary example: yes, much of the GOP base is predisposed to be anti-immigrant, but who got them spun up about “migrant caravans”?
Why, in general, do Reps hate Common Core? Why do Reps hate CRT and Dems like it? Is it because they studied for themselves and made up their own minds, or did elites tell them to hate and/or like?