Steven L. Taylor
@sltaylor.bsky.social
600 followers 250 following 340 posts

Professor Emeritus of PoliSci and former Dean of Arts & Sciences. My research is focused on comparative democratic institutions.🖖🤘 I write about politics at www.outsidethebeltway.com

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sltaylor.bsky.social
More dispatches from the war zone of Chicago.
govpritzker.illinois.gov
Congratulations to all the runners today at the Chicago Marathon!

I hope you’re taking a moment after crossing the finish line and enjoying all that the best big city in the nation has to offer.

Reposted by Steven S. Taylor

govpritzker.illinois.gov
Congratulations to all the runners today at the Chicago Marathon!

I hope you’re taking a moment after crossing the finish line and enjoying all that the best big city in the nation has to offer.

sltaylor.bsky.social
So much war. So much zone.
oregonian.com
Things are happening at Portland's ICE facility tonight.

Read more of our protest coverage here: www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/1...

sltaylor.bsky.social
Agreed. From the beginning my view is that the Democrats need to clarify who is in charge and therefore responsible. Make the Rs eliminate the cloture rule for this mess and make them own it all. A major problem in US politics is lack of understanding by the public as to whom is actually responsible
oregonian.com
Things are happening at Portland's ICE facility tonight.

Read more of our protest coverage here: www.oregonlive.com/crime/2025/1...

sltaylor.bsky.social
The music for Tron: Legacy was great!

sltaylor.bsky.social
Not only, as he notes, does the other team not exist, but whatever is said this becomes likely forgotten and irrelevant as soon as tomorrow, and definitely once the next game is played. This would include the shifting narratives that Adam mentioned (the refs, the coaches, etc).

sltaylor.bsky.social
I wasn't commenting on Donny, per se, as much as trying to amplify what I understood Adam to be saying to apply to much of the rightward mediasphere (which would include Trump in this clip), which approaches politics with a sophistication on the level of sportstalk.

sltaylor.bsky.social
The cross-blog dialog with @lawgunsmoney.bsky.social continues (or, perhaps more accurately, I continue to try and work out my thoughts on all of this--and I am not done yet!)

On Authoritarianism, Competitive and Otherwise – Outside the Beltway outsidethebeltway.com/on-authorita...
On Authoritarianism, Competitive and Otherwise – Outside the Beltway
outsidethebeltway.com

sltaylor.bsky.social
I have thought for some time that right wing media (talk radio and FNC, et al) sounds almost the same as sport talk. All about team and everything memory holed week-to-week because whatever you said last week is erased by the new game being played this week.

atrupar.com
Trump to the Navy: "I was president in 2016. And then they rigged the election on me. And then we caught 'em, didn't we?"

sltaylor.bsky.social
One of the many reasons I don’t like the filibuster/cloture rule is that it muddies responsibility from the POV of most citizens.

sltaylor.bsky.social
Fair enough—although not in the post I was referring to. The ongoing , never ending stream on social media has its disadvantages ;)
thebulwark.com
Doocy: "If a young man or woman signs up today, are they more likely to deploy to the Middle East or the Midwest?"

Hegseth: "The era of sort of reckless adventurism around the globe is over...We're here to defend the hemisphere, the homeland, the border."

sltaylor.bsky.social
Further, the deployment of fascistic tactics is not evenly distributed across the population. What happened in that apartment building in Chicago looks pretty fascistic to me.

I agree that the regime they are trying to construct is unconsolidated.

sltaylor.bsky.social
FWIW, I would counter that you are conflating totalitarianism with fascism. I don't think you have to have the former to have the latter.

The administration is privileging raw power over the rule of law and is dividing the population into Us and Them.

sltaylor.bsky.social
Agreed-even more so, I think that Stanley is correct, it is "a way of doing politics". We are all so programmed to equate fascism with Nazism with totalitarianism that it makes it too easy to ignore the burgeoning fascism right in front of us.

Incomplete fascism can still be fascism.

sltaylor.bsky.social
Too many simple-minded people have fallen prey to the simplistic dichotomization of red and blue states.
sirpungent.bsky.social
I remember when they introduced the Internet into schools.

It would be a way to freely share information, they said.

sltaylor.bsky.social
Kind of you to say--I appreciate the note. I think we are all struggling to get people to see what is going on right in front of us. It feels Sisyphean most of the time.

sltaylor.bsky.social
I blame @dhnexon.bsky.social for this (well, actually, I blame the GOP, Trump, and a number of others I could name).

Has the Constitution Failed? – Outside the Beltway outsidethebeltway.com/has-the-cons...
Has the Constitution Failed? – Outside the Beltway
outsidethebeltway.com