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US Politics: Cancelling Democracy


DanteGabriel

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I legitimately don't know how to answer that. 

What the Fuck am I supposed to do? Bury my head in the sand and pretend a 2 point shift (within the margin of error) in polls means... Something, something, hope from a dead Carrie Fisher?

Y'all have been kicking at this football of hope for YEARS. At what point are you gonna realize that rightness and goodness aren't something that wins out by the magic of friendship and belief in common love defeating the forces of hate and greed. 

Joe Manchin is your enemy. He will never give what is needed to save this country, even if that power was his to share. I know this because he keeps telling me with his actions. 

You say cynic like it's some kind of foolishness. So be it, optimist.

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9 minutes ago, Babblebauble said:

At what point does it stop being reflexive and become learned cynicism? 

Guess it depends on your definition of cynicism, which like mormont for me is basically an emotional response and thus can't really be "learned."  Regardless, there's nothing "learned" about being certain the progressives are going to vote down a prescription drug deal and ACA extension at this point.

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20 minutes ago, Babblebauble said:

I legitimately don't know how to answer that. 

With straw men, apparently.

20 minutes ago, Babblebauble said:

What the Fuck am I supposed to do? Bury my head in the sand and pretend a 2 point shift (within the margin of error) in polls means... Something, something, hope from a dead Carrie Fisher?

Y'all have been kicking at this football of hope for YEARS. At what point are you gonna realize that rightness and goodness aren't something that wins out by the magic of friendship and belief in common love defeating the forces of hate and greed. 

Joe Manchin is your enemy. He will never give what is needed to save this country, even if that power was his to share. I know this because he keeps telling me with his actions. 

You say cynic like it's some kind of foolishness. So be it, optimist.

 

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Republicans seem to be out to kill freedom of travel pertaining to abortions, citing it as a 'states rights' issue.

Republicans block taking up Senate bill to guarantee freedom to travel across states for abortions - CNNPolitics

The Democratic bill, called the Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act of 2022 was introduced earlier this week by Sens. Patty Murray of Washington, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York. The bill would additionally protect providers in states that support abortion rights from lawsuits for helping women from other states.
Murray, who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said GOP lawmakers across the nation "have already set their sights on ripping away the right to travel."
"Let's be really clear what that means: They want to hold women captive in their own states," she said. "They want to punish women and anyone who might help them for exercising their constitutional right to travel within our country to get the services that they need in another state. I hope everyone really observes how extreme and how radical and how un-American that is."
Sen. Steve Daines, Republican from Montana, argued the Senate must reject this "radical" bill because it would "give fly-in abortionists free rein to commit abortions on demand." He also argued it "protects the greed, frankly, of woke corporations who see it as cheaper to pay for an abortion and abortion tourism than maternity leave for their employees."
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Biden's executive order mandating hospitals perform emergency abortions challenged by Texas.

Texas sues Biden administration over abortion rule (cnbc.com)

Texas on Thursday asked a federal court to block the Biden administration’s requirement that physicians and hospitals provide abortions in medical emergencies.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, in a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, argued that federal law does not confer a right to an abortion.

 

The lawsuit comes three days after Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra warned hospitals and physicians that they are required to provide abortions in medical emergencies where it is necessary treatment to protect the life of a pregnant woman. Becerra said hospitals and physicians who refuse to comply could have their Medicare provider agreements terminated and face financial penalties.

Becerra said the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act pre-empts state laws that restrict abortion access in emergency situations. But Paxton said the law does not mandate any specific treatment, arguing that the HHS requirement is unlawful, unconstitutional and unenforceable.

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56 minutes ago, mormont said:

With straw men, apparently.

 

I'm not a master debater, but I don't think that's what I did. Maybe if I'd only written the first paragraph, where I admittedly detoured to take a shot at the pathetic pathetic pathetic idea that some kind of popular groundswell is in the offing... A concept held very very dear by people who douse themselves in useless statistics assessing popular will or whatever while the enemy uses the same information to assess political will and then does something with the knowledge beyond use it to generate clicks on their fucking webzones.

But I then immediately returned to the track at hand, regarding Manchin and the complete insanity of expecting to accomplish anything worthwhile with this man as your fulcrum.

I don't think that's a straw man. In fact, I kinda feel like you can't point to any reasonable explanation for maintaining this precious HOPE you people are still trying to smoke through your stoma so, uh, you did a little straw manning of your own.

That's right, I'm breaking out the "No I didn't, you did it!" defense. I think it applies here. 

Yo, I ain't posting to break people down out of malice towards y'all, but you folks need to wake up. My rage is directed at my declared enemies, who have who have who HAVE already taken from me rights of my person that I was born with. 

That's not fallacious. That's not a cynicism or a teary eyed projection based in hopelessness, that happened. And that right ain't coming back. No matter what lame ass bills get introduced or EOs get dispensed or stupid fucking obvious evidence is admitted against an explicit traitor, it ain't coming back because we already lost these battles for democratic actionability. We all sat around praying at the altar of progress thinking that it was some inevitable triumph that we were smart enough to recognize early, but if you haven't noticed we fucking lost. Not losing, not not winning yet. We fucking lost. 

One party gets to commit political violence, murders MURDERS, and transparently move to make irrelevant the act of voting for people they don't want. Oh, and they also achieved their lifeslong dream of reducing the personal autonomy of women up to and including now arguing they have the right to decide where THEIR women go if they might be capable of carrying another soldier in the war against democracy. 

If democracy, if representative government theoretically beholden to the people, is something you consider foundational to your way of life; there are people who believe the opposite and they will kill you and be absolved by the courts. They are real. They are armed. They are coordinated. And the police are on their side. So are all the courts that matter.

With all due respect, Mormont. 

And remember I'm saying with all due respect:

Whatever, man 

 

 

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15 minutes ago, Babblebauble said:

I'm not a master debater, but I don't think that's what I did.

You presented positions that nobody actually holds, then bashed them. It's the textbook definition of straw man argument.

Over the last few weeks, you've repeatedly done this. You've also railed about how awful things are while repeatedly saying you don't intend to do anything about it yourself and while insisting there's nothing anyone else can do about it either. At the same time, you insist that everyone else is being blind and you're the only one who understands how bad things are, in spite of the fact that people clearly do understand this - they just aren't willing to give up. And what does it hurt you if they don't?

Like I said, it's emotionally understandable but it's nothing more than that. We heard you the first time and you weren't saying anything we didn't know then. Just accept that other people can see things as clearly as you can, without needing to throw in the towel. Your response is valid, but don't keep throwing it out there to invalidate everyone else's.

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6 hours ago, James Arryn said:

Did you even read my post? I’m beginning to think you did not.

I did. Your stance, whether you want it to or not, puts you in the trenches with their ilk. You haven't addressed the reality of the lack of safety net, climate change, and other realities that endanger life for the remainder of it after.birth. It makes no sense to have this implacable stance for a ball of cells despite full knowledge that policies to support the health and safety of the mother, children, etc. so not exist. Why is that potential of life more important to focus on than the rest of us that are already alive? Than the remainder of wanted children.

I can almost understand your perspective if we lived in a post-scarcity world without rape, incest, dangerous pregnancies, etc. However we do not live in that fantasy world.

As for mourning miscarriages, the loss of potential life that was wanted is tragic and I do not begrudge you that just as you should not begrudge a choice to terminate the potential development of life that is not wanted.

This is an extremely disappointing stance -- and back and forth -- to read from you. Someone I've always found quite thoughtful and reasonable. I actually find it fairly distressing.

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7 hours ago, James Arryn said:

This is going to be an uncomfortable, unpopular post. 
 

I’m anti-abortion. It’s the least comfortable of my positions, it’s by a mile the position I hold that those who agree with me mostly do it for the wrong reasons or bullshit reasons. And it’s a position I know that can hurt a lot of people. I really wish I did not hold this position, tbh, especially the way I hold it, but I do. I don’t remotely chose to oppose abortion as a right over a wrong, just the least deadly* of the horrible options.  

So, here’s my position: human life is my prime motivation in all things. I am a million % against the death penalty, as you all know I remonstrate constantly about wars of volition and the relegation to ‘war is hell’ non-apology apologism for the countless victims of wars of acquisition, dominance, imperialism, etc. I am not a full pacifist, but close…I only believe that wars of aggression against expansive enemies should justify defensive war, or pretty much the Canadian ethos. I am against pretty much against any kind of killing there is.** 

*I do not know where human life begins. No one does. Until we do, I strongly feel that we should err on the side of not killing humans. The only but strong exception is where the mother’s life is threatened by the pregnancy/birth, again consistent with what I feel ought to be the priority. Now, most horribly, that means that the life of the child is prioritized over the woman’s right to choose even in the event of rape or similar. That’s disgusting, that is putting that victim through even more suffering and I would do anything to prevent that…except end a human life.

I am not religious, and I feel that most religious arguments against abortion either miss the point or are clearly hypocritical; to be “pro-life”…a phrase I don’t use in this context, because it’s used so hypocritically by most…while being pro-death penalty or ambivalent about aerial bombardment of civilian areas when it’s ‘our side’ doing it, that is just bankrupt to me. That’s about misogyny or power or just plain selfishness. 

Because I know what this means for women. Well, no, I don’t know know, but I intellectually can conceive of the outrage and helplessness and dehumanization of having other people legislate what I can or cannot do with my body. I understand that as a man this is much, much easier for me to say. I’ll never have to suffer the consequences to my person. I sincerely believe I would feel this way if I was a woman, but again I’ll never really know. I also know that like any law, the law I’d choose would absolutely be exploited to excercise bigoted agendas and misogyny. But to me there are other ways, though not nearly so sustained, wherein others legislate what we can and can’t do with our bodies if the result of our choices ends another’s life. 

So to me it is simply this: in the horrible choice between ending a human life and causing a human incalculable suffering for a period of time, I regretfully but sincerely choose to prioritize living over living with complete autonomy. I think the life of the child has been sloganed out of this issue, I feel that because so many used it so hypocritically, the other side has reduced the child/life/potential life to just words. I don’t think most people actually think about that aspect enough any more, it’s just dealt with in talking points or with exaggerated contrasts. Someone earlier said something like ‘this bunch of cells inside me has more rights than I do’, and that’s an example: the right to life is the only relevant right those ‘cells’ have, and you have it too. And if it’s life was a serious risk to yours, I would prioritize yours. 
 

If we ever get to a point where we can say with certainty that at X days life begins, I will fully support terminating pregnancies up to that point. But having been through the whole pregnancy/ultrasounds/etc. with my twins, not to mention our miscarriage, I can say that to my untrained eye what we were seeing on those screens was definitely life, and if it wasn’t human, what was it? Our miscarriage is, to us, a lost child, and nothing will ever take that pain away from us. But to be clear this experience did not formulate my position, it just affirmed it. 
 

This being the least comfortable of my positions, it is also the one I will never do anything about. I won’t tell people what I feel they should do unless they ask me, I won’t protest or try and shame people into agreeing with me. I sometimes feel that that betrays me some…if I feel children are being killed, why am I not trying to do something  about it? But I’ve seen the pain people I have known going through this endure and cannot find it within me to add to that. Maybe that makes me the hypocrite? I don’t know.
 

And though I thought Roe was bad law, where it was wrong was not where it was bad, imo. It was bad as it was classified, it was wrong where it addressed what is/isn’t life. They found that barring certainty we err on the side of not classifying it as life, and this to me was morally and medically wrong; early ‘fetus’ are absolutely treated as life in any other medical context except termination, and medical staff go to great lengths to try and save those lives when threatened by anything but the mother’s choice.

That said, I disagree with what the SC found recently, I find the ‘historically significant’ attribution to be not just bad law but incredibly dangerous law that will almost certainly result in more bad law to follow. I think most of them fall under the religious/misogynist class that sadly makes up most of ‘my’ side on this issue. And no 10 year old should be forced to not terminate, as that obviously presents a significant risk to her life. Not because she was raped, again…the prioritization of human life must remain whatever the cost short of human life. I know this will outage a lot of people I like. It’s a very lonely position, tbh. The people who agree with me mostly disagree with me on almost every other issue, including ones which reveal no prioritization of life, and mostly do so out of religious or other kinds of prejudice. The people who disagree with me about this are the ones I am most in synch with on most other issues. So I don’t really stand with anyone I know on this, and that’s a strange feeling. 
 

Anyways, I’ve been holding back on commenting on this topic lately and probably will mostly return to doing so, but I wanted to clarify that you can oppose abortion without being religious, and you can do so as part of a consistent prioritization on human life rather than just when it only affects others.  

**exception, adults who want to end their own lives with sustained consistency, while of healthy mind, because of contacting an incurable disease or similar should have that right, imo.

 

So, I understand why you’re saying what you’re saying, but I think your reasoning is flawed.

Firstly, I disagree with some of the premises. But, if we take all of the premises at face value, I still disagree with the conclusion.

So, let’s assume for the sake of argument that a foetus at any stage of development after conception is morally equivalent to a post-birth independent human in all respects. Let’s assume that terminating this foetus is morally equivalent to homicide in all respects (I disagree with these premises, but even allowing for them I’m still opposed to criminalising abortion).

Let’s say two men walk into a hospital waiting room. One of them is experiencing kidney failure. There are no viable treatment options, he needs a transplant. The other man has two healthy kidneys, and is a viable donor, but he refuses to donate. Is it acceptable to knock him out, strap him down, and forcibly remove a kidney to donate to the dying man? You say that you “regretfully but sincerely choose to prioritize living over living with complete autonomy” which would imply that you think it’s okay to take the kidney, but I suspect you would (rightfully) find this scenario horrifying.

Let’s say it’s not two men. Let’s say it’s a mother and her child. The child is dying, the mother can donate a kidney. But she refuses. You might say that’s a cruel and cold decision. What kind of mother wouldn’t donate a kidney to save her dying child!? But remember, the question is not “do you think the mother is wrong for not donating her kidney?” The question is “do you think the mother should be forced to donate her kidney?”

A kidney donation is pretty major surgery. Let’s say it’s not a kidney donation. Let’s say the child just needs a blood donation. Again, the mother refuses. I think most people would agree that a mother that wouldn’t donate blood to save their child is a pretty horrible person. But again, that isn’t the question. The question is, should she be forced to donate? Should she be arrested, prosecuted and jailed if she refuses? Even in this situation, I don’t think you can force someone to donate blood. I don’t think you should criminalise their refusal, even if you morally condemn the choice.

So I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this. A foetus might have a right to life, but I don’t think that right implies the right to use another human’s body. You might think that a pregnant person who chooses to terminate a pregnancy is a bad person (personally I don’t, but I’ll allow that others might). But I strongly believe that no one should be compelled by law to donate their body to another.

That’s the fundamental question here. Not “is a foetus a human life?” Not “is it morally right to terminate a pregnancy?” But, “can the law compel you to donate your body?”

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8 hours ago, James Arryn said:

Because I feel that 

1) as we don’t know when life begins, we should err on the side of not killing humans until we do. The downside of erring one way and getting it wrong results in countless suffering, a horrible outcome. But erring the other way and getting it wrong means countless death, an even worse outcome. 

2) it’s partly a semantic argument because, barring intervention or disaster, we know for certain it will pass any and all standards for human life given time.

3) The government regularly constrains our choices when those choices result in the death of a human life.

I disagree with you.  I believe that we open all sorts of incredibly problematic doors when we strip women of bodily autonomy when they become pregnant.

That said I was “anti-abortion rights” for a very long time and recognize that there are people of good faith who do see the difficulties but believe a fetus is a person who should be protected by the power of the State.  Not all people who oppose abortion rights are cackling with delight at the prospect of making abortion illegal.

What flipped me to “pro-abortion rights” was considering whether I wanted the State to have the power to imprison or detain women simply because they had become pregnant.  If a fetus’ life is more important than a woman’s bodily autonomy it gives the State power over women that I find dangerous.  It isn’t that I don’t care about the lives of fetuses.  It is that giving the State that kind of power over women’s bodies is simply wrong in that it makes women… livestock.  

Women are not livestock.

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9 hours ago, James Arryn said:

Because I feel that 

1) as we don’t know when life begins, we should err on the side of not killing humans until we do. The downside of erring one way and getting it wrong results in countless suffering, a horrible outcome. But erring the other way and getting it wrong means countless death, an even worse outcome. 

2) it’s partly a semantic argument because, barring intervention or disaster, we know for certain it will pass any and all standards for human life given time.

3) The government regularly constrains our choices when those choices result in the death of a human life.

I think your posts on the topic have been very well reasoned and I totally respect them. I'm mostly completely put off the entire topic because the discussion tends to very quickly veer into extremes, and both pro life and pro choice factions throw out the most edge case scenarios to back up their positions, and vilify the opposition. But at the same time there are far too many absolutists on both sides that don't recognise the validity to the opposite position.

Personally, I've always been pro-choice, I never really had to think about it too hard for most of my life, until it became very relevant to me. My assumption was always that abortion is a right and the pro life position is medieval and backwards. I'm not quite there now, I'm still very much pro choice, but also recognise that abortion is a horrible thing, and in an ideal world we would never have to abort a fetus. However I totally respect the position that not wanting to kill a human life is the most important value we can all hold, above all others. 

My main issue with an abortion ban is that it's too blunt a tool for a very complex and difficult problem. We should recognise that there will be scenarios where abortion will happen, whilst trying to put as much support in place to minimise the number. We shouldn't be arresting people, we should be making contraception easier, providing a system where actually having children isn't a crippling prospect etc. 

 

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5 hours ago, DMC said:

Guess it depends on your definition of cynicism, which like mormont for me is basically an emotional response and thus can't really be "learned."  Regardless, there's nothing "learned" about being certain the progressives are going to vote down a prescription drug deal and ACA extension at this point.

Emotional reactions are learned all the time. Thats obviously incorrect.

In particular learning that long negotiations that end up getting very little in good faith and doing so after getting fucked over once means it is likely to result in a reaction of revenge instead of acceptance is entirely a learned response.

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1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Manchin might as well change parties at this point.

Being a fash sympathizing, environment destroying dipshit with a “D” next his name lets him have the benefit of advancing the Republican agenda and keeping Democratic leadership on its knees. He won’t have nearly as sweet a deal as just another Republican. Ego is the only thing sustaining him at this point.

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10 hours ago, James Arryn said:

Did you even read my post? I’m beginning to think you did not.

Did it occur to you your post doesn't actually say what you think we are supposed to think it says?  That it is the same damned doubletalk the forced birthers have used forever?  And your chosen handle is VP of the Autocracy, which says a whole lot not pretty about your thinking right there, thinking that says because YOUR family suffered a miscarriage, no women have the right to not be forced to give birth.  Damned autocratic all right. While, of course, perfectly happy with euthanasia -- which is an arm, many believe, to eugenic cleansing.

Just as my handle says a whole lot about me. Do you even know that throughout history everywhere there was no legal, criminal bs talk by the state whether in antiquity, or any other time until in Europe in the 19th C about abortion at all?  Which isn't the case, for say, slavery, which has existed throughout history, because throughout history there were those who on the grounds of humanity, ethics, philosophy and religion did argue that slavery was wrong and should be illegal, though these were certainly in the minority until quite, quite late in the game.

So why do you think you have the right to declare that something that saves women's lives at all levels is not to be provided? You are not arguing for the 'good', you are arguing for the death and suffering of untold numbers.

 

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5 hours ago, Babblebauble said:

Yo, I ain't posting to break people down out of malice towards y'all, but you folks need to wake up. My rage is directed at my declared enemies, who have who have who HAVE already taken from me rights of my person that I was born with

And rights that apply to more than half the human race, but the other half have declared right here, discussing and arguing them are not of interest to them, and therefore people should stop talking about this and instead talk about the pull out the back end significance of polling stats. :rofl: No indeed, this has not escaped notice that this girly stuff lacks the significance and interest of manly poll stats that can be and ae argued over between manly men for years!  :rofl:

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10 hours ago, DMC said:

 

....Right.  That's what I've been saying.  That he's made a choice and further is asserting that choice should be imposed on everyone else.

This hinges on choice because you don’t agree about human life/rights being potentially present. If you take that out of the equation, let’s talk about a 6 month old baby. Who are you, or the state, or anyone to tell me I can’t choose whether or not to leave my unwanted baby on a hillside? How can we live in a society where you get to decide what choices I make about MY children? Just because you choose to not leave your child on a mountaintop, good for you but what the fuck gives you the right to make me act according to your choices?

You see? It’s not a logical inconsistency, it’s entirely consistent with the prioritization of ‘first, do not kill’. But if you don’t think that exists, as I stated in my op on the topic, of course choice and autonomy are the next priorities on the list. 

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Dude.

If you're intellecutally unable to distinguish between a 6 month old baby (viable outside that human incubator), and a cluster of cells (not viable outside that human incubator) then you really shouldn't have any opinion on reproductive matters at all.

I feel kinda uneasy to voice an opinion on the matter, because not my body, not my choice.

I think that might be a pretty good starting point for the male populace. :dunno:

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