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Celestial-body-NOS

Why should Man not rebel against Nature, when Nature herself is in rebellion against Justice?

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joined 2022 September 05 00:16:31 UTC

				

User ID: 290

Celestial-body-NOS

Why should Man not rebel against Nature, when Nature herself is in rebellion against Justice?

0 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 05 00:16:31 UTC

					

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User ID: 290

Maybe that was what I was thinking of. (It was c. 20 years ago.)

I remember an e-mail forward, titled 'The unbearable likeness[sic] of being", that had pairs of images of Bush fils and Hitler in similar poses; I haven't been able to find it again, so I couldn't tell you if that gesture was included.

(There was also a similar forward, "The Man/Simian Candidate", which paired pictures of Mr Bush with chimpanzees; one website hosting it, upon receiving Strongly-Worded Letters from people offended on Mr Bush's behalf, posted a statement saying "We apologise for making such a comparison, and hope that the following will be considered sufficient restitution.", followed by a thank-you-for-your-donation letter from the Jane Goodall Institute.)

The point of that poem is that when anyone, left or right, starts narrowing the category of 'human beings who deserve to live', they don't stop, and they are likely to end up narrowing it to exclude you. I personally believe that it is morally wrong to have a category of 'human lives that don't matter' (if any exception exists, it is only those who are currently, wilfully harming others and refuse to stop), but even if you do not share this belief, the existence of such a category is not in your self-interest.

For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.

It's bad karma.

You start dividing humanity into 'upstanding citizens worthy of life' and 'sub-humans whose life and well-being is not worth any efforts', sooner or later someone will put you into the second category.

First they came for the homosexuals, but I was not homosexual, so I stayed silent.

Then they came for the immigrants, but I was not an immigrant, so I stayed silent.

Then they came for the disabled, but I was not disabled, so I stayed silent.

And then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

Or 'Canine-American'.

constantly preserving the lives of people who will almost instantly die if aid is ever cut off without any path towards independence from said aid

That proves too much, as it could also be applied to many other life-saving medications, such as, inter alia, anti-rejection drugs for people with organ transplants.

I propose a pithier definition: any organisation set up by the government and not meaningfully accountable to the government.

In other words, something the government called up that they can not put down?

So, I do think that Roof has made a lasting impact on public consciousness.

Don't forget setting off a hyperstitious cascade against Confederate symbols....

Denali sounds like an Indian festival.

You're thinking of Diwali. Denali are a kind of Roman coin.

the particular Inuit language it's called that in

Koyukon Athabaskan, not Inuit. It's related to Navajo.

imposition of rules on the outgroup

During the arguments over same-sex marriage in the aughts, the common metaphor was 'telling me that I may not eat cake because you happen to be on a diet'.

What makes woke particularly insufferable is the rule creation mechanism. It doesn’t come from a canonical text, but rather, it’s an ever growing list of words or actions that were previously done by bad people.

Many fundamentalist soi-disant Christians phrased that mechanism as "Abstain from every appearance of evil", which apparently meant

Do not wear pants with punk rock patches. Also beware the bottles of sparkling grape juice with the foil tops, they might appear to be alcohol and stay away from video rental stores, someone might think you’re there renting a movie rated PG-13

along with avoiding

drinking root beer from dark bottles, wire-rimmed glasses, facial hair, clothing designed by gay guys, any hair style ever worn by any rock group anywhere, and anything that looks like it might be enjoyed by Billy Graham, his followers, or their household pets.

(Stuff Fundies Like, March 2009)

So what did Fauci and Hunter get pardoned for then?

Loosely translated from Politicianese to English, "whatever malarkey the incoming administration manages to pull out from where the sun don't shine."

I don't think he has any meaningful political philosophy

...other than 'getting humanity to Mars'.

A man whose allegiance

is ruled by expedience.

Call him a Nazi, he won't even frown;

"Nazi, Schmazi" says Wernher von Braun

Maybe if he'd combined it with a bowler hat...?

I shudder to think what that would mean for Vance's actions, given that Harrison's successor, John Tyler, later became the only U. S. president to openly swear allegiance to a polity firing on U. S. troops....

No one's ever had such big numbers before!

By magnitude, or by font size? (Late Show with Stephen Colbert, April 2016)

At some point it becomes more useful to model it as a form of tithing than con artistry. The people buying this junk must be getting some form of utility out of it, even if it confounds the sophisticated mind.

During the 2021 short squeeze of GameStop, some people bought stock not caring whether they came out ahead, considering the entire amount they had spent on it to be a fair price to strike back at the Wall Street investors whom they blamed for 2008. ("It's not about the money; it's about sending a message.")

Someone who feels ill-used by the Very Serious People in establishment politics might very well purchase the items in question thinking not "This has a good chance of being profitable." so much as "You bastards ruined my life and then had the gall to blame me and say I deserved it. F%*# you, I'll give money to the guy you hate."

It varies by region, per Ig Nobel laureate S. J. Newman.

It might [be] too early to celebrate the death of wokeness

If/when the estate of Dr. Seuss returns On Beyond Zebra and McElligott's Pool to print, I will consider wokism to have expired, gone to meet its maker, run down the final curtain, and joined the choir invisible.

Homeless people aren't birthed into this world as penniless drug users at a corner in the business district.

No, but they are birthed into this world as human beings, made according to the image of God, and bearing the inalienable right to be treated as an end in themselves, rather than as an inconvenient obstacle. (There, but for the grace of God, go I....)

They chose to occupy that premium real estate because it affords them some other benefit. Typically the easy ability to harass people for money and targets for retail theft. He always had the option of staying where he is from where people know him and would let him use the bathroom. Or going to a shelter for the homeless and using that bathroom.

The important reframe of modern homelessness that will help just about understand what we are talking about is this: They are on premium real estate, and there is no right to use some of the best, most expensive land in the country in whatever way you desire. I cannot go to Lincoln Park and start a hot dog stand next to the lion's exhibit.

But if you start declaring parts of a city as 'no poors allowed', you're opening Pandora's Jar; homeless people not allowed in 'premium' areas --> more areas adopting the same policy --> poor people confined to 'Sanctuary Districts' like in that Star Trek episode with the Bell Riots --> razor-wire fences, mass graves, and U. N. investigations.

There is no reason a homeless fellow should be able to occupy the same space and fill it with stink and feces

No, they should do their $euphemism in a toilet; however, this requires that they be allowed to! If there are free-at-the-point-of-use toilets nearby, and a homeless person chooses to befoul the ground, it is justified to prosecute them.

From the bottom of the ladder, the difference between 'direct harm' and 'indirect harm' looks rather academic.

Is it coercive to forbid someone from taking a No. 2 on the pavement?

I don't think that's a real thing ... The only real indignity is starving, plus maybe not having a (small) roof over your head.

'Existence worthy of human dignity' is how it is described in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, meaning more than mere survival. Living in a bare closet, eating tasteless gruel, dressed in rags, and staring at a blank wall when not working or sleeping, would not be 'worthy of human dignity' even if it isn't 'starving'.

So essentially, you admit there's full employment, yet there's still no way to get you to accept that workers have agency/they aren't raped when they have sex with their boss? Only if there's a new system, full communism or something.

'Full employment' in the economic-statistical sense is necessary but not sufficient for the concept I am attempting to point to.

If Alice wants an employee who will provide sexual favours/stand up for hours on end doing tasks that can be done sitting down/not eat rice on Tuesdays, and Bob wants a steady pay-cheque without involving genitals/allowing him to sit down if he can still get his work done/letting him eat whatever he feels like on whatever day he pleases,

  1. how often will Alice blink first, and how often will Bob blink first?
  2. if they cannot come to an agreement, how hard will it be for Bob to find employment under his conditions, and how hard will it be for Alice to find an employee willing to accept her conditions?

The thing I am trying to point to is 'economic conditions in which Bob does not almost always yield first, and, in the absence of agreement, Bob's future is not vastly harder than Alice's'. It can be present in some circumstances while simultaneously absent in others; thus it is not adequately captured by a single figure, although it is more common with lower unemployment.

I think achieving the lack of any real unemployment in a society (like the current 4% in the US) is of primary importance, and a great boost to the agency, bargaining power, and psychological health of workers. So I'm very sceptical of any attempts to help workers that could increase unemployment (raising minimum wage, anti-firing legislation, etc). What they gain in salary or security, they lose in bargaining power - that's not a good trade over the long term.

The other direction is not a good trade either -- a worker deserves a living wage (in the FDR sense, adjusted for the material progress of broader society) and security from being fired arbitrarily or for un-justifiable reasons and the ability to set reasonable boundaries. This is not an impossible trilemma unless one imposes the constraint that neither Alice's profit margin nor privileged social position be in any way inconvenienced.

Why doesn't it apply to doing the task for which he was hired?

Because that is a reasonable expectation.

If you are looking for a meta-level principle that will determine what is and isn't reasonable for Alice to demand, without having to think about the object-level details, I'm afraid that There Is No Royal Road To Geometry.

Certainly, in a wage dispute, Alice's ability to hold out longer is equally if not moreso present.

Which is why we have unions and minimum-wage laws.