Harlequin5942
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User ID: 1062
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
On "post-birth abortion" (more accurately, non-resucitation of neonatal infants) the Republicans are right that this occurs, though it is a matter of physician's judgement rather than something the mother can just demand:
In these cases, where there is little or no prospect of an infant surviving after birth, families might opt for perinatal palliative care, or comfort care — prioritizing comfort while allowing an infant to die naturally without exercising full resuscitation efforts.
They conclude that, fortunately, there is no actual post-birth abortion... because they DEFINE abortion to exclude such cases. That's like saying there are no gun owners who commit school shootings, because you DEFINE "gun owner" to exclude those who use guns for illegal purposes that would lead to their gun licence being revoked.
For moderates on abortion who don't even like the existence of a slippery slope towards infanticide (e.g. as "little prospect" becomes extended, then a judgement for the mother etc.) this sort of thing is cold comfort and an easy point of attack for Republicans against Democrats.
More generally, to see how this is a needlessly difficult issue for Democrats, see how the (generally sympathetic to them) FactCheck puts it:
Claim: Democrats “introduced legislation that allowed abortion on demand ... up to the moment of birth."
Claimed by: Lindsey Graham
Fact check by FactCheck.org: Spins the Facts
Same with AP news:
Claim: Forty-nine Democratic senators voted that it should be lawful to kill a full-term baby the moment before birth while it is still inside its mother.
Claimed by: social media users
Fact check by AP News: Misleading.
These editorial spins are fact-checker answers for when they can't say that something is false, but they would love to do so.
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
I think critics would be quite happy to go back to calling it "infanticide", but there's resistance to that too. Just like "woke", "SJW", and "PC".
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
darkly hint towards the murder being motivated by transphobia without explicitly saying so
In the view of the Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents (admittedly not the most prominent outlet in the US, nor Pittsburgh, nor perhaps the Pittsburgh lesbian community) her death is now part of the 2024 "campaign of terror":
A free man has the right to murder even a benign dictator.
What about Tito, if you thought there was good reasons to believe that the result would be civil war and genocide? (As ultimately there was within about 12 years of his death.) Is the right to "feedback" enough to justify instigating bloody chaos?
People are very quick with historical counterfactuals, I think. The Red Alert series was smarter. We know what happened with Hitler as Germany's leader in the 1930s; we don't know what would happen with Goering or Himmler as leader. Maybe they would have been smarter, more successful, and the Nazis would have won. Or if Hitler was killed in 1918, maybe German communist or ultra-conservatives unleash even more bloodshed. Germany was a highly industrialised and highly dysfunctional country - some degree of tragedy was likely. I also think that the USSR was likely to lead to horrors, even if Stalin died in 1923. Sometimes, a happy end requires a very big counterfactual.
That's not to say that "I would kill Hitler, in hindsight" is a bad judgement. There's a plausible case to be made that he was an exceptionally dangerous figure - that probably a Goering or Himmler or communist or non-Nazi far right Germany would have been less awful. However, it's overstating the case to think that e.g. Hitler's assassination would be utility-maximising, as opposed to expected utility maximising.
The same applies all the more strongly for those on the left who regret Trump's survival. Be careful what you wish for, because what you ask for is not always what you want.
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
Check out the Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze. It's by no means obvious that Operation Barbarossa was a dumb idea. Opinions to the contrary often seem to assume that militaries and societies can run on orders, rather than oil and bread.
However, I think that Hitler's earlier decision to go to war in 1939 was the beginning of the end of fascism. The promise of fascism was military power. By fighting a war against two of the main powers of the day (France and Britain) with backing from an economic juggernaut of unprecedented proportions (the USA) Hitler was taking a huge gamble with the risk of defeat. And the defeat of fascism militarily was its defeat ideologically. Soon, even the Spanish and Portugese regimes were moving in a conventionally conservative direction.
Similarly with communism: once the hydrogen bomb ended the prospect of a Soviet military victory in the Cold War, it was stuck in an economic competition with an economic juggernaut of unprecedented proportions (the USA again) and in comparisons with countries that had fundamentally better economic systems. The promise of communism was prosperity, which became a joke once Soviet citizens had a standard of living that trailed increasingly behind such erstwhile primitive backwaters as Finland, Spain, and even Taiwan.
There is no good evidence for intelligent design, but the closest is that God apparently directed history so that fascism was defeated militarily and communism defeated economically, i.e. on the grounds of their main promises. It's as if e.g. communism was able to deliver a more free society than classical liberalism or fascism a more stable society than classical conservativism.
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
By "before", do you mean taking precedence over the utilitarian arguments? Because in that case, as always with deontology, you face this position being taken to absurdity, e.g. claiming you have assassinating the dictator at the cost of a nuclear war that kills everyone but you.
Do you not think that you can ever be morally obliged to suffer indignity or coercion?
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
Is it constitutively part of policing to kill someone because they threaten you with being scalded?
If not, it's not defending the "sacred institution" of policing to defend these officers. I think it's the opposite: if police officers can't handle situations involving crazy old ladies, then this will encourage many people to avoid bringing them into situations, undermining policing and supporting crime. "Should we call the cops? Well, she's acting crazy, but I don't want them to gun her down and maybe us too."
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
the difference between the median UK or European police officer's uniform and a US police officer's.
Looks pretty similar, except for the high visibility vest, but do you have less superficial info than me?
Random US: https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-c4635ee41d8d1fb890d78a62d15268a7-lq
Random UK https://spf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/B_15674-scaled.jpg
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
If you "jokingly" say you're going to attack someone with a [pot of boiling water] and then you actually do it then you clearly weren't joking.
That's not true and I'm not sure why you think it would be? If I pretend to stab at someone with a fork (a deadly weapon) then they go crazy (like the police officer) pull a gun on me and in a panic I actually do stab at them, it doesn't indicate that I originally indicated to stab them with a fork, because the circumstances has changed.
Did she act rationally? No, but I don't think that acting rationally when threatened with a gun should be a requirement of not being shot by police officers, who could have left the situation without meaningful consequences. If police officers can't be trusted to handle situations like that in a rational way, maybe they shouldn't have guns?
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
So do you think he might have originally intended to kill her, since he threatened her and got closer to her when he perceived her as threatening him with hot water? (Apparently, in your model, if he was innocent, he would freeze and back off in such a situation.)
You might say that policemen are trained to not freeze and back off from threats, but they are also trained to defuse situations and to remove themselves from a situation when appropriate. If he felt so unsafe from a woman with boiling water, he could have left the room and called for backup, or at least left to wait for her to calm down.
I'm not convinced he intended to kill her, rather than just couldn't handle the mental responsibilities he had undertaken as a police officer.
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
It is unclear how her actions improved on the situation though.
She acted irrationally, but if people have to walk on eggshells around police to avoid being shot, then people (especially mentally unstable people) will tend to avoid the police at all costs, which is not good for law enforcement. (Not suggesting you disagree.)
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
Going national in such a case could be a rational strategy, if you want the cop to be convicted, since it creates more embarassment for anyone who wants to "protect their own" etc.
However, exploiting such a case for national politics is unleashing a Pandora's Box, as we saw with the George Floyd hysteria. So it's not generally a justified strategy.
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
JFK assassination: the proof is that the files are still sealed 100 years later
I have really lost track of time since the covid pandemic.
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
You can argue that policing is better this way, but in the context of that discussion, my point was that you don't have to oppose the institution of policing to think that the officer should have acted differently.
I thought you were suggesting that, if people don't have guilty conscience, they will react to threats by backing off. She didn't do that and he didn't do that.
She did have a potentially lethal weapon. That was his reason for pulling his gun her, after all.
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
Constitutive, not constitutional.
Its sanctity lies in its foundations and principles, not individual events.
Exactly my point. It's not defending the foundations and principles of policing to defend each and every thing that police officers do. That's like, given an incompetent president, saying "I'm rallying round democracy."
Note I'm also not criticising US policing in general. I don't know the statistics well enough, and I suspect even they skirt over a lot of circumstances. For all I know, maybe more info. will come to light that exonerates this officer. What I can say is that, from the info provided, he acted incompetently (I see no evidence of racism, personal vendetta etc.) and unfortunately if you act incompetently when wielding a gun, you can end up going to prison. Maybe his hormones were wrong that day. Maybe he found out that morning that he was being cucked. That's tough on police officers, but it's the law, and it's that way for a reason.
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
the alternative is clean lunacy of more pointless migrants, more trans* related insanity, more cultural revolution.
Was January 2017 to January 2021 notably free of these things?
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
But not surprised by the "US" annexing the oilfields and key military locations, right?
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
Merkel's premiership was also characterised by stereotypically childless-person behaviour, e.g. her short-sighted and emotive decisions on nuclear power and migrants. Her outreach attempts to Putin, even as he conquered parts of Georgia, was also reminiscent of this Family Guy sketch: https://youtube.com/watch?v=9FTk3SawjX4
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
People who insist that a meaning of a word is wrong because it is not etymologically "correct" or because it was not the "original" meaning, even though it's had the one they object to for centuries.
My favourite example of this are communists, and my favourite examples of linguistic prescriptivisms among that group are Stalinists, who would demand that people call them "Marxist-Leninists."
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
Nothing has been hit as hard with the istphobe hammer than groups of men trying to compete with each other in physical activity. The horse's mouth will plainly tell you that such things are rooted in white supremacy and that anyone who lifts weights is inherently suspect of being far right.
I am not aware of this being a significant factor at all. Who is saying this and how many people are listening to them?
In the MSNBC article, maybe some dog-whistling there (e.g. "Physical fitness has always been central to the far right.") but that's not the same as saying that "such things are rooted in white supremacy and that anyone who lifts weights is inherently suspect of being far right".
The Zoe Williams articles are closer, though it's "more right wing" rather than "white supremacist". (She confesses to having recommended "every activity and pursuit, every wellness wheeze and rejuvenation exercise the modern world has dreamed up.") And I doubt that she is a sufficient influence to stop "A young man [feeling] generally better if he goes to a martial arts gym twice a week." (The original controversial claim by @TIRM.)
My general model of happiness is that it directly or indirectly comes from hard work to pursue goals that are subjectively meaningful. Exercise slows ageing, helps protect against horrific fates like dementia, aids one's sex life (even if partnered) and many other benefits. A major problem, though, is that it's tempting and popular to think that happiness comes from ease and choice, rather than from striving. Happiness from ease and choice is largely an effect of relaxing from mental and/or physical striving...
Huh, that does sound a bit fascist, I admit, but I am happy to agree with fascists on that much.
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
The MSNBC article has a photoshop of a German youth rally throwing Nazi salutes with the subtitle 'Physical fitness and violent hypermasculinity have always been central to the far right' as a header to said article.
That's less a 'dog whistle' and more an airhorn going off behind you.
It's association, but association is not always dog whistling. "Punk rock is an important part of skinhead culture" doesn't imply "Punk rock is a skinhead thing."
Harlequin5942
11mo ago
Given the importance of the Midwest in US politics, doing anything to suggest German = bad is not a good idea. Plus, AFAIK, most people these days have no idea who the Stazi were ("Some sorta Nazis?").
Trump and the Republicans have played things like "post-birth abortions" very well so far. If they're smart, they'll apply the same mix of hyperbole and accuracy for the "abolition of motherhood". The Republicans may struggle with young women, but married women with children have been fertile ground (excuse the metaphor) for them and other conservative parties in the past.
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