Tiber727
8d ago
It depends, someone here linked one time to a story about wide-scale fraud done by a political machine it Chicago that went on for years, and only came out because someone got cut out of a deal, and snitched.
I don't know the details of that, but I'd separate "outsider" fraud - a random civilian fraudulently voting vs. insider fraud - people working within the political system to elect a candidate. The people who tend to believe in one tend to believe in the other, but if voter ID wouldn't stop insider fraud then I see no reason to link the two. I'm generally of the opinion that in any conspiracy, someone will eventually snitch if the rewards are tempting, and I believe the Republican party will ensure the rewards are tempting.
What you're saying might work in states where institutions are politically mixed, and the sides keep each other in check, though.
Sure, there are states where one party wins solidly politically, but even in those the opposing party isn't completely powerless. There are people from both parties administering the election.
Are there not states that don't require any ID? The Google summarizer thing seems to be under the impression that there are quite a few.
It looks like you forgot to include a link.
Apologies, here is the link.
Yes, and there's nothing wrong with that in this case. If you want to tell me "there's in no evidence for X", "what kind of evidence would you see, assuming X happened" is a perfectly valid question to ask,
I elaborated it more, but I did from my first response to you state that "double voting" would be what I would expect to see.
This seems to show that unless someone loses the bet, you will not be able to show there was fraud after the fact, just like I suspected. Further, if you're particularly good at making these bets, losing a few won't even matter, because a part of your argument is "the amount of fraud is miniscule, so there's no reason to enhance integrity".
Let's look at the data. Heritage Foundation's data goes back to 1982. Filtering for "Impersonation at the polls" gives 34 results. You can click the link and read a little blurb which I did for I think all of them, and by my count exactly half of them are for mail-in ballots. Which is honestly part of my argument against voter ID, because if I were going to commit voter fraud mail-in ballots seem way smarter. The absentee ballots were found by signature matching or voting for a dead person
In these two - 1 2 they were recognized by poll workers.
In these two 1 2 the fraud was detected in the very way I said, that someone was told they already voted.
Let's say that there is a 99% chance to successfully fraudulently vote and a 1% chance to get caught. If 10,000 fraudulent votes were cast we might expect 100 failures. Yet we've found and punished either 17 or 34 (Heritage lists 34, but 17 sounded to me like they might have been mistagged) in 40 years.
Well, I'd like to hear some details on what you think is so different, because I've often heard American progressives just outright lie about the state of laws in other countries
I don't really like to give answers on topics I haven't studied, and as mentioned I'm focused on what American Republicans have previously done.
Also, if there is some version of ID-law that Democrats would support, it's rather suspicious that they never argue try offering a counter-proposal, and instead just go on and on about how voter ID is unnecessary, racist, voter suppression.
They do? A common refrain is that Dems say they will agree if voter ID is free and can be gotten conveniently for people who have limited time/transportation.
The reason I and I think the DNC don't push for this is because again I don't think it's really happening, plus if you take the position that your opponents are literally only doing this because they have your worst interests at heart (talking specifically about the Republican legislators) then there's no point giving them an inch because they're just going to try and find a way to take more.
No, the question was "Mechanically, how would you even know that, if you don't bother verifying the voter's identity?" You even quoted it!
My point 4 is that a prosecutor's job isn't just to point to some circumstantial evidence of why a suspect might have done it, they need to be able to describe a reasonable chain of events of how the suspect did it. I'm asking you, how does our hypothetical fraudster perform the fraud? Does he go in as himself and vote as himself, then come in later posing as someone else and vote again? Might someone recognize him? Sure, in any individual case the odds might be low, but if the scale of fraud is large a 1% chance each time is likely to happen.
From what you said it looks like you're assuming there's little fraud because it requires some prep, brings little individual gains, and carries some risk of punishment, but once it's actually done I see nothing about how you would prove it happened after the fact.
I'd add "requires being able to make fake forms of ID in many states."
The "But once it's actually done" part is assuming the conclusion, in a "but how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?" kind of way. [Many states have rules about signing an affidavit], and they can compare signatures after the fact. And you keep not addressing the part where there aren't any complaints about people being told they've already voted. Sure, you can make a safe bet about who is likely to vote and who isn't, but safe bets still sometimes lose. Consider how dumb Americans can be, and consider that criminals are usually dumber. People manage to find a way to fuck up. And Republicans want to shine a spotlight on voter fraud so they'd tell everyone if they found it.
The problem with portraying this as an evil Republican plot to exclude students from voting, is that students can just go an get the type of ID that enables them to vote. You know, just like they do in every other country.
A hurdle doesn't have to be insurmountable to be a hurdle. Why do you think gyms do things like letting you sign up easily but have to jump through hoops to cancel? Why do you think companies do mail-in rebates instead of sales? Because that extra hassle sometimes works.
Anyway, you have again not answered my question. Does this mean you think that the same European governments who are routinely repressing right-wing speech, are somehow requiring voter-ID in order to repress left-wing student voters?
I don't study the governments of other countries, but from what I've heard they have different laws on how people get IDs. But I do study pay attention to American politics, and I have seen American Republicans repeatedly target things like early voting which is primarily used by Democrats. I'm not accusing them of this in a vacuum.
Tiber727
9d ago
Not really. In a capitalist system, worth is inherently a subjective matter of how much you/society value something. Obviously Trump values Greenland, or he'd shut up about it. Denmark likewise values Greenland, but Denmark is the would-be seller so they have final say. And they think Trump's offer is shit, for whatever reason they wish. Even the people living in Greenland have no interest.
Why is it rational for Trump to want Greenland, but not rational for Denmark to want Greenland?
Tiber727
9d ago
But see this attitude is part of the problem. Trump's interest in Greenland is not irrational or sudden. It's strictly transactional. It could be arranged easily. There is no special reason why Denmark has to have it, it doesn't form a core part of the Danish identity or state. It's some land they technically own. And instead of being willing to deal at all or even producing good reasons why the deal should not be done, everyone says, "it's our sovereign territory!" Well, yeah, can we do a deal about it? "It's ours! Not yours! You can't have it!"
And one of the core tenets of capitalism is that you have the right to value anything however highly you wish. If your neighbor comes to you offering to buy your house, you have every right to tell him it has sentimental value and that he should kindly fuck off, even if he offers you a lucrative deal. You don't actually owe it to him to be willing to sell.
But this is only because Denmark and Europe refuse to negotiate in the first place. Refuse to even consider it. What threat does it pose to Denmark to make a deal? It's their "sovereign territory"? That's not a good reason actually, that's declaring a priori some kind of status quo as an inviolable metaphysical truth.
This is a game of DARVO. They said no. They have a right to say no. And while Trump does have the right to come up with a more lucrative deal, he's instead going the route of trying to find ways to punish them for not accepting a deal they think is bad. Sorry, but the problem is not that third parties are unreasonable for not being helpful to you.
Mechanically, how would you even know that, if you don't bother verifying thr voter's identity?
A combination of factors:
-
In order to impersonate someone else, you'd need a bit of their information (which you could get, but would take time and this is a low salience crime). You'd need to spend time picking out people who don't vote and you can impersonate.
-
Most states do check for some proof of who you are. The real trick the Republicans pull is suggesting that the fraudsters are also out here printing fake student IDs or something, so we can't have that. Gee, I wonder who someone who uses a student ID to vote might vote for. Or that the fraudster might get a hold of someone's expired photo ID.
-
That Republicans have been beating this drum for decades now, and can't even come out with verifiable stories of people showing up to vote and being told they already voted.
-
Mechanically, how do these fraudsters operate? Do they vote, go to their car and pick up a hat and fake student ID, and go right back in? Wouldn't you think if this were happening at scale a pollster would notice seeing the same guy but with a different hat? Or do they drive around to different polling sites?
-
I once did some napkin math and suggested that on election day, if you were to use different polling stations to hide your crime, you could probably cast maybe 40 votes on election day. When most elections are decided by thousands of votes, you accomplished jack shit. Whoop-de-do. If there's only one or two people per election willing to even attempt this, it is literally better to let them get away with it and not turn away the greater number of people who might be turned away by Republican attempts to limit voting.
My strongest argument here is number 2. This fight is really over being able to decide which forms of ID are acceptable to vote rather than some ID vs no ID.
Why does literally every other country do it, then?
Lots of other first world countries limit free speech or gun ownership too. I always get a chuckle about selective calls to copy other countries.
Politics is notorious for being motivated by collective belonging. Limiting the analysis to direct personal benefit seems like intentionally blinding yourself.
You're overstating a nugget of truth. I didn't say there was 0 reason. There's just a tiny reason, a risk of jail, a low positive impact of a single vote, and a lot of time needed to pull it off.
Tiber727
10d ago
They should be able to make the argument about the object of voter ID, then, without having to question the motives of it's proponents.
As an aside, I'd note that to some people on the forum, the motive is a perfectly reasonable reason to dismiss. See "arguments as soldiers" and "atheist quotes the bible to Christian" discussions.
But I don't think that's the central point anyway. We do regularly argue the object of voter ID.
-
We do in fact look for voter fraud and that's how we've find out that a small number of people have tried to commit it and gotten caught.
-
The amount we've found is so infinitesimal that the upside to implementing voter ID is nil, not even counting whether voter ID would have changed anything. Even if "the real number may be higher," the reason people don't care is that unless you had post-hoc knowledge of swing districts, the real number would have to be tens or hundreds of thousands of times higher than estimated (and towards the same candidate) to actually change the outcome of any major election.
-
That implementing it to make people "feel" that the election is more secure is pointless, because the real root is usually sour grapes that their candidate didn't win. They'll just move the goalposts to claiming mail-in ballot fraud or such. Security theater is stupid.
-
That voter fraud is already a low salience crime, because there's no personal benefit and you'd have to do it at a massive scale to accomplish anything. Even if you think "no one checks," don't you think that if you try to cast 100+ fake votes that the odds of getting caught would go way up just because someone recognizes you or for some other trivial reason?
-
That the motive of its proponents does matter at an object level if they say they are going to do A and turn around and do B. Which I argue they have done and will likely do again.
Tiber727
10d ago
I don't really know what to do here
Perhaps recalibrate what counts as a caricature?
Your post above was not actually arguing any point. It was just saying "Why would anyone oppose common sense gun control voter ID?" And follow a similar tactic where one simply sidesteps any discussion about the fact that mass shooters are incredibly rare to begin with and a smaller mag size doesn't really stop them by making the conversation about the supposed unreasonableness of opposing it. The correct response to this tactic is to ask, "You tell me - why then are you so insistent on this if it doesn't actually do anything?"
I don't actually care about 'THE RACISMS" except for the fact that if black people reliably voted Republican then the GOP would be all over expanding the vote.
You play this game of "Dems only oppose it because it's a tribal signifier." I'm saying that yes, "disenfranchising qualified voters" fucking is the real goal of those pesky rightists. And we know this because we've literally seen them do it, in ways that cannot be written off as election security, in recent memory.
Tiber727
11d ago
Each state has its own rules so there is no one answer. But generally:
-
You register your name and address, and your eligibility is compared to a database. Some states allow same-day registration.
-
You are told where to vote. Some states allow provisional ballots where you can vote somewhere besides where are supposed to, but provisional ballots are recorded and checked separately to check for double voting or for recounts.
-
Most states require some form of ID. Note that "voter ID" isn't just about whether any ID is required, it's about what forms of ID are acceptable. Some allow you to sign and attest that you are eligible to vote.
-
Mail-in ballots have bipartisan signature reviews.
Tiber727
11d ago
No reasonable person (sorry mods, but let me finish) could really have a strong stance against valid and secure forms of identification as a requirement for voting.
Sure there is. If you want to make a process more burdensome, then there should be a benefit to outweigh the burden. The proclaimed benefit is reducing fraud. If in reality it does not reduce fraud - because the amount of fraud committed that it could stop is effectively zero - then it's just a burden. If it stops 1 fraudulent vote and 10 citizens, it's still pointless. The right pivots the conversation that the burden is very tiny and easy to circumvent, but it doesn't change that their preferred policy didn't actually do anything.
Would you buy and carry around with you a tiger repelling charm, even if said charm did repel tigers?
Instead, the left does nice little sleight of hand card trick. It's not about the object of voter ID, it's about the real goal of those pesky rightists; disenfranchising qualified voters. This is why references to poll taxes and other Jim Crow era voting shenanigans are ubiquitous in the discourse. It's a way to hijack the object of discussion itself and redirect it into "THE RACISMS" pile.
It's "not about the object of voter ID" because the object of voter ID is stopping something from happening that isn't happening. If you kept trying to further criminalize cannibalism I'd look at you like you were stupid or playing some game with me.
You're doing that thing where you take a reasonable argument but try to discredit it by making it about the emotional salience of the word racism. Yes, disenfranchising qualified voters is bad and I'm tired of pretending it's not. It's even bad if we ignored any discussion of race.
"The real goal" is a perfectly valid talking point when dealing with someone who categorically does things different from what they say they will. In 2013, a day after provisions of the Voting Rights Act got gutted by the Supreme Court, Republicans got to work making an election security law. Note that when making this law, they had already completed a survey of how people register and vote, broken down by race. They changed:
-
ID requirements - they already required some forms of ID, but accepted even expired photo IDs. They restricted the kind of IDs that would work, but kept some alternate IDs that whites use. Because apparently the vote fraudsters could also somehow get a hold of a bunch of expired IDs?
-
Same day registration - Notably not photo ID, which is the part always focused on. Sounds more like a way to stop people voting than increasing security. "The district court found that legislators similarly requested data as to the racial makeup of same-day registrants."
-
Out of precinct voting - Notably not photo ID, and not discussed. "Legislators additionally requested a racial breakdown of provisional voting, including out-of-precinct voting." If you vote provisionally, they check whether you've already voted before counting it.
-
Preregistration permitted 16- and 17-year-olds, when obtaining driver’s licenses or attending mandatory high school registration drives, to identify themselves and indicate their intent to vote. - You guessed it, done without ever suggesting we needed to do this. What does this have to do with security?
-
Reduction in early voting - also not photo ID, and also known that it was used primarily by black people.
-
Mail-in voting - This is commonly cited as a weak point in election security. But white people use this more than black people, so this wasn't touched at all!
Tiber727
11d ago
is Iran a threat to America's interests, or only a threat to Israel's interests?
They were always a threat to America's interests, just a matter of "how much." Israel aside, they've funded terrorism, provided arms to Russia for use in Ukraine, and threatened to build nukes. But they've been doing that kind of thing for decades. The real question is if the water's gotten hot enough for the frog to jump out. As Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq have shown us, war can be expensive and fail to actually get you the thing you wanted despite "winning" it. Or just make the problem worse.
I'm not crying for the Ayatollah, but I'm not seeing the plan of what we're actually going to accomplish by the end of this or how. Mostly I'm just noting the irony of Don the Dove. And laughing at how Trump can't get any of America's allies on board after calling them deadbeats.
Tiber727
17d ago
Aside from Okinawa which was already mentioned, the atomic bomb was also the culmination of years of fighting and Japan losing ground. All of their cards had already been played and discarded.
Tiber727
17d ago
Two things: The demand for perfection and Isolated demands for rigor.
When it comes to demands of perfection, it depends on the level of fuckup. The level of fuckup also depends on capabilities. If I blow up a terrorist and some kids also die, there may be some discussion based on capabilities of if I could have targeted him when children weren't around, but otherwise it was an unfortunate necessity. If I aim for the target and miss and kill children, well then there was some level of fuckup. The amount of fuckup varies from "humans are far from perfect, what are you expecting" if my technology is at the level of catapults to "this needs to investigated" if my technology is such that I can precision target a specific mosquito from halfway across the world. In the latter example, even if the answer ends up being that better technology doesn't eliminate the potential for human error, investigating is still important for identifying ways to not make that mistake in the future.
I have no intention of speaking for Dase, but when it comes to Russia and Palestine, there is some of the above - Palestine does not have precision targeting or a monopoly of force necessary to pick and choose targets (even if I give them benefit of the doubt and don't think of them as terrorists). But more importantly, we have already concluded that they are pieces of shit and choose to act immorally. We want them to behave morally, but we have given up expecting it so there is no benefit to spending more time on it than necessary to document their atrocities for posterity. Their sins do not create permission for us to sin.
Tiber727
20d ago
Why do you describe it like Trump was simply absent when all this was decided? Trump didn't simply fail to stop them, he is on board with it.
The people who wanted no war voted for a guy who constantly flip-flops, and this was a completely foreseeable outcome of that.
Tiber727
29d ago
Newsom has figured that out. "The woke" won't shut up about his one act of "throwing them under the bus" despite all the pro-trans bills he passed. They haven't "figured it out" at all, they simply don't talk about it because they genuinely don't think of themselves as engaging in the culture war at all. They don't think about trans issues because there's no need to think about it when there is only one position one could possibly hold.
They will comment in 50 reddit threads and argue back and forth for an hour about how only the right cares about trans issues.
Tiber727
29d ago
Believe me, they don't. I look to see what the left is thinking (as well as the right). They don't think the news is left-leaning, because if it was then Trump wouldn't have won. They think that grifters on Youtube create an "alt-right pipeline." They think that Trump is a symptom of white men afraid of losing the privilege they're entitled to thanks to DEI. They think the right is organized while the left constantly fights itself (of course the centrists should give up) and that the right will rally to the next person who will lie to them.
I actually think it's hilarious looking at The Motte and Reddit side by side.
I notice that I'm confused as to what "transgender rights" are.
From what I notice, it tends to be things like:
-
Being denied housing/jobs. - You know what, I could side with the Ts on this.
-
Surgery for adults. - I'm not going to celebrate you realizing your authentic self by cutting off your dick, but it's America and you should have the right.
-
Being able to use the bathroom of their choice. - Note that they always focus on bathrooms because they have stalls. Never mind locker rooms where you can glance over and see someone naked.
-
Legal documentation - I'd say it annoys me that they need everything to validate them, but speaking practically I don't care that much. I could actually slightly lead towards anon_'s take that the fact that they're actively revoking licenses shows direct animus.
-
Hormones for children. - They always play this game where they pretend getting them is difficult and you need to jump through all these hoops so no one could get them by accident. Never mind the gatekeepers (gender clinics) are also the advocates.
-
Sports. - They always attempt to pretend sports are unfair anyway due to biological differences, as if being male is equivalent to being a tall woman.
-
Prisons - A transwoman in a male prison is more likely to be raped. A transwoman in a women's prison is more likely to rape. Personally I'd rather make a small number of trans prisons around the country.
-
Insurance - Edited to add because I forgot about it. Because this is life-saving surgery of course they think it should be covered by insurance.
I deliberately search for takes from the left and right. The argument I constantly see is that the lefties on reddit seem to think that conceding any argument to the right is a slippery slope to Kristallnacht. Honestly, I would be perfectly accepting if a trans person would be willing to say, "Yes I know it's silly but my brain kicks me whenever I'm misgendered so please just go with it." My problem with the movement is the constant maximalist demands. I remember when the argument was that pronouns are meaningless titles, so it's no difference than using "Dr." instead of "Mr." Now it's "The science is settled and only a bigot could object."
Tiber727
1mo ago
I don't know how much a random redditor counts, but I have literally seen a conversation where the person "misgenders" a trans criminal, someone tries to lecture him, and he straight up says (paraphrased), "I use preferred pronouns because I am asked to, but criminals are not owed politeness." Which does square with the argument frequently made (if not necessarily believed) that pronouns are like titles and using them is "just being polite."
Tiber727
1mo ago
I wasn't really into Gemergate itself at the time, but it was multiple things at a time.
-
Games journalism being untrusted (for instance, Jeff Gerstmann being fired because he gave a mediocre review score to a game heavily advertised on the site),
-
Zoe Quinn allegedly sleeping around (which wasn't a review but her game was covered by the site)
-
Anita Sarkeesian was promoted on multiple sites for feminist critiques of video games, despite knowing nothing about video games and using incredibly old and simplistic evidence.
When the journalists tried to disparage and stop discussion of the above, that just fanned the flames.
Trans people took a defined word rooted in biology and tried to redefine it.
Yes, and "American" is rooted in citizenship. Citizenship is pretty objective and unambiguous.
If you asked someone say 5 years to define an American how many would say
-
America itself keeps PR at arm's length with a half-assed quasi-status. Adding to that, we literally had a war to force to people who didn't want to call themselves American to do so anyway.
-
English speaking is recommended, but not a requirement.
-
"Routinely complains about America." So literally everyone on this forum?
But to really test your point, imagine two U.S. citizens have a baby and live in say Israel. And that baby grows up and married someone who similarly was born to two U.S. citizens yet lived in Israel his or her whole life. That new couple had a baby.
Let's test the opposite. Imagine a mother has a baby right before crossing the border. The baby grows up to be the most stereotypical American you can imagine. Loves hot dogs and football, and cries during the national anthem. Is that child American? Many here would say "I don't care about any of that, deport his ass immediately." Hell, even if he was born on this side of the border and legally a citizen, many here argue the law should be changed so he isn't.
This is a bit of a toy example but it is trying to separate out “Americanness” from “legal status.”
And "Americanness" is nothing but a vague and arbitrary touchy-feely crap. You're entitled to believe it, but it has no actual meaning outside your head.
Tiber727
1mo ago
Nobody is misunderstanding you. You're just trying to argue why God says you should do X to an atheist. They reject the framework of the argument.
And for that matter, I reject it too. I think this is the right's equivalent of trans ideology. "You see, there's a literal meaning but also a spiritual meaning that involves conforming to a bunch of stereotypes."
Tiber727
1mo ago
I don't think oats is saying he hates capitalism, more that he's saying that capitalism has seemingly learned that being partisan can also be profitable. The left is more likely to make purchasing decisions based on politics. Thus the "free market" party is ill-equipped to handle it, because the bean counters are telling everyone to charge full steam ahead.
Though as an aside, I think "What if we brought down wages and benefits so citizens can compete with immigrants" is on par with "What if we made all the farmers become factory workers?"
Tiber727
1mo ago
RE: Body Cams
A couple articles does not a vibe-shift make. At the height of BLM Dems were more likely to support body cams than Reps (92 to 84%), but support was about as close to unanimous as any topic gets. I couldn't find any data newer than 2015 but it would take a massive vibe shift to put a dent in 92% support. Given the Dems are pushing for cameras, that seems unlikely.
Also, your ProPublica link isn't against body cameras. It's accusing the police of acting improperly with the footage they have.
Tiber727
1mo ago
Gender theory itself isn't an argument, but just a way to view the world. And it definitely arose from wanting to be the opposite sex, as you described. But "I want to be a man/woman" is a totally coherent concept.
It's coherent in that there is a desire there, for whatever reason. Part of my frustration admittedly is switching arguments between "this is totally normal, gender roles are all made up" and "go along with it or kids will commit suicide." The "kids will commit suicide" aspect suggests something is very wrong (when this argument is not used as emotional manipulation) but "go along with it" does not follow. To me "going along with it" is like if society decided that the treatment for hearing voices in your head is to say the voices are real, for society to grant personhood to the voices, and to redefine sound from vibrations in the air to anything someone perceives as auditory sensation. It makes the sufferer feel better about having it, but nothing has actually changed about them having it and it all collapses when someone naturally points out the elephant in the room. The only way for this treatment to improve is to increasingly demand conformity to avoiding the topic.
Whenever someone like Jesse Singal questions whether this treatment program is actually saving kids lives he's accused of wanting to kill kids. If you suggest that some kids might be autistic or struggling with adolescence, you get mobbed. Imagine if someone decided to research a drug to deal with dysphoria by suppressing the dysphoria and making them more comfortable in their own skin. And for that matter, if there have always been trans people, don't you find it a little odd that suicide is such a massive concern now as opposed to 100 years ago? If you think a trans kid was bullied 10 years ago, imagine 100. You'd think they'd have been killing themselves left and right and people would have noticed.
I am not denying this. Trans activism is trying to make wider society adopt the gender theory lens of viewing things, make it the "standard" as you say.
In reality they are doing this. From their own claims they are doing nothing, they are just living their lives and mean people are going out of their way to torment them. They act as if they have always been the standard.
-
Gender was always implicitly recognized throughout history because no one went around looking under women's skirts. Spend 5 seconds imagining what would probably happen if someone with a penis was identified dressing as a woman in the past (not counting theater).
-
Cherry picking niche societies with categories like "two spirit." Many of them were societies with strict gender roles that they wouldn't want to live in, and these gender roles were often a form of emasculation.
-
Salami slicing small changes in the name of acceptance, then framing the opposition as overreacting to nothing. Related anecdote: video games have quietly almost entirely changed character creators to say "Body Type A or B", "styles," or unnamed silhouettes, despite choosing the character's sex. They claim that this is no big deal. The right wing owner of the company behind Lords of the Fallen forced the devs to change it to Male/Female. Cue lefties saying they will no longer buy anything from the company. If asked about this discrepancy, Male/Female is appeasing right-wing chuds, Type A/B is "being a decent person" even when localizers changed it from the original Japanese.
-
Claims that non-experts should defer to experts, then denounce any experts/evidence as operating in bad faith and try to personally and professionally disqualify them. Experts that find evidence in their favor are of course neutral and professional.
I'm just pointing out that this is not something that can be objectively proven false, and is just a moral preference.
Moral preference cannot be proven false, this is true. But try comparing believing in gender identity to religious belief and watch the left howl.
Also, I can point out how their arguments in favor of their moral preference they conveniently discard when it leads to outcomes that don't support their moral preference. The "gender and sex are two different things" argument is presented as "I'm not trying to replace sex, I'm trying to add nuance." Then they repeatedly oppose any decision making based on sex, even matters where biology is a main factor. My favorite was another conversation where I also pointed out the discrepancy of it being called gender affirmation surgery despite gender being all in the mind, and was calmly told that breasts are also a gendered characteristic. And their definition of gender is nonsensical. Ask them to define a woman and it means anyone who identifies as a woman. Ask what woman-as-a-concept is, and all you will get is an endless runaround of what it is not.
Tiber727
1mo ago
Personally, my objection to gender ideology is not the social aspect. I ultimately don't care if a man wants to wear a skirt. But I see the discrepancy between the arguments they make and the actions they take. For as much as they say they are simply separating gender from sex, their actions are consistent with wanting to eliminate the concept of sex in humans.
-
"Biological" man/woman? This is offensive terminology.
-
Saying bathrooms/changing room usage is determined by sex? Bigot.
-
Sports separated by sex? "Leave it to the committee" when the committee allows trans women to compete, but get mad if they change it. Simultaneously attempt to argue that letting trans individuals compete with women is no big deal.
-
Attracted to the opposite sex? Genital preference.
-
Surgically altering your body to imitate the sexed characteristics of the opposite sex? Gender Affirmation Surgery.
-
Choosing your sex in video games? Body Type A or B.
-
In the progressive lexicon, there is no single word for the male and female sex in humans. There are acronyms like AFAB, or references to bodily functions (menstruators, chestfeeding, etc.).
Any decision based on sex must be made on gender. Any references to sex that cannot be replaced with gender must be hinted at rather than stated. Sure there's the "charitable" reading of the TRAs confusing their own terminology, but it seems to happen a lot. The most straightforward conclusion I can draw is that the rhetorical separation between sex and gender only exists because they worked backwards from the conclusion that they wanted to be treated like the desired sex in every way possible, and invented an argument that they convinced themselves of in order to square the circle.
With regards to this specific case, I could at least buy the argument if Irish law treated adoptive and birth mother the same. But if this line is true:
“under Irish law, as applied to date, the mother of the child is the woman who gives birth to the child and therefore the child would derive their citizenship through that mother”
then it seems unambiguous that Ireland is not using "mother" as "feminine caregiver," it is using it as "person who carried the baby." The "sex is not gender" argument doesn't fly here because the real source of the conflict is that the state is specifying sex and the plaintiff wants gender to be the standard. The point TRAs don't mention is that when Gender got divorced from Sex, Sex was the breadwinner who named all the words for man/woman, but Gender got literally everything in the divorce. If TRAs had invented new terms for masculine/feminine gender roles, then there'd be no issue because it was clear Irish Law was specifying sex. The actual motivation for the lawsuit is over whether the law is allowed to use mother/father to refer to sex or whether Gender has stolen the word "mother" for all purposes.
Individual people are capable of lots of crazy things. But conspiracy is another matter. You have to find like-minded individuals without tipping your hand to snitches. You need to gather and coordinate and preferably not leave evidence like phone logs. I said before that a very rough guess suggests that if you try to commit mass voter fraud you'd want to go to different polling stations each time, which one person could cast maybe 40 votes on election day (I suppose more if you count early voting) in person. You'd need at minimum hundreds of people coordinating to sway a presidential election by in-person voter fraud.
That's why recordings exist. And investigations. I'd also add that fame can be a form of payment.
Heritage's data goes back to 1982. According to their data in-person voter fraud has been proven to happen 34 times. According to AI, only counting presidential elections, approximately 1.2 BILLION votes have been cast in that time. We are sitting here arguing federal laws to try and better catch a crime that has provably happened less than once a year in the entire country and accomplished less than stealing a penny. The seconds that it takes to validate each person's ID each time are worth more than the actual fraud it would stop, even ignoring voter disenfranchisement. Not to mention the salaries of the members of Congress arguing over this fucking nothingburger. In person voter fraud is as much a threat to election security as a single mosquito is a threat to Godzilla.
A, I think that in terms of "reasons why I'm voting for X party" voter ID is pretty damn low on the list. The Democrats would lose more votes from legal citizens with expired licenses than they would gain. B, My claim is that if the goal of the GOP in pushing voter ID is to cause Dems to lose votes, then giving in simply gives them more flexibility. For instance, an accusation that has been levied is that after getting voter ID passed in red states, the GOP closed DMVs in poor areas, thereby making wait times longer and transportation more difficult. While that accusation could be true or could be conspiratorial thinking, it is the sort of thing you could do to effectively make a deal only to sabotage it later. It's like agreeing to a deal to let your opponent gerrymander the state slightly in their favor. C, again I don't think voter ID is a reasonable proposal for the reasons I said above. D, why even lose face by effectively admitting your opponent had a point, especially when they don't?
More options
Context Copy link