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Notes -
I watched the Harris speech this morning and wrote down some scattered thoughts. My apologies if any of them don't make sense without having watched, I was just typing a few things up as I watched.
Nice outfit - fairly warm while still professional.
When she mentioned going to Illinois, there was a small cheer, when she mentioned Wisconsin there was a much larger cheer. No one likes Illinois, not even the people that live there.
Talking about the experience of “injustice” is in such bad taste for the child of professors. These are privileged people that found immense opportunity in the United States. I realize that the whole Democrat schtick is playing up how oppressed people of color are, but it’s ridiculous for Harris.
The phrase, “I’ve only had one client - the people” is a fantastic way to spin never having held a private sector job. Good speechwriting!
The line referring to Trump as an “unserious man” is a good line. Trump’s lack of seriousness is obvious to all but his most ardent supporters. This criticism rings as much more on point than all of the Russia conspiracy and “coup” nonsense ever could.
The claim that Trump has an “explicit intent to jail journalists” is just an outright lie.
The callback to her earlier line with “the only client he has ever had - himself” is great speechwriting. Banger of a setup and punchline. Much like the lack of seriousness jab, this rings much more true than all of the dark conspiracy stuff.
The line that the Department of Education “funds our public schools” is pretty weird. It’s not quite literally false, the DoE does spend ~$20 billion on public school funding, but total American school spending is nearly $1 trillion and the vast majority of it is state and local money. Are people under the impression that school funding is a big thing that DoE does or is it just a bit of rhetoric?
Referring to abortion as “decisions of heart and home” is an interesting tactic. Abortion is a huge winning issue for Democrats, but it’s so frequently referred to with euphemisms rather than in the most literal terminology. I’m basically entirely on the same side as Democrats on the issue, which makes it more interesting to me that it tends to come with alternative phrasing rather than just saying what they mean.
Shoehorning every issue into “freedom” requires some downright Orwellian twists. Abrogating the constitutional freedom of the right to bear arms is inverted to “freedom to live without gun violence”. A massive regulatory state creating arcane rules for everything from flow of showerheads to the powertrains of vehicles becomes “the freedom to live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis”. I think the framing probably works for people on that side of those issues though.
Claiming that the recent Senate border bill was the “strongest in decades” is a lie. HR 2 from 2023 passed the House and was much stronger but was unacceptable to Democrats. I do understand that this one has become an accepted truth among Democrats though, so it probably plays pretty well. Continuing to push this one requires a fully complicit media, but she can safely rely on that.
The Israel line is politically palatable, but also pretty hollow. Israel has a right to defend itself, but the Palestinian people will get freedom and self-determination - OK, what’s that look like? As near as I can tell, Palestinian self-determination selects Islamist leaders. Islamist leaders want dead Israelis and the land returned to Palestinians from the river to the sea. You can’t solve this problem if you’re not addressing reality. Someone has to actually lose.
Overall, it was a well-delivered speech that tacks towards the middle on most issues. While I am personally not impressed by teleprompter speeches, her tone and clarity were both quite good. Simply being energetic and eloquent is a good look. If I were a Democrat strategist, I would feel good about the speech and consider it a positive step towards victory.
Correct if I am incorrect, but don't democrats deny any right to the father of child and the family of the mother to determine if it should live or die? Because if neither her husband nor her family should have any say, the "home" part is deceitful. Only the "heart" (of the mother) decides.
Is this referring to Trump? He owned hotels, casinos, of which visitors could be called clients.
A bit off-topic, but I read today about the political system if Bosnia and Herzegovina. The country has three main ethniticies: Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs, all are subethnicities of Slavs, each has an associated religion, and all speak basically the same language. The country is divided into Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina where the Croats and Bosniaks live, and the Srpska Republic inhabited by Serbs. Since the divisions run deep and none of ethnic groups trusts any other to not ethincally cleanse them, the bodies where power is allocated by election are subordinate to a neutral third party: Office of the High Representative (OHR) or unoffically Viceroy of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Such a solution for a territory deemed to be too "primitive" for self-rule wasn't invented in Dayton, Ohio, but follows in the tradition of "Mandates" dating back to the League of Nations.
Perhaps a similar solution could be adopted in Palestinian Territories: P5+regional islamic powers+EU+Israel each send representative to Steering Board, which elects a viceroy. He would be given a range of powers and would tasked to make sure violent extremists do not gain power, and to slowly accustom Palestinians to a free and democratic society.
How does differ from a just a military occupation? Under the OHR system the natives make the vast majority of political decisions and OHR only intervenes if he senses danger to the peace treaty (in BiH's Dayton Agreement), while under military occupation (as practised by Americans, not as defined in international law) not even this fig leaf is required: any organization can be freely dissolved, destroyed, or altered, any person killed, imprisoned, or impoverished with no justification needed.
While the Bosnian and Second World wars both saw brutality, Germans in the war just prior to the one which earned them the occupation (WWI) behaved in a honourable and admirable manner, while South Slavs in the war just prior to the one which earned them the occupation (WWII) commited many atrocities, even against each other. So by this criterion by which one could determine how civilized populations are, Palestinians of the pre 10-7 era are closer to the South Slavs of WWII, than Germans of WWI, in their want to seeing people die.
So the role the foreigners play should reflect this similarity: because the Palestinians are seemingly crueler in general, the regime should be hands-off.
The assumption is that the decision to abort is a discussion between the involved parties (mainly, the prospective mother and father). Legally, the woman has final say, but in any remotely healthy relationship, one would assume that she does not just make the decision without any input or consideration for her partner's opinion. I think most men would be pretty upset (and probably consider it a relationship-ender) if their girlfriend or wife said "I'm pregnant and I'm going to abort, don't bother telling me what you think because you don't get a say." Even if he's pro-choice, and probably even if he would be in favor of aborting in the situation also! That's just not the sort of decision that people in an actual partnership make unilaterally.
I emphasize again: in a healthy relationship. Harris isn't talking about either the abusive ones that the left likes to bring up or the she-demons who LOL at their exes on their way to the abortion clinic that the right (probably thinks exist in larger numbers than they do).
That being the case, that only one person has the deciding vote under the law doesn't make it "deceitful" to argue that for most people it is a decision of "heart and home."
Have you read about the history of Palestine? That's not too far from what the British originally tried to do with Mandatory Palestine (albeit with less finesse or consideration for anyone there, since the British had no love for either Jews or Arabs and basically wanted to wash their hands of the whole matter).
So did the Japanese. Before the invasion of China and WWII, the Japanese were known for being exemplary in their treatment of civilians and POWs. Things can change a lot in a decade or two.
What if only men would legally allowed to make some type of a decision, and their wives would be only allowed to argue against them and threaten with divorce (a no-fault divirce at that, as abortion of a child the father wants alive isn't, according to (my understanding of values of) democrats, grounds-for-divorce), would democrats call such decisions as anything other than solely his own? Because feminists like to poont to past such laws as example of the patriarchy and consider women in such cases completely powerless. Like the "women weren't allowed to open a bank account" (but they were allowed to talk to their husbands how money should be spent). Or suffrage: woman talking to her husband about her political ideals wasn't illegal, but because she wasn't issued a ballot, feminist consider the husbands vote as representative solely of his values and the woman disempoweted.
Yes. It's harder to think of an example of a decision that "only a man can make," for reasons of biology, but one that comes to mind is getting a vasectomy. A man can absolutely get a vasectomy without his partner's approval or knowledge, but a lot of women would consider doing so without consulting her (especially if she wants children) to be a deal-breaker. And it would be a dick (heh) move to do that without talking to your partner.
More generally, making any kind of huge financial or life decision ("I am going to quit my job," "I just bought a new Cybertruck," etc.) is the sort of thing you can legally do but most people would agree is a shitty thing to do unilaterally. And those sorts of decisions are mostly made by men.
Most people probably understood that a wife was probably going to have some influence on her husband, but it was also understood that a husband could and would vote however he wanted without consulting his wife.
I think this is a good description of the story the modern blue tribe tells about itself, and if it were true to form I'd probably have less of a bone to pick with that side of the isle's treatment of my sex. But like many autobiographies, it gives itself too much credit.
I think you'll find that in practice, very little scorn is offered to wives who decide for themselves that having another baby is "right for her", and very little lenience to husbands who aren't prepared to quickly get with that program.
From what I have seen, most normal people believe all such decisions should be mutual, while very tribalized people always tell a narrative that emphasizes the most selfish and abusive individual stories from the other side while claiming that the selfish and abusive cases on their side are exaggerated. Thus conservatives emphasize selfish women making childbirth choices without giving their partner any say, and claiming that men actually being controlling and abusive is just a story women tell themselves. While leftists emphasize women in controlling and abusive situations and imply women lack agency or responsibility for anything, while excusing truly selfish and irresponsible behavior by women.
"This should be a joint decision, but the person whose body is at issue has the final vote if they can't reach an agreement" is where we are at.
I understand what is supposed to happen. My concern is what happens when something goes wrong.
Blue tribe is happy to hand wave away men's vulnerability to women's overwhelming reproductive power as "biological" in origin. I am unsure how biology writes our laws in any sense other than the most reductive and worthless—but on the other hand, I am not opposed to the implementation of cultural protections in lieu of legal ones where the latter may be too unwieldy. Blues would insist that any legal protection for men is impossible to practically implement. I may mostly disagree, but I can see how it might be hard to implement within a marriage context. Cultural protections may be appropriate here.
The problem is that this form of protection isn't offered to men by blue tribe in nearly enough volume to justify the power differential. Blue tribe culture may be willing to condemn reproductive coercion of men by women as being kinda mean, and wag a finger at women who do it, but that isn't nearly enough, and proves that blues don't really care about this abuse of power.
If we're taking this seriously, reproductive coercion of men by women really ought to be considered at a similar level of transgression as infidelity. This is a good example of a love crime that we do actually take quite seriously, and offer serious cultural protection against in lieu of legal protection. If we were to apply this kind of protection as a safeguard against women's reproductive power, things would look very, very different. It would look like blue tribe looking at a sobbing woman whose husband left her because she tried forcing another baby on him dead in the face, and, shedding no pity whatsoever, assuring her that all this ruin is only what she wrought upon herself. It would look like, in the other timeline, blue tribe lionizing a husband as downright saintly for finding it in himself to forgive this kind of transgression, given to an individual wholly undeserving of mercy, even if the true intended beneficiaries are the children.
But in the current blue milieu, unexpected babies in marriage are something that just kinda happen. Like, it's a little bad if the woman is being deceptive, but comon dude, shit happens. You need to move on and focus on making room for the new kid. I don't even want to know how much of the asshole he would be if he up and left due to this betrayal. Sticking around is simply being a decent human being and awards no cookies.
Again, I'd have less of a bone to pick with Blue Culture if the protections it claims to offer to men were real, but as it stands right now calling it a fig leaf would be offering too much credit.
I don't think people do actually have much sympathy for a woman whose partner leaves her because she wants a(nother) child and he doesn't. It's just an unfortunate irreconcilable difference.
(I also don't think husbands leaving their wives because they don't want any more children is very common.)
He's still financially responsible for any children he produces, though. That's an ever-present potential consequence of having sex that both parties have to live with.
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