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[Apologies in advance for bringing up an old story, but I couldn't find any record of discussion of it]
Deep downthread in the election megathread @Folamh3 linked to a wonderful article you might all enjoy, but that's really beside the point. I want to talk about something mentioned within the article, namely a commercial. I'll copy the article's description here:
Here is the commercial in question that seems to have been almost entirely scrubbed from Youtube.. This kicked off a series of only vaguely connected thoughts I lack the ability to synthesize, but perhaps you all can put it together more successfully than me.
Burgers?
Of course there's a certain element of "Burgers?" to a commercial about suicide for an upscale department store. But I feel a few other elements of the commercial are curious to me. Take this screenshot from the ad, does this not look like a scene from Midsommar? Why are all the participants women? Why are they all White? This seems to frame the euthanasia as some sort of White feminist religious ritual, possibly connected with nature worship.
Suicide Girls
I'll note that the euthanized woman was described as having Ehlers Danlos. Anyone that has casually explored "SickTok" in the past few years will have surely heard of this condition. While I'm sure it's a real disease in some cases, there is undeniably a trend among young women sharing this concept with each other. I actually first encountered this disease when exploring the twitter of a porn model (so sue me) at least a dozen or more years ago. It struck me at the time as an obviously invented attention-seeking condition that allowed her to post hospital selfies every few weeks and be continually weak and bedridden with no obvious externally visible symptoms.
My second encounter with this disease was my cousin. My cousin is a few years younger than me and fifteen years ago was a sufferer of gluten sensitivity of one form or another (when it was popular for everyone to be suffering from it). About three years ago I heard she was now suffering from Ehlers Danlos.
It strikes me as telling I first encountered this in a porn model as I now consider them to be sort of canaries-in-the-coalmine for female neuroses and social messaging, obviously being more susceptible than most to these things.
Appropriately I just saw this going viral on twitter yesterday with the infamous Taylor Lorenz catastrophizing about her long COVID
Antinatalism, Environmentalism, Suicidality and Leftism
Here I'm just going to wave my hands in the general direction of The Socialist Phenomenon with its lengthy sections relating the running theme of suicide pervading socialist movements (Christian and otherwise) throughout human history. If you ever visit the /r/antinatalism subreddit you'll notice the distinctly leftist and often environmentalist concerns of its posts. In contrast, as pessimistic and addicted-to-doomposting as the far right can be I've never detected a major suicidal or antinatalist current on /pol/ for example. As an aside, see the movie First Reformed, it's horrible.
So what to make of this? I don't know exactly how to piece it together but there is some common through-line that connects feminism, White people, desire to be ill, environmentalism and suicide. Just wanted to hear whatever thoughts this commercial might spark in you all, as I don't really know how to connect the dots myself in a satisfactory way. Apologies if this is not coherent or focused enough for a top-level post.
I do find it very frustrating that before assisted suicide has even been legalized for terminal cancer, we're already talking about 30 year old women with psychosomatic illnesses. I think assisted suicide is obviously a good thing, because nobody should be forced to endure the last 3 months of a terminal illness if they don't want to. We can immediately recognize that it's cruel to let a dog suffer until the bitter end, but we can't extend that compassion to 90 year old humans in excruciating pain?
If the anti-suicide people are responsible for steering the debate away from the situations where euthanasia is obviously good and just, and toward the most ridiculously favorable ground for their side, I have to tip my cap to their genius. It's some kind of reverse Motte and Bailey that seems to happen with a lot of social issues. Moderates support allowing adults to be transgender if they want to, and then suddenly we're arguing about womens' sports and 9 year olds transitioning, and the moderates are stuck either defending indefensible and irrelevant nonsense or being called bigots by the radicals on their side.
This is why I just gave up and started voting straight-ticket Republican. It's all delusional weird guys with no social skills who collapse whenever anyone comes at them for real. You realize the Democratic party has nothing to do with you in real life, right?
"Enlightenment liberals" are over and dancing with a corpse.
Three strikes, you’re out.
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