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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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The state of Minnesota has passed a trans refuge bill.

Specifically, the bill would prohibit the enforcement of a court order for removal of a child or enforcement of another state’s law being applied in a pending child protection action in Minnesota when the law of another state allows the child to be removed from the parent or guardian for receiving medically necessary health care or mental health care that respects the gender-identity of the patient.

From my reading of this (not a lawyer, obvs): previously if a child ran away from home, and was found, the child would be returned to the child's parents. Now, however, if a child runs away from home, and claims a "transgender identity" the state will use its powers to keep the child from its parents.

This seems: absolutely pants-shittingly insane to me? Like I'm sortof reeling from disbelief at this and am still trying to figure out what I'm missing. This also seems to imply that if a child runs away to Minnesota, that the child will be kept in Minnesota away from his or her parents.

Can anybody help me understand this? This goes so far beyond anything that I had even considered in the realm of possibility that I'm sure I must be misunderstanding this.

As a related side note: I am reaching a point where reading things on this topic is becoming incredibly difficult. There seems to be so many seemingly double/triple/quadruple entendre words that its hard to follow.

Insane? If I'm correct in believing a fundamental necessity of American life in the 21st century -- as far as moneyed powers are concerned -- is to prune the surplus population in ways which provoke their naïve consent, then this proposed measure is very, very sane.

  • -10

But muh Demographic Transition...

Put more eloquently, this doesn't make sense. A number of people here will likely have the stats on hand showing that the US is already below the replacement threshold in terms of fertility. And, of course, I think this law is within that area of "I think the stated motivations of the people behind it are their literal and honest motivations, and there is no ulterior motive, only ignorance of repercussions."

Since the death rate is exceeding the birth rate the system should stop employing its eugenicist gears? This is a silly thought.

To your second point, your opinion is in that area of “No one knows anything that isn’t explicitly spelled out to them, even if the pattern should be obvious without the explanation.”

What if you are not correct?

Then the world is exactly as dumb as you think it is.

That's not what I mean.

Surely you have to take into account, as anybody with reason, that dooming people to terrible fates when you are not certain it is for the best is not good, because you might just be wrong and doing evil. And even then, all of the most terrible people of history share one unshaking belief in the righteousness of their cause, and they were all wrong.

The hard part of virtue is finding the strength to do things even in the face of our own fallibility, but we should first climb over the hurdle of the easy part: not treating matters of life and death with reckless banality.

Of course no evil is ever done in the name of evil. But that has nothing to do with what I’m saying, so I’ll level: I don’t think there’s anything good about this particular brand of sanity.

But if you believe there are “too many” people (I don’t)…

If you believe this surplus creates damage to the whole (I don’t)…

If you believe transgenderism is an innate and immutable condition (I don’t)…

Then these measures are defensible on any of those grounds, (albeit for very different reasons) and you’ll find yourself on the losing end of these arguments more often than not if you concede to any of those framing narratives.

Me? I believe most everything is imaginary and divisions are created or destroyed in order to meet the dictates of an unknown author. Whether it’s Von Neumann’s idea of unthinking geometrical processes to which humans are blindly governed, Steiner’s idea of competing archetypes (Lucifer and Ahriman), Jung’s idea of participacion mystique, or if some people are knowingly serving nonhuman/antihuman entities, I’m not sure and I doubt anyone who is.