Politics/Slapfights - Ancient history to modern day!

[Vol]

Well, I'm awfully glad I stopped to collect my thoughts and refresh this page before posting what I had written.

If Raga says holds true, we do have a resolution. I'll wait on all parties involved to confirm this, for the sake of propriety, but this should be the end of the fights if true.

[Mobius_118]

I put him on the foe list. I did it for people I'd almost consider friends.

I have nothing else to say on the matter. No shots across the bow, no snide remarks.

[TheodoricFriede]

Done.

[Raga]

God, I'm an idiot. Quoted instead of edited. Ignore.

[Mobius_118]

Back to politics...

Turns out those MAGA hat wearing shitstain kids are just as bad as originally posted.

The hat really does make it easy to pick out the stupid ones.

[Vol]

There. Detente. They're on each others' block lists. So going forward, there'll be no contact. So I ask the rest of you, do not instigate anything, obviously. Do not talk shit about this, about them in this context. If they should post something that even potentially references the other in a derogatory way, do not quote it, but flag it, and I will delete it.

I'm glad we could resolve it this way, rather than me swinging my dick around.

[Raga]

Back to politics...

Turns out those MAGA hat wearing shitstain kids are just as bad as originally posted.

The hat really does make it easy to pick out the stupid ones.

The point isn't that those kids were nice boys who never hurt a fly. It's that for the news to really do what it needs to do, it can't leap to conclusions.

Stop Trusting Viral Videos
I failed the Covington Catholic Test

[Mobius_118]

I'd prefer to know the whole truth, but I've called it before, and I called it again.

I'm much more concerned about the shutdown and the big ole' security issue that trump has caused over a wall that won't work, nor won't be completed within his lifetime.

[Sinekein]

Stop Trusting Viral Videos

I admit I overreacted when I saw the video, however, I think my initial comments here might not have to change: I still think that young, MAGA-wearing pro-life teens in a standoff with a Native-Americans is a good summary of Trump's most faithful base, the one that won't move no matter what he does.

But as I mentioned before, we had an even more extreme case in France where the same video could be seen either as "proof" of excessive and cynical police brutality...or just anti-riot police doing its job and asking for people to assist an injured demonstrator.

And it's "MSM journalists" to use the most common wording who shed light on that. From a left-wing newspaper who has never been the most supportive of cops before to boot.

The defiance towards journalists as a whole brought by the current political climate is frightening. "News" and "Opinion pieces" have become synonymous, which means that now people consider the accuracy of a news report depending on how much they agree with it instead of how accurate it is.

Now, I know that "News" can be oriented. I read The Guardian and Le Monde, and it's impossible to deny that they have no love lost for Donald Trump, Theresa May or Marine Le Pen, even by only reading the "News" tab of their site in TG's case. However, I have never seen the Guardian being dishonest: when they are reporting on a rumor, they say it is a rumor. When new information expands or changes a previous report, they say so, even if it "contradicts their political line". And even though I do not read those, I assume the same from other real newspapers with differing political lines - The Telegraph, The Independent, The Times, etc.

Same with Le Monde: I have seen several articles pointing out that the US economy had been flourishing in the last two years, even though it is something positive about Trump's presidency. And those were on the front page of the site, not hidden in the depth of the Economy section. They also have Opinion pieces by analysts who tend not to be as optimistic for the remaining two years of his mandate, but those are different articles (although not as clearly labelled as they are on The Guardian).

However, I do not hold the Sun, Daily Mail and others to the same regard. These are opinion pieces disguised as news reports.

[Mazder]

However, I do not hold the Sun, Daily Mail and others to the same regard. These are opinion pieces disguised as news reports.

The Sun and Daily Mail are utter turd.
Need I repost the "cancer song" made on Russel Howard's Good news that highlights a list of things the Daily Mail has said to have caused cancer over the years?

But, seriously though, damn Sine that's a lot of papers to read. A lot of English papers, especially for one who doesn't associate with being form the UK, lol.
TBH I don't really even read the papers any more, if I ever did.
They're just...so....dull in the way they actually present the news. Like I'm not even asking for a sensationalist style like in the USA, just....can we use less monotonous tones and up-marketed speech to present the news and just say it how it is?

[Raga]

The thing with the news is that there is no way to separate out opinion from news, not completely. The very opinion of what is and isn't news, of what deserves to go on the front page, of precisely how much air time or column space an item gets, how to phrase things (do you say chain migration or family reunification? illegal alien or undocumented immigrant? social justice or identity politics?), and what facts are or aren't pertinent (is the race of a criminal pertinent? what about his religion? is it never relevant or only sometimes relevant? if so, when?) are all opinions. They can be informed opinions, good faith/due diligence opinions, but opinions nonetheless.

[Sinekein]

It is true, but even if I can complain that Le Figaro is too conservative to my tastes, if they report on something, it is done accurately. Even when they' purposefully make a news as hard to see as possible (they've been owned by the CEO of Dassault who had a string of judiciary cases following him - none of which made it to the front page, they were simply evoked like "small news"), it's there and it's accurate.

The "dangerous" part is to go from "I think the media should talk more/less about X" to "since the media talks too much/not enough about X, hence I don't trust their report". Which is a step many have taken.

Anyway, next part could go in the "Book" thread, but its content is extremely political, so if there is a discussion it would be better located here.

I am currently reading (almost done with it, and only a "personal, non-political" part remains) Le Piège Américain (The American Trap), co-written by Frédéric Pierucci and Mathieu Aron. Pierucci was a high-ranking leader of Alstom, which used to be one of France's biggest industrial companies. Among other things, Alstom built the turbines of almost all our nuclear plants or ships, or our high-speed trains. In 2013, while landing in JFK International Airport, he was put into jail for "corruption", and landed in a high-security prison in Wyatt.

First, I have to say it's not a "good vs bad" story. Gigantic companies are no angels. But several very interesting themes are mentioned. I won't even bother with the "inside the US penitential system" part, because it sucks balls but it's been abundantly reported in other locations.

So, first item: Pierucci was, for lack of a better word, guilty. At worst, guilty by association. In 2003, bribes were paid by Alstom through intermediaries to land the building of a plant in Indonesia. At the time, the company was falling on hard times, and it absolutely wanted a win, so they ensured the right money fell into the right hands, and beat their (American) rivals. I won't go into details, he wasn't the one who decided (that would be CEO Patrick Kron, more on him later) or to hand the money, but he knew about it and he admits as much. So it's not a story of unlawful imprisonment, and he does not say he is innocent - his stance is more that he was "obeying orders". Which can be true or not, I don't know, he's the narrator so unlikely to insist on his flaws.

Second item: the US judiciary (not penitential) system. Pierucci was not a poor nobody. He was not insanely wealthy, but he was clearly upper-class, living in Singapore with his family and leading one of the branches of Alstom. His yearly wages are not mentioned but were probably way north of $100k. Still, in that situation, it was far, far from enough for him to get anything resembling a fair treatment. The "plead guilty" system is just plain insane, basically forcing all but the richest of the accused to striked a deal instead of going to a trial. Prosecutors who are trying to prove someone is guilty (not to find the truth, however complicated it might be) while being backed up by the Department of Justice while everyone has, at best, a lawyer, is so obviously unbalanced that I guess no one sees it anymore. Attorneys, meanwhile, are here to striked "the best deal", not - like TV shows love to show it - to actually defend their clients. Which means that the "bad" lawyers you see in TV shows, who defend mobsters or gangsters while asking for deals...basically are the realistic ones. I mean, I won't claim that the French Judiciary System is perfect, far from it, but it looks downright sane and fair in comparison.

Third item, and the most important, America's soft power and economic war with foreign companies. The whole story revolves around the FCPA, a little known law from the Carter era. Initially, it was implemented after a string of corruption scandals among US companies. Problem, by hammering down corruption, all "international market" companies - oil, energy, weapons... - would be at a disadvantage against their foreign rivals. So, for more than 20 years, it was there but no one cared really, only a handful of minor companies got to pay limited bills. But in 1998, the FCPA was extended to allow the FBI and the DOJ to prosecute all companies that either used dollars in their transactions (which means a vast majority of international transactions) or used US-based mail boxes or transit servers (!) for their mail exchanges. Which means that, from a law detrimental to US interests, the FCPA became an attack weapon against foreign companies due to the ubiquity of dollar exchanges and US companies dominating internet. It became even easier with the 2003 Patriot Act that extended the range of action of both FBI and DOJ and made it easier to spy on them.

Since then, unsurprisingly really, the DOJ has been extremely motivated when it comes to inculpating non-US companies that used "corruption". Especially those from OECD members (France, UK, Germany, Italy, Japan) due to them signing an anti-corruption convention to make the corruption of public agents always illegal...which means that they could not "cover up" for their own companies using their own, national laws. Chinese, Indian and Russian companies have not really been pursued by the DOJ because these countries did not sign this convention (and despite Russia or China being more traditional "rivals" to the US than the EU or the UK). Companies like Siemens, Alcatel, Hitachi or Technip have had to pay astronomical fines (several hundred million dollars) to the DOJ. Alstom did not cooperate...so in retaliation, the DOJ started arbitrarily putting in jail its high-ranking members. At least, that's how it initially looked.

Because aside from fining foreign companies (currently, Airbus is being investigated which luckily for Boeing coincides with the American plane builder not being very competitive on the most lucrative markets at the moment), there is another side to the story. While he was in jail, Pierucci learned that the Energy division of Alstom (70% of the company), which could boast to be the leading tech developer in the world when it comes to designing turbines for nuclear plants, was bought...by General Electric. General Electric which, in five different occasions, happened to have outright bought companies that the DOJ was investigating under the FCPA (some of them American) - and once the acquisition was made official, the fines were suddenly much less important than expected back when the corrupt entity was independent. Even better, two high-ranking members of Alstom, including the CEO Kron himself, flew to the US presumably to negotiate with GE. Twice, the day before, other high-ranking members were either arrested, or a mandate for their arrestation was produced for the DOJ. Of course, it could be coincidental, but the timing was just perfect to give GE even more of an edge for the negotiations. As for the Alstom acquisition in itself, the attorneys representing Alstom were from a cabinet led by GE's then CEO Immelt's brother, which looks a tiny bit like a conflict of interest. Oh, and as it stands, GE was not Alstom's only option for an acquisition, and clearly did not have the proposal that was the best for the company, but they won it anyway, which brings me to the fourth point.

So far I've mostly talked about the US, but French people aren't all white in this case. At first, it looked like the arrest of the Alstom members was a way to slowly climb towards Patrick Kron, the CEO, who initially refused to cooperate with the DOJ and tried (and failed to) play smart. When the project of acquisition by GE was revealed, it enraged then-economy minister Arnaud Montebourg (a left-wing protectionnist) as it came down to giving strategical assets to a foreign power which, in that situation, was hardly "friendly". So he decided to find a counter-offer, and managed to bring one, a much better one actually, from an alliance between Siemens and Mitsubishi. The new alliance would be mostly EU based, Alstom would retain its independence, it would be in all points superior to what GE proposed, it was glaringly obvious. But what Siemens and Mitsubishi could not do, while GE did, was to add to the package the mention that "they would pay all fines from the DOJ case". Which, as it turned out once the acquisition was done, was much lower than initially expected, which hugely benefitted GE - who then proceeded to shit on all the promises it made to try to at least make its offer competitive compared to Siemens and Mitsu's. Kron, meanwhile, to save his own sorry ass, negotiated in secret with GE, while publicly claiming he was thinking about selling 20% of another part of Alstom to a Russian company to improve the treasury. He went behind everyone's back, and ended up, because this world is crap, with a total of €16m from the acquisition, and then his departure from the company (because it had been made obvious he was a gigantic, cynical asshole). Now he's running a hedge fund. I've passed over a string of conflict of interests and lobbying moves that reach François Hollande, Manuel Valls, Emmanuel Macron or Nicolas Sarkozy, but all of them are mentioned, and none of them looks great - Montebourg is the only one that the author mentions as "sincerely having France's best interests at heart" (and the author doesn't really sound like a leftist, in case his job choice or reading Le Figaro was any indication).

Anyway, that's a shining example (among many) of the US soft power, and how it basically crushes anyone who stands up to him and tries to "play fair" - which China or Russia don't do by not adhering to the anti-corruption act, and it actually serves their interests. Some coined the term "law fare" to designate what is essentially racketeering. And it's a completely nonpartisan issue, as most of it happened under Obama.

But that's also why I'm somewhat not completely depressed by the future. First, because while it's hard for a foreign leader to accuse "nice guy" Barack Obama of being a dirty cheater, it's much easier to do with Trump who is much more obvious in his machinations (see: Iran, where many EU companies stood to profit from the improved economical relationships until they were embargoed again). Until Obama, the US weren't playing fair, but it was mostly seen as "not bad enough" that you'd try and fight against it - better suffer the consequences while you go on. Now however, at least in France and Germany (hence why I think the EU is more important than ever), several politicians have stressed the importance of judiciary cooperation in such cases. Because so far, all companies only had their countries at their backs, not the entire Union. There also have been talks of development of an alternate financing system which doesn't use dollars, meaning that the DOJ would be mostly powerless to stop even the deals that would threaten American interests.

Another positive thing is that the EU has basically decided to play dirty too. There have been several announces that the GAFAs were under investigation or outright accused in EU countries of countervening to the laws on personal data. EU countries are no more enraged at it than the DOJ is at the fact that there is corruption in the world, but they seemed to have decided that they could hit the wallet too. Now, Google or Amazon are probably powerful enough to ignore such things when it's just Latvia or Belgium doing it, but when it's the entire EU that's coordinated, it's much harder to do.

And finally, some UK companies have been targeted by the same FCPA retaliations, so if the UK was counting on a "special relationship" with the US to get better after Brexit is done for, I think the awakening is going to be rude. Because even if the president is nice and smiling and polite, the FBI and the DOJ aren't.

[Raga]

I posted this awhile back but I'll leave it here again. Media Bias Checker I thought it was accurate for all of the publications I knew enough about to use as test cases. It's my go-to now for new publications I don't know anything about. It tells you both the slant of the publication and also the degree to which it has factual reporting.

I don't know what it's track record is for non-English stuff (or even if it does anything with non-English stuff) but I've found it useful.

Also, my main list of news sources:

TAC (The American Conservative) - right-center/paleoconservative
National Review - right-center to solidly right/neoconservative
First Things - right-center/religious, specifically Catholic right
The Atlantic - centrist to center left
New York Times - centrist to center left
Washington Post - center left
Reuters - actually centrist
The Week - centrist to mild center left
Mother Jones - solid left/progressive
Quillette - center right/civic libertarian

And various others less frequently, but I read stuff from those at least once a week.

[Sinekein]

Interesting. French sources are mostly not treated. Only the AFP (Agence France Presse) is, and they're logically "Least Biased" being like French Reuters.

The Guardian and 538 get a left-center ranking which is logical. From what I gathered on this category, it's mostly "iunbiased reporting, biased analysis".

Those are the only sites I consult. I'd like to read the WaPo & NYTimes but you need to pay a subscription fee to access the articles.

[Raga]

Interesting. French sources are mostly not treated. Only the AFP (Agence France Presse) is, and they're logically "Least Biased" being like French Reuters.

The Guardian and 538 get a left-center ranking which is logical. From what I gathered on this category, it's mostly "iunbiased reporting, biased analysis".

Those are the only sites I consult. I'd like to read the WaPo & NYTimes but you need to pay a subscription fee to access the articles.

Just use a javascript blocker. Murders paywalls.

[Joblom]

basically it comes down to money and greed. Companies believe cheap labor is saving them money the rich people then can put down in their own pockets.

basically one of the reasons why China is chosen among other things for companies to have their factories, + less regulations, the government is still a dictatorship like Russia is.

Oh I know, I just wish more people, especially those operating the levers of power, understood or cared what the long term cost will be.

I admit I overreacted when I saw the video, however, I think my initial comments here might not have to change: I still think that young, MAGA-wearing pro-life teens in a standoff with a Native-Americans is a good summary of Trump's most faithful base, the one that won't move no matter what he does.

I think that whole affair is just the latest example of the Left-Wing's anti-white male agenda. I could also say that people jumping on that bandwagon or trying to make excuses for it is also an example of people being unwilling to call out the BS on their own side. The same sort of folks who called Antifa "freedom fighters" and conveniently ignored peaceful, average, every day Americans being hit with bricks, bottles, and pepper spray.

In the end, it all comes down to what you think the stakes are. As I see it, the "Trump Agenda" is a last ditch effort to reduce the pain and suffering this country is going to go through this century as a result of the triumph of the Left over the Right. What one calls progress I call decay. The political and social climate in the US of A will only get worse precisely because of left wing ideology and globalism.

Reducing or, god forbid, ending immigration would go a long ways towards easing some of the burden in the future. Limiting some of the strife that will result when our unsustainable system runs out of money. A people broken down into racial tribes will tear each-other apart where-as a country with common values, history, genetic heritage, will pull through much more easily.

[TTTX]

Oh I know, I just wish more people, especially those operating the levers of power, understood or cared what the long term cost will be.

yeah, but people are full of faults and once power and money are involved well people forget the big picture.

You see it with the game companies right now with the higher ups, they don't care if their companies go bankrupt tomorrow, because they have already made sure they have a lot of money save up for themselves among other things.

[Joblom]

Oh I know, I just wish more people, especially those operating the levers of power, understood or cared what the long term cost will be.

yeah, but people are full of faults and once power and money are involved well people forget the big picture.

You see it with the game companies right now with the higher ups, they don't care if their companies go bankrupt tomorrow, because they have already made sure they have a lot of money save up for themselves among other things.

You'd think basic business sense would prevail. I find Disney to be the most mysterious, but then I suppose that is because I'm assuming that profits matter more than politics. Apparently that's not the cause. It's more important to push a message even if it costs us money.

[TTTX]

You'd think basic business sense would prevail. I find Disney to be the most mysterious, but then I suppose that is because I'm assuming that profits matter more than politics. Apparently that's not the cause. It's more important to push a message even if it costs us money.

Well Rockefeller and others like him end up buying the Presidentsy because they wanted to keep making money while giving their workers next to nothing in either money or safety in the 19th century.

They were only stopped when Theodore Roosevelt managed to become President and even then he was lucky that puppet president got assassinated so he could take as he was vice-president in the early 20th century.

People like him are rare in politics and business.

[Alienmorph]

Honestly, between the ever growing disconnect between public and creators/producers, and the obsession with politics that's going on in media right now, I think in the next few years most of entertainment outlets in the West are gonna face a massive crisis and there's gonna be a lot of "evolve or die" going on.

The game industry is already bleeding out money like crazy. Comic-books have dropped monstrously in quality and consequently in sales, and they were already in a pickle due to digital publications starting to replace physical ones. Hollywood spends 2/3s of the year making sequels, remakes and reboots, and then the remaining 3rd of the year making Oscar-bait stuff, to pretend thei're still artists and care about good cinema. And even streaming services are not doing so hot... Disney apparently lost an whole billion dollar just for being co-owner of Hulu.

Yet every time we get told us the consumers are the problem, because we're nitpicky neckbeards who don't "embrace change" and shit like that, and we refuse to swallow up shit like the Disney SW movies (yeah yeah... they made money at the box office so far, but overally Disney still lost tons of money on unsold merchandise, and squandered so much goodwill that I guarantee they won't see another success like Force Awakens anytime soon) or we don't want historical revisionism in videogames, and so forth.

If some big companies have to go bankrup, or get close enough to it to scare alot of people in the business, so that the others can do better, I say so be it.

[Raga]

You'd think basic business sense would prevail. I find Disney to be the most mysterious, but then I suppose that is because I'm assuming that profits matter more than politics. Apparently that's not the cause. It's more important to push a message even if it costs us money.

Well Rockefeller and others like him end up buying the Presidentsy because they wanted to keep making money while giving their workers next to nothing in either money or safety in the 19th century.

They were only stopped when Theodore Roosevelt managed to become President and even then he was lucky that puppet president got assassinated so he could take as he was vice-president in the early 20th century.

People like him are rare in politics and business.

If Theodore Roosevelt ran as I ghost, I would straight up vote for him

Lincoln and Washington get obligatory "best presidents" award because those are the guys you are supposed to pick.

Theodore Roosevelt gets my nomination after those two.

[Sinekein]

I think that whole affair is just the latest example of the Left-Wing's anti-white male agenda. I could also say that people jumping on that bandwagon or trying to make excuses for it is also an example of people being unwilling to call out the BS on their own side. The same sort of folks who called Antifa "freedom fighters" and conveniently ignored peaceful, average, every day Americans being hit with bricks, bottles, and pepper spray.

In the end, it all comes down to what you think the stakes are. As I see it, the "Trump Agenda" is a last ditch effort to reduce the pain and suffering this country is going to go through this century as a result of the triumph of the Left over the Right. What one calls progress I call decay. The political and social climate in the US of A will only get worse precisely because of left wing ideology and globalism.

Reducing or, god forbid, ending immigration would go a long ways towards easing some of the burden in the future. Limiting some of the strife that will result when our unsustainable system runs out of money. A people broken down into racial tribes will tear each-other apart where-as a country with common values, history, genetic heritage, will pull through much more easily.

Immigration, decay, anti-white-male, isn't that a right-wing bingo here?

I mean, if you promote gender equality, you naturally become in one way or another "anti-white-male". Because even if you have nothing against white men, you will act to, overall, give more to nonwhites, or to women, which can be framed as "anti-white-males". The "equality" the right-wing fallaciously promotes is basically the one that sustains the current status quo where, overall, white guys simply have it better. Not as "better" as they used to, mind, which likely caused some of the recent electoral results where many voted for complete garbage human beings that just claimed to be proud to be white and men (what kind of program is that, really).

The Trump Agenda is about reducing the suffering of a limited part of the population. It already naturally excludes many US citizens from "belonging to the country", by framing racial issues are being intimately linked to what it means to "be American".

There is just no actual, serious studies (but a truckload of fake, shitty or dishonest ones) that showed immigration as being a burden in the country of immigrants that the United States are, but it is nice to see that it is still freely considered as a universal truth. To the point of actually seeing open racial conflict as something to look up for...

I mean, that's basically this, except said by real people:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGD9wEr9Zkc

[Raga]

I don't know how true this is but apparently that "Nathan Phillips" dude is some sort of wacky activist whose statements about what happened are borderline lies:

Nathan Phillips Vs. The Mass

I'm not posting that to try to prove who is or isn't the bad guy but to add to the pile of stuff that I've seen with people scrabbling to try to prove how awful the Covington kids really are (videos of kids from that high school wearing black face, videos of them harassing women in public) and thus how justified the initial leap to conclusion really was.

The more info appears on this, the more the situation starts to resemble what a sensible person would have called it 10 years ago: a bunch of wackos who are so politically energized that they are willing to dress up for causes, confront random strangers in public, and otherwise yell at people who disagree.

So, the fracas is pretty much exactly what you'd expect when you put a bunch of those sort of people with radically different opinions into a public, high-stakes arena together.

In other words, everybody involved is a *terrible, non-representative* proxy for the hordes of average Joes who vote Democrat or Republican.

[Alienmorph]

I mean, if you promote gender equality, you naturally become in one way or another "anti-white-male". Because even if you have nothing against white men, you will act to, overall, give more to nonwhites, or to women, which can be framed as "anti-white-males".

Uh, no. There's a big difference between saying "we need to stop discriminating people" and "it's okay to discriminate all the evil white people, if it helps other groups", which is the trending narrative nowadays. Again... if you're trying to reach equality but you base your efforts on a "us versus them" mentality, you've already lost.

[Sinekein]

I mean, if you promote gender equality, you naturally become in one way or another "anti-white-male". Because even if you have nothing against white men, you will act to, overall, give more to nonwhites, or to women, which can be framed as "anti-white-males".

Uh, no. There's a big difference between saying "we need to stop discriminating people" and "it's okay to discriminate all the evil white people, if it helps other groups", which is the trending narrative nowadays. Again... if you're trying to reach equality but you base your efforts on a "us versus them" mentality, you've already lost.

Okay, then enlighten me. There's inequality today between men and women, or whites and nonwhites (I'll add that not every nonwhite is in the same situation). How do you solve it if you give the exact same thing to everyone? It's basic math. If X > Y, then X+Z > Y+Z. If you give the exact same thing to X and Y, then the difference will remain.

And even those who promote to solve the difference between X and Y by giving Z1 to X and Z2 to Y so that X+Z1 = Y+Z2 get called names by conservatives because, yes, to solve that equation, you need to have Z1 < Z2. Z1 is positive, but the point in many minds is that Z1 is not as big as S2, and it's discriminatory, right? It improves their lot, but it improves the lot of others more, ergo it's unfair.

And I know a large, large number of gender equality activists who are actually very much wanting to help men, for example. By telling them that it's okay not to look like Ryan Gosling or Fight Club's Brad Pitt (corollary of women not having to look like Adriana Lima or Scarlett Johansson). By telling them that weakness is not a flaw that should be hidden at all times and that they should be ashamed of. By trying to help those that are victims of sexual abuse to come forwards, even if it is much rare for men than women due to the excessive shame. By explaining that a man's worth is not estimated by the number of wenches he beds monthly.

I mean, those things are explicitly a help to men, but don't tell me conservatives are applauding their supporters. They're also opinions shared by many gender equality activists (I daresay a vast majority, from my personal experience), and they don't frame the conflict as "us vs them", disproving your point. Yet they're seen as evil by those who, without outright admitting it, are perfectly fine with the current status quo.

Basically, your statement

"it's okay to discriminate all the evil white people, if it helps other groups"

...is once again a wet finger assessment of what gender equality activists want. And framed as if it's the majority's opinion, when, really, it just isn't. I have interacted with a large numbe (numbering in several dozens, might have reached the 100) of "feminists", in the wider sense of the term, and maybe 1 or 2 at most implied that they wanted to screw men over to make women better. The rest? They wanted to help women AND men, while saying that women needed MORE help.

[Raga]

Okay, then enlighten me. There's inequality today between men and women, or whites and nonwhites (I'll add that not every nonwhite is in the same situation). How do you solve it if you give the exact same thing to everyone? It's basic math. If X > Y, then X+Z > Y+Z. If you give the exact same thing to X and Y, then the difference will remain.

I'm not really interested in defending the uber libertarian "everyone should be treated exactly the same no matter the consequences or circumstances" line because of its obvious problems, but I did want to deconstruct this statement a bit.

There are several problems with that philosophy which is encapsulated in this obnoxious picture or various species of it I see around the Interwebz:



There are two problems here. One is that the picture ignores the fence as a component that can be changed and two is that it offers no insight for what should happen once the hurdle of the fence is overcome except to imply that the result should be egalitarian (everybody is the same height above the fence).

Or you can think of this using another analogy of running a race. If I want to rig a race such that runner A always beats runner B, I can do this in two ways. I can give runner A an unfair advantage *or* I can give runner B an unfair disadvantage. The difference matters because in the first place I'm helping player A win by helping him cheat. In the second case, runner A might not even realize that anything is going on (that runner B had his drink spiked or whatever) and he really believes he's running a fair race and that he won by his own effort and skill.

This is the inherent problem in so much social justice talk. The days of scenario one in which runner A wins by being helped to cheat (say by getting to own slaves or steal Indian land or whatever) are pretty much done. We have been in scenario two where runner A wins because runner B is repeatedly subjected to disadvantage (read institutional racism/sexism/whatever) for decades now.

It is not a *privilege* to not be subjected to arbitrary disadvantage. It's not a privilege to not be harassed by cops. It's not a privilege for a landlord or a cab driver or an employer to *not* discriminate against me on arbitrary grounds of how my name sounds or my skin color or my hairdo. It's not a privilege to not be suspended from school for stupid, minor infractions. These aren't privileges. These are lowest common denominator expectations of what my rights should be in a halfway decent democracy. The issue isn't that white people have these things. It's that many non-white people *don't* have these things.

So to go back to the stupid picture, the issue isn't people's varying heights. It's the stupid fence. The logical thing to do is to get rid of the stupid fence completely. And in the instances where the fence actually serves some purpose beyond being an arbitrary barrier to screen out short people, sure, give the short people boxes to get to the lowest common denominator of acceptability (to be able to see over the fence). *But* if they are still a foot shorter than the tall people and the tall people have a better overall view, this is perfectly acceptable. The issue is just making sure everybody can see over the fence and not to force radical egalitarianism on people beyond that.

So a real world example if those analogies are a bit too overwrought. There's a problem with not having enough black software engineers or doctors or rocket scientists or whatever. The solution is *not* to use affirmative action to cram a bunch of comparatively lackluster black candidates into elite schools to achieve racial parity at Harvard. This is just the appearance of racial parity and not real racial parity. The real thing to do is to start tearing down arbitrary fences lower down the totem pole (like our really stupid school tax system I've mentioned before that intentionally starves poor districts of school funding and keeps it in rich districts or stupid zoning laws that have the same effect) and where that's still not enough, give a "bonus" to poor districts sufficient to achieve that lowest common denominator of what we expect in this country: a halfway decent public education up to grade 12. If you do that, you will start to see that "no black software engineers" thing start to sort itself out normally.

If you come at it with this framework, I think people get way less defensive and it's overall more accurate and truthful.

[Sinekein]

One is that the picture ignores the fence as a component that can be changed.

It's a bit of a fallacy though. Because A/ You don't have to lower the fence as much when you want to help the tall instead of the tiny and B/ the metaphor obviously uses size as a factor of inequality, so remove the fence and you still have it, except without the "sight" part.

It is not a *privilege* to not be subjected to arbitrary disadvantage. It's not a privilege to not be harassed by cops. It's not a privilege for a landlord or a cab driver or an employer to *not* discriminate against me on arbitrary grounds of how my name sounds or my skin color or my hairdo. It's not a privilege to not be suspended from school for stupid, minor infractions. These aren't privileges. These are lowest common denominator expectations of what my rights should be in a halfway decent democracy. The issue isn't that white people have these things. It's that many non-white people *don't* have these things.

Except those are privileges, just not conscious ones you are responsible of. It's a privilege to be American, or French, instead of Rwandan or Syrian, for a variety of reasons: the countries are much safer, you have an efficient system that can provide help or protection (to a degree), you can travel wherever you want.

It's a privilege because it is a straight-up advantage over others. What I can agree on, however, is how the word "privilege" is thrown around, ie as an accusation instead of an observation. Because it's not anyone's fault to be French/American, or to be male, or white (or rich, in most cases - it is more often inherited than created from scratch). Yet it is indeed used as an accusation by pointing a finger as if people should be ashamed of it.

So a real world example if those analogies are a bit too overwrought. There's a problem with not having enough black software engineers or doctors or rocket scientists or whatever. The solution is *not* to use affirmative action to cram a bunch of comparatively lackluster black candidates into elite schools to achieve racial parity at Harvard. This is just the appearance of racial parity and not real racial parity. The real thing to do is to start tearing down arbitrary fences lower down the totem pole (like our really stupid school tax system I've mentioned before that intentionally starves poor districts of school funding and keeps it in rich districts or stupid zoning laws that have the same effect) and where that's still not enough, give a "bonus" to poor districts sufficient to achieve that lowest common denominator of what we expect in this country: a halfway decent public education up to grade 12. If you do that, you will start to see that "no black software engineers" thing start to sort itself out normally.

I mean, unless you are straight up racist, classist or sexist, it is impossible to disagree with that fact. I'm a teacher, I'm not gonna deny the importance of public education.

The problem is the scale of action. Overhauling the school system? No matter if you're looking at France or the US, it's a bi/trillion dollar issue. And it's even worse if you decide to bring the same excellence to "poor schools" than the one that's experienced in ultra-rich neighborhoods. Because, let's face it, in some places, schools are swimming in money to an absurd degree. I'm not even sure the US military budget would be enough to turn all of its public schools into little Harvards.

If you start cutting "excessive" funding in some wealthy schools (give you an idea: a public college (11-14yo) in Carquefou, near Nantes, a very wealthy suburb, can offer its classes a two-weeks trip in Venice that the kids almost don't have to pay for. The school also has an equestrian center) then aside from the accusations of being a dirty commie, you are "taking" something from the privileged. However, it's much easier to reach overall equality if instead of looking for absurd wealth, you look for reasonable wealth, enough for everyone to get proper education. It will still cost a fortune, but less so (even though the "everyone's super rich" option has the advantage of killing the possibility to "cheat" with the private school system). So you're basically down with either an incredibly expensive option, or an insanely expensive option.

Compared to that, affirmative action is a cheap option. It's clearly not efficient enough, but it brings some results in a relatively short term (overhauling the public education system would take years to work).

I'm currently reading a book named Inch'Allah, made by young investigative journalists about the islamization of Seine-Saint-Denis (France's county #93, mostly migrants, poor, unemployed, with about 700k muslims for 1.6m people). It's a territory that has been abandoned for years by the State, and from where a number of terrorists or radical activists come from. Many different aspects of Islam are discussed, but in most situations, you see that politicians are looking to do something, not everything - and "something" is often a short-term shortcut...because that's all they can do with the money and time they have.

Seriously, imagine the public education overhaul you propose. It will probably take at LEASt five, probably ten years to be properly implemented. Let's say that Democrats propose it first (doesn't sound like a GOP measure, but I won't deny I'm biased): they'll probably need POTUS, Senate & House to pass the first budget, and they'll need to hold three of them during the entire duration of the implementation. Because as seen right now, if the opposition takes just one of these - and with the cuts you'll have to make someplace else to pay for it, the opposition will have plenty arguments to win elections - it can block the entire project.

So short-term, easy-to-implement measures like affirmative action are used because they can actually, reasonably be taken under our democratic system. Your reform could work with, let's say an "enlightened dictator" - not a common breed.

You can probably cut it in several bits to make it easier to pass, but the smaller the pieces, the easier they are to unravel when opposing party comes into power.

In Seine-Saint-Denis, one such measure, and an efficient one at that, was taken by Macron (can't deny it really): half the size of first and second grade classes, to 12 pupils max. Those are the classes where kids learn how to read, write and count. It just works. But it costs a truckload of money...and it's only happening in the poorest areas of France. Basically, kids from rich areas often don't need that. Their parents can take care of their education to a degree, or hire help. Obviously, they would also benefit from it...but would you start by spending money so that all 1st and 2nd grade classes in France (even rich ones) are 12 kids max, or use the same money to try and reduce other disadvantages poor kids have?

TL;DR: I agree about the importance of education, but I think small measures matter, even if they're "unfair", because they are realistic. Only going for "total equality" is good in theory, but in practice, it means doing nothing.

[Alienmorph]

Okay, then enlighten me. There's inequality today between men and women, or whites and nonwhites (I'll add that not every nonwhite is in the same situation). How do you solve it if you give the exact same thing to everyone? It's basic math. If X > Y, then X+Z > Y+Z. If you give the exact same thing to X and Y, then the difference will remain.

Raga already answered you better than I could have done it, but basically it's a matter of changing a fucked system, rather than blaming the people who have no choice but to use it, or have been conditioned to think they have no other choice. You make sure all minorities and underepresented people have equal opportunities in terms of jobs, education and anti-discrimination rules, and do everything you can to go for a truly meritocratic and egalitarian society.

If instead you have to discriminate a part of the population in order to help another, by the end you're still left with a bunch of people being discriminated, and you're just doing the political equivalent of the chairs' game.

[TTTX]

Raga already answered you better than I could have done it, but basically it's a matter of changing a fucked system, rather than blaming the people who have no choice but to use it, or have been conditioned to think they have no other choice. You make sure all minorities and underepresented people have equal opportunities in terms of jobs, education and anti-discrimination rules, and do everything you can to go for a truly meritocratic and egalitarian society.

If instead you have to discriminate a part of the population in order to help another, by the end you're still left with a bunch of people being discriminated, and you're just doing the political equivalent of the chairs' game.

I personally doubt we'll ever going to see a true society where we are all equal, I don't think we human are capable of such a feet (after all we are flawed and not machines), we might come close assuming there isn't someone who fucks it up first (and there will be people who will try).

[Alienmorph]

True, an entirely equal society is probably an utopia, but we should at least try to get as close to it as humanly possible.

[Sinekein]

basically it's a matter of changing a fucked system, rather than blaming the people who have no choice but to use it, or have been conditioned to think they have no other choice. You make sure all minorities and underepresented people have equal opportunities in terms of jobs, education and anti-discrimination rules, and do everything you can to go for a truly meritocratic and egalitarian society.

It's not that I disagree with the idea, it's just that it looks extremely far away. Solving these issues requires gigantic efforts, truly.

If you dump all actions that, unfair or not, are reducing the gaps because they "don't go far enough", then it's a false dilemma case. There are other possibilities than "do nothing" or "solve everything". You can both take temporary, imperfect actions while trying to implement better, long-term, more expensive ones.

[TTTX]

True, an entirely equal society is probably an utopia, but we should at least try to get as close to it as humanly possible.

We'll try, but first we need to elect some better people and change the system is some places, before we can begin.

[Alienmorph]

It's not that I disagree with the idea, it's just that it looks extremely far away. Solving these issues requires gigantic efforts, truly.

If you dump all actions that, unfair or not, are reducing the gaps because they "don't go far enough", then it's a false dilemma case. There are other possibilities than "do nothing" or "solve everything". You can both take temporary, imperfect actions while trying to implement better, long-term, more expensive ones.

Indeed, but I can't think of many other causes worth putting that amount of effort in. And of course if there's the possibility to patch things up a bit in the present already, it should be done. But if you aknowledge from the getgo a certain way to deal with the problem is unfair, you should not go for it.

[Sinekein]

I mean, for example, what I mentioned that was done in poor French schools (they're called "REP" for "priority education network" - implying resources should be put there in priority) can be called "unfair". Only those REP 1st and 2nd grade classes get halved, other schools have to do with 20, 25 pupils for one teacher.

But if you don't do it, it's worse. It doesn't solve all issues (far from it), it doesn't give the same thing to everyone (because most pupils don't need it to properly get to read, write and count) but it's a start.

[Raga]

It's a bit of a fallacy though. Because A/ You don't have to lower the fence as much when you want to help the tall instead of the tiny and B/ the metaphor obviously uses size as a factor of inequality, so remove the fence and you still have it, except without the "sight" part.

This assumes *all* inequality is inherently unseemly though, which was the second fallacy of the diagram I pointed out. Trying to force in actual radical egalitarianism is something that can only be done with society wide aggressive and repressive social engineering and would entail such horrors as exterminating or wildly persecuting anybody with a high degree of deviance from the "norm." (Anybody who was especially smart/dumb, lazy/ambitious, insightful/oblivious, strong/weak, etc. because such variances do exist in people and they do make a difference in a person's life outcomes). Once everybody is above the fence (has attained the lowest common denominator that is acceptable) any deviance in outcome above that is fair game.

Except those are privileges, just not conscious ones you are responsible of. It's a privilege to be American, or French, instead of Rwandan or Syrian, for a variety of reasons: the countries are much safer, you have an efficient system that can provide help or protection (to a degree), you can travel wherever you want.

It's a privilege because it is a straight-up advantage over others. What I can agree on, however, is how the word "privilege" is thrown around, ie as an accusation instead of an observation. Because it's not anyone's fault to be French/American, or to be male, or white (or rich, in most cases - it is more often inherited than created from scratch). Yet it is indeed used as an accusation by pointing a finger as if people should be ashamed of it.

Privilege

People who use this word in my experience pretty much invariably use it in the sense of #2 A particular benefit, advantage, or favor; a right or immunity enjoyed by some but not others; a prerogative, preferential treatment.

And it's impossible to use it this way without conferring a notion of unseemliness to the situation it's being applied to, but advantage =/= unseemliness. Advantage is not intrinsically unfair, especially when "advantage" is really just some rudimentary baseline for human rights or not being abjectly miserable. It's not just a matter of me not being able to help it and therefore me not being at fault for it. Some of it I *deserve.* It's *my due* by virtue of who and what I am. Like, I refuse to accept *any* moral complicity, guilt, or whatever other word you want to use in not currently being someone who is starving to death, even though there are people who are starving to death. There is literally *nothing* untoward, ugly, negative, unjust, unfair, or unseemly about the fact that I'm not starving to death. I *deserve* to not starve to death. It is my just desert, my right, whatever you want to call it.

Now, the opposite side of that yoke is responsibility/duty. Because there is literally no such thing as a right without a corresponding duty (which is something people in our largely decadent, selfish society have conveniently forgotten). People are perfectly justified in demanding I exercise the duties that come with my rights (which are complex and include respect for other people's rights, largesse in certain circumstances, and more). But I refuse to accept that the rights themselves are unseemly and I refuse to give them up or pretend I don't deserve them or that me having them is shameful or whatever other stupid thing.

So short-term, easy-to-implement measures like affirmative action are used because they can actually, reasonably be taken under our democratic system. Your reform could work with, let's say an "enlightened dictator" - not a common breed.

This will obviously vary by specific situation, but in *this* example, the "easy-to-implement" measure of affirmative action isn't just cheap and easy. It's also 100% symbolic and useless to actually change anything. All affirmative action does (at the Harvard level which frankly is where 99% of the fuss is, nobody cares if some random community college has enough black students or not) is to change the racial makeup of the ruling class by explicitly expanding the slots available to mostly well off, upper class black kids. So it allows The Talented Tenth or whatever of black people to take their "rightful" representative slot in the social apparatuses of the upper classes. But as a vehicle for social uplift for poor people generally or poor black people specifically, it does nothing.

Seriously, look at the stats for kids in schools like that. They are overwhelmingly rich kids, black or otherwise.

Also, I think you overstate the complexity and expense of removing some of the fences in other situations. It's not a matter of "change everything from the ground up" or "target low hanging fruit" as if those are mutual exclusive and the only options available.

[Vol]

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... ion-access

New York passed, and publicly celebrated, this. A baby can be aborted up to the moment of birth if the mother's health might be affected, a purposefully vague distinction, since a mother's health is negatively affected by the pregnancy process in every single case. Also, forces public funding of abortion. On the plus side, it allows the abortion of a non-viable fetus at any time, which I support.

If we look to the Marist poll I linked last week, this would something only the most extreme pro-abortion folks want, and yet, here we are.

I'm willing to debate where life begins vis-a-vis a fetus, but not late in the process, then it's murder.

[Raga]

I'm willing to debate where life begins vis-a-vis a fetus, but not late in the process, then it's murder.

At the moment where the only discernible difference between a fetus and a baby is whether it's in or outside the womb or whether or not its mother wants it, yea that.

*Edit*

However, if this is accurate and is in fact all the bill does:

"The bill allows women to get abortions after 24 weeks if their life or health is threatened by the pregnancy in addition to permitting women to have an abortion at any time if the fetus is not viable, according to syracuse.com."

I'd say it is fair. Otherwise, you would be demanding a woman deliver a stillborn baby (at possible much greater expense and psychological trauma) or risk her life to carry the baby to term, neither of which is just.

[Sinekein]

This will obviously vary by specific situation, but in *this* example, the "easy-to-implement" measure of affirmative action isn't just cheap and easy. It's also 100% symbolic and useless to actually change anything. All affirmative action does (at the Harvard level which frankly is where 99% of the fuss is, nobody cares if some random community college has enough black students or not) is to change the racial makeup of the ruling class by explicitly expanding the slots available to mostly well off, upper class black kids. So it allows The Talented Tenth or whatever of black people to take their "rightful" representative slot in the social apparatuses of the upper classes. But as a vehicle for social uplift for poor people generally or poor black people specifically, it does nothing.

I don't know, I honestly believe that role models can have an influence, even if it is a marginal one. I'm pretty sure that Barack Obama did not hurt the statistics of black people getting into politics. Or Neil deGrasse Tyson those of young black kids wanting to study physics. Examples like these make it so that more young black kids see those careers as possibilities, even if far removed, which in turn helps fill "affirmative action" quotas with better students.

Obviously, it's not enough to fix everything.

Also, I think you overstate the complexity and expense of removing some of the fences.

Do I?

The rector (director of education) of my academy made a presentation to me and all new teachers on our first day. It can be summed up as "you're in the poorest academy in the country. Inequalities will be huge. School's goal is to reduce those. But they don't exist because of school, they exist because of poverty".

Basically, he showed studies findingvery, VERY strong correlations between professionnal success and factors such as "parents schedule" (ie "do they work on evenings" or "have they time at home for their kids"), "home surface" (do the kids have one room each, or do several kids sleep in the same room/bed) or "number of books at home".

To put it plainly, those are let's say "advantages" school cannot entirely solve, unless you're in an ideal communist state where you can forcefully erase them. So you have to both do much to help the poorest kids, without ignoring the normal or well-off ones who still need you to learn.

Education is the biggest fence, but what is "equality in education"? Is it only what is taught in school, or does it include the kids' private situation too? A good friend of mine is a teacher in a high school where most kids are black, and where most parents are either non-French speakers or don't know how to read. How can this high school seriously fight with others where most kids' parents are reasonably wealthy, well-educated, and can if necessary pay personal teachers to correct some issues with their children's studies?

Because honestly, when it comes to teacher quality or even investment, there isn't that big a difference - said high school, in Aubervilliers, is a positively great one overall, whether it is for teacher investment, management, infrastructure, or financial means. It's just that the advantages/privileges exist before these kids enter it, and just remain so throughout it. Progression is similar, but the gap remains.

Which means that "removing the fence" boils down to "solving income and education gaps". I don't think I overstate the complexity of such a problematic. The cost, maybe, although I'm not sure, education doesn't come cheap if you want it to be efficient.

[Sinekein]

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/426533-new-york-passes-bill-expanding-abortion-access

New York passed, and publicly celebrated, this. A baby can be aborted up to the moment of birth if the mother's health might be affected, a purposefully vague distinction, since a mother's health is negatively affected by the pregnancy process in every single case. Also, forces public funding of abortion. On the plus side, it allows the abortion of a non-viable fetus at any time, which I support.

If we look to the Marist poll I linked last week, this would something only the most extreme pro-abortion folks want, and yet, here we are.

I'm willing to debate where life begins vis-a-vis a fetus, but not late in the process, then it's murder.

I really don't think it's as disgusting as it looks.

Before 24 weeks, a newborn's chance of survival are basically nil (1% according to that French study I found, and without being chauvinistic our health results tend to be pretty good).



Column 2 is "amenorrhea weeks" (SA, Semaines d'Aménorrhée), Column 3 is survival rate, Column 4 is percentage of children living without severe neonatal pathologies. So those extreme prematures are also guaranteed to have huge health issues even if they make it (which they almost never do).

So the "24 weeks" is not chosen at random I assume. Before that time, if the mother's survival is at risk, then you have almost nothing to gain by prolonging the pregnancy, because if you have to have a catastrophic C-section (which can be hugely traumatic is the mother is in poor shape), the kid is almost guaranteed to die anyway.

[Raga]

Which means that "removing the fence" boils down to "solving income and education gaps". I don't think I overstate the complexity of such a problematic. The cost, maybe, although I'm not sure, education doesn't come cheap if you want it to be efficient.

But so much of this gap (at least here) really is attributable to dumb arbitrary fences.

This used to be a hangup I had. I used to think that we got all the obvious, low-hanging fruit problems like poll taxes and literacy tests and segregated lunch counters and whatever, and that the reason progress had bogged down was because now all the remaining issues were huge, complicated social problems that would take massive investment & decades of gradual cultural change to fix.

Like I used to think that, say, police brutality was really symptomatic of larger problems. (Black people are on average poorer because of historical and systemic racism - poor people get stuck in ghettos - ghettos tend to have more crime - crime attracts more police & the police develop stereotyping/racial profiling because of this process). I used to think that police brutality was just like salt in the wounds and if you really wanted to stop it, you needed to fix the "wounds" first.

But no, it's very often not that complicated. Like police departments are just consciously targeting poor people as a source of revenue or ghettoization happens partially because banks just disproportionately turn down even blacks with good credit for loans.

Or in the case of education, things like black students getting punished more than white students for the same offenses

Or that drug laws are arbitrary and are responsible for a good number of black kid's dads being in prison who would otherwise be working and providing support or helping them with homework or whatever.

Or their being terrible sex ed/access to reproductive services in black neighborhoods (which hardly involves remaking the entire education system or medical system) which means higher infant mortality, more teen pregnancy, more out of wedlock birth, and so on

And no, it's not all "arbitrary fences" of these kinds, but there are way, way more of them still around than a lot of people think and their consequences add up. Removing them is probably not a panacea, but it would not require remaking society from the ground up and I'm willing to bet a pile of money that the cumulative effect of their removal would be dramatic.

[Vol]

At the moment where the only discernible difference between a fetus and a baby is whether it's in or outside the womb or whether or not its mother wants it, yea that.

*Edit*

However, if this is accurate and is in fact all the bill does:

"The bill allows women to get abortions after 24 weeks if their life or health is threatened by the pregnancy in addition to permitting women to have an abortion at any time if the fetus is not viable, according to syracuse.com."

I'd say it is fair. Otherwise, you would be demanding a woman deliver a stillborn baby (at possible much greater expense and psychological trauma) or risk her life to carry the baby to term, neither of which is just.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/new-york-p ... 1548162001

Without going into the literal text of the law, this is what I'm going by. So the person-hood of a baby, fully capable of surviving outside the womb, absolutely must be explicitly defined, rather than a judgement call by any given doctor. Then demanding insurance companies, public and private, cover the costs is the usual authoritarian nonsense. Also codifies against punishing women for their reproductive choices in regards to work. Theoretically a good idea, but in practice, devalues their labor more.

As I edited in, non-viable fetuses absolutely should be removed as soon as possible, and morally, I have no issue when a mother is at risk of major injury or death, as well as severely retarded fetuses. However, the state mandating tax money pays for it, all insurance policies must cover it, and it can happen well past viability out of the womb based on a vague criteria is entirely immoral.

I really don't think it's as disgusting as it looks.

*data snip*

So the "24 weeks" is not chosen at random I assume. Before that time, if the mother's survival is at risk, then you have almost nothing to gain by prolonging the pregnancy, because if you have to have a catastrophic C-section (which can be hugely traumatic is the mother is in poor shape), the kid is almost guaranteed to die anyway.

Yeah, for the moment, that's about the line of removal and survival. As a matter of philosophy, I consider life to begin at conception, so as a matter of logic, I fully support sex ed, contraceptives, Baby Moses laws, and as a matter of practicality, I can make peace with day after drugs and some first trimester abortion.

As a hypothetical, when artificial wombs allow survival for a fetus at any stage of development, would you support extremely restrictive abortion laws?

[Sinekein]

As a hypothetical, when artificial wombs allow survival for a fetus at any stage of development, would you support extremely restrictive abortion laws?

I don't know, honestly. Depends on the shape of the world. In our current one, where we are threatened by overpopulation, and where an overwhelming majority of abortions are chosen by poor/teen mothers, I really don't see the point in finding a way to ensure a fertilized egg goes to term if it's to be dumped in a society that condemns it to poverty and misery.

Especially as this theoretical discovery will make the fertilization process even less "natural" than before. At the moment, IVF at least requires a live woman for a pregnancy to go to term. If it's not the case...then anyone with enough of these wombs and donors could suddenly decide to have thousands of kids being born.

If there's a way to both ensure it's impossible to abuse IVF procedures, and, more importantly, a way to ensure a "not aborted baby" gets a good childhood, then sure. The "ifs" are big though.

Actually it reminds me of a side plot point in a Miles Vorkosigan novel, about a duke who decides to gain influence by breeding hundreds of little daughters (in a society where there are fewer women, so they are sought after). The Emperor ruins his plans by crafting a law that forces him to add a dowry to any daughter he marries.

[Vol]

I don't know, honestly. Depends on the shape of the world. In our current one, where we are threatened by overpopulation, and where an overwhelming majority of abortions are chosen by poor/teen mothers, I really don't see the point in finding a way to ensure a fertilized egg goes to term if it's to be dumped in a society that condemns it to poverty and misery.

Especially as this theoretical discovery will make the fertilization process even less "natural" than before. At the moment, IVF at least requires a live woman for a pregnancy to go to term. If it's not the case...then anyone with enough of these wombs and donors could suddenly decide to have thousands of kids being born.

If there's a way to both ensure it's impossible to abuse IVF procedures, and, more importantly, a way to ensure a "not aborted baby" gets a good childhood, then sure. The "ifs" are big though.

Actually it reminds me of a side plot point in a Miles Vorkosigan novel, about a duke who decides to gain influence by breeding hundreds of little daughters (in a society where there are fewer women, so they are sought after). The Emperor ruins his plans by crafting a law that forces him to add a dowry to any daughter he marries.

Neither do I. Once the zygote is out and viable in the new womb, yeah, let it grow to term. But that would result in a massive baby boom which, based on abortion data now, would fall largely on the state. So the best solution is to prevent unwanted pregnancies from ever happening, but there lies a minefield.

[Joblom]

Immigration, decay, anti-white-male, isn't that a right-wing bingo here?

Yes, but the prize is economic collapse and societal break down.

I mean, if you promote gender equality, you naturally become in one way or another "anti-white-male".

No. I've heard all this before. You believe it's a zero-sum game. "Feminists" have an extremely cynical view of politics and society. They also have a very destructive and unsustainable model for society. It will not survive.

It already naturally excludes many US citizens from "belonging to the country", by framing racial issues are being intimately linked to what it means to "be American".

Irony.

There is just no actual, serious studies (but a truckload of fake, shitty or dishonest ones) that showed immigration as being a burden in the country of immigrants that the United States are,

There are, but we call those "hate facts" among other things. Just visit California sometime. It's an unavoidable fact that immigration from the third world is detrimental for a host of reasons. Even setting aside the impolite reasons, the fact is it becomes exponentially harder to have a cohesive or sustainable society when the people are divided by race, history, and language. Schools are much harder to run when they have to be bilingual. I think it is self evident by virtue of the existence of "identity politics" that mutli-culturalism doesn't work. As if the Left-wing's zeal for silencing and censoring contrary evidence, opinions, and discussion, wasn't proof enough.

Pro-tip: when you start calling logical thinking, reason, and math "cis white male privilege" and you call hard evidence undermining your assumptions "hate facts", you have given up even trying to win anybody over with reason... hence the whole opposition to reason and civility in the first place.

[Sinekein]

Schools are much harder to run when they have to be bilingual.

I think only English natives can see "having to learn 2 languages in school" as detrimental. Yeah, more efforts are required. It also creates bilingual kids who will just be better equipped on the job market.

Pro-tip: when you start calling logical thinking, reason, and math "cis white male privilege" and you call hard evidence undermining your assumptions "hate facts", you have given up even trying to win anybody over with reason... hence the whole opposition to reason and civility in the first place.

I didn't use the terms "hate speech" or "cis white male privilege", and you did not bring any "hard evidence". So I assume this sentence is self-criticism.

So the best solution is to prevent unwanted pregnancies from ever happening, but there lies a minefield.

True but hard to combine with "unlimited freedom of religion", because religious types go into a frenzy as soon as the word "sex" is uttered. They (all religions) really are the main reason proper sex ed isn't given to kids.

[Alienmorph]

I'm all for biligual schools personally. Yeah, it's more work for the kids, but in our current world, where everyone on the planet is a few clicks of mouse away, it can be mighty useful. Plus helps to foster a bit more the "citizens of the world" mentality, since learning more languages also come with more knowledge of other cultures that speak those as well.

[Vol]

True but hard to combine with "unlimited freedom of religion", because religious types go into a frenzy as soon as the word "sex" is uttered. They (all religions) really are the main reason proper sex ed isn't given to kids.

Then they can sit on a dick and spin, every American child should know exactly how a baby is made by the time they pop their first boner or have their first period. Condoms free and subsidized. Then once they're into puberty more thorough sex ed, so there's no more "anal requires lube?" moments.

[TTTX]

Well turns out that Denmark found an immergrant that had been banished from Denmark permanently was found in Denmark and turned out he just went through Sweden to get back where there isn't border control.

So now people want border control from people coming from Sweden, I can't say I blame them.

[Vol]

It makes me appreciate this place more, the freedom to debate any political opinion, when the Discord I spend the most time in has become a place for the creator's 2 mod friends to spew neoliberal shit with no recourse, and threats of moderation if you disagree. A nice soapbox for an _art_ chat server, to tell everyone why globalism is always good and Pelosi is a hero.

[Mobius_118]

Well, globalism is happening whether you want it to or not, and Pelosi is a hero.