Edit: new and improved image, now with 100% less support! Used my expert photo editing skills to change āsupportingā to say āvoting forā
Edit: new and improved image, now with 100% less support! Used my expert photo editing skills to change āsupportingā to say āvoting forā
Not sure where thatās going exactly but I donāt really have a problem with states rights. I thought diversity is good thing, no? The more things are regulated on a federal level, the more uniform the country becomes. And I thought people here hated fascismā¦ but I digress.
Yes, there has got to be a certain minimum standard of things we all agree on for a federal union to work, but apart from that, Iām all for giving states as much freedom as possible to experiment with their own regulations. Letās be honest, nobody really knows what the best way is to deal with all these issues we have.
So if California wants to tackle the future by building a high tech, EV-based, genderfluid LGBT society, why shouldnāt they? As long as people who donāt like that have the option to go to some other state and homestead on an organic backwoods farm, hunt deer, and worship Odin or whatever, thatās fine with me. Isnāt that what freedom is supposed to be about? Why do so many people these days have this weird notion that it has to be all or nothing, and everyone else has to want what THEY want or else be forced to participate?
Simply put, most people who believe in any sort of moral code, believe in such a code because they think they are correct. If they didnāt think they were correct, they wouldnāt believe it. This includes whatever people might be able to entertain about what would be correct in a given hypothetical scenario, or a broader issue. Extrapolation to the broad.
The reason āstates rightsā is kind of an iffy look is, you know, retroactive slavery justification from southern civil war apologists, but also, as a rhetorical tactic broadly, people bring up statesā rights as a kind of distraction. Now, weāre not talking about roe v. wade, whether or not roe v. wade was a good decision, or whether or not itās good for women to have access to healthcare, which, you know, it is, right, I donāt think thatās particularly controversial. Now, weāre talking about statesā rights, experimentation with democracy, that sorta shit, which is kind of blech.
I would also generally be opposed to other peopleās freedoms when they start doing harm, right, which is kind of a vacuous statement or whatever, right, how do we qualify harm? But if someoneās doing an organic backwoods farm where theyāre introducing invasive species and destabilizing the ecosystem, thatās a problem. If people are sacrificing their firstborn to odin, Iād say thatās also a problem. If people are entering that kind of lifestyle en masse to such a degree that it starts to destabilize everyone elseās lives, or cause them active harm, thatās also a problem. See my first paragraph, here.
We can also see how thereās kind of a more complicated relationship between states in something like the whole controversy between new york and texas, and immigrant buses, or whatever. New york wants to create a kind of liberal society, where their citizens have social safety nets, and they can benefit off of migrant labor while attempting to integrate them into society, right, relative to texas, in which migrant labor is exploited via under the table deals, on the basis that there is no legitimate alternative because the immigration system is super underfunded (this happens in new york too, this is a bad example, but entertain the hypothetical for a moment, Iām making a broader point here). If new york receives a shit ton of immigrants and floods their capacity to manage them all, their social safety nets will fail, and everything will kind of regress to the mean, to the status quo, which is going to be a problem especially when youāre getting a lack of political will and buy-in to lots of these ideas, and these things can be kind of repealed on a whim. We see the same thing almost in reverse, again, with texas, where they can lower their taxes on corporations to be next to nothing, and then suddenly all the corporations pull out of cities like san francisco and LA, and move to texas, and everything just kind of, races to the bottom, as it were. States do this all the time, where senators compete to be more favorably looked upon by corporations with their political decisions in order to get factories and ābring jobsā to their states, and get more voter turnout, even if the quality of life in their states ends up massively suffering as a result. It is a free market approach to a country.
To compress a lot of that metaphor, statesā rights, sure, but, statesā rights to do what? But I have completely digressed, I still find this to be kind of an aside, a tangent.
Itās a frustrating turnaround to encounter, ja feel? I come up against it a lot when I bring up, say, like, car-centricity, right. I can point out a lot of the problems with the lifestyle. It doesnāt scale well, itās not useful in many circumstances, etc, but then I bump up against this problem of, well, actually, itās their choice, so, eat it loser, nobody cares. They donāt contest the actual content of the point Iām making, or whether or not Iām right or wrong about a specific thing, they just say, oh, well, other people can choose to be wrong if they want. I can accept that, but you can understand why thatās also not a satisfying answer at all, right? Itās an anti-empathy answer, itās incurious, it doesnāt seek to learn about other peopleās perspectives or lives in any way, and it doesnāt seek truth. Thatās kind of not what Iām about.
Just from a legal standpoint, Roe v. Wade was always iffy because it was basically the Supreme Court making a law from the bench, which is not its constitutionally assigned role.
If people had wanted to make abortion access a National law, they should have gone through the proper political process and amended the constitution. But they didnāt do that, because they couldnāt get the required majorities in the house and senate, so instead Democrats stacked the court and rammed it through that way.
No matter how you feel about abortion, it was always a bad decision and a stain on the country, and nullifying was the correct decision. Comparing it to slavery is silly because pregnancy and childbirth are natural functions of the female body, slavery is not. And we did pass an amendment to abolish the latter so statesā rights can no longer allow it.
Thatās how things are supposed to work. The condition is the legal framework thatās applicable in all 50 states and trumps any state right, and as long as a state abides by that they should be free to do whatever the majority of residents want. Like I said, the beauty of this design is you can always move somewhere else if you donāt like it, because chances are, in a country this big thereās always people somewhere that share the same values as you do.
I mean, again, we can kind of understand that ājust move somewhere elseā isnāt a great response to issues somewhat might have, right?
But also, and this will probably be my last point, here, I donāt take the same perspective on these kind of legalistic frameworks that you do, I think. I donāt give a shit if they go through the proper channels or not to get something done, what I care about is whether or not theyāre doing something thatās right or wrong. I think abortion is a pretty good thing to have for a lot of reasons that Iāve previously described, so I want it around, I want everyone to have access to their baby-killing stem cell organ harvesting clinic, and thatās basically as far as my opinion goes.
The legal frameworks are the means to the end, theyāre not the end in-and-of itself. And itās not necessarily that the ends justify the means, or anything, but I have a couple reasons for believing why the means donāt really matter in this particular case. Believing that the means themselves are the ends, would kind of be the most absurd perspective to take, youād have to be an extremely dyed in the wool lib to believe that, you know. Youād have to like, not believe in shit like gerrymandering, fptp voting being fucking ass, not believe in shit like local city councils making zoning decisions that concentrate black voters into smaller and smaller voting blocks and ghettos. Those are all ends that are achieved by ālegitimateā political processes here in the states, and were undone by āillegitimateā protests, illegitimate means. Or at least, they were viewed as illegitimate at the time. If everyone who believes in the same shit all move to the same exact place, you get redlining, you get ghettos.
Again, also, I must point out, weāre not debating over whether or not abortion is good or bad, weāre debating over the legal framework that established it, now, which isnāt really what Iām interested in. I donāt really give a shit about that, for the aforementioned reasons. If abortion is a good thing, generally, if itās a good thing for society at large, which, Iām pretty sure is the case, Iām pretty sure weāve come to a consensus on that, then I donāt really care whether or not people have access to abortions legally or illegally, as long as they have good access, as long as they have safe access. I only care about the legal legitimacy, in this case, of abortion, only in the fact that, perhaps if it had been passed by amending the constitution, some shit that never happens because our democracy sucks, again for aforementioned reasons, right, I only care about the process as much as it enshrines it as a right more concretely.
But of course, we donāt live in that timeline, and I have to deal with current reality.
So you think forcing everyone to just go along with your wishes is a better response, then?
You realize not everyone in this country shares your opinion on abortion being a good thing, right? Saying you that you donāt care by what means itās established as a right IS basically saying that the ends DO justify the means, and that if necessary, youād be willing to disenfranchise, beat down, or even kill anyone who doesnāt agree with your opinion.
Again, the constitution is the framework of basic rights and prohibitions that we all agree on. And while I agree that having to move somewhere else to get something you really care about, if itās a split issue, like abortion is, where a large enough minority disagrees on it being a good thing, perhaps moving somewhere else isnāt as awful a compromise, is it?
I wasnāt born when the country was founded, neither were you, probably, unless youāre dracula, in which case, Iām sorry sir, I know it must be your time of the month again.
Actually though. I am growing a little bit tired of this conversation. Iāve given you some reasons why, in this particular case, I donāt think thereās a whole lot of problem with circumventing the ridiculous legal systems which prevent us from establishing what I believe should be basic human rights.
Also yes, I totally believe that I should be able to disenfranchise, beat down, or even kil lanyone who doesnāt agree with my opinion. Unironically. That was definitely something I said and is definitely something you can extrapolate from my post. I completely believe that. I should be able to kill everyone. Iām the arbiter of morality. Me personally, Iām god, Iām jesus, Iām judge, jury, and executioner. I think the punisher was cool, so was judge dredd, for sure for sure.
Did you just skim my post, or something? Gerrymandering, fptp voting being ass, people who, move away, right, because of political issues, and then we end up with ghettoization, redlining, do you just have no response to any of those manifested problems in our actual democracy?
Even many forms of what we would consider to be pure democracy can be co-opted to enforce the will of a minority of people, and it doesnāt even need to be co-opted, to oppress a minority at the behest of the majority. And if thatās where your democracy heads, you can just keep the minority from voting, as our founding fathers intended, and badda bing badda boom now you have an even smaller voting majority, which doesnāt represent the populationās majority, . Which is to say nothing of the kind of lobbied to shit democratic republic in which we live, which is more heavy on the republic side of that equation than most people would have you believe. So Iām not gonna lie to you, and pretend like our ultimate democratic republic manifest is going to solve every problem of humanity, and that if people go through the legitimate channels, everything will be squeaky clean, and weāll solve all problems with the click of a finger. We all just need to vote harder, and thatāll be it, right?
Also, again, for the fucking third time, weāre also, again, debating the legal sticking point, here, and not the actual content of whether or not what Iām saying is moral. Weāre not debating if abortion is good or not. Is abortion good? Do you believe abortion to be good, or bad? Are you āundecidedā, on this issue? If abortion is good, why is it bad to circumvent the legal framework? to āgame the systemā, here? It isnāt even gaming the system, really, these were rules that were laid out from the start of the system, here. Like, is it just bad because theoretically, some evil dictator will take power at some point, and then āgame the systemā in order to make everyoneās lives shit? That seems to me to be a problem, as Iāve been saying, more to do with the system itself, than to do with āgaming the systemā. Like, what are we gonna do in that circumstance, ask them nicely just to not āgame the systemā pretty please?
Is it a real disagreement weāre having here, or is it just kind of a āitās the principle of the thingā kind of a disagreement, I guess is what Iām saying, at the end of the day? I dunno. I keep coming up with new ways to talk about the shit youāre saying, but somehow I also think Iām reaching the end of my rope when it comes to, ways to talk about all-encompassing political issues.
Alright then, thanks for putting it all out there. I appreciate the honesty. Much easier to argue with people who donāt beat around the bush or hide their true intentions like a lot of other folks on this site tend to do.
Yes. Why would I waste my time reading through your walls of text to figure out how exactly you arrived at your idiotic conclusions when I already know what they are? Thatās gonna be your responsibility to figure out where you went wrong in your chain of causality when youāll meet with the inevitable end of your rope. Because, just to save you some time, those who champion the principle of death over life have always eventually met with their own destruction, and so will you, if you are as hellbent as you seem to be on destroying something you neither seem to understand nor appreciate.
Iām definitely more on the pro-life side on this issue, so I believe abortion is bad unless itās necessary to save the motherās life and the fetus isnāt viable. And by ānecessaryā I mean medically necessary, i.e. in order to avert imminent risk of death, not āthere goes my dream to study archeologyā or something like that.
Because the framework exists for a reason, and it has worked fairly well for the last 250 years. It strikes a careful balance between serving the needs of the majority without excessively oppressing the minority. Yes, Iām sure you can bring up many examples of where minorities were oppressed, but thatās always going to happen in a majority-based system. The key word here is āexcessivelyā. Many Indians were slaughtered, for example, but they werenāt entirely wiped out. We dropped two nuclear bombs on a foreign country but then we didnāt wipe them out entirely just because we could, and instead made a peace agreement with them.
Perhaps youāre still young and you donāt understand the concept of mercy just yet, but one day you will.
Oh, so youāre just a troll whoās not gonna read any of my shit, then, and you also donāt understand sarcasm. Luckily, since Iāve realized that youāre a bad faith tool, I also donāt have to afford the same courtesies to you, and waste my time reading your posts or writing a thought-out response.
You might try reading someday, it might help your dumb ass learn some shit instead of just thinking youāre smarter than everyone else all the time, and youāve already arrived at the correct conclusions. Also, nice trolling, Iām sure you got your (you)s, but it doesnāt really end up working to convince any third reader of this, when youāre so obviously cherry picking pieces of my argument.
āBoo-hoo, everyone who disagrees with me is a troll and acting in bad faithā
Was that also sarcasm or are you really this immature?
Just because Iām picking out the most salient points of your argument to focus on doesnāt mean I donāt take the time to write a thoughtful response. You call it cherry picking, I call it prioritization. Iām sorry, but I donāt have time to read these walls of text and my experience has taught me that debates on the Internet work much better if you only focus on one or two arguments at a time instead of like, 10. Thatās called respecting peopleās time, and your terse response, besides being absolute dogshit content-wise, is doing a far better job at it than your previous ones.
Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.