TSN Open Mic for the week of 3/13/2023
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to Ten Second News.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these on the Sidebar every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/03/11/florida-insurance-claims-hurricane-ian/Report
This has been predicted, for a long time now.
Not the fraud, but the fact that insurance companies will become the canary in the coal mine of climate change.
No matter how much propaganda denying climate change is churned out by rightwing thinktanks and media outlets, those with money in the game will vote with their pocketbooks.Report
Gotta say, the emotional resonance of my “but that won’t fix the problem” arguments against just writing student debtors a check has lost a chord or two.Report
Related: Wall St falls as SVB collapse fuels bank contagion fears.
Not looking forward to Wednesday, I tell you that much.Report
More halts:
Gotta say: the halts make me panic more than the plunges do. I know the plunges will go back up next week.Report
Schwab, wow.Report
No shortage of commentary on SVB. But bracketing the usual narrative fitters from the discussion, I think it’s plausible that folks blaming Regulation will be simultaneously right and wrong. Right in the sense that Regulations build the framework of rules that require compliance… but wrong in that Regulations are the framework of rules that drive behavior to maximize what is acceptably compliant.
What’s interesting about SVB is that it’s going under for holding the safest possible assets as required by regulations. Literally 0% Risk Weight. But they appear to have mismanaged their rate swap risk, which ‘theoretically’ isn’t supposed to happen with sophisticated investors like, well investment banks.
Which is to say, why not regulate rate swaps into the HTM policy… sure. That’s not the point. What’s the other thing that will be obvious in retrospect? That’s the thing we need to regulate. The thing we don’t know about. The thing that only becomes a thing once we iterate on the new things.
Which brings up the moral financial hazard of Social Media Clout Chasing… Did internet Bad-boy Peter Thiel flex on behalf of VC interests? Why wasn’t that regulated? How do we regulate the speed of information with Electronic Banking?
https://twitter.com/ProfessorStam/status/1634722138627121153Report
I’ve seen this one a number of times:
This seems to indicate that things are bad. Like, real bad.
Like “lower rates” bad.Report
Only to people who don’t understand how Bond Markets work… which shouldn’t include Investment Banks.
It’s only bad if you’re forced to exit your position early. Like, say, to cover operating losses or bank runs. And, you haven’t hedged your HTM with swaps.Report
You aren’t wrong but I think a critical caveat is that the banking industry isn’t a disinterested bystander to its own regulation. They fight harder than anyone for the treatment they receive. So it seems to me that while regulation can’t prevent everything, and bad regulation is by definition bad, we (by virtue of representative democracy of course) have to decide whether these things are public utilities where the greater good necessitates major restriction and oversight beyond anything we’ve had in this country before, or whether they’re speculative money making operations that can be allowed to fail with massive ripple effects across completely innocent people. The banks spend billions lobbying the argument that it can be had both ways, but I have no idea why anyone would continue to believe them.Report
All true, but that’s not my point. It’s that incentives create the game which creates the incentives.
Lobbying for one set of incentive you prefer, sometimes getting them sometimes not doesn’t alter the fact that you’re already iterating on the incentives you already have.Report
I would like the incentive of “we can change the rules after the fact if we need to” to be removed.Report
That can only happen when you’re able to effectively filter those receiving their just desserts from the innocent. I saw some tweet floating around suggesting that when the government steps in management keeps their jobs but they have to run 400% profits returned to the feds for 5 years and if they fail they spend the rest of their lives in jail. I actually thought the idea wasn’t half bad.Report
There are all sorts of good solutions, but every one of them relies upon reducing the power of the finance sector over the government.
And there are solutions to that, too, but a good portion of the electorate is either indifferent or actively hostile to them.Report
I don’t think they are. Banks are confusing because we think of them as big warehouses of money.
The bank has large asset holdings with a cashflow problem… the ‘losers’ should be Officers of the Company and the Shareholders. (Employees are unfortunate collateral damage in the bankruptcy).
Once a buyer with sufficient liquidity to ride-out the asset depreciation by covering the cash-out situation is found… the assets should cover the depositors.
But, 100% of all shareholder equity has to be wiped out as well as all exit clauses for Officers etc. The Bank is liquidated at the expense of the *shareholders* and the depositors are ‘entitled’ to the assets in proportion to whatever is left over.
The ongoing ‘problem’ that the FDIC and re-flating the bank is to prevent the flight of capital forcing the liquidation of the assets at a loss. That’s the hope behind reflating the bank with a merger of a larger entity (the usual outcome).
e.g. this situation is different from the 2008 collapse.Report
The outcome seems to be the same, though.Report
From what I’m seeing, it’s not. Think of it this way, the bailouts replaced money that ceased to exist… that was the existential crisis. SVB is a regulatory process which deals with cashflow issues when outflows exceed liquidity.
Still a failure, but not creating money where it doesn’t exist. At least given the reports so far.
Bonus observation… one of the Regulatory outcomes of 2008 was ending the strict separation of Investment and Commercial banks. So, when we talk about ‘depositors’ at SVB wich is an Investment/Commerical bank we crossover into this area that didn’t exist until the Govt. *asked/forced* Investment banks to also become Commercial banks.
Now most all(?) large investment banks are also Commercial banks, but not the other way ’round.Report
Still a failure, but not creating money where it doesn’t exist
Okay. I thought that the government would be finding more change in the cushions again.
If this ends up just being a managed failure where the bank is purchased and we can go back to normal(ish)… okay. Good. Let’s hope the execs take a haircut.
Then I read headlines like this one: Silicon Valley Bank employees received bonuses hours before government takeover.
It reminds me of last time.Report
I had heard that as well… the link says the following:
“The Santa Clara, California-based bank has historically paid employee bonuses on the second Friday of March, said the people, who declined to be identified speaking about the awards. The payments were for work done in 2022 and had been in process days before the bank’s collapse, the sources said.”
The bonuses ranged from $12k to $140k.
If there’s a history of paying out MBO’s on the second Friday in March? Pay is pay. The 8000 folks getting paid for doing what they needed to do in 2022 doesn’t phase me.
Unless there are big ‘in-lieu’ of equity payments for Execs, I’d put it as an accident of the date when the run occurred. If Execs were typically given RSU’s and this time they got cash? Sure, I’d claw those back.
The issue with Bonuses after the Bailout is that they were *after* the bailout… and, rather pointedly, none of the shareholders or execs had had their Equity liquidated.
One tiny irony in all this is that isn’t lost on me is that I was a (tiny $2k) shareholder in GM – which was considered a safe investment. My stake was liquidated in Bankruptcy, but GM and most of it’s Execs enjoyed a restructuring. But hey, that’s what diversification is for.Report
It isn’t. Look at 2008 and then look at SVB. In 2008 the Feds got involved because the finance industry over all said “It’s all gonna burn down if you don’t bail us out” The Feds got involved (they actually made money off it ironically), the finance industry took some haircuts but generally got to keep their lucrative, high paying, and prestigious jobs and their shareholders mostly retained their equity (except for FNMA and Freddie which remains a complicated story. Now 2008 was likely still decided correctly but as politics it was toxic, especially once those finance hypocrites turned around and started shrieking about the new regulatory rules that were imposed on them because of their idiocy.
SVB, on the other hand, is being liquidated. The depositors are getting all their money back but the bank executives and leadership will be unemployed when this is done and will have to look for new jobs with having rode SVB into the ground on their resumes. The share holders of SVB will only get any value from their shares in the unlikely event that once SVB’s assets are liquidated and disbursed to deposit holders and creditors that there’s money left over. In the event that the assets aren’t sufficient to cover all the deposits then the FDIC will make them whole using a fund that all banks pay into and that cost will end up being assed to the banking industry as a whole so it’s not even, technically, public funds being used to pay off any losses.
2008 and this could not be more different, frankly.Report
SVB, on the other hand, is being liquidated. The depositors are getting all their money back but the bank executives and leadership will be unemployed when this is done and will have to look for new jobs with having rode SVB into the ground on their resumes.
If this happens, I will feel that this is how it should have happened.
Until it does, it feels like another fleece job. (Especially given that the leadership sold their stock and everybody got their bonuses.)Report
If the leadership sold their stock in the days before insolvency, that will be investigated for clear insider trading violations.Report
Their CEO sold off a bunch 2 weeks ago. Hard to say if it was a coincidence. The whole run started with Peter Thiel advising people to divest.Report
Yeah… sure to be investigated.
Fortune reports that his plan to sell was created Jan 26… I’d expect internal review of reports/meetings on HTM holdings before 1/26 will determine if it’s’ an ‘accident’ or he was pulling the ripcord – or something murkier in between.
“The sale of 12,451 shares on Feb. 27 was the first time in more than a year that Becker had sold shares in parent company SVB Financial Group, according to regulatory filings. He filed the plan that allowed him to sell the shares on Jan. 26.”Report
There are rarely insider trading prosecutions for C Suite folks.Report
Meh, most insider trading by anyone isn’t prosecuted. The exceptions are high profile cases that catch media scrutiny.
Interestingly, here’s a fresh one that is going after exactly the type of situation above where ‘planned trading’ is linked to insider knowledge.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ceo-publicly-traded-health-care-company-charged-insider-trading-scheme
But, that’s also the point of 10b5-1 plans for Executives… to take the selling of their stock out of their hands by specifying future dates that they can’t change or manipulate. It’s a protection against the charge of insider trading.Report
My company uses (used?) SVB and we regained access to our accounts this morning (my weekend was hell). Everyone on the in-house boards I follow is reporting the same. So we’re partially there. Question now is can they find a buyer. Personally I also think everyone in a leadership position at SVB should be investigated but I’d be satisfied with them losing their shirts.Report
Working at Lehman Bros. certainly didn’t taint this guy’s resume.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/silicon-valley-bank-exec-was-lehman-brothers-cfo-prior-to-2008-collapseReport
These same names keep bubbling up.Report
The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article about the decline of history as a viable academic history.
https://www.chronicle.com/article/down-and-out-at-the-aha?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_6368760_nl_Academe-Today_date_20230313&cid=at&source=&sourceid=&cid2=gen_login_refresh
I’m sympathetic to the humanities students, I was one myself and a history major at that. The problem is that a lot of the attempts to solve the problem of the humanities don’t want to deal with the true solution to the problem. The Internet and podcasting has shown that there is a huge lay market for serious and not so serious history and other subjects in the humanities. Humanities students might not be able to go on to being tenured professors but they could get jobs doing some sort of history or humanities presentation. Still a large gamble though.
My brother had the observation is one thing that paradoxically hurt the humanities was that the younger millennials and zoomers were a lot more hyper-focused and serious about certain topics. He observed that when he was in college, this would late 90s and early aughts, the Asian studies departments were dominated by kids who loved Japan and Chinese culture and wanted access to more of it. Kids who were going to college in the aughts and 2010s were more focused on things like the remnants of the caste system and how that affects LGBT politics in India today rather than a general love and curiosity of Indian culture. The past and the culture seemed rather irrelevant to them.Report
The reality is that Theory is designed to destroy, burn down, and salt the Earth after it, not to create. I was also a history major* and am sad to hear if it’s decline. I also think that taught correctly it can be not only enjoyable but teach people the kinds of critical thinking, not to mention reading and writing skills that can be useful (I mean, have you seen how many people can’t even write a coherent 3 or 4 sentence e-mail?). However it seems like they really aren’t interested in teaching history anymore, the first rule of which is do not project. It requires a dispassionate approach that is highly unfashionable among the administrators that now seem to make these decisions, and so for all intents and purposes may already be dead.Report
I’m not really sure what you mean by do not project. Lots of serious historians had a definite ideological and polemic bent and still did real scholarship. History is suffering for the same reason other humanities are suffering. More students want practical majors and the algorithm weeds out history major and gender studies major equally. History majors are in a better position to save history because there is a tremendous public appetite for history in a way there isn’t for any other discipline in the humanities. A lot of historians seem to really loathe writing for even an educated lay audience though and concede this to the Right. It is political and professional malpractice.Report
I would never say that my history experience was apolitical exactly, but let’s not pretend these things are the same. Anyone who tried to do analysis through the lense of modern American politics would have been counseled against it and if they persisted their grades would have been poor for their efforts. Indeed I distinctly remember instances of any kind of editorializing expressly being discouraged (common themes were of course George W Bush and Iraq) and the message was consistently that anyone doing that is failing in their approach.
Now, I add the caveat that I went to Big State Flagship, which while plenty left of center culturally, didn’t seem to be subject to the kind of intensity and academic romanticism you hear about at small liberal arts schools. There’s just too many people interested primarily in getting their business degree and taking part in drunken riots when the basketball team wins. No idea how it is now.
All of that said I do agree with you that it would be better for historians to actually make a case for themselves instead of accepting their ride down the toilet with the rest of the humanities.Report
This is it. I saw it roll over departments and universities.
We all laughed at English majors and their LitCrit theories; who’s laughing now? They won. In fixing the Humanities they ended the project, which was the only possible way to put the cursed theories back in the box.
(to be clear, that’s not InMD’s point… I’ve gummed up enough of his comments to owe him a out clause).Report
I’ve been gone for so long I hesitate to speculate too much about what it’s like now. All I really have is what I see on various social media pages and alumni outreach. I can certainly say there’s all kinds of crap that comes from my law school that would’ve been laughed at when I was there.
My wife majored in sociology at the same university where I got my undergrad and still follows along with some of the stuff they release. Her take is that sociology has always attracted people with some kind of axe to grind. The difference is that where this was once seen as regrettable it now appears to be a prerequisite for acceptance into the program.Report
I’m a sucker for History of Ideas *and* taxonomies… so this was just bait.
Report
Yet another example of systemic racism in the US, with some thoughts on concrete reform:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/13/opinions/traffic-stops-black-men-police-reform-gaspard-robinson-turner/index.htmlReport
You know what also gets you pulled over?
1) Speeding. 30 miles over the posted limit is legally reckless driving. ((Usually you just get a thousand dollar fine and 5 points–at least when I got caught.) In Virginia, it’s 20 over the limit and you may indeed go jail.))
2) Speeding and having a out of state tag.
3) Speeding and having an out of state tag and it’s 1am.
Every time I’ve been pulled over, and it used to happen on a regular basis, the cop’s hand was on his firearm….
This also works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMNrV5ZC_o8&ab_channel=ChattanoogabenReport
Way to speed right by the point.Report
Japanese novelist and Nobel Laureate Kenaburo Oe died: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/13/books/kenzaburo-oe-dead.htmlReport
Today in Republican Gilead:
21 South Carolina GOP Lawmakers Propose Death Penalty for Women Who Have Abortions
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3898383-south-carolina-gop-lawmakers-propose-death-penalty-for-women-who-have-abortions/
This was long predicted, but vociferously denied as hysterical exaggeration by “reasonable moderate” pundits.Report
Even when this becomes law, these clowns will deny this is reality.Report
Fascinating:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/14/politics/cnn-poll-republicans-2024-nominee/index.htmlReport
Indeed. This generally tracks my trendline as well, but not for the reasons given in this survey. Mine are/is that basically the American empire is approaching collapse. Will it be a drop is “status’ as China takes over, or one too many foreign policy debacles like Afghanistan, or something else, I don’t know…..but all empires come to an end. The question is how and what grows out of the remnants.Report
I don’t think our best days are behind us, but they could be. Otherwise I guess I’m an average Republican: ok with ethnic diversity, opposed to modern sexual mores, distrustful of government.Report
How is one OK with ethnic diversity and supportive of candidates who want to keep ethnic minorities systemically oppressed?
And are you opposed to modern sexual mores – i.e. sexual practices – or are you opposed to the expansive modern understanding of gender and sexual identify? Cause here’s the thing – there have been and will always be homosexuals in human populations. They are well documented historically, appear to exist at the genetic level, and won’t disappear no matter how much draconian and legislation is passed into law. Ditto Transgendered persons. They aren’t “making a choice” and practicing their sexuality is, frankly, not something that small government conservatives have any business regulating.Report
You and I disagree on what constitutes systematic oppression. I don’t think we’re going to resolve anything here.
Based on the linked article (I can’t get to the poll itself), the question was whether “society’s values on sexual orientation and gender identity are changing for the worse”. that sounds more like a matter of mores than understanding, but obviously the two are related. Why did you make a distinction between them? Also, I’m not sure why you’re assuming I want to regulate these things. A person can oppose something without demanding governmental regulation.Report
If you don’t want to regulate sexual mores, that’s great.
I just assume this means we can harshly criticize the laws about book bans, drag shows and gay teachers without any pushback.Report
Well for starters, I don’t recall you speaking out against the various laws being passed and signed targeting the LGBTQIA+ community. Or condemning the politicians proposing them. Seems to me if you don’t want the government intervening, you need to say so and say so clearly.
See too many conservatives don’t say so and the vote for whoever is on offer from the GOP. Even as the noose tightens and more people’s rights are suppressed they simply don’t speak up.Report
OK, this may be related to the systematic oppression thing more closely than I realized. I don’t think of any of the laws I’ve heard about as targeting the alphabet community. We may be too far apart on that matter to even have common ground for a discussion.Report
Then you aren’t looking. The anti-drag laws in Tennessee target that community. Florida HB 1557 targets that community. Presently there are 413 anti-LGBTQ bills in state legislatures all over the US. So people who agree with you politically, perhaps in you own state, are supporting politicians and legislation that are indeed trying to enforce mores on that community.
https://www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rightsReport
I’m looking, but I see things differently. You have to accept that we see things differently. For example, although I haven’t read FL HB 1557, I don’t see anything in it that targets the alphabet community. I did read TN HB 9 – it was short – and ditto.Report
What would you have to see to accept that its targeted discrimination?
to put a finer point on it – when a politician at CPAC says that “transgenderism” has to be eliminated from America, who do you think he is targeting?
And do remember – the “alphabet community” are still American citizens.Report
Not a politician – you’re thinking of Michael Knowles, and he said the ideology has to be eliminated, and I agree with him.Report
Nice dodge on the question of what would be required for you to agree that’s the legislation is discriminatory.
Being transgender isn’t an ideology. Treating transgender people medically isn’t an ideology. Acknowledging the humanity of transgender persons isn’t an ideology.
Frankly its a Christian duty:
Report
Not a dodge. I thought it would be more illuminating. I don’t know what benefit we’d get from “why do you think it is / is not anti-trans?”.
As for transgenderism as an ideology, you treated it that way above when you referred to “the expansive modern understanding of gender and sexual identify”, didn’t you? Or at least you treated modern sexual theory as an ideology.
Now, as to the last thing. I don’t deny the humanity of anyone who thinks that he’s a different sex. I wouldn’t deny him rights based on that fact. I won’t say he’s right though. I think I’ve talked about this before, I dated a girl whose father was suffering from Alzheimer’s. It was uncomfortable to lie to him, but he was unreachable. I’m not going to treat a person who thinks he’s the wrong sex as if he’s right. That’s a lie, and it’s not loving to cater to someone’s delusion.Report
What we’d get is the bar, the benchmark, the criteria by which you aree determining these laws are not what we believ they are. Absent that information, you are correct that you and i can’t have a discussion. So what would you need to see to define these laws as discriminatory?
There are conservative politicians all over the country who seek to do exactly that. And you by your own admission support politicians of that party. Clearly you see that as consistent. I don’t.
Clearly you do not accept modern psychology or medicine on this, because it’s not an issue of wrong or right. A person who presents as male, and is labeled as male by society but is in fact female isn’t making a choice. Forcing them to live as who they are not is not loving. It is purposeful infliction of mental harm. Often known as torture.Report
OK, then, what’s anti-trans about FL HB 1557 and TN HB 9? What denies anyone rights?
“Clearly you do not accept modern psychology or medicine on this”
I don’t accept what they’re saying on this, or rather your interpretation of what they’re saying, as rooted in science rather than ideology. For example, you just referred to “a person who presents as male, and is labeled as male by society but is in fact female”. There’s no way to quantify that scientifically, correct? If we’re restricting ourselves to the empirical, a person who presents as male is in fact male. To say otherwise is to leave the realm of science.Report
You are still refusing to answer the question about why you believe these bills are not discriminatory.
As an example – TN HB 9 makes unfounded assumptions. it assumes that all drag performances are sexual in nature and thus must be restricted from viewing by anyone not an adult. It further assumes that the performers (who are overwhelmingly male) are thus engaged in lewd acts simply by presenting to society as women.
And since transwomen are required by their doctors to live as the gender they want to be – presenting as women – before they begin HRT and well before receiving reassignment surgery – transwomen are thus subject to being labeled as committing lewd acts because they are dressed as women in places other then designated clubs. Meaning that transwomen simply going to the grocery store will be assumed by the law to be committing lewd acts and thus subject to arrest and fine.
Catholic transubstantiation leaves the realm of science doesn’t it? I’m sure you don’t want that outlawed do you?Report
Yes, TN HB 9 categorizes drag shows as prurient. I have no problem with that. I don’t find that discriminatory.
You brought up science as a means to defend modern sexual morality, not me. You said that you consider this a matter of truth rather than a matter of belief. I’m challenging the idea that modern sexual morality is based in science, not the idea that something outside the realm of science can be the criterion by which we decide something.Report
You’re illustrating the dilemma noted by David Frim and others.
You oppose modern mores, and tell us you distrust government.
But your views about mores place you squarely in a shrinking minority.
And however much you talk the talk about distrusting government you say you are comfortable with a law giving the government power to arrest people for wearing the wrong type of clothing.
Majority rule, individual liberties and your personal morality are in conflict, so you’ve chosen to jettison the first two.Report
Majority rule and individual liberties have *ALWAYS* been in conflict.
There is a very, very funny joke being set up.Report
Yes which is why the majority respects Pinkys right to not be forced to have a sex change.
And minorities like Pinky are asked to respect the right of others to decide for themselves.
What’s happening is the the Republican minority is demanding the right to coercively block other people from living as they wish.Report
Mores disrespector chastises Mores disrespector.Report
Everyone yelled at me when my Return of the Bedroom Police essay was posted but I still think it’s the only workable approach. I mean, I wouldn’t want one of my priests going to a public school to instruct, not just because it would be in gross violation of the most basic American law and social covenants, but because I think the survival of my religion kind of depends on abstaining from that kind of thing. And yet there are those who would not extend the same courtesy with their gender spirit shamans, and call others intolerant for noticing.Report
The only way to understand the American project is downstream from the 30-yrs war. It isn’t a New Way, it’s the Great Truce. It relies upon a shared framework of ‘Mores’ and can’t survive their deconstruction.
In this sense I get to have the luxury of being the Agnostic; the Agnostic Liberal. It doesn’t really exist, but the alternatives to it not existing are worse.Report
I think that’s right. I’ve also been thinking a lot lately about the distinction between secularism and nondenominationalism. Secularism has its issues, particularly those I think you’re alluding to that arise from official agnosticism. That said I think you can make a big multicultural society function with it, you just need everyone to agree to certain rules about public versus private life, some of which may well be legal fictions, but history tells us with a little effort and self policing you can make it work. Nondenominational-ism aspires to a similar kind of outcome but no matter how hard it tries to pretend otherwise it really is its own sect and creates sectarianism. Maybe you really do have to be versed in a non-Protestant environment to grok that but I’m convinced every day it is the only way to do things.
For example, secularism can tolerate that some believe based on the Order of the Flying Spaghetti Monster that all people have a deep sense of themselves as noodles, meatballs, a combination of the two, or neither, but of course the state can’t teach that as a fact to a captive audience of other peoples children. The ND side says, well we all agree we have a deep sense of ourselves in this manner, so of course we can teach it as a general truth as long as we stay away from the doctrinal particulars.Report
I might redirect a little?
Secularism in this story is a denomination. It defines itself as non-Flying-Spaghetti-Monster but it can take as it’s own form: Teleporting-Risotto-Ghost; but since it has occupied the space of Secular, the Teleporting-Risotto-Ghost is ‘definitionally’ value neutral. Except that it’s not.
And what’s cool is that tomorrow it can be Roadrunning-Pastrami-Bird and still be the ‘Secular’ position.
It’s possible for everyone to disagree on what makes the best pasta for the flying monster… but absent the monster you get any old figment of our imagination – and that figment takes upon itself the mantle of ‘Secular Norms’ – which *must* be taught to the children as the standard by which denominations are judged to be denominations and therefore not permitted in the Secular Space.
It pretends not to be a denomination itself that must be accommodated, but instead the arbiter of what constitutes Neutrality.
Similar to what you’re saying (I think) but less optimistic; and (I think) illustrates why the defeater to the argument of Secularism is Secularism itself. It isn’t neutral; it defines itself as Not-Spaghetti-Monster… which is different from arguments over what makes the best Spaghetti-Monster. Further, once you kill the Monster? Long live the Monster.Report
Fair comment, so let me respond by (hopefully) doing a better job at defining my terms. I would call what you’re describing a sort of Theistic Non-denominational-ism dressed up as secular, rather than actual secularism. And that’s exactly what I think is going on with a lot of these issues, where we have lost the public Protestant culture of the country and now have the upper middle class enforcers of those norms left adrift, grasping at figments of their imagination (love that description btw), that in their more lucid moments even they can sometimes acknowledge are hopelessly shallow and incapable of inspring the broader solidarity they’re desperate to annoint themselves guardians of.
When I talk about secularism in this context I am thinking of something more like the strict state secularism that is part of the French constitution and jurisprudence. Now, that isn’t without its flaws either. A counterproductive form of it could be Superintendent Chalmers in the Simpsons yelling ‘Prayer? In a public school? God has no place within these walls!’
Which is to say success of secularism does not necessarily mean a war on religion, ancient or new fangled versions of it. I think we do have a solid blueprint for that, with our establishment clause, and the civil rights laws of the 60s that are completely consistent with its spirit. In that vein the success of a secular state isn’t measured in what you do see, so much as what you don’t see, which is state sanctioned coercion on purely personal spiritual matters.
Now, I know this is already an overly long comment, but I think a fair question, and the one that I think you’re bringing up, is doesn’t that ensure the death of religion itself at the hands of a secularist cult? My answer is only if you let it win in spite of having the highest laws in the land on your side if you know how to employ them. The catch about employing them though is that you have to understand that the problem with what the secularist cult is doing isn’t that it’s secular, it’s that it’s being done by a cult!Report
I think that our modern system can function with a population of denominational, nondenominational, and nonreligious. The only requirement is that people have a framework which is compatible with the Declaration of Independence, or they’re willing to act as if it is. I don’t think any of this is an existential threat to the political system. I also don’t see any of it threatening individual faiths.
Is this me being naively optimistic? It was bound to happen sooner or later.Report
sentence 1 should have said “mix of” or “and/or”Report
Yea I mean my prediction is that a lot of these sacred cows are already in transit to the slaughterhouse scene in fast food nation. I also think the medical and harder psychiatric interventions we’re talking about with children are destined to be blown up by a bunch of lawsuits over the next decade. We may not have the kinds of responsible medical boards they do in Europe to set us straight but we do have the plaintiff’s bar.
Nevertheless I still very much enjoy philosophizing with March on the topic.Report
I appreciate the sentiment. But I’m not sure laïcité will survive engagement outside of Christianity. laïcité in someways is parasitical on Christianity – an extreme form of an Augustine Two Cities doctrine and a culture that has categories for Secular and Religious clergy.
Further, it depends upon existing shared customs for it to ‘make sense’ as maybe even a compromise. It doesn’t make sense in the banlieues. And it isn’t even attempting to compromise with regards Islam.Report
Heh I attribute that to the kind of immigrants France takes in more than to incompatibility of the idea with non-Christian religions and cultures. We have plenty of immigrants from non-Christian societies that fit right in. The trick is to have a big ocean that lets you more or less pick and choose.Report
So the thought here is that narrow minded religious bigots are incompatible with a modern society.
Huh.Report
Yes. Run with that.
Imagine how amazing society could be if only it were populated with people unimpeded by obsolete beliefs.Report
No, they are, but they need to respect the Treaty of Westphalia.Report
That sounds very woke.
I’m not kidding.
The Enlightenment itself is now considered woke and the Republican Party has made illiberalism its centerpiece identity.Report
It was just the other day that “Freedom of Speech” was a white supremacist dog whistle.
Gotta say: if we’re back to the Enlightenment being woke, we’re on a good vector!
Oh, look here… someone is handing me a note…Report
Heh, we’re two cycles away from Horseshoe Ned Flanders running the Department of Neutrality.Report
All hail the Overmxn.
“Golly! I can’t wait to see what replaces the old order! I betcha it’s going to have to be amazing to overthrow the old slave morality!”
“Yeah. About that.”
Report
No Vegans will be saved. Everything else is just feelz.Report
Ooh, that’s fun. The 60-year-old gets my first cut, then the substance abuser. The person with a disability would be next on my list if it’s genetic. I don’t know if it’s right to expect a gay man to be willing to procreate. If any cuts remain, the men (other than the med student) draw straws.Report
I was going to say the right answer is clearly all of the women and whichever man is willing and fit to procreate with them.Report
We’d probably need a few thousand starters to create a robust population. Men can produce more people per second, but not per generation, so maybe 2 women for each man. But nobody would be allowed to have multiple children with the same person.
The average woman can churn out 15 kids, if everything stays functional. The first child carries 50% of the father’s and the mother’s DNA down, and statistically each individual child from there is likely to carry another half of the remaining.Report
Yea, one of the frustrating things about this exercise is that it doesn’t list sex for everyone in our party. Like is the Jewish university administrator a man or a woman? What about the racist cop? Even the substance abusing accountant could be a woman if they are departing from a country that allows same sex marriage.
As an aside not sure if you saw the movie Interstellar (I really liked it) but a subplot involves the space ship having a cargo of human embryos in case of failure to find a means to transport enough people from Earth to a new planet. Everytime I see it on tv I end up thinking to myself, even if they have the tech to allow babies to grow in artificial wombs who is managing all if the child rearing logistics to create a stable, growing population? It isn’t like you could drop a bunch of babies (or even a small number of adults) somewhere and abracadabra civilization!Report
I’m skipping your second paragraph because I want to see that movie.
I wonder if the absence of a sex given for some of them was purposeful. Why are you assuming that someone with a pregnant wife is a male? What about the med student? Women can be doctors, you know. Et cetera.Report
I think it is fair to assume anything like this form is some kind of trap.
Also sorry for the semi spoiler but you should definitely watch it!Report
I didn’t read past the movie title, so no worries. I’ve got to watch Interstellar, Gravity, and Passengers sometime, but I just haven’t been doing movies lately. I think I’m still in lockdown mode, when even a low-quality tv show promised to eat up far more time than an interesting movie.Report
I quite liked Passengers though it squicked out the further left quite thoroughly.Report
I liked it too. Definitely get why some people would find the conciet kind of objectionable but I think that’s true for a lot of fiction, especially with romance involved, if you think too hard about it.
Gravity didn’t do much for me. Seemed like the kind of thing that was probably fun on the big screen but meh in your living room unless you have a crazy entertainment system set up.Report
IIRC they had two highly capable robots who would have handled the rearing difficulty you talk about. It wouldn’t have been what we’d call a model childhood but two unsleeping, all seeing, tireless automata could probably manage a considerable number of kids in the first tranche and after around 10-15 years suddenly there’s a lot of help to raise a whole lot more.Report
Very true. That was another aspect of the movie I really liked, the robots. Still having had to take care of an infant before they seemed a bit… pointy(?) for the job. However definitely a plausible theory, and with the right equipment they could probably do it.Report
Men can produce more people per second…
A second seems like an unusual unit of time, unless we’re talking about harvesting sperm and artificial insemination.
Long ago my wife-to-be and I saw A Boy and His Dog. The post-apocalyptic group living underground takes in the boy (a young Don Johnson). It turns out they intend to imprison him and harvest viable sperm to impregnate the women. After Johnson escapes, his human-intelligent telepathic dog observes, “If they had just let you do it the old-fashioned way, you would have never left.”Report
The real answer is that you shouldn’t look at this like an engineer but like an HR manager.
Now sign the piece of paper.Report
I find that the most satisfying form of rebellion is to approach these things seriously and on their own terms.Report
In high school we did an exercise like this (WW3 had just happened and there are 10 survivors in a bunker but only resources enough for 8) — but each person had a different actual skill or resource, not this stupid IDpol stuff. We took turns playing the role of one of the people and arguing for not getting thrown out (I have a satisfying memory of taking the role of the musician, initially being voted as one of the superfluous ones, and then successfully convincing the group to keep me after all).
It’s nice how the conversation here has illustrated how some of the mores in our cultural inheritance were determined by specific challenges faced by our ancestors. We’re free to relax or change them now that we don’t have nearly the same level of need for a steady supply of soldiers or field workers…but let’s hope that situation doesn’t drastically change.Report
All other things being equal, in this scenario I’d opt for the greater genetic diversity. The rest of the identity politics stuff I could care less about.Report
I’m imagine something like this:
https://youtu.be/iek02NtfH_4Report
It was four decades ago but I think I couched it more in terms of what that group would need to stay sane. It wasn’t hard to convince a group of teenagers that they could never survive endless days of difficult life without music.Report
One of my pet peeves is reading columns by people (not you, certainly not this comment) who are selecting the skill set for their post-apocolyptic village. A recent one that ticked me off put an electrician, to wire solar panels, near the top of the list. Nowhere was there a person who could raise hemp and handle retting, spin thread, or weave fabric. No carpenter. No smith.Report
The beauty of our modern life is that most of us can enjoy all the blessings of human achievements and pat ourselves on the back about how advanced “we” are, without having the foggiest idea about how everything works.Report
::Raises hand::
HR Person: Hmmn, never had a question before…
Me: So on a scale of 1 to 10, the 21-yo Muslim stude
HR: Get out.Report
Nice.Report
I did laugh out loud at this, but I’m sure at least once it’s devolved into an “Iranian versus Indonesian chicks” debate. These events can bring out the worst in people, and there are two things men are always willing to talk about: sex stuff, and whatever a person they don’t respect has ruled off the table.Report
Easy.
1) All the females that are capable of giving birth.
2) All the men old enough to 1) impregnate them 2) defend the colony. Everyone else is expendable.Report
You’d ditch the 12-year-old boy? We want you on that wall, we need you on that wall.Report
I liked Ben Dreyfuss’s take on this. This scenario assumes that these ten people were the selected finalists…but why?Report
Chef’s Kiss:
Report
Yeah, that was beautiful.Report
Philip, I want to take one more pass at this. We all debate a lot of things on this site including facts, but at the core of our all disagreements are differences in ideology. These are things that are outside the realm of provability. I can only assert that, for example, humans have rights; I can’t demonstrate it. We’re all driven by our beliefs.
Now, as a matter of fact, I don’t see how TN HB 9 meets the definition of discriminatory. And maybe we should debate facts more often – although people usually retreat to imprecision and refusal to give the benefit of the doubt to opponents, so it’s not always productive.
With all of this out of the way, you made a claim above implying that gender ideology was based on science. I responded by questioning that claim. I’m not challenging our right to debate things that are outside science. I’m challenging your claim that the statement “a person who presents as male, and is labeled as male by society but is in fact female” is in some way scientific. If you admit that it isn’t, you don’t lose the ability to claim that it’s a good ideology, but you do have to admit that it’s not science.Report
There are hundreds of papers published in the psychological literature asserting this. Over decades. And last I checked that is the field of the science of the mind.
It makes the wearing of women’s clothing by “men” outside of a few select venues a criminal activity. Which means that transgendered women – who are REQUIRED by their medical teams to present as women for up to a year before starting other medical therapies – will be subject to arrest and prosecution. That is about as discriminatory as it gets.Report
As Yogi Berra is said to have said: “Some people, if they don’t already know, you can’t explain it to them.”Report
He knows. I’m just trying to get him to admit he’s fine with the discrimination because of who it targets.Report
“There are hundreds of papers published in the psychological literature asserting this.”
They may assert it, but not as a provable statement. There is no way to prove that a person who presents as male is female. At least, not with a consistent understanding of male and female.
If the words are meant in reference to sex, then aside from the fraction of a percent of people who are intersex, the male appears male and the female appears female. If the second word refers to gender and the first to sex, then the words aren’t being used consistently. And if either of the words refers to gender, then we’re outside the realm of science.
–
About TN HB 9 – It makes a kind of performance outside of select venues a criminal activity. By the letter of the law, no performance, no crime.Report
By the letter of the law, black men could still vote under Jim Crow. By the practice of the law, poll taxes, reading tests, and all sorts of other things kept them from doing so.Report
How does that pertain to the discussion? Is it just because I referred to “the letter of the law”? I meant that the law says something specific, and it’s not what you claimed it does.Report
Why yes – referring to the letter of the law regarding a law that is widely discriminatory will get you referred to other laws that claim to be one thing but were historically practiced as something else. Every time.
You really believe that a transwomen (Pre-transition) who is following her psychologists direction to present as female (meaning wearing female clothes, make up etc) in daily life will NOT be prosecuted in Tennessee under this law?Report
“a law that is widely discriminatory”
You still haven’t proven that.
“You really believe…”
Yes, because it’s not in the law.Report
None of the things used to prevent Blacks from voting were in the laws either Pinky. Took more federal laws to undo that. And its sliding back.Report
Your argument was that the law is discriminatory. “The law is not discriminatory but people might do other discriminatory things that aren’t part of the law” isn’t a defense of that position. It’s a defense of my position that the law isn’t discriminatory.Report
And wait a second, that’s not true. The Jim Crow Laws were laws. They were written or enforced in such a way as to make them discriminatory, but they were laws. So you’re arguing against your own position with factual errors – but interestingly, even if you had been factually correct, it’d undermine your position too. If you can’t find anything in TN HB 9 that’s discriminatory, and you have nothing but a hunch that it’ll be misused in a discriminatory way, then you can’t make the Jim Crow Laws comparison.Report
Must be nice never having to consider this sort of stuff for yourself or anyone you know. To see such laws a so clean and virtuous. Rarely in modern legislation is a law written to be openly discriminatory. There is still a well documented pattern of practice however where seemingly straightforward laws are indeed discriminatory in their application. That pattern exists for racial minorities and the LGBTQ community. It is farcical at best – and deeply frightening at worst – to assume this law will break that well worn p\ath, though I get that you are perfectly happy to see drag performers – who are often gay men – thusly regulated.
I will note, however, that when transwomen start getting arrested for violating this law, I will demand your denunciation of that activity as illegal. Should you fail to provide it – as I expect you will – I reserve the right to mock you publicly for your hypocrisy.Report
If you don’t post articles to that effect, can I assume that there aren’t any and mock you on those grounds?Report
You will anyway, regardless of what I post. Since like most conservatives you don’t see me as a legitimate American anymore. Hell, I’m pretty sure you don’t think I’m very intelligent either.Report
I see you as a legitimate American, and even if I didn’t, you’re allowed to post American stories here, so I await the presence or absence of arrest stories. Do I see you as intelligent? Well, when you say things like “you don’t see me as a legitimate American anymore” it doesn’t boost my appraisal of your perception.Report
What I notice here is that, contrary to your claim about being distrustful of government power, you have reversed the burden of proof.
Instead of asking why the bill is discriminatory, shouldn’t a conservative be asking for proof of why government force is necessary?
What harms are being inflicted, such that we need men with guns to prevent it?
Why do men who wear dresses need to prove scientifically to your satisfaction, before you will allow them the liberty to do so?
Like I said, you are just starting from the premise that Pinky’s moral viewpoint is established by law.Report
They just released GPT-4.
Report
Good news!
Report
Oh, this is great. If convoluted.
Greyzone wrote an article about Navalny.
Here’s the funny part: They (apparently) outsourced their work to an AI. People found this out by checking the sources and THE SOURCES WERE MADE UP.
Check out this entire thread:
That is some *SERIOUS* stuff right there. Amazing.Report
Chatbots may nudge people further toward good information management.Report
It’s a little bittersweet despite months and months of shenanigans for a Green Bay fan like me to see Aaron Rodgers take a metric shit ton of ayahuasca and go into a four-day darkness retreat so as to commune with the universe, only to have the universe open up to Rodgers and tell him “Go to the New York Jets“:
Rodgers will want the Jets to pick up his contract which would mean a $31M salary cap hit for the next year, along with Beckham, Lazard, Cobb, Lewis, and a pony. The Jets have already signed Lazard, although WR is not really the Jets’ weakness so far as I can tell and it looks to me like NYJ overpaid him at $44M (although yes, he is quite good).
But the real thing to note here is cultural. Green Bay has had essentially only two quarterbacks for the past thirty years. No other NFL team has anything that looks remotely like that; the closest thing to it was Brady with the Patriots (2001-2019). You’d think that there would have been more wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth in Packerland, but so far I can’t see evidence of a whole lot of that — I think a lot of fans are like me, and have been basically done with Rodgers and his antics for a while now.
So unlike the last hall-of-fame QB to go from Green Bay to the Jets, which was an angst-filled experience, it seems to be basicall, “Good luck in New York, A-a-ron. Im’a ordering my JL10 jersey.”Report
I was stunned when I heard what Lazard got from the Jets. I had him on my fantasy team last season, and he was pretty underwhelming. You could tell Rodgers missed Adams.Report
In today’s episode of every accusation is a confession, a former producer on Tucker’s show did not have a kind description for his audience: https://crooksandliars.com/2023/03/tuckers-ex-producer-fox-viewers-are-bunchReport
We’ve known for years that Fox News “personalities” hold their audience in deep contempt. All the way to the bank.Report
All media “personalities” are part of the elite. Their income alone puts them in that category. “Conservative” media personalities have more in common with their “liberal” colleagues than they do the people they claim to “represent”/broadcast to. Same for politicians. Why would your link be surprising?Report
The internet clickbait economy at its most depressing: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/studying-abroad-gap-year-student-travel-b2301319.html
TL/DR:
1. Insider published an article by a young woman in her twenties about how she did not like her JYA program in Florence. The article is filled with such gems like:
“Since three-day weekends are the standard for NYU’s study-abroad programs, almost everyone chose to take $20 Ryanair flights to places like Croatia and Munich for Oktoberfest. To me, this seemed like an exhausting form of escapism. I was convinced my peers were doing it only to freshen up their social-media profiles and make their friends back home jealous.
I, on the other hand, wanted to travel to learn more about myself and explore ways to shape my life after graduation. Since most of my classmates were looking to go to sex shows in Amsterdam and getting wasted in Ibiza, I traveled alone. I went to Nice, France; Lugano, Switzerland; London; Malta; and Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
But most weekends, I stayed at home in Florence, while my classmates burned themselves out with travel. During those lonely weekends, I ran along the Arno river, popped into free gallery exhibits, and cooked with ingredients I found at local vegetable markets. I was left in the apartment completely alone. This lack of human interaction didn’t help me feel optimistic.
I was disillusioned by the fact that no one in my study-abroad program seemed to have my values.”
2. Twitter acted how you would expect that they would react to such an article.
3. The Independent and I assume other places have articles on the whole drama.
I can sort of see a young person having feelings like this but there is also a part of me that wonders whether she was intentionally trying to be the main character of the day on Twitter. Even if she wasn’t trying to be the main character of the day on Twitter, PTBs knew the essay would make the author the main character of the day on Twitter and published it. The chronically online could not resist the bait, and an article was published in the media about the drama.
How many times have we seen this happen? Yet it still happens. It is like a dialogue equivalent of kayfabe. Everyone knows their roles.Report
My, my, my, how tedious.Report
Yes, exactly. Everything about this is tedious and happens again and again. I think it is a sign of people having too much time on their hands.Report
Look at Saul Degraw, promoter of social order and idle hands being the devil’s plaything.Report
There are people who will figure out a way to complain about absolutely anything.Report
I absolutely refuse to believe this is a real story by a real person. This had to have been written by ChatGPT.Report
Let’s give it a shot:
Report
And they say ChatGPT isn’t connected to the internet…Report
Have you met people?Report
Did she dream about kissing Valentino on a crystal blue Italian stream?Report
But she wasn’t being entitled; she was complaining about her fellow students who were being entitled. I mean, she sounds like she should grow up a bit, but she did the right things to take advantage of her opportunity.Report
Good news! New York has figured out a way to make sure that more students test at proficiency!
NYS lowers minimum scores for student proficiency in math, English
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy!Report
Ron DeSantis Wants to Make It a Felony to Have an Undocumented Person in Your Home or Car
A new Florida bill criminalizes not just undocumented Floridians but anyone who associates with them.
The bill is titled, the “2023 Anne Frank Is In The Attic!” bill.Report
I wonder how he intends to handle the backlash from the rich employers of such people – like Donald Trump? Though I suppose it could eliminate a lot of opposition if they were all in jail on these felony charges.Report
I haven’t read the text, but I assume that either the bill is silent on employers, or the enforcement will studiously turn a blind eye, while using maximum force on those who are giving aid and comfort.Report
No human is illegal. Employers of undocumented dreamers who just want to make a better life for themselves and their families should be left alone!Report
Local Marxist Socialist unhappy with youth culture.
https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/of-course-you-know-what-woke-means/comment/13648821Report
Memphis drag queen Bella DuBalle vows to fight Tennessee’s new law https://www.npr.org/2023/03/16/1163815547/tennessee-drag-law-queen-bella-duballe
TFA mentions that this performer is also an ordained minister. It occurs to me that if she called her performances part of her “ministry” and claimed immunity from prosecution under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, that might make a few heads explode. And demonstrate the ridiculousness of both a too-expansive reading of the RFRA and the selectively-censorious nature of the anti-drag show laws.Report
From the article:
“makes it an offense for a person to engage in an adult cabaret performance on public property — or in a location where the performance could be viewed by children”
Not my framing… that’s what the article is telling me is at stake. If NPR is wrong and it’s something else, well they should probably get an edit out.
So the goal is to engage in adult cabaret performances on public property and/or venues accessible to children?
What’s the win?
Brings to mind Ruy Teixeira’s article from way back, er no, today 🙂
https://www.liberalpatriot.com/p/how-democrats-should-handle-the-culture
I take your point about pushing for ministerial exception…interesting hypothetical. But again to Teixeira’s point would that be a win? Like people would go, the one thing we really need are Priests performing adult drag shows in public for children. I’m not a political consultant like Teixeira, but …Report
Just for giggles – how you defuse legislation that is designed to discriminate against transwomen following standard psychological practice to present as women for a year before beginning medical transition efforts?Report
Yes, being in public
not wearing a chadorwearing clothing different than a person’s birth gender is punishable by law.Yes, this is America, 2023.
Yes, moderate Republicans are fully supportive of this law.Report
Oh, my. Teixeira advocates nuance. That’s never going to fly.
FTR, I think that the issue is won when a drag performer like Ms. DuBalle is accepted as someone doing something that there’s room for in society. The challenge is whether a drag queen is inherently an “adult cabaret performance.”
As for the pearl-clutching “Won’t someone think of the CHILDREN!!??” part of the law, “I perform one way for a late-night show, and differently for an all-ages brunch, and encourage the other performers to follow suit,” is more than enough comeback to that. After all, if she remains fully clothed in her costume and doesn’t make jokes racier than PG-13 level, who’s to say that’s an “adult” performance?
That’s where a potential victory lies.Report
This is where the bigotry comes into the open, when they admit that in their eyes, trans and gay people are inherently prurient.
Like how a teacher mentioning his wife is just wholesome, but mentioning his husband is “sexual”.
To the conservatives, LGBTQ people are inherently prurient, and therefore lesser beings, unfit to be a part of everyday life.Report
Pinky said as much upthread.Report
Sure, the nuance will come over Adult and Cabaret. Which in my limited experience is pretty well age restricted even (especially?) in Las Vegas. But that’s my point… focusing on the Drag is missing the Adult Cabaret. Teixeira’s point is don’t ignore the Adult Cabaret or people will see *your* team as the extreme team.
If Adult Cabaret isn’t the issue and I were NPR and a reporter I’d check to see if you can perform Adult Cabaret shows with women/men in public accessible to children. If yes, then there’s a good case to be made that a) Drag Performers should be able to as well; or b) the law is amended so that no one can do Adult Cabaret performances in Public where children have access.Report
Adult cabaret is regulated as an adult business in Tennessee. You can’t perform it in public because its legally defined as a sexual activity. So in this case, drag has been made to comply with existing rules, whether the drag show is sexual or not.Report
I assume that X-rated drag shows exist, though I haven’t seen one, and they should be regulated the same as X-rated shows in which people dress, or undress, in accordance with their traditional gender assignments. (No Stripper Story Hour.) I have seen R-rated, PG-rated, and G-rated drag shows. They should be regulated the same way as non-drag R-, PG-, and G-rated shows are.Report
“people will see *your* team as the extreme team.”
Mhmm, the party of “Let’s hang women who have abortions” will be seen as the less extreme party.
The party of “The election was stolen”, the party of QAnon, the party of “Vaccines dont work” the party that bans books about the Holocaust is giving us lectures on how not to be seen as extreme.
Uh…No thanks, we got this.Report
Totally agree… and if we start seeing TikTok videos of dangling feet from hanged women, and obviously even before that, I and all the pro-life folks I know would have no trouble agreeing with you that this is bad and not part of the pro-life movement.
I assume you are referring to South Carolina HB3549. But the people who are trolling these early stage bills are not telling you about HB3552 which is sponsored by many of the same people and was introduced on the same day, Jan 10, 2023. That bill includes this provision for the avoidance of doubt:
Section 44-41-860. A pregnant woman upon whom an abortion is performed or induced in violation of this article may not be criminally prosecuted or found civilly liable for violating any of the provisions of this article or for attempting to commit, conspiring to commit, or acting complicity in committing a violation of any of the provisions for this article.
You may or may not be interested to know that is also provides for:
*Father must pay 1/2 all expenses from date of conception
*Contraception is protected and required (absent religious objection) for all health insurance plans
*IUD’s are specifically protected for contraception
*Emergency Contraception within 5-days is protected
*Penalties to doctors/providers range from $1k – $10k and 2mos – 2yrs imprisonment. As noted above the woman cannot be prosecuted directly or as conspirator.
*The ‘real’ penalty to providers seems be revocation professional licensing.
I certainly don’t think Pro-Abortion folks will think this is a good bill… but if we’re citing bills that aren’t even up for a vote journalists should at least *look* at a bill introduced on the *same* day by the *same* people before misconstruing that a bill designed to make Homicide and Assault that kills a fetus (as Assault that kills the woman) subject to the same penalties.
https://www.scstatehouse.gov/billsearch.php?billnumbers=3552&session=125&summary=B
Finally, I’m not even claiming that the law is perfect or without flaws… not sure what legislative meatgrinder it still has to go through… but it’s right there for journalists to report on – which they choose not to. Just a dumb commenter watching documentaries on TV who clicks links and is suspicious of ‘just so’ narratives.Report
Heh. The pregnant woman as bystander in an abortion.Report
i believe the conservative writer Kevin Williamson got in trouble for taking that line of thinking to its natural conclusion several years ago.Report
If you are a pro-lifer, how do you explain away the woman’s participation? In any other killing for hire scheme the one doing the hiring is also prosecuted.Report
I don’t disagree. And while I take the point that if we’re going to debate the law we should probably focus on the one that has a chance of passing over the backbencher message bill, it is also more than fair to ask what the limiting principle is here. Someone in favor of the plausible bill should articulate it.Report
I’m assuming you’re referring to the bill outlined in Marchmaine’s comment above. It would be interesting to get his take on how Section 44-41-860 can be rationalized.Report
This has shades of the ‘argument’ if you really think Abortion kills another human, why don’t you murder more abortionists?
We could, I suppose… how many would it take to demonstrate our sincerity?
But in good faith, the limiting principle has been in the Pro-Life movement from the start: The goal is reduction in harm.
Every pregnancy has two patients, every abortion has two victims. The goal is to reduce harm and mercy for people who have suffered by it.
I know y’all will come back and say that refusing the abortion is ‘worse’ or ‘more harm’. And therein lies the irrevocable discord.
But you asked for the limiting principle and the limiter is directly in the principle.Report
You’d think that George Tiller’s murder would have more fans among the pro-choice folks.
“Say what you will about pro-lifers but at least they finally did what I would have done if I believed what they do.”Report
I don’t think that’s right (and to March, I always proceed here in good faith!).
To use a parallel that I think you’ll appreciate, Maryland has a state Senator who is die hard on guns. He has openly said that his goal is to restrict ownership and access to firearms as much as possible, right up to whatever line the federal courts ultimately draw, for no reason other than he he believes there is no right involved and he wants to punish anyone and everyone he possibly can. This is of course annoying to me for a bunch of reasons, particularly because the MD legislature is among those that wants to go to war with the courts on this issue, damn the consequences to regular people, but at least the stakes are clear and anyone who disagrees is on notice of the nature of the game.
And to bring the issue to abortion, now that Roe is gone, it is fair to ask the pro life side- what’s the vision here? And for people who have a more humane one to make the case for it (and to be clear I direct that primary to the GOP, not my fellow commenters, not that I don’t welcome all thoughts).Report
Well, for my part, I always took the point that the problem with Roe was that it was decided incorrectly and inconsistently and just bad law and the second we saw it repealed, I thought we’d see better state-level law and some states would go for more European laws and others would go unchanged.
And, of course, a handful of states went full ban and banned interstate travel for one and so on.
Granted, not *ALL* of them did… but we moved solidly from “that’s a strawman!” to “that only happened in a couple of places” within a week or two.Report
Law moves slower than politics and we are still at the very early stages, probably far too early to have any sense of what any new equilibrium will look like. But that’s where it’s important to note that the legal criticism of Roe the court decision are really not the same as the criticism of abortion the practice made by the mainstream pro-life movement while Roe was the law of the land. The more I think about it the more I believe that there is no way that the courts are actually going to be able to dodge the substantive questions forever, no matter what SCOTUS said in Dobbs.Report
Yeah, I chuckle at the fact that Trump (of all people) pointed out the incoherence of the Republican Party’s response to Dobbs in the 2020 elections.
I agree that it exposed a lot of Republican “Don’t have to think about what this would mean” because a lot of Republican Pols see it as a Tribal Talisman and don’t really care or want to legislate around it.
Fair cop. But then the R’s are and have been using Roe cynically for decades. I’m fine leveling those criticisms… and in fact that’s what started this whole thing. I agreed that if there’s bad Pro-Life legislation I’ll call it bad.
The odd turn of events is that the increasing ‘Foxification’ of the Left continues apace where they lie about the facts and just assume everyone wants to hear what they want to hear.Report
No one believes this.
We’ve seen how the overlap between those who want to ban abortion and those who want to restrict contraception is almost a perfect circle.
If one were truly committed to less harm (as you claim) and willing to tolerate draconian action (which you’ve demonstrated) then it logically follows that contraception should be easy, free, available everywhere to anyone who wants it, and especially encouraged among adolescent girls.
But, oddly, there always seems to be handwavy reasons why this is not so.
The goal, as always is to control women’s sexuality and choices.Report
No one remembers the plan to make BC over-the-counter instead of by-prescription-only and how Democrats blocked it.Report
This is one of those things where you hear people say that once they read something about their field it makes you question everything written about other peoples field?
Like, I’ve previously shared the Lady Marchmaine and I manage our fertility naturally… and we can say with complete insider confidence that this is not a Pro-Life thing… it’s a subsector of Catholic thing… and the subsector is also totally different from, say, the weird Quiverfull thing I was forced to learn about one time.
Sure, we’ve got the Magisterium on our side… so take that! But when I hear about how everyone wants to ban Contraception when most every Protestant (and most Orthodox) and more than 50% of Catholics are all-in on Contraception?
It’s like who me? I’m driving the anti-Contraception bus? I can’t even fill a Catholic Big White Van.
Besides, in practice the Natural Family Planning thing has far more Crunchy Liberal Women leading the way and bringing more and more technology/apps online.
So yeah, whenever I hear the contraception thing… it’s either a) a weird evangelical splinter dude saying weird things or b) an objection to public schools usurping and/or hiding things from Parents for children under 18. Which, when you think about it seems to be a besetting problem for the Left…
As for weird “Theology of the Body” JPII Catholics: there’s, like, a totally better way to live in Matrimonial harmony with your natural cycle, dude. In that sense, we sound the same as moonbeam Liberals. In fairness, the Moonbeam liberals and JPII weirdoes have teamed up on some really cool tech though.Report
Agreed. You’d find less than 10% of Protestants and maybe (generously) 30% of Catholics who find artificial birth control objectionable, and what percent of those would want government involvement in it?
One of the most telling moments in recent political history was when George Stephanopoulos unveiled the new Democratic attack line in a 2012 debate and the Republican candidates just stared at him like, of course we don’t oppose that.Report
Conservatives don’t object to giving out free birth control at high schools? Uh, riiiight.
Again, this is a preposterous statement that no one can believe.
It’s one of many reasons why the Republican brand is radioactive to young people.
And it’s why my main criticism I’d towards the self described moderates who are alway eager to do the handwavy fan dance assuring that no, no one would ever think of banning contraception or charging women with murder.
But no reasonable person can believe those sort of blandishment anymore.Report
I happened to see this comment in the recents column, so I’m going to reply to it. There’s a difference between accepting that something should be legal and believing it should be handed out to children. That’s it.Report
Exactly.
And in this case “children” include sexually active high school students.
So conservatives want the most efficient method of reducing the need for abortion to be highly restricted, despite all the baloney about harm reduction.
Can you see why I call this a fan dance of bullsh!ttery?Report
And in the face of actual statistic compile din places like Colorado where underage pregnancies plummeted when highschool boys and girls could get free birthcontrol at school.Report
I think culture war issues about schools and children is how de jure and de facto restrictions no one thought could happen a year ago could potentially occur. We have a substantive due process skeptical SCOTUS and IIRC all of the big seminal cases involve what are in effect pre sexual revolution fact patterns (i.e. can a married couple be refused contraception).* Do those cases mean that condoms must be available on the shelf at every retail pharmacy, grocery store, and gas stations across the land or that pharmacists have to fill prescriptions for contraception to sexually mature minors (or even unmarried people)? Are those cases still good law? In light of Dobbs I am not sure we really know the answer to that anymore.
*Burt or one of our other con law scholars can come correct me if I’m wrong on the fact patterns.Report
Funny story, my methodist wife attributes her virtual immediate pregnancy with our son after we were (barely) married to what she learned during the classes we had to take.
But on the issue of a hypothetical war on contraception I don’t think it’s likely to come from any sort of considered theology, but if it does come, would be more a result of a now unmoored but useful political movement. I mean, most pro lifers are kind of idiots, not in particular, but in the sense that most hardcore activist partisans on any issue are kind of idiots (and how most people are frankly kind of idiots) and if it’s helpful for getting Republicans elected I don’t know that it couldn’t be redirected to something like that.
Are the chances of it super high in a country and culture of ubiquitous contraception, including among the most obvious voters for the cause? I don’t know. But while I wouldn’t direct that specific fear at Catholics, and as you note the number of kids in the pews with their parents make it clear that it ain’t the olden days, I don’t think it’s a totally preposterous concern either, just due to the way our democracy works.Report
Science FTW.
Obvs I don’t agree with you that Pro-Lifers are idiots.Report
Of course, and to be clear my framing was meant to be intentionally cheeky, not to attack you personally. My point is only that any issue, especially difficult ones, can end up in some weird places and weird outcomes when sucked into the vector of parties and politics. Hence never say never on that which is unintended and doesn’t even seem to have a strong constituency.Report
I see.
Section 38‑71‑146. All individual and group health insurance and health maintenance organization policies in this State shall include coverage for contraceptives. For purposes of this Section, “contraceptive” means any drug, device, or medication to prevent pregnancy. A contraceptive may prevent ovulation, fertilization, or implantation in the uterus. A contraceptive does not include any drug, device, or medication used with the intent of terminating a pregnancy of a woman known to be pregnant. This section does not apply if an individual or entity asserts a sincerely held religious belief regarding the use of contraception.
SECTION 7. The Public Employee Benefit Authority and the State Health Plan shall cover prescribed contraceptives for dependents under the same terms and conditions that the Plan provides contraceptive coverage for employees and spouses. The State Health Plan shall not apply patient cost sharing provisions to covered contraceptives.Report
If that passes you’ll have something. Right now that requirement doesn’t exist in Tennessee; it doesn’t actually exist in any red state I’m aware of. Problem is I don’t see this law passing because it takes away a key campaign talker of the Right.
Given that both bills are in the SC Judiciary Committee, we will see which one emerges.Report
I agree that it’s dumb to chase bills prior to passing out of review for full consideration and vote – especially with 50 different states and flavors of wackadoodle.
In my defense, he started it.Report
Oh, I wouldn’t expect anyone to be murdering anyone. I just don’t understand why holding only one party responsible makes any logical sense. Abortion is always a choice, terrible though it may be at times, and the mother is the one making it.Report
https://www.dailywire.com/news/lance-reddick-the-wire-and-john-wick-star-dead-at-60Report
Report
The criminalization of Rosa Parks according to Flordia’s anti-woke law:
The original: “Rosa Parks showed courage. One day, she rode the bus. She was told to move to a different seat because of the color of her skin. She did not. She did what she believed was right.”
The second version: Rosa Parks showed courage. One day, she rode the bus. She was told to move to a different seat. She did not. She did what she believed was right.”
The current version: In 1955, Rosa Parks broke the law. In her city, African Americans had to give up their seats on the bus if a white person wanted to sit down. She would not give up her seat. The police came and took her to jail.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/16/us/florida-textbooks-african-american-history.htmlReport
Show, don’t tell.
I like the third one better, in that it implies nonviolent resistance to the LAW, not to jamokes on the bus.
“She did what she believed was right.” Well, ya, but if I did everything that I believed was right, there would be a lotta people smellin’ coppa.Report
The second one leaves out race. What are the origins of these three?Report
DeSantis states the quiet parts loud: https://twitter.com/jfruh/status/1637649937407307776?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1637649937407307776%7Ctwgr%5Eb67ae1ccddf7aef521216fd8792ce77e9069c84e%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com%2F2023%2F03%2Fwilhoits-law-is-a-harsh-mistressReport
They can never seem to explain what is being imposed on them, or what freedoms they lack.Report