Open Mic for the week of 12/2/2024
On this day in 1804, Napoleon was crowned Emperor of France
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 the front page.
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 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.
Sadly, Sen. Van Hollen is right:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/02/van-hollen-biden-gaza-history/Report
I don’t feel tardy.Report
neither do I – I have said for quite some time that Biden was and is making a huge mistake because the Palestinians do have a point about Israeli action.Report
What happened on 10/7/23? Why did Hezbollah have to join the fray? The Palestinian leadership has made mistake after mistake in dealing with the Jews and later the Israelis since before any of us were born. It was always “one more glorious push and all the Jews will go away.” Meanwhile, they rejected the offers of both Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert without a serious counter offer and can’t/won’t control their dead enders. They then go wailing to the entire world after each and every “one last glorious push” fails and that their actions basically discredited the entire peace camp in Israel politically.
Meanwhile, 79% of American Jews voted for Harris because we recognize Trump is bad news. We did this despite the fact that most of us have no patience for the people wailing about Gaza after another “one more glorious push” failed and how the protestors harassed and menaced American Jews. American Muslims decided to play stupid political games and won stupid political prizes. The protestors found another reason not to vote Democratic this year.Report
The Palestinians as a people still have a point that Israel is the roadblock to a two state solution. They still have a point that protecting illegal settlements by ultra-rightwing Israeli’s is morally bad. They still have a point that their claim to that land is as valid as Israel’s.
And they have a point – expressed electorally here and supported by the Senator – that President Biden is in error by not using American military aid to Israel as a lever to force Israel back to the negotiating table.
That the Palestinians have ceded their internal political landscape to the worst possible actors does not diminish any of these points.Report
As recently as the Trump peace plan, we’ve had the Palestinians assert there can’t be peace without a right to return, which is also the right to destroy Israel.
The right wing of Israel is a serious problem, but they’re not the rate limiting step because the root issue is the Palestinians won’t accept any peace that doesn’t destroy Israel.
That total refusal creates a power vacuum that is filled by the Right Wing. For example when Hamas attacked those peace lovers on 10-7, they were proclaiming that peace isn’t an option.
They still have a point that their claim to that land is as valid as Israel’s.
These sorts of issues are normally resolved with wars. If we’re going to have wars but still insist that the issue is unresolved, then we’ll have more wars.Report
Everybody’s favorite Representative from Michigan had a very unhelpful tweet over Thanksgiving that was basically a woe on us real true indigenous Palestinians like the Native Americans. Well, it was unhelpful in forms of doing something to resolve the I/P conflict but it was helpful in demonstrating their cosmology.
The Palestinians basically see themselves as the real true inhabitants of the land. Some of them might reluctantly admit that Jews lived there as well but they were the political nation and had the total right of self-determination. The Jews had no political rights at all and certainly did not need to be including in the Palestinian nation. They still believe this and many of them see true justice as being the complete destruction of Israel no matter what. Their allies indulge them in this.Report
Come on, Dave, gimme a break.Report
One break… comin’ up!Report
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/youll-miss-pax-americana-when-gone-trump-postwar-international-system
Nick Grossman writes how people will miss Pax Americana when it is gone as imperfect as it is. Trump’s admin is going to embolden Putin, weaken NATO, weaken the EU, sell Ukraine down the river, not place any restraints on Bibi and the zealots, etc.
I think about this a lot with the burn it all down and start again brigade. Why do they think what replaces they hate will be better? It is likely to be much, much worse.Report
As the architects of the burning they believe they can control both the fire and the Phoenix which they will conjure from its ashes. Also do remember they mostly want internal-to-the-US regulatory control of businesses and the New Deal burnt down. The world of conflict it creates is just another business opportunity.Report
There are those people but also people who think burning down it all can lead to the creation of a real Northern European welfare state as opposed to it just being the Lochner Era/Gilded Age all over again but worse.Report
Sarcasm on.
“A return to the Lochner era will just lead to a heightening of the contradictions and cause the workers of the world to regain class consciousness and start a world revolution.”
Sarcasm off.Report
What did you think workers regaining class consciousness would look like?
Vibes? Papers? Essays?Report
I would think it would not include electing billionaire oligarchs with fascist tendencies.Report
Yeah, I don’t like reading history much either.Report
In prior case of class awakenings the oligarchs were already in power not actively elected to power by the newly awakened classes.
Nice try though.Report
The people doing the burning have no interest in a Northern European welfare state.Report
At this point, I think we have to call this sort of thinking Trump-doomerism, or something similar, because we have to admit that either the post-WWII order is so fragile that a half-senile old clown with a massive hair piece could destroy it, or admit that to the extent that it is at risk of collapsing, it is so because of a lot of things that have little to do with Trump, and at most electing Trump took our fingers out of some holes in the dam.
That said, American conservatism, which is dominant across its narrow and flat political spectrum, always leads to one form of doomerism or another, whether it’s Red Scares (that lead to multiple wars and massive destruction across the globe), or fear of global terrorism (that led to multiple wars and massive destruction across large swaths of the globe), or now fear of Chinese manufacturing and Russia’s imperial death throes (which threatens to lead us into regional and possibly even global wars), so at some point we have to admit that the Pax Americana is a largely Euro-American peace built on our violent reactions to a perpetual fear everywhere else, and maybe we should think about what “Pax” means, whether the “Americana” part is central, and whether there might be better, more robust ways of going about the “Pax” part, if not the “Americana” part. Obviously Trump is not going to lead us to that level of anti-doomerism, but if the world order really is at risk of collapsing, maybe Americans, or at least American liberals, can shed some of their conservatism and start thinking about what they would want the subsequent world order to look like, and how we can get there.Report
I hope you are right but I think your views on Trump-doomerism dismissiveness have more to do with not wanting to agree with liberals than anything else.
But my guess is that Trump is surrounded by people who are very giddy about bringing a wrecking ball to everything and Johnson is conspiring to get a conflict on Congressional recess so Trump can invoke Article II, section iii, ram through all his appointments on recess and then rule via executive action. Here is the latest on how he might gut Social Secuirty, Medicare, and Medicaid without Congressional approval.
https://www.vox.com/politics/388393/donald-trump-congress-impoundment-budget-supreme-courtReport
Both my attempts at posting this with links have been miserable failures, so:
Unlike a lot of conservatives, I am not motivated by an anti-liberal contrarianism. I’m happy to agree with them when they’re right.
I’m currently part of two reading groups formed from, let’s call it my extended grad school social circle (grad school friends, and friends they’ve made since we were in grad school), both groups focused on, er, “heterodox” political and economic views, though from different angles (one’s all leftists, one a weird mixture of political ideologies). Anyway, the leftist group has been reading a bunch about the post-WWII order and its inevitable collapse (it’s a matter of when, not if, but that’s just the way history works), and one of my favorite books we’ve read in that context is The Long 20th Century by Giovanni Arrighi, published in 1994, when Trump was still just a rich dude whose businesses regularly went bankrupt, and who showed up at high profile boxing matches (I can’t remember when he did the wrestling stuff, but it might have been around then too). While I don’t agree with everything Arrighi says, my views on the collapse of the post-WWII order are heavily shaped by that; my views on what might come after are shaped by other books I’ve read with that group, like The Exhausted of the Earth: Politics in a Burning World by Ajay Singh Chaudhary. Neither of these books are particularly worried about opposing liberals (though the latter has a lot to say about them). Throw in the excellent Marxist Theories of Imperialism: A Critical Survey by Anthony Brewer as another influence, along with many of the authors discussed therein.
Anyway, I recommend all of these, especially to liberals. It helps to have an actual framework for thinking about the world order, its positive and negative effects, its collapse, and what might potentially come after it, instead of just doomerism.Report
an actual framework
The problem with having an actual framework is that sometimes this framework will lead you to different conclusions about various members of the omnicause.Report
I’m not gonna lie, I tune out pretty much anytime anyone uses the word “omnicause,” so I’m not quite sure how that discourse looks, particularly since the people who use it seem just as likely to be upset about uni-causes(?) that they don’t like. So I’m not really sure what it’s doing here.
I do assume that part of the reason Saul is saying I am just disagreeing because I dislike liberals is because my framework means I frequently disagree with liberals, but I’m not sure if that’s what you’re saying or not.Report
Really? I loved learning the term “omnicause”.
“Oh *THAT* is the word for that phenomenon”, I thought. I saw it but I didn’t have a name for it.
What I’m saying is that if you’re not on board with every sub-cause in the omnicause, you’re going to be pigeonholed into Team Evil.
In this case, the assumption is that you disagree with a sub-cause because you dislike liberals rather than that you actually believe something.
And having an actual framework looks like conservativism (or, at the very least, “not wanting to agree with liberals”) because a good liberal is *ON BOARD*.
And, seriously, learning the term “omnicause” helped so much with this.
Next time Lee comes on here and complains that he hates that the left doesn’t appreciate how much of an ally Jewish folks have been over the decades but all of that means nothing, look at it through the lens of a guy who is on board with 90% of the omnicause and see if that lens illuminates rather than obfuscates.
(Seriously, It’s a useful tool.)Report
I don’t think the pigeonholing is the real issue. There’s with us or against us, cross issue fanaticism all over the place.
The issue with the omnicause is that it frustrates the use of state capacity the center left has traditionally championed. So you can subsidize construction of electric car charging stations. But you have to build them with union labor. And the materials have to come from MWBEs (or whatever the term is now). And there’s no exceptions on normal environmental review processes. And the builder has to show its dedication to DEI through various internal hiring and training initiatives. And on, and on. Until pretty soon no one is actually building an electric car charging station despite the theorerically generous subsidy.Report
I’ve definitely seen the stuff you’re talking about (hurray! Everything Bagels!) but the overwhelming majority of the people involved with the discourse aren’t part of building high speed rail in Northern California.
They’re 80% liberals who are scratching their heads at why they’re being considered 20% traitors.Report
Yea, I get that too. I’m on the receiving end of it here sometimes. And usually not even for the stuff you’d expect like my firearm enthusiasm, but like, not buying into the fierce moral urgency of telling school children punctuality is white supremacy or businesses engaging in convoluted forms of racial quota-ism while preening various vacuous absurdities at the office drones.Report
I think it’s easier to explain Lee’s, and probably most liberals’, hatred of the left without reference to “The Omnicause.” The base hatred doesn’t even come from agreement or disagreement, but from failure of the, er, near left (Berniecrats, Naderites, those sorts) to always fall in line electorally. According to the liberal narrative (which I find ridiculous), then, this is why we had Bush Jr and Trump the first time (there seem to be a handful of liberals putting Trump the second time on the near left as well).
Lee’s hatred is further strengthened by his belief that the left is antisemitic for opposing occupation, apartheid, and now genocide, but that’s not really an omnicause thing, that’s a very specific cause thing.
InMD’s version of “the omnicause” makes more sense to me, and I actually agree to some extent, but I suspect my solution and his are quite different.Report
Last I checked, there are something like 3x more people being born in Gaza than dying. If Israel is engaging in “genocide” then they aren’t doing a good job.
Gaza is a war. Mislabeling it as something else is not helpful. Further the desired solution seems to be that Hamas gets a pass for terrorism rather than they’re forced to surrender.Report
The House has released its AFTER ACTION REVIEW OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward report (warning: PDF).
Here’s from the first couple of pages:
The whole thing is, like, 500 pages.Report
Nothing there that wasn’t already in play, and mostly agreed to by both sides. The inflammatory stuff like Finding #6 about suspending the Constitution is red meat to the uninformed, mostly because the Constitution was never a suicide pact.Report
I was mostly interested by #1 in the top part and #1, #2, and #5 in the bottom part.Report
I’m wondering if we’re ever going to address the fact that we seemed not to care in the slightest about money fraudulently paid to business under the Paycheck Protection Program to keep them functional and employing people, with huge amount of money sent to people who just blatantly lied.
Or with the fact we probably should have structured that program completely differently. It’s not like it’s a _secret_ how many people that a companies employs. We could have just done: Oh, you have applied to this, our tax records show you have fifteen employees and pay them X, and you have shut down under the pandemic, we are going to transfer you 80% of this month’s paycheck for all of them, you need to pay them that money. All that money must go to your employees…it can go to different employees if you have cycled employees. If you have reduced staff and that is too much, hold on to it for now and contact us. We are also giving you some additional money to cover other expenses like rent.
Just the very basic ‘is this a legitimate existing businesses with actual employees?’, a thing that can trivially be done by looking at tax records of the previous year, and then looking at taxes _next_ year, where employees file taxes that report that income. How many employees a business has and how much they pay employees is not some opaque thing the government doesn’t know, it’s literally sitting in their tax records!
Instead, we had people just making up businesses and employees and buying Porsches with it. But, of course, we don’t care about that sort of fraud, because those grifters were mostly middle class…the only people we care if they are defrauding the government are the extremely poor.Report
For the record, I understand that the PPP was a helicopter dump of money and I have problems with it but they’re down the list.
In my weaker moments, I think “man, I should have started an LLC and put Maribou in charge of it and gotten a piece of that!” but… ah, well.
As it is, I was WFH for a couple of years and not visiting friends or family in person and doing the thing where I yell up to them from their driveway or yell down to them as they stood in mine.
You know what still chaps me? The whole “politicians not following their own mandates” thing.Report
Chaps me too – which is why elections matter.Report
The upper-middle class stealing will always be way down the list, second only to the upper class stealing.
Experts estimate that approximately 10% of the 800 billion given out as PPP was stolen. This is, incidentally, about the same amount as all retail theft in an entire year…done by a lot less people, aka, they each individually stole a lot more. And they’re much much easier to track down, we literally have a list of them.Report
Retail theft made it on the ballot in California and, sadly, lost. Pretty badly, it turns out.
We should have put PPP loans on the ballot too.Report
I mean, the lab hypothesis is a conspiracy theory by definition, so #1 is a weird thing to say, regardless of whether it’s true (we’ll never know for sure, obviously, but the evidence seems pretty overwhelming that it is false).Report
Well, pages 1-57 of the report go through the evidence of it being a lab leak.
The evidence seems to be there that it’s a lab leak and folks were involved in initially covering up and then doubling down and then doubling down again.
But one person’s mountain is another person’s molehill.
And, of course, we’ll never know for sure.
Coverups work like that, I guess.Report
those 57 pages rehash a lot of conclusions of the sort of “can you understand how this might be true” based on motivated reasoning applied to a scarce fact environment.Report
So long as we avoid isolated demands for rigor, I’m good.Report
The expert consensus among virologists and epidemiologists is that the overwhelming evidence is for a zoonotic origin, and not a lab leak, but if a 57 page political report says otherwise, we should definitely go with that.Report
Eh… I have to admit, I’m less impressed with “expert consensus” than I was in 2019.
The whole SciAm thing and the whole pivot from “don’t socially distance at public beaches!” to “it’s okay to go to protests!” thing got me to see those folks as similar to the experts at the FDA.
Not saying that they’re necessarily *WRONG*, mind… but more that we don’t know where they’ve been captured.Report
A lab leak is certainly possible, and Chinese behavior is certainly suspicious, but, as you say, the expert consensus based on available evidence is to the contrary. The report reveals that there is a lot we don’t know, but the positive case for the lab leak isn’t impressive.Report
Almost everything in the bottom half is Republican conspiracy nonsense, BTW.
#1 is especially nonsense.Report
Trump apparently told Trudeau that Canada should become the 51st state if it dislikes Tariffs because at the very least government for the next two to four years will be of, by, and for people who don’t realize Scarface and Goodfellas were not meant to be exemplaryReport
Al Capone > Al JolsonReport
Jolson. a legendary entertainer, decent, charitable human being who entertained the troops and fought against the Broadway color bar. Capone? Well, he did open a soup kitchenReport
When you put it like that, I can see how someone might see Al Jolson as someone to be emulated.Report
If we make each province a separate state, maybe.Report
Aaaaand it looks like South Korea just declared Martial Law.Report
Presumably to make their youngs marry and make babies. Or corruption. Or both.Report
It appears to be mostly a corruption thing.Report
The President declared Martial Law because the National Assembly is controlled by the opposition.Report
Serious question, does anyone know how S. Korean government works with regards ‘checks and balances’?
That is, declaring an ‘Emergency’ to invoke what I assume are constitutional powers should have some grounding in Emergency status that might be challenged… somewhere?Report
The National Assembly (which appears to be their legislative body) apparently voted unanimously to rescind the declaration, and the Constitution says he’s supposed to honor that.Report
I’ve read somewhere that the Legislature has the power to reverse the Emergency declaration which is why the President is so intent on not letting them convene. What a sh*t show, let us hope it’s not prophetic.Report
We may want to revisit the Insurrection Act(s). They offer pretty broad powers, so long as the President doth “by proclamation, immediately order the insurgents to disperse and retire peaceably to their abodes within a limited time.”Report
Sure, agreed! We get a shot at that in two years. Hope nothing goes bad between now and then. While we’re at it we should probably rein in the tariff powers the executive has too.Report
Trump’s DEI Beria has an enemy list:
https://newrepublic.com/article/188946/kash-patel-fbi-enemies-listReport
Eh, you shouldn’t jump back and forth between Hitler and Stalin. The head of the Gestapo should be used instead! Lemme google… Mueller.
Oh.
Okay. Yeah, probably best to run with Beria.Report
Heinrich Müller did not have an enemies list. HItler did. Sometimes Müller executed that list, sometimes other people did, but it was not Müller’s list.
Müller is actually notable as one of the top Na.zis that does not appear to be any sort of true believer, liking neither Hilter or Na.zism particularly. He was motivated almost solely by ambition. He’s basically a career police officer who ended up being promoted into the position, and was perfectly willing to go after anyone his superiors said to, in any way they said. Wikipedia has a quote:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_M%C3%BCller_(Gestapo)
This isn’t to defend him, only to point out how silly the comparison is. Kash Patel is a true believer. Heinrich Müller wasn’t, or at least he wasn’t in Na.zism, he just did the job handed to him by the Gerrman state, whether that was normal police work or executing Jewish scientists.Report
Dude, I already said that we should stick with Beria and not Mueller!Report
China announced Tuesday it is banning exports to the United States of gallium, germanium, antimony and other key high-tech materials with potential military applications, as a general principle, lashing back at U.S. limits on semiconductor-related exports.
https://apnews.com/article/china-us-tech-semiconductor-chip-gallium-6b4216551e200fb719caa6a6cc67e2a4Report
Won’t work unless Trump folds. There’ll be a price spike and then non-Chinese sources will promptly be sited and brought online.Report
That. That exactly.Report
More young men are converting to Eastern Orthodoxy because it is manly Christianity. Protestantism is becoming the domain of women:
https://www.rawstory.com/orthodox-church/Report
My experience with Orthodox Christianity is that it’s hostile to tourists. Like, “you’re not Russian/Greek… what in the hell are you doing here?”
It treats Christianity as a cultural habit rather than as an opportunity to be even More Calvinist Than Thou.
But I say that as a tourist.Report
This might be why a lot of very non-Christian customs like the Romanian bear dance survived in Orthodox lands more than Catholic and Protestant lands.Report
I had an on and off, at times pretty serious relationship with a Russian Orthodox girl when I was younger and never experienced any hostility. I’m of course a Catholic so possible I’m just sufficiently used to a level of old world style religion that it didn’t register.Report
As a (half)Greek born into Orthodoxy this has been my experience… I wouldn’t say ‘hostile’ I’d say it’s selectively permeable and that a very significant aspect of the community life is the ethnic culture that produces the original founding of that specific ethno-centric Orthodox Church (Greek, Russian, Antiochean, etc.). Some local Churches are more open to ‘new’ folk than others, and even within the Greek Churches there are flavors — ours in Chicagoland was more ‘suburban modern’ — such that my Aunt/Uncle who lived nearby would drive into the city for the OG Ethnic experience.
I don’t want to dive too deeply into liturgical wars, but in my ongoing experience with young men/sons is that what young men respond to is the full embrace of the sacred mysteries and do not respond to NGO-like community centers. Not all men, of course… but if you’re talking about a trend, that’s the trend.
Orthodoxy does the Sacred Mysteries of the Liturgy better than all… and that’s a big appeal. In the Catholic Church, Latin Masses and ‘High-Church’ Novus Ordo also thrive among young families (and men). The Boomer felt-lined circle churches of the 70s? Fading, and almost no attraction to young men (or women).
On a lighter note, as a convert to Catholicism, I like to tweak my Latin Mass friends that the 1570 Tridentine Rite seems idiosyncratically Roman and hopelessly modern to someone raised on the ancient Chrysostom liturgy. It’s like having antibodies to a certain sort of traditionalism.
As a final tangent… there’s no American Orthodoxy (yet); that’s one of the biggest tensions among third and fourth generation ‘immigrants’ where the community itself becomes selectively alien to these individuals depending on personal circumstances… which is why they see large drops as the diaspora assimilates.Report
It’s always interesting to me how this kind of thing is perceived. In my brushes with Orthodoxy I never attributed any of the brusqueness to sect. I just always figured Russians are kind of weird like that. None of if ever struck me as outside of past experiences in Europe, especially off the beaten path, and with increasing intensity the further east from the Rhine.
That said I did get some interesting, taken aback, responses from a few of my more secular friends to my own Catholic wedding, like it was somehow a very strange, maybe even reactionary kind of thing. Whereas to me it was the wham, bam 30 minute ‘you are marrying a Protestant and yes we do allow that these days’ ceremony.
Anyway to your (and maybe this discussion’s) larger point I wouldn’t expect Orthodoxy to catch on in the US in any big way. Men respond well to the idea of committing to something bigger than themselves, especially when it requires struggle and self discipline. Traditional religion can be a part of that but absent some deeper understanding and commitment the trappings are just trappings. Sauce without the steak. I have a sense that the people most motivated to spearhead something like that would also be the most likely to miss the point and therefore fail at it.Report
Sure, but the Russians/Greeks don’t think of it as sects — you’re Greek and therefore Orthodox whether you go to church or not. You’re either part of the community (by marriage, usually) or not. You can work your way in – like any other community – but being Orthodox by doctrine isn’t the same as being Greek Orthodox by birth. That’s what I mean by semi-permeable.
It makes perfect sense in Greece or Russia… it has different ramifications in the US.
The ‘sect’ thing is seen by Orthodox as a particular Catholic failing… we’ve begotten all the sects from our Reformation.
But to your larger point, yes, the Liturgies are ‘proxies’ for the commitment to the whole-thing and not some sort of bowdlerized ‘current thing’ thing.Report
Hegseth is going down:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/trumps-pick-defense-secretary-pete-hegseth-peril-senate-republicans-rcna182738Report
I’m old enough to remember John Tower.Report
Ah performative politics at its finest.Report
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/05/centrist-progressive-democrats-election-recriminations-blame/Report
But—but—LatinX! Joe Rogan!Report
Yeah, she should have run ads saying “I’m for they/them.”Report
She didn’t run as moderate or progressive. She ran as undefined.Report
this guy has some interesting ideas about how to tackle the housing crisis. Unfortunately it’s not an issue Trump or anyone else at the federal level can address unless we deconstruct federalism.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/12/06/housing-shortage-trump-stock-affordable/Report
I can’t believe we didn’t comment on this.
George Santos crashed the GOP Christmas party as ‘Santos Claus.’
https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/12/05/congress/santos-claus-appears-on-the-hill-00192840Report
I can’t shake the feeling that a couple decades from now this guy’s life story is going to be made into an academy award winning film, starring the most up and coming, serious actor of the day.Report
I’d take the other side of that bet. He’ll be lucky to be a trivia question or comic relief.Report
Could just be my particular sense of humor. Of course I understand what a disgrace it all is. But every time he pops up I can’t help but laugh. He could be a character written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone.Report
I get it, he’s the current GOP in a nutshell.Report
Krugman is leaving the Times after 25 years for different pastures.Report
I think this is probably how medicalization of ‘gender dysphoria’ in minors starts to end, or at least is greatly diminished. Even if this lawsuit fails more will follow it. As long as providers (apparently) really are surgically removing the healthy breasts of 14 year old girls and prescribing off label cancer drugs to prepubescent children with minimal evaluation it’s hard to imagine one not eventually succeeding.
At that point there’s a blueprint. Blood will be in the water for the plaintiffs bar and provider behavior will change accordingly. Even if they personally don’t want to their insurance carriers will make them.
Minors can’t meaningfully consent to this stuff and I’m not sure most parents really do either, to the extent the consent arises from using highly questionable statistics to emotionally blackmail them.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2024/12/06/americas-best-known-practitioner-of-youth-gender-medicine-is-being-suedReport
Why do you care about the ‘healthy breasts’ of 14-year olds girls? What incredibly creepy terminology.
Also, to make it clear here, you’re arguing that neither the minor _nor their parent_ can consent to medical treatment.
Do you think all medical care of children done under ‘person is unconscious’ rules, where we are allowed to assume life-saving consent but nothing else?
If so, do you think minors should be allowed to be on birth control?
In fact, do you think 14-year old boys with gynecomastia should be able to have healthy breasts removed? Please note that gynecomastia in teen boys is almost entirely benign, to the point that most of it doesn’t even require a diagnosis test, and, thus, those are also healthy breasts by any measure. But…minors cannot consent to medical treatment, according to you, so I guess the answer is no?
But, hey, congratulations on being propagandized successfully.Report
BTW, if malpractice happened here, it happened HERE. As almost all these detrans lawsuit people have had their story fall completely apart on later examination (And it’s hilarious you think this is the first one.), we shall see what happens, but if it turns out her doctors did something wrong, they will have to pay.
But the way this _actually_ works is that a bunch of allegations are made that the doctor cannot respond to (Because of HIPAA) and then once it gets into court, it turns out significant portions are not true, or were deliberately misleading. It almost always turns out, in this ‘rushed transition’, the person rushing them _were_ the patients.
The case goes nowhere and eventually get dropped.
Here, it’s worth pointing out how _wildly insanely fast_ the stuff happened in this story. I don’t just mean the treatment, but even _getting to see a doctor_. I know an adult who made an appointment at a gender clinic, and she’s was handed a year-long wait…to see actually go to the clinic.
And it’s also worth pointing out that there are clearly defined standards of care for trans people, and these event do not conform to them. Mastectomies are sometimes done on minors, but 14 is basically unheard of, it’s more 16 and 17. Likewise, puberty blockers generally start at 13, not 12. There is absolutely no reason to start testosterone at 13, either, that’s well before a lot of cis boys start showing results from testosterone!
Which makes me think there was something going on, but the thing I suspect is not something that makes Johanna Olson-Kennedy look bad, but rather the parents, who were willing to pay incredibly large amounts of money to fast-forward this because their daughter demanded it.Report
Yes, yes the second details emerge of what this actually looks like it all becomes unheard of, as if this sort of thing isn’t exactly what’s been asked for. Blame the parents, or throw out red herrings about treatment for well understood, objectively diagnosable conditions.
Doctors are not order takers at a McDonalds. They have a higher duty to do what is right, not whatever is demanded.
And hey maybe you’re right, maybe she’ll be vindicated this time around. But as long as healthy children are being put on cancer drugs, or having the types of surgical procedures the plaintiff underwent, they will be exposing themselves to very big, very well deserved malpractice suits.Report
Never answered my ‘Should minors be able to get birth control?’ or ‘Should minors boys be able to get mastectomies?’
Oh, let me guess, that is ‘objectively diagnosable ‘, which is nonsense. Trans boys having breasts is as ‘objectively diagnosable’ as cis boys having them.
What you are attempting to claim is that being trans is not objectively diagnosisable, which…it is. Or, rather, having gender dysphoria is objectively diagnosable.
I could list the diagnostic requirements for gender dysphoria for you, but surely since you’re in this discussion making statements about it, you know enough to be able to do that, right?
Or, alternately, have you just been subject to a constant stream of propoganda for almost a decade now from a bunch of very rich people who operate the media with absolutely no pushback?Report
A mere 1.5% of our population is transgendered, youth included. Between 1 and 13% of them later choose to detransition, and 82% of those cite outside pressure (usually from family) as the reason. Your narrative is propaganda ginned up by people who can’t stand to see healthy humans NOT living in an artificial gender dichotomy.Report
What narrative? And why does anything you just said relieve healthcare providers of responsibility for the treatments they recommend and provide?Report
That is a narrative driven by propaganda, not facts or statistics. As our few remining trans members will tell you – again – the treatments for trans youth and adults involve extensive psychological counseling, long-term and very slowly introduced hormonal changes and THEN (and only then) gender reassignment surgeries. Given the very slight number (of an already small population) who eventually choose to detransition, asserting that standard of care needs to be reversed is harmful to that community.Report
Yeah.
Let’s see if this Blue Sky embed works:
I doubt it will, so here’s the link:
https://bsky.app/profile/caseyexplosion.bsky.social/post/3lcnknt6a2s2tReport
Here, let me just post the link to Blue Sky, I doubt we can actually embed that. Mods can delete the other one:
“If you’re cis, one thing I’d like to impart with regards to trans people is that you are being lied to on an almost unfathomable scale, from billionaires like Musk, to religious fundamentalist groups, to print and broadcast media, to entire governments, they’re committed to spreading malinformation.”
https://bsky.app/profile/caseyexplosion.bsky.social/post/3lcnknt6a2s2t
Read it, there’s more.Report
There was a big protest against anti-Semitism in the United Kingdom this weekend with 32,000 people participating and some interesting demographics. Besides Jews and Christians, you also had Hindus, Sikhs, and non-Jewish Iranians participate. Another way to put it is that groups who can charitably called not overly enamored with Islam and see at least some parts of Islam as causing many issues joined forces. The Hindus and Sikhs in India and even outside of India do not get along. That they joined forces for this march is actually pretty significant.
https://www.thejc.com/community/over-30-000-march-through-london-against-antisemitism-t6ne9zk0Report