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@Greyparrot
And what do you mean solve it on a personal level? The point of government is to solve the issues the free market cannot solve on their own. If you have a company making their profits off of not paying for waste disposal and instead using the towns drinking supply as their trash can, who solves that issue?
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@Greyparrot
I don’t know anything about real estate law, that doesn’t stop me from choosing a competent attorney.
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@cristo71
I think there are a few things going on here.
First is the evolution of capitalism. As great as it has been for us and the world, it has reached its peak. The fact is in a capitalist society wealth begets wealth, so the gap between the top and bottom continues to expand. The bottom continues to grow and those at the bottom continually feel like they have no real shot, which turns into anger. On the political right this tends to be directed at immigrants, on the left it tends to manifest through claims of racism. I think most are missing the point.
The second goes back to Ronald Reagan and his “government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem” philosophy. This philosophy is incoherent. If there is one central purpose of a government, it’s literally to solve society’s problems.
The incoherence of this philosophy has run its natural course. How do you as a politician run for office when your philosophy is that the institution you are trying to be a part of is itself the problem? You can’t run on accomplishments because that’s self defeating to your entire message, so the only thing you can do is claim you’re going there to be a bull in a China shop. This leads to nothing but chaos in government which in turn reinforces people’s anger.
This is where candidates who have no experience or qualifications became a featured selling point on the right. It’s also what eventually lead to the death of expertise. It’s a very tough line to cross for actual qualified republicans. They can’t possibly make sense out of all this so when they try it comes off as disingenuous, because it is.
Enter Donald Trump.
Trump is a perfect creation for this time. He has sold himself as a successful billionaire so people think he is competent, yet he’s one of the dumbest people in DC so he can sell the BS that right wing voters believe without coming off as disingenuous. He’s a perfect storm.
In Trump they see something they’ve never seen in a politician… themselves. They don’t know anything about NATO or why it matters, well Trump doesn’t either. They don’t want any more Muslims coming in and don’t see why we can’t just ban them, well neither does Trump. They can’t stand the fact that they have to accept when they lose an election, well neither does Trump. And the guy is a big success so he must know what he’s talking about.
Whether it’s ignorance, misogyny, racism, cruelty, narcissism… Trump is the first politician to make these people feel like they don’t have to be better, and they will be forever loyal to him for it.
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@949havoc
And apparently I did not? Apparently how?
You seem to be under the impression that I like other leftists judge the economy the way you seem to - based on our own personal financial situation. Sorry, it’s a bit more complicated than “I did great, therefore Trump was great”.
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@Discipulus_Didicit
Wait, is that actually a thing people attack Biden on? There are so many actual things one could say about him that I find it odd someone would feel the need to make up something silly like that.
There’s a whole thread on it…
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@949havoc
Because he cannot move on, and neither can the Republican Party.
The vast majority of republican voters believe his complete BS lie that he won the election, it’s literally the biggest issue in republican politics right now.
Trump continually polls better than any other republican. If the primaries was today he’d win the nomination, and we all know he plans to run again. He literally just did a rally today.
Bill Maher sums up the threat that is Trump pretty nicely: https://youtu.be/7cR4fXcsu9w
As far as why we inject him into other topics… most of it is out of the sheer audacity of Trumpers attacking Biden or others in areas where Trump was objectively multiple times worse, like on divisiveness for example.
Trump wasn’t a politician coming into this so he was never judged like one, even though he was literally in the highest position on politics. Anyone who supported him while talking trash about anyone else is just absurd. Trump was the dumbest, most childish, most narcissistic, ignorant, vile, lunatic we have ever seen in politics. If you can’t acknowledge how bad he was there is no point in conversing any further, you have clearly lost sense of reality.
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@949havoc
Sorry about your four years. I profited big-time, but then I invest in my future, and always have. And I…
Is there a point you’re trying to make other than “I’m so wonderful” or “Trump haters are just poor lazy people looking for handouts” even those the vast majority of educated high income voters voted for Biden?
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@n8nrgmi
Like I said, you don’t seem to have the first clue what science is.
I just explained to you two of it’s primary elements; verifiability and repeatability. Do you have any thoughts on that?
I can see why you ignored it though, because that’s exactly what your examples are not. None of them are verifiable, none of them are repeatable. Your book is just a list of anecdotes, that’s the opposite of science.
If it were science then it would be subject to peer review. Where has that process taken place? No where of course.
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@949havoc
Do you really think Biden is worse than Trump when it comes to dividing the country?
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@ILikePie5
Pick a topic.
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@949havoc
Why should that be amazing?
Because the hypocrisy is absolutely astounding. If there is one thing even Donald Trump supporters can not seriously argue, it’s that Trump is a uniter. The guy attacks the media, the democrats, members of his own party, actors, athletes, other world leaders including US allies (but never dictators for some reason), hell he even attacked the pope. It’s literally what he does. He said just yesterday that we don’t want people from Haiti coming here cause they probably have AIDS.
The absolute last thing you can say about him is that he would ever care to unify the country, his whole political career depends on our division. But you’re going to attack Biden for being insufficiently unifying? What a joke.
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ockam's razer is that if people die and tell us of the afterlife, the most simple explanation is that they died and experienced the afterlife.
No, it isn’t.
Occam’s razor is the principal that the explanation with the fewest assumptions is the most reasonable to accept.
The explanation that the person hallucinated or that their mind created a vision requires almost no assumptions. We know the human brain can do this.
The idea that the person’s consciousness left their body and left our universe to visit some plain of existence where our next life will take place… that’s just batshit crazy. We have no evidence that it’s even possible for our consciousness to leave our body, we have no evidence that it nor anything else could leave our universe, and we have no access to anything beyond this universe to even guess where it might have went. The assumptions here are astounding.
These two things are not even close.
we have lots of science on the pro authentic side, and mere hunches with scant science attached to it on the anti authentic side
If you believe that then you don’t know what science is.
Science requires verifiability and repeatability. There is no verifiable and certainly no repeatable way to demonstrate that there is such a place where our next life could even take place let alone a demonstration of our consciousness going there.
plus, it ignores that almost everyone who has the experience believes in the afterlife afterwards, even if they didn't before the experience. and the large majority of atheists who have the experience end up believing in God. (those who dont change just didn't get any insight into the matter.... it's pretty much never the case that a theist becomes an atheist or that an atheist gains knowledge that there is in fact no God)
All of this is completely irrelevant. I can show you a thousand pastors who no longer believe in God and you will make excuses for all of them. The fact that people believe simmering doesn’t make it true.
i've said it many times, but the idea that we hallucinate elaborate afterlife stories when we die, is as stupid an idea as it comes.
And you can keep saying it, that’s not the same thing as providing a valid argument against it.
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@oromagi
If this were Obama or Clinton republicans would have absolutely lost their shit and every user here knows that. But it was Trump so they don’t care.
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@949havoc
Never ceases to amaze me how the same people who criticize Biden as not doing a good enough job of unifying the country, always seem to support Donald Trump.
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@n8nrgmi
people die and tell us of the afterlife. how is that not evidence for the afterlife?
Evidence is comprised of two elements; validity and necessity. Validity is an either/or, necessity is a scale.
NDE’s are contain neither.
They’re not valid because we’re talking about an “after”… “life”, which by definition, occurs when a person is dead. If a person is dead then they cannot tell us anything about what happened to them.
They are also invalid at least for any specific god or conception of an after life because everyone who experiences them experiences something different. So there is no god you use them to support without cherry picking the NDE’s that help your case and dismissing the rest.
When it comes to necessity, let me start by saying it all depends on your standards. You can call anything evidence, but where is your threshold for what qualifies?
For me, from necessity standpoint what qualifies as evidence is that which is more easily explainable by the conclusion than alternatives. Call it a 50/50 test.
NDE’s fail that test because they’re more easily explainable by natural means. We know that unusual things such as hallucinations happen when the brain is under duress, we know that we have a strong tendency to see what which we want to see, and we know that nearly everyone who experiences an NDE experiences the one that lines up with their own faith. NDE’s fit perfectly within everything we understand about how the human brain works. Conversely, we know nothing about the supernatural.
Thus, invoking the supernatural to explain NDE’s is a complete violation of Occam’s razor. That’s the literal opposite of evidence.
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@thett3
failing to perform such a basic function when you have the house, senate, and presidency would reflect extremely poorly on the governing party
I already acknowledged that people don’t understand how government works so I don’t disagree, I’m just pointing out that the argument is not valid. The fact that democrats have a path to stop republicans and fail to act on it does not mean they get more blame than the republicans who literally (hypothetically) voted to default.
You don’t get to shoot someone in the head and then blame the person who failed to stop you from doing it.
They are not entitled to Republican votes, if they want them they either need to make concessions or use one of the ways they have to circumvent the Republicans.
Republicans and their supporters do not get to make this claim. The idea here is that it’s the democrats job to avoid economic catastrophe from being brought on by republican obstruction. That can only make sense if you view republicans as your adversary.
Unless you think a recession is a good thing and want republicans to go to congress to destroy the US economy, there is no way to logically square blaming the side you oppose for failing to stop the side you support. It’s a complete contradiction.
If this is true this significantly raises my opinion of congressional Republicans, making me regain a modicum of respect for them
Why only republicans? It should raise your opinion of both parties.
I don’t take too much out of it honestly. We both know those were symbolic votes. There is no way any republican would have voted to default while their president was in office. Politically speaking, democrats would have had so much more to gain.
But I agree with what you said earlier, there was never any real threat of a default, both parties understand the seriousness of the situation. The main reason I started this thread is because most of the people defending what republicans are doing at least act as if they take it seriously, I think it’s worth examining the logic behind why they defend it.
What is not hypothetical about this is the real damage it is doing to us. Our credit rating has been down graded because of this pure silliness, so playing this game is not without consequence.
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@thett3
They may not want to do it that way, but "we have the presidency, the house, and the votes in the senate but didn't want to do it the way Mitch made us" isn't going to hold up at all in the court of public opinion if the US actually defaulted.
I doubt that, but if that were the case it would only be because people lack understanding of how government works, not because that makes sense.
If the US actually defaulted it would happen with every Democrat voting to pay our bills while every republican votes to default. It can’t get any simpler then that.
The reason that people (of both parties) would change their positions if the situation was reversed is because all of this rules drama is just the means to an end, the means themselves are not inherently right or wrong so it makes sense that people don't actually care about the rules. What they care about are the ends.
The debt ceiling was raised 3 times while Trump was president, each time with more democrats voting for than republicans. This is purely a republican thing.
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@ILikePie5
This analogy is wrong on so many levels. Let me make it easier for you. Democrats are a sniper who has the terrorist in the scope with a shot ready, but choose not to kill the terrorist and would rather let the hostage die.
Ok, let’s use your analogy.
First, you seem to be confused about who is what here. The sniper is the Democratic Party, the hostage is the American economy, and most remarkably, the terrorist in this analogy is the Republican Party.
So your central argument breaks down immediately. To argue that the terrorist in a hostage negotiation plays no role in the story, is absurd.
Second, you are misrepresenting the sniper. You are acting as if the sniper allowed the hostage to die because they just didn’t feel like saving them. This completely ignores what Ramshutu has pointed out to you and you’ve ignored multiple times already… that the Democrats are taking a stand because they are refusing to allow themselves to be bullied by the hostage taker.
This is not a radical idea, “we will not negotiate with terrorists” the literal policy position of the United States and has been for decades. And it’s one that every republican supports.
But most importantly, if this analogy were real and the sniper allowed the hostage to die, on some level it is reasonable for ones anger to be directed at the sniper. The reason why that is is because we expected more from him. We don’t expect anything more from terrorists because… you know… they’re terrorists.
In other words we have no expectations of them because we already understand that they are terrible human beings who are bent on destroying our way of life, which is just the long way of saying… they’re the bad guys. So they are doing what bad guys do.
But yet, your position is that they’re the good guys. You will continue to support, defend and vote republican. This is the equivalent of looking at the sniper situation, and seeing the terrorist as the person who better represents you.
That in and of itself is bad enough but it gets even worse, because not only would that say something amazing about you, but it is logically self defeating. If you side with what the terrorist is doing, then you have undercut your entire argument as to why what the sniper did was wrong. All he did was sit back and allow your side to take control to carry out the actions they said they would.
So unless you are a democrat who see’s democrats as the side that is supposed to protect you from the republicans, your argument is complete nonsense.
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@Ramshutu
You can’t hold someone hostage - and then blame the other side for not giving into your demands. Your logic is ridiculous.
Crazy thing is he knows it, he’s not stupid.
The main reason I started this thread was to see if anyone here would actually try to make this argument. It’s a bit of a fascination for me. I understand we’re in tribalistic times, but what is it that causes a person to completely abandon reason and logic twisting themselves in pretzels pretending they believe an argument they know full well is nonsense? I get why TV and radio hosts do it, I get why politicians do it, but why would anyone else?
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@ILikePie5
Democrats have the ability to raise the ceiling by themselves, yet they won’t. End of story
End of story? Why? Why is the Democrats failure to stop the default the story, but republicans actively causing it not?
If a terrorist kills a hostage, would you charge the hostage negotiator while letting the terrorist free?
Let me help you a little with the analogy.Democrats are refusing to fetch a fire hose when it’s right next to them because they want to go to a party instead.
Ok, so what about the side that doused the house with gasoline and lit the match?
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@ILikePie5
If congress fails to raise the debt ceiling and the US defaults on its debts, who deserves the blame for this - Democrats or Republicans?Democrats. They don’t need a single GOP vote in either the House or the Senate for them to raise the debt ceiling.
So you blame Democrats for their failure to stop the republicans from sending the US into default. Ok.
What about the republicans who sent the US into default?
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@Greyparrot
Indirectly it does.
No, they have nothing to do with each other.
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@Greyparrot
I have no idea what racial fatalism had to with anything in this thread, but ok.
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@Greyparrot
More importantly, who deserves the praise for forcing future spending cuts on objective bullshit?
You do know that the debt ceiling has absolutely nothing to do with future spending right?
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@n8nrgmi
the dems are in control right now, so they deserve a little more blame.
So when republicans invoke the filibuster thereby requiring republican support, then every single republican votes against it while every democrat votes for it… that’s the Democrats fault?
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@Greyparrot
Bill gates built his wealth out of a garage, why didn't you?
You do know that 330 million people can’t all be the richest person in America right?
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@Greyparrot
Kneeling was not a hot topic until Trump started politicizing it at his rallies. That is when it blew up.
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If congress fails to raise the debt ceiling and the US defaults on its debts, who deserves the blame for this - Democrats or Republicans?
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@949havoc
I discussed both socialism and communism, and pointed out the distinct difference.
Mentioning the word communism is not the same thing as discussing it.
Misrepresenting left wing ideals by calling them communism is not the same thing as discussing it.
Words have actual meaning. If you’re trying to make an argument it’s normally a good idea to stick to them.
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@thett3
I literally wrote that whole post, submitted it, and then went back and edited it to add that last paragraph because I thought it was a point worth making (hence the “BTW”). You ignored the entire post to focus on that just so you could score a point, which failed by the way.
As the very next paragraph of your link reads:
“In politics, "carrot or stick" sometimes refers to the realist concept of soft and hard power. The carrot in this context could be the promise of economic or diplomatic aid between nations, while the stick might be the threat of military action.”
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@949havoc
it isn't conservatives who invented "democratic socialism," is it? Propaganda? TYeah, on the left. Far left/..
“I know you are but what am I?” worked in third grade.
Your claim had nothing to do with socialism, you were talking about communism invoked from a complete slippery slope.
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@thett3
I don't believe that there is a long term side effect. I'm 99% sure that there won't be one. However, to me, that isn't nearly sure enough that I'm willing to force people to take it. The fact is that there IS no long term data
The point is that this is not a valid argument, it’s an excuse for people who are anti-vax to pretend they’re being reasonable.
There has never been a case of an approved vaccine shown to have long term side effects nor is there a known mechanism for these vaccines to have one. This is a completely made up concern.
We’re all entitled to our feelings. We don’t have to feel safe on a plane, but saying I don’t feel safe is different from arguing that it’s not safe.
I already did, if you have natural immunity than you don't need the vaccine. Therefore any risk, no matter how small, results in a negative cost-benefit analysis.
Please provide a source that’s not YouTube, I have poor service where I normally spend on DART
Arguing that it isn't a punishment to lose your job for not wanting to take the vaccine is pure sophistry. The mandate is a stick, not a carrot.
It’s not sophistry, it’s English.
The word punishment carries a strong negative connotation for a reason. By calling it a punishment when it’s not, you’re being manipulative and intellectually dishonest because you’re using that connotation to make your point where the connotation doesn’t actually apply.
The connotation comes from the idea that the individual who’s well being is negatively impacted was the point. That this individual was essentially targeted and the hit to their well being was the intended result. That’s a good reason for anyone to get fired up. But that’s not what this is.
Mandating vaccines is about improving public health. It’s the idea that if more people get vaccinated, we will all be better off. Less people will die, less business would close, and less travelers will stay away. It’s the means by which we can get back to normal. Yes some people will lose their jobs, but those people made their choice. No one chose to die.
And there’s nothing new about this tactic, it’s the same thing pro-choice advocates do when they label pro-lifers as “anti-women”, or when pro lifers claim that pro choicers just want to murder babies. For every position there are pros and cons. Pretending that the cons are the point to label your political adversaries may work politically but we all know how dishonest it is.
And BTW, of course it’s a stick, we ran out of carrots. The vaccines were made free and readily available everywhere. We set up Q&A centers where people could talk to medical experts before deciding to take the shot, we even tried lotteries and literally paying people. If you haven’t gotten it yet, there’s nothing left for us to try.
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@n8nrgmi
there isn't enough evidence to be an atheist
You either don’t understand what evidence is or don’t understand what atheism is.
The problem is of course that you understand both of these, so this comment demonstrates your ultimate flaw - this isn’t about reason and logic. The quote made you feel good, so you put it out there. That speaks volumes about your approach and why you ultimately believe the way you do.
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@949havoc
What progressives really want is communism
I see right wing propaganda is alive and well.
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@bmdrocks21
I’ve never argued that it’s 100% all on racism, so what’s your point?You have never mentioned any other factor and have simply pointed to disparities. Then you said we have to do something because something bad happened in the past. So, yes, you were implicitly stating that racism is the culprit since you added zero nuance.
That doesn’t follow.
Invoking racism as a factor =/= racism is 100% the cause.
Really, the whole "equal opportunity" argument is a sham. Nobody will have equal opportunities no matter what. How your parents raise you, your religion, your genetics (even if you don't think they are different on a group-by-group basis, the scientific consensus is still that intelligence is 40-60% heritable). If a group on average behaves much differently than another, they never will have equal opportunity because they will make themselves less capable of taking advantage of those opportunities.
Do you believe every individual deserves to be treated in accordance with what their group does?
Learning how historic policies affect today is a valid question. But then that's where you stop,
I stop there when I find myself talking to someone who won’t acknowledge it. It’s like talking to someone who won’t acknowledge that 2+2=4 but then wants to talk about multiplication. No point in going any further.
You accuse me of not wanting a conversation
I’ve made no statement regarding what you do or do not want. This is a broad conversation about self professed race realists, and to the extent I’ve commented on you at all it was specifically in regards to your comments here in this thread.
The thing is, I understand your rationale completely. You just aren't willing to say what you think. You're trying to hide it……because you only care about that and don't want to come to the uncomfortable realization that "huh, maybe it isn't all White people's fault"….So again, I iterate, you claim to want to rectify differences in outcomes that will never close as long as we live in a world in which personal choices impact your life outcomes. Considering that will never happen, you simply want perpetual special treatment…
Telling me what I actually believe and what my motivations are is not an argument.
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@thett3
Let people choose. Being made unemployed and unemployable for not wanting a vaccine for which there is no long term data, and for which if you’re in certain classes (natural immunity or young and healthy) is a net negative to your health
1. Please provide one example of an approved vaccine that was known to have long term side effects. Anywhere. Ever.
2. Please explain how getting vaccinated is a net negative to the health of any one group.
I don’t think the President should be able to implement this punishment (and that’s exactly what it is, no matter what euphemisms people choose to use)
It’s not. Punishment, by definition, is carried out for the purpose of being punitive. Mandates are for the purpose of improving public safety. Besides, Biden isn’t even mandating the vaccine, if you don’t want to take it you can get tested weekly, so this argument fails in more ways than one.
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@Greyparrot
I'm asking you to be more specific as to how the unvaccinated or naturally vaccinated are putting the pharmaceutically vaccinated at dire risk.
It’s not about individual risk, at least not directly. This is about keeping the virus from widely circulating, which is what the unvaccinated are aiding. That’s what causes risk to us individually as well as the economic consequences. As much as the anti vax anti mask anti anything-to-fight-Covid crowd thinks, when Hospital ICU’s are completely full and refrigerator trucks are being called in to store dead bodies, locals stay home and travelers stay away.
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@949havoc
The left must impose the caveat of #2 that the exception is "the natural and necessary effect of upholding right #1" in order to make sense out of right #1 by enabling its exception. When does any right enable its exception but when the rights of another person are infringed?
There is no exception to right number 1, that’s the point of putting the caveat in #2.
Can you please give a more clear example of what exactly your issue was?
And, what, pray tell, is natural or necessary about abortion; the act of artificially ending the life of the embyro/fetus?
I didn’t say abortion was necessary, I said the effect of harming the fetus was the natural and necessary effect of the woman exercising the right to her own body.
Do you agree that we all have a right to our own body first and foremost? Yes or no?
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@949havoc
Nice try, but that statement ignores that:Individuals that have already had the virus, and survived, may also have natural immunity.Individuals who contract the virus have seen marked improvement and cure by therapeutics. Vax is not the only game in town.
I already addressed all of that in the second paragraph of my post:
Vaccines are the only action any one of us can take to do our part in fighting the virus. After the fact therapeutics do nothing for society. Catching Covid to gain antibodies endangers society further, and even if you already have those antibodies, vaccines will still increase your antibodies thereby further protecting you and those around you.
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@Greyparrot
Exactly what process endangers the vaccinated population? What exactly are the limits of the vaccine to keep the population safe?
No vaccine is 100%, so within the vaccinated population where will be infections, hospitalizations and deaths. That’s just math.
I don’t know if that addresses your question so if not please be a little more specific.
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@949havoc
Can someone give me a rational explanation why y'all still insist? No, I don't think you can, primarily because of the three factors above.
Because unlike every other ailment you mentioned, Covid is contagious. And because it is contagious, and because every single case as well as every single death was a direct result of catching the virus from someone else… that necessarily means that this is a virus that cannot be fought at the individual level. It can only be fought against by society at large.
Vaccines are the only action any one of us can take to do our part in fighting the virus. After the fact therapeutics do nothing for society. Catching Covid to gain antibodies endangers society further, and even if you already have those antibodies, vaccines will still increase your antibodies thereby further protecting you and those around you.
So at the end of the day this entire discussion comes down to one very simple question… do you believe you have any obligation to the society you are a part of? The consensus I gather from those who oppose these mandates is a clear “No”.
And if that’s the case then the resolution here is simple - if you don’t care about the rest of us then we don’t care about you. I’m not putting my health in any unnecessary danger because you care more about your freedom to do whatever you want than you do about doing your part to protect me and my family. It’s that simple.
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@thett3
You think the emergence of a pandemic that has killed 700k Americans in just over a year might have had something to do with that?That has nothing to do with what the president has the power to do, no
Ok, let me rephrase… imagine we find ourselves in the middle of a serious and deadly pandemic, what actions should the federal government take to ensure the safety of its citizens?
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@bmdrocks21
Well supposedly you want everyone to be treated equally. Yet, your rationale is this "has no purpose" because you don't want others using that information to stop giving preferentialtreatment to certain groups at the expense of others.
If you don’t understand someone else’s rationale it’s better to ask questions than proclaim nonsense.
I do believe everyone should be treated equally, that’s why I am against preferential treatment for anyone.
Treating everyone equally begins with ensuring that everyone is given an equal opportunity to succeed. Please enlighten me as to how this is the case right now for the average black child vs the average white child in America.
Assessing the collective intelligence of races serves no real purpose other than to explain away disparities in wealth by attributing it to “they’re just stupid” rather than taking a deep look at any other underlying issues that may also be factoring into it.
It never ceases to amaze me how the same crowd that always talks about how we are all individuals suddenly has a penchant for categorizing everyone into an intelligence camp.
No, it isn't necessarily an either/or. But blaming it all on racism is equally as absurd as blaming it all 100% on genetics.
I’ve never argued that it’s 100% all on racism, so what’s your point?
You're blaming something that happened in the past for something that will persist forever and then…
You can stop there because you already got it wrong.
Whether our current state of wealth inequality is a result of our history/policies is an actual conversation, with actual facts that can actually be verified and linked backward to establish whether there is causation that continues into today’s society. Some arguments that there are may be valid, some may not be, but we don’t know until we actually have that conversation. Race realism has nothing to do with that.
I remind you that this thread is specifically about why many on the left view race realism in the light we do and folks like yourself here continue to prove that point; because you refuse to recognize that even if there are in fact significant genetic differences playing into why we are still here, that doesn’t negate any moral obligation we have as a society to right whatever wrongs persist. Race realism isn’t an attempt to have a real conversation, it’s an attempt to skip over one.
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@thett3
If it turns out that disparities between races are due to oppression then drastic action is necessary. If it turns out those disparities exist simply as a fact of nature, than no action is needed.
It’s not an either/or proposition.
I don’t understand why you don’t understand that you continue to make my point. The very fact that you are framing this as of it’s one or the other demonstrates the very problem I am pointing to. The implication is that if we determine that, say blacks are genetically inferior to whites, then the result of this finding is that we can now chuck away all of our history as well as everything black people are pointing to with regards to racism and how it impacts them in order to just proclaim that blacks are where they are because of their own inferiority and walk away. That implication is not just wrong, it’s grotesque.
You can’t throw someone into a hole and then blame them for being there when they are unable to get out. So even if it were the case that black people were just not smart enough to lift their community from the depths they were plunged into, that doesn’t change the fact that it was not because of their faults that they ended up there in the first place. That fact matters regardless of what genetic differences we could possibly discover. So if someone is unwilling to at the very least acknowledge it, that tells me all I need to know with regards to whether this person is interested in an honest dialog.
We don't have all the facts, but I'm the one who wants to seek them out whereas you have argued that the knowledge would be pointless. I really do think this is quite revealing.
I never said the knowledge would be pointless, I said the knowledge would be irrelevant to what public policy should be because I find the notion of public policy adjusting for the collective intelligence of a race to be absurd.
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@949havoc
Is freedom's right to the privacy of our body limited just to women and for specifically the right to an abortion, and, otherwise, the State has that freedom to dictate, such as relative to Covid vaccines?
This really is quite simple, let’s start with a basic outline of relevant rights:
1. Every human being, including a fetus, has a right to its own body.
2. No human has a right to impede on the rights of others, including endangering the health and safety of others, unless it is the natural and necessary effect of upholding right #1.
That’s it. From here you get the left’s position.
Abortion is permissible because even though it undoubtably causes harm to the fetus (apparent violation of #2), it is the necessary effect of upholding right #1.
If vaccine mandates included strapping the unvaccinated down and injecting them by force, then mandates would violate right #1, but they don’t. What mandates say is that you can have right #1 all you want, but you don’t get to engage in number 2.
There’s nothing hypocritical here. What’s hypocritical is claiming that #2 takes precedent over #1 when it comes to what you’re allowed to do to others but not when it comes to what others can do to you.
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@thett3
I’m still so flabbergasted at the idea of the President ordering private citizens to get a vaccine or lose their jobs. I could not have even imagine that occurring two years ago. The Overton window has shifted to authoritarianism incredibly quickly
You think the emergence of a pandemic that has killed 700k Americans in just over a year might have had something to do with that?
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@n8nrgmi
but here's this"Vaccines are highly unlikely to cause side effects long after getting the shot"
Fake news
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@Mesmer
You realize your response agrees with the argument I'm making, that most people never seriously anything before the "just because?"If this is the case, then policy doesn't and won't be based on your ultra cerebral notions, and instead (what I've argued) largely people's tribal feelings.
You’re definitely trolling here, nobody is this dense.
Across multiple threads, the topic of conversation is about what policy should be. At least that is where our conversation began, and ever since it’s been a constant tug of war where you go off the subject to talk about politics and I have to pull you back to talking about policy itself.
I am not and have never disagreed with your basic premises that most people are not sophisticated in their views and on the role that politics ultimately plays in policy, so why do you keep talking about it as if there are started disagreements between us and as if I am somehow making concessions when I agree with you on points I never disagree with you on?
If you don’t want to talk about policy just say that, stop pretending that you don’t understand this is where our conversation began or that you don’t understand that this is what I have been talking about all along.
You routinely attack rightwing people/groups/ideas whilst almost never attacking leftwing people/groups/ideas. So, even by this standard (which I'm not even sure is correct), you're biased and tribalistic by your own words LOL.
You didn’t pay attention to a word I said, but that’s not surprising. I already explained what tribalism is, do you have any response to that? Or is pretending that I never made the points I did while you repeat the same points you already made your idea of a productive conversation?
Again, objectivity and neutrality are not the same thing. I never claimed to be neutral nor is neutrality required for one to be non-tribalistic. The reason I don’t criticize the left anywhere near as much as I criticize the right is because I tend to agree with the left. Why is that so complicated? Why would you expect me to criticize views I agree with?
Again, tribalism is when you place your tribe over your core values or when your core values center around your tribe. Provide one example of where I have ever argued against my own professed core beliefs to defend my tribe. I’ll wait.
And because all you look at here is the score card of who gets criticized, I have been called a probable racist on this site for criticizing the woke left. If you’d like to dig that thread up feel free, it’s certainly not worth my time to prove it to you.
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@bmdrocks21
Well right here you say that the facts serve no purpose
I specifically stated that it depends on what you’re trying to accomplish.
X is not relevant to Y =/= X has no purpose
Is it inherent limitations in people causing disparities or is it the fault of other people ("discrimination")?
It’s not an either/or. Even if the former is true, that doesn’t negate the latter.
Do you not agree that those two different causes call for vastly different policy responses?
No. Disparities in outcome is not the thing that proves oppression. We know the black community was oppressed because we record our history and we saw the disparities form as an immediate result. Sure one can argue that genetic cognitive differences (if they were in fact real and significant) played a large role in keeping them there but that has nothing to do with how they got there in the first place.
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@thett3
I can give you a policy example right now. If the reason that black students are underrepresented in students with high grades and high test scores, and Asian students are over represented, is not because of oppression affirmative action is not necessary.
So in other words, if it turns out that black people are genetically stupider than other races, we can just ignore America’s history of oppression and proceed as if the playing field was always level.
You’ve made my point.
But some inequality almost certainly is caused by Mother Nature. I don’t see why I should accept blaming everything on “our” history without considering all of the facts.
Well first of all, as you acknowledged, we don’t have all the facts. If and when the science can definitively say whether gaps in intelligence between races is a real thing and severe enough to explain the disparities we see, then we can have this conversation.
Second, it’s not about blaming everything on our history. It’s about recognizing the fact that what happens today impacts tomorrow, so you can’t pretend that centuries of oppression wouldn’t have a lasting impact especially in a society that has done really nothing to make up for it.
We don’t know if genetics plays any significant role, but we do know that history does. So if someone is not willing to acknowledge the latter then I have no interest in hearing their views on the former. That’s really it.
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