falcolas

This isn’t a matter of perspectives, it’s a matter of consequences.

Consequences which are already happening. Women are dying from abortion laws. Trans individuals are dying due to anti trans laws. The data is out there proving it.

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I see that we have moved on from Denial to the second D of avoiding accountability: Deflection. I wonder if Attacking will be next in a pivot to DARVO, or Diffusal?

It's not my imagination, it'd Donald Dump's own words:

"I will sign a new executive order instructing every federal agency to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age. [...] I will ask Congress to pass a bill establishing that the only genders recognized by the United States government are male and female and they are assigned at birth."

"I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical-left lunatics. And I think… and it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or if really necessary by the military"

“It’s so bad they should lose their license, and they should take ’60 Minutes’ off the air”

And frankly, I'm glad that I care about things that may affect people other than me. It means I'm probably not a narcissist.

A difference of opinion?

What human rights people are allowed to have is a difference of opinion?? Who gets thrown in jail for being "the enemy within" is a difference of opinion? Which media outlets get closed down for airing Pumpkin Spice Palpatine's dirty laundry is a difference of opinion?

Kindly quit turning down the lights and telling us it's our imagination.

> Monopolies require strong states to exist.

How so? When competition can merely be purchased, why wouldn't the larger company do so? Or if the competitor doesn't want to sell, the larger company can undercut them until they're forced to sell or exit the market. No government required for either tactic, and there are plenty of examples of both occurring in US history. For example, Standard Oil, which was formed when about 40 smaller companies joined forces.

Another place where monopolies take root with no state input is when there's a large barrier to entry, such as with railroads. The cost (and justifying the cost to investors) is too much for most companies to even break ground, let alone complete. For example, Bell System, which owned the copper in the ground and the equipment producer Western Electric.

Now then, of course a state can and do also raise the cost of entry for new competitors - but then we're going to be talking about a regulated market.

Wikipedia and the American Heritage Dictionary expressly disagree:

"In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any other external authority."

I don't find it surprising. Leisure time in adults has often been co-opted by "working a hustle" (aka working a second or third job to afford to live). And when they finally do go down, they put on TV or their phones. Of course kids are going to mirror their parents behavior.

I'll even blame videogames to a certain extent. You used to have to read a lot of text to get the story of a videogame, but now it's all voiced. Games like "Sea of Stars" where it's still text based are the minority these days. And they'll probably become even more of a minority with the rise of AI narration.

For those who remember "Reading Rainbow" - it was taken off the air at the time of "no child left behind" because PBS put a emphasis on learning to read, and didn't have the budget to continue Reading Rainbow.

It's sad, but at a time when there are more books than one could ever read in a dozen lifetimes, reading has been set aside. I almost wonder if the pendulum will swing back, and humankind will become oral storytellers once again.

Perhaps it's just me, but I'm pretty glad that we don't have the government interfering with our every contracted act (a sale is such an act).

On the flip side, without the government to enforce a contract one party has broken, there would be no reason to ever fulfill a contract - you'd have to rely on citizen's force, and history has not shown that it's been particularly good to rely on regular citizens.

Personally I'd agree.

But his having different priorities than us doesn't make him a hypocrite.

This isn't regulatory capture, this is deed restrictions. HOAs, water rights, mineral rights et.al. use this same mechanism.

Bozeman MT also has a huge lot being completely unused because it was a former K-Mart. And Bozeman is growing like nuts, I can't imagine there's nobody who wants the space.

Having two opinions on two different forms of land use restriction is not necessarily inconstant. Especially since one is a form of contract law, the other government regulation.

Beyond enforcement, the government has no real part in the former. Except perhaps not disallowing it. But we have rights to specific parts of usage excluded from land sales all the time - water rights being a particularly gnarly one.

In this case since it's deed restrictions as part of the land/building sale it's not the government enforcing these restrictions, it's plain old contract law.

Not at all. The natural end state of an unregulated market is monopolies. As demonstrated again and again throughout US history, with only anti-trust regulation bringing the monopolies to an end.

I'm holding out hope that we will avoid that kind of a period of time. The polls show a dead heat, but, well, when's the last time you answered a phone call which was marked as 'potential spam' or which came from an unknown number? My phone's been configured to block those entirely. And I'm a xennial.

I think the poll results have been skewed by their reliance on cold calling people, and those cold calls probably only really hit those who are 50+. I don't believe the Republican party has anywhere near the same kind of support from those under 50.

Under abortion bans, more women are getting abortions. Under abortion bans, maternal mortality rates have gone up. The infant mortality rate is up in states with abortion bans too.

So even if you consider the flushing of an embryo or fetus to be murder, the abortion bans have not (and likely will not) help the numbers.

> As far as they're concerned, they've lived through a half-century holocaust of baby murder

It's interesting how this narrative has developed only in the past 40 years or so. At the time of Roe vs. Wade, the Catholic Church did not view a person as being alive until the first breath (a view held today by the Jewish Faith - I've heard they consider the truncated care available to women as an affront to their faith). It wasn't until around Regan that the view really started to change as stopping abortion became a mainstay of the Republican party's policies.

This incorporation into their policies and values is mostly what drove the change in view - going from "it's not a person until it's born" to "fetal personhood". Then after the Dobbs decision and in the leadup to this election, that the phrase murder started being thrown around.

Ever wonder why they're still only prosecuting for the act of abortion, not murder? It's because federal law (which trumps state law) only considers a person as someone who is born.

> they've all collectively decided not to bother trying to seem sincere to those who do not agree with them.

I'd argue that they act quite sincere, and often violently so. Raised voices is the least of what a conversation between a "abortion is murder" and "abortion is health care" tends to result in.

The only time people didn't have a choice is when they wanted to interact with society. Something which, thanks to the internet and delivery services, is almost wholly optional in this day and age.

But, the moment you start interacting with society at large, you have to follow that society's laws. Laws which have always included things like quarantining and mandatory vaccinations to prevent the spread of infectious disease.

See, as one example, the 1920 response to the Spanish Flu epidemic.

I do care, about the woman and prosecutorial misconduct that used her to push an agenda - to promote the idea of "unborn children".

She's a woman, belongs to a minority race, and a criminal. Yet I still believe she should have the same human rights as a white Christian man.

> even if abortion in that state were legal right up until birth. This isn't a miscarriage due to natural causes or some kind of accident but due to drug use.

First, in 2020 abortion was not a crime since it is pre-Dobbs.

Second, they don't know why she miscarried. They only assumed (as you've noted).

They simply got creative in the meth charges in an effort to push the "unborn baby" narrative over a "fetus". The fact that the woman was a minority and a criminal simply made it easier.

> Is the argument that the mother has absolutely no responsibility for the well-being of the fetus?

Not really, when it results in a miscarriage. There's just too many reasons that miscarriage can happen, and no real reason to prove why to anything resembling reasonable doubt. If the child had lived to be born and shown problems with meth during pregnancy, they would have been taken from the mother and put in the foster system.

I'd think that an average would go broke pretty quick, having to always eat out. Third spaces - particularly free third spaces - in the US don't really exist in most cities. At least not without facing accusations of vagrancy.

Is, unfortunately.

And the biggest consumer of hormonal treatments as children (in the 99% range)? Cisgendered girls and boys who have no desire to transition.

And though you didn't mention it, let's do a quick aside on gender affirming surgery: Boys with gynocomastia get mastectomies while girls get breast enlargements to improve their perception of their bodies.

There are restrictions and bans on gender affirming care. Most often for minors, but also for adults. It's telling that most of these that are aimed at adults call out exceptions for Viagra.

There are laws prohibiting drag shows which have been written so vaguely that they can be applied to trans people as well, especially those who do any kind of performance.

Next up are laws forcing trans individuals to use the bathroom assigned to them at birth. I'm very curious how they expect women to react to bearded, burly men entering their bathrooms, and how they expect men to react to women presenting individuals (actually I'm quite sure of how they'll react: they'll be SA'ed if not killed).

And then there's the bans on playing sports for Trans individuals - all 40 or so of them.

So no, they're not explicitly outlawed, yet. Just everything about them living their life is. Much like it was never illegal to be gay, they just outlawed sodomy.

> There are going to be a bunch of laws about it voted on in the election next Tuesday

Also worth looking at is how these state constitutional amendments have been attacked before they were even up for vote, and how many plans are in place to attack the results.

Even so, if the new president decides to, they can effectively destroy the ability to get an abortion anywhere in the US by using the Comstock Act; by enforcing a provision of the Comstock Act which prohibits the shipping of "... every article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion."

> The way they act concerning it makes me think that relatively few really believe it.)

Enough people in power believe it:

At least one woman (Marshae Jones) was put in jail for getting shot while pregnant, while the shooter was let free. The woman was accused of not doing more to protect the "unborn baby".

At least one woman (Brittney Poolaw) has been sentenced for having a miscarriage, and others have been arrested and charges brought against them.

State attorney generals are suing hospitals in other states to obtain information on both transgender and pregnant folk's visits, with the intent to use that information to prosecute those people in the AG's state.

I'm not sure if that counts by your measure, but it involves the government directly.

Sure. But it's on by default, isn't it? Just like Apple's upload is on by default.

Also, chromebooks require such a sign-in as well, and I'll bet they enable that syncing by default as well.

Singling out Apple here is kinda silly when they're encrypted (if you don't trust Apple to tell the truth there, running their OS at all is risky), and when the behavior is that which we'd expect.

And at the end of the day, using Apple's password manager is mostly (exceptions including wifi passwords) optional.

At least with Chrome (and stock chromium, IIRC), you don't have to sign into the browser. If you sign into any Google property, the browser will use that auth to log you in.

Firefox does not, but it sure prompts the hell out of you to do so.

So do Chrome and Firefox. If you sign into them, they download your saved passwords which were uploaded to their clouds.

> they make things harder, ... for those around them

Agreed. I think the point I'm trying to make is simple, to abuse your examples here: Your not giving a shit is neither my fault nor my problem.

And to generalize it, "Your problem with my personal trait is neither my fault nor my problem." Be that trait a disability, skin color, sexuality, gender, or nationality.

Because unfortunately disabilities are just targeted as all those other ones when people want a scapegoat.

I might be getting a bit philosophical, but that's what this feels like it boils down to. Person A is vocal about their dislike of something about Person B.