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Surfivor
Surfivor
7 months ago

Maybe the problem is that conservatives don’t argue or call out liberals enough. It seems often that liberals always have to get in the last word. Everyone is afraid of sounding like a conspiracy theorist but just about everything that the propagandized left believes is actually a conspiracy that was sold to them

Richard J Hauser
Richard J Hauser
6 months ago

Mental illness of the Left Response

This discussion is close to my heart as I had many of them with my mother when she was alive. She was an avid Rush Limbaugh listener, and he would tell some whoppers. My mom was way smarter than me so I never had any doubt to her having any mental illness or deficiencies. If she believed it, then she had her reasons and if I were to understand then I had to find those reasons. She once told me that schools were putting litter boxes out for kids who believed they were cats. I told her that these days EVERYONE has a camera in their pocket and I could not find ANY video supporting her theory, so we did some research. I found out that to prepare for school security lockdowns, classrooms needed an alternate method for kids to go to the bathroom. So, some classrooms put a five-gallon bucket with kitty litter in a closet for emergency use. So we were putting kitty litter in classrooms for kids to use, but it wasn’t because kids thought they were cats, it was due to school shootings.

My favorite Paul Wheaton quote is something like “the root cause of differing opinions is differing datasets”. As someone who currently believes in three of the things that you claim are unreasonable, I’d like to point out some data points I think you are discounting. These points alter my opinion, so if you would like to change my opinion or people like me, then all you have to do is disprove this new data or show it isn’t inapplicable to the situation. I can supply references upon request if you want to know where I pulled the info from.

1. Trump will never leave office – Your point is that since Trump has already left office once, then he will obviously leave office again. I would restate that as he tried and failed to “not leave office” with at least four acts. These all failed, so he left. The four points were the fake electors, directly calling an election official to get them to “find votes”, asking Pence to not certify the election and finally January 6th. Even if I conceded the last point you would have to explain the other three. I would ask if he tried to “not leave office” last time, why wouldn’t you think he would try again?

2. Choosing a party could cause the end of democracy – I agree that the statement is hyperbole but there is truth in a case-by-case basis. One party has tried consistently to eliminate voting rights of individuals. So, if you are one of those people and you can no longer vote or your vote doesn’t count, then democracy is kind of over for you. The steps taken to this goal are threefold: permanently excluding felon voting, jerrymandering and trying to get valid votes blocked or discarded. You may claim the last is an attempt to prevent fraudulent voting, but investigation after investigation has showed this as statistically non-existent, so I find that argument inapplicable. So, if a poor person was born at home (no birth certificate) and never got a driver’s license and has voted for 30 years now cannot vote due to voter ID laws, isn’t democracy over for them? If a state which is 70% democratic is gerrymandered in such a way that they only get 20% of the representation isn’t democracy withheld from them?

3. Sea level rise – I’m looking to build a homestead in Florida that I will pass down to my kids, so I’ve done a bunch of research on this and from what I’ve read: in the last 100 years sea levels have risen 8-9 inches. This works out to almost 1/16th of on inch (.06”) per year for the first 80 years and a little over a 1/8th of an inch (.14”) for the last twenty. Since tidal changes range from zero to almost 50 feet, it is easy to see why most people don’t notice the change. The exceptions are those in very low areas such as Venice and Holland which had to combat the changes with expensive tidal control barriers. The projections I read say that we will have another 10-12” over the next 30 years or 1/3”-2/5”(.33-.4”) per year. If you think this sounds crazy then point me to better data. Do other people say WAY crazier things? Sure, my guess in this case is because they confused vertical and horizontal motion. Someone says that the tides will come in 8 feet and the other thinks they hear that the tides will rise 8 feet. So is 4-5” rise over the next dozen or so years a big deal? It depends on your location and altitude. Florida is so flat and wet to start with that it is a big deal and something I will have to account for when I build the house.

You last note was on the abortion debate. And per your request I will not try to change your mind but I will show the process I followed to come to my view which will give you a path if you want me to change mine. You see this as a sanctity of life issue, where I see it as a bodily autonomy issue. Let me take an extreme example to show how I have come to my view.

Let’s take two adults, so we don’t have to answer the question about where life begins, they both start as two completely normal upstanding human beings with full protection under the law. I will call them Allen and Bob. Then Allen gets very sick. The sickness causes a deficiency which requires a VERY special treatment, in fact the only thing that will keep Allen alive is daily transfusions from Bob.

Now should Bob be required to give those transfusions? If Bob is nice and starts giving transfusions, but it endangers his life, should he be required to continue? I say no. I would like both to live, but know that it is not my decision to make. It is Bob’s because it is Bob’s body. The courts have ruled that even blood donation cannot be required.

The question is not about when life begins, it is more basic. It is the basic human right that we all own our own bodies. A person can choose to sacrifice for another, but they should not be required to. At our current level of technology, a fetus/baby cannot survive earlier than around 22 weeks, so till then there is only one viable human-being and that is the mother. I would hope that she chooses to sacrifice for her baby, but in my view, I cannot require it. So for her I have to leave her a way out which sadly is abortion.

Richard J Hauser
Richard J Hauser
6 months ago
Reply to  Jack Spirko

Oh well, I thought we could have a discussion and you obviously didn’t even read it.
At least I tried and you at least have the answer to your question.

Sorry to have bothered you.