Oh, America

[Roxxsmom]

I think another reason that Democrats tend to do a lot of navel gazing and blaming of their own party is because it gives one a sense of control to do so. We can (possibly) change the things our own party does, but we are pretty helpless to do anything to change the behavior and attitudes of the Right, at least in the short term. I think many of us have experienced the frustration of attempting to discuss these issues with a friend or family member who has been sucked into the reactionary right, and it feels pretty hopeless.

And to be fair to the navel gazers, the post Bill Clinton Democrats have become friendlier to big business, corporations etc. The party mainstream has bought into the idea that less regulated "free" markets are the best thing for the country. This is not only not working for those who have always been marginalized, it's not working for working class and (increasingly) for middle class Americans either, but no one inside Washington really seems to care. People who have been able to enjoy a middle class lifestyle (home ownership, benefits, and relative economic security and a chance at college for their kids), even if they have joyless, grueling jobs, are falling into economic insecurity and poverty.

The Democratic party has moved to the left on some social issues, which is reflective of a shift in the population as a whole (most Americans don't want Roe overturned and think same sex couples should be allowed to marry, for instance). But they haven't addressed the problems faced by more and more people, rural and urban, White and people of Color etc. in a world where globalization and technology are turning workers without very specific skills that are currently in demand (and even those skilled folks must be constantly updating their skills to remain competitive and often lose out as they get older) into a disposable commodity. A small number of people are doing better, much better, than ever before, but everyone else is working harder to stay in the same place, if they are lucky, or actively losing ground if they are not.

People are losing their place in the world, and they don't see a ready way to make a new place for themselves from within the system. This is really scary. Scared people get angry. This leads them to embrace weird, out-there outsiders whose whole personas ooze anger and are increasingly frank about their desire to burn everything down.

Why small-town, White working class people are particularly inclined to embrace candidates that essentially hate everything and want to burn our democratic institutions down is an interesting question too. I am guessing it probably relates to the reaction by folks who are losing what they had vs that of people who are being stymied in their attempt to get something they hoped for? There is also a tendency to dismiss beneficial things like science, higher education, modern health care, public health agencies etc. if one hasn't got access to them anyway, but the results are horrific in a world where science, higher education, modern health care, and public health agencies are more important than they have ever been.

I am definitely not excusing the racism, homophobia, and misogyny, which are disgusting and scary, but they seem to keep cropping up in this country, like mold in a water-damaged house. We can't seem to escape from our racist history, nor from the weird idea that the strong should rule the weak that is so at odds with our pride in being the first modern democracy and with conservative claims that we are a Christian nation

 

[Introversion]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/09/texas-woman-ticket-abortion-roe-v-wade

A pregnant woman in Texas told police that her unborn child counted as an additional passenger after being cited for driving alone in a high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane, offering up a potentially clever defense for motorists navigating the legal landscape following the supreme court’s striking down of nationwide abortion rights last month.

 

[Unimportant]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/09/texas-woman-ticket-abortion-roe-v-wade

It's a clever ploy, but I can see this backfiring on pregnant women in general. If the fetus counts as a person, a pregnant woman will need to buy two bus tickets, two plane tickets, two movie tickets. Anything that is charged at $X.00 per person, a pregnant woman will have to pay double.

 

[Alessandra Kelley]

It's a clever ploy, but I can see this backfiring on pregnant women in general. If the fetus counts as a person, a pregnant woman will need to buy two bus tickets, two plane tickets, two movie tickets. Anything that is charged at $X.00 per person, a pregnant woman will have to pay double.

Will she? I don't know what the situation is now, but there was a time when one did not have to buy an extra ticket for a baby or child if they were sitting in your lap or you were otherwise carrying them the whole time (I know, I know... and my husband and I were horrified at the thought and made sure to buy that extra seat and strap the baby in a safe, well-padded car seat in it anyway).

It was only if they required an actual extra seat that one had to pay...

 

[Unimportant]

Will she? I don't know what the situation is now, but there was a time when one did not have to buy an extra ticket for a baby or child if they were sitting in your lap or you were otherwise carrying them the whole time (I know, I know... and my husband and I were horrified at the thought and made sure to buy that extra seat and strap the baby in a safe, well-padded car seat in it anyway).

It was only if they required an actual extra seat that one had to pay...

Dunno, but if Republicans can find a way to use it to impose additional costs on women, I reckon they'll do it.

On the other hand, would tax credits per child kick in from the moment of conception?

 

[Brightdreamer]

This will be the case where they declare women are not actually people, so there was only one "person" (the fetus) in the car...

 

[SWest]

"Yes, miss, please hop up onto the belt with the rest of the checked baggage..."

 

[RedRajah]

"I have liquids in my body!"

 

[frimble3]

"Yes, miss, please hop up onto the belt with the rest of the checked baggage..."

If people are allowed to have 'emotional support animals' in the cabin, why wouldn't a fetus be allowed to have it's 'total support human' with it at all times?

 

[Roxxsmom]

It's a clever ploy, but I can see this backfiring on pregnant women in general. If the fetus counts as a person, a pregnant woman will need to buy two bus tickets, two plane tickets, two movie tickets. Anything that is charged at $X.00 per person, a pregnant woman will have to pay double.

Or at least airlines etc. could argue that they should be allowed to charge more for pregnant women (as they do for pets) in order to assure their safety and to be covered for any liability. Though they do still allow toddlers under two to fly sans ticket if the parents simply hold them in their laps (which does seem rather dangerous to me--I'm not even allowed to hold my ipad or purse in my lap during takeoff and landing, FFS).

Fetal personhood is very much a "we really don't want to go there" thing, as it instantly reduces the fetus's host to something less than human for the duration of their pregnancy. Even the so-called pro life crowd doesn't seem to understand where this will likely end up. Prosecution for miscarriages? Involuntary detention of all pregnant individuals? Constant surveillance? One's spouse or another family member or some government official being assigned as a pregnancy guardian?

Still, it is pretty funny to turn the state's twisted logic back on itself. I have little doubt the courts will find a way to prosecute pregnant HOV drivers while still restricting their activities in other ways. Internal consistency isn't really the Right's strong suit anymore, if it ever was.

 

[dpickett]

Yeah, I don't get it. Are they blind to the danger they and we are in?

Two things come to mind.

The first is something Josh Marshall, of Talking Points Memo, said early in the Trump years: one of the advantages of living in a functioning liberal democracy is that you don't have to think about the government most of the time. While different administrations may come and go, the apparatus of the government, on all levels, continues to function. And, since most people are far more affected by their local governments on a day-to-day basis, what happens in DC seems a long way away.

Two, because of that, most people only pay attention to politics in the breach. I've spent the last five years as a volunteer organizer, talking to voters. For most people immediate things--family, job, friends, sports--take precedence over politics. So, if you're used to living in a country where the functions of government which affect you don't change that much, it's easy to think it doesn't matter. There was, obviously, an enormous awakening in the Trump years, but I think a lot of people have gone back to business as usual now that there's a Democrat in the White House and we're no longer being led by a narcissistic con man.

SCOTUS killing RvW is changing that calculus, but it's still an uphill struggle to get people to really care about politics. In a weird way to post-WWII administrative state is a little too good at its job.

 

[Brightdreamer]

Fetal personhood is very much a "we really don't want to go there" thing, as it instantly reduces the fetus's host to something less than human for the duration of their pregnancy. Even the so-called pro life crowd doesn't seem to understand where this will likely end up. Prosecution for miscarriages? Involuntary detention of all pregnant individuals? Constant surveillance? One's spouse or another family member or some government official being assigned as a pregnancy guardian?

Oh, I think they do know - at least, the leaders of the movement know, and the rest have been successfully prevented from thinking too hard about it (or are just convinced ends justify the means/surely it won't be that bad/other rationalization to avoid noticing where they've been led). I think you underestimate the cruelty they're willing to inflict on "the lesser sex" in order to pursue their goals, which were, TBH, always about the cruelty and dehumanization of women and only tangentially about any perceived benefit to the unborn.

 

[Roxxsmom]

Oh, I think they do know - at least, the leaders of the movement know, and the rest have been successfully prevented from thinking too hard about it (or are just convinced ends justify the means/surely it won't be that bad/other rationalization to avoid noticing where they've been led). I think you underestimate the cruelty they're willing to inflict on "the lesser sex" in order to pursue their goals, which were, TBH, always about the cruelty and dehumanization of women and only tangentially about any perceived benefit to the unborn.

I think many of them do. The core of the pro life movement seems to be very much about strengthening the patriarchy and forcing women to depend more on men and to be more under their control. Recent polls in the UK suggest that pro lifers tend to reject gender equality in almost every other respect as well. I can't imagine it would be very different in the US. There is also a connection to racism and segregationists over here, which may be why so many of the so-called Religious Right in the US also seem to be reactionary wrt racial equality. In its inception, it was a decoy issue to unite the southern, evangelical Right around a new cause, once it appeared that desegregated schools were a done deal*.

But there are some folks who have been so sucked in by the "a blastocyst=a baby" thing (though of course they don't know that word, let alone know what a blastocyst looks like or how many fail to implant naturally). They see those pictures of later fetuses sucking their thumbs and think it's like that the whole time. Some people do seem to genuinely buy into the idea of embryonic personhood to such an extent that it doesn't occur to them what all the societal fallout would be--more maternal deaths, more parents and children in poverty, more delinquency and possibly crime down the road, more babies born with horrific birth defects where they will need intensive care for their short lives (that our health care system is ill-equipped to take on or pay for), and more human suffering in general. Or they have "prayed on it," as evangelicals like to say, and they figure that their god will somehow take care of these things.

I do know people who are like that: never worry about consequences or spend too much time planning for anything, because "God will take care of it."

Plus people do bond with their own pregnancies much earlier, thanks to ultrasounds, so for many parents an abortion is personally unthinkable. This is a good thing when it encourages better health practices and preparation for parenting. It's not so great, though, in that very early miscarriages are now as devastating to some people as later ones, and some people take their personal aversion to abortion for any reason to a point where they say things like, "I would give my life for my unborn child, and you should for yours too."

So many humans think other people should be just like them and that we can legislate and terrorize them into becoming so.

*New rulings striking down bans on public money supporting parochial schools does seem to pave the way for re-establishing publicly funded private schools that are segregation academies.

 

[dpickett]

I think many of them do.

I agree. And the link you cite about the birth of the modern, evangelical resistance to abortion shows the entire movement is rotten to its core with lies, misdirection and half-truths used to disguise it's true purpose, which is to roll the country back to the days of Jim Crow and white men always being in charge.

 

[SWest]

Sharpen your pencils, gang, President Biden needs your views:

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/mitch-mcconnell/2022/07/05/who-chad-meredith-bidens-anti-abortion-pick-kentucky-judge/7790119001/

As chief deputy general counsel, Meredith defended a 2017 Kentucky abortion law requiring doctors who perform abortions to first perform an ultrasound and describe the image to the patient.

He lost at a trial in federal court but the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals later upheld the statute.

 

[dpickett]

Sharpen your pencils, gang, President Biden needs your views:

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/mitch-mcconnell/2022/07/05/who-chad-meredith-bidens-anti-abortion-pick-kentucky-judge/7790119001/

Just FYI, it's not at all clear what's happening with this.

The first story about it was in the Lousiville Courier-Journal, and didn't give much in the way of detail, except to paint it all as a poor Biden decision. Given the state, and the slant, it could very well be Rand Paul or the Federalist Society hitting Biden. There were then some leaks suggesting the deal was one anti-abortion judge in return for McConnell to stop slowing down the appellate nomination process and so allow the Biden admin to confirm 20-30 pro-choice, pro-worker, pro-environment appellate judges.

Since than it looks like all the info is coming from those same sources, and the White House, and McConnell, have been silent. I can see Paul doing this, even if it meant fucking McConnell, because he's that dumb. But we don't know the whole story.

Not telling people to avoid venting their spleens, but beware reporting from the LCJ all coming from the same source. And I have no idea why the White House has been so quiet.

 

[SWest]

...Not telling people to avoid venting their spleens, but beware reporting from the LCJ all coming from the same source. And I have no idea why the White House has been so quiet.

Writing to one's President is not an exercise in venting one's spleen...especially if one wishes to be effective.

More from CNN:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/30/politics/biden-federal-judgeship-kentucky-conservative-anti-abortion-lawyer/index.html

 

[SWest]

Governor Whitmer of Michigan signs an EO to not extradite abortion patients:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/13/politics/michigan-whitmer-executive-order-abortion/index.html

This protection, of course, lasts as long as a pro-privacy administration does.

 

[HogansHiro]

Just wondering.....if the USA goes whole-hog Mike Pence and bans abortions entirely, would it be legal/feasible to have floating abortion clinics just off the coasts, out in international waters, for the rich people to patronise?

12 nm off the coast is considered international waters. Couldn't be on US flagged boat though. Canada/mexico maybe. Good business oppurtunity....start a go fund me

 

[BenPanced]

Just wondering.....if the USA goes whole-hog Mike Pence and bans abortions entirely, would it be legal/feasible to have floating abortion clinics just off the coasts, out in international waters, for the rich people to patronise?

The idea's being...floated for the Gulf of Mexico.