And so at last we must speak of the wealthiest nation in the world having people proposing infanticide “for the health of the mother.” Including mental health of course, and the fact that she wants to avenge herself on the father, or something.
I have more to say about that, and will in a PJM column. Some of it has been said before, some has not. Possibly the crucial part has not.
But that’s not the point here.
Infanticide has been performed throughout history. Usually by mothers who couldn’t afford to support the baby. Sometimes by mothers who wanted to hide that the baby looked uncommonly like a slave or servant. (That mental health thing.) Sometimes at the mandate of the state. Sometimes at the mandate of the father who wanted a baby of a different sex. In a memoir I read from the Chinese Cultural revolution, she related, in rural districts, where people were starving anyway, seeing girl babies drowned in the slops bucket or fed boiling chicken soup to kill them. In Africa, it’s not unusual to kill one of each pair of twins.
Note I’m not saying this makes infanticide all right. I’m saying it happens. I’m not one the moral imbeciles who says that because a great number of pregnancies self-aborts abortion should be all right. That’s like saying because a large number of people over 70 die naturally, it should be open season on them.
Infanticide is an horrendous act, one from which every adult human being should recoil. The societies that performed it en masse — say Phoenicians or Aztecs — have been justly reviled and viewed with horror by civilized humanity.
And yet, in the most prosperous nation in the world, a nation with such an infertility problem that we scour the other nations of the world for children to adopt, a man with medical training can sit calmly before cameras and talk about how the mother and the doctor can take a little time and discuss infanticide.
It seems like a curious kind of madness, and it is.
But you don’t get to this kind of madness all of a sudden.
You don’t get all at once to the insanity that children pre-puberty, children whom we’d not allow to choose, say, whom to marry or to sell their property or even what medicine they should take, are in some areas allowed (and the parents forced to accept it) to take puberty-delaying drugs or to choose to self-mutilate because they say they are the other sex, really.
You don’t get all at once to the crazy epistemological confusion of “anything we do as a society” with “socialism” either. Because societies have been doing good and bad things for a long time before anyone got the idea that economies should be planned and that everything we do should be controlled by a powerful central government. (Which had been tried, before, with absolute monarchies, and caused mass revolts against despots. Ah, but this time it would be the right people. Educated people. Stop me when it sounds familiar.)
You can say all this has its origins in Rosseau’s d*mned noble savage and Marx’s economic “but I should be given more stuff!” theories. And you wouldn’t precisely be wrong.
But those have their origin in turn in what we’ll call “a defect in human make up” or if you prefer “the fact we’re still mostly apes.”
Apes need — crave — hierarchy. Throw an ape in a zoo with a bunch of strange apes and they immediately establish where they belong in the hierarchy. All studies done of apes in the wild show hierarchy and a climb in the hierarchy.
Humans are apes. We want to know where we stand. And mostly we want to stand on top.
We crave “titles of nobility” so we can peacock it over our equals. We crave showing ourselves superior to others.
In a way the modern era, with its fluid hierarchies, its loose bonds, drives people insane. They need to know they’re on top, special, better. Physical aggression being frowned upon and these days what used to work like it for women — vamping it up — being looked at as unenlightened, all that remains is to show your intellectual superiority and your moral superiority over others.
The problem is that most humans are not intellectually superior or morally superior to others. Most humans are — sing it with me — average. That’s why we call it average.
And when your social signaling must be done by displaying “intelligence” how can an average person display their special gifts of thought?
Most of us realize when we find smarter people that they often have ideas that seem weird to the rest of the world. This is enshrined in history — of sciences, of art — with the idea of the lone genius who comes along and sees that this despised thing is NOW the real best thing in the world, and thus makes a new order.
Keep in mind, having known a lot of very smart people, I know that a lot of their ideas amount to “and the bridge will be completely carved out of soap.” But few people have had much exposure to true bonafide geniuses.
So how do the average or slightly above average signal they’re “so smart.”
If you say that people should save a bit of their money against hard times, you’re not showing you’re smart. You’re just saying what everyone knows. If you say an adult human being should control him or herself so that they don’t go around being controlled by their emotions and whims and so they can attain long time goals. Again, you’re just saying what everyone knows. You risk being thought… average.
So to counter that, average people say the counter intuitive, the shocking. Quite literally they live their lives Pour Epater Les Bourgeois.
The person who doesn’t save is right,and is living life to the fullest and the state should provide for them. Human beings should live for the now, because that’s the unsullied life of the noble savage. And on and on.
It’s all around. It’s in every story, every news report, every art form.
“I will show I’m brilliant by taking something everyone knows is bad, and proving it’s actually wonderful.”
This led to nostalgie the la boue which was responsible for some really bad books well before the middle of the twentieth century. But then the middle of the twentieth century was “blessed” with mass communication, which is to say mass-means of transmitting story.
Unfortunately by then “shocking” had become confused with “good.” So with the idea of the people they were shocking frozen circa 1950 — which is to say a good 30 years earlier, when the creators of the 1950s were forming THEIR ideas of the world — the new mass communicators set about showing how smart they were.
As a result, we’ve gotten countless stories with bad businessmen (they used to once be considered models to look up to, particularly since some sects of protestantism viewed wealth as a sign of being blessed.) Virtuous communists/anarchists/rebels. Virtuous homeless people. Children who know more than their parents. Women who are stronger than men. People who totally deserve to be supported by the government and not have to work for a living because they’re geniuses. Artists whose art makes no sense to anyone, and who are therefore geniuses.
And each of those is a bite into the fabric of what creates civilization. They’re “countercultural” in the basest sense. Believing in this destroys the culture. Any culture that exposes itself to them.
Believing that you signal you’re superior to the people around you by destroying the foundations of what leads to a good and prosperous life leads to generations growing up thinking this is the way to attain status. And to their struggle for status destroying more of the culture that created the prosperity that allows them to be countercultural.
Bite.
As a child growing up in the mid sixties, I think I was six before I came across the story of the virtuous and brilliant hippie-philosopher who died because he couldn’t make money lecturing people about random stuff, and how this was an injustice.
Fortunately in the mid sixties there were still grandparents around that said things we thought were cringingly embarrassing and low class. You know, the basic things: clean your room, study hard, work towards what you want. The fact that Peterson saying this now is a daring revolt tells you how much it’s been lost.
All human beings are born with the need to signal status. We’ve learned that just telling everyone they’re special and “gifted” doesn’t help anything. It actually hurts.
What we need to do is change the signaling from things that destroy society to things that build society.
Look, as Peterson has shown, we’re now at that point where saying the common sense things our great grandparents knew is countercultural. Daring.
We face a media and artistic establishment indoctrinated into the idea that the rest of the world still lives by 1920s morals.
They’re getting a little desperate. When knitting with yarn you keep in your vagina or rolling yourself in feces only give you limited internet notoriety, you must do something more.
The same with the left. Having come out in favor of socialism, having recruited people who think “you must belong to something so why not the state.” What do they do for an encore? Having established a mother’s right to have an abortion for no reason at all at any time in many places till the third trimester (check) with partial birth abortions disguising the obvious killing of a viable infant, what do you do for an encore? How do you shock the squares?
Infanticide. It’s the next logical step. And it must be good, because look how it shocks the common people.
If we allow this to continue, their attempts to shock us are going to get really creative.
How creative? What comes after infanticide? Do you really want to know? Perhaps we’ll be building pyramids to the sun and sacrificing hundreds of thousands of people in a day? Perhaps the right to cannibalism. The one thing we know is that this “movement” taking bites out of culture doesn’t like humans much. Perhaps because liking your own species is so much of a given, so mundane, so bourgeois.
And then there’s the counter push. If there weren’t, Peterson would have no purchase. And he does.
But the opposition is entrenched and has billions of dollars on its side.
The cart stands poised. If we allow them do continue pushing, we’re going to go off the cliff. At the bottom there’s mass dying and lives that are worse than dying.
Or we can push the other way, push that which builds society.
The tide is turning. Time is on our side. But nothing is free. A civilization if you can keep it.
Put your shoulder to the wheel in whatever way you can — blogs, comments, stories, art, teaching — and push. Push with all your might.
The future of humanity depends on it.
According To Hoyt 
I see title. I see picture. I think, ‘Smack!‘
i see picture and i get phantom itches ALL OVER arg
Yep. That’s where the Germ came from.
Years ago, I would guess in the Mid-Seventies, I recall reading a Sidney Harris* column that discussed a 19th Century Chinese guidebook to England. It marveled that England was so sparsely populated that they preserved the lives of every child, even those of prostitutes, rather than adhering to sensible policies such as China’s having a well on the outskirts of every village and town where unwanted infants could be deposited.
I have kept that lesson, that many things are mostly a matter of custom and perspective, but I am inclined to take the English view of lives rather than the Chinese.
*A prominent conservative syndicated columnist of that era.
The early church had a great deal of growth simply by rescuing infants left to die of exposure.
Adopting the unwanted is often an effective growth strategy.
While infanticide and most abortion disgusts me (some just makes me sad because I see it as an expression of how we just have to live in a fallen world), part of me wants to encourage it among leftards. The same reason I am heart broken about not having children is why I want leftards to embrace childlessness.
The future belongs to those who show up for it. I won’t and, if you’ll allow me to display my moral superiority to some, if I am not worth having in the future the average protard surely isn’t.
As I recall from my research, in Ancient Rome a not insignificant number of child slaves were infants that had been “exposed” (abandoned by the father) and had been “rescued” by a slave owner.
> disgusts
Me, it mostly leaves me shaking my head in wonderment. Yes, I know there’s rape, and occasional failure of birth control, but the sheer volume of “it just happened!” claims boggles my mind. For at least the last half-century, no American woman has been unable to regulate her own fertility; if she gets pregnant, it’s usually because she was boinking without protection.
I see young couples freaking out because they hadn’t “planned” for a baby, and now all their other plans are ruined; well, what the hell did they think was going to happen? Their plans apparently didn’t appear to involve condoms or pills…
Late-stage abortion is painful, messy, expensive, and risky; it’s a monumentally stupid method of birth control, though that seems to be how it’s mostly presented. But I guess if they were looking that far ahead they just might have dropped some quarters into that vending machine in the bathroom and prevented the whole thing…
Pretty much “abortion as birth control” is what disgusts me. It is also what “pro choice” is really about if you listen to them.
Hell, I’d even agree to universal federal provision of the pill on demand as the compromise to end abortion on demands, but they want both which tells me a lot.
The ones you listed up top such as rape, sever handicap, and so on are the ones that make me sad about the fallen world.
Yes, I know someone adopted whose mother let her go because she was conceived by rape. My brother only lived two years because of a birth defect. I know that those things can be survived.
But I also know the toll my brother’s brief life took on our family as a whole and on my parents specifically. I understand how someone would resort to abortion to avoid that pain. Hence the sorrow, not disgust.
But because you couldn’t remember to take the pill or just plain choice to not have sex?
Yeah, I’ll be over here above the rutting animals thank you very much.
I dislike having to disagree with you but I feel I must.
“It is also what “pro choice” is really about if you listen to them.”, referring to abortion as birth control.
Not quite. What ‘pro-choice’ is really about is eugenics by stealth. I’ve run into it again and again. The stated importance of making SURE poor minority women have access to ‘reproductive services’. The appalling statement that that was the reason that pro-choice forces – WHO KNEW ABOUT IT – didn’t report and force the closure of Kermit Gosnell’s house of horrors.
I simply cannt find any way to parse that other than “we don’t care HOW many poor brown women die, so long as their babies die.”
I’ll argue we should split the difference and say it is about both.
Abortion rights for pretty white girls in elite colleges and POC girls in elite colleges with the right thinking is about birth control and, to quote a recent President of the United States, “not being punished with a baby”.
For POC who aren’t elite with approved thoughts and for white girls who aren’t pretty or in elite schools it’s about removing, as Scrooge would say, the excess population.
Even typing that out makes me feel slimy and even worse about sharing a species with hard core pro-choice advocates.
But what about Hollywood, and male predators wanting access to a bunch of pretty and desperate young women, without having to pay lasting costs if a pregnancy occurs?
It’s still about privileged white people not being punished with a baby hence birth control even though the woman may be a non-elite white with wrong thoughts or a POC who has not agreed to be the pet of the white elites.
The hardcore Pro-Choicers are doing their damndest to ensure that Abortion is banned almost everywhere in my lifetime. There are more Gosnell-type abbatoirs out there, I’d bet serious money on it. And they have learned bupkiss from the backlash they’re getting over ol’ Kermit,mso they’ll get caught shielding the others, too. Then there are all the opportunities to screw up massively embodied in their opposition to parentsl notifications. Some minor is going to be smuggled across State lines tto dodge such a law, and die of comolications, and won’t THAT set off a firestorm.
THIS.
More and more deaths are guaranteed – note that Roberts (yes, that Obamacare protecting Roberts) voted with the Foul Four to stop a Georgia law requiring abortion “doctors” to hew to the same standards as any other licensed practitioner. (My wife’s dermatologist has hospital admitting privileges; requiring the same of one of these quacks constitutes an “undue burden on a woman’s right to choose,” though.)
Before getting out over your skis about Roberts’ vote, keep i mind that this ruling merely that enforcement of the rule is suspended while the case against it continues. He may yet rule in favor of the law, especially if the court make-up alters before the case come before it.
That said, it seems to me that he was wrong. As this column explains, there is, as yet, no harm inflicted by the law, the three doctors affected having not even attempted to comply:
Kavanaugh’s abortion dissent doesn’t mean what you think
[SNIP]
Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh is asking a good question: Why should Louisiana refrain from enforcing an abortion law, which plaintiffs are saying is impossible, when the three doctors at issue haven’t tried to obey it?
In Kavanaugh’s dissent, he said the case “largely turns” on whether Louisiana’s three doctors who provide abortions can get the admitting privileges the law requires in the next 45 days. He argues that it makes logical sense that they should be allowed to try do do that, while the law is in effect, and if they can’t, then the plaintiffs could challenge the law based on that failure. (To its credit, Louisiana even said it would not try to “aggressively enforce the law.”) If the doctors get admitting privileges, all of the clinics can keep doing abortions, and Louisiana gets to keep its law protecting women. Everyone wins.
Some avid pro-lifers might want to interpret Kavanaugh’s dissent as a method of tiptoeing into the waters of abortion without causing too many waves. It’s not. Kavanaugh didn’t argue in his dissent about the merits of Roe v. Wade or abortion. But this shouldn’t disappoint pro-life advocates. Kavanaugh stuck to dissenting about the procedural issue at stake, which is whether or not a law that’s already in place should go forward, while the people most affected by the law, abortion doctors who need to get admitting privileges, figure out if they can or should abide by it. It makes sense logically, practically, and procedurally.
If the court had ruled the way Kavanaugh described in his dissent, it actually would have allowed more of a litmus test for abortion advocates. If the law had been allowed to go into effect, it would have forced the plaintiffs to face the issue at hand: Are three doctors really unable to get admitting privileges at hospitals in 45 days?
[END EXCERPT]
Some minor is going to be smuggled across State lines to dodge such a law, and die of complications, and won’t THAT set off a firestorm.
It has happened. I don’t recall the names, but I remember it, perhaps someone else has a better memory of it. It did not play out as you might expect.
A girl, fearing her parents reactions, went across state lines to get an abortion in a state where there was no parental notification laws. The mother of the girl who died, having been convinced that her daughter might have lived if she had received her abortion locally, became a vocal advocate for eliminating parental notification laws.
I think that I approve of Gosnell. The supreme court has said that we may not charge, convict, and execute these ‘mothers” who have partial birth abortions. At least with Gosnell there was a chance of them dying horribly.
Gosnell was convicted of infanticide — three counts of first degree murder.
He induced labor and then, once the child was born, it was either left to die or killed.
I wonder if a minor element of it is also that if they can get a girl to have an abortion, then odds are she is on the Democrat voting rolls for life (or at least not on the Republicans). They merely have to remind those girls that ‘Team R says you are a baby killer.’ It’s seems like something Kendy (for The State) would do.
Me, it mostly leaves me shaking my head in wonderment. Yes, I know there’s rape, and occasional failure of birth control, but the sheer volume of “it just happened!” claims boggles my mind. For at least the last half-century, no American woman has been unable to regulate her own fertility; if she gets pregnant, it’s usually because she was boinking without protection.
Not really; the vast majority of unwanted pregnancies were using birth control, from the studies I’ve been able to find that don’t conflate “we were not trying to get pregnant” with “we WANTED to not get pregnant.”
People just don’t pay much attention to the failure rates in standard use. I know I’ve talked about my sister’s buddy, who has three kids born on a different form birth control each. Pill, shot, and IUD. And she actually does the “follow directions perfectly” thing. (After the baby born when she had an IUD, her husband got cut instead.) That is getting into “buy a dang lotto ticket” territory, but only because there were three in a fairly short time.
Here’s the rates:
http://americanpregnancy.org/preventing-pregnancy/birth-control-failure/
Thing is, if you preach “safe sex” and the assumption that fertility regulation works perfectly, you get people who feel entitled to have sex at absolutely any time, without reproduction.
When reproduction occurs, they are much easier to talk into an abortion.
And once they’ve had an abortion, or pressured the woman they were intimate with into doing it, it’s very hard to make them face the child’s humanity.
“Thing is, if you preach “safe sex” and the assumption that fertility regulation works perfectly, you get people who feel entitled to have sex at absolutely any time, without reproduction.”
Exactly Foxfier. I sometimes ask, “In the old, evil days, when a man got a woman pregnant, typically he was forced to marry her (even if sometimes at gunpoint). Now maybe the marriage wasn’t a good one, but no reason to expect that it was less likely to be good than one procured another way. See current divorce rates. Nowadays when a man gets a woman pregnant, if he offers to pay for half HER abortion, he’s considered a mensch. How is that a good deal for a woman? How is that empowering feminism?”
Why have the failure rates gotten so much worse, for the same methods? That’s about 3 times higher than what I’ve seen reported for several decades now.
Personally, I suspect it’s a case of the usual (he doesn’t want to use a condom and she doesn’t want to take the pill/use other methods) combined with the fact that the current climate has made it so very ‘fashionable’ to get an abortion–complete with NOT informing people of the many, many risks involved in getting one–that more and more are shrugging and going “Why bother? It’s more fun without the contraception, and I can just get an abortion.”
But I could just be cynical.
They like to report the perfect use, not the normal use.
I still have no idea how they establish “perfect use” for something like an IUD or a shot, where it’s not like you can forget to take it!
I suspect we’re getting into unnatural selection territory. Five of my six kids were while using one form or another.
Darn right the big kids all know, too. But one was while I was on the pill. My body just didn’t care. (OBGYN should have told me that my cycle not syncing with the pill meant the pill wasn’t working.) I bet that we’re two or three generations into selecting for that, depending on the family.
My unofficially adopted older brother (joined the family when he was 20) and his wife have gotten pregnant on almost every form of birth control there is, short of vasectomy/hysterectomy, heh.
They’re okay with that, it’s just that it became a running joke that they couldn’t get pregnant when they were *trying*, only when they weren’t.
“I bet that we’re two or three generations into selecting for that, depending on the family.”
Were I a doctor, I’d consider that a very good research project.
Evolution is in definite overdrive. There are children alive today who only were born not only because their mothers choose not to have an abortion, and their grandmothers, but their great-grandmothers as well.
Evolution works on the marginal case.
(After the baby born when she had an IUD, her husband got cut instead.)
I know someone who, having gotten a vasectomy after he and his wife agreed no more kids, waited the recommended period of abstinence and then some three or so extra weeks to make sure, while ensuring he was… erm… drained daily of the taddies. Because of the potential of some live ones still being in there for a while.
I know this because I was the person he knew that he could safely complain to about how hard it was to abstain when he missed making love to his wife without it being turned into ‘just about sex’. Hell, I knew the evening he planned to seduce his lady. Told me his plans to make it super special and everything. Was quite romantic, and she was apparently quite happy with his efforts.
Three weeks exactly afterward, he popped online and said “Well, I’m going to be a dad again… stop laughing.” I couldn’t help it though he sounded so sheepish and gobsmacked.
They got the girl they’d been trying for before giving up and yes, he was the dad.
Yeah, there’s a reason that even vasectomy’s perfect use isn’t 100%….
❤
This. That they’re framing it as being ‘no different and as harmless to the mother as’ abortion in the first trimester to second is medically disingenuous and dangerous.
That they pretend that there is no psychological, emotional or mental harm to the mother to choose to kill their kid is also a giant lie.
I wonder about the US sometimes. I wonder about how these insanities can be cheered by the Democrats, and their constituents…
As I have said before: What’s the end game? If what they’re doing is to shock for the sake of shocking, we’ll eventually get to a point where murder is perfectly legal, even of an adult… as long as the person being murdered is considered second class; of the wrongthinkers, of the wrong political belief.
Given how quickly the falls from grace happen… I laugh at how they push for this. The fools always think that they’ll be the ones never to fall.
Frankly, I’m worried about someone who says that having a late-term abortion for the mother’s mental health rather than delivering the baby and giving it to someone who wants it is supposed to make me feel better about the woman’s mental health. What the hell kind of person says “kill it and take it out of me” and thinks that will make them feel BETTER than simply “take it out of me and give it to someone”? And what the he’ll kind of person would DEFEND that?
They’re lying, pure and simple. You can tell because there is no follow-up to check her mental health and see if the “cure” worked.
Given how many people they sweep under the rug that regret their abortions, I reckon there is no mental health services for that at all.
Use to be only informal– Catholics, obviously, always had Reconciliation.
Apparently some folks noticed that non-Catholics, heck non-religious, would ask about if they were allowed to go to confession…. so Project Rachel got going.
IIRC, it was mostly women who’d been pulled through by the skin of their teeth and sheer luck in friends, or who watched others be destroyed.
did an unwelcome visitor leave a comment right here?
*puzzled* What makes you say that?
because i saw a replay to your post with no name on it and no content.
Huh. I didn’t see that. And the reply history for me doesn’t show one.
Word Press is “acting up” and sending emails with only the “quoted” post without poster name and poster comment.
That’s been happening lately on the email notifications.
WP Delenda Est
Not here. Mad genius club.
May not be valid for all values of “mental health.”
Americans for non-Americans 101
First thing, we are insane. Our culture is different enough from where ever you grew up, that we are all at least a little crazy by whatever standards you grew up used to.
Psychologically, the Civil War is the biggest war in American history for Americans. The Japanese occupation of the Philippines, and LeMay’s bombing of Japan, don’t have the psychologist impact on Americans of the cost of the ACW. The impact of the ACW on Americans might compare to what the occupation meant to Filipinos or what the bombing meant to the Japanese.
For this matter, it is also relevant that we don’t all like and trust each other. One way to manage that is to stay out of each other’s business, and keep our distance.
The matter of the New Deal entangling us all in each other’s business is a stresser, and was much fresher in the days of Roe versus Wade. Socialism at the time of the New Deal saw eugenics as a way to deal with the problem of the poor who were not gainfully employed.
There were also a lot of negative feelings in the South, regarding the Civil War and Reconstruction. Some of these were grounded by abuse of Blacks. But a little before the time of Roe, abuse of adult Blacks was forcibly stopped. The effect of abortion policy on blacks has not been discussed from that perspective because ‘the parties switched places’. That appears to be false in the case of the Virginia Democratic Party. Northham seems to have gone to medical school because Black babies were in season, and he wasn’t brave enough to pay the costs for hurting black men.
Anyway, a lot of the current abortion debate makes more sense when you realize that we can all tell that bad things have been happening, but don’t necessarily know where to attach the blame and anger. So we put it on the opposite side of the factional dispute, regardless of whether we should.
Yes, but if they don’t have children of their own, they will take other people’s children. Hence the state of modern education.
That only works so well. Yes, it creams off a part each generation, but there is also population flow the other way. Interestingly one of the strongest causes of said flow is having kids and enjoying it. So while they may cream off more for the non-protard side they often lose their most fecund.
At some point, progtards are going to be no better at “importing” a next generation than Europe has been. You can get the people, but not the culture.
Especially since it meant the pagans were disproportionately male and the Christians, female. Turns out that having a pagan father and a Christian mother worked out to — Christian.
Cue Kipling…
I may have mentioned it in this forum before, but search fails me now. The story that led me to stop writing as a career choice was one I wrote called “Last of the Morons” wherein the title character accidentally saves the planet from annihilation by an alien race that kept the balance of power by wiping out emerging civilizations, all due to a mutation she carried as perhaps a side effect of her diminished mental capacity. I sent it off to Ben Bova, who had been encouraging before, and he replied that he found it too close to propaganda. Mind you this was the year that “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” won the Hugo. I had naively thought that SF was exploring alternate futures and ideas. I decided to stop beating my head against a wall and start getting paid for what I could do.
Without the actual rejection slip, but the similar observation of the field, you have just described why my idea of working on writing my last few years in the service got tossed for a “real” job.
I would also say that is why indie has revived my willingness to work.
Can we hope to see your first indie novel this year or next?
Herbn, Maybe I’ll put up a short story of more recent vintage here if gracious hostess allows. I doubt I’ll finish the novel I started 40 years ago, but when I get back to writing, it will start with a set of 12 short stories called Advance Guards. That I will put up on Amazon.
sure.
I’ll be watching the Sunday previews for the link.
I’ll put up a link to it on Sunday in the comments if that suits unless gracious hostess has a better suggestion.
Link is here as well: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ioSn1UXH1oIwF0gLFlVdjX2_qgSEYiEI
Actually, I was expecting “they’ve lived long enough” Senior-cide to be next – all those boomers hoarding all that wealth: They need to move on and let that money be shifted to help the rest of the population. And by “help” we mean “get sent to DC where the bureaucrats can spend it on what they want” – see AOC’s Green New Deal FAQ for an idea on “what they want” looks like.
That is what I expect before infanticide as a general practice. One, they can point to enlightened Europe where we don’t the elderly are urged to accept euthanasia, often against their will.
Plus, millenials are made about not being able to afford houses while all those boomers have McMansions.
Is it okay if that happens to lots of leftist boomers who still go to protests all the time I’ll have mixed feelings of horror and schadenfreude?
Euthanasia? Yes, starting first allowing so-called physician assisted suicide to those who demand it, then comes gentle encouragement, followed by not so gentle pressures, to renaming it an appropriate treatment and mandating it.
Senior-cide is the end point of single payer government run health care. Because of the lack of infinite funds at some point further care will be refused for the elderly who government officials will argued are no longer contributing members of society, i.e., taxpayers.
Reminds me of an otherwise alright or so-so story but it had copyrights, etc. go not to heirs (for what had they earned) but all proceeds to the government to fund…. well, otherwise alright or so-so. As has been said, giving a government money is similar to giving teenagers a sports car and whiskey. Neither is apt to end well.
You mean the Death Tax? Except at 100% instead of 55%.
Aye, except they only mentioned IP. As to material goods, that *might* have been different. I can see a real Problem if gov’t tried to grab the Three Family Gradunza that was in the family for generations…
You know, if copyright law hadn’t gotten outright insane that wouldn’t be half as appealing. When copyrights last two generations beyond the death of the author their point has been missed.
Then again, as someone working on a career built on IP, I respect Article I’s statement about their purpose and think a limited time should mean just that and not retroactively extended (ie, if we pass a law extending copyrights it only affects new ones on or after the effective date).
I intend to declare all my writings public domain on the death of myself and my wife (in case she outlives me). Easy for me to say. I don’t have any IP worth anything at the moment. I can dream, can’t I? Still there’s a reason “The Three Musketeers” gets made into a movie every 20 years. It’s called public domain. I don’t know what kind of studio-friendly deal Philip K. Dick made for his movie rights, but few would know who he was if he hadn’t.
I no longer recall the text, but in this case I would expect gov’t owned copyright to have no expiration.
Well, they think so many warning stories are a How to, why not “Logan’s Run”?
Just saw this one along those lines;
I’ve been expecting euthanasia as the Social Security endgame for 40 years. It’s the obvious solution, one I expect the Democrats to advocate the instant they think it will gain them votes. Say in about ten years.
The left has already been very vocal about its desire that “all the old white people die already” in connection with things like elections (such as Brexit and 2016 presidential election), and have made it clear that they would accelerate the dying of old people they view as being “in the way” if they could.
Which makes one shake one’s head at their running all the “Paul Ryan is pushing Granny off the cliff in a wheelchair” ads a few years ago.
Oh well.
“If the left didn’t have double standards….”
Its not double but different. For them it is all about the ends. Kill off those that vote against you (or lock em up in elderly storage facilities while harvesting them for votes) is good. Decreasing their turnout for the enemy is also good. So they do both according to their standards
I think it’s a toss-up between euthanasia for the elderly, and euthanasia for the handicapped, particularly the mentally handicapped, to be next on the agenda. The elderly may not be producing much of value to society, but the handicapped are actively consuming tons of resources that could be better used (by whom, I don’t know). I saw this coming a LONG time ago — maybe twenty years ago, I mentioned to someone I knew that I thought euthanasia of the handicapped would eventually come in the the US, and he said, horrified that I would even suggest such a thing, “Not in THIS country!” Well, respectfully, he was wrong. As the mother of a severely mentally handicapped adult daughter, who also has some serious chronic health problems, it’s something I think about once in a while.
My bet is passive euthanasia– just not treating the disabled or elderly when they’re ill.
Active murder of the healthy will probably hit the disabled, first.
Canada’s national health service already does that.
Friend’s mom, age 65ish, chronic severe back pain. Oh, it’s just osteoporosis, here’s a painkiller, go home. Only when she was dying in agony did it come out that they’d known all along she had bone cancer, but _chose_ not to treat it.
Same friend, then age 25ish, came up with testicular cancer. OMG we’ll get you in right away, and here’s all the latest and greatest treatment and followup. Cured!
Friend was furious, and tried diligently but could not get an answer for why he got timely-and-appropriate treatment, and his mother got none and was basically sent home to die.
When the family doctor retired and was no longer officially gag-ordered, he admitted to my friend that there was a reason for this (paraphrased): “She was old and no longer paid taxes. You’re young and can be expected to pay taxes for another 40 years.”
As countless others have observed:
it is ALWAYS cheaper to simply not treat the sick.
Sometimes, the cost has a good chance of a pay-out.
*feels ill*
Deciding to let old people die rather than treat them is how the British NHS already works and what will end up happening here if the Dems get their dream of nationalizing healthcare.
Or even just feed them and give them water.
I had one of my vampire characters do that once. Because it was a HORROR game, and it was supposed to be a product of the derangements she was suffering from. The worst thing was how plausible and logical I made her sound about it.
Genesis gets it. “Eat this. And you can be like God, knowing good and evil!” In other words, you can be special and superior if you disobey a clear command – or common sense. Shock the ultimate “square.”
And it also gets the outcome: the plenty is taken away and you must work from the sweat of your brow for subsistence and suffer the pain of childbirth.
AOC’s Green New Deal is a trip back to the Bronze Age or early Iron Age at best, but it’ll shock all the squares who built our oppressive society.
I found I was FAR from the only one to read of it and immediately think of the “Great Leap Forward.” That worked out *so* well…
(Note the gaping chasm of sarc.)
The Great Leap Forward worked very well … for those leaping. For those leapt upon, not so much.
Terrifying picture over on PJ Media.
There ain’t no way to hide your crazy eyes.
Socialism be damned. Here’s stupidity. If she believes one word in ten of what she says, I’m astonished she remembers to breathe.
Gah! And I thought the original was nightmare fodder!
When your Landmark Green New Deal looks like a cross between something from the Babylon Bee and Nixion era black propaganda, yeah.
I’m still boggling over that. Her supporters are the sort who like to travel overseas to ‘find themselves’ and ‘experience culture’, then come home and bleat about how so much better it is over in Europe versus America.
A couple of weeks as a rich tourist, staying in hip resorts & hotels in the fancy part of town is no way to come to an understanding of how a country actually works.
For that, one has to actually live and work a job, stand in line to get things done by bureaucrats, travel to the dingy parts outside the capitol, see what is and what isn’t available in the stores, speak a passable version of the lingua franca, stay long enough for the cultural honeymoon to wear off, and so on.
The tourist usually have no clue what they’re talking about.
Yeah. They also don’t wander away from the tourist trap areas. Venice is actually lots quieter (and quite a bit less interesting) when you move away from the trap areas, but we came to the conclusion that this was deliberate as the non-trap areas tended to be where people lived.
Guam is pretty darned laid back once you get to the less touristy parts.
“But you don’t get to this kind of madness all of a sudden.”
You’d not think so, would you? But it is amazing how quickly such madness can creep up on a culture. It seems like rot in a house: you cruise along thinking everything’s okay, the structure is sound and the one day you realize the bathroom ceiling is sagging ever so lightly, step up on the commode t touch it and — Floof — you’re up to your knees in plaster dust and debris. Or you fall through a rotted board in your back deck and are stuck mid-thigh through the boards. struggling to pull yourself out.
Cultures rot from the undersides and too often we shrug, proclaim ourselves “tolerant” and let the corruption grow. Where colleges and universities once defended our ideals and principles they now seem eager to be “edgy” and compete over who can tear out the most load-bearing walls most quickly.
Typhus in LA City Hall, A government worker actually got typhus in the city hall from fleas from rats in her office.
The Progs have let things get THAT BAD.
They STILL don’t know what to do. They MAY take up the carpet.
The Progs have NOT got a clue.
Coming to San Fran soon.
In 1968, in San Francisco, I came across a curious footnote to the psychedelic movement. At the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic there were doctors who were treating diseases no living doctor had ever encountered before,diseases that had disappeared so long ago they had never even picked up Latin names, diseases such as the mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, the thrush, the scroff, the rot. And how was it that they had now returned? It had to do with the fact that thousands of young men and women had migrated to San Francisco to live communally in what I think history will record as one of the most extraordinary religious experiments of all time.
The hippies, as they became known, sought nothing less than to sweep aside all codes and restraints of the past and start out from zero. At one point Ken Kesey organized a pilgrimage to Stonehenge with the idea of returning to Anglo-Saxon civilization’s point zero, which he figured was Stonehenge, and heading out all over again to do it better. Among the codes and restraints that people in the communes swept aside—quite purposely—were those that said you shouldn’t use other people’s toothbrushes or sleep on other people’s mattresses without changing
the sheets or, as was more likely, without using any sheets at all or that you and five other people shouldn’t drink from the same bottle of Shasta or take tokes from the same cigarette. And now, in 1968, they were relearning . . . the laws of hygiene .. . by getting the mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, the thrush, the scroff, the rot.
Tom Wolfe – “The Great Relearning” (http://www.unz.com/print/AmSpectator-1987dec-00014)
Interestingly, despite reading it many times it was only in formatting it to post here I recognized yet another example of gross ignorance: Ken Kesey thinking Stonehenge the zero-point of Anglo-Saxon culture. It was ancient before those peoples existed. It was ancient before the Celts they displaced from Briton existed.
It might be close to the zero point of settled culture in the British Isles, but it is no where near the zero of Anglo-Saxon culture. To consider it as such is an insult to the Anglo-Saxons, the Celts, and the people (probably a branch of Beaker culture for most of the construction although the earliest portions predate it).
1) Thank you so much for doing the heavy lifting of getting that Tom Wolfe quote in here. I’ve been thining of it since about the third sentence of Our hostess’s post, but kind dreaded the work. I do most of my commenting from an iPad, and the mouse-workarounds are so-so.
2) I believe, and have believed for some time, that Stonehenge is one of the greatest works of the Prehistoric Practical-Joker’s Society.
“probably a branch of Beaker culture”
Beaker culture???
I thought to have a culture required more than one.
There, fixed it for you.
Cute, but it is a real thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaker_culture
“That’s like saying because a large number of people over 70 die naturally, it should be open season on them.”
Actually, I’d approve that, provided said septuagenarians get an unlimited right to shoot back.
—
I think infanticide should carry far more hurdles to leap before being allowed, and far more adverse consequences than merely the loss of the child. There truly are some cases where a child is so deformed as to be a monster that doesn’t live long after birth; and we know humans don’t treat others with even minor differences well. So those with major differences are likely to be bullied to death or suicide; or as the Japanese do, hidden away in bare subsistence and anonymity. Of course there are cases like one in today’s news where the child was born without a brain and the parents choose to go to term with it so the organs could be donated.
It’s usually not possible to build something without destroying, or at least sweeping what’s already there out of the way, if only to make a spot you can work in. I’m afraid this ‘requirement’ is valid for us to start rebuilding our society. The relevant question is, can we clean a spot up to work on, or do we have to bulldoze the entire lot?
—
Cannibalism? Only if the PETAphiles succeed in outlawing eating animals.
(Mike, they already have the unlimited right to shoot back. It’s called self-defense, and the 2nd Amendment.)
Yeah, now. But the stipulation was actually opening a season on them; implying licensing, regulation, and authorization. How many are you going to be allowed to take? How long is the season? What sexes can you take and when? (Good Lord, how do you tell visually at range when you have 70+ different sexual/gender designations????) Do you have to take them to a registration station for weighing and confirmation of age? What do you do about poaching, or if someone takes an 69 or 80 year old by accident? Are you allowed to eat them afterwards? Is there a market for the carcasses? Soylent Green!
You don’t have to declare an “open season.” Once you get universal / socialized / single payer healthcare, you just put delays in the path of needed care, or add co-pays larger than most can afford, or simply make the whole healthcare process so tedious and obstructionist it’s effectively denied.
Once all healthcare is under your bureaucratic thumb, you can do whatever you want to any demographic you target.
or you just assign everyone doctors that aren’t accepting new patients
Exactly! I have some socialist acquaintances, who are severely obese. They believe completely that ‘free universal health care’ will make them healthy! Yet, they refuse to take even the most basic steps towards their own care. I’ve had them call me a callous hater, who wants people like them to die, even when I tell them I sincerely believe under socialist health care they will be killed! I’ve even pointed them to articles pointing out that obese people in their socialist utopias are horrifyingly discriminated against for surgeries, and employment as the companies are fined for overweight workers. They live in a complete la-la land.
I know some socialists who are, while spiteful about (some) rich people, actually very diligent themselves and concerned about doing their fair share. And they seem to sincerely think — despite being Appalled by Trump, of course — that if they can just get people to declare that nobody should have to worry about how to pay for healthcare, the government system will inevitably Care about all the same people they do.
For me the socialists I know, who are diligent about their own selves, actually understand it’s a dream utopia, with little chance of success, because humans are going to human. These people are very rare and very dear to me, as they teach me compassion. I guess it has to do with understanding that the ‘government’ is not an abstract magical fairy godmother, but an entity run by humans. Too many socialists I know don’t seem to grasp that concept at all.
I don’t seem to know those ones.
They are rare. Very rare.
Yes. They think of the government as the domain of angels.
I guess Lucifer is an angel, Sarah
I figured you just needed to show both ears to get the bounty. There’d be a bounty, right? Oh wait, you mean for them to take us, don’t you? I figured shooting back was just pest control. There’s little worry about them taking us, I think. Most of them would soil themselves just thinking about touching one of those narsty guns…
What is worse are the parents of a child born without a brain and the parents choose to go to term and RAISING the Child because it could get better and deserved a chance.
Talk about people without a clue.
Because doctors are never wrong, and our understanding of how humans work is perfect?
Know too many kids who were going to be deformed, or unable to survive.
That’s before things like “So, Helen Keller should have been killed?”
Bingo. It’s never “kid doesn’t have a brain, but he might get better”. It’s “the doctor told us the kid doesn’t have a brain, but we’re not willing to kill the kid, just in case the doctor is wrong.”
Or even just “maybe disabled people have a right to not be killed for their own good.”
Actually, there are a fair number of working adults who have severely atrophied brains. Turns out that if born with just a brainstem and change, sometimes you can develop normally and not have the lack noticed. All that redundancy.
Obviously not the way to bet, but it happens.
I’ve got a scene in my head:
“We have no record of anyone with this condition every surviving!”
“Have you EVER LOOKED?!”
Folks with Down’s use to die really early, so making it two toddle was impressive.
Then Roy Rogers and Dale Evans had Robin Elizabeth. And they didn’t send her off to be warehoused until her inevitable death, they took care of their daughter themselves with medical help.
And they memorialized her by supporting this approach…and long story short, my cousin graduated with a dude who had Down’s.
I strongly suspect it was folks like that–who loved and cared for their DS kids instead of warehousing them–that led to all the ways their various medical issues can be treated, and many are now living healthy, productive, and happy lives. (As I’ve said elsewhere, most of the folks I’ve ever met with DS have a HUGE capacity for joy and happiness that we could all learn from.)
I remember reading a paper on early interventions — turns out if you surgically improve the shape/fit of the mouth parts so they can talk without major impediment, Downs kids do a lot better. Guessing it’s not so much the improved ability as early interactions (give and take developing the brain, as best it can).
I had a summer-camp counseling job when I was in college; at the Southern California Lutheran camp, Camp Yolijwa. We did a session one year strictly for campers with learning disabilities. What used to be called mental retardation. The one thing that I saw in that session was that the three or four campers who lived at home with their families and were basically mainstreamed were all much more advanced than the most who came from a Lutheran-organized sheltered home. I don’t know if they were at the top limit of their capacities because they lived with their families, or their families had chosen not to send them to an institution because they were at the top end of their potential.
One of those kids was an Eagle Scout, and the star of his local HS wrestling team; we on the counseling staff pretty much considered him as an honorary counselor.
Robert was going to be so mentally damaged we’d probably have to institutionalize him. We were assured this and URGED to abort because I’d gone into seizures three times (Robert assures me at that point it was eclampsia, not pre-eclampsia.) When I refused they started on Dan yelling at him for not LETTING me abort.
They were right about that institution. It’s a medical school. We sent him there, and he should — knocks on head — barring major disaster graduate from it May 2020.
I was going to be mentally slow, and at best my parents might be able to teach me to look after myself — born very premature, and in conditions that led the doctor to believe I’d been on at least half oxygen for a while. — Well. I can’t claim to have done something like get an MD. Just short of a Phd in Languages doesn’t rate.
And I DO often have trouble looking after myself, which is why I have a squadron of fan who bully me to take time off.
Look, yeah, Robert was born 27 years ago. We have much better instruments now. But doctors are still not infallible. If we — forbid the thought — get that kind of in utero diagnosis on one of the grandkids, I hope even son is skeptical enough to go “Why don’t we have him/her and make sure? I mean, we can always donate the organs, and its’ a mitzvah to some other family.
My parents were assured that I was going to have severe brain damage/health issues, on account of being 3 months early and only 3lbs7oz at birth. *cough* That…is not the case.
Granted, no one was pressuring them to do anything at that point, as I was already born. But now? I can’t help but think there might have been doctors pushing them to ‘let me die’ or, going by what they wanted to do in VA, out and out kill me. Even though I came out screaming, and kept right on screaming until they fed me. (Which they don’t usually do with a premie that soon, or at least not 39 years ago.)
My dad told me there was another baby there who only weighed about a pound. And they were doing all they could to save the little guy (I hope he made it). My cousin was almost that small, and she’s perfectly healthy now. My brother with the heart condition wasn’t supposed to thrive, and he did. Mom wasn’t even supposed to be able to have children at ALL, and she had three. (And two of us were a BIG surprise.)
My sister’s boy was born with club feet.
Per the hospital, that’s really been dropping in the last 20 or so years, even though it’s a thing that just happens.
Most people just kill the kid.
Likewise cleft pallet.
…. my godmother in BFN 19-teens the west had a cleft pallet and was fine, my sister’s cheer-buddy’s boyfriend had it and was corrected so well we just assumed he’d had a bad ground-level trip that left a tiny scar, and people are killing the kids rather than take them to Saint Jude’s or similar.
Oh, God, help us.
I’ve seen lefty-tumblr types ranting about how they’re disabled and talk about “curing” disability meant genociding them.
I rolled my eyes.
Because I thought they were having hysterics over actual medical treatment. I didn’t connect it to this.
FWIW, from what I’ve seen, they’re talking about ACTUALLY CURING folks– like those implants that let a deaf kid hear– being “genocide.” Because it wipes out the “deaf community,” you see.
Not, y’know, actually killing folks.
I’ve seen that too, but the fact that people are actually bragging about getting rid of this or that problem and they just mean they’re aborting everybody with the condition casts the less specific posts in a rather different light.
Amen.
My mom will talk to a fence post if you put a hat on it, and also chose my godmother.
So at the charity hospital when she was in the elevator visiting…k, giving nephew a name, Crow… she actually talked to folks in the elevator.
At one point a little girl had a rather bad cleft pallet, in the front, she basically had no lip under her left nostril.
My mom, being Mom, did the oochie-coochie-coo and said something like “well,d arling, I don’t have to ask why you are here!” and made the kid’s mom cry, because most folks just ignored the girl, and her
dadbio-father had divorced the mom for not aborting the little girl.o.O I’d say that, however difficult single parenting is, the mom was well rid of the dad…
It’s not like cleft palate is even HARD to fix these days. Or even expensive. And there’s many, many doctors who do it pro bono. That man…there are no words for it.
Amen.
I was outraged a few years back when a woman (from Eastern Europe) abandoned her DS baby with her (American) husband because he refused to institutionalize/otherwise remove it. I was glad to see, a year or so later, that she changed her views and apologized. (The cynic in me says “Well, she saw the baby was healthy and thriving and NOT actually a burden”…but on the other hand, it’s stuff like that that helps change cultural attitudes to such things. So yay.)
You were heavier than I was.
Having learned more about premature babies over the years, this does not surprise me. I was bigger than many, and gained weight right away (on account of screaming until they fed me, heh). Apparently I was very popular with the NICU nurses, as well, because I could be picked up and played with.(And dressed in doll clothes. To be fair, that was all that fit me. They sent some home when I went home early from the hospital.)
Basically, I was a weird outlier in the realm of premies. The family theory is that it was a combination of miracle and genetics–both sides of my family have for generations lived at high altitudes, and trend towards very large lungs on my mother’s side…and my mother was living at a high altitude while pregnant with me. We think my lungs developed earlier than normal. Sadly, this theory held some weight with my brother Joe–we were living at/near sea level (I forget where San Antonio falls with that) with when Mom was pregnant with him, and his lungs were *not* anywhere close to adequately developed when he was born.
I was born at home. Also screamed the house down till they fed me. They wouldn’t take me into the incubators, so grandma kept me surrounded by warm hot water bottles. (The house wasn’t heated.)
They baptized me at a month, and had a big party for my third birthday when they decided I’d probably live.
Yup. Sounds like you were an outlier too. 🙂 And even though you were consistently ill…considering that you WERE born at home (rather than a NICU with all the bells and whistles like I was, heh), you’re a walking miracle!
And today, more and more premies are surviving better and better. Considering that they’ve saved babies born at, what, four or five months now or something like that? And that those babies go on to be perfectly healthy, or at least quite healthy? I spit in the eye of abortionists and their “It’s not human until…” blasphemy.
Hell, I’m supposed be nearly blind, and instead I ended up being the only member of the family who didn’t need glasses. (But wanted them. Sigh. Oh, the disappointment at the age of ten and being told “No, you’re probably NEVER going to need glasses.)
3 pounds 5 oz here. And you’ve seen me….. I grewed some. 😎
hey I can now gain in a day what I was born weighing. Sigh.
That’s because you’ve had so much practice!
My cousin was born without a complete spine, called Spina Bifida,1967. Aunt & Uncle had to fight the doctors to clean her up. Doctor’s assessments were to hold her & let her die. She wouldn’t survive 48 hours, if she did she would be severely physically & mentally handicapped.
They were wrong. She was never mentally handicapped despite the schools trying to warehouse her. With my Aunt & Uncle as her parents? Not a chance. Pretty sure they are in the dictionary under stubborn.
Today therapies & physical devices are being used based off of what her father developed for her physical therapies. They were crude. But she had a need, he figured a way. Toddler who had no leg function was ready to crawl, no problem, wide skateboard contraption will work to terrorize the dog & cat … Need to strengthen legs. Body brace will work; so what it had to be rebuilt every couple of weeks as she grew. She was never able to take more than a few steps, but it was more than the doctors gave her at birth. She passed away in 1980, just after her 13th birthday.
*bad movie villain voice* But gosh, she was going to die anyways, it was all wasted.
Because you know folks who make it to twenty never die, right?
*shudder*
And don’t get me started on abused kids, like the cousin who had her toes burnt off by her mother– over the course of months, on a kitchen stove as best they can tell.
Only way I ever knew was because my mom was…strident…that we not embarrass that cousin by noticing her toes at the family reunion, or worse yet actually make fun of the lack there. (Given both the nature of kids and the nature of her kids, very good idea. Nothing like an innocent “why do your feet look funny?” to destroy a major party.)
She is an awesome lady happily married and with several healthy kids of her own, now.
There’s a reason I admire foster parents.
*dry* I see some DS kids who seem to function better than supposedly normal kids.
Yes. I used to assume that no one could get to IQ = genetics of intelligence without Advanced Bigotry. Never underestimate the power of ignorance.
I remember reading about Sweden’s health care system, as it went Socialist (I wonder if it’s recovered…). They stared out encouraging euthanasia and voluntary sterilization, as I recall, and then had a couple of decades during which they were dealing with persistent episodic scandals over doctors making such decisions over the objections of family.
I dropped out of Johns Hopkins, and in the years I spent hanging around the Homewood campus, I met two pre-med students I would trust to lance a boil.
Two.
The late, very much lamented Dr. Susan Haden Elgin called them med-sammies: Medical Samurai.
And there are far too many doctors who will advocate–in defiance of that supposed oath–killing a child (or an adult, let’s be honest here) they deem to be too much of a ‘burden’ on society/family/the doctor’s golfing schedule.
And you know what? That was the parents’ choice to shoulder that burden. Even if that child never does get better…what is learned by the medical professionals increases our knowledge of such conditions. And might, someday, help cure such things (in a manner that does NOT involve killing the child). And what is earned by the parents in the love, service, and care of their entirely disabled child cannot be measured. And it is not something that someone on the outside of it could ever fully understand.
Likewise, parents can choose to let their child go–not in terms of euthanizing them, but if the child requires extraordinary measures just to keep breathing, to choose not to put them through all of that. My parents were faced with it with my brother. And yes, they did seriously consider all sides of it, before they agreed to let him go. And the moment my mother whispered to him that it was all right to let go, he stopped fighting so hard. And they both held him and loved him until the end. They grieve to this day, some thirty years later, and they will do so until we see him again after this life.
This is an impossible, heartbreaking decision. But the point, I think, is that it was the *parents’* decision. Not a doctor pressuring them one way or the other. The doctors on hand when my brother was born were more than willing to do all they could if my parents had decided to keep fighting. Could someone make the judgement that my parents were being selfish, that they didn’t want the inconvenience? Of course. Just as people might judge the parents who chose to keep their child alive as selfish, for putting such a burden on society. This is a hellishly grey area–but murdering an otherwise viable child for the sake of the mother’s ‘health’ according to vaguely defined terms is most definitely not. And forcing parents to allow medical professionals to kill their child against their wishes is also not grey. (Looks pointedly at the Charlie Gard case and the others in the UK.)
The people, I notice, who advocate the most for infanticide of disabled people are the same ones who then bleat ‘why don’t you care about (insert their pet cause here/cause of concern) you have no heart!’) Pointing out that they also have none in return gets a shriek that you’re a hypocrite and that their standards and that situation are completely different blah blah blah.
They do not understand that to cheapen death is to cheapen life.
Torn From Today’s Headlines!Relevant news story:Mom carries dying baby to term to donate organs
A brave, selfless mother carried her dying daughter to term in order to give birth and be able to donate her organs to keep other babies alive.
This is not the first such story I’ve seen. A couple a year or two ago did the same. If I recall right, the hospital fumbled it a bit, and they were only able to salvage her retinas (instead of most everything healthy), but here’s hoping that sensible, compassionate hospitals get better at working with these kinds of parents.
Talk about tough. But damn, I admire people who make THAT choice.
But then there was the case of a child who was born missing most of his (or her — I really can’t remember as it’s been a long time since I read the story) brain. Microcephaly, if I recall correctly. And yet, after a period of time, the brain did expand some, and the child was eventually of normal or near-normal intelligence. Miracles to happen, and doctors don’t know everything, not yet, at least. I wouldn’t suggest heroic measures to save a baby without a brain (no machines), but if they breathe on their own, I would say to give them a chance.
If you’re betting on a miracle, you may as well throw your money away. They don’t happen often enough to justify relying on them.
On the less flip side, if it’s your child, you’re likely to do whatever it takes for them to survive, thrive, and succeed; unless you’ve chosen to abort them already. This is part of the natural selection and survival of the fittest process. Noticeable changes do not happen on a human lifetime scale, but over hundreds to tens of thousands of years. Those who have a tendency to abort will weed themselves out of the population.
I think for many, it’s less betting or relying on the miracle than it is hoping for one. And for the ones willing to undertake all the sacrifice (including monetary) that entails, they sometimes do get one.
And sometimes you get one out of the blue. My next younger brother (adopted shortly after my parents lost my brother Josiah) had a congenital heart defect. He was supposed to be sickly, and have all kinds of problems–but other than spending his twenties in a state of perpetual idiocy, he’s doing great. (He’s about to turn 30, and is finally–much to our joy–growing up. It helps that he found an exceedingly sensible young woman who would leave him if he pulled his previous crap. :D) His second open heart surgery and recovery did entail a few actual unexplainable miracles. (And yes, big medical bills, heh.)
I suspect that might be a bit how miracles actually work: 95% of the time, they don’t ‘just happen’, they involve a lot of tears, sacrifice, and anguish on the part of the recipients (or parents of the recipients as may be). Otherwise, we might all take miracles for granted. 😉
*chuckle* Just a comment about your bit about the sensible young woman…
You know how there’s always that fantasy of turning the bad boy good?
It happens, if the guy wants to turn good and the girl is someone he wants and will leave him if he doesn’t clean up.
Yeah, we figure that’s what is happening here.
I love my brother, but she is waaaaaay too good for him. Or at least, she was until he’s started working to be good enough for her. 😀 We’re very proud of him. He’s still got a long way to go, but at least he’s finally moving down the road!
Then there was a child born with Microcephaly in my mother’s school district, abandoned in the hospital by the parents. Who took off for parts unknown. Until he died (not sure what age) the school district was putting out $50K a year for “education”, which was basically physical therapy. That was in the 1980s when $50K was a lot more money.
Why he didn’t die is unknown. But basic care- feeding and cleaning- nothing more, and he lived.
Anywhere but the USA he’d have not made it past 24 hours.
anywhere but the USA he would have been counted as stillborn. That’s how most European countries are fudging their numbers.
This rather horrifying fact right there.
yep, if a baby leaves the birth canal alive, we count them as alive, and most European countries that are showing lower infant deaths than us don’t because they don’t do that.
Hell, I’d bet if it leaves pulseless and apneic but gains a momentary pulse either on stimulation or treatment and then promptly loses it they are counted.
I’ve met a woman who was told twice that her sons had such issues that she should have an abortion. She has two perfectly healthy sons.
I suspect that, in the eyes of those advising her, both boys suffered from testosterone poisoning which, while not necessarily fatal for the boy, is highly likely to result in adult onset toxic masculinity.
Nah. Just a faith in the test.
Being on the threshold of septuagenarianism myself, I absolutely plan on being ready and will and able to shoot back.
So there.
Forget back, if it becomes open season on an age group I’m going to thin the hunters before they can legally shoot me first.
I said they are like the Puppet Masters.
Too stupid to keep slaves.
Directive 7-12 FTW!
(For those of you not familiar with “The Andromeda Strain”, that’s the use of nuclear weapons to sanitize a disease area)
Part of the problem is we don’t all agree on what corruption is, or how much of it is tolerable, and when the point is reached where we say, “Too much! Time to prune back with the .357 if they don’t do it voluntarily.”
Yes. Diversity is a challenge. Challenges can be opportunities, but not unless the challenge part is recognized.
Oh, and re AOC’s riposte to the President’s State of the Union body slam and nose-crunch on Socialism, wherein, embodying all the dignity of The House of Representatives, AOC was “Like, hah! We, like, have the U.S. Post Office! That’s Socialism! Double Hah! Neener!! Oh, I’m, like, totally Instagramming that.”
Does that mean the cursus publicus under the Roman Emperor was socialism too?
The answer is, of course, No.
The inaccurate trope “Government is just another name for the things we do together” does not mean “Socialism is just another name for the things government does.”
The modern left as epitomized by AOC, that darling of the media, bear all the traits of spoiled children whom having reached calendar adulthood are expected to act their age. And faced with such expectations revert to crying and hissy fits with demands that the government must now take the place of their once doting parents and provide them with not only all their physical needs, wants, and desires, but most important, validation for how truly special and unique they obviously are.
I’m kind of surprised AOC doesn’t sue her parents for wrongful birth like that other guy is doing.
Since AOC’s an elected official, maybe her constituents could get standing to sue AOC’s parents for parental malpractice.
It’s a Good Thing you are not evil.
1+
I’m Michael Houst, and I approve this message.
I think the rest of us should be able to sue her district for impersonating intelligent life. As for Occasional-Cortex…does she have her dog license?
I’m tempted to sure her parents for wrongful birth of her.
Can’t we sue the people who elected her?
I mean, her parents raised and educated her to be a perfectly adequate barista. It’s the voter who messed up.
Embrace “both”.
I have been advised that if something doesn’t make sense look for a tax or a subsidy*. My understanding is that if you give someone $10mm it is taxed as a gift. If you lose $10mm to them in an uncontested lawsuit they dont pay taxes on it. Do not know if that’s what’s going on with that specific case or not.
* and it’s not bad advice for writers looking for a plausible reason for some nonsensical bit of plot or world building.
> The modern left as epitomized by AOC, that darling of the media,
—
She can’t help the way she looks, (well, STFU would help…) but the way the Democrats keep putting her forward reminds me they originally called themselves the Jackass Party.
I think of AOC as a kind of political Lucy Ricardo: she’s dumb and pretty, and none of her plans have a chance of ever working out, but she’s so gosh-darned photogenic, when she mugs for the camera, and cries when it ends in disaster, that the fans just can’t help themselves.
I consider her and her ilk the easily manipulated front face and distraction. The brainwashed Janissaries sent to go rush the front lines.
I wonder what is supposed to come after them.
The folks in raid jackets with three letter acronyms on back
AOC was “Like, hah! We, like, have the U.S. Post Office! That’s Socialism! Double Hah! Neener!! Oh, I’m, like, totally Instagramming that.”
No, I think Occasional Cortex should be encouraged to go down this road. “Just think, Guys! Everything you do in life could be just like going to the post office.” If that doesn’t turn everyone against her brand of socialism, I don’t know what will.
And the scary thing is, the USPS is one of the better postal services.
USPS is better than it was before United Parcel Service and FedEx came on the scene.
DHL let my $260 keyboard stand sit on a dock in Obertshausen for three weeks last year….
While I have had one issue or another with every carrier over time, DHL is the one I actively try to avoid.
at this point so do i
Yes. The only time DHL delivered here, right street wrong house by 4 houses. No excuse. When it would have delivered it was day light. We were home, the other house residents weren’t. Got the delivery notice. Of coarse with “thefts” they “hide” the delivery, so obviously you aren’t looking good enough … uh, no, sorry. There aren’t any places to hide anything.
OTOH we have had Barkbox go to the neighbors, two different months. Again, got the delivery notice, no box. Come on. It’s delivered, Every Month! It was after dark, but, guessing it was a sub driver. Its weird to go pickup a delivered mail off of someone else’s porch, even if it is addressed to you, at your correct address.
My next door neighbor is a veteran, and he and his wife are on painkillers for various joint and chronic pain issues. Back in November, the delivery service the VA uses dropped off a 90 day supply on my front porch. No knock (we were both home), no signature required…… Meanwhile, my wife has to go to the doctors office and hand deliver her prescription to the pharmacy because of the “opoid epidemic”….
I had Airborne Express either throw a washing machine pump 20 feet from the road onto the porch, or else very carefully place it in the bowl of (wet) cat food. From the damage to the pump, requiring a re-order and another week using a laundromat, I’ve got a solid guess and a similar desire to never use them.
I have one of those big blue steel truck boxes lag bolted to the porch beside the front door. On the front are big reflective stick on letters with the house number and “DELIVERY.”
Feral Express refuses to put packages in the box. On top of the box, in front of the box, in front of the door, or wedged between the box and the house, but apparently the whole “lift the lid” thing is more than they can process.
It varies. My town’s is garbage because of an unfirable PI and his pet employees. The next town over is first rate because opposite.
Some folks were musing that she was a plant by white-hat conspirators. (Object, to make the progressives look bad.) Pretty sure she couldn’t be; a conspiracy to do that would have to be plausible, and Occasional-Cortex hasn’t jumped over that bar.
The Green New Deal seems more like life as a trip to a California DMV office. (Hated it with the fire of a thousand suns; my birthday coincides with every school-age person trying to get their license.)
Shockingly, Oregon DMV is almost pleasant, especially in January (wife’s B-day).
I have experienced four different DMVs. Only New Jersey’s was as bad as the cliche. The others weren’t a lot worse than shopping in a Big Box store on a weekend. It helps if you are pleasant to the (usually) ladies who are trying to deal with the mess. You may well be the only polite person they’ve seen all week.
The motor vehicle office here in San Antonio is wonderfully helpful and professional. So are the staff at the central post office, and the branch offices that I have experience with. It’s really most curious – how very pleasant and helpful they all are.
i would have to agree. when i moved to San Antonio it took under a week to get my permanent license from filling out all of the paperwork.
I had to renew my license and for some reason picked the closest. Very crowded, and there were two long lines. I picked one and a long time (90 minutes?) got to the front, only to be told that I was in the wrong line. Neither one was marked. Got in the correct line, took my test, then had to go back to the first line. So, 4.5 hours of standing.
$SPOUSE didn’t have to take the test, but the waiting time was shorter than the time it took to fill out the one-page form. And the staff were polite and pleasant. (I’ve run into one crabby SOB in a local government office here–animal licenses. Didn’t see him again when we registered the other dog a few months later… OTOH, the now-closed Social Security office had a drone who was ‘orrible, and the armed(!) guard in that storefront office wasn’t much better. I haven’t figured out why a Social Security office would need more than a receptionist, if that.)
Oh, example 1 was in San Jose, CA. Wife’s experience was in K-falls, OR.
We can go to Junction City to renew licenses. But to get a new one you have to go to the Eugene offices because that is the only place they will allow the driving test … seems everyone was going OUT of Eugene to take the driving portion, so they nixed that. No idea why *yes sarcasm*
It happens a new driver will pass first time, but in general not if you are under 19, there is an unwritten rule to fail them. Eugene office has (or had) a horrible reputation for this. Has had since before I got my drivers license I got mine from the same DMV at 16.
Also kid insisted they actually look at the driving log that is, you know, required. Hey. He was polite. The gal who took the paperwork glanced at me & asked sarcastically if the hours total was legit. I just shrugged & stated “only child with two adults to drive with, he drove a lot. That is only a partial list. Having him drive not the problem. Getting him to log it, OTOH.”
It happens a new driver will pass first time, but in general not if you are under 19, there is an unwritten rule to fail them. Eugene office has (or had) a horrible reputation for this. Has had since before I got my drivers license I got mine from the same DMV at 16.
There is a reason I never got the paperwork for surface award or aviation wings; that kind of… cow farts…. makes me want to star breathing fire.
When I did my driving test the supervisor tried to say I hadn’t signaled when I had, and yes I challenged him, and yes I passed.
When Pa taught Grandma how to drive (Grandpa had always been The driver until his illness) he found that one examiner had a habit of failing every first-timer he had. However, he also found that one could specifically request NOT to have that examiner for any subsequent test, and made good use of it.
This was in contrast to what was likely his experience… “Yeah, I’ve seen you driving around town on your leaner’s permit. Let me mark things approved and we can both be on our way.”
I can absolutely state that should I have to ever retake the driver’s test in our pickup, I would fail for the same reason I did at 16. There is no way I can make a right turn on to a two lane one way, from a driveway, without either partly going into the left lane, OR cut the curb OR angle out of the driveway so not a 90 degree turn. It ain’t happening. Plus, “of coarse I looked in the rear view mirror … not that you can see anything out the back, below 5 feet.” Thanks to the canopy, you can barely see that; 3 windows.
Luckily, now, we have alternatives, with shorter turn radius.
I failed my first driving test fair and square (mostly). It was in the city of [redacted] and parallel parking was on the agenda. They used flags to mark the points and when I hit a flag, end of test.
The next time I took the driving test, I went to a suburban DMV and passed. Got warned by the inspector that my left turn into a side street was too tight, but he was in a good mood and passed me anyway.
California; I had to do a driving test when I moved there in ’74. Needed a motorcycle cert and my own bike was on a moving truck, so my roommate lent me his brand new 1947* Honda 550. Had to do a figure 8; blew a shift due to the trans having a bit of a false neutral (not a lot of miles on it at the time), but I got a pass.
(*) Actually, a 1974, but the title said 1947. Considering California tags were prorated by age, my roommate had no desire to get the title fixed. His plates might have cost less than my 1968 Honda 350 had
Didn’t have to parallel park when I got my first one at 16; Oregon had already dropped it. Flunked the first test fairly. Left turn out of parking lot onto one way street. I got into the right (i.e. wrong) lane. Second time, got nailed for running over the curb … see above … I’d still fail that one & I’ve been driving for a few decades.
Washington did have to parallel park, but they didn’t put out flags. First time I’d EVER parallel parked … examiner was generous. I still can’t parallel park, easily. It’s better with the current car, it’s got that handy little back up camera & vicinity warnings. Pickup? No way. Not a chance. Heck backing up is a PIA. Pickup with trailer, never mind, don’t drive that combo, even forward.
Testing for parallel parking was sensible at the first location. That city needed it. Still, flags at the corners didn’t register to me. Cheaper than a simulated car, I suppose. But, I was a suburban kid, and still do as little parallel parking as practical. I’d rather walk an extra block. Of course, some of the pickups I’ve had needed tugboats to park…
I might be able to do parallel in the Ridgeline; between the smart* backup camera and the parking sensors, it’s viable. Still don’t drive it that much, since mileage isn’t that great compared to the Foresters. One of those has a backup camera, so if I really need it, I have the help. K-falls tends to have a variety of parking options; part of downtown has diagonal parking, and if you head in the right direction, there’s empty parking a ways away. Might be on a steep hill, but hill parking isn’t a problem for me.
(*) It has some wonderful features. If you are turning, the grid lines curve to show where you are heading, and it’ll alert you to cross traffic when you are backing. The truck is also short enough so that you can turn fairly sharp. I still miss the lumber rack, but I figure I don’t need to get my own 20′ pieces of whatever all that often anymore. (As he crosses fingers, thinking about the possible need for another culvert.)
” still do as little parallel parking as practical. I’d rather walk an extra block. Of course, some of the pickups I’ve had needed tugboats to park…”
Sounds about right. Parallel park … heck no. I need the exercise anyway. Darn right the truck needs a tugboat to park. I even avoid anything that requires me to back out if at all possible, again, “hmmm, need the exercise, I pull through because it’s available” rather than park closer in a spot that I then have to back out of. Every Time.
We did our SS online. No problems at all.
As I recall, online wasn’t an option for $SPOUSE because paperwork. I did some minor business there before they closed and agreed with my wife. That person would have had Fluffy do a face-claw for being a bad example of dragonkind.
My signup was straight forward and online a few years later; by that time BHO had the K-falls office closed, so physical presence would have been westside.
“Government is just another name for the things we do together”
Yeah, so’s “bugger all” but that doesn’t mean it is a good thing to do together.
The correct answer to that is, “No, Government is jut another name for the things we do together by force and violence.”
Government is like fire. If you are young, healthy, and skilled it’s possible to live without it. It won’t be comfortable, though. Also like fire, you have to keep an eye on it and there’s always some mess to clean up.
Poul Anderson had it as Government is the entity that reserves the right to kill you if you don’t do what it wants.
Useful but dangerous servant. Horrible master.
Government is a euphemism, “a generally innocuous word or expression used in place of one that may be found offensive or suggest something unpleasant.”?
Definition courtesy Wiki
Somebody I used to know posted to Facebook a version of the old joke describing different government and economic entities in terms of “You have a cow.” Some of it was actually funny. Interestingly, it had communism as “You have two cows. The government takes them both and gives you some milk,” which is still overgenerous to communism but better than I was expecting… considering that for socialism it had, unbelievably, “You have two cows. You give one to your neighbor.”
….
I spent too long debating whether to keep quiet or start a fight and/or go in as a nitpicker (not the first person I’ve seen trying to redefine socialism as charity, but there might be an “in” given that most of its advocates still acknowledge governmental coercion of the greedy people they don’t like :eyeroll:) and now I think the window for the conversation is kind of past, but *gah*.
I’d seen another version where socialism had them take both cows, then give you some of the milk.
Communism took both the cows, shot one, and shot you if you complained.
I think someone made an edit pass on the meme.
The “give one to your neighbor” is for sale on amazon.
/headdesk
The poster one of my high school teachers had take the cows, give you some milk for socialism, and I think it had takes your cows, puts you in charge of chickens, then takes the eggs and you starve.
Looking at recent (and not-so recent) history, it might be:
Socialism: You have 4 cows. The government takes the three best, gives one to your neighbor, a strong supporter of Fearless Leader, keeps one for the state, and gives the best one to FL for his herds.
And so at last we must speak of the wealthiest nation in the world having people proposing infanticide “for the health of the mother.”
That a child who has already been born and is now independent of the mother needs to be killed for the mother’s health? Nonsense! Only if we have devolved to so low a point that mental health necessitates the acceptance of authorizing murder by neglect as preferable to allowing the child to be raised by someone else.
It takes careful mental gymnastics to maintain societal blindness at this level. We find ourselves in the midst of The Fantastiks:
“for the health of the mother.” has ALWAYS included MENTAL health. Why for the health of the Mother was always meaningless as a restriction.
The double wammy of the January 22, 1973 Supreme Court decisions of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton did greatly reduce those restrictions that any government could place upon access to abortion. Roe allowed for abortion up to the point of viability, at the time set at the first six month of pregnancy. It was Bolton that added that health of the mother could extend availability.
Up until now the cases the has court addressed have involved abortion and not infanticide. Any bills allowing the latter would run up against the Federal level Born-Alive Infants Protection Act of 2002.
A much more practical standard would be to forbid direct abortion– treatments that can result in the child’s death are alright, but not actively killing the kid. It would even avoid the slippery slope of “well, this human doesn’t need to live.”
I’m suspicious for at least some folks, the ability to decide this or that innocent doesn’t need to live is a feature.
s/innocent/person I don’t want around/ Fixed it for you.
Always seems to boil down to the comfort of the killer, doesn’t it?
Nailed it.
Hmmm. My mental health would be vastly improved if we exterminated all the Progressives in this country today. But that would probably put an undue burden on funeral home operators and casket makers. Maybe we should do the extermination of 10% of that population per month, starting alphabetically?
Don’t need either, that is what mass grave are for.
Do what the Russians did at Leningrad, at the mass have sound systems playing dirges with lots of sub Sonics. Very effective. NOBADY does war memorials better than the Russians.
Ah, but you see, even in death I think of them as being humans deserving of some dignity, rather than as anthrax infected livestock.
I thought you were talking about progressives?
Glad I didn’t have any water in my mouth. 🙂
lol
Damnit, Herb! I was about to drink!
That’s twice in one comments section 🙂
Nah. Just gather them in a nice location north of Las Vegas. Say 70 miles or so. Big party, lots of booze and drugs.
Then add one B-52 bomber and four B-61 bombs.
Only if we have devolved to so low a point that mental health necessitates the acceptance of authorizing murder by neglect as preferable to allowing the child to be raised by someone else.
I’ve seen this justification many times: killing the child is fine, but giving it up would just be too painful. The child’s opinion about this apparently doesn’t matter.
The ultimate in socialism: if I can’t have it you can’t either, applied to a child.
Excuse me, I have to go be physically ill.
You don’t UNDERSTAND, giving up the child has Social Stigma, abortion is a Social Good and gets praise.
You want to stigmatize the woman for EVER, you Bully!
Because heaven forbid we work to change the incentives by lauding adoptions and considering abortion a horrible choice sometimes forced on you.
Reminds me: Lewis Lawes, the long-time warden of Sing Sing prison, wrote an interesting book about his experiences. He said that the mother of one prisoner who was facing execution refused to come for a final visit: she said it would be just too painful for her.
“killing the child is fine, but giving it up would just be too painful.”
Seems to me a guy name of Solomon addressed that point somewhere.
Oh, I’m sure some “have a little list” of other people’s kids whose absence from the world would be of supposed benefit to their mental health.
Actually, you can just remove the apostrophe s and kids from that sentence.
“We crave showing ourselves superior to others.”
Pfui. Those of us who are superior know the danger we face from envious lesser beings and thus strive to remain unnoticed by them.
Many people are all to aware of their own ignorance, insecurities, incompetencies, and lack of mastery. We are all to eager to accept at face value the facades of competence put on by folks doing their best to cover up how much they do not understand. The only people who truly believe themselves Masters of All They Survey are such hopeless incompetents they are blind to their own limitations, like a five-year-old tying a towel around his neck and jumping from the porch roof.
Sometimes it is best to be misunderestimated.
That’s like saying because a large number of people over 70 die naturally, it should be open season on them.
Considering the age of much of the DNC leadership……..
> What comes after infanticide?
Why, you raise the age for abortion to 18! (27 under Obamacare)
> seniorcide
My initial reaction was a reasoned explanation of why this would not happen, but the Voices presented a list starting with a number of justices and politicians well into old age whose euthanizing would be of great benefit to society, so I’m going to delay a comment until I can come up with a sensible defense of Ginsberg, Pelosi, Clinton, et.al… don’t hold your breath, this might take a while.
What do you thing the restrictions on helping seniors under Obamacare and under the Single payer systems in England and Canada are about. Delay, Delay, have them die before they cost all that money.
In the near future: first Right to Die, then Die so your family will not suffer, then Die so that society doesn’t suffer, then required to die to make room “For the Children”.
* die to make room “For the Children”.*
… Wasn’t that one of the plot points behind Logan’s Run?
No, they were going to be reborn. The City could only support a certain number of people and the computer in charge had to make sure the number stayed the same. Who would listen to people who said they went RED early. The Computer says that they were right on time.
As Logan asked Francis, Do you know anyone who has been renewed?
It pays to read the book. Which is considerably deeper than the movie.
Yeah, and the children there were about as useful as the progressive socialist left is today.
😀
Yes…and the novel the film was based on made precisely that point. The young don’t build, they consume. Building is for middle-aged people and the old.
Tom Clancy had a line in one of his books (Red Storm Rising, IIRC), that having grandchildren changes a man’s perspective.
I’m remembering a Grade B movie from 1968 (according to Wiki) Wild in the Streets where people 35 and over were rounded up and sent to camps. Haven’t seen it since the ’70s, but it was chilling. Dammit, it’s not a how-to story!
There might be more than the one flick by that name, but I believe I recently saw it listed on TCM.
http://www.tcm.com/this-month/article/1206422%7C0/Wild-in-the-Streets.html
[SNIP]
When Robert Thom, who’d spent years working on movies aimed at the youth market, wrote Wild in the Streets, a short story about the Baby Boom generation turned revolutionary overlords of their elders, Arkoff and company knew a movie had to be made. A screenplay was quickly churned out by Thom and an offer made to Phil Ochs to star in the lead role of Max Frost, a pop singer idol of the youth of America who takes the country by storm. Ochs promptly turned it down, deciding the whole story was so counter to what the actual counter-culture believed in he couldn’t possibly endorse it by going along for the ride. This did not stop anyone else from participating.
Shelley Winters, Richard Pryor, Ed Begley, Hal Holbrook, and in the role of Max Frost, Christopher Jones, all signed on to film the outlandish story with as straight a face as they possibly could. Also included was Millie Perkins, Thom’s wife at the time. Wild in the Streets was released to semi-serious reviews by bewildered critics who weren’t sure if what they were watching was a parody, an endorsement of youthful revolution, or a cautionary tale against giving teenagers too much power. The movie itself seems to take itself seriously enough, to the point where the audience isn’t sure whether to be offended or entertained.
The movie starts off with a young Max Flatow making acid in his parents’ basement while his mom (Shelley Winters) wonders why he hates them so much, particularly his dad. The next day he destroys their home and blows up dad’s car before heading off to, well, something. The movie doesn’t bother to say, it just skips ahead ten years and tells us that now he’s a multi-millionaire pop idol adored the world over.
A young senator, Johnny Fergus (Hal Holbrook), comes to the now renamed Max Frost asking for his endorsement. Senator Fergus wants to lower the voting age to 18 (something that actually happened just three years later) and figures he can use Max’s popularity to get the amendment passed. Max takes to the stage and advocates for 14 instead, prompting protests and sit-ins until Fergus gets him to agree to 15 if he calls the teenagers off. It’s not long after that that Max and his entourage, which includes a young Richard Pryor as his drummer, Stanley X, get an insider in congress, dose the DC water supply with LSD, and get the age requirements for senator, representative, and president all lowered to 14. And, of course, Max gets elected president.
[SNIP]
That’s the one. It was shown at the dorm my sophomore year during check-in/registration week. Being young and a registered Democrat at the time, (conditions both curable with experience and a sense of survival) it didn’t do more than mildly disturb me, but it’s been lingering in long term storage.
After Max gets elected, things get really weird… There’s more at the Wikis. As the article (mis?)quoted “Don’t trust anybody over 10”.
Except RBG is already dead, Pelosi is pickled and thus unkillable, and Clinton…I’m still trying to figure out how she, of all vampires, go to be the Daywalker.
She’s an energy vampire leaching off Bill. It’s the only explanation for why she keeps his philandering butt with her.
Politically, they’re Siamese twins. From the beginning they were always “Bill and Hillary”; all their contacts, all their influence.. it’s *joint* influence. If they split, their backers and sycophants would then have to choose sides, because There Can Be Only One. It would be worse than starting over from scratch.
You know, like when a couple gets divorced, and they reject any friends who keep talking to their ex.
Judging by some of the published reports, it’s also worth noting that a spouse cannot be compelled to testify against the other. That goes both ways…
The sun hides its face from her?
If you say that people should save a bit of their money against hard times, you’re not showing you’re smart. You’re just saying what everyone knows. If you say an adult human being should control him or herself so that they don’t go around being controlled by their emotions and whims and so they can attain long time goals. Again, you’re just saying what everyone knows. You risk being thought… average.
Saying those things might be average, but doing those things?
The reason Dave Ramsey gets to say M-F for three hours to several million people “spend less than you makes, save, and have no debt other than a mortgage” is in a culture driven by debt and keeping up with the Jones he lives it.
Sure, he is also a good self-promoter and didn’t always live that way. If anything, the not living that way helps his message, because he has shown he has done the hard work instead of having it easy.
I think that is why “learn to code” took off so readily. The idiots from the clickbait factories lorded their moral and intellectual superiority not by doing but by saying. Learn to code (or learn to coal or other variants) are all ways of saying, “If you’re so damned special why not do something instead of yakking.”
I am fairly sure if you dig deep enough into ape studies you will find doing moves you up the hierarchy faster than posturing. Posturing, after all, is about power. We know that in a chimp band if the top male rules by raw power, ie violence, he has a short reign because two of his rivals will combine to remove him.
He postured; he “talked”. They did.
Genius does have wild thoughts, but more often than not it is the genius willing to do the 99% perspiration who moves up in the world compared to the ones who only worry about the 1% inspiration.
Saying those things might be average, but doing those things? The reason Dave Ramsey gets to say M-F for three hours to several million people “spend less than you makes, save, and have no debt other than a mortgage” is in a culture driven by debt and keeping up with the Jones he lives it.
As Sarah pointed out, though, they aren’t really trying to shock today’s “average” person. They’re trying to shock the “average” person circa their imaginary 1950s. The fact that their ideas are actually pretty close to today’s average hasn’t really caught up with them.
True.
I mean, Dave is more shocking to most than late term abortion.
That isn’t healthy.
Fiscal responsibility is a huge shock to a *lot* of people. Certainly we never covered “make a budget” or “how to balance a checkbook” in the schools I went to. For that matter, they seem to be concept many legislators are equally unfamiliar with.
People don’t *want* to learn that they can’t just keep building debt forever. I know so many of those in meatspace that I have no doubt they’re the democraphic the eminently-quotable Occasional-Cortex is courting.
You know, I give it thought now and then but given the confluence of abortion and being a financially responsible adult have come together in this thread, does anyone have an opinion on why Dave’s audience base, and a lot of similar stuff, seems to resonate disproportionately in the religious communities?
I mean, it isn’t just there but I’ve noticed the super mommy types, who are often stay at home/work at home types, and Christian mommy types have a huge overlap (also with hardcore service submissives fwiw).
The easy guess is people living on one income with 3+ kids cannot afford to be even average in how they handle money these days, but that seems a bit too simple.
Just because it’s the easy answer doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
The choices are “be responsible” or “sign up for every social program that’s available”, which has the built-in problem of the best bennies are only for (female) single parents.
Probably because the religious communities have preserved more of the ethic of personal responsibility and making sure that you’re not a burden on others.
This.
Both groups think in terms of the long game.
I’ll add that financial prudence gives you options. You can invest when a good opportunity arises (I was shoveling money into the stock market in 2009-10). Buy something you want when it comes on sale (done that). Be able to fix a shredded tire without worrying about the money. You sleep a lot sounder, your blood pressure is lower. It’s a Good Thing.
So, you feel secure if the gov’t is not your emergency fund.
It also explains why progs want the gov’t to be your emergency fund even if that is worse for you.
Maybe “everyone knows” that nobody can afford kids, even just three, so those who manage to get that far up are already dedicated, have a religious reason for it, and are willing to sacrifice for their kids?
I have 5, out of the (at least) 8 pregnancies my wife went through. Not all that difficult. We did tell them all at an an early age they were going to college on OPM or not at all. Oldest is a USMA grad, youngest currently an ROTC cadet. If you’re not a deadender in a dead end job and your income goes up over the years, it’s not that hard to afford children. You can even (usually) have 2 cars the entire time. But they both won’t be brand new. You keep them until the wheels fall off- or one of the kids totals them. You don’t take expensive vacations to Europe or go on cruises. Also helps if you spread them out. 1980 oldest, 1998 youngest. Pretty much a generation apart…. And my wife’s been a stay at home mom the entire time.
My mother’s family was sptead out like that. She was born in ’53, her youngest sibling (of six total children) was born in ’73. I was born in ’80, and my youngest uncle is more of an older brother to me than an uncle.
Dad & his siblings. Oldest was born in ’35, youngest ’50. Between dad’s two youngest siblings, & mom’s younger brother, I have 3 uncles that are more older brothers than uncles … especially since I don’t actually have any brothers; only sisters.
Friend I had in school, has an uncle who is her younger brothers age …
“The idiots from the clickbait factories lorded their moral and intellectual superiority not by doing but by saying. Learn to code”
Talking this morning with the service technician replacing the compressor on our heating & AC system I remarked on the technology required for such repairs and the surrounding regulatory environment, observing that damned few “Marketing Majors” or FillInTheBlank Studies professors had the smarts to take on his line of work.
I could diagnose by ear the probable reason my truck would not start this AM (something mechanical shattered, probably starter or alternator sheared. It had that “lovely” stripped gear sound.). The rest of the flashing warning lights and how to get into the beast to change what went south? Need someone with the tools and computer.
Starter, plus the battery committed hari-trucki. Ah, 8 degree F weather and three year old original manufacturer batteries.
The OEM battery on my current car died at a trailhead in the George Washington NF.
Total number of cars in the lot: one (mine)
On Labor day weekend.
A mile from the nearest house.
It took over an hour for the tow truck to get there, and they weren’t wasting any time, either.
“Genius does have wild thoughts, but more often than not it is the genius willing to do the 99% perspiration who moves up in the world compared to the ones who only worry about the 1% inspiration.”
This is true. It’s the part of being a real-deal genius the movies and TV shows gloss over, or stuff into a montage.
Not that these people are geniuses.
“when your social signaling must be done by displaying “intelligence” how can an average person display their special gifts of thought?”
This is a particularly vexing problem because, as a rule, you must have intelligence to perceive intelligence. It is an adage that actors/writers can rarely portray a character who is more intelligent than the actor/writer depicting him. Many of the tricks employed — use of sesquipedalian verbiage, complex grammatical structures — are no better signals of actual intelligence than are a porn star’s grimaces indicative of actual sexual transport.
Depicting brilliance to the dim is akin to describing color to the blind or explaining fashion to the tasteless.
are no better signals of actual intelligence than are a porn star’s grimaces indicative of actual sexual transport.
There is a reason amateur porn took off.
Maggie Gyllenhaal made the best observation discussing prepping for her role in Secretary. Having obtained appropriate videos, which at that time were all amateur, she noted unlike regular porn the actress’s eyes weren’t dead. Instead they very engaged in the experience.
For some reason that stuck with me and has affected how a view a lot of things well beyond adult video. Writing this I wonder if that idea worming deeper is why I watch so few movies, so little TV, and read almost no new trad published books.
You want dead eyes? Look at Pelosi the other night. Creepy.
She’s got lifeless eyes. Black eyes. Like a doll’s eyes. When she comes at ya, she doesn’t even seem to be livin’… ’til she bites ya, and those black eyes roll over white and then… ah then you hear that terrible high-pitched screamin’.
We’re going back for a bigger boat, right?
“It is an adage that actors/writers can rarely portray a character who is more intelligent than the actor/writer depicting him.”
Although it must be acknowledged that Gillian Anderson seemed to pull it off in The X-Files, at least during its initial 1990s run; at least, she often endeared herself to fan audiences by cheerfully proclaiming herself to be considerably dumber than Dr. Dana Scully. (Which in hindsight doesn’t mean she isn’t smart — merely that she doesn’t have Scully’s IQ.)
Part of the problem is that the ultimate measure of “intelligence” seems to be the ability to understand and solve problems quickly and efficiently. However, the essence of drama is a conflict that requires a life-changing or self-changing effort to resolve, one way or the other. Which puts you in a neat dilemma: either your Smart Protagonist’s conflict is one that can’t be solved by intelligence alone, or the Smart character has to be relegated to non-protagonist support.
Diligence, application, and speaking skills can pass as intelligence. As they should. Like racism, inteliligence is a seriously wonky word.
Then there’s noblesse oblige: The truly superior’s obligation to exercise that superiority in service of the inferior masses.
Though I guess if your elitist superpower is “being a GS drone in the Federal Department of Redundancy Department”, your service to the masses is to work tirelessly to make their lives just as miserable as yours while socking away as much graft as you can get away with.
Just remember, there are some “GS drones” that are selfless and hard working with an attitude of service to the country. Unfortunately, not enough of them.
Oh, sure, I know some. I’m even willing to concede that there are good SES folks.
I’m just saying that a superiority-entitled humanity-unit in a role like that will look for ways to gain from whatever power they have accrued vs. using it to help others.
Years ago I saw the proposal that anyone who had a role that claimed to be ‘Public Servant’ ought be required to play that role in full and, while on the job, address any and all members of the “public” as Master.
I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Frank Herbert once argued that power did not corrupt, it attracted those who were already corrupt.
More an argument applicable to the Senior Executive Service job listings than the GSA-schedule jobs.
Embrace the power of “and”:
It seems to be a hallmark of superhuman fiction that super-villains vastly outnumber super-heroes. That is probably the most believable element they have.
Oh, it’s a trope that’s pretty universal; there were always more Orcs than Elves. The only reason Good survives is that Evil is guaranteed to eat its’ own.
^^^This^^^
And we need to keep pointing out they exist, and that they are needed and valued.
Because the job itself sure as bloop ain’t going to be very rewarding.
Why, thank you. 🙂
Actually, the pay is tolerable, though on the low side. I could retire, collect my pension…and turn my coat and go to work as a contractor for at least 30% more than my current pay.
You’re welcome.
Especially since you could make the same money doing the popular, wrong thing.
Well, turning my coat would be both legal and ethical…merely collecting an honorable retirement and working an honorable post-retirement job. But I still have faint dreams of Making a Difference.
Yes, I DO tilt at windmills, too. 🙂
Of COURSE you do. You hang out at ATH.
As a fellow government drone, I salute you.
I frequently crack jokes about being a small-government advocate who is nevertheless a government bureaucrat. On the other hand, I try to make sure I do my job well, and help people where possible.
And hey, I took it for the insurance, man. (And I’m learning to code, heh. Not in the job, though.)
I have worked for and against government all my life.
I think there’s a lot of us like that…
THIS
Motion seconded.
I took “the popular, wrong thing” to mean staying in the same job and not doing it, or perhaps pushing for Moar Socialisms…..
Arkansas, for various reasons, had never developed much of a state bureaucracy. By national standards it ran “lean and mean” with minimal overhead and a laughably small state budget.
Back when Bill Clinton was campaigning for his first term as governor of Arkansas, one of his promises was to “address historic inequality” by creating more state jobs. And he promptly did who when elected. So places like the DMV went from three people to eight, but only the original three bothered to work…
Those “jobs” still exist, a built-in Department of Redundancy in every office, and more, as the bureaucracy belatedly obeys Parkinson’s Law.
As a child growing up in the mid sixties, I think I was six before I came across the story of the virtuous and brilliant hippie-philosopher who died because he couldn’t make money lecturing people about random stuff, and how this was an injustice.
Fortunately in the mid sixties there were still grandparents around that said things we thought were cringingly embarrassing and low class. You know, the basic things: clean your room, study hard, work towards what you want. The fact that Peterson saying this now is a daring revolt tells you how much it’s been lost.
But the fact that Jordan Peterson is making $100k/month off subscriptions, book sales, and ticket sales is a delicious way to rub salt into the wounds of the left.
To reference my above comment, that hippie-philosopher talked while Jordan Peterson did: had client in clinical practice, did actual research and published results, and wrote a very complex book trying to answer a fundamental and complex question (why were people willing to risk nuclear annihilation over differences in philosophy).
Perhaps the right to cannibalism.
Cannibalism will be a while, because a story about it (out of an event in Denver no less) is still the go to story for Dungeon Monitor training in the S&M scene.
Since Climate Change must be fought buy getting rid of Cow farts, you have to get rid of Cows, then all other farm animals (they eat too much food that could be eaten by people. Climate Change will mean we are able to grow fewer crops.
Because Climate Change, we will have to get rid of big trucks, we will not be able to hall food around to where it is needed(Cities), therefore the Cities will starve. What is the ONLY food source in the Cities? Humans. Under starvation conditions some people resort to Cannibalism, therefore in order for Progressives to survive they will have to become Cannibals, therefore Cannibalism is GOOD and Moral. There are many BAD THINK people that DESERVE to be cooked.
Get your copy of “To Serve Man” while you can.
I have long maintained that civilization begins at the city limits. It’s just that many are confused as to which side is which.
I thought climate change was fought by reducing Progressive emissions to as close to zero as possible. Shame they’ll need to stop breathing, but it is important to reduce emissions.
Do you know how much CO2 your average progressive produces?
And as we saw from the latest “science” paper that TXRed turned up, the global tropics are an amazingly efficient carbon sink when left fallow so the jungle grows back, so if inconvenient bodies are “recycled” in mass graves and the jungle allowed to overgrow everything, it’s a net plus for the planet’s carbon budget!
Well, technically, a net minus in the global carbon budget, but if you think fixing carbon is a good thing, then it’s a good thing. Yay team limestone.
On the other hand, if you think the current deepening solar minima might tip us over into a mini ice age, fixing carbon would fall into the ‘not a good thing’ column. Yay team beach weather.
But on the gripping hand, if you think atmospheric carbon dioxide is a low order trailing indicator rather than a high-order forcing agent, then the global carbon budget is irrelevant, and you should go have a nice juicy steak. Yay team beef.
Too bad all those photosynthetic organisms corrupted a nice mostly-nitrogen atmosphere with nasty free oxygen. You let that sort of thing go on long enough, there’s no telling what problems might come as a result…
Geological record firmly establishes that life thrives on Earth when the Earth is warmer, and the mass die offs occur when the Earth cools. Of course since what the climate is actually doing is demonstrably not relevant to the left, but simply is a pretext that is being used in order to push their goal of global totalitarian communism, this intentional ignorance of this geological history comes as no surprise.
And hot air. Don’t forget the vast amount of warming caused by Progressive hot air.
The last large scale effort to de-modernize a country” was Pol Pot in Cambodia, who murdered millions. It should be noted of course that Pol Pot, like Ocasio-Cortez and her cohort, was a communist.
Do I even want to know?
Probably not…I think it is funny in a way but I wasn’t there.
But if I think too much about what was stopped (and what wasn’t) as opposed to the clusterf*ck of DMs deciding how tho act I’m a bit ill.
“`I will show I’m brilliant by taking something everyone knows is bad, and proving it’s actually wonderful.`”
Amongst the Brits this is known as being “so sharp he cut himself.”
We face a media and artistic establishment indoctrinated into the idea that the rest of the world still lives by 1920s morals.
Flappers. Where are the flappers? Come on…
Ah well, guess I’ll have to settle for the older (pre-Hays) Betty Boop cartoons.
By the way are you doing YOUR bit to save the planet?
Are you taking your BEANNO pills???
No, I eat beans and no BEANNO. With a subzero (F) high forecast for today, it seems we could use all the global warming we can get.
Although it has a heavy dose of “Grrl Power” and a little bit of class envy the Miss Fischer mysteries on Netflex (from the ABC) provide a healthy dose of flapper imagery.
The first episode has most of the now politics push compared to later ones so if you can get through the first I think you’ll find them fun.
Yup.
Oh, that’s good to know. Because I watched that first ep, and even though the Jazz Age is my catnip, I ended up going “If the whole series is like this, nope nope nope.”
If it’s just that first ep, I’ll give it another try 😀 THanks!!
It is a YMMV and I’m only two past that one, but the drop from episode 1 to 2 was pretty big.
Still a lot of class stuff but that isn’t 100% out of character and much better handled. The butch doctor is outright missing.
Beloved Spouse & I tuned — by accident — in during the middle of an episode from, at a guess, the third (last) season … and I think it was two further episodes before we had entirely worked out it was in Australia, in the Jazz Age.
The “I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar” element is not unbearable, not at all, and is largely played period appropriate (it was the Jazz Age, after all!) so, unless you are strongly averse to Girl Power themes it is worth watching. We bought the DVD box and all the books (good, quick reads) and haven’t regretted. Hers is a sensible feminism, rooted in independence and self-reliance (think: Camille Paglia) and Phryney Fisher would sneer at the suggestion she requires a safe space.
Some of those clothes and accessories that Essie Davis wore were real jazz age pieces.
Her chosen firearm is decidedly not, however.
In spite of her libertine predilections I think it impertinent* to use the phrase “jazz age piece” in connection with Miss Fisher.
*Also injudicious, unwise, unkind and unsafe.
“I’m smarter than other people, I see what they don’t see,” is the basis for conspiracy theorist sorts of disorders, too.
And I’ve long said that if you need a PhD and full time quest to find and describe, oh, oppressive systems holding back women in 2019 America, you’re not describing something real. If a normal person living in the world every day can’t see it, it’s not there.
It is also the basis for the leftist media approved conspiracy: false consciousness theory.
(Nods)
One of the reasons it’s really hard to deal with people who believe in fringe and bizarre historiographical theories is because they’re usually smarter and more motivated than the average person, because in order to spot the holes in the mainline narrative you kind of have to be.
What comes after infanticide?
Nanking.
I would point out based on number of rapes during the rape of Nanking, it was safer than US college campuses according to feminists (ie, the rape rate is under 1/16 per annum)
But we know ‘feminists’ are a bunch of.. er.. Buying Litches.
I’ll buy “Buying Liches”. 😉
I was going to say Soylent Green comes after infanticide.
As a male in my late 60s I’ve long been an observer of one telling aspect of the ongoing cultural progression, the so called sexual revolution. And must remark, having some knowledge of the predilections of ancient Greece and Rome, that it’s true that everything old is new again.
First they backed off on the laws criminalizing adultery and sodomy between consenting adults. And rightly so, in my humble opinion.
Then homosexuality became the cause du jour, moving from a felony, to misdemeanor, to commonly acceptable, and ultimately allowing for same sex marriage. And other than a few extremists using the issue to attack traditional institutions, where’s the harm?
Now the big contention in the ongoing revolution seems to revolve around trans rights. Trying to maintain a fair and open mind about that, but the potential for abuse disturbs me, particularly irreversible medical treatments inflicted on young children seemingly at the whim of virtue signaling parents.
And once that issue has been fully incorporated I expect even stranger kinks to rear their heads, as some will always delight in riding the leading edge of the wave. Pedophilia and beastiality anyone?
The legalizing of gay marriage in Mass moved me from pro to “heaven help us no”. It became clear within a year the point was not to help gay people create stable lives, but to create a cudgel to beat the enemies of the left with.
That is why despite knowing more trans people than the average (up to and including a HS friend) I am willing to give no ground on trans rights. Trans activism isn’t about helping my friends have safer or more stable lives. It is about chewing them up for juice to spit on conservatives only to abandon them as soon as they are used up (see how gay men are being pushed out of LGBT activism because of “male privilege” and the treatment of TERFs).
When gays and lesbians are kicked out of the LGBT movement, we really are in the Crazy Years. Doesn’t surprise me, given how people who don’t act like the stereotype of a San Francisco Queer or Bull D*ke get told “You’re not really a homosexual.”
It’s even worse…most TERF’s are Bull Dyke types. In fact, that’s a big part of why they are Trans Exclusionary…they believe their identity as women on the masculine end of the scale is being erased.
Their, not unreasonable IMHO, fear is that with trans being pushed at teens and pre-teens a girl who likes trucks and sports, instead of growing up into a relatively well adjusted lesbian will be pushed into becoming a transman.
I mean, that is how crazy the world is, the complains of a specific subset of radical feminists are making sense.
Here’s an example of male privilege based exclusions: https://thetab.com/2016/03/23/gay-men-arent-oppressed-enough-according-nus-81622
Yep. Sorry, but xi all lost any benefit out of doubt when you started closing adoption agencies and attacking individuals who don’t do what you want of them.
“Pedophilia and beastiality anyone?”
I would put my betting coins on polyamory. Because cultures which practice
ganggroup marriage are so obviously healthy.Probably both, in the “if there’s grass it’s game*” area along with multiple marriages.
*if you are not familiar with this, it is about female Hebephilia; biologically able to reproduce, but only a complete moron would, say, have a herd animal do it at that point.
The normalization of polyamory is already well along–we’ve already had some liberal Christian pastors saying that it’s totally legit and Biblical.
We crave “titles of nobility” so we can peacock it over our equals. We crave showing ourselves superior to others.
On something of a side note, there’s the discussion that keeps flaring up in sci-fi circles about why we keep getting space feudalism. And I think we may have a big part of the answer right there: these are fantasy worlds, and many humans fantasize about that title of nobility. Seems to me that one of the best aspects of David Weber’s worldbuilding was the realization that a lot of wealthy, high-skilled people would immigrate to Manticore for the chance to be called “Earl” or “Duchess.”
Secret princesses or lost princes, surprise inheritances, lottery wins… my real parents will show up and take me away.
Though titles of nobility add an additional element which is the idea of the inheritance for your children and grandchildren of the title. Ha! And isn’t that the opposite of the idea that 100% of inheritance should go to the State? Because some people push for that with seeming sincerity.
“Secret princesses or lost princes, surprise inheritances, lottery wins… my real parents will show up and take me away.”
I’m so tired of that particular trope in fantasy novels that it gets a book walled in the first chapter.
To be fair, when your protagonists are children or teenagers and by definition lack the capacity to get themselves out of their own unhappy circumstances, a visitation of Good Fortune from an Unknown Background is very often the most plausible convenient plot trigger available.
I’m trying to work my own riff on the idea in one novel in progress: while our hero does discover that an unknown family background connects him to a secret order of white wizards protecting the world, which he’s then invited to join, it’s presented as causing a great deal of anguish along with the excitement, because much as our hero loves the idea and hates his school, he loves his family too and doesn’t want to hurt them, and is more than a little unthrilled about having to live by himself in another city and country for his training. (The theme being, basically, that not everyone is going to see their Letter From Hogwarts as an unalloyed joy.)
(Nods)
I’ve got a story like that going that I need to do some more work on once I finish the current WIPs. The protagonist only wants to go to magic school because he knows he needs to learn how to control it. He’d much rather stay home.
I always wanted to write a story where the MC believed him (or her) self to be “the chosen one” only to find out by the end that there is no such thing. Of course, the good would have to defeat the evil thing anyway… I mean, it wouldn’t be much of a story to have the MC completely fail (not a good one in my book anyway). I just think it would be fun to have the MC have a (hopefully comic) realization that he (or she) is not all that special after all.
MC: Shouldn’t I be the one destroying the thing powering the evil dude’s magic? I am the chosen one after all!
Old Wizard: What? No! Where’d you get this “Chosen One” crap? I just needed someone to carry my pack. I’m getting too old for this! Everyone thinks they are SO special these days. Geesh!
I’m kicking around a story idea where there’s a group actively looking to set up “Chosen Ones” in an effort to force conformity and control on various worlds. (Short version: in the war between the good and bad gods, the bad one “won”–and this is his way of exerting control over everything. Because people do love a good story, and those Chosen One stories seem to always get a big response…)
I’ve got one with people setting up Chosen Ones and artifacts. Not for control, but because they realize that sometimes people need a kick in the pants, and if that’s how they need to motivate them, that’s what they’ll do.
But then it has to be “Yes, you were chosen, but not because of some mystical bloodline reason, but because you did the choosing. Choosing to do something.”
Have you watched the Lego Movie?
My family has a few stories like that, but inverted. The thief who narrowly managed to avoid transport to Oz is the classic, I suppose. OTOH, I came by my Oddness naturally.
Meh. I already have the only title of nobility that means a damn: American.
All other titles of nobility embrace inequality imposed by law with only casual regard to merit* of the title holder.
*However defined.
Mr. RES and Mr. President.
Lord, I hope we can keep it.
That, and monarchies are fairly simple and easily understood; someone is in charge, they delegate thus-and-so, chain of responsibility, yadda yadda.
Whereas in democratic/republican systems, “they” direct things independently of the figurehead leader, and orders come from “them”, like a smog monster. And the few people with even shreds of power are elected by popularity contest, the same way they chose the prom queen in junior high.
“The Federation” or whatever has no face in the story; other than perhaps a featured individual, it’s just a deus ex machina squatting in your story.
Titles of nobility are just fine, as long as you’re required to work your ever loving backside off, and succeed, to get one. They should be recognition for accomplishment, not participation.
Like the end of The Gripping Hand where a character is forced to take the title of nobility he has spent over a decade dodging.
There is another reason. Feudalism is a simple structure with a declared hierarchy. Also it is the basic human hierarchy. Leader and people under him. Leader is responsible of the people, people are responsible to the leader. An Ape band. There is no reason it has to be bad and most people are comfortable within that framework. Differences in government are mainly differences in HOW the leaders are selected.
When Sweden and others elected Kings, they mostly got good kings.
I will disagree slightly, another main difference in government is the flows of responsibility.
Effective governments have bi-directional flows in the hierarchy. Failed governments have unidirectional responsibility either tyranny, no responsibility of the leader to the population, or the welfare state, no responsibility of the populace to the state.
I’ve thought for years that feudalism (in various local guises and costumes) is the default to human society in general. Socialism/communism is just a more than usually fancy costume for the same old ‘strongman takes over and pretends to look after the lower orders.’
I’ve often thought that titles of honor might not be a bad thing. The key would be making sure they did not become political candy-bars (unlikely)…and distributing enough of them.
OTOH, the term “Kentucky Colonel” exists for a reason.
That’s pretty much how Elizabeth II handles various honors lists; you can’t just buy your way into a knighthood, you have to perform some reasonably valuable service as well. (theoretically, anyway)
A while back when I realized how old she was, I wondered what kind of power she would actually be passing on to her successor. Holy freaking shit! She might be the most powerful single individual in all of human history… she has lived so quietly for so long, people forget she’s not a figurehead.
Her likely successor thinks plants have feelings. It could get really weird after that.
Her likely successor thinks plants have feelings. It could get really weird after that.
I’ve noticed that long periods as the heir apparent really don’t seem good for one’s mental health. I would worry about what a King Charles might do. On the other hand, given the way things are going now, I wouldn’t entirely dismiss the idea of Elizabeth outliving him.
Oh, and with the confluence of Queen Elizabeth and Kentucky Colonels, this seems an excellent time to share the fun fact that one of Elizabeth’s titles is, “Admiral of Nebraska.”
That’s the reason against patents of nobility in the Constitution. You can be a “noble”, just not from or with government authority.
“What comes after infanticide?”
Humans as parts shops. Just yesterday we saw reports that China is performing a significantly greater number of organ transplants than reported, without consent of the donor. And we’ve seen the aggressive push for extending “assisted suicide” more widely, both as a way of reducing the “burden on society” and as a source of “contributing much needed parts” to the infirm.
As for organ donors, Donors should be the default.
You should have to opt-out.
And then if the ER opts to ignore your opt-out because you have a good blood type? Sorry, no. Plus would your estate get sued if you failed to opt out and it proved that you were, oh, a BSE carrier (why I can’t give blood any more. I was in Europe too long in the 1990s and might have Mad Cow [no offense Orvan])?
No offense taken. I know very well that it is the world is mad. I am, at times, merely angry.
Blood donation came up when the lab tech was sticking my arm. I don’t dare try to give blood anymore because of warfarin, and the other meds could make live too interesting for any recipient.
“Oh, gosh, we didn’t notice the opt-out before we cut her still beating heart out. Sorry?”
Exactly. Already I’ve heard stories about over-eager ER administrators discouraging care because someone had a signed donor card with them. At this point, pure anecdata, but since living patients are an expense but organ donors are not…
Remember the guy who got drunk and held off the doctors from his son’s hospital room, because he thought the (in his early 20s) kid would recover, but his estranged wife and the kid’s brother had already signed him up for organ donation?
Stuck in my mind because the SWAT team doctor flipped out when he got in there, because the patient was missing. Yeah, there was a guy in the hospital bed, but it was obvious to the SWAT doctor that he was not in a vegetative state.
Ah, but Larry Niven has written rather well about the organ banks.
I did. After having pretty much the entire staff in ER make smartass “donorcycle” comments after a DWI with a Buick nearly killed me, the first thing I did when I could drive was go down to the DMV and have the donor endorsement removed from my driver’s license. I’m taking all my bits to Hell with me.
Given my autoimmune, giving my organs to someone else might be a serious bad deed.
I can’t remember my tipping point, but I think it was a Human Exceptionalism article about what is involved in beating-heart donation; I seem to remember a note about the impressive difference in survival rate between donors and non-donors.
And not impressive in a good way.
My family knows that if it comes to that, I want to be a donor, but I took the opt-in off my license precisely because of that sort of thing, which was making my husband unhappy.
Can’t donate blood because he’s from the wrong part of the world.
Where is the principled case for the continued persecution of serial killers?
Absent law prosecuting serial killers, where is the practical mechanism for forbidding right wing death squads?
What is the reason we should not now have right wing death squads?
The right has reasons it does not want to be hunting down and murdering the left. The left has reasons it does not want to be hunted down and murdered.
How do we maintain a consensus?
Heh. Some guy described his amazing, edgy, oh-so-amazing story idea where murder was legal in the world and you could just kill anyone and no one would care.
He got really mad at me when I said that it wouldn’t work, that it *couldn’t* work. That people don’t behave that way.
(Historically, I believe, only very small numbers of people in a given society ever had that right and it usually involved *extreme* prohibitions on anyone in the “okay to kill” group, trying to defend themselves.)
That nobody would care is highly unlikely.
The first thing that would happen is, someone would make a reality show out of it, as in Sheckley’s “The Tenth Victim.”
“If there’s money in something, someone will find a way to extract it…”
“Lone Star Planet” Killing a Politian was not considered murder, you just needed a good reason. The example was a Politian who put forward a Bill for an income tax. As soon as the judge heard that the case was dismissed as justified. Also a Politian could kill someone. If anyone questioned it, the Politian would have to give a good reason. Basically the old “He needed Killing” law.
The problem with Death Squads is CONTROLING them and at some point stopping them.
Much better is “Unintended Consequences” individuals plan, execute STFU. Repeat as needed. Attacking Bureaucrats, Politians, Judges, Media. The people responsible and who can make changes back to the Constitution.
The issue with the three-S’s method is that the line agents of a tyrannical .gov will just informally declare nogo zones and hunker down. If the matter arises to the attention of higher, the performance art of occasional televised punitive expeditions would be added, but the line boots of tyranny would do the self-preservation thing unless they have a handy Dept. of Redundancy Dept. SWAT company to back them up.
The Fed lives in a collection of urban hives, parasitic on the rest of the country.
Push too many people too far, and they’ll just barricade the roads, turn off their power and water, and ignore them.
They hate us because we’re OUTSIDE. And they’re not only inside, they’re splitting “inside” between “gated enclaves” and “cheap post-apocalyptic movie.”
The thing about “gated enclaves” is that their power and water can be turned off too. Likewise food delivery. And there’s less collateral damage.
This is pretty accurate. The widespread ridicule of the “green deal” is a good sign. It’s all over when people swallow the fantasy and go along with it, so I’m glad people are pointing out how stupid it is.
Not sure I belong here. I would much rather be completely overlooked. I don’t want people to notice me much.
It’s not safer not being noticed. Trust me.
And you can’t really tell if you are being noticed. Things leak through even the deepest cover.
Yeah. Apparently my political closet was glass-fronted.
Thus the anecdotes about the fate of the first person to stop clapping for Stalin.
I’m debating making “COW FARTS!” my go-to response.
ROFL
At the risk of being labelled a fart-denier, I must note the science that indicates it’s actually cow-belches that are the methane product of ruminant rumination.
Nope. I want people to know I exist, especially in the government, and be very worried about pissing me off.
The Green New Deal: Obamacare with double the costs and none of the benefits!
I will trade you a bridge to Hawaii for a flying lesson and a jumbo jet plane to reality.
I believe that infanticide in 18th and early 19th Scotland was so common that a woman could be executed if she was found to have concealed her pregnancy and if, after an appropriate time, she could not produce an infant.
Granted, that impression comes mainly from The Heart of Mid-Lothian, and Walter Scott is not a reliable historical source. But I’ve found some corroboration online.
c4c
(Warning: rant ahead. Sorry, that crap with the abortion bills really touched a nerve with me. TL;DR–the politicians and others promoting these bills are the new Dr. Mengele. Or worse.)
I feel like those Dems in NY (and VA) promoting (or passing, in the case of NY) that bill looked at Gosnell’s house of horror and instead of being horrified went “That’s great. Let’s do more of that.”
And the justifications. Honestly, the justifications I’ve seen over the last few years–but *especially* last week–are what moved me from “I think abortion is wrong, but making it illegal probably won’t help” to “Nope, needs to be illegal NOW.” And sure, I’ll agree that in the cases of rape, incest, or (definite, no doubt) endangering the mother’s life exceptions should be made. But the stuff I heard and read from the ‘pro choice’ crowd last week has put me right on the edge of going all in for it to be illegal, period.
And of course, the backpedaling. Well, that governor actually *meant* only in cases of “severe deformities.” But here’s the thing: define ‘severe.’ Because I can see an extremely slippery slope that’s only going to get steeper the better genetic testing gets. Oh, hey, that baby is going to suffer from severe anxiety/depression. That’s a burden, right? That’s a severe ‘deformity’ right? Oh, hey, that baby has a high chance of developing schizophrenia–they have all the genetic markers for it. Better not to have them be a burden, surely. That child is missing an arm. Well, missing a limb is a severe deformity, right? And so on, and so forth.
I saw it first hand back in the late nineties, when my mother–who unexpectedly found herself pregnant in her forties (after having been told she’d never have kids, had me–and I was three months premature–and lost another who was four months premature, and so they adopted all the other siblings) was being not-so-subtly pressured by one of her doctors to get the testing for Downs Syndrome. Because, see, women of a Certain Age have a much higher chance of having a child with DS–and of course she surely would want to get an abortion, then, right?
Implicit in that “doctor’s” attitude were several things: that she was appalled that a woman of my mother’s age was even considering continuing with her pregnancy, appalled that she’d do so even when there were *already* five (living) kids in the family (seven if you count the one we lost, plus the one that, heh, joined us at the age of twenty), and smugly sure that any right thinking person would view a child with Down’s Syndrome as an intolerable burden on themselves and on society.
Mom flat out refused the test. And when the doctor protested, she got harpooned with the facts (because Mom believes in research): that that test had (may still have, I don’t know) a high incidence of false positives. And that EVEN IF her child had DS, that was no excuse to murder it. The doctor was deeply offended by this, to the point of all-but-berating on the subject, and Mom changed doctors without further adieu.
As it happens, my baby brother was the only one of her three birth children she carried to term (AND was over nine pounds–Mom complained, vociferously, that that part REALLY SUCKED), and although as much an Odd as the rest of us, is perfectly fine other than an unholy love of debate. (We channeled that into speech and debate, and it helped.)
But even if he *had* been born with DS, he would have been every bit as much a blessing. (For one thing, most kids–and adults–I’ve met with Down’s Syndrome are the sweetest, happiest people I’ve ever met. The one exception…well, she was a brat because her parents were ashamed of having a child with DS, and ignored her as much as they could manage.)
And yet, we have European countries proudly announcing they’ve ‘eliminated’ DS in their population. No they haven’t. They’ve just murdered all the babies with it–and probably a good many that didn’t, besides, given the flawed nature of all medical tests. And now we have people in this country claiming that infanticide should be allowed in the case of ‘severe deformity’…even as we’re already seeing the definition of ‘severe’ is anything but, and more a matter of ‘It’s not convenient/It’s not perfect’. It’s eugenics come back with a vengeance, and it makes me sick.
But that moral code and political position would mean that you would be inconsistent if you argued for the casual murder of drug addicts and imprisoned felons. Isn’t being able to argue for that worth more to you than being able to sleep at night with regard to the obligations you feel towards those most helpless?
Hang on, are you saying that if one is anti-abortion, one must also be anti-death penalty? (Or you’re being sarcastic, I’m not sure, it’s been an insane week and I’m not parsing things correctly. 😀 I’m pretty sure I’m not parsing this right.)
No, I’m not saying that. When I said casual murder, I meant casual murder.
Capital punishment could be seriously expedited and still be regulated much more tightly than abortion is.
It isn’t really sarcasm. More a rhetorical question. I doubt anyone who is on the pro-life side and not confined to an institution really wants capital punishment to be as loosely regulated as abortion is. Even with me on the side of opposition to abortion, even with how angry I have been at times.
I look at current regulation of abortion, and compare my best guesses of what it would look like transposed onto young able bodied men to policies I have advocated. I’m the monster? Much nicer people than I are the monsters? I’m willing to be considered a monster if it makes those people stop trying those bullshit arguments on me sooner. (Fool, which I cheerfully embrace for similar reasons, was much harder for me to start embracing, because of a history of vanity about my intelligence.)
For a reality check:
The supreme court waived enforcement of a law that abortion doctors be able to take patients into a hospital that is further away than any of the places my last ob/gyn could take me for birth, as if that wasn’t chosen as a restriction exactly because any other procedure has to have it.
Gotcha. (Knew I wasn’t parsing that right.) And yeah, I am definitely against casual murder. Some people–adult people, who have made choices–I do think definitely need killing. Either after thorough due process and a near-definite certainty of guilt, or during the attempt to inflict violence upon another human. But again, like you say, neither qualifies as ‘casual.’
Some people actually do argue that.
Which I suppose, to be consistent, requires all in utero executions be preceded by trial by jury of peers of the (to be) condemned … and an appeal process that can extend decades.
“And yet, we have European countries proudly announcing they’ve ‘eliminated’ DS in their population.”
Judenfrei, anybody?
Yeah, and “toxic masculinity” is next, since they haven’t been able to identify “sociopathy” in the womb yet.
There’s always another victim, you know. Once you have the organization for stamping things out, it tends to be self-perpetuating, like any other organization.
The way the left is acting, it looks like they may simply start a second round of going for the whole Judenfrei thing again. They certainly have no problem supporting groups that openly call for death to all Jews and a governing entity (the Palestinian Authority) whose official position is that any land they control must be completely Jew free.
I also refused the tests. After six years of infertility, I wasn’t GOING to have an abortion, even if they told me the kid was an octopus.
Yup.
I asked my OB if there was any reason whatsoever to take the test that pertained to her ability to doctor us, even as an advantage to know ahead of time on her part… she said no. I said no.
Count me in on the “refused the tests”. After 10 years of infertility, no way, no, no, no. Because of bein.g over 30, nurse said she & the doctor were required to ask, but they knew my answer, just needed it officially; whatever words I chose to use.
My choice? “Tell whomever it concerns that require you two to ask me this question to take the question & shove it up their ass till it comes out between their ears where their brains are suppose to be. Oh, and NO.”
My sister didn’t get asked. Although all 5 of hers were after she turned 30 too. She did miscarry the 2nd, at about 4 months, & the 4th they had to abort (tubal pregnancy, no chance of long term fetus survival & likely would endanger mother). All 5 pregnancies were declared miracles. There were pictures as to why she couldn’t have kids. Doctors just marked the paper no & had her sign it.
Both of us would have taken multiples in a heart beat minute. No question. We both risked it to get pregnant. Me with a drug that risked twins, plus a family history of twins. Them with IVF … didn’t work, but they tried it. They weren’t doing anything special for the actual pregnancies, they had already adopted … which you’d think be easy based on the unwanted babies & fosters out there … nope, not a chance.
Drug that risked twins. Me too. And When I conceived Robert there were TEN embryos at 8 weeks. They told me I would have at LEAST triplets. Alas because of eclampsia, either I absorbed them, or Robert did to survive.
It’s okay. We love what we got.
I trust you WEREN’T hanging out with Cthulhu…
I also wasn’t reading Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife. Or looking at it.
#ConsensualTentacles is totally a thing. ^^
Has that convo with the doc (viz elderly primagravida) and I asked if the tests would reveal anything that could be fixed in utero? Nope. So why risk my already risky pregnancy with these tests?
Doc agreed there was no point. Good woman.
Well, I do know a woman who was able to get all the arrangements for her daughter’s operation before birth, so matters slid straight from delivery to operation.
And then because the operation was scheduled at a place near her mother’s, where they were planning on leaving the older daughter, she and her daughter moved there a month in advance, just in case she went into labor early.
However, this was all ultrasound testing — spina bifida.
You and me both.
I suppose the sickest thing I had ever read was some lament by some silly woman scribbler (and yes, it’s too late in the day for me to go searching for the link) who had discovered she was pregnant naturally with triplets. And was just humiliated at the thought of having to drive a minivan with all those baby seats in it, and shop at Costco, and spend all her time tending to three dribblers – so she was considering having the number of infants in her womb reduced medically … because.
I was personally horrified – so were a lot of other readers of her editorial cri de coeur,apparently. I think Insty or his contributors linked to it a couple of times. Here – this woman was given a generous and unlikely blessing and a miracle, and she wanted to turn it away because … the embarrassment of three children was just too much?
I don’t know if the silly bint went through with the selective abortion. I was too sickened by the sheer shallowness of the woman. (What do you imagine she would have said to the one or two kids selected to survive? “Oh, yeah – you might have had another brother or sister or two, but I just couldn’t deal with the social embarrassment!”)
She was offered a gift – and was inclined to turn it away, because …
Embarrassed? On what weird planet?
I’ll admit, too, that the hormones associated with pregnancy simulate insanity and pregnant women should be barred from making any important life-and-death decisions until post-partum hormones are at normal levels.
They also shouldn’t be making decisions on any large purchases.
I mean it.
This on the insanity. Same thing immediately after birth.
With Robert because of the eclampsia thing I SWEAR I didn’t return to normal till I stopped nursing. My poor husband.
It’s a social thing.
I’ve had multiple people in Washington walk up and scold me for having too many kids*, and my own family started pulling the “you know they found out what causes that” thing with baby #2.
Heck, I wouldn’t get rid of my kids for anything, and I still don’t do the pro-life marches because I’m pretty sure six kids under ten would send a notable number of the gals running screaming INTO the abortuary.
*going over my memory, the last one would’ve been when I was packing the Empress around, he actually walked up to coo at the cute baby and then noticed there were three car seats visible. Didn’t see the two in the back for the Princess and sister’s boy.
My parents got slightly less crap as we were living in the Bible Belt when all 7 of us were home. I think it also “helped” that we were spread out. There was 9 years between me and the next youngest, my older sister was already a teenager when my parents adopted her, and there’s 17 years between me and the youngest. (In fact, for the last couple years of high school, people assumed baby brother was actually my son. That was the only thing about his presence that irked me, heh.)
But I’ve got friends with multiple children who face insults from people for being “breeders” so yeah, it’s a thing.
But the response is not to be embarrassed at having several children, the appropriate response is to give the people chastising one as many middle fingers as you can manage at once.
I may not ever be able to have children of the body, but by God you better believe that as soon as I am in a reasonable position to do so, I am going to have as many foster/adopted kids as I can manage.
Good. The poor foster kids NEED someone dedicated– and we can’t do it, both by regulation and because of the risks associated with seriously abused kids.
me being bipolar, and that they have isolated a couple of gene sets for that, I’d be one law away from getting aborted as ‘deformed’.
As I’ve pointed out several times, if there was actually a “gay gene”, someone would have developed a genetic testing kit for it, and within six months the boast that “there are no gays in Iran” would be a reality.
“But few people have had much exposure to true bonafide geniuses.” Back when I used to interview for jobs, my best selling point was, “I’m a very good programmer, but I’m not a genius programmer. I have known some genius programmers, and I can understand what they do, get their respect, and translate it into something you can understand.” It really is true and was very impressive to the folks interviewing me.
I sometimes ask engineers, “Would you rather be Tesla or Edison?” Almost all say, “Tesla!”
“So ending your life living alone in a apartment that you don’t leave for 20 years with very little money, but being recognized as a genius is more up your alley than becoming a famous billionaire who has many engineering accomplishments in his own right to boast of but also has some business savvy?”
“Yep!”
We are a weird species.
Bah. I’d rather be Ed Heinemann. Or, given my career, CAPT Eric Brown, RN.
> Edison or Tesla
Steinmetz!
My grandfather knew Steinmetz. On the other hand, my grandfather knew a lot of people who were movers and shakers in NYS by virtue of being the Grand Master of the Grand Council of Royal and Select Masters (Masons) of New York back in the ’60s. On the gripping hand, he and my Dad thought it was hilarious to get me drunk on dandelion wine and watch me staggering around the lawn when I was 3.
Hiram Maxim, perhaps? If I recall correctly, Westinghouse or some such paid him not to compete in the field and sent him to Europe to pay attention to developments across the pond.
He got bored and started fooling around with machine guns…
John Moses Browning!!
** “I’m a very good programmer, but I’m not a genius programmer. I have known some genius programmers, and I can understand what they do, get their respect, and translate it into something you can understand.” **
That was my presentation too. Along with “I will deliver something that will work, incorporating what the genius programmers piece, & it can be changed by someone else when needed. Translation, not only can I do the job, but I can pickup anyone else’s work & figure it out, quickly, plus ultimately I’m replaceable & you don’t loose my work.
AND the person coming behind me won’t be saying “This is brilliant. Now how do I change the bloody code without breaking it?” A position I have been in more than once, & every single time managed to make the changes needed without breaking the program.
Two complements I’ve repeatably received throughout my career –
“you deliver a working program that makes sense & is easy to follow.”
“Code & processes were well documented & code was easy to follow, despite your very noticeable coding style.”
In my early days of home computing (Heath H8) one of the magazines had an article on multiplying two very large numbers. The author said his son wrote the program and used “structured programming”.
If that structure were a Jenga tower made of overcooked pasta, he might have been right. The listing was about 100 lines of code, and it worked, but it had more GOTO statements than a 500 line FORTRAN program. Among other things, Genius Son never heard of subroutines.
IIRC, my rewrite chopped it down to 50 lines, still in BASIC. The next month, the magazine published the duo’s long-number division program. No improvement. I let that subscription lapse. OTOH, the replacement was Byte and my introduction to Jerry Pournelle.
d, sounds like we have had similar approaches to our careers.
Frank, agree. I thought that was how programmers were suppose to work. Know we are not the only ones. But based on code that essentially got dumped* on me, there are a lot of those that don’t work that way.
* Didn’t mind. I was hired to straighten out the projects.
Ah, but you see: I’d be Tesla done properly!
You all need to read “Whence” by TR Dillon — an alternate history story on infanticide.
C4C
I blame the ’60s. And I’ll keep blaming the ’60s until…something or other.
Why? Because, the last level of sane “revolt against our parents and their square ideas!” was during this era. And, because of movies and TV and comic books and novels and everything else…we’ll never forget it. We’ll never be able to forget it. And, the bar is raised, and we have to keep topping ourselves to try and do something that is even more rebellious and to stay ahead and be “cool.”
If they go any farther…there won’t be any farther left.
(Tho, at this point, Heterosexual Sex In The Missionary Position would be shocking to me…)
Oh good, it ain’t just me. Blaming the 60’s.
I blame the positive portrayal of the 60s, in the 80s, as well…
Second. They remembered all the flower children coming to Haight&Ashbury, they forgot the kids that burned their brains out on drugs, the homeless that started to flock there and never left, a thousand and one other things that happened.
AKA The Era of Excreable Tasts
Taste.
There’s another opposite of abortion problem that I’ve seen some very rare write ups about.
Sperm donors with more than 20 or 30 or even more children. There’s really no regulation. And there are males (not men) running around with literally dozens of genetic offspring, and have never seen them and don’t care. Stupid single women, mostly professionals, which doesn’t disqualify them from the “stupid label” have had children from men they’ve never met.
Have you ever seen the lies on a dating site? Just how do you think they’re picking the ideal father of their children? From a pretty basic dating site description written by the donor. Yeah, he;s not going to lie, right? And these vast numbers of one father offspring tend to be located in a relatively small geographic area. There’s recently been at least one marriage that didn’t happen because the engaged couple talked and realized they were both fathered from anonymous sperm donor, and had DNA tests. They were half siblings.
This from 2011: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/06/health/06donor.html
150 children.
Not to mention the number of women who’ve picked the donor, then discovered later the fertility doctor mixed his own sperm in- and one of his was the winner.
IMHO, there really is no societal upside to sperm donation.
I’ve go a philosophical dog in the fight– I think a kid has the natural right, barring some kind of extreme situation, to have parents. That is folks connected to him by a natural means, who take responsibility for him.
The incredibly massive jack-ups of artificial fixes?
Horrific, but kinda obvious.
Still horrific, though.
Jack Vance, “Cholwell’s Chickens,” Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1952. https://archive.org/details/Thrilling_Wonder_Stories_v40n03_1952-08.Standard/page/n1
Interesting tidbit in the ‘What’s New in Science’ section: “CLERICAL JOBS will be as obsolete in the world of the future as the one-hoss shay . . .” due to automation.
Nah. They’ll just change.
Those jobs did go away – every sizeable business used to have dozens to thousands of clerks who kept customer accounts, typed out bills, etc. All replaced by “office automation”; that is, computers, printers, and automatic envelope machines. All technically white collar jobs, too.
It was another couple of decades before CNC equipment did the same to much of the manufacturing industry.
As noted by the Princess, after six decades those jobs haven’t gone away (at least not entirely) but they have changed in ways that might initially baffle a secretary or clerk of 1951. Office workers may do more things than their forebears, and certainly do them differently than they did before, but they’re still there. One of my most recent jobs was ensuring that their voice and data connections were up to snuff. Whether or not those ‘more things’ actually add to competitiveness or efficiency may be open to question . . .
Another interesting tidbit was the prediction that the office automation would be performed by specific machines dedicated to specific tasks. Some of that still out there (not all fax machines have been relegated to the junkpile) but it’s becoming less so all the time.
Of course they’re still there. But where there might have been a hundred, now there might be five or ten doing the same amount of work, or more. When was the last time you sent something to the typing pool, or sent a clerk off to look up a paper customer file in a cabinet?
I disagree with your analysis, Sarah.
First and foremost, the Left’s obsessive love of abortion is based not in some philosophical view. It is based entirely in selfishness.
Leftists go through life in a carefree manner, everybody screwing everybody else. Abortion is what they use as birth control.
However…
Ever since the 2004 election, which was decided by social conservatives (who were subsequently betrayed by G. W. Bush), the Left has been obsessed with the possibility that pro-lifers might eventually outbreed and, thereby, outvote them. Because of this, they have been moving toward the goal of universal mandatory abortion. What we are seeing is a moving of the Overton window with that goal in mind.
This is also why they are pushing for gun confiscation. Every single one of them literally masturbates to the thought of ripping babies out of the wombs of pro-life women.
EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.
And the fact is…they will almost certainly be successful. The Treason Generation, aka Millennials, unanimously support abortion and gun confiscation, because without exception, they do nothing all day long but have bisexual orgiesl
This all follows from denial of truths, in this case starting with “The other guy has all the rights that I have, and as much value as I have … and that value lies beyond measure.”
Speaking of Jordan Peterson, this video was my introduction to him: https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=xV4oIqnaxlg&t=3095 . Powerful stuff. It convinced me that, though human and fallible, he is a good and great man.
Sarah, you are correct about the Elites taking extreme positions to shock the squares and virtue signal each other about how cool they are.
You are completely wrong about use being apes and wanting to climb the gorilla ladder to the top. We are fallen, disobedient sinners. We sin because it’s our nature. It’s who we are. There is a Remedy for that, but to accept God’s solution is to acknowledge that we are not the pinnacle of the universe.
I don’t think anyone who says we’re apes says we’re the pinnacle of the universe.
And let’s just say you and I have different ideas about what “the dust of the Earth” means, and what we are too. (If He didn’t expect Fleshy beings to “sin” He wouldn’t be all knowing.)
The Creator is not two years old.
And the solution is FAR more complex than just “acknowledging” or saying anything.
MY opinion. But matters of faith don’t respond to disputation.