The author isn’t wrong about the bible explicitly requiring first breath to indicate being a soul, the premier verse on this is Genesis 2:7 “God breathed in his nostrils and he became a living soul” I wear a ‘Jesus is pro choice’ shirt around and this is one of my arguments against those who tell me I’m wrong, the other being the whole God let Adam kill billions of unborn people thing.
Can someone help explain their logic (or lack of)? What does changing their stance on abortion have anything to do with being able to maintain racial segregation?
Getting people riled up about abortion allowed them to get a large segment of voters to support their party. Anti-choice people are largely emotional, single-issue voters. Once you’ve convinced people that your opponents want to allow “baby killing”, you can pretty much count on their votes without having to actually cater to their needs.
My assumption: Very few people are willing to vote for a party that outright says that they’re for racial segregation. So they invent a mostly unrelated issue that makes people ignore everything in favor of their stance on that issue. Then they can freely implement policies that keep the poor poor (e.g. the tax system, the justice system incl. the outrageous US prison system, and the hole “deliberately spread hard drugs in black neighborhoods” thing), which works to segregate because the recently desegregated are obviously overwhelmingly poor and uneducated. And that’s despite the fact that poor white people also suffer from these policies, but because of heavy propaganda and single issue voting they managed to have a lot of those poor white people vote for them anyway.
Though I have a hard time believing that segregation was actually the main goal, instead of just making rich people richer.
I’ll offer a perspective on this, that isn’t exactly following the book’s argument. Broadly speaking, it does not benefit the working class in any way to vote conservative; government regulation is required to restrict businesses and protect workers’ rights. So, in order to gain votes, conservatives will often employ the tactic of publicising one particular issue that they know they are likely to be able to campaign well on, and trying to ensure that they win based off that issue. This works well, because if your candidate gets in, they are then able to vote on a whole raft of issues that the electorate may not support.
Previously in America, racial divides had been the basis of this tactic. Up until FDR, the Democrats had used divisions between black and white working class farmers to win the South (an interesting historical sidenote on this is the racial solidarity in the Populist Party, a third party that grew out of farmers unions in the south, and was eventually undermined by the democrats choosing a candidate who ceded to some of their economic demands). However, once the parties start to pivot, and especially once JFK/LBJ start to endorse the civil rights campaign, suddenly it’s not as electorally viable to openly use racial divides as your campaign strategy. So, to keep your party relevant and to be able to stall civil rights legislation, you have to a) make your anti-civil rights operations covert (Google cointelpro), and b) find a new campaign issue to get your candidates in off the back of. That issue, this book posits (and I think quite rightly) was abortion.
Hopefully that’s a somewhat clear explanation of the basic logic behind the explanation; if you’re interested I can point in the direction of sources to read/watch/listen further.
This reminds me a bit of something I read about why dictatorships, and corruption, are so common world-wide. I forgot the name but there was a book on it.
The basic idea was that when essential services are lacking and not guaranteed for everyone, such as healthcare and education you must sacrifice your integrity in order to secure those for your loved ones.
So, sure, behind all this can be plain crab-mentality, racism and so on. But I also imagine a significant factor can be attributed to fear of losing something seen as essential and not guaranteed.
For the people being manipulated, yes. That is usually a significant factor. Often the main one.
The manipulators don’t actually have that concern though. They’re generally pretty well off. They just want to change the rules to be even more in their favor in any way possible no matter who it hurts.
Yes, but letting the rich get richer while the poor get poorer won’t actually help if you’re in the middle. That’s just a lie to make you feel good about other people getting screwed for the benefit of the people causing most of your problems.
Yes I think we both agree. If everyone has access to essential services then that helps everyone, including the people in the middle due to reduced corruption, crime etc.
a significant factor can be attributed to fear of losing something seen as essential and not guaranteed.
This is a lie told to us, as zephr_c alludes to, by those manipulating society for their own gain.
The reality is that there is enough food produced globally to feed 10 billion people, we only don't because it isn't profitable.
That isn't to say the fear of being left without, under our current system, isn't a very real one, it is, and I'm subject to it myself as I'm sure you are, my point is that we need to be aware (and make others aware) of who is telling us there isn't enough (and putting our lives at risk for money by exploiting us more and more as well as withholding food and housing) and why, rather than just accept it as an inevitable reality, because it isn't.
I’m from the Netherlands and I can’t say that I’m familiar with these issues personally.
Then you're not looking hard enough (or at all, if at this point you still think your country is somehow untouched by capitalism, which it isn't)
Also how do you want to solve hunger in an area where warlords have power? It isn’t like we can do much about it from here.
You're pointing at a tiny (and very random) symptom of the problem (one that in many if not all cases is created directly by and for capitalists and often the governments they own) and expecting an effective localised solution, but the problem is systemic, and the only way to fix a systemic problem is with systemic solutions - abolish capitalism and build a society that doesn't need exploitation oppression and massive disparity just to exist.
Do yourself a favour, read up on ant capitalism, on socialism, on anarchism. Look in to your local community and how people in it are struggling (and they are), and how you can help, that's probably the best thing you can do on a personal level.
Sure I do see some issues. For example we don’t pay stay at home parents, even though it is a lot of work. But this is essentially the shift of family support to state support and it takes time.
Have you ever been to the Netherlands? BTW you sound kind of condescending and I don’t think you’ll get many people for your cause like that.
I'm not here to coddle your feelings or tell you what you want to hear because what you don't want to hear makes you too uncomfortable.
At the end of the day you'll either try to be better or not, my tone is just an excuse for you to weasel out of actually doing even the bare minimum like trying to educate yourself.
You might be new to this, but I'm not, it's the exact same bullshit excuses and derailing each time (you've done it again with the stay at home parents, trying to shift focus away from the actual problem)
And yes, I have been to the Netherlands, not that it matters one bit, capitalism is capitalism, and you guys still having the relatively (for obviously privileged people like you, anyway) easy to swallow mild version doesn't mean it isn't already decaying, and that the shit the rest of us (in Europe, by the way, I get the feeling you incorrectly presumed I'm American from your pointless and derailing question) are already dealing with isn't already cooking for you (back to the point I made about educating yourself? If I can find one, two, three in 2 seconds of searching, so can you.)
Get your head out of your ass and if you genuinely care, go do something about it, I'm done spoon feeding your lazy ass, you're head is taking up too much space for anything to actually sink in.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I understand that you feel strongly about this, and I genuinely want to understand better. Sometimes, a more approachable tone can help bridge gaps and make it easier for others to engage in meaningful dialogue. Strong approaches might make some folks hesitant to join the conversation. I’m here to learn and discuss, so let’s keep things open. Appreciate the sources you provided!
I feel we started off on the wrong foot. Just like you, I’d also like to improve the system we live in. For example I understand that everyone in the Netherlands is privileged, including me, and I’d like for more people in the world to be able to enjoy this quality of life.
Capitalism might not necessarily be the best approach. For example I value the insights from Noam Chomsky about how state funded research provides essentially all technological innovations. Personally I think these innovations are what make our world better over time. I dislike that our knowledge isn’t freely shared with the rest of the world.
I'll be honest, I don't have the will nor the energy to talk you through anti-capitalism from the basics, it's clear you're not willing to actually make any effort, so neither am I.
I will just leave you with two things that stick out from this last reply:
Educate yourself on tone policing and stop doing it, it's not only derailing to the conversation and providing you an excuse to ignore everything being said to you and to do fuck all, it's also just plain rude and extremely condescending - don't pretend to want to learn from someone (worse - naturally expect them to educate you) and than focus first and foremost (and almost entirely) on how they're doing it (especially from your ignorant starting point, where you clearly have no idea about even the basics of the topic, let alone what kinds of oppressions people less privileged than you suffer daily, and just how much of an impact reality has on our lives. You being completely clueless and deliberately detached doesn't mean you're more "cool calm and collected" it just shows you lack any sort of passion, let alone relevant lived experience).
The second point I want to address is:
For example I understand that everyone in the Netherlands is privileged, including me
On a global scale, yes, people living in the Netherlands are, on average some of the most privileged, on a local scale however, absolutely not everyone in your country has the same privileges as you seem to (I assume because if you don't/won't see marginalisation, you've almost certainly never experienced it yourself), and the idea that they do is so absurd I don't even know how to get you to see the reality around you when you refuse to open your eyes.
Do you seriously think there are no desperately poor people in your country? No homeless people? No disabled people? No racism? No sexism? No Islamophobia? No Anti-Semitism? No anti-migrant hate (which is a mix of a couple of the former)? No homophobia or transphobia?
Do you seriously think Dutch workers aren't being exploited by the dozen billionaires in your country (and a bunch outside of it) that control the economy (by, at the very least, hoarding money that would otherwise be circulating)?
Do you seriously think your government works for the benefit of all of those marginalised people, and not for themselves and those aforementioned billionaires?
Whatever, it feels like I'm wasting my breath either way, like I said before - you either take your head out of your ass and look around for yourself at the reality around you and at the unimaginable wealth of information that exists at the tips of your fingers, or you don't.
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