Global Politics - General Chat

[Jassassino]

"like the abortion ban that is now claiming the lives of a staggering amount of women in Texas right now"
If that's true, I don't support it. Abortion should be considered when the mother is in danger. The vast majority of abortions are done for convenience, though, so this legislation is at least a net positive. It's astonishing to me how leftists can focus on the suffering of women when it comes to abortion laws and yet have their eyes completely welded shut to the THOUSANDS OF BABIES THAT WERE SAVED FROM BEING MURDERED. How have they completely blinded themselves to mass death of innocent babies? Surely, there's something deeply rotten about these people.

Or maybe you just genuinely cannot comprehend the idea of women's bodily autonomy? The right to choose is not your concern at any point of the timeline of an abortion. Do you not consider the possibility that some women simply do not want children, have been victim of failed contraception, or victim of sexual violence? Sorry to say as well, but as long as a fetus is natal, it's not a 'baby', your comprehension of the cycle of fetal development isn't up to par. At the stage at which someone who is child bearing can have an abortion, complex emotions, thoughts and even muscle control from the 'brain', which is essentially just a collection of cells in the fetus, isn't possible. At 14 weeks, the cutoff for abortions for most countries, does it begin to do this.

[TomRL101]

It's called an unborn baby. Stop using euphemisms to justify the murder of babies.
Again, bait is a cope. It is literally possible to believe that abortion is wrong without it being irony or bait. You've isolated yourself from other opinions for so long that you forget that there are two billion Christians, most of which are against abortion.
Life begins at conception. The zygote has all of the genes of a complete individual, as well as a soul. It's a living human. If I'm remembering right, the overwhelming majority of women have abortions for convenience, and not the more severe reasons you listed. Convenience just isn't a good reason to end an innocent life.

[BigBrother]

It's called an unborn baby. Stop using euphemisms to justify the murder of babies.
Again, bait is a cope. It is literally possible to believe that abortion is wrong without it being irony or bait. You've isolated yourself from other opinions for so long that you forget that there are two billion Christians, most of which are against abortion.
Life begins at conception. The zygote has all of the genes of a complete individual, as well as a soul. It's a living human. If I'm remembering right, the overwhelming majority of women have abortions for convenience, and not the more severe reasons you listed. Convenience just isn't a good reason to end an innocent life.

Righto. Okay. Let's take this in good faith (more fool me). If you're pro-life are you anti-capital punishment? If you're pro-life are you against poverty? If you're pro-life do you believe that the state has a significant role to play in ensuring that children grow up safe and happy; are you anti-gun? If you're pro-life surely making school shootings an impossibility is the morally right thing to do, right? Are you pro-education so that kids born grow up and have the best chances to have a happy and productive life?

PS: This is still a fucking abhorrent take; your religion is yours, it's not your place to tell anyone else how to live because a book written by men and edited by men said so.

[NateDog]

I could make arguments against some of these points you make, but half of them would get me banned from the forum. An honest, good faith discussion can't be had in left wing circles. Some points I'm also just uninformed about, like the part on Trump himself, so I'll cherry-pick some.

I find it funny how "you people" repeatedly claim that you cannot talk to the left and that nobody listens to the left because of "constant hysterical language", yet you continue to do it and tell everyone from up on high with hysterical language how foolish we all are. You're telling leftists to have compassion for people that had the opposite of compassion for people that weren't like them when they were alive, then you're saying if leftists didn't act the way you claim they do that there would be less dead children in Gaza? Do you read what you're saying?

[Wayno]

. The zygote has all of the genes of a complete individual,

Every cell in the human body contains your complete DNA but we don't grant personhood to dandruff.

as well as a soul.

The existence of a soul is metaphysical / religious belief, not scientific fact and has no basis when deciding on laws or morality where all the citizens do not share those beliefs. We very much live in a pluralistic society. They are based on shared, verifiable principles.

[Jassassino]

The zygote has all of the genes of a complete individual, as well as a soul. It's a living human.

Crazy how I typed up a whole bit about how you wouldn't obsess over keeping acne spots because it's a collective of productive cells with your DNA in, but deleted it because I didn't for one minute think you'd be so ridiculous in your beliefs to be a proponent of something like this. Guess I was wrong and Wayno was able to make the same point in an absurdist way as I was going to, so. 😪👏

If I'm remembering right, the overwhelming majority of women have abortions for convenience, and not the more severe reasons you listed. Convenience just isn't a good reason to end an innocent life.

What even is "convenience" in your eyes? I think if convenience means not having to take a second job as a single mother, endure 9 months of mood swings, chemical imbalances, cravings, pain and a labor which can last hours on end, potentially ending in a surgical removal of the child - then yeah, I'd say convenience is a very fair reason for it.

[Aragorn]

fellas this all gets a lot easier when you realize this is the idealogical backbone of Tom’s opinions:

[Null]

He had a trans roommate. Meaning almost certainly leftist. Also, one of his rounds had "hey fascist" written on it. Do you really think some right-winger (almost all of which are more extreme than Kirk), is going to write "hey fascist" on a bullet casing? It's hard for me to believe you aren't playing dumb on this one.

He had a trans-girlfriend. But that has nothing to do with his political ideology. If you want information on how political he was, I’d suggest you read this. 

https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/exclus...om-charlie

The bullet casing said “Hey Fascist, Catch! ↑ → ↓↓↓” which is a reference to Helldivers II. 

The right is traditionally much slower to violence

This is a historically false statement, especially now. Empirical political science research is unequivocal about far right domestic terrorism being more prevalent, especially in Europe and the US. Robert Pape’s study for example concludes that political violence in the US has become disproportionately concentrated on the right. 

https://cpost.uchicago.edu/publications/..._movement/

[Departed]

he's a political opponent. I don't have anything against Aragorn otherwise though fr.

When the issues don't affect you, it probably is very easy to treat this like team sports, but the reality is that it isn't.

I could make arguments against some of these points you make, but half of them would get me banned from the forum.

Are you implying that you hold bigoted views or something? I'm not sure why you would assume that otherwise.

Left-wingers celebrated the murder of Charlie Kirk on mass, and we have hours of footage to prove it.

 
That's not violence, nor is it threatenings. It's saying "good riddance" to a bad person. That's not the same as loading up the rifle with the meme bullets and blowing a hole through his neck.

I personally didn't celebrate his death, but I most certainly didn't mourn him, nor do I think the world is, in any way, a worse place without him.  Kirk harmed people.  He, like Trump, understands how feeble-minded most of his listeners are, and how agitated and quick to violence they are.  He also helped push legislation which helped get us to the point we are with Roe v. Wade being overturned and women dying in parking lots for it.  Anyone who was targeted by Kirk, particularly, people of color, have every right to be as loud and proud about how un-sorry they are by his death.

Celebrating the death of a bad person is not the same as killing or threatening to kill a person, so I'm not sure why you bothered bringing that up.

When Donald Trump dies, I'll celebrate because he has a bodycount, he's caused irreparable harm to this nation and to the most marginalized among us.  He is an evil piece of garbage and the world will be a much better place without him.  Just like the world will be a much better place without any despot or wannabe despot.  Saying that doesn't mean I'm gonna arm myself with a sniper rifle and go graze glass near his other ear.

They've never been held accountable, so they just post it freely.

 
Celebrating a bad person dying isn't the same as threatening to kill someone yourself, which republicans do quite frequently, and did so quite frequently after Kirk's death.  Freedom of Speech dictates that so long as you aren't actively calling for violence, or that what you're saying isn't causing violence, it's all kosher.  Same reason Nazi's are allowed to exist.  If you want to be mad at anyone not being held accountable for the things they say, try being mad at republicans calling in bomb threats to polling stations or threatening to behead judges.  Try being mad at the far right lunatics sending death threats to every single judge who goes against Trump.

Or the Trumpist who fire-bombed a federal judge's home in South Carolina and nearly killed her and her entire family because she ruled against him.

It's kind of hard to take pearl-clutching seriously when the right is actively doing all of this as we speak.

Right-wingers responded by cancelling leftists, a game that the left has been playing for ten years, and got so bored that they have now moved on to shooting their opponents in the head instead.

 
1.  Nobody was getting "cancelled" by the left.  People opted to vote with their wallets to apply pressure to companies and companies either acted in one way or didn't.  Which is no different than when republicans boycotted Bud Light because a trans influencer was doing a cross-promo with them.  Or when they started boycotting Nike over Kaepernick's kneeling.  That also wasn't what happened with Kimmel or Colbert.  That was Trump and Carr very directly blackmailing greedy corporations and using the full force of the federal government to do so. The worst thing anyone can say Biden did in that regard was urge social media companies to block anti-vaxx pages when the pandemic was still raging, and right wingers are acting like that's the crime of the century.

2.  The shooters political ideology isn't leftist. You're also blatantly ignoring the fact that the vast majority of shootings are very overtly right wing.

This is not exactly violence being met with violence. The right is traditionally much slower to violence, as any reasonable person knows.

They quite literally aren't, if the amount of them going on shooting sprees is any indication. Trump's own former FBI director confirmed as much during his first term, and the record has only skyrocketed since.

We have an attempted political assassination, a successful assassination, all of summer 2020

Two attempted assassinations on Trump, one from a right wing lunatic who also planned to kill Biden, and one from some politically confused lunatic who was a republican for most of his life and had a criminal record.

We also had a successful political assassination this year with Melissa Hortman, the attempted assassination of John Hoffman, their spouses, pets, and the plan to kill more Minnesota democrats, including Governor Tim Walz.  The shooter was a far right activist with a long, standing record and head of a security firm.  We had the attempted assassination of Governor Gretchen Whitmer.  We had Governor Josh Shapiro's house get firebombed.  We had J6.  We had that lunatic who, after Trump targeted the FBI for their "hoax" investigation, go into the Ohio FBI's office and get into a shootout.  We had the lunatic who, upon Trump calling CNN the enemy of the people, drive to CNN's HQ with a truck full of explosives and ammo because he intended to bomb the entire building and kill every single person inside.  We had the mass shooting two weeks ago, carried out by a republican.  We had an overwhelming amount of recorded shootings linked to conservative ideology.  

Again and again, all conservatives.

If you don't believe me, then by all means, do a little actual research and see for yourself the volume of right wing mass shooters versus left wing mass shooters. Ideally from a source with a solid reliability rating which you can check online.

numerous trans church-shootings as evidence of left-wing violence. You're not even close on this one.

By numerous, you mean two of recent memory?  The latest being someone who was "de-transitioned" and also a radicalized Nazi?  

He had a trans roommate. Meaning almost certainly leftist.

 
That doesn't mean "almost certainly leftist."  Plenty of young men in today's day in age don't hate trans people but also think right wingers are "based."  That was the whole point of TPUSA.  Try to make them hate who the older generations hated, and not all of it sticks.  It's not evidence of anything other than people desperate to create a narrative without anything concrete to make it stick. Isn't it republicans who love to say right wingers aren't a monolith?

For as corrupt as Patel and Bongino's FBI under Trump is, even they have admitted that they are struggling to find any tangible evidence that Tyler Robinson held any left wing ideology. If not wanting to crucify trans people on the spot makes him a leftist, then that's a whole other conversation that should be had with professionals.

Also, one of his rounds had "hey fascist" written on it. Do you really think some right-winger (almost all of which are more extreme than Kirk), is going to write "hey fascist" on a bullet casing? It's hard for me to believe you aren't playing dumb on this one.

And it's hard to believe that you're this out of date with evidence that was fact-checked almost immediately after Patel said that:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/ch...rcna230950

Charlie Kirk shooting suspect referenced fascism and memes on bullets, officials…
The suspect accused of fatally shooting conservative activist Charlie Kirk left beh…

"like the abortion ban that is now claiming the lives of a staggering amount of women in Texas right now"
If that's true, I don't support it.

 
https://www.texastribune.org/2024/10/30/...scarriage/

Texas woman dies after waiting 40 hours for miscarriage care | The Texas Tribune
Josseli Barnica is one of at least two pregnant Texas women who died after doctors …

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/11/27/...a-ngumezi/

A third Texas woman has died under the state abortion ban | The Texas Tribune
Porsha Ngumezi bled to death as she was miscarrying after her doctor opted against …

https://www.texastribune.org/2024/11/01/...an-emtala/

Nevaeh Crain died during a miscarriage after trying to get care in Texas hospita…
It took 20 hours and three ER visits before doctors admitted the pregnant 18-year-o…

And there are many more who are dying in parking lots and law enforcement is covering them up.

Abortion should be considered when the mother is in danger. The vast majority of abortions are done for convenience, though, so this legislation is at least a net positive.

 
You don't get to decide that.  Nor do you get to use your religion to enforce that onto others.  That's up to the women and the doctors, not the politicians and most certainly not the puritans.  If you don't want an abortion?  Don't get an abortion.  If you don't want women having abortions out of "convenience" for some weird reason, then create an economy that makes having children a more viable path for people who aren't born into wealth.

If you care so much about women you will never meet having kids you will never meet, strive to make a world that a kid can comfortably be born into. Not one where we now have systems for identifying dead children in schools if some mass shooter literally blows their heads off.

It's astonishing to me how leftists can focus on the suffering of women when it comes to abortion laws and yet have their eyes completely welded shut to the THOUSANDS OF BABIES THAT WERE SAVED FROM BEING MURDERED. How have they completely blinded themselves to mass death of innocent babies? Surely, there's something deeply rotten about these people.

A fetus is not a baby.  It's a clump of cells.  Remove a fetus from a womb before it's fermented into becoming a baby and it dies within hours.  A fetus removed from a womb cannot become a baby.  If a clump of cells cannot survive without the woman, then it's not a life.  It's cells en route to becoming life but until it does, it's just some thing that's still developing.

By that same backwards definition, anyone who's ever masturbated is a mass murderer because any number of those sperms could've also been on their way to becoming a bouncing baby American.  Yet, I imagine you aren't calling anyone who's ever pleasured themselves such things. Why not? Sperm may not be baby shaped, but it's just as much a "life" as a fetus is. And just like a fetus, without fermenting in someone's womb, it's nothing but cells.

If you want to talk about children getting slaughtered?  Aim that ire towards right wingers who care more about guns than kids, because apart from RFK Jr, the biggest killer of children is gun violence.  Where's the outrage for the threats to actual, living, breathing children?  Where's the call for real, tangible action?  Is it because punishing and controlling women to save something that isn't even a real life yet is easier and more convenient for you than the messy task of addressing gun control and the resurgence of preventable diseases brought on by the rise of anti-vaxxers?

More to the point, if abortions were murder, then all abortions would be unacceptable under any circumstances. After all, murder isn't acceptable ever, right? If it's suddenly not murder when it's a necessity, then it's not murder ever. This isn't about saving a life because until those cells can exist beyond the womb, it's not life. It's about control; telling women what they can and cannot do with their own bodies. From ignorant men who don't know the pain and risks of child birth, and don't care because in their eyes, that fetus matters more than the woman carrying it. If she didn't want to get pregnant, then she shouldn't have pre-marital sex, right? She should've saved herself for marriage. If she's bleeding out in a parking lot and if her complications result in her no longer being able to bare children, then "sucks to suck," right?

That has also happened, FYI. Women who weren't ready to have kids but wanted to eventually have them lost their ability to do so, thanks to hospitals refusing to treat them for emergency abortions brought on by these abortion bans, destroying their uteruses. The ones who weren't killed from it, at any rate.

And it's any wonder why people celebrated Kirk's death when he helped get us here through TPUSA indoctrinating young men into thinking any of the above is not only acceptable, but based to the extreme.

Sorry lad, we're not just flawed. We're ALL evil, every single one of us. Yes, there are levels to it, but we are all evil. If you really introspect, you'll find it.

I don't believe in god or religion, so I also don't believe in original sin.  I reserve "evil" for those who act in ways that harm others and do so with a smile on their face. "Everyone is evil" is a poor excuse to not bother even trying to be better.  It's an excuse to justify the cruelty the right is inflicting upon the whole world, be it Netanyahu's mass slaughter, the UK's full on anti-trans tilt, everything the Ayatollah does, and Trump's regime scapegoating the marginalized as they run this country into the ground.  

Why would you even think to say that as any kind of excuse for the horrible things Charlie Kirk and right wingers en masse have done?  Is it to hand wave their cruelty aside by saying "we're all just filth"?  You choose to believe in original sin, but a person isn't born deciding, "I'm gonna make millions by teaching young, ignorant men to assume all black people in high skill jobs got it to fill a quota and that all trans people are pedophiles."

Why should I subscribe to this? Is there a good reason? I'm willing to guess that this is a belief you think should be forced on Christians.

Yes, I absolutely believe that all Christians should be forced to mind their own business and stop telling others how to live their lives based on how Christians feel they should live their lives.  That's no "gotcha." That is 100% my perspective which should be forced upon all Christians and all religions.  Believe what you want, live a code of life as you see fit, whatever you feel will give you the best quality of life and will deliver you to your kingdom of heaven, if you choose to believe that. The second you force your beliefs onto me and demand that I live my life the way you want me to?  That's the moment we have a problem.

Jesus overrides every other rule I held. I'm going to continue to talk about the reality of god and take the punishment that comes with that. Nothing else matters.

Jesus taught love and kindness. Charlie Kirk taught hatred, cruelty, sexism and racism. Evangelicals teach the same. I hear a lot of god talk and very little of what the bible truly teaches; be good to those around you because they are all gods children and made in gods image.

Personally, I don't believe in god or heaven. I believe in making the most of what we have here on earth and trying my damnedest to treat others with kindness, dignity, sympathy, empathy and an open heart.

I also believe that if there actually is any god or heaven, then people like Kirk better like warm climates because the bible makes clear what awaits those who inflict cruelty upon others in the name of their lord.

At any rate, that's all I'm going to say on this matter. I'm not a "debate me, bro." I have zero interest in engaging with people who make clear they are not actually serious about hearing others out, and I've seen nothing that demonstrates any meaningful conversation awaits if I continue responding.

[TomRL101]

fellas this all gets a lot easier when you realize this is the idealogical backbone of Tom’s opinions:

How the mighty have fallen indeed