Obligatory “The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion”
https://joycearthur.com/abortion/the-only-moral-abortion-is-my-abortion/
Exactly. “I thought -I- would be allowed to get an abortion when I needed to, because I’m not evil or poor like the babykillers I talk about in church. I’m a good person - it’s just a baby would ruin my life (usually = disclose my cheating/premarital sex/be inconvenient) so it’s different.” It’s the classic “rules for thee but not for me” of extremists.
A majority of conservatives in WWII Germany also claimed to not be aware that millions of innocent people were being exterminated. Conservatives do two things consistently… They harm others and they deny it.
In illustration of that point:
Only one of my ten Nazi friends saw Nazism as we—you and I—saw it in any respect. This was Hildebrandt, the teacher. And even he then believed, and still believes, in part of its program and practice, “the democratic part.” The other nine, decent, hard-working, ordinarily intelligent and honest men, did not know before 1933 that Nazism was evil. They did not know between 1933 and 1945 that it was evil. And they do not know it now. None of them ever knew, or now knows, Nazism as we knew and know it; and they lived under it, served it, and, indeed, made it.
As we know Nazism, it was a naked, total tyranny which degraded its adherents and enslaved its opponents and adherents alike; terrorism and terror in daily life, private and public; brute personal and mob injustice at every level of association; a flank attack upon God and a frontal attack upon the worth of the human person and the rights which that worth implies. These nine ordinary Germans knew it absolutely otherwise, and they still know it otherwise. If our view of National Socialism is a little simple, so is theirs. An autocracy? Yes, of course, an autocracy, as in the fabled days of “the golden time” our parents knew. But a tyranny, as you Americans use the term? Nonsense.
When I asked Herr Wedekind, the baker, why he had believed in National Socialism, he said, “Because it promised to solve the unemployment problem. And it did. But I never imagined what it would lead to. Nobody did.” I thought I had struck pay dirt, and I said, “What do you mean, ‘what it would lead to,’ Herr Wedekind?” “War,” he said. “Nobody ever imagined it would lead to war.”
The evil of National Socialism began on September 1, 1939; and that was my friend the baker.
Remember—none of these nine Germans had ever traveled abroad (except in war); none had ever known or talked with a foreigner or read the foreign press; none ever wanted to listen to the foreign radio when it was legal to do so, and none (except, oddly enough, the policeman) listened to it when it was illegal. They were as uninterested in the outside world as their contemporaries in France—or America. None of them ever heard anything bad about the Nazi regime except, as they believed, from Germany’s enemies, and Germany’s enemies were theirs. “Everything the Russians and the Americans said about us,” said Cabinetmaker Klingelhöfer, “they now say about each other.”
Men think first of the lives they lead and the things they see; and not, among the things they see, of the extraordinary sights, but of the sights which meet them in their daily rounds. The lives of my nine friends—and even of the tenth, the teacher—were lightened and brightened by National Socialism as they knew it. And they look back at it now—nine of them, certainly—as the best time of their lives; for what are men’s lives? There were jobs and job security, summer camps for the children and the Hitler Jugend to keep them off the streets. What does a mother want to know? She wants to know where her children are, and with whom, and what they are doing. In those days she knew or thought she did; what difference does it make? So things went better at home, and when things go better at home, and on the job, what more does a husband and father want to know? The best time of their lives.
There were wonderful ten-dollar holiday trips for the family in the “Strength through Joy” program, to Norway in the summer and Spain in the winter, for people who had never dreamed of a real holiday trip at home or abroad. And in Kronenberg “nobody” (nobody my friends knew) went cold, nobody went hungry, nobody went ill and uncared for. For whom do men know? They know people of their own neighborhood, of their own station and occupation, of their own political (or nonpolitical) views, of their own religion and race. All the blessings of the New Order, advertised everywhere, reached “everybody.”
There were horrors, too, but these were advertised nowhere, reached “nobody.” Once in a while (and only once in a while) a single crusading or sensation-mongering newspaper in America exposes the inhuman conditions of the local county jail; but none of my friends had ever read such a newspaper when there were such in Germany (far fewer there than here), and now there were none. None of the horrors impinged upon the day-to-day lives of my ten friends or was ever called to their attention. There was “some sort of trouble” on the streets of Kronenberg as one or another of my friends was passing by on a couple of occasions, but the police dispersed the crowd and there was nothing in the local paper. You and I leave “some sort of trouble on the streets” to the police; so did my friends in Kronenberg.
- They Thought They Were Free- The Germans, 1933-45
And the award for the most depressing and paralyzing thing I’ve read all year goes to…
Except, here in the US, the neo-nazis aren’t even concerned with making their constituents’ lives better. They make them as bad as they possibly can, and their cult still doesn’t believe it
That’s the beauty of sado-populism
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Enact policy that hurts your constituents
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Blame out-group du jour for the problem
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Run on “stopping” said out-group
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Rinse and repeat, change out-group as necessary.
Populism is always bad. Be it left or right, conservative or liberal, socialist or capitalist. It is always reactionary and never leads anywhere sane or sober.
Can you please define what you view as “populism”? For whatever reason every time someone says it they either mean a definition so vague and broad that it means almost any mass movement or definition different from any other I’ve heard.
I have spent the past few weeks constantly getting more and more confused.
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Well that was a hard dose of reality for a Friday afternoon.
*All’s quiet on the Western Front *
Is a very good book and movie that shows the nightmare unfolding and how the main characters react to WW1, and the horror at the end when they see it all new again for the leading up to WW2. Best movie besides Das Boot to humanize the enemy and get into their lives to see how the majority of them were tricked into war
I read All Quiet last year. It’s definitely worth reading if you want to be reminded about just how terrible and ultimately pointless waging war is.
Which version of all quiet on Western front do you like?
The movie always stands out in my mind. Its beautifully shot and the respect that the director gave to the material is very iconic to me. I have only listened to an audio book of it, so I cant say that I really trudged through reading it. The message about trying to empathize with the enemy is something that I feel close to. My grandfathers mother remembered her grandfather Red Cloud in stories that she told her grandchildren and were told to me. I think about how close those historical people like my grandfather Red Cloud or Sitting Bull or Crazyhorse and how they are not that far away from me today. My mothers cousins remember their grandmother talking about being at Wounded Knee looking for survivors with her mother. The idea behind the pain and suffering that war brings to everyone is a good reminder that most people are caught in a situation and its always good to think about walking a mile in their shoes before you judge them and then take up arms to kill them.
There are multiple movies, which year?
the old one, the 1930 film
I havent seen any other. Was the modern remake any good?
Who is the author of this? Great stuff.
Milton Mayer wrote it in 1955.
It’s the best description I’ve read of how fascism takes hold of a country; essential reading for our times.
If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked— if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non- Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C?
That was a terrible read, but thank you for posting it. It lines up with exactly what I’m seeing now: a sheer and utter lack of being informed. You see it in every poll of what people think, it’s incredible.
This is surely before they started rounding off Jews right? I find it impossible to “not know” such a thing is happening without some cognitive dissonance going on
It is not. The baker he refers to was one of the Nazis who rounded them up; it was more or less an open secret. People just went along:
Anti-Nazis no less than Nazis let the rumors pass—if not rejecting them, certainly not accepting them; either they were enemy propaganda or they sounded like enemy propaganda, and, with one’s country fighting for its life and one’s sons and brothers dying in war, who wants to hear, still less repeat, even what sounds like enemy propaganda?
Who wants to investigate the reports? Who is “looking for trouble”? Who will be the first to undertake (and how undertake it?) to track down the suspicion of governmental wrongdoing under a governmental dictatorship, to occupy himself, in times of turmoil and in wartime with evils, real or rumored, that are wholly outside his own life, outside his own circle, and, above all, outside his own power? After all, what if one found out?
Suppose that you have heard, secondhand, or even firsthand, of an instance in which a man was abused or tortured by the police in a hypothetical American community. You tell a friend whom you are trying to persuade that the police are rotten. He doesn’t believe you. He wants firsthand or, if you got it secondhand, at least secondhand testimony. You go to your original source, who has told you the story only because of his absolute trust in you. You want him now to tell a man he doesn’t trust, a friend of the police. He refuses. And he warns you that if you use his name as authority for the story, he will deny it. Then you will be suspect, suspected of spreading false rumors against the police. And, as it happens, the police in this hypothetical American community, are rotten, and they’ll “get” you somehow.
So, after all, what if one found out in Nazi Germany (which was no hypothetical American community)? What if one came to know? What then?
- They Thought They Were Free- The Germans, 1933-45
They were told the Jews were being relocated.
At 80%, a lot of people who aren’t conservatives are ill-informed.
Of Women in Texas 70% are right wing
Of Women in Texas 82% are Christian
Let’s be real here, it’s mostly conservatives.
I clicked through and am seeing 38% of women are conservative and 32% are moderate. Why would moderates be considered “right wing”?
i suppose because the overton window in the US has shifted so far to the right that US moderates would be right wingers in most of the first world.
I mean, that’s probably correct. I just am trying to figure out why it’s a valid inference in this particular poll.
They’re not ill-informed, they’re wilfully ignorant.
Good point.
Given that abortion has been banned in the state for two years, one would think people would be aware that, well, abortion has been banned in the state for two years — but 73 percent of those surveyed incorrectly believed that abortions were still available at abortion clinics in the state. Twenty-one percent believed that people were still regularly getting abortions at those clinics.
Goddamn. Maybe those republiQan women weren’t evil, just ignorant as hell?
I’ve said this plenty and people tend to agree with me even if their first reaction is to fight me on it, conservative women are some of the most if not the most stupid people in the US. At least conservative men have something to gain by voting the way they do, but conservative women literally vote to get their own rights taken away.
I don’t even say this trying to be mean, I wish they got what they deserved and by that I mean healthcare, education and whatever social program they needed to be happy and safe. Unfortunately they constantly vote against me wanting the best for them.
They need to all be sat down and forced to watch The Handmaid’s tale, with a constant reminder they won’t be one of the rich wives.
Unfortunately some of them want it. Check out trad wives, it’s sad.
Meh, that’s the thing about choice. If they and their partner want to live that way they can choose to do so, as long as they aren’t trying to force others to also live that way.
I get it and agree with you but these are also the type of people who want everyone to go back to that and go out of their way to insult people who don’t live that lifestyle.
One of the big points was that even the rich wives had a horrendous life. Indeed, even the men.
Serena Joy hated her situation, did she not?
My wife’s mother told her not to worry about abortion being banned because “people won’t let that happen”. Umm. Except it already has.
There was a brief record scratch moment when the abortion ban stuff happened, but the trumpers I know got right back on the bandwagon and are now talking “white replacement theory.”
Ugh, that’s gone mainstream?
Sure has. It’s pretty easy for Nazi talking points to go mainstream when the richest person in the country, who also controls a social media platform, is a Nazi. And the ex-president is a Nazi.
This sort of thing shouldn’t be surprising anymore.
“I don’t need to vote. People will never let Trump get elected.” Wanna bet she will never change her mind on this stance either? Like, “Yes, Trump got elected once, but people won’t let him get elected again, so I don’t need to vote.” Ugh, I am getting angry at this straw man of your wife’s mother now.
WILLFUL IGNORANCE OF OTHERS PAIN IS EVIL
It’s the Nuremturd defense. “I was just followink LibsofTikTok”.
There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.
Greg Abbot is a little piss baby.
Sounds like a direct quote from George W Bush, which is a fucked up version of the original idiom: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”
To his credit, he realized on the fly that if he said “shame on me,” it would be on The Daily Show that evening.
People like to laugh at that quote but it’s about as good of a fumble recovery as anyone could have done in that situation. Dubya was no fool, despite his “bumbling everyman” persona.
He’s the Boris Johnson of America, if the brits need a translation.
Maybe, but it would’ve been joked about once and been done, whereas his wrong quote in fact was on The Daily Show that night AND we’re still talking about how dumb he sounded 20+ years later. Typical con behavior really-- doing something in the moment that only other cons think is the better choice but really fucks things up for decades.
See, I disagree here, I like to believe there would have been a “shame on me” rap produced from it.
I guess that’s a possibility, but would it still be getting plays 20 years later? Why would that one phrase be so bad compared to all the other dumb shit he said? There were compilations of his idiotic quotes and people barely make specific references to those now anyway, partly because it’s been so long and partly because his dumbassery has been overshadowed by the more recent GOP fascism.
That’s it- exactly 👍
When they vote with their middle fingers stuffed in their ears I’m not sure what they thought was going to happen. They got exactly what they wanted.
You mean Texans are stupid and ignorant?! Shocked pikachu.
This sounds like a failure on Democrats to get information out.
Yes, we all know Republicans like to keep people ignorant, but this should be a slam dunk informational campaign for the Democrats: “here is a case where a woman needed and really should have been given an abortion. She was denied. Here is where you can find the court case.”
I’m certain the Democrats have purposely put off abortion rights and housing prices so they can promise something for the next election. I don’t even think Biden has really talked about abortion in any meaningful way between his election and last March.
This sounds like a failure on Democrats to get information out.
Actually, yes! I haven’t even read the rest of your comment yet.
God damn the DNC needs to go harder.
Too many Democrats still think their copilot is a rational actor and not a coked out gorilla. Reaching across the aisle hasn’t been an option for at least a decade but the democrats want to just act like the coked out gorilla holding the other yoke is willing to go back to a pre-Reagan era of collaborative legislation. We need to vote the republican party out of relevance, and then vote the apologist democrats out if relevance to so we can get some actual election reform
That’s only gonna happen if you can get leftists to vote in local elections and primaries instead of getting pissed at moderates for picking the wrong candidate and opting out of the system. Conservatives are pretty awful, but every election plays out the same…all those complaining and claiming never-Trump status will all fall in line before November. Yeah, it makes a lot of them look spineless, but you can’t argue that they haven’t pulled their party in the direction they wanted.
100%, and I see SO MANY pissy high brow leftists working against their own best interests here on Lemmy. We need to show democrats that we have the voting power to stop the parade of neo liberals in big elections when the average democrat voter is social liberal (and the non-participant would be voters and third party voters are even more socially oriented than that)
I’m all for blaming Dems for being ineffectual cowards but this is one topic they have been very happy to shout about. As the artice points out, the media does not have to report it:
There’s also the fact that we have a very divided media and the media a lot of people get — and, more importantly, trust — does not tell them about things like this.
Then they have been shouting about it in the wrong places if 80% of Republican supporting women have no idea. Run some ads in more visible spaces.
I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.
And yet most will keep voting Republican and then complain when they become handmaids…
Vote for Leopard Leopold Facemuncher 2026! 🐆
Because they don’t even know it’s a problem. That is the conclusion of the survey. I feel like this is a prime opportunity for an information campaign:
“This woman has an entropic pregnancy”
Clip of a doctor briefly explaining what an entropic pregnancy is and how they are always unviable.
“She was denied an abortion in Texas and would have died if she did not go to a different state that still allows abortions. Here is where you can read the court case.”
This isn’t exactly surprising. With over 60% of Americans busting ass at multiple low paying jobs just to scrape by living paycheck to paycheck, many don’t have time to stay informed on political developments, even major ones such as this.
It’s not a big, it’s a feature!
oh, there are exceptions – but only for the elites
Yeah, came here to say “money” 😁
Something something leopards and faces
Their thinking (or lack thereof) is the flaw. That’s how you arrive here.
Is there a reason that the ‘do no evil’ is always dropped from the 4?
The 3 shown are part of evil; the ones who “don’t see it, don’t speak of it, don’t hear of it.” They are the banility of evil, the enablers.
I’ve never heard of a 4th accompanying the 3. It seems to me that they would not travel together.
I never had, either, but it does exist.
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This is what happens when Democrats fail to get the word out
