“We don’t believe those rights should be subjected to majority vote.”
Conservatives are testing new tactics to keep abortion off the ballot following a series of high-profile defeats.
In Arizona, Florida, Nevada and other states, several anti-abortion groups are buying TV and digital ads, knocking on doors and holding events to persuade people against signing petitions to put the issue before voters in November.
Republicans are also appealing to state courts to keep referendums off the ballot, while GOP lawmakers in states including Missouri and Oklahoma are pushing to raise the threshold for an amendment to pass or to make it to the ballot in the first place.
The emerging strategy aims to prevent abortion rights groups from notching their third, and largest, set of ballot measure victories since Roe v. Wade was overturned. And while conservatives celebrated the fall of Roe for returning the question of abortion rights to the people, these efforts are seen as an implicit admission that anti-abortion groups don’t believe they can win at the ballot box — even in red states — and that the best way to keep restrictions on the procedure is to keep voters from weighing in directly.
Conservatives: “States’ rights!”
Voters: “Ok.”
Conservatives: “Wait…NOT LIKE THAT!”
Conservatives: “Muh 2AAAAY!”
Groups Conservatives Hate and Threaten: sigh “When in
RomeCrazy Conservative Fascist Land…” buys guns “But we’re not going to cuddle with them while we rock ourselves to sleep or name them Betty lou.”Conservatives: “Wait…NOT LIKE THAT!”
POC, women and LGBT folks are, and have been, the biggest gun buying demographic for a few years. Ain’t that somethin’? This old white guy is here for it.
Gun are not magical protection talismans. Learn, train, go learn and train more. Know your rights, know the laws in your area.
There’s a steep learning/practice curve. For example, the safety rules are childishly simple. What’s not simple is practicing them religiously, practicing until mere knowledge becomes reflex.
And then you have to ask, and answer yourself, under what conditions am I willing to take a human life?
"I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father. I kill with my heart.”
― Stephen King, The Gunslinger
Think on it.
If you’re willing to go through all that, get a fucking gun. If not, do not.
As someone who served (for school, not the cause), I disagree.
If these fascists get their way and start coming for “undesirables,” better a poor shot than no shot at all. Training dramatically increases the chance of hitting someone, but again, better to have a chance than none at all.
And you can learn the basics in a couple outings. Guns are not a steep learning curve, especially if you focus on a single model. They’re so easy to learn, a willfully illiterate Alabamian can do it. The bar for a successful IKEA assembly is far higher.
Gun people, by that I mean gun fetishizers, just like to play pretend it’s highly technical to be a basic user. Like 90s dads with camcorders.
They’re a dangerous tool largely designed to be user friendly, nothing more.
Focusing on a single weapon is great, and a great point! LOL, I’m all over the place.
But the number of women I’ve dated that have a 9, uh, somewhere, uh, just in case… Having said that, the women I’ve taught are always far better than the guys.
You got a point in that something is better than nothing. Mostly. I just don’t want people carrying around guns when they haven’t made the commitment to training, safety and the law. Good way to get themselves, and others, in worse trouble.
From what people say on nextdoor.com, it’s astonishing what my neighbors think makes for a justified shooting.
And yes, I fully expect the fascists to come for many of us. We’ve had it easy and peaceful in America, pretty much forever. I’ve outlined a scenario many times where my conservative neighbors come to disarm me, “for my own good”.
Having said that, the women I’ve taught are always far better than the guys.
I suspect that’s the same reason all the women I’ve worked with in software development have been really good at their jobs: the ones who wouldn’t have been aren’t there at all in the first place.
The ones who were merely average were driven out early, along with some who were truly good.
Trades ringing in, that’s my theory, too.
I won’t commit to saying I can do something professionally unless I’m damned fucking sure I can, because any small failures will become glued in everyone’s memories, kind of like me being around at all tends to stand out. It’s exhausting.
Good points, and yeah ego gets in the way with a lot of CoD obsessed dudes.
I’d rather we didn’t live in gun dystopia, but the fascist gun nutters are ironically the reason why everyone else kind of needs one.
So with that said. Better to buy one commitment or no, with the only proviso being a trigger lock and keeping the key in a secured place. Then it’s an insurance policy if there’s violence in the streets. With any luck, You can easily fumble through looking through a keyhole or smart doorbell at a fascist banging on your door demanding to take/end you, bringing the gun downstairs quietly, aiming straight at the door, and clumsily shooting through.
Again, better that chance than just accepting violent death.
To that last point, it freaks me out how many people intend to lie down and die rather than fight back.
“You gonna fight tanks and planes, LOL!”
No. I’m going to defend my family and my home. If that means my death, that was in the cards anyway. Rather die with my boots on than starve on a train.
Better to die on your feet than live OR die on your knees. Agreed.
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Gun are not magical protection talismans. Learn, train, go learn and train more.
That’s what well-regulated militia are for.
Get a gun if you don’t want to put your life in someone else’s hands when the shit hits the fan.
They only like states’ rights when it’s a way infringe on individual rights.
…that is, if the “individuals” are women, minorities and / or impoverished
Regardless of the rhetoric, conservatives will always be regressive on women’s rights, minority rights, and human rights in general.
Unless you’re a wealthy white male (as in Wealthy; rich doesn’t cut it), voting republican is against your best interests.
Hell, even if you are wealthy, it’s not in your interest. Long term, they are just going to create an environment that is going to be hostile to them just existing. Both the actual environment and society.
The future doesn’t exist when you only think 1Q at a time
Precisely.
This is what baffles me about today. Strip our rights, steal our labor, and slap all that wealth within your fortress. Nothing is left to make society work after, so whats the goal? I won’t go to work if working gets me nothing. The snake has found its tail.
See: absolutely constitutionally legal slavery. You’ll work once the pain is bad enough and you’re not allowed to die. Also see: neofeudalism.
Even yallqueda has a tipping point when they realize they are on the menu. Unless you gradually lower the quality of life and human rights over many generations to normalize it, suddenly locking up the people of today would cause such a shock I’m sure chaos would ensue.
Isn’t that what’s going on right now? For a certain definition of “gradual”. From the Boomers, through Gen X, the Millennials and the Zoomers, slowly stripping away rights, liberties and privileges until everyone’s a renter living from penny to penny and absurd wealth like Elon is normalized alongside militarized police, daily school shootings, homelessness and unaffordable healthcare/college. Arrest 10-year-olds and put them in solitary, train them through the prison system to work for absolutely free (see: constitutionally legal slavery). Use “war on crime” and “war on drugs” as an excuse to do mass arrests and put people to work as actual, literal slaves in for-profit prison camps as “punishment” for the most petty and double-standard “crimes”. Normalize 24/7 surveillance, so your masters know where you are and what you’re doing at all times. Normalize random killings of “suspects”. Normalize rigged “elections”. Before you know it, suddenly locking up the people of today is not so shocking anymore.
It is, but look at the timeline. Boomers are still around. Gen X is still around. The scale at which this operation would need to execute is so massive that the elites who planted it wouldn’t stand under its shade. Therein lies the problem, the socipaths in charge want everything for themselves. They don’t care if their descendants rule the ashes, they want to. This insatiable need, coupled with their narcissistic brain patterns from a life of self-service, and where we are makes sense. We never left the jungle, we just plastered it in concrete.
“I do not want to see abortion put in our constitution,” said Rep. Brad Hudson, a Missouri Republican. “I believe the right to life is a fundamental right that all human beings have and certainly should not be taken away because of a vote by a simple majority.”
All of them said that each states’ citizens should determine its legality. Could it be that they are fucking liars?
Asking is a waste of breath
The party of “We-Can’t-Get-What-We-Want-So-We’ll-Change-The -Rules!” at work.
Nothing fascists hate more than a democratic process they haven’t rigged in their favor.
They get their way, they’ll start back dating who voted for what and punishing the people who they feel voted wrong accordingly. Petty, insecure little fuckers that they are.
They also don’t want liberal topics on the ballot because more liberals might want to come for that way.
republicans are concerned about two freedoms: the freedom to do what they want, and the freedom to force you to do what they want.
They realize if it goes to the polls, they will probably bring the opposition out.
Back in 1967 Democrats were pushing for safe abortions because women were dying from “back alley” abortions. Leap-frogging ahead, California governor Regan signed into law a very permissive abortion bill. He even toyed with requiring pregnant welfare women get abortions in order to get assistance money. A few years later polling told them that flipping to the other side of the issue could be made a vote winner so all Republicans suddenly became fetus lovers.
Yep
As long as there’re conservatives on the ballot there’s abortion on the ballot.
It must be nice to be a Republican voter. You never have to care about material conditions or the people around you. Just awful ass people. Other voters aren’t looking to make life worse for people.
This is really true. Conservatives vote to benefit themselves only. Lower taxes for me. Don’t let other people do things I don’t agree with. If I can’t have it, nobody can.
It’s such a selfish way to vote and govern.
it boggles my mind how anyone with a half a brain and any emotion can check that R box without dying a little inside.
ignorance is bliss, i spose?
Right-wing authoritarians (ie. conservatives) are more likely to be, in a word, stupid. Well, stupid and/or sociopaths.
Many of them literally can’t understand the world and therefore need a simplistic political ideology that emphasizes traditions and social norms, or they have dark triad personality traits and need a political ideology that centers around hurting the ones they don’t like.
Sources
In the present research (N = 675), we focus on the relationship between the dark side of human personality and political orientation and extremism, respectively, in the course of a presidential election where the two candidates represent either left-wing or right-wing political policies. Narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and everyday sadism were associated with right-wing political orientation, whereas narcissism and psychopathy were associated with political extremism. Moreover, the relationships between personality and right-wing political orientation and extremism, respectively, were relatively independent from each other.
We found eleven significant correlations between conservative [Moral Intuition Survey] judgments and the Dark Triad – all at significance level of p<.00001 – and no significant correlations between liberal [Moral Intuition Survey] judgments and the Dark Triad. We believe that these results raise provocative moral questions about the personality bases of moral judgments. In particular, we propose that because the Short-D3 measures three “dark and antisocial” personality traits, our results raise some prima facie worries about the moral justification of some conservative moral judgments
Despite their important implications for interpersonal behaviors and relations, cognitive abilities have been largely ignored as explanations of prejudice. We proposed and tested mediation models in which lower cognitive ability predicts greater prejudice, an effect mediated through the endorsement of right-wing ideologies (social conservatism, right-wing authoritarianism) and low levels of contact with out-groups. In an analysis of two large-scale, nationally representative United Kingdom data sets (N = 15,874), we found that lower general intelligence (g) in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology. A secondary analysis of a U.S. data set confirmed a predictive effect of poor abstract-reasoning skills on antihomosexual prejudice, a relation partially mediated by both authoritarianism and low levels of intergroup contact. All analyses controlled for education and socioeconomic status. Our results suggest that cognitive abilities play a critical, albeit underappreciated, role in prejudice. Consequently, we recommend a heightened focus on cognitive ability in research on prejudice and a better integration of cognitive ability into prejudice models.
We report longitudinal data in which we assessed the relationships between intelligence and support for two constructs that shape ideological frameworks, namely, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO). Participants (N = 375) were assessed in Grade 7 and again in Grade 12. Verbal and numerical ability were assessed when students entered high school in Grade 7. RWA and SDO were assessed before school graduation in Grade 12. After controlling for the possible confounding effects of personality and religious values in Grade 12, RWA was predicted by low g (β = -.16) and low verbal intelligence (β = -.18). SDO was predicted by low verbal intelligence only (β = -.13). These results are discussed with reference to the role of verbal intelligence in predicting support for such ideological frameworks and some comments are offered regarding the cognitive distinctions between RWA and SDO.
Conservatism and cognitive ability are negatively correlated. The evidence is based on 1254 community college students and 1600 foreign students seeking entry to United States’ universities. At the individual level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with SAT, Vocabulary, and Analogy test scores. At the national level of analysis, conservatism scores correlate negatively with measures of education (e.g., gross enrollment at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels) and performance on mathematics and reading assessments from the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) project. They also correlate with components of the Failed States Index and several other measures of economic and political development of nations. Conservatism scores have higher correlations with economic and political measures than estimated IQ scores.
Right-wing ideologies offer well-structured and ordered views about society that preserve traditional societal conventions and norms (e.g., Jost, Glaser, Kruglanski, & Sulloway, 2003). Such ideological belief systems are particularly attractive to individuals who are strongly motivated to avoid uncertainty and ambiguity in preference for simplicity and predictability (Jost et al., 2003; Roets & Van Hiel, 2011). Theoretically, individuals with lower mental abilities should be attracted by right-wing social-cultural ideologies because they minimize complexity and increase perceived control (Heaven, Ciarrochi, & Leeson, 2011; Stankov, 2009). Conversely, individuals with greater cognitive skills are better positioned to understand changing and dynamic societal contexts, which should facilitate open-minded, relatively left-leaning attitudes (Deary et al., 2008a; Heaven et al., 2011; McCourt, Bouchard, Lykken, Tellegen, & Keyes, 1999). Lower cognitive abilities therefore draw people to strategies and ideologies that emphasize what is presently known and considered acceptable to make sense and impose order over their environment. Resistance to social change and the preservation of the status quo regarding societal traditions—key principles underpinning right-wing social-cultural ideologies—should be particularly appealing to those wishing to avoid uncertainty and threat.
Indeed, the empirical literature reveals negative relations between cognitive abilities and right-wing social-cultural attitudes, including right-wing authoritarian (e.g., Keiller, 2010; McCourt et al., 1999), socially conservative (e.g., Stankov, 2009; Van Hiel et al., 2010), and religious attitudes (e.g., Zuckerman, Silberman, & Hall, 2013).
With Donald Trump the Republican nominee and Hillary Clinton the Democratic nominee for the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, speculations of why Trump resonates with many Americans are widespread-as are suppositionsof whether, independent of party identification, people might vote for Hillary Clinton. The present study, using a sample of American adults (n=406), investigated whether two ideological beliefs, namely, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) uniquely predicted Trump supportand voting intentions for Clinton. Cognitive ability as a predictor of RWA and SDO was also tested. Path analyses, controlling for political party identification,revealed that higher RWA and SDO uniquely predicted more favorable attitudes of Trump, greater intentions to vote for Trump, and lower intentions to vote for Clinton. Lower cognitive ability predicted greater RWA and SDO and indirectly predicted more favorable Trump attitudes, greater intentions to vote for Trump and lower intentionsto vote for Clinton.
In Study 1, alcohol intoxication was measured among bar patrons; as blood alcohol level increased, so did political conservatism (controlling for sex, education, and political identification). In Study 2, participants under cognitive load reported more conservative attitudes than their no-load counterparts. In Study 3, time pressure increased participants’ endorsement of conservative terms. In Study 4, participants considering political terms in a cursory manner endorsed conservative terms more than those asked to cogitate; an indicator of effortful thought (recognition memory) partially mediated the relationship between processing effort and conservatism. Together these data suggest that political conservatism may be a process consequence of low-effort thought; when effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases.
Thanks for assembling these!
Jokes on you, they are already dead inside.
MAGAs are rebelling against the notion that they are not a privileged group. They feel like it’s the libs (and the ‘fakenews’) fault that they aren’t succeeding.
If those pesky libs didn’t try to treat everyone the same (even the blacks and the LGBTs) they would still feel like they are the special important group like they did in the good old days.
They feel attacked at the mere notion they might not be inherently better than disadvantaged groups. Ultimately, they are hiding from the uncomfortable truth that they are just as shitty as everyone else. They’re not special. But Trump makes them feel special.
Beyond that, I think most of them genuinely believe that A) things were better in the past…even though it’s some because concept of the past, B) that when things were “better” for them, they were better for everyone, and C) if that means reverting in ways like rolling back racial equality, women’s rights, religious tolerance, diversity, marijuana reform, and LGBT progress…well, so be it.
To them, things were better back before all that happened, and they’re so convinced not only that it was better for them but for everyone, that they’re basically saying, “Shut up blacks, women, gays and lesbians, and everyone who isn’t a straight white Christian male. You don’t know what’s best for you. Things were better for us back then so they were better for you too…so we’re going to do everything in our power to revert back to that time.”
Honestly their warped thinking in this regard is disturbingly similar to the bullshit they’ve pushed schools to teach children about slavery in the South. Basically, “The slaves had no skills and through slavery they could learn some skills, so it was actually a benefit to them.”
Jokes on you, they have no fucking 🧠’s
For your average voter caught in the grift then yes… But when you look at the people running the show it’s more of a mixed bag. The grift changes. They talk about things in big purposefully narrow and oversimplified versions of leftist rhetoric about constitutional freedoms and equalities which spread power horizontally but their aim is to make it go vertical, create hierarchy. Abortion debate on it’s face is an emotional issue that people can get behind because “think of the litte unborn babies! Don’t they need freedoms?!” but you aren’t supposed to notice that reinforcing the traditional hierarchy of family by removing the choices of women makes it easier to place the entire category in a place where their labor, time effort and freedom of movement and self determination is taken by force. It makes women’s entire existence precarious because they might lose their careers and ability to move freely for something they have no reasonable control over. Any woman who becomes romantically entangled with a man, regardless of the quality of that relationship of that becomes at risk because they KNOW birth control even under perfect use conditions is not perfect and part of keeping most long term heterosexual relationships alive and fulfilling means putting a woman in some manner of danger of risking the life she wants to lead a couple of times a week… And as for anything outside of that arrangement they want that to burn too.
At the top they aren’t stupid. They just don’t want a democracy they want hierarchy and they are smart enough to trick people into believing that their world view is still democratic.
10/10 read. Very well said 👏
Like I said in my earlier comment, conservatives tend to be either stupid and/or sociopaths. Generally it seems that the “rank and file” are the stupid ones, while the manipulative sociopaths are the ones running the show.
Looking at the American Conservative pool there’s some muddying of the water. I imagine if you keep slamming garbage into the system eventually the pool you draw your enthusiastic support from will feed back into itself. Sorting your idiots from your proper authoritarian scum though isn’t particularly worthwhile… As long as whatever nonsense you throw into the program is effective in obtaining the objectives you want it doesn’t matter who is a true believer of the grift versus one who understands the point. But I think it’s a mistake to call them idiots. That tends to make them seem less threatening and if you engage with their rhetoric with the aim of exposing idiocy and hypocrisy you will usually lose the ear of those who are being duped. You have to treat those who are caught in the grift respectfully like intelligent humans who have the capacity to make up their own minds or else they shut down and the programming takes over.
Calling them idiots is statistically accurate, and you can find a bunch of studies to that effect in the comment I linked to.
Being stupid doesn’t make them less threatening, though, and I’d be inclined to argue it makes them even more dangerous; a stupid person is much more liable to make, well, stupid choices, and choices that hurt not only others but even themselves
It’s propaganda. It always is. No one is the villan in their own story, the media they consume tells them they’re the oppressed ones and so they become the “hero” when they fight oppression.
Anything the Republicans do that is shitty gets spun or completely ignored by the propagandists. There are no right wingers who think they’re doing a bad thing by voting R, they think they’re saving America…
Thanks Rupert fucking Murdock. I can’t wait for you to join Kissinger.
i don’t understand why they care so much about this
It is a (dying) polarizing issue in order to try to maximize as many of the Christian demographic votes as much as possible. After this it is just the LGBQT+ issues and that’ll probably be a dead issue in a decade. It isn’t their only demographic or their only hot issues but right now the numbers are pretty split. If they lose more of the Christian demographic the numbers will probably start earning them a disadvantage.
You’ll know they’re very scared when they start pushing to increase voter age because younger voters don’t have enough life experience to make wise decisions or some other trash. To have any chance of success they’ll have to somehow get moderates behind them with something unpopular with youth, so maybe like a war with Iran (I’m not saying it would be unpopular with young voters but they may not want yet another generation off to war) or something.
They’ve already been trying to bring “raise the voting age” into discussions.
Republicans LOVE the Constitution!
Except for the ones about Voting Age, Religion, Search and Seizure. . .
Rule and control.
It ain’t the bible. Abortion is OK in the bible.
As one who used to share their beliefs, let me explain. Putting aside the folks who cynically use the issue for political purposes, the grassroots pro-lifers simply believe the fetus is a human being (what else would it be?) and thus it has human rights. The mother also has rights. So what do you do if two people’s rights collide? You look at the harm inflicted. For the one, it means expense, inconvenience, discomfort, and sometimes life-threatening danger. For the other, it means death.
Pro-lifers do not all draw the line at the timing or circumstances they believe acceptable to allow abortion. But all believe there need to be limits. All believe it’s a human rights issue, that an abortion kills an innocent human being.
To them, this issue is our generation’s Holocaust. That is why they can’t just sit by and let it happen without a fight.
They miss one important aspect. No matter the relative harm inflicted, no human being has a right to demand the use of another human being’s body.
You can’t even force marrow or blood donation, let alone kidney or liver. Even after someone is dead, no one has a right to their body without consent. Yet, women are being forced to donate their bodies to someone else?
There is no legal right to that.
I agree with you. Yours is the best argument to counter the pro-life folks. If my brother needs a kidney to survive and I am the only matching donor, I still have the right to refuse and nobody is allowed strap me down and take my kidney by force, even though my refusal is a death sentence for my brother.
The only difference I see is kind of a “trolley problem.” In the case of abortion, you’re not simply refusing to help and letting nature take its course. Instead you’re actively killing a human being in order to free the mother from having to sustain it for a short time.
Any way you look at it, though, the best thing to do is to prevent unwanted pregnancy in the first place. But when you look at most pro-lifer’s beliefs, you find that they are opposed to birth control, sex education, as well as social services to aid needy children and mothers with prenatal care, food, housing, health care, jobs, childcare, etc. At that point, their hypocrisy is blindingly apparent. It’s not really about saving life, it’s about punishing women for the sin of enjoying sex.
And in order to punish the “sinners,” they are willing to sacrifice the lives and health of women who find themselves in the horrible position of needing to terminate a planned or wanted pregnancy for legitimate medical reasons.
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I have actually given birth.
Then I’m stunned that you don’t realize the risks.
I don’t approve of the conservative lifestyle. Very non-trad.
All laws that impact our rights should be up for a vote. Then after X number of years they should be back on the ballot to see if the public opinion has changed
they should be back on the ballot to see if the public opinion has changed
Not without mandatory voting, but sure.
If it’s difficult to whip up enthusiasm for a second round of political fervor, and it is, then this just ends up being a vector for attack.
Remember, they see family values as their ability to conform others against their will to the household family model.
A conservative utopia is a single family home in which no escape lays for the children and mother and they are completely at the command, mercy, and whim of the authority of the household head.
Policy which disempowers abusers ability to extort compliance from others will always attract the ire of the right in the west. It is geopolitical realism in the household, there are no sovereign states besides the world leaders, only pieces which the leaders may trade and cajole at their leisure, and any attempt to uproot this “reality” is idealism and should be treated as idiocy, then persecuted if the gaslighting fails.
I like how you write, PhlubbaDubba.
Mama always said I had the soul of a poet, she was less than thrilled when my dad convinced me to go to engineering school lol
Does anyone remember the phrase ‘Compassionate Conservatism’ from the 90s?
That sure, uh, worked out well…
Bush and McCain really fought hard for it but the cognitive dissonance of islamophobic state endorsed propaganda and presidential candidates and leaders insisting Muslims are friendos proved too much for the Republican brain to handle.
Especially when Obama became president and put yet another nail in the coffin of them being able to say the N-Word without being treated like trash by everyone else for it.
The phrase is an implicit admission that conservatism is inherently without compassion.
Do the Democrats even try to do a fraction of a percentage of litigation that the anti-voting rights Nazis do?
Lawyers are expensive and big Corp funds these terrorists to get tax breaks and friendly legislation.
Oh yeah… Citizens United and lobbying
