Category Archives: Media

The Trump Years

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I expected Trump to rip a hole in the fabric of reality so we could look through it to a deeper truth about the human experience. And he did exactly that.
      –Scott Adams

With minds still in a spin that we’d gladly forget,
On General Soleimani and Jussie Smollett,
And those years of disease, those years of confusion,
Either swelling a crowd size or concocting collusion,

He called the news fake, and lo, it became so,
Was there ever such power since God started this show?
God lit the darkness, but Trump lit the fuse,
Only the metastasis of chaos keeps him amused.

Whom he poses with today is disposed of the next week,
In that spinning black whirlpool down that dead-end creek.

We observed what that orange-tinged tar-baby did,
And now we aspire to out-juvenile the next kid.
He yanked each and every one into his vortex,
Put that in your pipe to enlighten your cortex.

The Covington kids seemed like good ones to demonize,
If you can’t catch the big fish, be content with the second prize.

All the sources that we trusted and loved so well
Said “Just click on us to hear the next bombshell.”
Bombshell after bombshell was promised all those years,
Some bursting in air, some just clogging our ears.

Yeats doubted the future of the human soul
For weasels fighting in a hole;
Trump pried open our minds to rip off the veneer –
What swirls inside is a climate of fear.

Yet we now notice the same (if that’s any defense)
In the mind of artificial intelligence.

Old Cronkite had conjured a belief in community;
That 46 we elected is the deep fake of unity.

Yes, a showman lurched over toward political spaces,
He said, “Heere’s some entertainment! – check them angry faces.”*
And now that we’ve done those years pointing and jeering,
Let’s together all hold hands, like at the Kavanaugh hearing.

* Scott Adams once said that Trump, coming from an entertainment background, had combined politics with entertainment, and that those who get upset at him are part of the show.

      30 May 2023

A Look at a Major New York Times Article

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Secular Pro-Life has published an article of mine under their paid blogging program.

 

Some further thoughts on the SPL blog post:

Looking again at the post, I regret the wording “The editorial board who wrote this [NY Times] article are either obtuse or dishonest.” I don’t think it was inaccurate to say that, but I’m normally careful to follow the advice of The Economist Style Guide: “Do not be hectoring or arrogant. . . . Nobody needs to be described as silly: let your analysis prove that he is.” So I apologize. I could have simply pointed out that the article is full of untruths and sloppy logic, without becoming personal.

 

You may leave a reply, if you wish, without giving your name or email address. If you do give your email address, it will not be published. Back up your work as you type, in case of accidents.

Some future posts:

Life Panels

A Trade-Off of a Sensitive Nature

Unborn Child-Protection Legislation, the Moral Health of Society, and the Role of the American Democratic Party

The Motivations of Aborting Parents

Why Remorse Comes Too Late

The Kitchen-Ingredients Week-After Pill

Unwanted Babies and Overpopulation

The Woman as Slave?

Abortion and the Map of the World

Falsehoods and Sloppy Logic in a Major New York Times Article

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On December 28, 2018, The New York Times published a 13,500-word article attributed to its editorial board. A comprehensive critique of that article is in the works. Here I will just offer a list of some of the specific falsehoods, and instances of poor logic, in the article:

That long attack on fetal personhood nowhere directly addresses the question, Is the unborn in fact a person, and thus entitled to rights? In terms of any direct examination, the question remains an elephant in the room throughout the article. But the article strongly suggests that the unborn child is actually a zero as regards moral importance. According to the authors, any ostensible belief in fetal personhood is mainly a ruse to mask social reaction . . . to a perceived new permissiveness in the 1970s.

That implication by the authors that those who champion fetal personhood do not really believe in it is overwhelmingly false, and they seem to be trying hard to avoid the elephant in the room, the obvious question right under their noses – which would be a form of intellectual dishonesty. Only in one sentence near the end do the authors address at all whether it is possible that a fetus is, in fact, a person. That sentence is, And it reflects a tragic reality: There are circumstances in which the interests of a fetus and those of a pregnant woman collide. But if the death of a fetus is truly a tragedy, then why the authors’ sly (or unthinking) suggestions to the effect that any “tragedy” is just a ruse employed by neurotic personalities, and that Ronald Reagan was only convinced by cynical “Republican strategists” to deem it a tragedy?

Another example in the article of misrepresentation of facts –

Right in the second paragraph is this claim:

In fact, a fetus need not die for the state to charge a pregnant woman with a crime. Women who fell down the stairs, who ate a poppy seed bagel and failed a drug test or who took legal drugs during pregnancy — drugs prescribed by their doctors — all have been accused of endangering their children.

The first sentence (in the context of an article about “a relatively new [legal] concept”) implies that the woman who fell down the stairs broke some Iowa law by doing so. An actual glance at the linked article is enough to show that that implication is false. And the “poppy seed” article linked to does not actually use the word “accuse” nor report any accusations in any legal sense of the word. The same with the “legal drugs” article.

Two examples in the article of poor logic –

What if, as many opponents of abortion hope, the court rules that the fetus has “personhood” rights under the Constitution?

In that event, all abortions would be illegal

This does not follow logically. The statement is arbitrary. Their premise seems to be that it can never be legal to kill a person, but we know that that is not true.

The doctrine of fetal personhood represents a sharp break from the great traditions of Western law that, at their philosophical core, seek to preserve space for the individual to live free from the tremendous power of the state.

If we’re going to appeal to the great traditions of Western law, women won’t be allowed to vote or own land.

Here are some further examples in the article of falsehood, misrepresentation of facts, lack of supporting evidence, or poor logic. I won’t explain the problems with these statements unless requested. Probably those who have read the article can see the problems –

Some common forms of birth control could become illegal if personhood becomes accepted law. And, for many anti-abortion activists, that’s the goal.

the feticide law and increase the maximum penalty for feticide to 20 years, which prosecutors apply to. . . . convict Purvi Patel of feticide and child neglect after she took pills to induce an abortion at least 23 weeks into her pregnancy.

a dead woman was kept on life support against her wishes

the anti-abortion movement’s determination to establish the legal “personhood” of fetuses — and to make sure that their rights supersede those of the women who are carrying them. In 1984, the conservative activist Paul Weyrich, the founding president of the Heritage Foundation, explained: “I believe that if you have to choose between new life and existing life, you should choose new life. The person who has had an opportunity to live at least has been given that gift by God and should make way for new life on earth.”

A pregnant woman would cease to exist as an autonomous person.

In the unimaginably hard, profoundly intimate moments when a pregnant woman must weigh her own needs against the possibilities of a fetus growing inside her

Political ambition has also played a powerful role.

(c) 2019

 

P.S. January 14, 2019: The above-mentioned comprehensive critique of the Times article is now ready: “A Look at a Major New York Times Article”

 

You may leave a reply, if you wish, without giving your name or email address. If you do give your email address, it will not be published. Back up your work as you type, in case of accidents.

Some future posts:

Life Panels

A Trade-Off of a Sensitive Nature

Unborn Child-Protection Legislation, the Moral Health of Society, and the Role of the American Democratic Party

The Motivations of Aborting Parents

Why Remorse Comes Too Late

The Kitchen-Ingredients Week-After Pill

Unwanted Babies and Overpopulation

The Woman as Slave?

Abortion and the Map of the World

A Stopgap Response to Robin Marty’s Coverage of the March for Life

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I may expand on this later.

Robin Marty, a pro-choice activist, has covered the recent March for Life here.

The article surprised pro-lifers with its relative fairness. Though not neglecting to make a couple of criticisms of it, Kelsey Hazzard of Secular Pro-Life wrote, “But on the whole it was a much fairer piece than we would have gotten from any other pro-choice writer.” I don’t doubt that this is true.

However, let’s look at an important theme of the article. At one point Marty quotes Jill Stanek as saying, “Well, of course we want to get into the mainstream,” and Stanek’s son-in-law Andy Moore as saying, “We’d be more than happy to keep separate.” But there’s something strange about this. For one thing, Marty doesn’t quote Moore as using the word “mainstream.” Is Marty sure that he was referring to the mainstream — and not meaning, for example, “We’d be more than happy to keep separate from pro-choicers”? There is a difference between a dislike of socializing with some people, and being out of the mainstream. Wouldn’t a reluctance to be in the mainstream mean that one does not even want one’s policy views to prevail?

And regarding what Stanek said, well, with most Americans favoring some abortion restrictions, aren’t pro-lifers in the mainstream, which would also place their leadership in the mainstream? I wonder if Stanek said “mainstream media” rather than “mainstream.”

Stanek has tweeted regarding this, “I don’t remember what I said or the exact context of the sentence that came b4.”

If I understand correctly, by “sentence that came b4” Stanek is referring to Marty’s: “I had told [Stanek] that the part that stuck out to me most was this idea of an alternative culture that could stand as a complete counterpart to the world the rest of us interacted in, creating its own reality that anti-abortion and especially Christian conservative true believers could exist in, untouched.”

The main interpretive theme of the article, running alongside its fascinating factual coverage of the March, seems to be that pro-life activists are younger and more numerous and more well-intentioned, and even more joyous, than Marty expected, but that nevertheless they are out of touch with reality.

A willingness to take a fresh look is unusual in public discourse, and praiseworthy. But what about the concept that pro-life activists are out of the mainstream and that some of them don’t even want to be in it?

A serious minority party or movement is usually said to be “the opposition,” but not out of the mainstream. Activists for any cause are always in a minority, but if the cause itself is popular, do we say that the activists are out of the mainstream? Those who actually marched for civil rights in Washington in 1963 were in a small minority in the US, but were they in a “bubble”?

Marty tries to support her “bubble” idea by noting that “The ‘us versus the rest of the world’ theme was consistent through the panels I attended.” But surely that is a fairly common denominator of all struggles against oppression, and pro-lifers feel that their unborn sisters and brothers are oppressed.

So the best way to make sense of the idea that pro-life activists are out of the mainstream (and that some of them don’t even want to be in it) is to infer that to Marty, their being out of the mainstream does not reflect on their numbers or their seriousness about changing policy, but rather is synonymous with their “creating [their] own reality” where their ideas will not be threatened.

And what is the real reality that, to Marty, pro-life activists are out of touch with? It is that an unborn child is a “life,” whereas its mother is a “person”: I will never, ever believe that the rights of a life developing in the womb outweigh the rights of the person carrying it, or that she has an obligation once pregnant to provide society with a live, full-term infant regardless of her own emotional or medical needs. (Which also seems to echo the occasionally-heard conspiracy theory that pro-lifers are motivated by a desire to increase population.)

The “reality” that an unborn child is not a person is of course almost the main crux of the abortion issue and is normally admitted by both sides to be highly subjective. In another post, I looked at it this way:

In thinking of the unborn, some people tend to perceive a still picture, an organism frozen in time, while some tend to perceive a process. If you kill a small clump of cells lacking, perhaps, even a beating heart, is it correct to say that you are killing an organism whose life presently has little value, or to say that you are depriving it of the complete human life which has started as a process? In fact, both statements are correct. Obviously the perception of a process is a more complete perception. If one does perceive a process, then one will also intuit that the unborn is a full-fledged member of human society, and will call it a person. But there is no way to prove logically that the process model is more valid morally than the frozen-in-time model as a basis for deciding the fate of the organism. . . . I would call the “process” perception of the unborn holistic, and would call the frozen-in-time perception reductive or mechanistic; but scientifically, neither is incorrect . . .

For some comments by pro-lifers on Marty’s article, see Secular Pro-Life’s Facebook status of February 1 at 9:24pm.

By the way, here is the one photo that to me best captures the big array of feelings that drive the March for Life.

 

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens could change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has!” (Margaret Mead)

 

© 2015

 

You may leave a reply, if you wish, without giving your name or email address. If you do give your email address, it will not be published. Back up your work as you type, in case of accidents.

Some future posts:

Life Panels

Evolution, and the Humanizing and Uplifting Effect on Society of a Commitment to the Unborn

A Trade-Off of a Sensitive Nature

Unborn Child-Protection Legislation, the Moral Health of Society, and the Role of the American Democratic Party

The Motivations of Aborting Parents

Why Remorse Comes too Late

The Kitchen-Ingredients Week-After Pill

Unwanted Babies and Overpopulation

The Woman as Slave?

Abortion and the Map of the World