Opinions are like what again?
My horoscope in the metro today advised me to keep my opinions to myself. Here's someone else's: www.fucksouthdakota.com
posted by $!# at 3/22/2006 09:30:00 AM
posted by $!# at 3/22/2006 09:30:00 AM
5 Comments:
Ooh, that's my new favorite website.
I think that South Dakota web site won't do much for the pro-choice cause (and may even do some damage). Here's a link to what I think is a much more convincing, productive opinion:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-molmann21mar21,0,4391226.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
I would guess that fucksouthdakota.com will very little to influence the real-world debate in either direction. But who knows? It certainly speaks to a widespread frustration on the pro-choice side of the debate.
The LA Times article frames the question in a much more meaningful way (thanks for the link) -- it puts abortion in that class of 'things people will do no matter what'. People are going to drink alcohol no matter what, even facing the harshest penalties. We've collectively decided trying to prohibit it does more harm than good.
People will also find ways to murder each other even if we remove all the sharp objects from the world. We've collectively decided not to put up with it, and punish people who do it.
There's a pretty clear line between those two examples: harming yourself vs harming others.
For people who define a blastocyst as a being with rights, I guess abortion is a pretty clear line as well. But I really think most Americans don't believe the union of sperm & egg is enough to be 'alive', and also favor access to contraception.
The south dakota situation really seems to stem from the blastocyst-rights side of the fence, and when taken in conjunction with the constant demonization of homosexuals by the same crowd, I can really sympathize with the desire to send a hearty 'fuck you!' in that direction, unproductive as it may be.
Furthermore, there aren't so many contradictions involved in taking a moralistic stand against murder -- whereas the anti-abortion crowd has to deal with a ton: rights of a zygote versus rights of a woman; rights of a zygote versus quality of life for actual living, breathing, thinking children (whose parents may not want them, or may put them up for adoption, or who may be crippled or born with horrific birth defects). The high-and-mighty moralistic argument gets even more tenuous when you notice that many of the people who claim to vote based on whether a candidate is adequately anti-abortion don't seem to mind voting for candidates who support the death penalty, or like starting wars. Pro-life really seems to mean pro-zygotes and forced pregnancy, not pro-thinking, independent, human life of any sort, much less adult life. I see it as pretty similar to how none of the red-state gay-bashers frothing at the mouth about marriage comes from a state with as low a divorce rate as the one where gay marriage is legal -- or how baptists appear to have the highest divorce rates of people in any religion tracked in US democraphic surveys.
Fucksouthdakota.com is a well-put reaction to the holier-than-thou hypocrisy of that cabal, with all its eye-popping fallacies -- which, by and large, get repeated verbatim by the mainstream media these days. When the right's free to go about comparing gay marriage to a man marrying a box-turtle, and no one says boo -- and the Washington Post, no less, validates such high-minded discourse by hiring people who spew and encourage that hate, and gives them a podium -- and when these are the people who control all three branches of the federal government -- well then, frankly I think it's a little stupid to talk about how we have to be high-minded and keep the debate civil. Because, what, we'll lose power?
Frankly, fuck that. That's the sort of talk that supporters of the Kerry camp and beltway campaign managers were spewing throughout 2004 -- and where did it get us? No more Fourth Amendment, that's where.
Fuck that.
The progressive/liberal/Democratic/whatever left has been spending far too much time lately hand-wringing and worrying, and far too little actually getting shit done, and almost none stoking the fires of the partisan base which I think is the only thing that can save us all. It's time to stoke. It's time to annihilate the credibility of our enemies, via humor, via mocking, via telling the truth, however-many marriage-hating, abortions-only-okay-for-me-and-mine, hypocritical fuckers we piss off, who would never vote for one of ours anyway. At least we'll join together and laugh, and not feel like islands in a nightmare somewhere between Kafka and Margaret Atwood. It's time to create our version of the right-wing talk-radio empire that served as a focal point for the neo-wingnut movement, and I think this site is a great example of exactly what we need.
Furthermore, there aren't so many contradictions involved in taking a moralistic stand against murder -- whereas the anti-abortion crowd has to deal with a ton: rights of a zygote versus rights of a woman; rights of a zygote versus quality of life for actual living, breathing, thinking children (whose parents may not want them, or may put them up for adoption, or who may be crippled or born with horrific birth defects). The high-and-mighty moralistic argument gets even more tenuous when you notice that many of the people who claim to vote based on whether a candidate is adequately anti-abortion don't seem to mind voting for candidates who support the death penalty, or like starting wars. Pro-life really seems to mean pro-zygotes and forced pregnancy, not pro-thinking, independent, human life of any sort, much less adult life. I see it as pretty similar to how none of the red-state gay-bashers frothing at the mouth about marriage comes from a state with as low a divorce rate as the one where gay marriage is legal -- or how baptists appear to have the highest divorce rates of people in any religion tracked in US democraphic surveys.
Fucksouthdakota.com is a well-put reaction to the holier-than-thou hypocrisy of that cabal, with all its eye-popping fallacies -- which, by and large, get repeated verbatim by the mainstream media these days. When the right's free to go about comparing gay marriage to a man marrying a box-turtle, and no one says boo -- and the Washington Post, no less, validates such high-minded discourse by hiring people who spew and encourage that hate, and gives them a podium -- and when these are the people who control all three branches of the federal government -- well then, frankly I think it's a little stupid to talk about how we have to be high-minded and keep the debate civil. Because, what, we'll lose power?
Frankly, fuck that. That's the sort of talk that supporters of the Kerry camp and beltway campaign managers were spewing throughout 2004 -- and where did it get us? No more Fourth Amendment, that's where.
Fuck that.
The progressive/liberal/Democratic/whatever left has been spending far too much time lately hand-wringing and worrying, and far too little actually getting shit done, and almost none stoking the fires of the partisan base which I think is the only thing that can save us all. It's time to stoke. It's time to annihilate the credibility of our enemies, via humor, via mocking, via telling the truth, however-many marriage-hating, abortions-only-okay-for-me-and-mine, hypocritical fuckers we piss off, who would never vote for one of ours anyway. At least we'll join together and laugh, and not feel like islands in a nightmare somewhere between Kafka and Margaret Atwood. It's time to create our version of the right-wing talk-radio empire that served as a focal point for the neo-wingnut movement, and I think this site is a great example of exactly what we need.
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