fpb | (no subject)

British media, including the supposedly conservative ones, are supporting Obama and (especially) hounding Sarah Palin, with a ferocity unknown even to their American counterparts, and looking more like the Daily Kos than anything, so to speak, human. This is appalling in itself, and may well end up being disastrous if by any chance McCain and Palin win. These creatures are planting poisonous ideas in the average British reader, which will take decades to weed away. And incidentally, it does nothing to disprove my view that at the roots of all serious modern political conflict in the West there is abortion; for the British media and establishment, including the so-called conservatives, are completely sold on the practice, and anti-abortion forces are marginalized to an extent unknown and hard to believe in Italy or America. This goes back a long time - Margaret Thatcher always voted in favour of abortion. Now, Sarah Palin, simply by being who she is, is a living rebuke to all the abortion-is-necessary crowd; and this explains the ferocious hatred and the avalanche of pathological lies with which this attractive, polite, competent female politician has been welcomed. Find me another explanation that makes sense! It also accounts for the complete silence that has been enforced on anything that might make Obama, the most pro-abortion candidate in history, look bad or even moderately dubious. It is not about race; if Judge Clarence Thomas were running for President, he would be treated like Palin has been. It is not even about party; if Condoleeza Rice had run and got the Republican nomination, you can bet your life that she would have had a much smoother ride than Palin. She, after all, has no children. You cannot underrate the power of repressed and concealed guilt feelings, crawling under the skin of all the career women who got rid of unwanted babies in order to please bosses and boyfriends, and indeed among all the men who were complicit in their crimes or even demanded them; when faced with a brilliantly successful career woman who not only had five children, but opted against aborting even the disabled one. (I don't suppose it helps that she is beautiful and looks ten years younger than her age. The sheer unfairness of the distribution of beauty is salt on any open wound, and the wound in question is painful enough in the first place.) Sarah Palin is a mirror who tells them the truth about themselves; and it is a truth that they cannot bear to see.

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and now she's got no income and no support and can't land a job because she's going to have to take maternity leave soon if she keeps the fetus

And on the planet you live in this is not coercion?

because she just plain doesn't want a baby

And on the planet you live in this is not selfishness?

And on the planet you live in this is not coercion?
maybe if they'd offered her a free abortion to come work for them. but they didn't, she just got a lot of "oh, you're going to have a baby! how nice! you should go stay home with it. come back when it's four years old and you can put it in company day care for a monthly fee" from the interviewers.

And on the planet you live in this is not selfishness?
knowing your emotional and personal limitations is not selfishness.
how many babies have you adopted? or are you childless and selfish yourself?

Being squalidly sentimental and placing one's own poor wee feelings is not selfishness. It's not, is it? I already told you that all that talk about feelings is nothing but excuses, and what is more the selfishness is plain - it's all about me, me, me. If I want a baby, it's about me, not about the baby. As for your other sob story, take it to someone who cares. In Europe, such behaviour is illegal and could cause the company to be taken to court and heavily fined.

so how many unwanted, unaborted babies have you adopted?

or are you as selfish as those nasty murdering women you rail against?

Adoption is immensely difficult in this country for legal reasons, and I am not within the parameters of the law. Nor am I rich enough or selfish enough to go buy babies in the third world. What is more, I am unmarried; and what is more, I regard the current adoption laws as inhuman and degrading, and would like to seem them changed at the same time as abortion is outlawed.

You have to get through your twisted mind that apologies and excuses don't cut it with me. The only thing I am interested in is what people actually DO. You keep finding excuses for not adopting; to me, that only means that you need excuses. Because at the end of the day there is only one thing that comes out of all those excuses - more dead babies.

Touche'. Your first real hit in this entire exchange. But if I as a single middle-aged person with few means of my own were in some way to get a child, you would accuse me of selfishly wanting one while not having the means or the environment to bring it up properly.

nah. i've seen plenty of impoverished single moms and dads who love their kids and do a great job bringing them up, because they wanted them and are devoted to them. i've also seen some very rich people with stable marriages who have made their children miserable and driven their kids to suicide because they don't pay attention to them and never wanted them in the first place.

if you thought you'd be a good parent and were willing to go through all the red tape and trouble to give a home to a kid without one, i would salute you. ...but you haven't. so yeah.

As a single middle-aged white male with no regular income, I would not get one. So I don't even try. But I would have loved to have married and had four or five children (my ideal family size). And that is the truth and you can make of it what you like. We can't always have what we want.

There are thousands, maybe even millions, of childless married couples who would absolutely love to adopt an unwanted baby. This issue is therefore a red herring.

I have a suggestion: you go to Fandom_wank with your likes and work off your issues there. You are not going to get one shred of sympathy from me, and you are not going to enjoy being answered to. Just go flock with birds of your feather.