(no subject)

[fpb]

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.

Comments

[fpb.livejournal.com]

NO, they don't. They are yet another excuse - a woman who has gone through that trauma is healthy and happy? Are you serious? Do you realize that your own words, your list of tragic terrible dreadful reasons to have an abortion, confirm in themselves that abortion is a trauma and a tragedy, and that the only kind of woman who would not feel it as such would be one so naturally selfish (and women can be as selfish as men) that she could walk through Auschwitz untouched? In other words, a sociopath? And is that your idea of a person who can raise a happy child: a sociopath? Your ideas contradict each other, as do your excuses.

[scifitwin.livejournal.com]

i like how your definition of a healthy, happy woman is one who thinks that her worth is defined solely by what's in her womb, or who can't get over a simple medical procedure that in most cases is less physically traumatic than actually giving birth.

so what are you doing to change the world so that fewer women have to have abortions? lobbying for stronger anti-abandonment laws so pregnant women aren't on their own? teaching women about condoms, or about leaving abusive relationships, so that they can have babies when they're less likely to abort instead of getting pregnant and getting rid of them? taking on big business to make them provide paid maternity leave, better health insurance, and free daycare for pregnant women so they can be assured of being able to care for their child instead of aborting it out of fear of being fired?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Your assumption that I am not going to do any of those things says more about your own native selfishness. Of course, you cannot conceive of an anti-abortion person as being anything else but a hypocritical swine, because, if you were anti-abortion, that is the kind of anti-abortion person you would be. I am different from you in every way, and in so far as I can make a difference in various areas, I intend to. But abortion is the central issue, and so long as it is legal anything else is a sticking-plaster over cancer.

[scifitwin.livejournal.com]

i just asked. what are you doing to ensure that women don't feel the need to seek out abortions in the first place, besides calling them selfish?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I want the adoption laws changed so that a woman who is willing to give up her baby is not punished for that by being barred from it for life. I regard these laws - which are pretty universal in the West - as both inhumane and based on a false premise (that is, that you can get a baby to bond with any couple as it would with its physical parents; which has repeatedly been shown to be nonsense). My view is that adoption should be changed to be something more like fostering, allowing some contact with the original parents if they wish, and with less huge and absurd bureaucratic obstacles - which at any rate do not keep real villains away and only manage to send willing parents to purchase babies in unregulated third world countries.

I also approve of European laws against dismissing or victimizing pregnant women employees.

yeah, we all want things.

[scifitwin.livejournal.com]

so you're writing letters to your representatives showing them your support for changing these laws? getting people to sign petitions urging the government to pass new laws and change the structure of their bureaucracies? donating money to social service organizations which support your views? any of that?

Re: yeah, we all want things.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If you knew more about British politics, you would not ask such stupid questions. Where the parties are agreed, which is over most things, the ordinary citizen has all the chances of the fire-cat pursued by the ice dog through Hell. Anyway, you asked what I would do, I answered. Now you find reasons to pretend that my answers are inadequate.

Re: yeah, we all want things.

[scifitwin.livejournal.com]

i asked what you're doing, not what would you do. but whatever.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

INcidentally, your business about a woman defining her worth by one thing or another is clean off the point. It is a feminist cliche' which I would not touch with a bargepole, because it is still based on the usual "it's all about me me me" crap. It's not about your sense of self-worth; it has FUCKING NOTHING to do with it. It has to do with a human life. If your sense of self-worth depends on murdering a baby, your sense of self-worth can go to Hell. And will.