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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28008 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 7, 2024

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Naïvely over-optimistic. For example, it's been a staple of 20th century sci-fi that eventually the government is going to regulate and license parenthood to prevent "overpopulation." Most of my classmates in college back in the early 2000s thought it was necessary — both to "save the environment" and to prevent "the wrong sort" from having kids (some defined "wrong sort" in terms of genetics, others in term of likely bad "nurture", but both agreed the target would be flyover Republicans). Just a couple days ago on Reddit, in a discussion on SpaceX, space exploration, and why the latter is becoming "right wing" coded, several people proposed that "space" is right-wing because going into space is totally unnecessary, and Earth will be more than enough, if only we can get reproduction and population growth under control — and therefore "parental licensing" is both necessary and inevitable. The only problem they could see with it was the need to figure out how to keep "the wrong people… (right wing conservatives)," from taking it over and using it to promote "racism, inequality, sexism, ableism and the like" (as opposed to using it against their enemies).

How would your conservative communities handle being systematically denied parenthood licenses?

On a scale of things to be prepared for from 'not going to the beach in case a dog swimming with a gun in its mouth accidentally shoots you' to 'keeping jumper cables in your car' this is very firmly on the not having kids so they don't die in school shooting end of the spectrum.

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