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PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   35138 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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But all that misses the larger point, which is that it is possible to distinguish "paying thousands of dollars a month to gay men so they can have unprotected sex with a lower risk of an STD" and "refusing insurance to women who refuse abortions in principle".

Yes, it's possible to distinguish, which means that when the other team is back in power they will happily distinguish to enact the exact opposite of your preferred policy.

It's always easy to come up with just-so stories how the other side not having escalated in the past must have been due to contingencies that will be totally unaffected by your side escalating, and surely not because someone somewhere did not just want to stoke the fires of Moloch's furnace higher.

The vaccination stuff, probably because public sentiment was moving anti-Covidian.

I didn't get the sense that it was moving anti-mandatory-vaccinations, except in communities that the Democrats had largely written off as a voter base anyway. In an era where generating hype (stealing this expression from a pop culture engineer interview I read recently, which randomly put a good label on this propensity to just want to be betting on the winning team) is a crucial political strategy, punishing anti-vaxxers more would probably have actually energised the base.

Liability for "not aborting" is still outside the Overton window.

Would it stay there if normie Democrats found that the infrastructure supporting their own sexual lifestyle choices (as opposed to those of a loud but small utility monster minority) is being attacked? Your enemy, too, is capable of making sacrifices to punish and spite.

Christian sects that refuse various medical treatments have been targeted for many years (e.g. by taking their children away from them); the problem with trying to charge them more is that if they refuse blood transfusions they tend to cost less (being dead).

That doesn't apply to life insurance, where living longer means more profit.

Yes, it's possible to distinguish, which means that when the other team is back in power they will happily distinguish to enact the exact opposite of your preferred policy.

They'll do that anyway, subject to other constraints than reciprocity. And in this case Team Red has the advantage of having the more sympathetic position.

I didn't get the sense that it was moving anti-mandatory-vaccinations, except in communities that the Democrats had largely written off as a voter base anyway.

Black people in particular were vax-skeptical, and judging from the number of teachers getting in trouble for violating the vax policies in NYC, it DID extend to some Democratic bases.

Would it stay there if normie Democrats found that the infrastructure supporting their own sexual lifestyle choices (as opposed to those of a loud but small utility monster minority) is being attacked?

The proposal here is exactly to refuse to support the loud but small utility monster minority.

That doesn't apply to life insurance, where living longer means more profit.

As far as I know it is already legal for life insurance companies to charge more to those scrupulous of receiving blood transfusions.

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