Radical Centrist Idea #3: Second Amendment Abortion Rights

Another Reason Why I’m Completely Unelectable

Totally Fair, Totally Offensive Idea #3:

Bridge the liberal/conservative divide by treating abortion as a gun rights issue.

What American partisan politics needs is more outside-the-box thinking. For example, American politics could end much of the nasty wrangling over abortion if someone could create a clever way to use firearms technology. If someone could perfect a procedure in which a doctor could perform an abortion using a handgun, terminating the fetus without unduly harming the pregnant woman, then much of the conservative criticism of abortion rights should evaporate overnight.

Perform a pregnancy termination using a firearm, and this would make abortion clearly protected by the Second Amendment. The NRA would have to take a pro-choice stance. It would be a simple matter of redefining the procedure as “standing your ground against a dangerous intruder.” Declare the fetus to be a burglar, claim you were afraid for your life, and the NRA has to support your right of self-defense. Any time a woman dies in childbirth, Second Amendment gun-rights activists could then say, “if only she had a gun on her, that wouldn’t have happened.” And, people against gun control can then say with great conviction, “when abortion is outlawed, only outlaws will have abortions.”

Meanwhile, in the absence of such technology, we’ll just have to make do with what we have. So, if Second Amendment truthers are willing to define “arms” broadly enough to include just about anything, then I wish to include every abortion instrument under the definition of “arms.” I hereby declare the razor-tipped curette as my self-defense weapon of choice. If abortion is murder, then that means there was a weapon used. Something used as a weapon can be used in self-defense. Something used in self-defense is in principle protected under the Second Amendment. I hereby declare all abortion instruments to be part of my national heritage, and I am within the spirit of America to resist any attempt by my government to restrict my use of it. You can take away reproductive rights from my cold, dead fingers.

Here's my vision: the NRA merges with NARA and become a political powerhouse covering the entire political spectrum. They already use the same letters. They can call it N(A)RA.

 

Radical Centrist Rule #2: Take the Whole Country

You can file this next to my previous immigration compromise, which liberals and conservatives can both hate in equal measure:

Whatever country in the world the U.S. should take as its model for national health care, the U.S. should also take as a model for immigration policy.

You want Switzerland's very solid universal health care? Then you take Switzerland's very restrictive immigration laws. You want China's really cheap universal health care coverage? Then you have to take China's incredibly stringent immigration laws.

(In order to get a visa to work in China as a teacher, I was required by the Chinese government to have a full physical exam, complete with an HIV test, TB screen, and an EKG. No one with a heart condition is allowed to immigrate to China to work. I had to demonstrate to the government of China that someone in the government of China had officially invited me. Now THAT is a tough immigration policy. China won't even let overweight people adopt babies from China. Definitely hard core.)

Let liberals import another country's health care system, and let conservatives import the immigration policies. Unless we're saying that not everything Europeans do should be emulated.....

 

My Radical Centrist Proposal -- Something for Everyone to Love and Hate

Or:
 
How a Fetus is Like an Illegal Immigrant

 

 

In American today, liberals and conservatives are both inconsistent in their politics. They’re both hypocritical in some ways. What I propose is the perfect political compromise, which will force both sides to be consistent. It is such a perfectly balanced compromise that it will never happen. (This  idea seems so obvious to me now that I can't possibly be the first one to think of this. I have to assume that someone else has come up with this before, probably Bill Maher or Dennis Miller).

So, here’s my new rule for American law:

Anything you can do to a terror suspect or illegal immigrant you can do to an embryo/fetus, and anything you can do to an embryo/fetus you can do to a terror suspect or illegal immigrant.

 

You can’t be a conservative who argues that non-citizens are people when the people are unborn but then treat non-citizens like non-people when they’re immigrants. You can’t be a liberal who says that non-citizens are people too no matter where they're born and then deny non-citizens rights just because they aren’t born yet. One side wants to deny equality for those not born in a particular place, and others want to deny equality for those not born.

 

Because, basically, a fetus is an undocumented alien. It’s not a citizen, because under current law a citizen has to be literally born in order to be a citizen. There’s an actual “place of birth” on all the forms, whether it’s a birth certificate, passport application, etc. Being born in a particular location requires that you are actually born.

If a fetus is to be treated as a citizen, then you will have the really awkward legal situation of one citizen living entirely inside another citizen. When you look at how the U.S. government treats “Indian nations,” which are officially nations living inside another nation, you get some idea about how well that one-inside-another works out in practice. Not so great. Those reservations are great foreign countries, aren’t they?

 

Then there's the really tricky scenario for anti-immigration and anti-abortion conservatives -- what do you do about pregnant illegal immigrants in the U.S.? Being born in the U.S. automatically makes a person a U.S. citizen, so does that mean all immigrant fetuses are also citizens? Or, are conservatives suggesting that some fetuses need protection and others do not? Tough call.

The federal government has done nothing to formally approve the existence of any particular fetus in America. There is no visa for it, and it doesn’t exist in any government records anywhere – no Social Security number, no citizenship status, no eligibility to get a job, and no driver’s license (the ultrasound ID photos tend to be really hazy). No paper trail at all, just here without anyone in authority giving it permission to be in this country. So, why not treat all fetuses the same way America treats *all* undocumented aliens?

Just declare your fetus an “enemy combatant,” and conservatives have to let you do whatever the hell you want with it. If conservatives protest, just tell them that they have to take your word for it, that for reasons of national security you can’t explain why your fetus is a risk to the entire country, because telling them all the details would compromise intelligence sources. Just refer to abortion as “enhanced interrogation of a terrorist suspect,” and conservatives should stop asking you questions about what you’re doing. Ask them if they're willing to risk a repeat of 9/11 by refusing to give the "good guys" all the tools they need to fight the "bad guys."

 

If they protest that the aborted fetus is innocent, just tell them you had to strike in a pre-emptive military action because the fetus was clearly showing the intent to acquire Weapons of Mass Destruction. Call it the Uterine Corollary of the Bush Doctrine. Call them bleeding hearts and suggest that they are giving aid and comfort to the enemies of freedom. They're pretty big on that whole "enemies of freedom" schtick.

Sometimes the Simpletons Aren't So Simple

Here's one of the stories we're working on at this hour. Like I said, this is a blog about everything.

The central myth of our gendered society is the idea that men are simple and women are complex. This is the underlying vision of masculinity and femininity that continues to shape people’s thinking, no matter where they fall on the political spectrum. Ultra conservatives and radical feminists both seem to maintain the same major stereotype about how basically simple men are and how complex women are. Pat Robertson and Andrea Dworkin would appear to agree on this basic point. Their competing ideologies flow in part from the same basic myth.

It’s a very popular, very rarely challenged assumption, probably because it’s such a useful myth. No matter what your rant is about gender, you can make any point you want by appealing to this basic stereotype. Men have benefited from the myth and been hurt by the myth. Women have benefited from the myth and been hurt by the myth. Sometimes being labeled “simple” is an insult, and sometimes it is a badge of honor. Similarly, being “complicated” can look like you’re “sophisticated” or “evolved,” or the label can make look like you’re chaotic or irrational.

Men themselves may be the biggest proponents of this simplistic view of men. Pretending to be simple can be very useful in getting out of boring social obligations, after all, and there’s great benefit in lowering your girlfriend’s or wife's expectations of you.

I propose the strangely radical concept that men can be just as complex as women. More specifically, in the aggregate, on average, any given man may be as complicated as any given woman. Men and women may be complex in totally different areas, and some individuals may be “wired” more simply than others, but I recommend that we suspend the assumption of male simplicity for the moment.

Unfortunately, this looks like a very dangerous, inconceivable idea to many people. Too much of the way society organizes itself is based on this stereotype, and a lot of people have a lot to lose if people started assuming men and women were equally complicated. The whole advertising industry would have to retool, at the cost of billions of dollars. This revolution would lead to a wholesale turnover in the self-help industry and might turn the bestseller lists upside-down. Imagine if men and women were both from both planets – how many books is THAT going to sell?

(On the upside, the men's fashion industry might get a big boost from this revolution -- imagine if you could market something besides the exact same tuxedo for every man going to a formal event. Imagine if a man's tuxedo could go out of fashion as quickly as a woman's evening gown. Cha-ching! Twice as much money for the fashion industry generated by every Oscars night. Think outside the box, people!)

At the very least, let’s step back and think of it as a hypothesis that men are simpler than women. Maybe it's true, maybe not. How would one go about testing that theory? What kinds of proof would you accept one way or the other? I suspect most of what you think supports this stereotype is just wishful thinking and confirmation bias, only seeing what you want to see.

Maybe I’m wrong, and on the whole men really are simpler than women. I’m just amazed at how few people challenge the stereotype at all. I’m amazed at how much is built on this stereotype, even though it goes unchallenged. Even if men are simpler than women, I seriously doubt the difference is as big as we’ve been led to believe.

What’s remarkable to me is how often men are given reminders that men are simple. Everywhere we turn, the media images in pop culture tell us that we’re simple-minded, over and over again. It’s like society has to constantly remind us to think in very limited terms.

But, if we really are naturally and contentedly simple-minded apes, then it’s a waste of energy to remind us to behave like that, because we would already be doing it. If we are already the kinds of men portrayed in beer commercials, then the beer commercials don’t need to tell us how to behave like that.

So, why remind people to act a certain way if they’re already acting that way? Reminders are for people who sometimes forget, sometimes resist the expectations put on them, or sometimes break the rules. Perhaps the answer is that many men seem to be violating that stereotype, which is why the reminders continue to exist. Too many men appear to be more complex than they are supposed to be, so someone has to put them back in line.

 

So, guys, don't go back in line. If you were ever in that line in the first place, that is.

Please don't vote.

I won’t tell you to get out there and vote. In fact, I think it would be disingenuous of me to tell people to register if they haven’t already.

First of all, I doubt that this would work anyway. Are there people out there who are right on the edge of registering to vote, haven’t quite gotten around to it, and my nagging them puts them right over the edge? Somehow, I doubt it. I am fatalistic about telling people to vote, the same way that people are fatalistic about voting itself – will my one voice really make that much difference?

Second of all, I do understand the idea that the greater the voter turnout, the “healthier” the democratic system. There’s a certain collective goodness that comes from more participation compared to less participation. On the other hand, to my mind that depends on how people cast their votes. There are candidates and proposals that are disastrous if they win. I don’t want people voting in such a way that makes the situation worse.

Frankly, not every voter acts in a responsible way. I do not want to encourage lunatics and the feebleminded to cast a vote just to cast a vote, or just to be "part of something." I am not convinced that an ignorant, thoughtless vote is always better than not voting. The U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights were originally crafted with the assumption that the majority of voters can be wrong and that you have to protect the country against irresponsible forms of democracy.

Along the same lines, if you’re waiting for someone else to remind you to vote, you are probably not highly informed about current events in the first place. If you are only swayed when somebody reminds you to vote, then you may be too easily swayed to be a responsible voter. If you need me to tell you to vote, then you really shouldn't be a voter.

If you're silly enough to think that refusing to cast a ballot will be an effective political strategy, then you are terribly misguided and therefore should not vote in the first place. If you are silly enough to think that your one vote makes no real difference, that actually shows a bit of mathematical wisdom on your part, but you can't see the forest for the trees and therefore should not be voting anyway.

Third, there’s my own political self-centeredness. I only want to encourage you to vote if you’re going to vote the way I do. I don’t want to encourage the other side, which is of course made up of the worst sort of people, and it’s beyond me how anyone can vote for them. And, the fewer other people vote, the more relative power my vote has. Being one out of 40 million gives me more power than being one out of 80 million.

Finally, I think telling people to vote has become clearly counterproductive. I suggest we try some reverse psychology in order to increase participation, especially if you want to get more young people to vote. Tell people NOT to vote. Tell them that the government does not want them to vote, and that this is “for your own good.” Tell younger voters that they are too young to have such responsibility and should leave these decisions to people who know better. Make some sort of absurd movie called “Voting Madness,” in the style of “Reefer Madness,” that shows people the horrible dangers of casting a ballot. Get some disgraced authority figures to tell people to stay away from the polls. Have both Obama and Romney tell the people in the other party to skip the election.

Make voting into more of an act of rebellion or counterculture and less one of those boring things from high school civics class, and you may be getting somewhere. Tell people not to, and watch them thwart you at every turn.

Of course, I will be voting. I will vote for all the reasons you are supposed to vote. I actually believe in all the great reasons to cast a vote. If you don't have any of that commitment, then please stay away.

You're Right, Now Let's Talk

On the Good Men Project blog, “wellokthen” sent in a message that I was very much intrigued by. I was thinking myself along similar lines, because I get very frustrated when people online just get bogged down in their own ad hominem crusades. I don’t think I’m ready to make such an extreme statement. I see his point about getting the attacks over with, but it seems really foolish to lay yourself out there like that. I’m thinking, however, of drafting a similar statement when I have conversations online, like “you say I’m a bad person. See my disclaimer at _____ so we can move past this already.”

Quote:

I just figured something out about discussing hot-button issues like racism and sexism. I can’t believe it took me so long to see the solution to dysfunctional debate.

Here’s my idea: I should stipulate ad hominem statements about me beforehand, to save everyone a lot of wasted energy. I hereby admit and accept anything anyone says about me as a person. Whatever you guess my motives are, those are my motives. Whatever you say about me as a person is true, no matter what it is.

I am a terrorist, rapist, child-molesting, victim-blaming, racist, misogynistic, homophobic serial killer who clubs baby seals and puts recyclable material in the garbage. I tear the tags off mattresses before I buy them, I immediately go swimming after I eat, I run with scissors, and I have terrible hygiene. I assassinated Archduke Ferdinand, planned the attacks of 9/11, and made the Buffalo Bills lose four Super Bowls. I have a lot of typos because the white hood that I’m wearing obstructs my vision. Whatever horrible truth you have to share with me, I am in denial about it, except for the parts about which I am totally ignorant. If you think I am trying to make fun of terrible things, then yes, that is my motivation.

I will not spend any time denying anything said about me. You can just assume you are right on the money. Whatever you say, guilty as charged. So stipulated. You can quote me on it.

Now, can we talk about ideas and evidence and truth?

(Wow. Defensive much?)

Bigger Sources, Smaller Minds

I’m sure this is old news to internet experts and I’m not the first person to see this, but this is a big revelation to me.

The internet is a paradox. It’s an open forum creating close-minded people.

The internet is a wide-open cosmopolitan place where you can find virtually anything you can imagine. On any particular subject, you can find literally millions of opinions. You can explore all over the world and never quite get to the bottom of anything, because there is always something new to investigate. It is the epitome of diversity, flux, and multiple viewpoints. You could explore the web 24/7/365.2522 and still barely scratch the surface of all the new things you can discover for yourself. Theoretically, the internet was going to make us all more informed, more rounded, more open to new ideas.

In reality, however, many people who spend hours online actually behave in the opposite way. They scan the web and discover only the information and opinions that reinforce their pre-existing ideas. Their time online has made them even more Manichaean in their worldview, more absolutely convinced that they are completely right. The chaos of the internet for them translates into an absolute certainty about the truth as they see it. Very often, once you find an online forum you like, you stop exploring. There are more potential news sources than ever before, but just like the days when newspapers were king, most people get their news from only one or two sources. The internet gets bigger every day, but the number of sites each person visits stays fairly stagnant. (I’m guilty of that myself.)

Consider the nature of the language people use online. How often does anyone on a blog or in a tweet say “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure” or "I can't quite make up my mind about that" or express any sort of intellectual nuance about reality? Rarely, partly because this is virtually impossible on Twitter. It takes up too many characters to say “on the one hand, I can see it this way, but on the other hand, I can see....” For many people, the internet is not really a place to explore but a place to get as fast and as limited an amount of information as possible. A multiple-paragraph review of a restaurant will just not do. Tell me how many stars and give me a few pithy quotes. Hopefully the first few comments on the list are accurate, because that’s all I’m reading before I eat there!

 

The internet provides virtually unlimited room to write whatever you want. You will not run out of paper or ink on your blog. Writing 100,000 words costs you the same as writing 10 words, essentially. The sky's the limit in terms of how richly you want to express yourself. The result, though, in reality? A long paragraph becomes "tl;dr." Tweets get shorter and shorter, without any room for even punctuation anymore. Turns out the internet doesn't really contribute to verbal diarrhea after all. The nightmare scenario of people blathering on hasn't really happened (well, except on my blog.) Quite the opposite. Perhaps that's the silver lining. I can dismiss you much more quickly now because I don't have to scroll down very far to get to the next person.

Maybe the internet stimulates a kind of intellectual agoraphobia. The incredible chaotic mess that is the internet frightens people into finding safe little cubby holes where they can soothe themselves by talking to like-minded people and consoling themselves by trolling people who disagree. I’ve been in countless online discussions in which I really am trying to understand another person’s point of view and really am conscious that I could be wrong about what I’m saying, but the other person only reads what he has already decided is the case. It’s odd that such a wide-open, anything-goes place like the internet has bred fundamentalist-level paranoia about other people.

Despite absolutely clear evidence that you really don’t know anything about the people you encounter online, you will see people online draw the most incredible conclusions about you based on a few lines of text. Despite the clear reality that the internet is full of illusions, fluid identities, and the benefits and dangers of anonymity, many people are absolutely certain that if I write a particular sentence then that is clear evidence that my motivations are obviously x, y, and z and the narrative of my entire life story is clear for all to see.

The illusion that the internet makes people more informed has apparently convinced many people that the more time they spend online the more they know, so the more certain they can be about their opinions. I spend hours on the internet every day, I have only found material that confirms my assumptions, so therefore I am an excellent judge of people who disagree with me.

The internet is a great place to experiment and wrestle with ideas and language. In a practical sense, that’s the only reliable part when you’re speaking with strangers about a subject. Really, all you have to go on is the material in front of you. What did this person say, and what kind of statement is that? Is this statement true or not?

The least reliable, most speculative part of internet discussions is the internal, personal side, the part that focuses on the real identity of the person writing. And yet, a lot of people head straight for the personal territory. They are the most certain about the places they really have the least evidence about, like what motivates another writer, what the other writer believes, what they are ignorant about, etc. If my ideas are too complicated and they disagree with yours, it’s so much easier just to say that I’m ignoring the real issue, which is ___, or that I am clearly just another one of those ____s.

Maybe this is another psychological reaction to the big, scary internet. If I had to open my mind to the possibility that I was wrong about something, then who knows where that will stop? If I can’t put everyone online into just a few simple categories, then my head might explode from the complexity of the information. Perhaps if I can’t instantly analyze other people, then that may mean that I don’t really know myself all that well, either. If my sense of purpose has been based on an illusion, then what will be my sense of purpose after that? How could life have any meaning when I don’t get to see the world as angels versus demons anymore?