Truths and inspirations, 17 May 2023
posted by Infidel753 at 2:11 AM
17 May 2023
About Me
- Name: Infidel753
- Location: Portland, Oregon, United States
Individualist, pro-technology, pro-democracy, anti-religion. I speak only for myself and not for any ideology, movement, or party. It has been my great good fortune to live my whole life free of "spirituality" of any kind. I believe that evidence and reason are the keys to understanding reality; that technology rather than ideology or politics has been the great liberator of humanity; and that in the long run, human intelligence is the most powerful force in the universe.
Previous Posts
- Video of the day -- under the deep sea
- Link round-up for 14 May 2023
- The modern free press
- Video of the day -- a magical battle
- Image round-up for 9 May 2023
- Link round-up for 7 May 2023
- Two hundred and eighty-eight to one
- Truths and inspirations, 3 May 2023
- Video of the day -- Check It Out
- Link round-up for 30 April 2023
God doesn't exist
Evolution happened
Global warming is real
Homosexuality is normal
Aging is a curable disease
The election was not stolen
Everything "spiritual" is a lie
US out of UN, UN out of US
Free speech is for everybody
Humans do not have "souls"
Men can't become women
Fetuses are not persons
Words are not violence
Taiwan is a nation
Pluto is a planet
8 Comments:
I see you've changed your stap line. I disagree. Alcohol prohibition didn't fail. It was much worse than that... It changed the USA from a nation of beer drinkers into spirits drinkers, it was a massive boost for organised crime and corruption and resulted in a huge upswing in violence and murder, it removed a tax. It was a disaster.
"Fail" is your car not starting. "Disaster" is when it blows up with you inside.
(An no, it ain't just Tesla. Just down the street from my wife saw a brand new electric BMW spontaneously combust - fortunately the driver was out of it taking photos on her phone for the insurance company - she doing this because it had started smoking so I guess she was lucky though obviously she didn't see it quite like that at the time!)
Prohition was a disaster. The "War on Drugs" is a James Cameron movie of a disaster. In the UK now it is very difficult to get good old weed. It has been replaced by nasty skunk. Same way in Chicago a hundred years ago it was much easier to get some iffy "whiskey" than a decent pint of beer. Quite why people never learn is the real underlying disaster.
NickM: That's all true. In addition to trying to keep the line brief and snappy, I'm assuming that most of my readers are Americans who are familiar with how bad prohibition was. Certainly the effects of drug prohibition have been equally bad -- it's fueled a huge increase in the power and wealth of organized-crime gangs, except that most of them are in Mexico and Columbia, not here, so we're exporting the disastrous effects of our bad laws. Laws against sex work haven't generated such large-scale mafias, but they empower pimps and traffickers, and make the whole field dangerous and sleazy. Every crackdown via laws like FOSTA/SESTA has made the situation visibly worse. As for gun prohibition, a serious large-scale effort to confiscate guns is the one thing that would likely start a real civil war. This isn't Australia.
There's a value in the emphasis on "fail", though. A lot of our would-be abortion-banners and gun-banners are so fanatical that they would probably push ahead even if they knew the prohibitions they want would have disastrous side effects -- they would blind themselves to the reality, or consider it a price worth paying. Hence my emphasis on "failing" in the sense of not achieving the desired result -- drinking alcohol was still very widespread during Prohibition, drug use and sex work are still very common now, and even the strictest laws probably wouldn't reduce the actual number of abortions or guns very much, for all the horrendous damage they'd do to society.
Well to put it simply. If making something against the law meant it would just stop happening then defunding the police wouldn't just work but it would be a moral imperative to do so.
I agree with you on guns. It would start a civil war because the people who would be really pissed off about it are - well - they're heavily armed aren't they?
Lots of things piss people off, but this goes deeper. I think it's almost impossible for non-Americans (or even most urban Americans) to understand what a fundamental part guns are of the very culture of about one-third of the US. People fight very hard when their culture is under attack. That one-third would react the way the French would react if a government authority were trying to force them to give up speaking French. It could be worse than 1861-1865.
The LUSHblueart images reminded me of an artist Vargus that drew in a picture mag that I used to buy for the articles.
I'm sure it's not Vargas that she's using, but I do see the resemblance in style.
Oh these are very true.
Mary K: Thanks! I'm gonna keep 'em coming.
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