the abortion obsession
we can’t escape the reality that Iowa has a labor shortage in part due to human abortion.
It’s good to recognise the signs of irrational obsession with a particular topic. I’m here to help Tom from Quiner’s Diner on this occasion.
If you start to see your pet obsession as the root cause for every piece of news you stumble upon, you’ve probably crossed the line.
I don’t know much about Iowa, but a quick internet search tells me that the population is growing. The article that Tom refers to is specific in that numbers of people aren’t a problem, it’s a lack of relevant skills.
So, it’s a twisted and obsessed mind that imagines forcing women to continue with unwanted pregnancies in unstable relationships could magically create a skilled adult workforce to plug the gap.
We could equally say that the criminalisation of rape has resulted in lower birth rates and caused a shortage of workers. Perhaps he’d like to suggest that the availability of condoms has resulted in lower birth rates and caused a shortage of workers. I’d wager allowing women to have jobs outside the home has resulted in lower birth rates and caused a shortage of workers in Iowa.
Pick your favourite topic to oppress women, and use that to blame for every piece of news. Even simply to put a spin on news that could be perceived as good – because the job market is clearly buoyant in Iowa, and they have the opportunity to encourage skilled workers from all over the world to come and enjoy their fertile land!
Goodness, is that Teabillie still posting?
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Don’t you follow him?
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He banned me. His kind of nuttery is dreadfully fragile.
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Big countdown is headline here. Think he’ll give himself up?
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Lord Lula? Nope. He’s already told Folha he’s not going to do it. He might change him mind before 5pm.
The level of stupidity here today is classic. His supporters are comparing him to Mandella, Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr.
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The same will happen when they come for Cristina. I wonder if politicians in Europe are just as bad, but are better at covering it up.
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Perhaps they’re just not as greedy?
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Is it about greed? I thought it was power trips and money is necessarily a part of that.
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Coat and hat of the same outfit.
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For you: https://wp.me/prAQD-rxo
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That’s just ghastly on every level. Where do you find these people?
You still down under?
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No, back up over and very chilly. No idea why I follow that blog but thought of you instantly, nice to see them at work in your patch. 🙂
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SP doesn’t need Jesus. It just needs a good earthquake.
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and applause for this: There is something absurd about trying to deduce an invisible creator using word games in the guise of ‘logic’.
Dear Mel really doesn’t like being reminded that *defining* something in existence doesn’t actually make it real.
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I guess he’s so immersed in that world that he can’t see the absurdity. Philosophy is for angst-ridden teenagers – it has its uses but it generally a tangle of words trying to define things we don’t have the ability to describe or comprehend. I’m all about our limitations as animals, really surprised we got into space. 🙂
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On days like this I’m surprised we could get down from the trees
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“Teabilly” I know it is very classist of me, but I find that very funny. 🙂
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Oh, man. I wish I could write a long, detailed, and thoughtful diatribe to accompany your concise take on the issue, but there’s really only one thing I can say:
Gross.
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It’s interesting where obsession can lead people. Immerse yourself in any topic and you can see it everywhere I guess.
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Reticular activating system. It’s the part of the brain that determines what you notice.
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Tom wouldn’t know reality if he sat right in the middle of it… QED.
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Well based on that post, he’s drifting ever further away …
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That’s exactly what my comment meant: the post reveals a growing detachment from reality.
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Well, I must confess, feels a bit odd discussing that with you. Clear parallels with the panic over political correctness and deplatforming of questionable speakers. It’s the end of the world! Everyone will become a snowflake and humanity will perish. And all that.
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I think my serious concerns about the growing rift I have been warning about for two decades in the Left between classical liberals such as myself and the widely supported post modern (Marxist) ideology – especially among the young – that directly attacks the very values I think are most important to our way of life (like free speech) is worthy of serious consideration by those who should not be blind to what their support of group identity means in real life to real people.
I am not happy to hear my concerns echoed by so many big brained people that this incompatible rift is a growing root problem that has led to a Donald Trump winning the most powerful office in the free world to effect, that this problem is not something to be shrugged off as trivial, or overblown to be an end-of-the-world scenario (although that possibility has increased in likelihood you have to admit under Trump). It really is a growing problem and one that has deeply and negatively affected even the fifth estate to the point where mass media is equally blind to the very reality that raises a Donald Trump to the Presidency and then scrambles to try to reconnect its function to observing and commenting on reality rather than the preferred ideology that is fast becoming so ubiquitous, the toxic effects of an ideology that drives a country like Britain into Brexit, that grants Russian interference in social media to real world effect, that raises uncritical acceptance of fake news to effect.
It’s not a small issue at all but one that continues to grow in deeply divisive power by those who do not recognize its malignancy to Enlightenment values but support its spread and highly negative abuse of power in the name of everything it isn’t.
I’m sorry that makes me seem in your eyes to be somewhat ridiculous. Perhaps you would be better served reading or listening to a Steven Pinker or a Jordan Peterson, a David Frum or Stephen Fry, a Laura Kipnes or Peter Boghossian, a Bret Weinstein or… I mean the list just goes on and on and on of people who have been subjected to and so clearly see the fascism of the Regressive Left in action, in real world effect… not as the ideology of tolerance and respect and aiding victims from their victimizers as it is sold to the credulous and naive but for the very real and growing danger it is to the welfare of all of us.
Sorry that seems to be a problem you associate with me for pointing it out rather than take issue to those who don’t, won’t, or for ideological reasons will not see or address this danger.
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What a long comment as usual. And you’re telling me your pet hate (potential allies who champion taking other points of view into consideration) are to blame for Trump. Not mindless reality TV celebrity culture, or US political football, or sheer collision of random events. IT WAS THE REGRESSIVE LEFT. Yes, obsession specs indeed.
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Okay, stay with me here.
One of the people I mentioned was Laura Kipnes, an academic who was accused of a harassment infraction in a lecture she gave by talking about the dangers of this regressive movement and spent 9 months under the modern day version of the Inquisition determining the extent of her blasphemy. (She’s hardly alone in this modern day witch hunting.) Because she is tenured and this is her area of research, she is somewhat immune and so was found only somewhat guilty but her university had no legal choice but to allow her to continue teaching and researching. Not so for most of her in the Western colleagues. These people don’t talk about being targeted and accused by ideologues from the Left for fear of being labelled by them a racist and/or bigot and/or alt-rightist or what have you, being deplatformed and disinvited, having their papers retract and their means of making a living professionally ended. The labeling costs them their jobs if they – like Laura – dare to speak up, speak out, challenge the One True Ideology that is Post Modernism in action and dare to demonstrate the harm from it. What Laura is finding out in her ongoing research is just how ubiquitous this alt-reality really is, just how deeply woven into our merging digital culture it has become, just how many actually and strongly disagree with it but say nothing out of fear for sharing a similar fate orchestrated by the ideologues and those who go along with them.
Okay.
Along comes the Donald. Now ask yourself (and face the honest answer) if media and almost everyone you know were surprised by the election results that sent Trump to the White House? If that answer is yes – and it was certainly the case for almost the entire mass media left scrambling to rewrite the next morning’s headlines, then what I’m saying is that it is verboten to speak against this toxic ideology, forbidden to report on the rise of and and reasons for Trump’s electoral success. (of course, right now everyone is being sold a bill of goods that it’s really all the fault of those Other people and not then millions and millions of citizens who voted FOR him). If you do speak up and speak out, you will be attacked not on the truth value of the valid criticism raised but for daring to raise it at all. That’s why mass media went along with assuming their beliefs about reality aligned with the fascists of the Regressive Left and so utterly failed as a public Estate to report reality, report just how close this election really was going to be, the reality that demonstrated the growing support for a candidate hostile to Post Modern ideology of victims and victimizers and a negative populist dangerous to every facet of United States public institutions and equality law. What I’m saying is the public discourse and speaking atmosphere that is intentionally poisoned by supporters of the Regressive Left throwing vacuous accusations of the worst characteristics against anyone who dares criticize their malignant ideology translates into not saying anything at all but shows a growing willingness by vast numbers of people to support even a terrible person like a Trump when given an anonymous means to do so. In this sense, the election of Donald Trump demonstrates the disconnect between what is true in reality – massive support for Trump – and what is reported to be true by ideologues and those collaborators in media who continue to go along to get along – that vilifying him (even if by merit) is enough to create a preferred reality rather than get at the root reasons for so much disaffection against the status quo.
Sorry. Reality doesn’t work that way- by submitting to an ideology – no matter how racist or bigoted or extreme one paints people who speak truth to power about uncomfortable unsafe triggering ideas. But what this capitulation to the ideology does is neuter our common means to have access to accurate non biased reporting of reality. That’s one of the toxic effects made evident by the Trump election. But it is not by any stretch of the imagination a one-off.
The same is true for Brexit. The same is true for child sex rings in England, The same is true for Israel/Palestine issues. The same is true for Islam, for Syria, for Russia. We don’t have access to accurate non biased reporting of reality but are subject to this ongoing onslaught of ideologically driven and therefore acceptable ‘reporting’ in its place.
So you bet I assign a large measure of blame to those people who don’t see this ideological blinding as a problem but continue to try to sell it to the Great Unwashed as if going along with it is really a signal of high virtue.
This is how totalitarian states emerge from democracies. Not from a narcissist like Trump but from a majority population that has utterly fooled itself into believing what isn’t true, that authority that curtails our shared rights and freedoms is the right way to protect them from ‘danger’.
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Amazing. It’s like you dropped in to prove the obsession point. This is surreal.
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Worker shortage in Iowa is probably due to the fact that Iowa is boring and no one wants to be there. Not because of abortion.
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Ha, I did have a paragraph about that but figured as I’ve never been I can’t comment. Suffice to say, if you have skills, I’m sure there are nicer places to live in the USA.
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The problem may more be the State is too “nice”. No mountains. No amazing landscapes. Just plenty of peaceful, peaceful glory to God in the Monsanto Plains.
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As a deconvert of fairly Conservative Christianity, I’m still trying to shake out exactly how I feel about abortion. I think it’s a medical procedure, mostly between a woman, her family and their physician. However once the fetus comes to the point of viability outside the womb, I’m still a bit more dicey on the wisdom and morality of ending it’s life, his or hers, unless for the life of the mother or congential defects that would threaten the baby’s life… Even later on. Also, I feel more empathy and compassion for victims of rape and incest. Admittedly, these last are among the least numerous reasons for terminating pregnancies yet they seem to be used by advocates as the most forceful. Overall, I think the decision lies far beyond the state or federal capitols and should still remain between the family and the physician.
Too much politicization of what is already an emotional and heart breaking situation. That’s where I’m at right now.
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But does this knowledge that abortion is responsible for skilled labour shortages not make you think again? Perhaps this is the final forced birth winning argument to make abortion illegal.
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I think that article is utter BS. As you rightly said, the delusion rules all interpretation. I doubt that we in the us will ever see abortion made illegal again or ‘forced’ pregnancies and births. Perhaps the fear is on the other foot? I think we’ve come too far to be pushed back to the dark ages. Even with prolife a advocates making political pushes. Not very likely to happen these days. In my opinion.
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Yes, and two years ago it wasn’t likely that Trump would be the US president. People make odd choices.
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Not sure that’s the same at all and the vast majority of the us population/voters would never agree. Not likely at all these days. Just not the same as electing trump at all.
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Can I use my comment as the core of a post asking for input?
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Sorry, think my post jumped the gun. Linked back to yours though
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No problem, will be interested to see what you say. Very polite to ask – I usually swipe without checking. 🙂
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Thx again
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The Trump election demonstrates the detachment (willful delusion) going on in the Left. I think the same detachment is going on about abortion where reality in the US is that there is a significant and growing systemic movement to curtail and shut down abortion services every way possible… except by a SCOTUS ruling. For example, how many abortion service providers are there in your state today compared with, say, 25 years ago? I would be suurprised if the rate hadn;t dropped by at least 3/4.
The reality is that these services are becoming more and more difficult and onerous: from allowing the dispensing of prescribed RU486 to be determined by a pharmacist’s personal choice to conditional foreign aid that will not support women’s reproductive health care to the withholding of emergency medical services by hospitals. That 1 in 6 hospitals in the US are now under the direct thumb of Catholic priests who will terminate even senior staff who okay life-saving medical services if it involves terminating a pregnancy is a pretty good indication that this anti-abortion, anti-choice, anti-woman sabotage against women is not just ongoing but gaining more and more authority, an authority that is indisputably strangling the life out of any woman being able to even make such a choice and having the means to act on that choice if it involves healthcare.
I think it takes a willful blindness to not see this organized and intolerant movement against a legal and ethical and medical service taking place every day. Again, I see the effect of the merchants of doubt busy sewing the seeds in natural allies whose doubt serves only to continue to grow this cancerous and toxic anti-abortion, anti-choice, anti-woman authority.
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Sometimes we just make it too easy for you Violet!
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You pro-lifers, or you religious folks? Or maybe Iowans? 🙂
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Probably the conservative christians who don’t always think through the issues or think about what they are actually saying. You are very good at finding this stuff, I will give you that! 🙂
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By contrast one can then also argue that not having abortions would create greater amounts of people in poverty, and all the problems associated with that. To think that somehow all our problems would be solved by just having more people is ludicrous.
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A glimpse into the obsessed mind seeing links everywhere. To Tom, the criminalisation of abortion would solve all problems – lots of cute, loved babies and skilled workers are just a start.
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Suppose abortions in Iowa dropped to more or less zero in forty or fifty years time?.
How does Tom equate this with a larger pool of workers?
If the abortion rate is already declining as his graphic suggests, and yet there is a growing shortage of workers, and we accept that people are having more or less the same amount of sex then to my mind this suggests that people are using more effective means of contraception.
Is he suggesting woman must now ditch contraception altogether and focus on becoming baby making machines?
Didn’t a group of rather nasty fascists try something like this once upon a time?
Aside from the insidious nature of this fantabulous plan, once there are enough workers how does one prevent the circle turning when there is an excess of people and as Swarn suggests, the excess contributes to higher levels of poverty?
I suppose Iowa must then build more factories etc for its burgeoning population to work in.
Based on this model, a balance will never be struck.
However, demand for ”stuff” will naturally diminish if there is less population to purchase or to feed etc.
And of course less people, less pollution less etc etc.
Just a thought.
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There’s nothing rational about his ponder, just the mind of obsession seeing connections to their obsessive subject everywhere they turn. A bit like Tildeb if you poke him – can link all that’s wrong with society to the ‘regressive left’.
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Oh, there’s lots wrong in the world that has absolutely nothing to do with the regressive Left. But the regressive Left is a growing problem that is not trivial. So when people comment that it is, that is has more to do with me than its effect on real people in real life, then I do comment. Because you often paint the role of the regressive Left in many domestic issues just this way – even champion it – you receive a fair bit of commentary from me that you then classify as obsessive. You create the conditions to uphold and confirm your confirmation bias about me and then export and impose it on me. That’s no way to reveal what’s true but it is a way to make yourself feel insightful.
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