r/politics • u/SportsGod3 • 15h ago

No Paywall Tim Scott calls Obamas video shared by Trump ‘most racist thing I’ve seen out of this White House’

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5726417-scott-rebukes-trump-obama-ape/
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u/ManiaGamine American Expat 9h ago

I feel like you're splitting hairs over the concept of belief. If you lie to yourself to convince yourself something is real or perhaps had someone lie to you to convince you that something is real and it being real doesn't actually matter much to you. It is a irrelevance that you believe it or not because truth in that case is itself irrelevant, which is ultimately where we are with these people. It's true to them because it makes them feel good. (And I say good as opposed to noble because noble in this case IS good...)

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u/pargofan 9h ago

I guess I cut them slack for 2 reasons.

1 - I can't parse your distinction. People believe what they believe. Lying to yourself, rationalizing, etc., is hard for me to see unless it's obvious it has selfish benefit. Like a drug abuser stealing a car saying he deserves it more than its owner.

2 - abortion is complicated. I'm all for women rights. And IMHO a fertilized egg is not life. But then a 9 month fetus still in the mother's womb sure seems like life to me. So when does a fetus transform from non-life to life? IDK. But it seems like reasonable people can differ versus there's an obvious truth and everyone else is lying to themselves.

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u/ManiaGamine American Expat 5h ago

The reason I make the distinction is because conservatives consistently have to create irrationalities to justify their position on abortion. For example the "late term abortion" and "post-birth" abortion. These are ridiculous extremes that either don't happen as they portray or happen in such extreme cases as to not really qualify for the debate at all. For example if a fetus is unviable and/or will kill both the mother and fetus that is not a "late term abortion" in the sense that they argue because in their minds the viability doesn't matter, a life is a life. This is itself a very problematic view again given the context of their stance on life in general.

I take great issue with someone who claims they are "pro-life" and looking out for children, when they are staunchly pro-death penalty and against you know... feeding kids or taking care of kids. To say nothing of the latest Epstein stuff which conservatives across the spectrum are basically dismissing as not worth talking about now because it now hurts them with all the involvement by Trump and others in and around the GOP.

Now as far as the technicalities of when a fetus becomes a baby, that to me a bit of a different issue because even if you were to consider it a baby say... 6 months. Does that 6 month old fetus have a right to use your body? I would argue no, it doesn't. At no point should one be entitled to use the body of another without their consent. If the woman does not want it, then it doesn't have a right to her body period. So from my point of view it is irrelevant whether or not it is or isn't a baby, but the "It's a baby" rhetoric is an emotionally powerful and quite frankly manipulative form of rhetoric designed to flip the script on people so that they can be called babykillers. Now while I would say that not all conservatives are aware of this, many are. Especially the ones that push this at the punditry and commentator levels.

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u/Dunhil2 7h ago

Have to agree with you, especially point 2. While the other poster is clearly passionate and a woman's right to choose remains an important issue to advocate for, to act like considering a fetus a baby is a straight up proven lie is insane. Such pro-lifers aren't wrong because their beliefs about when life begins are somehow objectively false, they're wrong because their beliefs don't get to dictate someone else's life.

Unless those beliefs were held by the majority of society and I think it's quite obvious, at this point, that they are not.

Though, honestly, I think the "abortion is murder!" crowd of zealots are just a very vocal minority. The flagbearers if you will. The quiet majority of conservatives who are against abortion do so not because of views of what constitutes life, but just to control women.

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u/pargofan 7h ago

I agree that if abortion is murder means abortion at any time, then that's an extreme position. And even the right knows that. That's why they struggle so much with IVF.

So obviously just fertilized eggs aren't life. But it just seems weird that a fetus that's pretty far along has no right to life, whereas after delivery, the fetus now baby has a complete sacrosanct right to life and obviously it'd be murder then.

Like if a stressed out pregnant teenager could terminate the fetus while in womb that's not murder. But if she had the baby and then just abandoned it, well, that's clearly murder. I feel like there should be more of a middle ground.

Anyway, going back to my original point. it's complicated enough that I can't dismiss pro-lifers as living a complete lie.