"He's talking about the border patrol, he's talking about nurses, he's talking about teachers, he's talking about everyday Americans who love their country and want to dream big again and support you, Mr. President. And I hope their campaign is about to apologize for what Joe Biden just said. We are not garbage. We are patriots who love America and thank you for running Mr. President."
Said Marco Rubio to Donald Trump, on stage at Trump's rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania last night. Click the video below, which is cued up to the spot. Trump appears to be hearing this news of President Biden's statement for the first time.
Trump reacts: "Wow. That's terrible.... Remember Hillary? She said 'deplorable' and then she said 'irredeemable.' Right? But she said 'deplorable.' That didn't work out. 'Garbage,' I think is worse. Right? But he doesn't know. You have to please forgive him. Please forgive him! For he not knoweth what he said."
Trump continues: "These people. Terrible terrible terrible — to say a thing like that, but he really doesn't know. He really, honestly, he doesn't. And I'm convinced that he likes me more than he likes Kamala. Convinced. But that's a terrible thing."
It was a terrible thing to say, but you can see that Trump knows that Biden's rhetoric — like Hillary's "deplorable" — was an excellent gift to his campaign. And it came just as Kamala Harris was delivering her big closing-argument speech that was supposed to reach out to all Americans and to characterize her as the one who, unlike Trump, embraced everybody.
"In 2016, I famously described half of Trump’s supporters as 'the basket of deplorables.' I was talking about the people who are drawn to his racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia — you name it. The people for whom his bigotry is a feature, not a bug. It was an unfortunate choice of words and bad politics, but it also got at an important truth. Just look at everything that has happened in the years since, from Charlottesville to Jan. 6. The masks have come off, and if anything, 'deplorable' is too kind a word for the hate and violent extremism we’ve seen from some Trump supporters...."
"I wasn’t sure voters were ready for that. And I wasn’t running to break a barrier; I was running because I thought I was the most qualified to do the job. While it still pains me that I couldn’t break that highest, hardest glass ceiling, I’m proud that my two presidential campaigns made it seem normal to have a woman at the top of the ticket."
I have an aversion to the "making history" argument. And I don't like the idea of whether voters are "ready" for it. It's a visualization of a timeline of progress, in 2 ways. The first way makes perfect sense: The first female President of the United States has a place in history as the first female President of the United States. But the second way is an insidious attack on people: the idea that we voters as a group are in a process of enlightenment, some of us are further ahead than others, and one is most advanced when one is influenced by the argument that we ought to vote for someone because she will be the first.
I do appreciate the "sometimes" in "I sometimes shied away from talking about making history." As I remember it, she and her champions sounded the history-making theme continually.
And now, we've got a new candidate who can use the history-making theme. I'm still irked when I'm elbowed to come on, everybody, let's make history. I may on my own feel myself warming up to a candidate because of some personal attribute that has only a dubious connection to the ability to do the job well, but it's negatively related to this talking about making history.
ADDED: I was delighted to stumble into a TikTok that expresses how I feel about all this talk about making history:
I thought nothing of it when I saw — in Politico — that Biden, speaking in private, has called Trump a "sick fuck" and said "What a fucking asshole the guy is.” There is nothing the slightest bit surprising about this. I remember half a century ago, when people were surprised and censorious about Nixon's dirty words on the Watergate Tapes. But is there anyone sentient who didn't already know Biden says "fuck" in the White House?
Maybe whatever is going on right now seems bigger than everything else, but the pandemic, at its worst, was only set to wipe out 5% of us, and nuclear war was going to kill us all. As for climate change, if it's not worse than killing 5% of us — mostly the old — then it's not as bad as it's been portrayed in the press.
Ah, it seems that only a few weeks ago, there were mainstream media voices who would have called Donald Trump "the greatest existential threat in our lifetimes."
But the pandemic is the "existential threat" that we've done the most about — taken so seriously and changed so much of what we are doing. Maybe we need to call it the "the greatest existential threat in our lifetimes" to make sense out of how much we've done. We haven't been willing to sacrifice so much to deal with climate change — to radically shrink economic activity and to stay home or very near home. Much of what we've done for the pandemic is also what we could do for climate change if we took it deadly seriously.
Why did we do it? Deaths were happening before our eyes, and experts told us this is what we all need to do, and the whole world was doing it at once, and we understood that it needed to be done right away. That is what's greatest about the pandemic: The way We the People of the World acted in response to the thing — not the thing itself.
Now, to read the editorial. It begins with a "thank you," and it advises us not to look only at the failures but to look at all the good "the vast majority of Americans have done." Why limit it to Americans? Because it's Memorial Day?
This weekend, as we honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of our country, it’s worth pausing to acknowledge the smaller but essential patriotic sacrifices we are all making today, for one another...
We've done a lot of "smaller" things. Whether they were and are "essential," we'll never know, and we'll analyze and politicize for as long as our lifetime lasts.
You’re doing great, my fellow Americans. What you have been asked to do is not easy...
But it is much easier than giving your life in battle.
... but you’re doing it. And you’ve already made a big difference. People are alive today who might otherwise not be, thanks to the sacrifices you have made and are continuing to make....
The editors call on us to continue. It's a thanks in advance:
Until there is a vaccine, which could be years from now, the simple acts of wearing a mask and practicing social distancing may be the most reliable ways to stem the spread of the disease and save more lives.
And if you don't believe in the cause, don't protest:
The most patriotic thing that Americans can do right now is not to carry military-style rifles to a protest that shuts down their state legislature, or to spread baseless conspiracy theories online, or to pick fights in a supermarket over reasonable public health measures....
Or at least, don't do the sorts of protests that are never a good idea, whether they're about a pandemic or anything else. The editors don't go so far as to tell Americans that it's not "patriotic" to have protests about our disagreement with what the government tries to force us to do.
As Hillary Clinton famously said: "I'm sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic. We need to stand up and say we're Americans, and we have the right to debate and disagree with any administration."
Gravely, eh? That's spooky. I'm scared! Josh Earnest was Obama's White House Press Secretary. (Had you forgotten? I had.) He says:
When I was press secretary for President Obama, my strategy was simple: I spoke directly with the president and didn't make a habit of lying to the American people.
Well, of course, you don't want to make a habit of lying to the American people. That's just pathological. A good press secretary lies when it serves a specific purpose. If you just make a habit out of lying, you lose the advantage of all the times when saying what's true is actually in your interest and you miss all the cute chances — like the one you're using here, Josh — where telling a cagy truth works the same way as a good straightforward bald-faced lie.*
You and I both know that's not how the Trump administration operates. Between the constant staff upheaval and drama, the rogue tweets, and overall failure to put the interests of the American people first, it's clear this administration is in utter chaos.
Apparently, Josh wants me to feel like I'm in a special club with him — "You and I" — and we have knowledge together and there's chaos. We "know"! Eh. I don't know. What makes tweets "rogue"? I don't even get the concept. Seems to me, Trump just talks to us directly when he's got something he wants to say.
He may be a rogue ("A dishonest, unprincipled person; a rascal, a scoundrel" or "A mischievous person, esp. a child; a person whose behaviour one disapproves of but who is nonetheless likeable or attractive" (OED)), but I don't agree that the tweets are rogue ("Aberrant, anomalous; misplaced, occurring (esp. in isolation) at an unexpected place or time" or "Inexplicably faulty or defective" (OED)).
And I really don't like seeing characterizations like that portrayed as "knowledge," especially when I'm being roped into it. I supposedly "know" things I don't even believe. And yet it's "clear" that there's "chaos"... and not just chaos, "utter chaos."
I feel like some clown named Josh just popped in to madly gesticulate and grimace. You're not going to alarm and activate me like that. But I never give money, so I'm just a recipient of over-inclusive email. I could unsubscribe, but then I couldn't write posts like this. You have my data and I have yours. You have your channels of communication, and I have mine.
Skipping ahead in that email:
I am deeply concerned that the Trump administration is doing lasting damage to the bond between the American people and their government -- and I can imagine you feel the same way.
I appreciate that he's admitting it's just his imagination now, but I must say I feel a little creeped out by the notion of a "bond between the American people and their government" that must be preserved. I believe in maintaining a separation between oneself and the government. It's dangerous for individuals to feel bonded to government. That sounds like fascism. I think if Trump is making individuals feel less oneness with government, that's good. I'm not a fan of chaos, but too much order is fascistic. I like my distance, separation, and objectivity. One thing I love about Trump — which was not true of Obama — is that we all feel so free and energized to criticize and insult him and just hate him. It's so wholesome... health-giving... salubrious.**
_______________________
* Yesterday, when I was complaining about Hillary, I said:
Hillary Clinton's approach to communication is so annoying. I'm not a Trump fan, but he's at least a straight talker — even when lying! It works for his fans and his antagonists. He's energizing. She, on the other hand, is such a pain. Imagine having to follow the daily blather of President Hillary Clinton.
Not all my readers share my sense of humor. Some people took the trouble to write comments telling me it didn't make sense to say that someone who was lying could be a straight talker. It makes sense to me. That's why you can have a bald-faced lie. Would you prefer a hairy-faced lie? More of a bearded hipster character?
** I love that word, "salubrious." It reminds me of the hardest I ever laughed during a live theater performance, as I told you — if you were reading back then — in 2004:
The play was [Turgenev's] "A Month in the Country," and at the beginning of a scene, where a number of things were going on, a minor character came out and said "The weather is very salaboobious today." Now that was supposed to be funny, but it was just way too funny compared to everything else that surrounded it, and in fact it brought peals of laughter that continued far into the scene.
"She’s made that clear, and honestly, what bothers me the most is the fact that she shrinks away from just saying so. Anyone who’s paying even the slightest bit of attention realizes that we’re talking about a consistent perspective, not a gaffe — and I’d appreciate it if she didn’t insult my intelligence by saying that I just 'misinterpreted' what absolutely could not be interpreted any other way."
Hillary Clinton's approach to communication is so annoying. I'm not a Trump fan, but he's at least a straight talker — even when lying! It works for his fans and his antagonists. He's energizing. She, on the other hand, is such a pain. Imagine having to follow the daily blather of President Hillary Clinton.
It's not clear when this video was made, but it's all over my Twitter feed right now — perhaps as an accusation of hypocrisy in light of the Burns Strider story in the news yesterday.
She says — and I had to keep pausing the video to laugh and to say things like "What hypocrisy!" — it "is really important because it can’t just end with one person’s disgraceful behavior and the consequences that he is now facing. This has to be a wake-up call and shine a bright spotlight on anything like this behavior anywhere, at any time. We’ve had a series of revelations about companies in Silicon Valley — you know, just sexual harassment and sexual assault being, you know, kind of accepted. That’s the cutting edge of our economy. … This can’t be tolerated anywhere, whether it’s entertainment or tech or" — politics? — "anywhere."
IN THE COMMENTS: Dickin'Bimbos@Home said "Harvey bundled big D-money for you, Hillary - Any Comment on that, Hillary?"
Watch the video. I didn't blog about that part, but it's in there. She says she can't give the money back, but whatever she got should be deemed included in the 10% of her income she always gives to charity anyway. I'm paraphrasing — to make it clearer. What she garbled out was:
"What other people [how got money from Harvey Weinstein] are saying, what my former colleagues are saying, is they're going to donate it to charity, and of course I will do that. I give 10% of my income to charity every year, this will be part of that. There's no -- there's no doubt about it."
Forget death panels. If Republicans pass this bill, they’re the death party.
Will DEATH!!!! work as a political message?
The Republicans famously, successfully used "death" to reframe political issues: death tax, death panels. But those were more precise issues that really had to do with death. "Death tax" was a reframing of "estate tax," and "death panels" had to do with end-of-life medical decisionmaking.
"Death party" asks us to believe the Republican Party is happy to let us die.
I would think that crudely shouting DEATH!!!! would cause many people to turn away from the whole discussion. And for many others — especially people facing life-threatening conditions or with family members who are dying or have died — the harping on death causes pain and anxiety.
Using text and gestures and tone from the 2016 debates, actors play the 2 candidates, with the gender flipped. The audience is surveyed before and after, and pretty much everyone is stunned to discover that gender bias did not work at all as they thought it did. The male Hillary was rather repulsive, and Trump's approach to communication was quite successful coming from a woman....
We heard a lot of “now I understand how this happened”—meaning how Trump won the election. People got upset. There was a guy two rows in front of me who was literally holding his head in his hands, and the person with him was rubbing his back.
Here's an article about the theater experiment, which you can see in NYC. The title is "Her Opponent."
The two creators are admittedly liberal and expected the project to reinforce the shock they experienced on election night — “I was struck by the aggressive body language that Trump was using and thought it would never be tolerated by a woman,” recalls [co-creator Maria Guadalupe] of the debates — but found themselves understanding how the outspoken businessman and reality TV star won the presidency. After each performance, [director Joe] Salvatore conducts a discussion with the audience, who generally dislike the male Clinton character’s mansplained fact flood and “all the nodding and smiling that a woman needs to do to be listened to,” says Guadalupe, and favor the female Trump character’s visible passion and clear messaging.
Obviously, Guadalupe is wrong about what a woman "needs to do." It's more like what she thinks she needs to do. The unsmiling, forceful, engaged female Trump has a better effect. I think the show is evidence that women can be like that. They don't need to tone everything down and try to act pleasing. And maybe they shouldn't. It's phony. Now, Hillary Clinton was her own special version of phony, so you can't just generalize.
There's a clip at my old post. And here's another clip (within an MSNBC program):
Here's a clip showing one rehearsal technique:
I'm so interested in this show! I hope they put the whole thing on line in the end. It is so educational. Such a great perspective on how we experience gender.
Psychologically speaking, resistance and resolution are at opposite poles. For resistance has fundamentally to do with not being able, or willing, to deal with the negative experiences in your life. And ultimately your happiness depends a lot more on handling—then letting go of—such adversities than it does, self-protectively, denying them, or fighting against them. In addition, so does (unwittingly) holding onto their associated feelings of hurt, sorrow, anxiety, or anger.
Without consciously deciding to, you can even get “attached” to feelings you haven’t resolved. But if you become aware of the exorbitantly high costs of not acknowledging, and working through, these feelings, you’ll realize that heedlessly clinging to them hasn’t at all contributed to your welfare. Quite the opposite.....
I ran across that article as I was looking for a link to put on my coinage "persisting-resisting" in this post, referring to "the people who are persisting-resisting Trump after the election, who go heavily into not-my-President politics." I knew that Mitch McConnell, squelching a Senator, had said "Nevertheless, she persisted" and created a feminist meme and that Hillary Clinton had combined "persist" with its rhyme "resist" in some kind of advice to Democrats. Ah, yes, here it is in all its tin-eared glory:
"Let resistance plus persistence equal progress for our party and our country. Keep fighting. I'll be right there with you every step of the way."
It's worth noticing that the psychologists have gotten there first with the resist/persist rhetoric. I don't know if I trust psychologists more than politicians. The old psychiatrist advice stop resisting sounds rather creepy. I'll be right there with you every step of the way — that's creepy too.
Anyway... connect that Hillary quote and that Jung quote. "Let resistance plus persistence equal progress" and "What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size." Seems like progress will come in the form of more Trump.
Based on the conversations after the performances, it sounded like audience members had their beliefs rattled in a similar way. What were some themes that emerged from their responses?
We heard a lot of “now I understand how this happened”—meaning how Trump won the election. People got upset. There was a guy two rows in front of me who was literally holding his head in his hands, and the person with him was rubbing his back. The simplicity of Trump’s message became easier for people to hear when it was coming from a woman—that was a theme. One person said, “I’m just so struck by how precise Trump’s technique is.” Another—a musical theater composer, actually—said that Trump created “hummable lyrics,” while Clinton talked a lot, and everything she was was true and factual, but there was no “hook” to it. Another theme was about not liking either candidate—you know, “I wouldn’t vote for either one.” Someone said that Jonathan Gordon [the male Hillary Clinton] was “really punchable” because of all the smiling. And a lot of people were just very surprised by the way it upended their expectations about what they thought they would feel or experience. There was someone who described Brenda King [the female Donald Trump] as his Jewish aunt who would take care of him, even though he might not like his aunt. Someone else described her as the middle school principal who you don’t like, but you know is doing good things for you.
I'd like to see video of the complete performance, but there is this clip from a rehearsal:
Brilliant. What a great realization of a great idea!
Yesterday, Hillary Clinton did a short press conference about FBI director's Comey's letter to Congress about reopening the email investigation. Here's part of that:
REPORTER: What would you say to a voter who right now will be seeing you and hearing what you're saying, saying I didn't trust her before. I don't trust her any more right now....
HILLARY CLINTON: You know, I think people a long time ago made up their minds about the e-mails. I think that's factored into what people think and now they are choosing a president.
So the question is: What would you say to a voter? And the answer — the nonanswer — is: People don't think. They're done thinking. Anything that could be in the email is already factored into their opinion of me.
It sounds as though she's delivering the contents of what could have been an emailed conversation with her confidantes about what she could say to voters. I imagine a private conversation hitting upon the idea of maybe voters will think that they don't need to think about email anymore because they've already heard a lot about email, and that if they are still voting or considering voting for her, they've factored it in.
But that's not what you should say outright to voters. You should say something that makes them feel they've already absorbed and digested the email and have had their fill. You shouldn't reveal that's what you want them to think!
It reminds me of President George H.W. Bush:
"Message: I care" came in January 1992 as he was just gearing up the process of losing the election to Bill Clinton — Bill Clinton, who had a special knack for making people feel that he cared.
".... refusing to feel shame about some of the terrible things that have happened to them, and they have shared their stories. Shared them [publicly] and in print. Some have spoken about sexual assault and how that has affected them going forward. Some have shared stories about their abortions. There is such power when we come together as a group. The plots of the stories may differ but many of the feelings are the same. What you did for precious Lev is motherhood in its highest form. You protected him. You protected him from trauma, pain and suffering. And then you turned this dreadful experience into something positive. The experience didn't harden you, it softened you. Bless you for openly sharing your story. I know you have touched many people. Thank you."
By the way, I need to elaborate on something I was writing about yesterday in the post "Who — Trump or Hillary — was confused or dishonest about abortion at the last debate?" I was looking very closely at a something written by the obstetrician/gynecologist Jen Gunter, who had mostly attacked what Donald Trump said about abortion in the last debate, but who also said that Hillary Clinton was "confused." Gunter wrote:
Talking about abortion from a medical perspective is challenging when you are not a health care provider. Even someone familiar with the laws can get confused. For example, Mrs. Clinton made an error speaking about late-term abortion when she said it was a health of the mother issue. Typically it is not (it’s almost always fetal anomalies).... I don’t know where Mrs. Clinton got this “bad news at the end” of the pregnancy being about maternal health.... [N]o one is performing health of the mother abortions at 38 or 39 weeks we just do deliveries. It’s called obstetrics.
Gunter proceeds to talk about "deliveries" that are designed to kill the unborn — a procedure she speaks of approvingly because "After 24 weeks birth defects that lead to abortion are very severe and typically considered incompatible with life." Now, 24 weeks is generally considered the point of viability, and under the case law, a woman has a right to choose to have an abortion for any reason prior to viability. But after viability, laws may protect the life of the unborn, but the woman has a right to get an abortion to protect her own life or health.
That, I assume, is the reason why Hillary Clinton spoke of late-term abortion as a matter of the woman's health. In other words, it wasn't "an error." The person "with the laws" was not "confused." She was framing her position carefully to fit the law. Gunter is a person familiar with the medical practice. From her point of view, Hillary seemed "confused" because Hillary's position is out of line with the real-life facts as Gunter has experienced them. So it seems that Gunter stumbled into what can be understood as devastating to Hillary Clinton's position. I don't know how many people will notice this, however. I didn't notice it when I wrote the post yesterday.
Here's something else I noticed only after writing the post.
Many news outlets accused Trump of misrepresenting Clinton’s position by bringing up the possibility of killing “the baby on the ninth month on the final day.” This does not happen, said the fact-checkers. But go back and read the transcript: What Trump said (in two iterations) was that “if you go with what Hillary is saying in the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby.” That is the logic of her position on late-term abortion, which is that an abortionist should be free to perform an abortion at any stage of pregnancy if there is a health reason for it, including a reason of emotional health. Some journalists were touting this criticism of Trump’s comments and defense of Clinton’s position, which ends up saying that abortions at the very end of pregnancy never happen but should still be legal because of the principle of the thing. Trump grasps that logic and says he objects to it. “Now you can say that that’s okay and Hillary can say that that’s okay, but it’s not okay with me.” You can agree with Trump or you can agree with Clinton, but you can’t truthfully say that there’s no difference between their stated positions.
The link at "this criticism" goes to a blog post by Dr. Jen Gunter, "Donald Trump confuses birth with abortion and no, there are no ninth month abortions." I'm reading that now. She quotes Trump's "I think it’s terrible if you go with what Hillary is saying in the ninth month you can take the baby and rip the baby out of the womb of the mother just prior to the birth of the baby." Her first objection is is: "we don’t rip anything in OB/GYN." They use sharp instruments and make neat cuts.
Perhaps we can forgive Donald Trump for not knowing this as it is hard to believe that a man who bragged that he doesn’t change diapers and said he wouldn’t have had a baby if his wife had wanted him to actually physically participate in its care would have attended the birth of his own children. It’s certainly not for the faint of heart as there is, after all, lots of blood coming out the “wherever.”
That's amusingly written — if you're in the mood to be amused on this subject — but it's willfully ignoring Trump's motivation to use inflammatory rhetoric. He's not purporting to accurately describe a medical procedure but to dramatize the perspective of the baby who is getting killed. To be fair, it probably feels better to get killed with sharp instruments than to be ripped apart. And yet "partial-birth" abortion is illegal under federal law and the Supreme Court upheld that ban precisely because there is another method of late-term abortion, and that method — if I may believe Justice Kennedy's opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart— does involve ripping:
The doctor grips a fetal part with the forceps and pulls it back through the cervix and vagina, continuing to pull even after meeting resistance from the cervix. The friction causes the fetus to tear apart. For example, a leg might be ripped off the fetus as it is pulled through the cervix and out of the woman. The process of evacuating the fetus piece by piece continues until it has been completely removed....
That grabbing and ripping is the the method that remained legal after the "partial-birth" abortion ban. (Gunter eventually describes this procedure: "The fetus is essentially taken apart with a D and E to fit through the dilated cervix." But, she says, this is not "ripping," but "simply surgical technique.")
Gunter says:
Trump’s statement, as incorrect as it may be, supports the fallacy of the due-date abortion.
Supports the fallacy. In other words, he didn't say doctors were agreeing to perform abortions as late as the due date, but he caused people to picture this nonexistent event. His words, as Ponnuru observes, are about Hillary's philosophical principles: Hillary sees no role for the law to do anything in the hypothetical situation. Hillary, for her part, doesn't defend herself by saying we don't need laws about things that are not happening in the real world. She rests on the belief in the woman's autonomy. (As I would put it: The woman has sovereignty over the interior of her own body and the only legitimate law is her law.)
Back to Dr. Gunter:
Talking about abortion from a medical perspective is challenging when you are not a health care provider. Even someone familiar with the laws can get confused. For example, Mrs. Clinton made an error speaking about late-term abortion when she said it was a health of the mother issue. Typically it is not (it’s almost always fetal anomalies).... I don’t know where Mrs. Clinton got this “bad news at the end” of the pregnancy being about maternal health.... [N]o one is performing health of the mother abortions at 38 or 39 weeks we just do deliveries. It’s called obstetrics.
Was Clinton confused? It might be a political choice not to talk about destroying a defective child.
Gunter proceeds to school us in birth defects, which, she says, are the reason for 80% of abortions that take place after 21 weeks. The defects, she says, "could range from Down syndrome to anomalies incompatible with life." Gunter shifts quickly to abortions that take place after 24 weeks, considered the point of viability, after which the woman no longer has a constitutional right to have an abortion for any reason. She writes:
After 24 weeks birth defects that lead to abortion are very severe and typically considered incompatible with life.
Typically. What's hidden behind that word? Are we still destroying children with disabilities that do not mean that they'll die before birth or soon after? After 24 weeks, Gunter tells us, the doctor can either induce labor (after killing the fetus with an injection so that the "partial-birth" approach to removing the fetus won't violate the federal law) or use the ripping (it's not ripping!) method described above (which is called "dilation and extraction").
I’ve never heard of a dilation and extraction for any other reason than severe birth defects and often it is for a woman who has had two or three c-sections for whom inducing labor might pose other health hazards, like uterine rupture. Are we to force women to have c-sections for a pregnancy that is not compatible with life?
A good question. I've had 2 c-sections myself, and the second one was recommended because, after the first one, there was a danger of uterine rupture. But what I don't understand here is why wouldn't waiting for a natural birth be the alternative to a c-section? It is natural birth, not abortion, that is parallel to a c-section, since it is intended to keep the baby alive. Gunter doesn't even seem to notice the ethical question why would we accept the deliberate destruction of the fetus at this point? Is it euthanasia (because the fetus is suffering)? Is it for the mental peace of the woman once she knows that this pregnancy is not going to result in a healthy baby? Does it matter whether the disability is fatal? Remember Gunter wrote of birth defects that are "typically considered incompatible with life." So some but not all of these babies would, if not actively killed, go on to die a natural death.
Gunter tells us that some women "might think they can make it to term and then at 34 weeks cave and ask to be delivered because they just can’t bear one more person asking them about their baby":
Do they just smile and walk away or say, “Well, actually, my baby has no brain and will die at birth?” Some women go to term and others can’t. To judge these women for requesting an early delivery is cruel on so many levels. I wrote more about it here if you are interested. Regardless, terminations for birth defects isn’t ripping “the baby out of the womb in the ninth month.” At 38 or 39 weeks it’s always an induction and is simply called a delivery.
Notice the language glitch: It's "isn't ripping" because it's "called a delivery." Of course, the official terminology avoids the ugly word "ripping." But calling it "delivery" aligns with calling it "partial-birth," which is what horrified people more than the dilation and extraction method and produced the federal law that the Supreme Court upheld in Carhart. Gunter has talked about both methods, above, but she switched to speaking only of the delivery method (with isn't illegal when the body is already dead because of the injection). But Gunter has shifted to talking about abortions after 38 or 39 weeks and now she's telling us there is no longer a choice between the 2 methods. So in that sense, there is no "ripping."
But Trump's use of "ripping" wasn't technical. It was dramatic rhetoric expressing how horrible it is to deliberately kill a human being who is this far along in development. Dr. Gunter is interested in presenting medical practitioners as expert and ethical, but she's not very attuned to the way clinical terminology can sound heartless or deceptive. I'm not convinced by her effort to skewer Trump on his use of the word "rip." Her better argument has to do with how unlikely it is that any baby is killed on the last day of a full term pregnancy, but Ponnuru deals with that argument well: Trump is testing Clinton's principle. Nevertheless, Trump is making people think about the reality, not merely a hypothetical. He's distracting us if he's alarming us about things that aren't happening. I'd like to see the candidates concentrate on the matters that genuinely will occupy their attention if they get into office.
Clinton was also confused or dishonest, as Gunter explains. I suspect that she doesn't want to delve into the ethical questions surrounding the disabled, especially if we're talking about anomalies that begin with Down syndrome.
I suspect that Hillary Clinton feels most comfortable and most politically effective talking about the feelings of women and seeming to empathize with their struggles, referenced abstractly, before scrambling to the high ground of individual autonomy.
At last night's debate, the moderator, Chris Wallace, chose to make the first question about the Supreme Court. This perked me up. It's what I've concentrated my attention on for the past 35 years, and we've got an open seat and maybe 2 or even 4 seats that may open up in the next presidential term. What I remember from watching the debate last night is that both candidates were absolutely awful. Now that I've slept on it and have access to the transcript, I want to double-check my own opinion. So come along with me and judge for yourself.
Wallace observed that the topic of the Supreme Court had yet to be discussed at a debate in any depth, and he wanted to "drill down." Going to Clinton first, Wallace said:
[W]here do you want to see the court take the country?
The idea that the Court is in the lead taking us somewhere is all wrong, but no one is going to point that out.
And secondly, what’s your view on how the constitution should be interpreted? Do the founders' words mean what they say or is it a living document to be applied flexibly, according to changing circumstances?
That's a simple way to prompt the candidates to talk about interpretive methodology, and it's an invitation to bungle, because candidates don't really want to get stuck at either end of those seemingly opposite positions. (I say "seemingly," because you can say that the founder's words meant that this is a living document to be applied flexibly, according to changing circumstances.)
Clinton goes first:
You know, I think when we talk about the Supreme Court, it really raises the central issue in this election. Namely, what kind of country are we going to be? What kind of opportunities will we provide for our citizens? What kind of rights will Americans have? And I feel strongly that the Supreme Court needs to stand on the side of the American people. Not on the side of the powerful corporations and the wealthy.
I was already loudly arguing with her. The side? The Supreme Court isn't supposed to take sides. She's blatantly saying she wants a Court that doesn't act like a court but gets on one side. Her Court is a Court that ought to have to recuse itself constantly.
Who advised her and coached her about talking and looking like this? It's either ludicrous or scary... which makes me think that she's decided to try to sound like Trump. In that view, this is her statement of what Trump seems to be. This is what she thinks Trump's fans are responding to in Trump. It's so wrong on so many levels. And I guess that's a clue why she's not 50 points ahead.
ADDED: If you imagine this clip played to a large group in an auditorium somewhere, her tone and gestures make sense. But then why did the campaign allow this video to go public in this form rather than using video of the crowd with this video playing within that larger scene? Maybe the other video is worse because of the crowd response. I don't know. These are problems that arise when you do not appear in person at events but video yourself in.
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