Posts by blindjackdog
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
No disparagement intended re James Hurman's related post, btw. It most certainly is a good thing to have an understanding of constitutional principles. But that doesn't mean that if you feel alienated from the political culture you shouldn't express that in the only available way.
-
Right at the moment we've got an alliance of parties orienting themselves specifically (and explicitly) with regard to a demographic of notorious non-voters, and in doing so they're tailoring both their message and its medium.
Isn't that democracy in action? Hasn't collective non-voting in that respect therefore inspired a political response? Aren't those non-voters now at least getting the chance of seeing candidates who might actually appeal to them -- something that wouldn't have occurred if they'd all simply obeyed the dictates of the righteous and paternalistic, swallowed down their gag reflex and cast a dutiful vote for the least bad option available?
(Unsurprisingly, the result is that legions of anti-democrats (most notably, of course, those holding or seeking to hold political power) are in a shit-spin over it, showing their true colours as they maintain that only particular forms of political discourse are legitimate.)
The You must vote message is so complacent and arrogant and self-important, it really makes me want to hurl.
The You lose your right to complain argument is so stupid that anyone making it loses their right to have opinions.
-
Up Front: Dropping the A-Bomb, in reply to Danielle,
No matter how laudable a goal a more diverse society is, you’re still interfering with the choice of an individual woman.
It's pretty astonishing that you simply assume that there's a self-evident hierarchy of interests here, coming down on the side of the individual woman. Doesn't that make you reflect on the levels of your own acculturation, even a little bit?
Besides, it's not a "more" diverse society; it's a less less diverse society.
To be clear: I'm not disagreeing with your position, which seems to be the prevailing one here, and I think that more restriction on abortions is no answer to anything.
But I'm really pleased that Hilary's raised this issue, because I think it's a huge one, and a really tough one, and one that's causing a whole lot of silent pain.
I also think that it's quite a distinct issue from those Emma raised -- despite the obvious common ground.
If the traditional abortion debate involves our imagined understandings of the meaning of the fetus (which were largely pretty unsophisticated up until the "pro-lifers" forced us all to start articulating them), then this debate is one about our imagined understandings of the meaning of being human.
It's profoundly confrontational.
A woman close to me has said that she's pleased she's not having kids because this very thing would potentially put her in the position of making a decision that she would believe to be morally indefensible.
It may be a woman's choice, but in making that choice, she's making a choice about what the species should look like. Or she's choosing to act on someone else's, or her society's, choice about what the species should look like.
(And if dudes are guilty of coercive behaviours when it comes to your more garden-variety abortions, you can bet your life you've got hubbies up and down the country pulling out all the passive aggressive stops when they discover that according to the analysis of some scan there's a certain probability that little peanut might turn out to be a big old Downer... and pragmatic women are then "choosing" to keep the peace.)
(There's so much talk about "choice" around here, it sounds more like a neoliberal think-tank than a supposedly left-leaning blog.
Haven't simplistic, positivist notions of choice been given the old heave-ho by, oh, I don't know, a moment or two of critical reflection?)
I'd say that folks from all over the political spectrum are discomfited by this business, not because of any individual woman's treatment of her individual fetus, but because they really don't like the idea that this is where we've come to as a society -- and because they know that in this neoliberal, conformist, shallow, unreligious and bottom-line-conscious society there is only one trajectory it can take.
They might be coming from a place of ecological or religious consciousness; or from experiences of love through deep alterity; or from a sense of the fundamental unhealthiness of individuals being placed in such existential hotbeds, making "choices" as to what they feel can constitute an acceptable human life in the context of the exigencies that define their own.
The answer is not more regulation, no, but a hell of a lot more conversation. The dominant, "pragmatic" consensus prevails (and it does) in large part, I suspect, because there's so much shame and silence surrounding these decisions -- which is in turn tied to the levels of actual uncertainty and ambivalence attaching to the "choices" they entail. For certain women to find some kind of choice that feels true, rather than one that feels already chosen for them, the possibilities for understanding this thing in its true profundity have to be explored in conscious discourses that offer alternatives to our imaginations beyond the platitudes of self-actualisation or the cruel puerility of some pathetic cunt like Michael Laws.
-
The guy who now does The Civilian used to write these long-winded bits for the student rag at Canterbury, most of which seemed to be nothing more than protracted proofs of his mastery of the subordinate clause.
But this one time he got all earnest and confronted the “A-bomb issue”, attempting an “objective analysis” of the debate. Yep, seriously.
The question, he mused, stroking his writerly beard, came down to whether or not abortion did in fact consist in killing an unborn child.
I’m working from memory here, so I may be slightly mis-recalling his argument, but that was the basic thrust.
Certainly, what I took away from reading his insights was that it seemed a bit questionable to pose as “objective” when you’re uncritically adopting a term of the debate – “unborn child” – and employing it as a simple, value-less referent, as a mere tool of analysis (a scalpel for the dissection of the issues, if you like), despite the said term being in fact the invention, rallying cry and fantasy of one (particularly hysterical) side of the argument.
Strangely, I was moved to write a letter to the editor outlining my concerns at such intellectual slobbery. Very strangely, the magazine never published my letter, but it did publish Mr Uffindel’s response to my letter, which I thought was unfair treatment indeed. (His response was to point out that I was wrong and to repeat his argument, thankfully in summarised form.)
Years before, I’d also tried to put together a coherent extended piece on this topic (with no pretense at even-handedness), but never got it down properly or to my satisfaction. The keystone reflection in that putative discussion was, however, the enormous extent to which modern imaginings of the meaning of the fetus are influencing the terms of discussion and the possibilities for understanding it.
Canvassed would have been the obscene over-use of ultra-sound, wherein a conflation of rowdy discourses has convinced so many that the image rendered by this technology – often the footprint of no more than a few cells growing on a woman’s body (just as a mole or tumour might grow) – represents in fact something akin to a human life. Such a wonderful leap of the imagination; such evidence of our capacity for sentimental extensions.
The personifying language used by the medical staff (that I’ve witnessed) operating this technology is disgraceful. It sends an anti-abortionist message with every utterance.
The meaning of any given fetus is the meaning attributed by the human being in closest proximity.
ETA: A few posts got in before this, covering similar ground (though less space), so it now appears redundant. And maybe I should’ve said embryo, too, not fetus, but I’m not changing it…
-
I felt that the metaphor (in NZ dialect) was consistent with the dubious character of the narrator. Perhaps this isn't sufficiently clear (and let's face it, I'm wrong about lots of things) -- so sincere apologies if any offense was caused. I'll think about it some more while we're travelling over the next couple of days.
Comparison of two dissimilar things using "like" or "as"? Ms Crotchett always told me that was a simile. Guess that's why the metaphor's unhappy: it's trapped in a simile's body.
Don't apologise, Haywood -- it's a slippery slope (as parliamentary privelege allowed Winston Peters to describe Pansy Wong).
Next thing you'll be grovelling to all those erectilly dysfunctional radio sport listeners because of your casual and insensitive over-use of the f-word -- tormenting them with their inability to satisfy their wives' constant need for opportunities to assure them that they are, indeed, satisfied.
And don't think about it: while I'm sure you are wrong about lots of things, I also doubt that heavy, morally-clouded cogitating is going to relieve that situation.
On the PhDs, you clever kids: it's a surprise our universities haven't noted the potential profits they're missing: why not put a price on something that they're already giving away?
Unless there's no demand, I guess, and the current clearing-house approach bespeaks a product of no value beyond that of a slightly curious, antiquated relic -- about as useful as a five cent piece, but as cumbersome and embarrassing as a scud missile.
ps I do hope Cameron Bagrie can make a cameo with Bollard someday.
-
'Salright Sara. Thank you.
-
There was a young blogstar named Tze Ming,
Who'd write with the bite of a bee sting:
Hypocrisy's slayer,
Forsooth a truth-sayer,
We sure gonna miss all that she bring. -
I won't carry on this kind of discussion with the heartless. It makes me sick.
Heartless and mindless. Good on you Sara: I don't think anyone else is reading, and these creeps really aren't worth the effort.
-
In addition to condemning utterly, and being sickened by, child abuse, may I say that I find murder a very bad thing indeed and express my gratitude for the invitation to make that radical opinion clear.
Actively plotting murder with the genuine intention of carrying it out is also a very bad thing.
(My facetiousness should not be taken as lack of sincerity, but rather as indignation at being [I feel] called upon to make such a manifestly unnecessary statement.)
As one who has practised it, though, I am reluctant to speak too strongly against the idle suggestion of killing someone one despises. I don't defend it: I simply have no strong views on something so vague and context-dependent.
An earlier suggestion by Russell that the accused have been represented as "heroes" I find difficult to fathom: I can't recall anyone on these threads expressing such a view. Personally, I have few heroes. Among NZers, perhaps David Lange was one.
There are essentially two conversations going on here: one related to the semantics of truth and information, which through translation and decontextualised representation have been rendered virtually opaque in terms of the topic under discussion; and one examining broader patterns of social and cultural behaviours. Some posters are more interested in the latter conversation, which they see as actually relevant to their own and others' lives; periodically, though, they are dragged back into the former by the snide pedanticism of those who are (self-)satisfied with cheap sophistry.
In simple terms (and I enter here the terra mauvais of speaking for others and offer all appropriate caveats) what Sara and friends are interested in is the FACT that if the same evidence was gathered "incriminating" a bunch of builders, plumbers, shearers and bus drivers, all pakeha, all living in Riverton, the police operation would have looked significantly different. And they're asking why.
As for:
Jesus Christ, Sara. Try and examine what you're writing.
You moved on from using the phrase without a shred of evidence to putting "cavity search" in quotes as if it appeared in some claim from an actual person. This is hysteria.
Jesus Christ, Russell. You accuse anarchists of being patronising? Sara's is pretty much the least damaging of the many examples of hysteria we've seen surrounding this particular issue. And frankly, "hysteria" is a dangerously loaded word, up there for thinking women with "fascist", "nigger" and "nazi". Best left out of the old lexicon of polite debate. Besides, Sara did say:
I am not particularly concerned that you accuse me of making up the cavity search. I believe the person who told me and she believes the accuser who told her.
Sara's merely entering the much-vaunted I-know-something-you-don't-know game, which has pretty much been the trademark of this discussion from the beginning.
the ridiculous meme that this was just some racist, Bush-fellating plot to put the frighteners up some uppity nig-nogs and tree-huggers
Craig, this is an absurd simplification and misrepresentation. Others may, but I do not perceive any "plot" as such. But the police/media/public (re)actions bespeak the disturbing levels of underlying racism within our society, whether you're inclined to notice it or not. The Bush factor merely points to the power of this term "terrorism", whether it refers to anything real or not. And the fact that some of the accused may have used the term themselves is merely, to my mind, corroboration of that, not any firm indication of their intentions (and that others would take their use of it as such an indication is even further corroboration). (Terrorists in this world are merely renegades: why don't we call them that?) And as for putting the frighteners up nig-nogs and tree-huggers, frankly, my less-than-active conspiracy alert has yet to come up with any compelling "motive" behind the gross display of state power that took place in Ruatoki. More frighteningly, I see it as simply the natural playing out of human brutality and mindlessness.
-
Paternalism. There it was, all the time, staring me in the face.
Like a gun to the head.
Never had a gun to my head.
You?
Bears cogitating upon.
Course, not everyone gets to feel like their life's suddenly turned into a movie, which is the going definition, I believe, of "real and worth giving a fuck about", so they shouldn't complain really.
(For a moment or two, Patricia and the police shared something kind of special: Hollyreal. Until it turned awful and ridiculous and obviously sick, at which, of course -- nation of heroes -- the first person to show some fucking "leadership" was one of the captives, walking through the impotent weapons that were trained upon her, while their mindless masters wondered who would tell them what to do next: never know, maybe there'd be a reason to bash someone's head in; or maybe do a haka; or pass a joint; or whistle at some chick in a short skirt; or laugh hollowly in embarrassment -- please, anything, just get me the fuck out of here!)
Ach.
Paternalism a la JS Mill is one thing; but when it goes more Mark Lundy you gotta start to wonder.
Course, you know, those officers couldn't be sure. What would the public've said if they, like, let those people go inside for blankets and then they came out, nan and the kid (butch and the kid?), guns blazing, suicide bombing, all that.
Eh? Eh?
All very well to criticise, but they're the ones on the frontline of this heavy shit; they're answerable to the nueu zilund "people"; they gotta weigh these things up.
Cocksuckers.
Sara: yes yes, we have a culture alright: it's all around us.