Until a certain age, apparently. I asked what the cut-off age is. Again, I don't care if you don't want to answer. That is up to you.

I have no cut-off.

They say around 16 weeks. If you're asking which are strongest on this issue it's hard to say. Like you, I'd say that autonomy is high on the list. Unlike you, I'd say that equality is also high on the list. That I look to the norm suggests that I value cooperation and tolerance, perhaps. Could go on and on but I don't see the point.

They say…what if they said something else? The problem with appealing to popularity is that popular opinion often gets it wrong.

In the case of rape, I suppose that it would need to be a proven case of rape, like a criminal conviction?

None of that is up to me.

Regarding age, you're pro-life for adults? What's the age cutoff?

I wouldn’t use the terms pro-life or pro-choice, both of which are stupid. The debate is around the act of abortion in particular, not choices or life general. I prefer the terms pro or anti-abortion, none of which applies elsewhere. I am anti-abortion.

If I were able to vote on it, I guess that I'd go along with 98.3% of the population, around 16 weeks.

What do your principles say? Going along with what is popular is fine and all but that could all change.

No, what I consider a valid excuse for abortion is if the unborn is a product of rape or if the mother is too young or if the fetus is malformed.

What are your own views on the matter?

I would not consider it murder because there is a valid excuse for it. It is homicide by definition, though. I’m sure most people disapprove of homicide. What about you?

One can disapprove of an act while at the same time disapprove of any act that would infringe on another’s right to choose to act in such a way. Disapproving is not infringing on anyone’s choices, I’m afraid, so your statist friends don’t have much to go on.

As others have mentioned a woman ought to do whatever she wants with her own life and body. The moral standard for me is bodily autonomy and absolute freedom, so long as it does not interfere with the bodily autonomy and absolute freedom of anyone else. The question of abortion, though, is does she have the right to do what she wants to the life and body of the unborn?

As far as i can tell, the task of the pro-abortionists has been to diminish and belittle in the conscience the body of the unborn. To kill it with a clean conscience, for example, one must sneak in and sever its life before this or that occurs, before it has feelings or a heartbeat. At least then will the killer be satisfied with herself and her humanity. Also, the unborn is not autonomous, but entirely dependent. Bodily autonomy is not a question until it is, until the unborn itself becomes autonomous. Rather, a foetus is more like a parasite or an organ, a mere extension of the mother, despite having its own DNA. But at what point in another's life does autonomy occur, and is killing a child before that occurs remain the right of the mother to kill her own? I'm not so sure.

In the end, I carry a principle that conflicts with itself. So I have to quell the dissonance and remain satisfied that it isn't up to me wether someone wants to kill the life growing inside of her. I leave that to her, but will always remember that they are killing a life that is not their own, and will judge accordingly.

Consciousness can be reduced to the body for the simple reason it cannot be reduced to anything else. In fact, it has to be reduced to the body for the notion of consciousness to make any sense in the first place. When we discern whether someone is conscious or not we examine the body. When we use the term "conscious" we are describing bodies. And since no other object, substance, or thing exists in the body but the body, save for perhaps some flora or food waste, it ought not be reduced to anything else and it ought not be inflated to anything else. They might try to reduce it to the flora, I suppose, but I think that task would turn out to be silly indeed.

One of the problems with anti-physicalism is not only that they cannot reduce it to anything, but that they refuse to, and this is a clear indication that the project is doomed. It's just a surprise that it's taking so long.

For years decline in media trust has trended downward, especially among registered republicans. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/08/30/partisan-divides-in-media-trust-widen-driven-by-a-decline-among-republicans/.
I think it’s fine to dismiss people because the enjoy a Murdoch production more so than a Microsoft and General Electric one, and sometimes rightfully so, but I think these numbers indicate that some are more beholden to corporate or state press than the others.

For Trump voters in particular, they were witness to one of the greatest feats of yellow journalism in the country’s history. Here’s a good analysis per the folks at Columbia Journalism Review.

Given this one can understand how one can fall prey to conspiracy theories. People trust who they trust, and more often than not they’ll trust Uncle Buck before they trust some state-run or state-influenced mouthpiece. The institutions that have tasked themselves with informing the public have failed in that regard.

I didn't say that it is a prerequisite to forming right beliefs in particular or forming beliefs in general. I said it is required to forming one's own beliefs.

If one doesn't understand rhetoric, for example, one doesn't understand the methods through which people try to use fallacious techniques to try to influence how you think. One learns to avoid appeals to authority or emotion, for example, which is common in propaganda. One can rely on one's own thoughts, language, and judgements, or whatever else is built on this foundation.

It's just the theory that one cannot understand how language can be used against you until one understands how to use language.

I said it was a foundation, not all you need. The idea is that one will be better equipped to navigate his own language and thought along with that of others. Not everyone is endowed with such a foundation because not everyone has had any classical education. Rather, they’ve been taught what to think, not how to think in state education, which is little different than indoctrination in my opinion.

A foundation in how to think is a prerequisite to forming one’s own beliefs. A base understanding in grammar, logic, and rhetoric suffices in this regard. Grammar is the mechanics of language. Logic is the mechanics of thought. Rhetoric is the application of both to language. With this simple foundation one can see quickly through the propaganda.

Unlike others I do not claim to know his intentions. The narrative does, yet has clarified nothing, for years using fallacious methods to funnel readers to their failing rags.

You yourself had no clue about his Charlottesville statements and for some reason asked me to inform you. That’s half a decade of being misinformed on information that is public record. It explains why you tried to probe weirdly whether I too was like your cousins, who apparently are equally misinformed. Multiply that misinformation and compound it with The Narrative held by millions of others and there you have the moral panic. Those trapped within it are ruining the world.

You can ask Trump. He says who he was referring to. I wasn’t there, so no I do not consider myself amongst them. Do you?

The insinuation has always been that he incited an insurrection and encouraged lawless action at the capital. Of course, none of it passes the “immanent lawless action” test of real first-amendment jurisprudence. Nonetheless, he was impeached for it. And now Jack smith follows the same specious line of reasoning.

I’m just asking why you and Jack Smith don’t think it is the same.

As I said on Saturday, we condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of bigotry, hatred, and violence. It has no place in America. And as I have said many times before, no matter the color of our skin, we all live under the same laws; we all salute the same great flag; and we are all made by the same almighty God. We must love each other, show affection for each other, and unite together in condemnation of hatred, bigotry, and violence. We must discover the bonds of love and loyalty that bring us together as Americans. Racism is evil, and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans. We are a nation founded on the truth that all of us are created equal. We are equal in the eyes of our creator, we are equal under the law, and we are equal under our constitution. Those who spread violence in the name of bigotry strike at the very core of America.

https://time.com/4899813/donald-trump-charlottes-ville-remarks-transcript/?amp=true

I know nothing about your cousins but I suspect they fell victim to the same ploy and nonsense. Trump’s Charlottesville speech and comments is public record and nothing in them can back up your claims. Let’s examine them. There are entire paragraphs condemning violence and bigotry. Perhaps you fell for Biden’s lie that Trump had never once condemned racism or white supremacy. So I’m afraid you and your cousins have succumbed to the very same dirty tricks and now find yourself in the very same moral panic.



Surely you don’t think Jim Jordan was bodyslamming people on the house floor, or that when he says Guillianni is a fighter, Rudy is handing out uppercuts to other lawyers. I wan’t to know why you and Jack Smith would conclude his other use of the term “fight” to mean more than the way he was continually using it previously through this entire speech, not to mention that the riot was well underway before he used the words Smith had quoted in his indictment.

That entire year we were taught rioting and storming government buildings was good ethics, so much so that medical experts deemed it a public health necessity even during a pandemic lockdown. People scoffed when Trump had to be evacuated to a bunker under the whitehouse, and scorned him for taking a picture outside of the historic church that some rioters had burned down. So if some crazed Trumpers want to protest Congress, and the worthless schmucks filling that institution, I say go for it.

Contextomy refers to the quoting out of context of speech, not to the context of the environment or the moment.

Trump uses the word “fight” numerous times in that speech. You can pick any one of them and we can try to discern whether he was being literal or figurative. Take your pick.

Who do you think should control and manage capital?

The Chicago rally in March 2016. The Costa Mesa rally in April 2016. The New Mexico rally in May. The San Diego rally.

I'm glad the hecklers were thrown out and mistreated as all censors need to be.

Which rally did Trumpsters go to and start harassing and beating the rally-goers?

Then why can you not bring up anything else but the few select words chosen for you by an opposition press?

It’s because you’re uninformed. There is nothing wrong with that because, really, who gives a straw about political speeches? But if you want to make informed judgements on the matter one has to avoid contextomy and the one-sided story and go straight to the source for a peek.

The examples are myriad. For instance, one of Jack Smith’s indictments abuses contextomy to an almost comical degree:

Finally, after exhorting that “we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore,” the Defendant directed the people in front of him to head to the Capitol , suggested he was going with them, and told them to give Members of Congress the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country

https://www.justice.gov/storage/US_v_Trump_23_cr_257.pdf

Smith never mentions that throughout the entire speech, the phrase “fight” was used figuratively. When Trump says that Guliani or Jim Jordan are fighters, or that when he fights with the press ("I'd fight. So I'd fight, they'd fight, I'd fight, they'd fight. Pop pop"), he doesn't actually mean fisticuffs and brawling matches.

And Smith never once mentions what Trump thought literally: "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."

It's comical and embarrassing but also unjust that the Department of Justice itself is abusing this fallacy to dupe people, including grand juries, engaging in a fraud so blatant that only a useful idiot would be capable of believing in it.

I was glad for the rhetoric because rally-goers were getting beaten and berated by protesters, rioters, and Clinton operatives paid to incite violence. I’m also glad that people started to fight back because the belligerent and menacing activity, much of which resulted in violence, is a direct violation of free speech.

I would argue that your alarm was a direct result of two tricks of propaganda. One, contextomy. Two, the one-sided story. You never mention mobs descending on these rallies or protesters evoking their heckler vetoes inside of them. You only mention a concern for the exact words chosen for you by a press who explicitly endorsed the opposing candidate.

Take a read of this.

The Mug Shot Is a Warning

Donald Trump’s booking photo was supposed to be an exercise in humility. He turned it into a threat.

Even as Trump was held to account, then—even as he was, in theory, brought low—he was elevated. Last night, as so many times before, viewers’ gazes were directed Trump-ward. Medusa’s curse is also the curse of anyone in her path: Whatever the consequences, she compels us to look.

In the process, though, the event that should have been a show of accountability for Trump became an act of concession to him. The typical mug shot, usually taken after the subject’s unexpected arrest, bestows its power on the people on the other end of the camera. The alleged criminal, in it, tends to be disheveled, displaced, small. But Trump, trailed by the news cameras that confer his ubiquity, found a way to turn the moment’s historical meaning—a former president, mug-shotted—into one more opportunity for brand building. He might have smiled, as some of his alleged co-conspirators did, making light of his legal jeopardy. He might have assumed an expression of indignation, the better to channel one of his preferred personas: the innocent man, victimized.

But he did neither. Instead, he looks straight at the viewer, seemingly incandescent with rage, taking the advice he has reportedly given to others: Perform your anger. Turn it into your script. Make it into your threat. His menacing glare gives a similar stage direction to the people who follow him and do his bidding—both in spite of his disrespect for democratic processes and because of it.

I’ve always stuck by the theory that we’re in a moral panic and Trump is a folk devil. Not much else explains what others have called TDS. This article only solidifies it for me, the way it weaves a little narrative that confirms the author’s own fears and anxieties, all divined from a mugshot and nowhere else. Like how the once host of The Apprentice is a criminal mastermind, a Russian spy, the fascist barbarian at the gates, will melt earth in nuclear war, and can incite insurrection and lawlessness with his magical tweets, eroding the foundations of Democracy™—each one rings as hollow as the last. But these conspiracy theories justify, or are used to disguise, the fascism they’ve adopted in order to combat both Trump’s rise and their own decline in credibility and power. The persecution of one’s political opponents, the criminalization of contesting an election and political speech, is justified because, well, look at his mugshot.

Fair enough, though I think dismissing the burden of proof is a bad idea when it comes to making claims, especially one’s that involve accusations against human beings.

So you do not believe the burden of proof should lie with an accuser?

I meant to say the burden of proof lies with the prosecution, or anyone who makes accusations against others. Those who presume innocence should be everyone else. But apparently it’s different according to some degree of statism or other. It applies only to the state, juries, judges, courts. Anyone else it does not nor ought not apply.

Does that makes sense?

I bought an official space force hat for $25 back in 2018 or something and sold it for around $250 last year.

The Trump campaign is already selling merch of his mugshot. It will go down as one of the most famous shots in American history. I’m buying for posterity.

https://nypost.com/2023/08/24/trump-already-selling-merch-featuring-his-mug-shot/amp/

One standard that applies to those who prosecute in courts, but to no one else. Only they should presume innocence. Only they require the burden of proof.

The presumption of innocence means he has the right to defend himself against the charges in a court of law. That is exactly what is happening.

That means you hold it true of some men and not others. Two sets of standards.

Mughsot!

The presumption of innocence is either a basic human right or it is not. You either believe in it or you don’t. Anyone who says Trump should prove his innocence believes one and not the other, and reveals why we ought to have such rights in the first place: to protect the innocent from people like them.

Much talk of Trump “proving his innocence” in a system where innocence is assumed, or ought to be, at least if due process and fundamental human rights are any concern. These and other inclinations indicate that the inquisitorial authoritarianism rests solely in the hands of his haters.

According to the defense they were given too much data in discovery that there is no chance they could go through it in time. But it might be for the same reason Biden’s DOJ and their special prosecutor waited until election year to start their trials: politics.

Suggesting? I was asking a question.

The election was in November.

Changing laws is cosmetic and minor, according to praxis.

Think for yourself for a second. Do you think changing a law is cosmetic and minor?

I’m not sure they were changing election laws in the lead up to an election out of the goodness of their hearts.