People who are oppressed have the right to be prejudiced against their oppressors. — _db

Oppressors also tend to be prejudiced against the people they oppress. It is, briefly, hard to think positively about people you have screwed over, not just once but for a long time. If the people I oppress are good, deserving people, then what am I?

That is one of the damnable things about oppressors: forgiving them isn't going to help. Reverse oppression won't help either. As long as oppression serves the purposes of the oppressor (and it generally does) there is no good external reason to stop being an oppressor. People won't stop oppressing until it no longer 'works'. The civil war was an ultimately unsuccessful effort to make slavery (in the USA) stop working. What happened is that a new regime of oppression took the slave masters' place (in some cases they were the same people). Eventually the banks, government, real estate agents, etc. took over.

I don't say this out of approval: It just seems like that is the way it works.

A large part of my argument is that "IF" we were able to extend peoples lives it is likely that either many or most of these people could work longer, work conditions might improve, and society might be able to improve due to the extra idea/input from these people that are contributing to society instead of them just wasting away in nursing homes in their later years. — dclements

My impression is, based on observation, reading, and experience is that most people have their most creative and productive years between by age 40, age 50 at the latest. I'm not thinking of "creative professions" here -- rather, people who can create, innovate, invent, and implement effective solutions to social or technical problems. The two decades following brain maturation (around age 25) seem to be our most mentally productive periods.

It's a very good question why this period of high productivity doesn't last longer (for most people). At age 50 I was past my peak in creativity. Intellectually, I might be reaching my peak at age 75. Time will tell. Too bad I wasn't functioning at 25 the way I function at 75. "I could have been a contender."

There are 100 year old people who remain intellectually and emotionally engaged, but they are really few in number.

The point I am trying to get at is that there is something... existential, not biological that brings our periods of productive creativity to a peak, and then diminishment. You know, Kant said that nothing straight was ever built with the crooked timber of mankind. The fact is, we keep running into our species deep, built in imitations. It wears us out.

True enough, it takes time to grow up, and having grown up, to put adulthood to good use. Personally, I'd assign a little more time to productive adulthood--so age 25 to 70. For physically hard work, less productive time applies.

Longevity will be of no value to people who will be stuck in dead-end and life-sucking jobs until they are 100. One of the reasons people long to stop working is that their jobs are highly unrewarding. We can't all be like Anthony Fauci, still going strong at 81, and ready to move on to something else. I'll take that back: Many of us could be like Tony, still going strong at 81 -- but not under the current circumstances.

Life can be more enjoyable than it tends to be. Work can be more satisfying than it usually is. This can not happen within the existing economic arrangement, even if we lived to be 200.

Things happen in a bathtub, too. — god must be atheist

Do you prefer Pepsi or Coke for bubble baths? Diet or regular?

Most assuredly, we white men are not subjected to systemic pervasive reverse racism/sexism. However, it is entirely possible for non-whites and women to speak and behave in a racist, sexist manner, and it happens.

there are many more men in prison, many more men overdosing or strung out on drugs, many more men die prematurely because of preventable health issues, more men are prone to serious mental health issues, and yet we don't really seem to care very much about and of these issues, — 64bithuman

The demographics you cite are, to a significant degree, class linked. Most upward mobile, middle to upper class white men (or women) are NOT in prison, overdosing or strong out on drugs, suffering premature / preventable death, or having major mental health issues. A significant portion of the men that you reference are downward mobile (or bottomed out) working class men with few to no prospects.

The middle class establishment loathes downward mobile white men because they are an unpleasant reminder that social mobility works both ways, and the middle classes are not all that secure in their prosperity or status. Minority people in straitened circumstances, on the other hand, fulfill middle-class expectations, so the upwardly mobile are much less bothered by them.

OH GREAT! Another sex scandal, this time in outer space! According to the New York Times, the science writer Dennis Overbye mentioned that James Webb was thought to have either participated in, or done nothing when higher-ups purged gays from the State Department. Didn't hear about that? Not surprising, it happened during the Truman Administration, 1945-1952.

Now some torqued out astronomers (and others) want James Webb's name taken off the telescope.

I have no idea what James Webb did at the post WWII State Department. Yes, I am aware that gay people were rousted out of many government and military jobs. The outrage depends entirely on retroactively applying contemporary standards to a past which no longer exists.

Of course [as a gay man] I reject the hatred, loathing, medicalized diagnoses, criminal status, and so on that added up to gay people's pariah status in the post-WWII period. Being outed by the FBI in 1947 wasn't merely inconvenient, it could be life-wrecking. [As a gay man] I can also accept that this was where society was at in the post-war period. Even a modest organized resistance by gay people didn't emerge until 1950, and didn't achieve noticeable results for at least 20 more years.

Whether James Webb led the charge in ridding the State Department of gay employees, or looked the other way, he was acting in light of mainstream values of the time, and during a time that did not significantly change for several more decades.

James Webb's significant achievement was in the very demanding and difficult administration of the APOLLO program. The success of APOLLO was a very big deal. Sure, they could have named this telescope after Pythagoras, Ptolemy, or Pryzblinski, but they didn't. And they should keep the name, especially in the face of people who make it a practice to fly into rages because the past doesn't live up to their expectations.

Oops, just joking about feeling the effects of Hayflick's Limit.

As Woody Allen said, "I'm not afraid of dying -- I just don't want to br there when it happens." And he, of course, was joking,

Seriously, many people probably experience varying degrees of derangement in the final hour(s). If death isn't swift, there may be successive organ failure and a rapid build-up of toxic substances which amplify the dying process. So yes, it could be pretty unpleasant for a while. But then it is over and the curtain of silent oblivion descends forever.

Rather than focusing on stretching out life, even life without end, an actual attainable goal is to live life in the knowledge that life is short. Make the most of living while one can.

Old age can be a burden, true enough, but I know people (like myself) who are very much engaged in doing what makes life meaningful and interesting to them. One can and should prepare to die with as much serenity as possible, but not dwell on it.

OK, I'll take a deep breath, squeeze very hard, and force those hay flicking cells back a year or two.

I'm feeling the effects of Hayflick's Limit.

Some animals live a very long time, in human terms, like the 500 year old quahog clam found on Cape Cod. But the animal below is thought to be immortal: "Hydra is a group of small invertebrates with soft bodies that look a bit like jellyfish. Like Turritopsis dohrnii, Hydras also have the potential to live forever. Hydras don't show signs of deteriorating with age, Live Science previously reported. These invertebrates are largely made up of stem cells which continually regenerate through duplication or cloning. Hydras don't live forever under natural conditions because of threats like predators and disease, but without these external threats, they could be immortal." https://www.livescience.com/longest-living-animals.html



So, if you want to live forever, be a hydra.

There are also plants that live a long time, like a sea grass off the coast of Australia that is around 100,000 years old.

Presumably, immortal species do not evolve once they become immortal. They just stay the same. So, had you been born an immortal hydra millions of years ago, you'd still be hydra. Or, had you been born into the last common ancestor of apes and humans 20,000,000 years ago, you'd still be the last common ancestor. No philosophic mongering for you, you immortal not yet very bright-ape.

Long ago, evolution produced time-limiting mechanisms in almost all complex plants and animals, including humans. Death clears the stage for another one of evolution's critical inventions -- progeny. If there were no death, life would have long ago consumed the last resources to support life, and life would have come to an end--extinction, not mere death.

Even within healthy bodies, death is an ongoing process. Cells die, either by wearing out or by following instructions -- programmed death (apoptosis). Cells that don't die as intended become, cancers and end up killing the organism.

If this person's existence makes any of you angry — Baden

It's not him, it's you.

I've been aware of and have been reading about trans issues since the 1970s; I've been friends and associates with trans people; I've provided counseling and support for trans persons. it's not new territory for me. What has changed is the extremity of the rhetoric by and/or about trans people. It has become more extreme, such that people like yourself who are apparently very sensitive to rhetoric can no longer generalize about who gets pregnant and who doesn't.

"Well gee whiz, this trans man who still had her original plumbing got pregnant, so I guess we can't distinguish between 4 trans men and 4 billion alleged women who might get pregnant."

You lost the battle for social reality. — Baden

To the extent that social reality is what Baden happens to think, I suppose so. In the larger picture, the existence of trans people is more or less established. The "pregnant women" paradigm has not been shaken. "Pregnant persons" is not a term describing reality; it is a fantasy of lunatics who have lost their grip on the real world.

National Public Radio news casters are now using the term "pregnant persons" as opposed to pregnant women. Such bullshit!

"A trans woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth" — Baden

No body "assigns sex" at birth. "Assign" is trans rhetoric. Babies' genitalia are recognized as male or female. In the small fraction of cases where genitalia are ambiguous, a specialist makes a closer check. A large clitoris or small penis might confuse things.

Animals don't have genders, just biological sexes. — Michael

And humans are nothing if not animals.

Once upon a time, this topic would have yielded many pages of responses. Not now, not from this crowd, anyway.

I'm 75; gay; was in a relationship for 30+ years, till death did us part. We did not get married; we did not have a civil union. My theory is that couples should stay together because they want to stay together. If they want to stay together, they will. Otherwise, they will eventually go their separate ways. I haven't been in favor of gay couples raising children, either. Of course I know gay and lesbian couples who did raise children, and they did well, as far as I could tell.

What SHOULD gay or lesbian relationships look like? They WILL look like what the partners make of them. Heterosexual married relationships seem to be burdened by a lot of expectations (by both parties). The heterosexual marriage success rate isn't as good as people wish. I'm not sure what the success rate for formally married gays and lesbians is.

A long relationship was never in my 5 year plans, but it happened, and I'm glad about that. Life with someone else is generally better than life alone.

Yes. When people behave in ways that one thinks are anti-social, uncivilized, or immoral, one must condemn it. One must disavow the unacceptable action.

From time to time, we witness acts that are "bad", whether that's stabbing authors or shooting the convenience store clerk; stealing catalytic converters or defrauding the Medicare program; trying to overthrow the election or seize the neighboring country. We can't be indifferent. We need to be clear to ourselves (and to whoever is in earshot) that we condemn wrongdoing.

I'm not sure I want to "wade into" the murky fluid of "trans and gender issues. Some people believe that, contrary to appearances, they are not the sex they were "assigned". First of all, "sex" isn't "assigned at birth"; sex is identified, based on readily apparent organs. Sometimes, (not very often, .001%) genitals are too ambiguous to make a visual determination. [The term "assigned sex" is employed to support the ideological notion that the identity of male or female is arbitrary.]

Not at all unreasonably or inhumanely, babies are raised to be the sex their unambiguous genitals say they are. More to the point, the genitals are a result of the DNA which has directed a male or female body to exist.

How people identify themselves in the body they are born with is more complicated then which gender roles any given person performs. As a gay man, I prefer sex with other men, but I have no inclination to think of myself as a woman, or to behave like a woman. Some homosexuals do think of themselves as their opposite sex, at least some time. There are heterosexual men who prefer sex with women who like to behave like women, at least some of the time -- cross dressers. It's quite literally "role play". Some women like to play the same game, dressing as men.

It seems to me that "transgendered people" have adopted an extreme form of homosexual drag, one in which they commit to playing their opposite gender role all the time, and making changes to their body to match their concept of the role. So, for some it is a matter of changing costume and hair. For others, it involves an extensive re-upholstering of their body,

I believe their are limits to this game. One can have the opposite's genitals constructed; one can take hormones to shape the body. The appearances can be changed. But, after all that, one remains one's biologically determined sex.

It's a game of appearances, and as Oscar Wilde said, "It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."

Then why condemn what happened to Rushdie? — baker

I condemn it because I want a thicker, and better, veneer of civilization. Civilization is what we use to counter those parts of our brains that send us off into wild rages and flights of irrationality. Religion has delivered a decidedly mixed performance as a component of civilization. Islam and Christianity have a particularly mixed record. Where/when/why it fuels uncivilized behavior, it should be pruned.

If there is a "closed primary", voters have to declare which party primary they are voting in. One can become a member of a party. That puts you on a list.

In the US there are public records of registered voters, voters by parties, voters by voting--that they voted--not who they voted for--and so forth. There are also records of donations to parties / candidates.

Of course, there are ways of donating $10,000,000 to Candidate Crook without being listed. How is on a need-to-know basis. If you have to ask how, then you don't need to know. Similary, if you need to ask how much it costs to buy a candidate, then you can't afford it.

:100: sadly.

Hanover was talking about Jews stoning heretics. If I am not mistaken, the Inquisition was run by Dominicans, a Catholic order not usually confused with Jews. For further information, see Python, Monte: The Spanish Inquisition

You might be God, but in a just universe, definitely not. I, on the other hand, am entirely suitable as a supreme being in a just universe. You being a lesser being, god, cat, whatever... wouldn't recognize Me. Now go back to your room and finish your catechism lesson.

In a current New Yorker piece, Robin Wright says

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini never read Salman Rushdie’s book “The Satanic Verses,” his son Ahmed told me in Tehran, in the early nineteen-nineties. The Iranian leader’s murderous 1989 fatwa against the British American writer was a political move to exploit the erupting fury in Pakistan, India, and beyond over a fictional dream sequence involving the Prophet Muhammad. The book’s passages, which portrayed human weaknesses and undermined the Prophet’s credibility as a messenger of God, were blasphemous to some Muslims.

The Ayatollah was shrewd that way. At the time, the young Islamic Republic was emerging from existential challenges: an eight-year war with Iraq that produced at least a million casualties; widespread domestic discontent; deepening political rifts among the clergy; a flagging economy that had rationed basic food and fuel; and a decade of diplomatic isolation. Khomeini condemned Rushdie, as well as his editors and publishers in any language, to death.He called on “all valiant Muslims wherever they may be” to go out and kill all of them—without delay—“so that no one will dare insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims henceforth. Whoever is killed in this cause will be a martyr” and ascend instantly to heaven. Tehran offered a reward that eventually grew to more than three million dollars.

Khomeini often capitalized on issues that distracted public attention from the Revolution’s fissures and failures.

But unlike Christianity, there is no credible central Islamic authority. — Jamal

That is an important feature. Theological interpretation is apparently quite decentralized and local. There's no pope, no Vatican, no infrastructure of command and control.

There is no central authority to which condemnation, approval, or appeal can be addressed.

IF you polled 10,000 Moslems from various countries, my guess is that a majority would not be in favor of executions for book writing. There would be a minority (10%? 20%? 30%?) who would approve, and they would approve for various reasons.

TRUE BELIEVERS of any stripe are more likely to follow available "hard lines" than people for whom belief does not dominate their thinking or their life. There are Christian fascist and white nationalist TRUE BELIEVERS who are quite capable of carrying out violence against fellow Americans who are not displaying sufficient loyalty to the Prez, for example. There are TRUE BELIEVERS in Islamic countries who have no qualms about blowing up a bomb in a market to to kill Shias or Sunnis.

I don't have much understanding of differences between Shia and Sunni Muslims. I won't draw any analogies.

The Catholic Church has, had, or used to have something called the "Index Librorum Prohibitorum" -- banned books. In recent times no one has been burned at the stake for either writing or reading a forbidden book. In the past, at various times, Christians resorted to grotesque executions for violations of doctrine. William Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English. What a monster! John Wycliffe was executed in 1384. Wycliffe also translated at least part o the NT into Middle English, and questioned some core Catholic theology. He was so heinous that years later his corpse was dug up and burned at the stake.

No -- Rome's or Canterbury's excesses neither justify nor excuse Tehran's pontificating mullahs. A plague on all their houses!

Most Christian churches have, through reformation, incremental change, an embrace of secular ideas (the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and science) lost a lot of their former triumphal absolutism--all to the good. There are some outstanding exceptions, of course.

Islam has not had a reformation (so I am told). There seems to be a substantial core of absolutism remaining. The Taliban demonstrates this, as does the malignant Islamic State and various spin-offs.

So we have a medieval ayatollah issuing death warrants for authors who they think ought to be punished by death. Then we have young Moslems cultivating the same medieval thinking on line, unto the heathen state of New Jersey.

All religions which presume to hold the final and absolute truth are a mortal danger.

I stand corrected but lament the fact. — Agent Smith

Oh, do you regret not living in Peoria?

News for the worried-well OR well-they-should-be-worried from the New York Times:

ng about having gay sex recently — Varde

Should you have anal intercourse? Sure. Will you get Monkeypox as a result? That depends on what circles you travel in. If you plug into the circle of, say New York gays who are most sexually active, your chances are much higher of getting infected. If you start with the boy next door in rural Georgia, your chances are much much smaller. It is considered good manners to ask if it is OK first.

Why are so many gay men in New York infected with Monkeypox? Because groups (like gym rats or theater workers) tend to mix among themselves. Eventually infectious diseases spread widely, erasing group boundaries. AIDS landed among a group of fairly affluent, similarly employed gay men in New York--like artists, musicians, writers, actors, etc. They went to the same watering holes and had sex with each other.

Anal intercourse more common among straights than gays? Not likely. 80% of gay men report anal intercourse while about a third of straights report anal intercourse. And the third of heterosexuals reporting anal intercourse ay not be your typical couple in Peoria or suburban Atlanta:

According to the NIH:

Previous research has shown that HAI is associated with a variety of risky behaviors, including drug use (5–7), multiple partners (6, 8–10), concurrent partners (8), and exchange sex (6–8, 11), suggesting that people who engage in HAI are in a higher risk population for acquisition of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STI). This is supported by studies that also show a higher prevalence of STIs among those who engage in HAI (12). Additionally, condom use is uncommon during HAI, with some studies indicating that condom use during HAI is less common than condom use during vaginal sex (13, 14).

Is it the sexual event that spurs it, or why it spread originally? Do penises and arses create it, or, well, do gay monkeys? — Varde

The same question came up in relation to AIDS in the 1980s: does anal intercourse produce the virus? The answer is absolutely not.

Why does anal sex transmit HIV and Monkeypox more efficiently than oral or vaginal intercourse? It has to do with the details of different organs and how viruses are shed and transmitted. You can look it up.

Monkeypox is related to the Variola virus that causes smallpox. Smallpox had a fatality rate of around 30%; Monkeypox is rarely fatal (but still pretty unpleasant). Smallpox and Monkeypox are NOT related to chickenpox (herpes zoster). Smallpox is an ancient disease which killed many millions of people. Monkeypox was discovered in 1958. Rodents and monkeys may both be an anima reservoir of the virus. The virus spread to humans through butchering monkeys (which are eaten in parts of Africa).

My default assumption is that the government public health employees at the federal, state, and county levels are reasonably competent. However competent they are, the bureaucracy in which they work seems to dampen their capacity for swift and strategic action. Not to pick on government employees exclusively: It's difficult to act strategically, swiftly, and effectively again and again, whether one works for a corporation or a government agency.

Covid was brand new; there was some excuse for dithering, AIDS was brand new; again, some excuse for dithering. Monkeypox, a relative of smallpox, is not new, and the means are at hand to vaccinate and treat. Granted, we hadn't kept a stockpile of the meds because we hadn't seen an outbreak of monkeypox here before.

However: An outbreak of contagious disease leaves one very little time to respond before "the cat is the out of the bag". Compare the flood in Kentucky with Katrina in New Orleans: In KY, the response began immediately. In NOLA, the response was sluggish, and things got worse rapidly. Same thing with Monkeypox.

Who gets sick with what is often a matter of contingency or chance. Infectious diseases like chickenpox, measles, polio, HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, E. coli, staphylococcus aureus, covid 19, norovirus, et al are relatively easy to transmit. Being in the right place at the right time MAY result in a transmission and consequent illness -- or it may not.

Had HIV landed in a different European and American group--straight swingers--the history of the disease would have been different, more like its African pattern.

But it didn't. It landed in the gay European and American population where gay men were having large numbers of sex partners. Even within the group of properly promiscuous gay men there were differences in sex practices that affected the pattern of transmission. Monkeypox also landed in the not particularly celibate American gay population.

Chance and contingency isn't everything, however.

Monkeypox is not a new disease (unlike HIV in 1981). There are vaccines and antiviral drugs that are effective. The federal public health response to Monkeypox was sluggish, despite clear information from European countries that the virus could spread rapidly in the gay male population. The CDC and state public health agencies did not act immediately when reports of the first Mpox cases appeared in the early part of summer.

Fast response is crucial when dealing with easily transmitted infectious diseases. If the responsible authorities dither and delay, infections will spread and by the time there are thousands of cases, control (let alone elimination) becomes nigh unto impossible.

Regarding language and thinking... I've been reading Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes (2020). Great read, by the way, Neanderthals were physically capable of speech but we don't know whether they possessed spoken language like that of Homo sapiens.

Neanderthals possessed considerable technology in stone, wood, and bone; knowledge of the natural world necessary for finding and killing food; preparing clothing; and possibly an aesthetic sense. Injuries to bones that crippled individuals healed and the individual lived--with help--for years afterward, If they didn't have a spoken language like ours, how did they transmit information? Could we transmit information without a spoken language? Could we innovate (anything) without language?

Neanderthals didn't innovate; during their long existence they maintained what they had. If they lacked language, perhaps they could not innovate, adapt. Their population was always small--they didn't have the means to rear more of their own kind (apparently).

If it's a chicken (innovation) and egg (language) situation, I think the chicken comes first. With language, the innovation can be distributed and expanded. Without, innovation stops with the innovator.

Highly substantive OP and followup comments.

maintaining bodily processes — T Clark

Some brain scientist (if only I remembered correctly) noted that the primary function/purpose of the brain is "maintaining bodily processes" which needs to be understood broadly. Small clusters of cells in the brain stem are responsible for such essentials as heart beat, respiration, and waking up from sleep. But most of the brain considerable resources are applied in making sure the body gets fed, watered, sheltered, mated, and so on. We have seen what happens to people whose brains don't tend to business. (They tend to do poorly and die early -- unless another brain looks after them.)

Our quotidian lives require the full-bore efforts of our advanced brains. Art? Literature? Darwin's books? Google? Mars rovers? Nobel prizes? Yeah yeah yeah, very impressive. All of us keeping society up and running day after day, decade after decade, is a mammoth operation overseen by ordinary but expert brains that won't get a cash prize and a medal.

My brain loves to use the resources left over after feeding and shelter are taken care of to think about existenz quite apart from everything else. Is recreational thinking a 'need'? Maybe. Certainly it's a 'want'. One of the horrors of the quotidian work-a-day world is reaching the end of the day again and again without having had a moment to just think, let alone have creative thought and dialogue with other brains.

So... award your brain a Nobel prize for seeing you through to an old age where you have time to speculate, write, think.

scientists believe the climate is likely headed toward reglaciation, — Tate

We the planet should be so lucky to re-glaciate, preferably before the 2024 election.

there is some kind of "class warfare" going on — dclements

"The only war is the class war." The rich get richer by making the people poorer.

Workers create wealth through the various processes of their labor. The owners collect a portion of the worker-created wealth and keep it. The workers retain enough to maintain themselves, but not enough to become (even remotely) rich.

What about social and economic mobility?

There is some social and economic mobility in capitalist countries within the working class. Education, skill acquisition, brains, luck, hard work, thrift, and cooperative financial institutions can enable one to move up the economic ladder, but only a few get from the working class into the top tier of wealth. Home equity is one way many families have achieved upward economic mobility. However, there are numerous social and economic institutions making that upward mobility possible.

Post-1930s depression-era legislation and post-WWII programs created a lot of the opportunities that enabled many families to accumulate wealth. Without billions invested in road and infrastructure construction, without billions made available to finance the suburban boom (in the 1950s and 1960s), without FHA and VA loans, without expanded college education opportunities, a lot of upward mobility wouldn't have happened.

We like upward mobility, but there is also downward mobility, a less cheerful topic.

But aren't disability payments a result of the labor movement? That, social security, medicare, worker's comp, unemployment payments, aren't all these things a sign of the government's historic loyalty to labor? — Tate

Maybe yes, maybe no. Social security and unemployment insurance were established by Roosevelt and the US Congress in the 1930s in the face of abject need. At least 25% of the workforce (unionized or not) were unemployed and there was growing unrest. Part of the motivation for the major safety net programs was to protect capitalism from revolution. Another motivation was to reduce poverty. Workmen's Comp was established in 1908. Medicare / Medicaid was established in 1966 under Lyndon Johnson. From Workmen's Comp to ObamaCare covers a century of time. It isn't like Congress has been tripping over itself to pass these programs--and we're still in finished! MAYBE we will find Medicare finally authorized to negotiate drug prices.

It would be better to describe safety net programs as pro-citizen, or pro-worker, rather than pro-union. Social Security, Unemployment, Disability, Medicare - Medicaid, and Obama's health care programs were all attacked (editorialy and in court) by conservatives, with strong resistance from conservatives in congress.

Web3. however interesting it might be, is not relevant to the current topic.

One thing you do need to understand about the American labor movement is that it only existed in the first place due to federal backing, originally by Teddy Roosevelt and then Wilson. In Wilson's case it was in line with his progressive Christianity. — Tate

Well... news to me. Consider this:

In early 1866 William Harding, who was then president of the Coachmakers' International Union, met with William H. Sylvis, president of the Ironmoulders' International Union and Jonathan Fincher, head of the Machinists and Blacksmiths Union. At that meeting they called for a formal meeting to be held August 20-24, 1866, in Baltimore, Maryland. On the first day of that meeting the National Labor Union was born. Also, on that first day various committees were created to study different issues—one of which was focused on the 8-hour system. — Wikipedia

So, some level of unionizing was occurring at least in the immediate post-Civil War period. Congress did pass an 8 hour day law (applicable to railroads), and the SCOTUS upheld the law in 1917.

It would be more accurate to say that the existing union movement required congressional action to establish the 8 hour day across the country. That isn't the same thing as unions existing because of federal backing. The federal government is a tool which capital and labor both use for their own ends--the former more effectively than the latter.

The Socialist Labor Party was organized around 1873; union organizing was a major plank in their party platform. The Haymarket Riot in Chicago was 1886 -- all well before T. R. and W. W. An eight-hour day proclamation issued by President Ulysses S. Grant declaring that employers cannot reduce wages as a result of the reduction of the workday, 1869