Sunday, July 24, 2022

Poor choices can be entertaining

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for June 22, 2022)




Do you ever get to the point where you feel like sitting back and watching the show while people suffer the consequences of their bad choices? I do, and I remember the biblical story about Jonah having the same impulse. It's human nature.

There's one show I won't be watching, though. I can't think of a worse waste of time than watching the January 6th Congressional clown show. Congresscritters are wallowing in their self-importance while the disasters they've unleashed on us are making it hard to afford to fuel our cars; making it harder for us to afford food and everything else.

I'm not saying there's anything they could do about it at this point-- the damage has been done. Anything they did now would make it worse. But to try to distract the public with this theater and pretend it's important? Unconscionable politics.

Two years ago I warned of inflation on the horizon, due to the stimulus checks and wanton government spending. Some people took this as a cue to tell me how wrong I was instead of heeding the warning as an opportunity to do things to protect themselves. They decided a better use of their time was to attack the messenger.

I wonder if they've learned anything since.

Then, you have groups parroting the claim that guns are society's biggest problem. Some area teenagers emphatically demonstrated it's not the tool; it's the people who choose to violate another human so badly they end up dead.

I guess the anti-gun activists would say it's a good thing those teens didn't have guns because it would have been worse if they had.

As with any claim I make, you are free to listen, or not.

I'm not telling you what to think. Instead, I hope I set your brain gears in motion so you can think your own thoughts-- thoughts based in reality, not on wishful thinking and bad assumptions.

One bad assumption I see is the assumption that political government is the proper tool for solving problems. If you can get people to accept this groundless claim, you can keep them from even considering actual solutions. There's a problem? What legislation or rules can be imposed to fix it? You won't find a solution there. This assumption will keep people looking in the wrong place. This is choosing to fail even before you've begun. Poor choices have bad, but entertaining, consequences.
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Another possible application of the Bubble


I think it's possible to use my Bubble Theory to resolve another thorny situation where rights seem to conflict.

It may be a way to better address, or view, abortion. 

My view is that at conception the zygote isn't yet an individual person, but at some point between conception and birth-- at least by the time the fetus could survive, with help, outside the uterus-- it becomes one. At that point in time, whenever that is, a "bubble" of bodily autonomy-- individual rights-- enclosing the fetus comes into being inside the pregnant woman's equal and identical "bubble" of bodily autonomy. Inside her body; engulfed in her property, but not her property.

She can no longer claim ownership of what's inside the fetus' "bubble", even though it lies within her own body. She is responsible-- a steward, but not an owner.

After that point, ethically, only if the fetus/baby becomes a credible threat to her life, liberty, or property can she forcibly end the threat.

There would still be plenty of room for those who simply want to fight over the topic to quibble over exactly when the fetus' bodily autonomy "bubble" appears, to complain that this involves "mental constructs" (as does everything above concrete physical objects), to argue over what constitutes a credible threat to the woman's life, liberty, and property (and whether it matters), to keep them entertained.

My view that political government and legislation have no place in our lives remains unchanged either way.

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