A while ago I stopped reading a popular Catholic blog that, looking back, was already on the decline. The blogger is a well informed convert who, perhaps a bit like me, failed to resist using his soapbox to indulge his anger. Honest readers got banned for asking critical questions that previously rarely came up because they were rarely prompted by his posts(I no longer recognize anyone who comments there, and once upon a time a typical post could draw hundreds of meaty comments from dozens of regulars several times a day), apologies for his overreacting in a medium where everyone is autistic went from being something I admired for their elegance and humility to something quite rare.
It started with me just spending less time there overall because there was less combox discussion going on for me to follow, and I eventually got tired of saying to myself "Well, when he foams at the mouth over the evils of some group he partially disagrees with, he doesn't really mean me because my motives are clearly not what he describes." He did make this argument himself from time to time, which made me feel less like I was just rationalizing being judgmental, but after a while it only happened when someone in my shoes asked for confirmation, and eventually he just stopped talking about anything else.
Not literally--it's more like how I used to be on here a few years ago, is all I mean--but every time he posted on a hot button topic I had to make excuses for him in my mind. Eventually I gave up--it had become a daily occurrence, so clearly he was done making room for people like me in his target audience, which was weird considering everything else he still wrote didn't seem to exclude me--and like I did when I gave up network television for the substantial minority of questionable content (probably not really a minority, but even then there were things I wouldn't watch), I afterwards realized how much I had been deceiving myself about the level of vice and acrimony I had been trying to desensitize myself to.
Sometimes I would wonder if I was overreacting or if he was just going through a phase, and I would go back; the stuff he did that was good, was very good, and I honestly missed it.
Every time, though, I'd be proven right again. He still churned out the same good and bad product, but he didn't seem to have his heart in the good anymore.
It's not all vitriol, but like before, when it's a hot button topic, the gloves and the muzzles come off.
I just had to dive in one more time, though, and I couldn't resist compiling some of the questionable reasons given in a post and its combox for why voting Democrat is necessarily the morally superior option these days.
Before I post any of that here, though--I don't need any excuses to go back yet again and get angry at people until I get banned too, even if that would only take five minutes--I want to clarify that I do believe it's possible to discern that voting for any of the parties is the best choice. We don't all have the same priorities, we don't all predict the same crises or whims of history, we don't all have the same local candidates to consider or problems to contend with firsthand, we don't all have the same information, but we all have to make our best effort. So when he says that he votes (D) with a clear conscience, I can accept that, even if I don't think everything he says adds up to much more than "I'm angry and this will show them!"
One of the first points brought up was that Trump increased funding by 8% in the past year to Planned Parenthood, and so the GOP doesn't really mean to do anything about abortion. They put up disappointing SCOTUS justices, talk a good game, PP gets some milage out of the scary possibilities on the horizon, everyone goes home to the status quo but richer. I think there's a little truth to this; it's kind of the same thing flipped with gun control. But 8%? PP's federal subsidies in 2008-2009 were $363 million, and in 2016-2017 were $544 million. That's like making a point of criticizing Hitler for his mustache. Meanwhile during that time period Obama cancelled the Mexico City policy and tried to get federal funding to PP an unremovable item of the federal budget. Trump undid both those things. Clutch your pearls over 8% if you want, but don't talk to me about purity of intent.
"But abortions go down with a Democrat in the office!" And contraception goes up, right? "Yes, more comprehensive sex ed!"
Oh, you mean the stuff where kindergartners are taught to masturbate and encouraged to experiment for themselves even though they're not mature enough to perform, let alone comprehend, the act? Or do you mean the stuff where kids who are of the age where they need some guidance are taught to be "heteroflexible" and that all sexuality is a human construct except for noncisbinaryism which is in-born, which doesn't seem to do much except send teenagers to get scrips for an SSRI and start bringing guns to school? This blogger and some of his readers are Catholics, and like I said before they are well informed; they know that while contraception might not be quite as grave as abortion, they are intrinsically linked; the two practices come from the same mindset and they have the same social outcomes, and they pass through each other along the way. So I struggle when people at that blog make an argument that sounds like it's going to be something like "I'm not positively choosing the lesser of two evils, I'm just trying to mitigate the moral damage to society," which would be fair because the voting booth doesn't have room for that kind of nuance, but ends up being "This single matter of abortion is the whole of the issue of reproductive morality, so if I can make the number of D&Es drop tomorrow, then I will accept anything that follows after." Double effect doesn't excuse you when the secondary effects outweigh the primary ones, and it's not like our arguments are pie in the sky abstractions against things no one has seen happen in society everywhere contraception is liberalized.
Say the temporary and slight drop in abortion is worth it, but don't say that's the end of the story. Even Democrats who want more abortion tell us that it would be nice to practice eugenics by more community-friendly means that are harder to implement.
Say the temporary and slight drop in abortion is worth it, but don't say that's the end of the story. Even Democrats who want more abortion tell us that it would be nice to practice eugenics by more community-friendly means that are harder to implement.
"Well, millions got health care from Obama they didn't have before!"
Maybe so. But what civil liberties were jeopardized by the casuistry that made this precedent? How many people lost their health care? That's a number I never see; that's a question I only am answered with silence. How many didn't get to keep what they liked? How many besides the Little Sisters had a little choice before but got it taken away and replaced with something morally offensive? "Well, they don't have a choice, so it's not like they're formally cooperating with evil; only materially!" That is a discussion to be had within one's conscience, not a point to be used to justify subsidizing evil. Now there's talk about Obamacare imploding, but it's all Chicken Little and Trump; practically none is "crap, this sure looks like it was designed to fail all along and they knew it well before 2016; how can we get out of the particular mess we're in without making it worse either way?" And that's why I sometimes wax skeptical about this blogger's intellectual honesty these days; only so much can you overlook as the lack of perspective, especially in someone who talk about this for a living.
"You MAGA cultists are only making things worse by swallowing his propaganda. After my analysis I believe God is commanding me to vote Democrat."
Maybe He is, but in my experience, usually when God does that, it's because of something specific going on in your life, and not because God is heavy handedly intervening in society--and if he thinks I'm another "MAGA cultist" after all because I'm honestly responding to something he said that struck me as off point or I'm new and missed the last time he said he weren't really criticizing the people who were thoughtful or pinched their noses when they voted for Trump, then maybe he does need to remind not just his readership but himself of whom he means when he uses epithets. Anyway, God can do as He sees fit, including raising up angry prophets, but usually He's more subtle. I don't make this point to put God in a box, but a year ago he was saying "I can vote (D) with a clean conscience," but now it's all "directive from God?" Really? Follow God to the best of your ability, by all means, but does he hear himself? Whom is he trying to convince?
There's a saying about dogs and fleas. You don't have to feed one or take one into your home to pick up fleas, you just have to lie down with them.
You see it’s already working? They’ve got him supporting—for he certainly is silent on these points, which does little but scandalize non-evil Trump voters who might be open to changing their minds—things that are just as morally and socially destructive (which should concern all educated Catholics; these people clearly are willing to cook the golden goose if they get too much resistance to pull a Scandinavia, and then how much help will the little darlings be getting? This is not some pie in the sky abstraction that can’t hold a candle to the reality of suffering people you know personally, this is something we see happening in the world right now), and all for only the low low price of:
- promoting a culture of abortion and contraception, even if raw numbers for the former are dropping when Dems are in power (would you consider the possibility that this is deliberate—that they skew their marketing to change what appears to be trendy, so they can claim that it's their policies and a friendly administration that help pregnant girls more effectively than Welfare helps the homeless?), and like I said before from the Catholic perspective abortion and contraception go hand in hand, but have you looked to see if or how much contraception has gone up compared to the drop in abortion? I'm not sure it's fitting or even possible to make a numbers argument, but it might be worthwhile to consider the proportionality of things to see if there are any trends that will need to be addressed in the next generation.
- encouraging not simply libertine and hospitable immigration policies but a whole movement of flouting rule of law. However bad those cages are, they were there long before 2016 and the bureaucrats really are not just moving anonymized kids around the country to be jerks and kids cartoon villains—at least, not any more than before.
- supporting a movement that is long on symbolic gestures—you’re familiar with these on the other side, as you always point out—that are fraught with mixed results (high costs, lopsided success stories, habit of following unsuccessful historical patterns)
- supporting a movement that has done little to prove they haven’t outgrown their uncivilized roots or just ported their rhetoric into more egalitarian pursuit of power, except for their frequent and contradicted say-so.
- supporting a party that likes to put obstinately and openly heretical Catholics front and center with the express purpose of propagating scandal
- supporting a party that promotes gender confusion and uses double-talk to assault the Church. And I don't want to hear some hoo-rah about Republicans being hypocrites for talking a good moral game but failing to meet the marginalized in the street, so to speak; a standard that is low enough to follow successfully is no standard at all, and I raise this point under this bullet and after the one preceding particularly because gay marriage and naked pride parades and so on are scandals that flow into and through and out of the abortion movement, and a Catholic with a scintilla of history education will know that these things cannot stay separated. Or is hypocrisy only a problem when a politician espouses old fashioned values but doesn't practice old fashioned charity, and it's okay when a politician turns old fashioned charity into government programs but rejects the truth?
If you're a single issue voter, that's fine. Some things really can be so important that nothing else is worth considering. But few things that are that important are also so simple that you can take a snapshot of a single outcome and declare victory--it's the epitome of cherry picking.
I'm not saying a pro lifer can't honestly vote Democrat because of their record on abortion, despite my skepticism; Republicans habitually fall short, probably in no small part because it is more useful for them to have that fight to fight than it is good to have won it.
But if all you're doing is looking at one number under when the White House has (D) versus when it has (R), talking about how one of those parties never succeeds without even thinking about how the other party vacillates on a daily basis between seeing abortion as an evil that should be prevented but not opposed and something to be celebrated (seriously: this blogger used to talk a lot about how Moloch corrupts, without resorting to the genetic fallacy or invoking the halo effect, so he knows better)...then maybe you need to reconsider how honest you're being with yourself.
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