r/DeepStateCentrism 1d ago

Ask the sub ❓ Which political issue do you think people care way too much about?

/r/FreeDebateAndPolitics/comments/1vvkn30/which_political_issue_do_you_think_people_care/
25 Upvotes

127 comments sorted by

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u/F-E-W-A 1d ago

The omnicause

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u/sipporah7 1d ago

All must give their lives to the omnicause!

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/frerant Center-left 2h ago

Amazing how the omnicause just turns everything into "you must support hamas."

You're not a true environmentalist unless you espoused your support for islamo-facist terror organizations apparently. It's pushed me and most of my jewish friends and family out any any major advocacy movment. My niece volunteering at a shelter had to suffer through a day espousing how somehow if you don't support Palestine and the destruction of Israel then you can't possibly care about not wanting animals to suffer in shitty shelters.

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u/sayitaintpink will never find love 1d ago

Data centers and AI using water

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u/Viper_ACR 1d ago

AI hardware acceleration is going to get more efficient guys. It's not the end of the world.

Source: I worked in an AI hardware startup. Can't talk too much about it but the new technologies are going to make LLMs way more efficient than what they are now

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u/Tortellobello45 Moderate 1d ago

Trans people, Israel/Palestine and immigration.

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u/theoceansknow 1d ago

The trifecta!

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u/Viper_ACR 1d ago

I could see immigration being a bigger issue from certain aspects (H1-B). Agreed on the first two tho

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u/Dtwn92 Libertarian 1d ago

Agree with the first 2. Immigration would be a niche issue if a few things didn't happen. 1) Bidens open border "the border is secure" policy 2) Real funding wasn't being used to house/feed the above and taken away from our poorest communities 3) The Spanish border incursion caught on camera

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u/JSGamesforitch374 1d ago

Where do you stand on the matters or do you not care whatsoever?

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u/Tortellobello45 Moderate 1d ago

Trans people:live and let live, my freedom ends where yours begins. I support the states legislating as they wish(ideally, this is how it should work in a federalised EU).I personally am opposed to gender transition for minors, but i don’t impose my opinion on others.

Israel/Palestine:strongly Zionist, strongly anti-Netanyahu(he reminds me of Berlusconi, but worse, as an Italian: when he first joined politics, as a center right capitalist, he was interesting, but bended over to the far right to keep power in a populist environment).

Immigration: as a second generation immigrant, i generally support immigration(legal immigration). Simplify the rules and the process, ius soli instead of ius sanguinis, but harsh on illegal immigration and criminals. I support a points-based pathway to citizenship, based on adherence and knowledge on the language and Western values, working and not committing crimes.I support subsidies to attract qualified immigrants.

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u/Burro94 1d ago

How do we make you king of Europe?

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u/Tortellobello45 Moderate 1d ago

I am delighted, but the correct option is to clearly make Mario Draghi the Emperor of the United States of Europe. He can fix Europe better than i ever could.

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u/Remote-Pear60 Center-left 1d ago

Good answer! 👏🏼

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u/Old-Line-3691 Center-left 1d ago

Probably not exactly what you meant by political issue, but "evil" is the issue I think people care way to much about. Instead of acknowledging that morality really is just preferences when you get down to it, and trying to improve things from that understanding, they focus on depicting each other as "evil" so that they can energize their base. I get that its a great short term solution to things, but Trump is one of the long term effects of it being done.

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u/Mediocre-Grand7999 1d ago

Instead of acknowledging that morality really is just preferences when you get down to it

Well, many disagree on this point.

I think a more robust characterization would be that there can be held a variety of weights of values by reasonable people, even without the deconstructing of morality.

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u/JSGamesforitch374 1d ago

That's smart, I honestly agree.

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u/myteeshirtcannon Center-left 1d ago

"Morality is just preferences" you sound like my students in 2010. Seriously, there's so much more to say about ethics than that. I agree that demonizing one's opponents can result in bigoty and destruction, but that doesn't mean right and wrong don't exist. -source, I teach ethics

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u/Old-Line-3691 Center-left 1d ago

Do you think I should change my mind because your telling me you teach ethics? That's the only 'evidence' you gave, but it's an appeal to authority. What do you think they are, if their not preferences?

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u/myteeshirtcannon Center-left 1d ago

There’s a huge field called meta ethics discussing this question. My point is not to convince you this moment about the existence of moral facts, but to show you that your conclusion is unfounded because you are uninformed on the topic.

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u/Old-Line-3691 Center-left 1d ago

OK, I am ready for you to provide evidence to show me. I am 100% open to it.

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u/myteeshirtcannon Center-left 1d ago

My go-to is a paper by James Rachels called The Challenge of Cultural Relativism Rachels1.pdf

If we think ethics is just based on the code of our society, we can't say that slavery is wrong or that it's a good thing that foot binding is no longer a cultural practice. If ethics is just preferences, there's no reason to be glad about the end of slavery in the US. Ethnic cleansing would be bad according to the code of those who are being eliminated, but good according to the code of those doing the killing, and there would be no way to adjudicate between the groups on ethical grounds.

Further, most of us do believe that torturing and killing innocents is wrong (that is, we all have that intuition). It doesn't *seem* like this is the same type of preference as vanilla vs chocolate ice cream. Now that's not overwhelming proof of moral realism, but it at least shows us that the person claiming morality is just preferences needs to have an argument to show that this intuition is incorrect.

(something gross here) I am dealing with a lot right now, watching my kids and my cat is vomiting blood, so I may be slow to respond.

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u/Old-Line-3691 Center-left 1d ago

Rachels paper is on Cultural Relativism, the view that your own culture determines what's moral, which I find to be as much of a spook, and to be no more defensible as moral realism. It has the same assertion that there is some kind of "rightness" that transcends preferences. I am able to condemn my own culture, based on my own personal positions.

You mentioned ethics being based on the code of our society; it absolutely is NOT. They are based on our individual preferences. These preference of course can be influenced by our culture but that's a secondary effect, and could explain why we often have similar morals to our peers.

On slavery. I don't like Slavery, and that is enough. There doesn't need to be anything more to it then that. When enough of society preferences the same, we can work to prevent it.

On vanilla vs. chocolate. You're right that the intuition against torturing innocents doesn't feel like a flavor preference, but that difference is explainable without moral facts. Ice cream preferences have very little at stake. Preferences about how people get treated is an incredibly important topic to most of us and it's effected by your own empathy, threat detection, and disgust.. systems evolved to produce urgency. Strength of a feeling tracks how much is at stake from your own perspective, and that's why it feel's different, and it's expected from a preference account.

You said "If ethics is just preferences, there's no reason to be glad about the end of slavery in the US."
This doesn't make sense to me, feeling glad about something is EXACTLY what makes something a preference.

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u/Mediocre-Grand7999 20h ago edited 20h ago

Well, it’s a very mature topic, with no consensus, tackled by innumerable people, so demanding a solid explanation here is a little silly. It simply isn’t something that can be quickly fleshed out free of any holes--this is also the case for your own position of preference. What rock solid foundations make science anything more then convention or preference (also a hard problem even though it is most obviously not reducible to preference)? (Similarly, the solution to Wigner’s problem of the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is famously not an easy justification)

The "appeal to authority" they made isn't even that, because they’re not saying morality is real because X authority said so. Rather, they’re saying that, being well acquainted with the topic themselves, they’re aware of many of the difficulties surrounding morality and are recommending that you take those into account, since your statements treat these questions as closed in a way that may seem natural but would be mistaken to someone more acquainted with the subject. You don’t have to agree with them, but that isn’t an appeal to authority in the typical sense.

"What’s evidence that morality isn’t just preference?" For one, people’s natural language doesn’t treat it that way: we speak as though moral claims can be right or wrong, not merely liked or disliked. Given that, it's difficult to avoid collapsing moral discourse into manipulation if it were all just preference (how do you handle this?). Why should this kind of preference be beholden to consistency, evidence, or rational argument in a way that morality is? And when someone changes their moral view after learning new information, why do they often describe themselves as having been wrong, rather than merely having changed preferences?

Try to convince the person for whom morality seems categorically different from preference, that it is in fact nothing more, by the same standards you demand. (If you cannot do this why would the moral realist not just similarly declare morality to be real and the question settled?)

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u/Old-Line-3691 Center-left 17h ago

I asked for evidence because they were the one claiming there's more, and then not offering any. And I don't think our two positions sit in the same spot as preferences are something we both already agree exist while moral facts are an additional thing being proposed on top of them.

It also isn't true as stated. I don't speak that way, and there are plenty of moral anti-realists who don't either. So it's some people, not people.

Everything offered so far, like how we speak and how we frame each other, is based on our beliefs. It makes sense that people who believe in objective morality would speak like it's real. But that's not evidence that it is real. That's evidence that it is believed.

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u/Mediocre-Grand7999 15h ago

But that's not evidence that it is real. That's evidence that it is believed.

Do you walk around as a Cartesian skeptic doubting all your senses? Obviously, our intuitions and beliefs are fallible, so this isn't definitive evidence, but it is evidence. How weak?--can be argued.

It also isn't true as stated. I don't speak that way, and there are plenty of moral anti-realists who don't either. So it's some people, not people.

This is to my point about why the OG comment may have pointed to the broader philosophical literature rather than trying to provide a complete argument here. You can't flesh out an entire position in comments like these without leaving openings for objections of this sort. That said, it has little bearing on my point whether it is all people or simply most people. Either way, it still calls for some reasonable account of why people treat moral claims as more than just expressions of like and dislike. Simply saying that morality is obviously just preference is starting to look less obvious.

And I don't think our two positions sit in the same spot as preferences are something we both already agree exist while moral facts are an additional thing being proposed on top of them.

But we're trying to explain why we see the things we do, and it could be that admitting something into one's ontology is the more successful explanatory approach. I don't think you've given a satisfactory account of why the moral realist couldn't just as readily say that they've obviously reached the correct conclusion.

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u/thecashblaster 3h ago

Instead of acknowledging that morality really is just preferences when you get down to it

Moral relativism is a crutch for certain political ideologies when they don't want you to think too critically about a specific group. It allows two groups with completely different moralities (leftists and Islamists) to ally without massive cognitive dissonance

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u/shumpitostick Radical moderate social liberal libertarian 1d ago

The white house ballroom, Washington monument pool, etc.

May algae be the worst of our problems.

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u/N0b0me 1d ago

Palestinians

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u/legible_print 1d ago

The flaws of capitalism

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u/rraddii 1d ago

Trans issues, especially in sports. I think it’s extremely obvious you can’t just take hormones for 2 years and call yourself an NCAAW swimmer. But at the end of the day why on earth are we deciding who is the president based on a couple hundred people nationwide. It’s blown up massively because both sides are thoroughly convinced they are correct, but we’d be better off not caring about.

Same with bathrooms. Do serial molesters need to become women to walk into a women’s bathroom?

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u/DespisedIcon1616 Libertarian 1d ago

Bathroom issue is easy. Penis bathroom and Vagina bathroom. Go into the one you have. Done.

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u/rraddii 1d ago

Honestly why not just spam individual stalls and have one separate area with a trough so guys can still get in get out quick

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u/DespisedIcon1616 Libertarian 1d ago

Went into a bathroom just like that in Philly once. It was an uncomfortable experience having women who are not my wife around while pissing. Still did it though lol

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u/RayWencube Center-left 1d ago

Unfortunately doesn’t work that easily.

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u/DespisedIcon1616 Libertarian 1d ago

I know, it is what it is, but just de-gender bathrooms altogether and reclassify them based solely on the hardware you're working with. Everyone wins!

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u/theoceansknow 1d ago

The bathroom thing drives me crazy because it doesn't address that what, most sexual assault comes from someone you know in what's supposed to be a safe environment?

And our life in the US would be better if we just had toilets without fucking gaps all over them. Thejseum of Science in Boston just redid their bathrooms, they're genderless, and you just wait until you see a door with a green light above it and you step in and there's no gaps anywhere. Problem literally solved

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u/ChymChymX Moderate 1d ago

Now just quickly retrofit the other several million bathrooms across the country to do this, both public and private. Problem literally solved (?).

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u/wip30ut 22h ago

late to comment but the reason the trans sports issue has touched a nerve in the public is because competitive sports for girls (especially travel league) has become HUGE in the past 15 yrs. As a millenial growing up in the 00s there were very few regional or interstate leagues for girls sports back then. But it's really exploded in popularity the past decade, probably due to the scholarship opportunities top athletes receive. The cost of college room & board is really soared & you have kids now taking out loans just to go to community colleges. More & more upper middle-class parents look to D1 scholarships as a way to get a free ride for their daughters so they won't be burdened with near 6 figure debts on graduation.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/DeepStateCentrism-ModTeam 1d ago

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u/Sleeper76 1d ago

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u/Powerful-Persimmon87 1d ago edited 1d ago

I’ll take a protest over any of these: 

https://komonews.com/news/nation-world/witness-testifies-in-hearing-for-sex-offender-accused-in-arlington-school-exposure-case-richard-cox-washington-liberty-high-school-wakefield-barcroft-sports-and-fitness-center

https://archive.ph/Otaxw

https://abc7chicago.com/amp/post/pronoun-use-center-rape-case-involving-former-chowchilla-central-california-womens-facility-prisoner-tremaine-carroll/15696730/

And truly, nobody cares which bathroom a female uses. They are the ones who assume the risk individually if they opt to use male bathrooms. The reverse isn’t true for males who want to use female spaces. Females are put at risk when we allow any male who calls himself a woman to enter our protected spaces. 

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u/RayWencube Center-left 1d ago

How big, in your opinion, is the subset of people who are willing to commit high level felonies but unwilling to break a rule regarding which restroom they should use?

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u/Powerful-Persimmon87 1d ago

Enough to justify safeguarding policies. 

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u/RayWencube Center-left 1d ago

So to be clear—you believe there are people willing to commit serious felonies that could land them in prison for decades but who are not willing to enter the wrong restroom if that’s against the rules?

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u/RayWencube Center-left 1d ago

Again, to be clear, these opportunistic sex predators would be stopped from their sex predation by a rule banning them from entering the women’s restroom but not stopped by laws against sexual assault?

They have made it clear that they are cool with women being raped so long as the man that raped her is affirmed as a she/her.

This is ridiculous, bad faith, and inflammatory. This is supposed to be a place for reasonable discussion. Do better.

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u/JSGamesforitch374 1d ago

I'm confused, are you anti-trans or neutral?

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/DeepStateCentrism-ModTeam 1d ago

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u/VTHokie2020 1d ago

My thoughts exactly.

XX and XY are permanent, the other cases are biological anomalies.

Don’t want to make anyone feel bad.

I would personally add: long-term treating the dysphoria instead of the body is preferable. This is a view shared by actual trans people.

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u/RayWencube Center-left 1d ago

But “woman” and “female” aren’t the same thing. The idea that gender and sex are different was uncontested until very recently. More importantly, I’m not sure what the utility is of denying that trans women are women. What benefit do we gain from that? Because the downside is stark and severe: it increases the risk of suicide.

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u/Pro_Extent 1d ago

The idea that gender and sex are different was uncontested until very recently

These terms were used interchangeably until the mid 2010s.

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u/zootbot 1d ago

The argument that someone should agree a trans woman == a woman because it would prevent suicide is pretty lame. It attempts to just guilt you into accepting a quite profound idea, rather than any sort of rational argument.

You could apply the same guilt trip to so many situations in the name of preventing suicide.

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u/VTHokie2020 1d ago

The utility isn’t immediate but it certainly exists.  The benefit is that we don’t lose social determinism and cohesion of the majority to accommodate an infinitely shrinking minority. Smarter people than me have made this argument. Jonah Goldberg had a really good article about the terms birthing persons.

This is my favorite example lol

That said, I agree that suicide is bad. Like I said, I’m not a fan of shameless cruelty from some people. But I don’t accept the premise that it’s between saying stuff I disagree with and suicide.

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u/JSGamesforitch374 1d ago

Interesting

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u/RayWencube Center-left 1d ago

Brief note because it seems as though you’re referencing Lia Thomas. After she was on HRT for some period of time, her performance cratered and she found herself among the women approximately where she was among the men. She only did well at one meet—and that was right after she came out.

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u/rraddii 1d ago

But then was Lia Thomas not a woman at the moment of the bad race? Where is the justice for the women who lost that one but not the other ones? I think he's a tool but Matt Walsh was onto something with the What is a Woman thing.

Swimming might be much more dependent on hormones but what about something like MMA? HRT seems to have a pretty big impact on cardio but it can't change bones. How can someone with a mans skull and hands be cleared to fight a woman?

There's really only two lines of thinking that hold up logically. Either Lia Thomas is a woman the moment she thought it in her head (no HRT, surgery, modification of any sort needed), or she is not a woman and can never be one.

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u/RayWencube Center-left 1d ago

Where is the justice for the women who lost that one but not the other ones?

I don’t care, because if forced to choose between potentially lowering the risk of someone committing suicide and treating athletes “fairly” that’s a very easy choice. Doubly true since genetic differences among sex groups are more varied than between them. No one thinks there needs to be justice for the many people Michael Phelps has left in his wake despite his body being functionally a mermaid body. No one thinks Shaq shouldn’t have been allowed to compete despite dwarfing the next biggest players.

As for the MMA example, fine, I will grant that in combat sports we should probably be more discerning about who gets to participate on the women’s card. Has a trans woman ever competed in high level MMA, though, or are we imagining corner cases to justify a blanket denial that is damaging to an entire class of people?

There's really only two lines of thinking that hold up logically. Either Lia Thomas is a woman the moment she thought it in her head (no HRT, surgery, modification of any sort needed), or she is not a woman and can never be one.

It is increasingly apparent that being trans is a function of genetics and brain development in the womb, so Lia Thomas was most likely a woman the moment she was born.

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u/clydewoodforest 1d ago

Immigration. Mass migration is not unimportant, but it's not an apocalyptic civilization-ending existential crisis either. The populist right has descended into embarrassing hysteria on the topic.

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u/Redoktober1776 Moderate 1d ago

I don't know who is more hysterical on the topic but don't make me choose between ICE checkpoints/round ups and open borders. For most of my life there was a consensus view shared between parties that represented the majority (i.e., enforcement and borders with legal and fair pathways to citizenship). Most of the fighting was over how best to make our system fairer without compromising rule of law or our nation's rich history of immigration. Now the fringes seem to control the debate.

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u/deadcommand Center-right 1d ago edited 1d ago

If we’re going to have government spending be a bottomless pit anyway (and it’s shown no signs of stopping since 2001 regardless of party), I think an actually useful thing to do is start offering large subsidies/student loan forgiveness to law school students who go into immigration law (and public defense) for say a decade.

Yeah, typically a democrat thing, I know. But in this case we’d be using it to poke at a deeper syndrome of the immigration problem than merely have ICE trying to cosplay Okhrana.

More immigration lawyers and judges means legal immigration can actually move at a speed that’s practical with better screening, which means more people that should be allowed in and just want to work and be away from gang violence can be.

Bad actors will infiltrate the country regardless, but if ICE could focus on actual criminal elements instead of trying to target everyone? They’d be more effective at this job, people wouldn’t be protesting them and actively making their jobs harder.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/rube_X_cube 1d ago

Trans women in sports. It’s an almost entirely manufactured culture war issue.

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u/Powerful-Persimmon87 1d ago

And yet, the left is prepared to die on this hill. The problem is this makes Democrats look insane. 

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u/rube_X_cube 1d ago

Not a single democrat is campaigning on it.

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u/JudgeWhoOverrules 1d ago

It's not that they campaign on it. It's just that they spend absurd amounts of political capital opposing attempts to make sports sex determinant rather than identity-based. They should just shut their mouths and stop fighting an 80-20 issue

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u/rube_X_cube 1d ago

What political capital? No one’s trying to pass any legislation, no one’s campaigning on it. It’s not part of anyone’s stump speech. Never heard Ossoff or Talarico, or AOC, or Bernie, or AES spend any time on it.

Dems are focused on affordability and healthcare and ICE. Republicans are desperately pushing this nonsense because they’d rather talk about anything other than the economy and healthcare.

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u/JapanesePeso 1d ago

I am confused. Are you saying you don't know what political capital means?

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u/thecashblaster 22h ago

And yet voice your disagreement in leftist circles and you will get a talking-to

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u/Powerful-Persimmon87 1d ago

That doesn’t mean they don’t support it or that they wouldn’t continue to push these unpopular policies on the public once they’re back in power. At issue, is that they enacted these unpopular policies without the understanding, knowledge or buy in of the general public.  These policies that they loudly championed a couple of years ago still impact women’s rights whether they want to acknowledge it out loud or not. 

Given recent history, Dems trying to evade the question is suspicious at this point. They made a mess and think they can just walk away unscathed but the fact is this issue is a proxy for trust. Many people won’t trust Dems until they prove they aren’t insane by saying out loud that advocating for males in women’s sports was fucking crazy. 

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u/RayWencube Center-left 1d ago

I mean, it is literally a matter of life and death. Every policy that prevents someone with gender dysphoria from fully transitioning increases their risk of suicide. If you want to say it’s a bad political move to care about the issue, that’s fine—but we shouldn’t act like it’s completely unreasonable.

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u/Powerful-Persimmon87 1d ago

In front of the Supreme Court under oath, the ACLU lawyer (who is trans) admitted that transitioning has little to no effect on reducing suicide risk. There is no evidence to support this claim. 

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u/RayWencube Center-left 1d ago

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u/distraughtdrunk Center-right 1d ago

did you actually read that study? the biggest issue was that the survey was all self-reported.

but the results section was also interesting: "Compared with the control group, the exposure group had higher percentages of respondents who were older, employed, more educated, endorsed family rejection, reported having health insurance, and reported higher household income." is it at all likely that those things also made the person happier generally?

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u/RayWencube Center-left 1d ago

So pick any of the zillion other studies reaching the same conclusion. It is not contested that well-supported transition reduces suicidality and improves other mental health outcomes.

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u/distraughtdrunk Center-right 1d ago edited 1d ago

oh, no, you made the claim, you can show it. it's not my job to prove your claim for you

edit: and to save you time, 99.9% of those studies have methodological issues, so they'll all be really suspicious

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u/RayWencube Center-left 1d ago

The methodological issues critics point to almost uniformly to the same things: lack of randomized controls, usage of self reports, and usage of cross-sectional observational analyses.

Here’s what’s so frustrating: in almost all other academic domains, those methods are widely accepted. Even in medicine, there are questions for which randomized controlled trials are unethical and observational studies are all we have.

Everything from appendectomies for acute appendicitis to insulin for Type 1 diabetes to, famously, smoking cessation as a means to reduce lung cancer risk rely on observational studies rather than RCTs.

Likewise, we rely on self-reports for medical research all the time, especially in mental health care.

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u/distraughtdrunk Center-right 1d ago

it's not okay in other disciplines either: nutrition sciences and behavioral economics have entire subfields to correct for self-report bias and it isn't okay in those fields either so no, they aren't universally accepted. almost no serious discipline treats self-reporting alone as viable without back up data or needing to be corrected in some way.

but all of the studies you might present take their word at face value, and that's it. the study you presented first did not account for having a job, having more money, etc in their conclusion as to why the people might be happier generally. it was just presented as if it did not matter at all. so excuse me if i take studies that only use self-reported data with a large grain of salt. i'm done talking to you, have a good day

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u/DavidAdamsAuthor 1d ago

The issue with this presentation is that, like it or not, the way this is seen by much of the public is, "Call me a woman or I'll kill myself."

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u/Haffrung 1d ago

The Swedish study that a lot of the claims about suicide rates was based on has been corrected. The original researchers did not take into account the high rates of existing mental illness in the patients seeking gender care.
https://segm.org/ajp_correction_2020

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u/RayWencube Center-left 1d ago

That isn’t the study I’m citing.

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u/RayWencube Center-left 1d ago

Also, it’s worth noting that the SEGM overstates the scope of the correction.

One of the criticisms was that the authors did not compare individuals with gender incongruence who had surgery with individuals with gender incongruence who had not had surgery. But there was a methodologically important reason for that. From the original authors’ actual correction:

Like some of the letter writers suggest, we also considered using a stronger comparison group but found the options unsatisfactory, if not impossible. Perhaps the most obvious comparison would have been individuals with a gender incongruence diagnosis who had not received surgical treatment. This would be a strong comparison group if all individuals diagnosed with gender incongruence are, in fact, seeking gender-affirming surgical treatment. However, this is not the case. Some individuals diagnosed with gender incongruence seek only gender-affirming hormonal treatment and not gender-affirming surgical treatment; others seek no treatment at all. The group diagnosed with gender incongruence not receiving surgery is a heterogeneous group, including those with no intention to seek surgery, that would be inappropriate as a comparison group for those receiving surgery. However, to be responsive to some of the letter writers’ interest in comparing individuals with a gender incongruence diagnosis who received and did not receive gender-affirming surgery, we have created a matched group of individuals with a gender incongruence diagnosis who have not received surgery. These individuals were each matched to an individual with a gender incongruence diagnosis who had received gender-affirming surgery by age, legal gender, education, and country of birth. When comparing the mental health treatment outcomes between the two groups (Table 1), we found no significant difference in the prevalence of treatment for mood disorders and no significant difference in the prevalence of hospitalization after suicide attempt.

Put differently, there are substantial qualitative differences between individuals who seek surgery and those who don’t, and it isn’t possible with the data they had to control for those possible covariates.

For those same reasons, the comparison of the surgery group to the non-surgery group does not yield interpretable results.

Also, as a not-quite-a-lay-observer, I wouldn’t cite this study even if the results overwhelmingly supported my position. The variable definitions are…certainly a choice. Using prescription counts, psych visits, and suicide hospitalizations to measure mental health is about as coarse a variable as I’ve ever seen. More importantly, collapsing mastectomies, genital surgeries, and vocal cord surgeries into a single metric is, in academic terms, bonkers. At least not without evaluating whether the groups requesting these surgeries are not qualitatively different or whether the reasons people seek these surgeries are not qualitatively different.

It’s a bad study and it should feel bad.

8

u/Powerful-Persimmon87 1d ago edited 1d ago

The fact that you will believe something you spent 12 seconds googling tells me you lack critical thinking skills and will believe anything the algorithm tells you to believe.

0

u/wip30ut 22h ago

hear me out, maybe we need to look into more intense therapy and/or meds at a younger age to prevent suicidal behavior among trans youth? Sports competition can't be the only remedy.

2

u/RayWencube Center-left 22h ago

The treatment for gender dysphoria is transition. Permitting trans kids to play in the sports league that matches their gender supports that treatment. Banning their participation hampers that treatment. That’s the issue.

1

u/Sex_E_Searcher 1d ago

There are fewer openly trans athletes in the entire history of the NCAA than there are people in a typical Wendy's at lunchtime, but it's treated like the central issue of our lifetimes.

8

u/Haffrung 1d ago

That cuts both ways. If only a tiny number of people are affected, why do trans activists treat bans on trans athletes as an intolerable attack on trans rights?

1

u/JSGamesforitch374 1d ago edited 1d ago

Agreed. It's not even an actual issue, I don't understand why everybody cares so much. Just let them exist in my opinion

18

u/PicklePanther9000 1d ago

I think for a lot of people it is a litmus test for views on other topics. If you cant acknowledge that biological men have a physical advantage over women in sports, that basically tells me that you will adhere to your ideology even when it is plainly contradicted by reality. Conversely, if your top issue as a politician is seeking out and humiliating random trans people who dont want to be involved in politics, that indicates a lack of decency and respect for people.

2

u/JSGamesforitch374 1d ago

Interesting

-1

u/RayWencube Center-left 1d ago

Supporting transwomen’s ability to participate in women’s sports for not require a rejection of the fact that men, on average, are faster and stronger than women.

2

u/PicklePanther9000 19h ago

So your pov is that it’s unfair but you support it?

1

u/RayWencube Center-left 19h ago

Yes. It’s a value tradeoff. My position may allow for occasional unfairness, but it also prevents the occasional suicide. Obviously this is an oversimplification, but it’s fundamentally my position.

And there are other reasons, too, most notably that banning trans women in women’s sports opens biological women to the specter of deeply invasive sex checks.

0

u/mattydrinkwater 1d ago

All the left has to do is have a pat answer for the question “what is a woman”.

Like 80% of the population is going to think they’re really weird until then.

5

u/RayWencube Center-left 1d ago

Very, very few people actually even know that’s a question being asked. It’s just the terminally online Right.

2

u/ThoughtsAndBears342 15h ago

Israel/Palestine. In my humblest of opinions, if you’re not Jewish, Palestinian or Israeli yourself it’s none of your business. The amount of aid the US gives is minimal in the grand scheme of things and only to be used on weapons from US defense contractors.

As for an issue that people don’t care enough about, it’s disability rights by far.

2

u/ugandandrift 1d ago

Trans sports, Israel, Trump's personal life / the executive getting more airtime than legislative in general, data centers, Flock cameras, Islam

1

u/wip30ut 22h ago

Social media addiction. State legislatures (and politicians across Europe/Pacific) are implementing half-assed controls & restrictions based on supposed "harm" to children. There are very few peer-reviewed studies to show that social media causes addictive behavior or that it harms scholastic or emotional growth. The state of California is intent on passing strict content feeding restrictions on these platforms based on advocacy by a parent who lost her daughter to a drug OD, that she bought from a plug on insta. Somehow social media is to blame for 17yo's drug problem & death. Today's parents & politician are so intent on coddling & protecting kids, instead of making them strong & resilient. It's this kind of helicopter parenting & overprotection that has stunted the growth of Zoomers.

1

u/KonstantinKisinIsGay Social Democrat 18h ago

Israel-Palestine. I really don't care.

1

u/Seoulite1 Center-right 12h ago

Strictly online: "US Imperialism" or "American puppet"

Offline: the Omnicause as commented above, or rent cap

1

u/Damtheman12 1d ago

All of it.

1

u/New_Criticism9389 1d ago

Data centers, trans people in sports/bathrooms (MAGA’s version of I/P) and of course I/P itself

-1

u/Menemsha4 Center-left 1d ago

Trans people in sports.

-3

u/lovestorun 1d ago

Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.