Random Politics

[Ab]

Looks like Roe v Wade in the USA is headed for the shredder:

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/0...inion-00029473

The fact that this draft got leaked is pretty fucking insane.

[Ab]

Strap yourselves in and feel the OMGs

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeaut...over_40_years/

[Lightspeed]

Oof, some of those comments burn.

[Ab]

The movements in the chart burn me enough all by themselves.

[Lightspeed]

[xor]

Originally Posted by Lightspeed

We better drop the voting age then. Cause I paid plenty of taxes before I was voting age.

There's a Supreme Court case at the moment, but the result can't change the law.

That's an interesting debate. What are the pros vs cons for having it lowered to 16?

[blynk]

Pros
-When it is at 18, not all 18 year olds get to vote.
If they turn 18 the day after the election, they dont get to vote until they are 21.
Same with lowering to to 16, it will infact make the average age to start voting about 17.5
-There are plenty of decisions that affect young adults so why should they get a say
-The future of the country has a bigger affect on a younger person than it does on an older person

Cons
- The risk of them not being mature enough to understand their decision
- The risk that the parents will influence them on who to vote for, so in effect giving the parent 2 votes.

[xor]

I'd assume if this gets passed into law then a 16 year old could sign a legally binding contract as well.

[fixed_truth]

I'm happy for it to be lowered. I don't think it'll make much difference to the polls & turnout will be low. It'll probably just be a small group of 16-17 year olds that are interested in politics.

[Lightspeed]

The Oranga Tamariki Cycle



Insightful++

[xor]

Originally Posted by fixed_truth

I'm happy for it to be lowered. I don't think it'll make much difference to the polls & turnout will be low. It'll probably just be a small group of 16-17 year olds that are interested in politics.

If one has the capacity to help shape the government then it would be rational to believe they can also sign a contract or purchase alcohol.

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by xor

That's an interesting debate. What are the pros vs cons for having it lowered to 16?

So we're debating now? I thought the principle was no taxation without representation?

I guess there is a debate after all about how to ensure more fair representation in NZ. To improve upon the status quo which skews representation in favour of those who benefited most from NZ's colonisation.

[xor]

Originally Posted by Lightspeed

So we're debating now? I thought the principle was no taxation without representation?

Sure, why not. That's how you thrash out good ideas vs bad ideas.

Labour tried and failed to slip something through and got rekt. That's the cool thing about democracy.

[Lightspeed]

Anyone else seeing this? lololz

[Ab]

Originally Posted by xor

If one has the capacity to help shape the government then it would be rational to believe they can also sign a contract or purchase alcohol.

or have sex with one's legal guardian

[Lightspeed]

Solomon Islands Prime Minister ups ante in criticism of Australia while praising China

I think this was the way Samoa would have gone if the former government had held onto power.

[fixed_truth]

Originally Posted by xor

If one has the capacity to help shape the government then it would be rational to believe they can also sign a contract or purchase alcohol.

It's only rational if you believe it's true that the task of buying alcohol and consuming it responsibly requires equal or lesser capacity than voting.

[xor]

Sure, i bet the loan sharks are looking forward to offering some sweet HP loans to the kids at school.

[xor]

https://twitter.com/kehetauhauaga/st...84481475588097

This is a pretty interesting read. Nothing like a bit of nepotism to keep the cash rolling in. So dodge.

[Ab]

Nepotism - or, one might say, strong connections within whanau, hapu, and iwi that bravely endure even after nearly two centuries of colonisation - is deeply deeply ingrained in Maori culture. You can't take away an attitude of "family first, even if that conflicts with the law" from Maori people without making them less Maori.

[_indigo1]

That seems fairly consistent with primitive culture?
Most if not all cultures go through a phase of family/bloodlines forming the structure of society above all?

[DrTiTus]

Cabinet Manual - there are rules in place, even using the word "whanau" which is Maori enough for me to say it still applies.

https://twitter.com/kehetauhauaga/st...195008/photo/2

[Ab]

Originally Posted by _indigo1

That seems fairly consistent with primitive culture?

I think you misspelled "non-Western-Christian".

[_indigo1]

Originally Posted by Ab

I think you misspelled "non-Western-Christian".

That's fairly incorrect. When did you become so woke-washed?

[_indigo1]

There was an attempt.... to gatekeep being Maori....

[Lightspeed]

Originally Posted by _indigo1

That's fairly incorrect. When did you become so woke-washed?

Yeah Ab, surely you recognise we're better.

[_indigo1]

Originally Posted by Lightspeed

Yeah Ab, surely you recognise we're better.

Don't put over-dramatised nonsense into my mouth. Nobody made any comparative judgements.
If you are interpreting the word primitive as better, that's on YOU.

[Lightspeed]

I interpreted "primitive" in the traditional sense: backward, less advanced, that which can be improved upon.

You are of course welcome to introduce any nuance you might have in mind, unless that's too "woke-washed" for you?

[_indigo1]

No, that is not what primitive means 'traditionally'
That is what it means when used as a slur. And honestly I have no time for people who walk around playing strawman painting anything that can be interpreted as a slur as a slur.
I suggest you brush up on your English rather than looking for reasons to be triggered and chips to shoulder.

Try strongmaning for a change.

Everything evolves. Culture is one of them. Cultural evolution exists.
It is a fact of history that more often than not in the arc of cultural change [in surviving cultures], what begins as heredity or even just closed-succession based governmental structures moves toward more open equitable systems of power sharing.

I am not going to be so judgemental as to call that progress, as who am I to define that.
However one can definitely say it is a trend with time.

So in that sense, the prior is primitive.

[_indigo1]

And actually I worded it wrong when I said 'more often than not in the arc of cultural change [in surviving cultures], what begins as heredity or even just closed-succession based governmental structures moves toward more open equitable systems of power sharing.'

What I meant to convey was that they move away from familial or hereditary forms of power structure.
As clearly many modern cultures are far from equitable in their power structures.

[Lightspeed]

Oh cripes, my English!

lolz

You just making shit up.

[fixed_truth]

Originally Posted by _indigo1

There was an attempt.... to gatekeep being Maori....

He's not gatekeeping being Maori, he literally acknowledged that Seymour is Maori through his whakapapa.

He's pointing out that Seymour is a terrible advocate for Maori and that he advocates for policies that actively oppress Maori.

[_indigo1]

Well he kind of did..

Jackson said it was "sad" to see Seymour's Māori policy considering he had "claimed he was Māori" previously.

But I was posting tongue in cheek anyway

[Ab]

Originally Posted by _indigo1

That's fairly incorrect. When did you become so woke-washed?

Did that just happen? Did I just get accused of WOKENESS??




In all seriousness though, I was referring to the phenomenon that most of what we consider "normal and civilised" as far as society goes is not at all normal in a historical sense, and is really the result of a millennia-long project by the Church(1) -- and by the Church I mean the group of organisations that started with that which we now call the Catholic Church, based in Rome, and all its offshoot sects - to break up family-based cultures wherever it encountered them (which was everywhere) in order to transfer wealth and power to itself. The retention of pre-colonised attitudes is evident in New Zealand (for example this Mahuta thing) not because Maori culture is a "primitive" culture but rather because NZ is almost as far as it's possible to get from Rome and the break-up-family-culture cultists got here relatively late.(2).

1. Here's the project in a nutshell. The lesson that early Christians learned was, in order to not get fucked by the man you have to be the man. Emperors and nations come and go, so the trick is to be so powerful that no-one ever fucks with you.

Quickest way to get powerful? Get rich. Quickest way to get rich? Take the wealth that other people already have. Where's the wealth? Tied up in family-based cultures. Inheritances, tribal obligations, shared property, customs about marrying your brother's widow or about your adopted child being literally 100% your legal heir in order to keep the assets in the family. Wanna get rich quick? Change those customs. Start regulating who can marry whom (gay partners? cousins? widowed former partners of family members? nope, you going to hell now!) and who can legally inherit property (just look at the fucking terminology we inherited, illegitimate child, mother-in-law)with the threat of eternal damnation. Sell rich people a story about the eye of the needle and no rich person getting in to heaven. Tell dying rich dudes with no church-recognised descendants and cut off from the customs that would have redistributed their wealth among the tribe that leaving their assets to charity will get them in to heaven, and wow what a coincidence, all the charities are administered by the organisation telling the story.


2. Here's a social experiment. Fill in the gap in this sentence: "I am ...". Basically the more your culture is influenced by Western Christianity (so that's everyone from Italian Catholics to Tennessee snake-fondlers to everyone growing up in the Commonwealth) the more likely you are fill in the gap with an adjective or a description about yourself and your own attributes. I am funny. I am a jogger. The less Western-Christianified your culture is, the more likely you are to fill in the gap with a description of your social role or an explanation of your relationships. I am a father. I am John and Jane's son. The more Westernised you are the more you think of yourself as an individual; the less, the less likely you are to think about ANYTHING as an individual.

Nanaia Mahuta seems woefully unqualified for anything. But she is a person of import to Tainui Maoris because she's the daughter of Robert Mahuta, which makes her electable in the Waikato region, which means she went straight into parliament for Labour. For her to stack leadership positions with her own family members is perfectly normal and understandable and in Maori culture expected of her. The cultural pressure she must be under to divert every taxpayer dollar she can to members of her own iwi is unimaginable to someone who doesn't live that stuff.

For a really good summary of this fascinating subject, including the "I am" experiment which I blatantly plagiarised, you should all read "The WEIRDEST People in the World" by Joseph Henrich.

[Ab]

Oh yeah here's an interesting example from the book - the island of Sicily stands out culturally from the rest of Italy because for centuries it was under Muslim rule. Sicily dodged a lot of the Great Church Business Plan and the accompanying laws about marriage and inheritance because it wasn't Christian. Even when it became part of the European nation of Italy,

(i)n Sicily, there were so many requests for dispensations to marry cousins in the 20th century that the pope delegated special power to the bishop of Sicily to allow marriages between second cousins without the Vatican’s permission. Normally, dispensations were (and remain) a papal privilege, but the demand was so high that an exception was necessary.

Sicily also gave the world the Mafia, an organisation in which one's strongest duty is not to the laws of society but rather to The Family and one's Godfather.

I found that fascinating. Anyway, as you were.

[StN]

Originally Posted by xor

https://twitter.com/kehetauhauaga/st...84481475588097

This is a pretty interesting read. Nothing like a bit of nepotism to keep the cash rolling in. So dodge.

Heh - he didn't even mention the husband/cousin thing - or has that gotten old now?

[StN]

...and now after reading Abs bits, I feel more enlightened.

[fixed_truth]

Originally Posted by Ab

The less Western-Christianified your culture is, the more likely you are to fill in the gap with a description of your social role or an explanation of your relationships. I am a father. I am John and Jane's son. The more Westernised you are the more you think of yourself as an individual; the less, the less likely you are to think about ANYTHING as an individual.

This made me think of how this applies to different health care delivery models. The key to effective health care delivery is getting buy-in from the client. Pakeha for a long time have already greatly benefitted from societies institutions & systems and so you've already got buy-in. Any brief rapport building might be about what they do for a living.

With Maori this history of benefitting from societies institutions isn't there so often there's a wall up. To get through this it might require an extra session over a cup of tea & biscuits not asking question about them as an individual but asking who their family is & where they're from & also telling them the same about you.

[xor]

Originally Posted by fixed_truth

With Maori this history of benefitting from societies institutions isn't there so often there's a wall up. To get through this it might require an extra session over a cup of tea & biscuits not asking question about them as an individual but asking who their family is & where they're from & also telling them the same about you.

Plenty of Maori have European lineages, so not sure how the above can have any weighting.

[Ab]

Originally Posted by fixed_truth

This made me think of how this applies to different health care delivery models. The key to effective health care delivery is getting buy-in from the client. Pakeha for a long time have already greatly benefitted from societies institutions & systems and so you've already got buy-in. Any brief rapport building might be about what they do for a living.

With Maori this history of benefitting from societies institutions isn't there so often there's a wall up. To get through this it might require an extra session over a cup of tea & biscuits not asking question about them as an individual but asking who their family is & where they're from & also telling them the same about you.

Yeah, but it's way deeper than a cup of tea. The more you retain your non-Western-Christian indigeneity, the less likely you are to trust anyone with whom you don't share family ties. Trusting institutions and respecting strangers based on their qualifications are alien concepts if you've grown up immersed in a non-Western-Christian culture. If you can't show how you're related to me, I don't care how many biscuits you bring me.