• 2 Posts
  • 17 Comments
Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: February 17th, 2024

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  • Actually, you’ve missed the mark. It’s not whining about an advancement, it’s legitimate criticism of the US health industry. He’s just saying what we all know to be true which is that regardless of technological improvements, lifesaving care will continue to be ruinously expensive for those that are able to access it and gatekept from many others.

    If you have a problem with comments like these undermining celebration of scientific progress, then maybe you should think about the structural political issues that lead people to disillusionment and cynicism rather than labeling people as conspiracy theorists.


















  • In interactions with authoritarians, I’m often reminded of Jean-Paul Sartre’s description of anti-semites.

    “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

    Tankies follow the same underlying basis for their justifications of authoritarianism as every other stripe.