Here’s the case, put relatively well:
Moral superiority aside, a somewhat general rule of thumb is that if you have children AND they live in the same country, then you have a HIGHER vested interest in the wellbeing of your country.
I’ll take “wellbeing of your country” to mean wellbeing of the residents of your country, though it doesn’t have to mean that.
Now, this argument is one that’s true sometimes. But only sometimes. It also assumes that parents care about the wellbeing of their children, which isn’t always true, but we’ll assume it is for now.
Let’s run thru why it doesn’t work for powerful people, which includes most politicians, certainly anyone with a decent chance of winding up President of the United States.
It is possible to take actions which increase the wellbeing of your children, which also harm the wellbeing of your country. American politicians and oligarchs, for example, sold America’s manufacturing base to China. They become filthy rich as a result and their children will be very well taken care of even if America is in serious decline. It did, however, harm the majority of Americans. (There are thousands of other examples, feel free to add some in comments.)
Your children may live in a worse-off America, but they are better off than if you did not do that harm. (Or, at least, that is your belief.)
If you prioritize the wellbeing of a small group over a larger group it usually possible to hurt the larger group to benefit the smaller group.
In fact, there is a strong argument that people without children are far more likely to prioritize the wellbeing of the residents of their country than those with children: they don’t have to make a choice: “should I make my kids better off OR the everyone else better off?”
Even at the simplest level, of “should I spend more time with my kids OR spend more time doing my job” there is this conflict. Great men and women are often bad parents, because if working an extra hour means helping a thousand of someone else’s children, they do that even if it hurts their own kids.
There is no free lunch. You always have to prioritize.
Harris will be a terrible President, I’m confident of that. But it has nothing to do with whether or not she has kids and, in fact, if she intended to do the right things for ordinary Americans, the fact that she didn’t have children would be a significant plus.
Most cultures have a family worship disease: the idea that you should always put your family first.
NO.
If you are willing to put your family first when doing so means that large numbers of people will suffer, you’re a monster. In fact, one of the necessities of having power over large numbers of people has to be that you don’t put your family first IF doing so will result in harm to others.
If you reach a point where it’s your family or a large number of others, and you can’t choose the “others” then you should step down and give the job to someone who can take care of the others.
Only those without power can, ethically, prioritize their own family without being monsters.
That this has to be explained to people is another sign of our inability to reason clearly about moral and ethical issues.
Oakchair
Those in power need good distractions.
Instead of discussing the merits of forever war
Instead of discussing why 60% of people are ill
Instead of discussing why 1 in 30 kids have autism
The nation is discussing if Harris would be bad because she hasn’t got knocked up.
Oligarchs don’t want those they rule to be thinking human beings, they want them to be domesticated cattle. Sick, fat, dumb, and lining up for the slaughter. Looks like they pretty much accomplished that already.
Mark Level
I mean, the fact that the Clintons have 1 child, Bush Junior 2 daughters, Obama the same, and Trump multiple children and grandchildren quite solidly disproves any claim that one or more children (in a population of more than 300 million ‘Muricans) would increase any President’s support for better living standards nationally.
The Dimmie followers may be dumber than the MAGA Cult, I have noted even more recently based on the way people I know who were defending Joe’s competence (2 people I know made a bet 3 days before Joe was ousted, the loser was a retired history professor who I previously considered pretty smart) flipped on a dime & are now proclaiming Cop Kamala the new Messiah for the PMC Libtards.
There are a couple of College radio stations I listen to habitually when I am reading/ studying in the mornings. This morning I just had to tune OUT of KZSU Stanford when the DJ began playing selections only by people named “Harris”!! WTF? Why the Fuck!? You might as well be a UFO Cultist or Flat Earther given the level of mindless worship & endless credulity these morons publicly share.
It won’t be our high (allegedly) intellect that kills off the human race via technological overreach and rot uniquely, it will be this kind of tribalistic submission that destroys the US in the short-term, & perhaps the majority of Western “civilization” in the next century or two.
As the martyred sage Frank Zappa, called before Congress by the likes of “Tipper” Gore for the sin of corrupting the Youth (like Socrates before him) and interrogated by her about “what kind of toys” his children had– (evidently she assumed he gave them dildos?) observed, we are “Dumb All Over”–
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8TKiRo-W4U
Praise our New God, Cop Kamala– the “Left” of the Uniparty demands it.
Oakchair
It won’t be our high (allegedly) intellect that kills off the human race
—–
Agreed, the problem isn’t necessarily that people lack intelligence. The problem is that they lack the emotionally ability to engage in topics beyond a picture book level. In this case intelligence can compound the problem because it is used to defend the persons ego by maintaining denial.
A lifelong habit of refusing to engage in anything intellectually appears as stupidity, but at it’s core it is completely different.
Feral Finster
“Harris will be a terrible President, I’m confident of that.”
Each day I see Team D groupies demanding that we vote for Harris in spite of everything, that we must be content with whatever crumbs a Harris Administration tosses them.
They sure do sell out for cheap.
Willy
That having kids makes one more concerned about national wellbeing, is a simpleminded argument which operates at the same level as proclaiming that only Christians can one have moral values. The reality is that the only real predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Most other arguments are aimed at low information suckers.
I’ve got no idea why Kamala Harris would be a terrible president though.
Most of Harris’ political ratings from the various large organizations (AFL-CIO, NAACP, Club For Growth, NRA Political Victory Fund, and so on…) place her somewhere between pragmatic moderate and politically left. Plus Donald Trump repeatedly accuses her of being a “far left radical”. That alone gets my vote.
John
Heard an interesting discussion in a discussion between Kim Iverson and Caleb Maupin. Talked about his book on Kamala being censored by Amazon and then segued into a discussion of recent American politicians with serious “Daddy” issues. Clinton , W Bush, Obama, Trump, Kamala, Vance….Maupin feels Kamala has a lot of unresolved rage and anger about her dad. The laugh is a tell.
My question is….why to Amrikans select such damaged goods people to run things?
Willy
Kamala’s father is a neo-Keyensian economist who divorced her cancer researcher mother when she was seven. Her sister is a lawyer who’s had a wildly successful career compared with other lawyers I know on a more personal level.
I’m fully aware that a lot of success comes from luck, high extraversion of the self-important kind, “who you know”, and ruthless ambition. But a lot of failure comes from emotional scars suffered from significant childhood abuse.
Amrikans select damaged goods to run things because most power and control games reward sociopathy. Sociopaths simply have more weapons to do political battle with, and in many societies, nobody stops them. Many average Joe six-packs have been conditioned to equate an expensive stuffed suit repeating “You’re fired!” in an ubermensch kinda way, on national TV, to be indicative of high competency. The need for cognitive closure in a busy, stressful, and powerless world, I guess. And then there’s the ‘mystique factor’. Elon Musk’s success only came under serious question after he started opening his mouth.
But to put Kamila in even remotely the same sanity ballpark as Donald Trump, another idiotic compulsive mouth-opener, means that something is seriously messed up with the way American society is being run.
Will she bait and switch after some significant dark money payout? Possibly.
Will she be corrupted yet again by nefarious economic ‘experts’? Perhaps.
But I seriously doubt she’ll do stuff like blow Netanyahoo just to get back at her dad.
Mark Level
“Most of Harris’ political ratings from the various large organizations (AFL-CIO, NAACP, Club For Growth, NRA Political Victory Fund, and so on…) place her somewhere between pragmatic moderate and politically left. Plus Donald Trump repeatedly accuses her of being a “far left radical”. That alone gets my vote.”–
Hey, Willie, a couple of obvious points:
1. I don’t care about how politricks NGO’s “rank” Kamala– that is all smoke & mirrors. Would you buy housing from Trump? Believing in these people’s rankings/ opinions (including the NRA!! I bet they call her a “radical”!) ignores totally the cynicism of the people that work in these professions. ALL they care about is forwarding their own specific agenda thru their connected buddies, they don’t give a shite about bettering the great mass of people or saving this failing country.
2. Having taught High School I’ll tell you that the majority of adolescents show one level of wisdom far higher than the majority of adults do: they judge people based on what they DO, not what they say they will do or other misrepresented “values.”
3. What is Kamala’s actual Record? If you have any level of self honesty you should look into the actual Record, which I am very familiar with having lived in NorCal from 1989– 2021– the following is a VERY partial summary: a. Shucks & jives about being into Tupac & smoking weed when she is a career cop/prosecutor (& factually lied, when she was in college the Tupac she claimed to listen to was 5 or more years from release); b. Sleeps her way to the top by having a “romance” with the flagrantly corrupt & 3 decades older Willie Brown (I learned of this when Willie shared in the weekly SF Chron column he was gifted as a power player, bragging about the Luxury Car he bought her as a birthday gift). c. viciously attacks the Lefty DA who preceded her, Terence Hallinan, as “soft on crime”, letting “predators” out, & other Willie Horton type complete smears, is eased into power by the corrupt Brown-Burton Dem machine. d. The first thing she does when in power is take all the files about Catholic priest rapists that Hallinan had been sharing with victims for lawsuits and puts them behind a firewall– but hey, the SF Catholic Diocese (virulently homophobic, headed by a drunk (DUI arrested) Cardinal rates her very highly, which I am sure you respect? e. Takes campaign money from Steve Mnuchin. After the ’08 Greenspan-Summers Depression refuses to prosecute Mnuchin for ripping off mortgage holders (many black, not rich, etc.). f. Keeps (mostly black & brown) jail inmates incarcerated even after their sentences are up, openly states that this (essentially Slave labor) is justified to fight fires; g. Threatens to jail the parents of (mostly black & brown, is there starting to be a pattern here?) students who cut school, & in a speech (which I heard even a Dem black woman apologist for her on NPR while driving today admit was reprehensible). h. When first elected, she billed herself as “the first Indian American official”– but now she has race-shifted to the first “black” SF DA/ potential president. i. (Also mention on ShitLib NPR today, amazingly): had to drop out of the 2019 Pres. primary before the Iowa Caucuses because she was predicted to run 5th in the California primary, a major embarrassment. j. Oh & per Sabrina “Sabby Sabs” Salvati, an actual black woman lefty, she was polling at 1% among black & brown voters (her alleged demographic) at that time. k. Is a subordinate shill for the Clinton dynasty (which factored into why Obama wouldn’t endorse her). l. Before she dropped out, she only fund-raised well & was enormously popular in the Hamptons, home of the entitled 1%, as their token brown person. m. Recently denounced the D.C. peaceful, legitimate demonstrations against the Genocide in Gaza (& the West Bank) as “anti-Semitic” and “despicable.”
I’ll stop there just at half the alphabet– there’s more I’m sure I forgot. But hey, here’s my consolation– in the unlikely event she “wins”, she will carry on the Genocide just as firmly as Joe did, that’s clear. (NOT that I like or support that, as a Troll on here once accused me of when I called out the World Central Kitchen celeb chef.) Then we will all be able to call out your unreasoning faith that she has ever been ANYTHING but right wing (except performatively & cynically) or a smug, entitled member of the 1%, Zionist, Oligarchical Elites. Oh, & if she signals her AIPAC handlers are in control by picking Josh Shapiro as her VP, which seems quite likely, that will surely signal she’s all in for full scale Genocide with no fake “regrets”.
Don’t expect her to take Michigan in that case. She currently polls more poorly with people under 35 than the bloated Septuagenarian Donald J. Trump does, what an achievement!
Mary Bennet
We have had mediocre presidents before. I doubt Harris would be “terrible” as in Geo. Bush level terrible. I don’t see her being conned into a dumb war, Obama’s phrase, by neo con worshippers of Aries who make sure they couch their memos in apocalyptic Biblical phrasing.
An important test of a president is what is the president’s conduct during a time of crisis, such as a major natural disaster. Obama mostly did well at that, GWB was terrible, remember flying aimlessly around the country after the towers came down, and Trump only cared about photo-ops.
About 1/3 to 1/2 of Harris’s home state is currently on fire, and I have not heard one peep out of her on that subject. That I do find disturbing. So far, Harris doesn’t impress me but I don’t see her as malevolent or vengeful.
It is amusing to see the Republicans scramble to find insults to throw at someone who does, after all, benefit from favoritism for great looking women bias. She can’t be credibly denounced with euphemisms for ugly, or called weird etc. etc. She was elected, not appointed, to substantial jobs, atty. gen. and Senate, no Rose Law Firm here.
Furthermore, this election, for Democratic officialdom, is existential. They won’t be getting another chance at those cabinet and WH jobs again. So far it looks like we will be seeing a competently managed campaign.
Joan
Thank you for saying this. Maybe it is a characteristic of the species, but we do have a family-worship complex in which family is supposed to come first no matter what. It silences those whose families treated them badly and leaves them with a lot of cognitive dissonance.
Mary Bennet
Mark level, I take your word for most of that, like I said, she so far does not impress me. but as for the slept her way to the top trope, does you or anyone seriously expect me to believe that the FOX news babes didn’t?
mago
Got it Mark. She’s a messy shit lib whose career is littered with husked out victims, many from the same raza.
She comes from a patrilineal line of slave traders.
And yes MB, she did get down on her knees and pray to suck her way up.
Nothing shocking about it, and nothing to get shook up about.
It’s the way things go down, so to speak.
Any way you look at it you lose . . .
(I’m not nihilistic btw, I just like the Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack from the movie Mrs Robinson.)
The future’s in plastics btw.
Jan Wiklund
Concerning “being monsters” – the trouble of being human is that there are at least three different ethical systems, and we have to follow all, or make compromises between all. They are
– rule ethics (don’t break this or that rule)
– consequence ethics (try to get the best overall consequences of your action)
– trust ethics (prioritize those who have given you their trust).
Following any of these to the endpoint would be monstrous – rule-riding, jesuitism and mafia moral. But your children trust you more than your voters, so you would probably have to put your children first – to a certain degree.
Willy
Mark Level,
I hope this isn’t another episode of “lesser evil is actually greater evil”. I remember high school algebra. Our first week they warmed us up with the math basics. I sat next to a kid who got every single “greater than less than” wrong because he forgot which way the arrow’s supposed to be pointed. I can only imagine what teach would’ve done had he done so on purpose and not backed down.
So do you have a preferred candidate, or is it all just bitching about how perfect always has to be the enemy of the good? (or in this case, the better)
I always liked the “let ye who has not the sinless candidate throw the first stone” bit. Not because everybody suddenly looks down at the ground as if caught thinking something wrong, but because the stones really start to fly then.
Mary Bennett,
… we do have a family-worship complex in which family is supposed to come first no matter what. It silences those whose families treated them badly and leaves them with a lot of cognitive dissonance.
Best comment today. I know of a catholic family (13 kids), where the father had been so abusive that he died of old age all alone in some catholic care home. Yet today, while there is some alcoholism prevalent in that family today, those kids grew up to be surprisingly well-adjusted with their own kids seemingly normal. None of the generational abuse we hear so much about. I can only speculate as to why. But I am fairly certain that the father was abusive because he put his faith into procreating way more kids than his modest income could handle, and all of his kids inherited his boneheaded headstrong nature. It’s always something.
I do know a few ‘black sheep’ who were likely separated out because they pissed off the patriarchal order somehow. I dont think it’s all about “families”, but good families. But then we already knew that JD Vance is a buffoon.
Feral Finster
“Plus Donald Trump repeatedly accuses her of being a “far left radical”. That alone gets my vote.”
If that is all that it takes, then you want to be fooled.
Feral Finster
@Mary Bennett:
“We have had mediocre presidents before. I doubt Harris would be “terrible” as in Geo. Bush level terrible. I don’t see her being conned into a dumb war, Obama’s phrase, by neo con worshippers of Aries who make sure they couch their memos in apocalyptic Biblical phrasing.”
Well, Harris has a golden opportunity right now not to let the US get sucked into another Middle East war. If Harris is any different from Biden, now is her chance to show it.
shagggz
@Mary Bennett:
“Obama mostly did well at that”
Maybe he got lucky on the natural disasters front, but times of crisis more broadly? I would point to the Flint, MI water crisis that Michael Moore has correctly made such a stink about: Slick Barry knowingly abetted the permanent brain damage of tens of thousands of (mostly poor, black) children by telling them their lead-contaminated water was safe to drink, when he pretended to drink same when it was actually bottled water.
Or what about being the getaway driver for the biggest bank heist in history, overseeing the largest drop in black wealth under any president, throwing countless families onto the street due to provably fraudulent “robosigned” predatory loan documents?
someofparts
ML –
a) makes me laugh
b) knew about vaguely. appreciate the detailed account
c) knew that she had replaced a good guy. did not know she ran such a sleazy campaign
d) never heard about this. no matter how low the bar is set, something will find a way to slither under it.
e) knew about refusal to prosecute Mnuchin. did not know about campaign money
f) heard about this one. did not know about the fire fighting justification
g) yeah. more than usual volume of negative blow back on this one IIRC
h) never heard this. what a clown show
i) remember this one
j) heard this one too
k) did not know this. explains a lot. bodes ill
l) remember this one
m) did not know this. no bar too low to slither under … again
I have read enough about Harris to have her pegged as corrupt, heartless and sometimes inadvertently funny. I had no idea her lack of scruples was so expansive. The idea of having Hillary as a shadow candidate just makes it all worse. We may find ourselves on a ship piloted by the daughters of Ahab
Willy
If that is all that it takes, then you want to be fooled.
She’s a centrist. Trump enablers are the fools. But she has promised more progressive than Trump has proven that he’d ever deliver.
I still don’t understand the virtue signaling. Makes absolutely no practical sense to me.
different clue
” Obama actually drank bottled water”.
The evil which is Obama actually goes even deeper than that. Here is a youtube of Obama “drinking” the water. Observe that he merely pretends to drink it and actually does not drink any of it at all. Here is the link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2ZynkD3N_k
Over the years Naked Capitalism has offered numerous visual examples of ” the evil which is Obama” on live realtime display. The problem is that they are diluted by tens of millions of words and/or pictures about other things. It would take thousands of hours of brute force iron-butt/ pots-of-coffee searching to find them and re-copy/paste/post them to one handy-dandy place.
I suspect Obama delayed in endorsing Harris because he wanted to see which way the wind was blowing first so he could then pretend to be the Great Kingmaker who was making the wind blow. He wants to preserve his image of relevance in order to protect his own fragile ego.
shagggz
@different clue,
He couldn’t even bother with a convincing gulp of not-leaded-water. Just goes to show the total intelligence-insulting contempt he has for the little people.
His keeping up the perception of being the Great Kingmaker is how he will continue to squeeze profit from this sinking ship, fragile ego or not.