Yeah, “My way or the highway.”

Those issues are usually settled by historians many generations later, when everyone who actually struggled is safely dead and can’t object. Who has the right to fight and kill, the settler whose wife and daughters were scalped and raped by the Indians, or the Red men who saw their land and livelihood and very lives taken from them by palefaces who broke their treaties and lied every time they spoke? The filters we view history through come up with very different answers depending on the mesh size we select.

This is one of the things I’ve always stressed in political and historical assessments here on the Zone. The answers are NOT simple, NOT black and white. History has its own mad rhythms, and the participants have, at best, a highly subjective view of what is going on.

I watched a Military Channel history of the First World War on Superbowl Sunday, and I could not figure out why millions of people had to die. There was no reason for it, no purpose. None of their goals were ever accomplished, none of their reasons to fight ever really addressed. It all made about as much sense as an avalanche.

A lot was accomplished, but all of it was unforeseen and unanticipated. But the people back then certainly didn’t feel that way about it. They saw it differently. They thought they had good reasons to fight. And to die. Now we can see what a huge, pointless tragedy it really was.

We’ve had arguments right here on the Zone “why” the Civil War was really fought, which both Yanks and Rebs in 1865 would have been baffled at overhearing (not to mention rolling in the aisles with laughter). And we continue to argue why Korea and Vietnam and Iraq and were fought, not realizing that a century from now people will laugh at our excuses, regardless of which side we were on.

Yes, we all do have cognitive biases, and it is hard to escape them. But realizing that, and realizing you will never completely be able to, is the first step in freeing yourself from them. But don’t think one day you will find yourself in the Club of Truth. There ain’t no such thing.

You do need a sense of morality, and you do need ideological filters to help you assess the data which bombards us, otherwise we would be overwhelmed by a waterfall of undifferentiated information. What we see is highly affected by what we already believe, even in science, which is probably our most objective way to view reality, but which is really loaded with assumptions and preconceptions our pride refuses to recognize. Scientists realize this, or at least, the good ones do. You can measure things with precision, but explaining them is all in your mind. Knowing this is the only way to even begin to approach the truth.

So don’t feel upset if you’re confused, if people you respect and accept tell you conflicting and inconsistent stories. Be suspicious of certainty and intellectual arrogance. If you are indeed guilty of analysis and paralysis, it just proves you are making progress. It’s the guys who know it all who are blowing smoke out their ass.

Thinking you can figure it all out by just counting on your fingers
will teach you nothing except what you already know.

The quote is from my brother in law. I posted this link on Facebook also.

I am simply pro choice.

I want mammograms for the ones who can not afford it.
Susan Koman is a great charity.

My brother in law also added…

. I try real hard to be neutral on abortion (if my taxes aren’t paying for any) and sympathize with organizations that just don’t want to deal with the politics of it. But totalitarianism politicizes everything, so that neutrality is betrayal. If I would have wanted to be a real jerk, I would have written: Yay, more abortions. Eventually there won’t be any liberals left!

Bowser helped. But see…this is where I go away scratching my head. Bowser has cognitive biases…you do and I do.

It becomes so convoluted, I throw up my hands.

I am guilty of paralysis by analysis.

based solely on this post of yours, I can’t tell on whose side you’re on.

Are you slamming the “totalitarian/Feinstein wing of feminism”, or are you satirizing those who would employ that rhetoric against it? And where did your block-quote come from? Who said that? Who are you quoting? Do you agree with them, or are you pointing out their intransigence and intolerance?

Bowser’s post pointed out some of the background on this decision, he alluded to it being part of an ideological battle being fought over the very existence of Planned Parenthood, and implied this was an end run by conservatives to destroy that group, just as how it was unsuccessfully attacked in Congress, simply because it was known for its abortion and birth control activities.

Even though PP is not allowed by law to fund abortions, it still is on the Conservative hit list, and this latest kerfuffle was another battle being fought in that secret war–a battle being fought out of sight, deep beneath the surface, away from public view.

There’s been a lot of this sort of thing in Florida, particularly over the teaching of evolution in the schools and in textbooks, where, for example, Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” was attacked as being unfit to be shown in the public schools because it claimed the universe was created before the world, and that both are over 6000 years old.

Much of the culture war is being fought as guerrilla actions, not out in the open. It is a war of hit and run, sabotage and ambush. It is fought as attacks on TV shows that might be too sympathetic to gays, or too critical of businessmen, or disrespectful of one group or another. Many of these battles are hidden, in the background, because the general public would dismiss them as pointless nit-picking, and the combatants know that.

The other side is simply saying I want to live my life my way, I want my body to be my own. I want freedom. They add that they will grant the same right to the people trying to dictate to them Those people have the same freedom to live their lives as they choose.

It’s very simple. People trying to shove their religion down the throats of others. People who do not live up to the tenets of their religion, who do not follow the teachings themselves, trying to force others.

And other people trying to be free from those tyrants.

Yay, another victory for the totalitarian/Feinstein wing of feminism! After all, attempting to be neutral in the abortion debate is an act of the enemy.

Damned if I know.

One of the characteristics of successful organizations is that they stray from their origins. That’s clearly what happened here. They believed their own PR, thought they were invincible, and they were as long as they stuck to their mission. They thought they could do anything. And they could in the narrow field of breast cancer research.

When they strayed into making a political statement, they got bit. And it’s worse than that. The CEO trots out in front of the nation and lies. The person she’s protecting sells her out, and resigns anyway. The Foundation restores money to the organization they were trying to eliminate.

So we are where we were, except for the damage to the Komen Foundation. You have to wonder where their PR people were. But obviously Handel was clever enough to create a stampede and rationality left all of them briefly.

It usually SWOOSHES over this ole gal’s head. I am either dumber than a stump, or naive.

Neither one is very appealing.