Before modification by entyti at 01/06/2022 09:37:58 PM
I always hate these type of thought experiments (nothing personal) for it assumes good faith.
No worries and I agree, we absolutely do not live in the ideal. While most may adhere to good faith, history shows us that some humans inevitably will not. That's why I included the caveat.
BUT NO ONE LIKES THAT,
Hell, right? Wouldn't it be nice if we could actually have some trust in our gov't? This is why Idk what to do. Gotta fix the trust problem before we can work on fixes we can agree to, otherwise we distrust so that cooperation becomes impossible.
We do not want minors who go to Juvie to have a criminal record after they are 18 or after they are 25
And as usual with leftie policies, I can agree with the intent but I heavily disagree with the actual policy; all these soft-on-crime prosecutors merely encourage more youth to commit crimes.
Then again hard-on-crime prosecutors lock up 16 yo black kids with .5oz of pot for 30 years.
I just don't know.
Thus we imagine an ideal father, an ideal system, a mandatory service. This ideal space...
There's times your way annoys me to no end, but hot damn if you don't put things well sometimes.
Person 1: "laws can't do anything to keep powerful weapons out of the hands of the public yet simultaneously the state also has the capacity to create good fathers and transform the spiritual lives of its citizens"
Person 2: (in response) "The unconscious desire for a lawful Father overriding every contingency is very powerful, from where I sit." ... "yet this fantasy is also the unconscious disavowal, is also a disavowal of living actual fathers—not the one created in the image of a God."
Put another way we retreat to fantasy for we feel the present is unbearable, we do not think we can change the unbearable present, so only via the retreat to fantastical (aka things that are so unlikely to happen) can we fill whole again. Via retreating to fantasy we can provide the cathartic relief, the relief of our strong emotions we feel fervently inside. :disapprove
Yes I am FUN at parties! 
I mean, it sounds like I'd have fun at your parties...
Believe it or not I am not always a Grump. I just cycle between Good Faith and Bad Faith with specific issues. Issues this board loves to flare up 
And on the issue of Guns I think we can create a Reparative Reading and System of Laws / Society that people feel less anxious about Guns but also lower the amount of Gun Deaths of various type. I still believe that is possible 
I just doubt it is going to happen anytime soon (lets say the next 8 years, beyond 8 years I do not think anyone can accurately see it is a threshold where things are hard to predict for lots of small changes introduce chaos and unpredictability in good and bad ways.)
I do not see anything changing in the immediate future ... For I think we are "doubling down" on the Paranoid style even if lets say 66 to 80% of people have had enough of it, specifically with Guns (we love our Paranoia on a dozen other issues.) But those 20% remaining are scarred, and "other people" have learned how to make a whole lot of money, Billions of Dollars of money a year, learning how to cater and pump more fear in those 20% on People who are so distrustful of the present that they can not tolerate any interloper change involving guns and laws.
And without something like ranked choice voting, multiple parties, etc to short circuit this. I just can't see anything changing in the near future. Change is very much still possible and this is not a call for nihilism, I just do not foresee lots of smaller movements that no one can recognize at first glance and thus no "critical mass" will occur in the short term (next 8 years or so.)
The government won't save you. The government can't do everything.
And when it can't, we need community and family.
But that is not new though! In every time I can locate people complain about culture, bad government, bad dads, etc. I can literally quote chapter and verse but it will just be putting Ecclesiastes once again on the internet.
Like I rambled in other places even in the best of times people can not really capture into a bottle what makes good community, good fathers, and so on. Sure we can analyze this to death and write fabulous books. Books which I love to read in libraries, like queer Bilbo of old (though podcasts / audio books while I work I consume like 20:1 vs reading now a days.) But once you read those things that just helps you to see better or worse, how one lives, how one speaks, that is just as important.
Bah I feel like I am about to ramble the 
Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path, where one should not get fixated on "one thing" but it is at least 8 things one needs to do.
I have not been following this closely but there is a current Supreme Court case...
Who knows what this current 9 justices will do shrug
Well fuck me sideways, I understand the argument and get it, but holy shit that's a bad look.
Indeed! Well the future will come, and come what may. (what is this from again, this idiom? Is it Macbeth, google says yes but also Twelfth Night by Shakespeare which I have not read.)