The Wrong Fights

It has been my experience, in my 68 years on this earth, that more things are fucked up from ignorance and incompetence than from malice.  This week has brought fresh evidence.

• The abortion fight.  It was wrong and misguided to base the "pro-choice" side of the argument on "a woman's right to choose."  Even today people are still harping on about women's rights and women's autonomy and women's ability to make healthcare choices about their own bodies.  This is a losing argument, as we have seen.  It's a losing argument because it does not address the core argument of the "pro-life" side.  By side-stepping their central concern, it allows their argument to grow and fester in the womb.  No, the "pro-choice" movement should have been about defining personhood.  When does a cytoblast become a person?  At conception?  At first heartbeat?  At quickening? At fetal viability?  At birth?  This is the core of the issue -- not women's rights -- and properly framing the argument would have made it winnable.
  

• Prosecuting Trump.  The Justice Department, two impeachment hearings and the January 6 commission all have it wrong.  There is no need to build an airtight case against Trump for seditious conspiracy.  The dude has broken, openly and in public, dozens of lesser laws.  He should have been indicted in his first week in office for clear violations of the emoluments clause.  Then he wouldn't have had the opportunity to add everything subsequent to his rap sheet.
  

• Once it became clear the vaccine was safe and effective, it should have been mandated.  The public good should have taken precedence over misinformation-driven "personal freedom" arguments.  If not forced vaccination, deniers should have been forced from their jobs, denied unemployment, and denied hospital admission.
  

• Taxation.  Rich people (and corporations) should be taxed at a minimum 22% rate, and given the option to invest the equivalent amount in public projects to avoid the taxes.  If they don't want to fund the government, fine I understand, but they should have to undertake funding of some of the functions of government to duck taxes.
  

• Misinformation.  The public airwaves are a public resource, and a broadcast license should carry with it the responsibility of fact-checking.  What's that you say?  The internet is still full of fools?  Well, if broadcast media was reliably factual people would know that "customer-created content" is unreliable.  There'd be a division between professional news and amateur opinion.
  

• Gun rights. Anybody should be free to buy any gun they want at any time. Ammunition on the other hand should be strictly illegal unless severely controlled.

• The US should have the ability to call a "no confidence vote" on any politician at any time, just like most other democracies. This should include judges.