Truck Captain Stumpy said:
the intentional attempt to enlist sympathy from others for at least one position so that they [the sociopath] can provide another trolling/baiting comment akin to pedophilia, bestiality or some other reprehensible subject. what do you think?
I wouldn't say you're wrong; part of my assessment is subordinate to the larger forumlation:
"You may have persuaded me to devalue human life in utero, but unlike you and Poplawski, I have too much respect for first responders to plot their demise."
This seems more, to me, a petulant outburst, something we all did as children and not everybody outgrows. Indeed, I have an obscure, inexplicable joke about political conservatives on this count, most recently illustrated by their attempt to seize on the Civil Rights movement in advocacy of supremacism―
e.g., Kim Davis―in such a manner as to remind that they just don't comprehend the difference.
Something similar seems to be in effect, here. Our neighbor is trying to illustrate a notion he both disdains and fails to comprehend. So he lashes out, exaggerates, tries to depict a miserable human condition resulting from acknowledgment of fundamental reality, such as the humanity and human rights of women.
What stands out, again, to me, is what he chooses to fill the stage; this selection is his own priority.
The appeal to sympathy is inherent; the general hope is that the argument makes enough sense to allies that they will feel comfortable repeating it. Indeed, this is why soundbite culture is so affecting in American society; these days, cable news is a laboratory for political operatives―test this, try that, see what catches on, and run with it. We saw a morbid attempt at that earlier this year when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) tried to make vaginal insertion under force of law into trying to help women get in on a
"cool thing"↗. What's a Republican Party to do? Start organizing events to talk about the cool thing as part of womanhood. Yes, they really tried this.
We might consider two aspects of the problem. First is that they don't really have a pathway right now to get what they want, so there is a perpetual exercise taking place in which they hurl as much spaghetti at as many walls as possible in hopes of finding something that sticks. The second is that they are preaching to the choir, because in ignoring the fundamental truth that women are human beings and have human rights, full stop, what they are searching for is a message that appeals to
them, in order that
they can unite, believing themselves akin to the Civil Rights luminaries of history, insofar as the only reason the Negroes got what they got was because they were heroically uppity and pesky, and it is in this context that conservatives so often fail to distinguish the basic difference. None can carry that banner when laying siege to human rights.
And this is why they hate dryfoot; it illustrates the reality of woman as human being and having human rights. Choir-pleasing aesthetics are insufficient tools for dismantling human rights, so they need this idea off the table. Apparently, it's not fair if they have to put some actual effort into demonstrating the functional validity and reliability of their beliefs.
And if they resent that summary, they need to give us something better to work with; I mean, we're more than four decades out from
Roe and the only thing that has changed is a small matter of terminology, from Life at Conception to Fertilization-Assigned Personhood; it is even less substantial an alteration than the infamous Creationism rebranding and re-emergence as Intelligent Design.
I suppose I should concede at this point that the Poplawski line was, actually, more metaphorically intended; there really is no way to respond to our neighbor directly without charging the proverbial guns like a proverbial Rus peasant―it's not actually about winning any argument, for our neighbor, but, rather, inflicting as much damage as his imagination might purport he is accomplishing. Whatever his actual feelings about abortion itself, this tirade is much, much more personal. Or, you know, so it would seem, at least according to what he is writing.