Kacey Musgraves is facing backlash from some fans after she showed support for immigrant families during a birthday performance.
The Grammy-winning country singer celebrated her 38th birthday on Friday by marking the opening night of her Middle of Nowhere tour in Chicago. At one point during the performance, she paused the show and urged the audience to donate to the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights as her “birthday wish.”
“It’s a wonderful organization, and they help give aid — legal aid — and money to children whose parents have been deported unfairly,” Musgraves said on stage. “It’s not a political thing. It’s just, these kids need help.”
She continued: “They have no guidance and no way to get through this thing without their home base or their parents. So anyway, 50 cents, whatever the hell, I don’t know, whatever you want to do, but that would mean a lot to me. If you don’t want to, that’s totally fine too.”
The plea was met with applause and cheers from her crowd at the United Center. However, once videos of the moment started circulating online, conservative political commentators were quick to unleash their wrath on the “Follow Your Arrow” singer.
I’m right there with you. However, even Nazis are human.
In fact, especially Nazis are human; it takes a human to be that evil. But don’t pretend they’re anything less than typical, this is why you have to engage with them, you can’t write them off worthless scum and pretend they don’t exist or matter, there’s too many of them for that. The only way to beat them is to absorb them back into reasonable society. It’s a shitload of work, and you just have to keep at it until their ideologies are once again a fringe subculture.
They’re human, sure, and all humans are animals. Of course, not all humans are people.
This is the definition of dehumanization.
Imo I can hold the tenets that fascists must be met with force as violence is the only thing that will stop them (the Keyser Söse theorem); but that doesn’t stop me from considering them as human beings, who weren’t born this way. It may be tactically correct to consider the reasons someone would turn to naziism and fight those as well.
What part of “Nazis are human” is dehumanizing?
I’m not sure what has to malfunction in the brain or soul of any animal (human or otherwise) to become a Nazi, but it robs them of personhood, which is why they’re dangerous. There are dolphins, elephants, and other animals that I’d consider akin to people, and some humans I wouldn’t.
This part:
Do all humans possess rationality then? What in your view is personhood, exactly?
Personhood is not the right to moral consideration. That is a right of all sentient creatures. So what is it? Have you ever read anything about this before or are you just now discovering the concept?
Dehumanization is a concern when some humans believe that moral consideration is grounded in one’s humanity. It is not. Every sentient creature is worthy of moral consideration, even nazis. They are human, too, but this is not a compliment; it is a biological fact.
If you are one of these humans who believe that your species (as opposed to your sentience) grants you inalienable rights, then yes, I can see why dehumanization would concern you.
Your speciecist definition of “person” — whereby every human is automatically entitled to personhood (even Nazis), whereas every elephant or dog is denied personhood (even good ones) — seems grossly out of touch with normative and empirical reality.
Why do you think i deny dogs and elephants personhood?
Because what made you upset was the denial that “all humans are persons.” Since you had no problem with the claim that “not all animals are persons,” you must believe there’s something special about Homo sapiens.
Here, look:
Likewise,
But this conclusion is unacceptable to you. It’s almost as if the “species” matters. I am attempting to disabuse you of that belief.
And it sounds like you’re one of them. But here I am engaging with you. Trying to remind you that you can be better, that you can be the bigger person, that you have a responsibility to be change you want to see.
I am kind to all animals, even small ones. They are not people, or even human, but that doesn’t matter.
Personhood is the instantiation of certain transcendental values. Many (if not most) humans in our 200k year history have not been people capable of understanding important things or acting in moral ways. So what? Bears aren’t people either and it doesn’t stop me from being nice to them. Pretending otherwise out of some misplaced sense of inclusivity doesn’t make me a “better” person, as you said — it makes me wrong.
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By the way, the argument you’re making is a speciesist one, as if all Homo sapiens share a special trait that other animals don’t and denying this fact is “dehumanizing,” whatever that means.
This is incorrect. All animals, including humans, fall somewhere on a spectrum: for kindness, for intelligence, for their ability to love, etc. Some combination of these traits is called “personhood” and grants you special responsibilities and considerations — for example, my willingness to take your ethical opinions seriously, as I’m doing now, for you.