OK, I know this is rather beside the point here, but Keyes is a former diplomat?!
**boggles**
Alan Keyes is a ☣.
I think I disagree with every single position I've seen Keyes speak on, but I respect the hell out of him for speaking his mind and not compromising on his rationally-arrived-at beliefs.
catachresis: gonna have to say that i can't call rational any beliefs arrived at primarily via religion.
Yes, let us survey his rationally-arrived-at beliefs.
a. There is an actual holocaust of blacks underway because:
b. there are more black babies aborted than there are born (according to him).
c. Incidentally, pro-choice is a 'slaveholder position'.
That's about as rational as π.
Keyes is a former diplomat?!
Well, Elton John is a former heterosexual.
Let me clarify before I get a storm of shit: I'm not saying beliefs arrived at primarily via religion are bad, or stupid, or incorrect. They may well be the opposite of all three. What I am saying is that you can't call those beliefs rationally-arrived-at.
If Alan Keyes was white and spewed the same shit he'd have a cabinet position by now.
ok, flashboy COMPLETELY cracked me up.
I believe the term is "bat-shit loony." Bull Goose is McMurphy.
Alan Keyes was Reagan's ambassador to the UN, where, among other things, he vigorously defended the administration's policy of dealing with apartheid South Africa.
I have yet comprehend why he ran.
"The people of Illinois rendered a very clear decision on Tuesday by handing Alan Keyes the greatest election defeat in Illinois Senate history. Barack Obama's attention is focused on the important work he now must do for all the people of Illinois."
Translation: Don't feed the troll.
I have yet comprehend why he ran.
My theory is that it was GOP comic relief. They knew there was no way he was going to beat Obama, they knew exactly how Keyes would react so what the hell, wind him up and watch him go!
No, Alan Keyes was their only hope of beating President Obama. A reasonable opponent would just have lost. They needed to throw a certifiable maniac into the mix in the hope that one day he'd say something so utterly insane that Obama would crack, and just grab him by the throat and start shaking and shaking whilst trying to bite his forehead off.
It nearly worked, too. That Karl Rove's a genius.
Oy, I knew I should have added in a footnote there. Apologies that my comment transmuted in to flamebait without.
Keyes' premises as far as I can tell, are mostly based on his religion. His conclusions, as far as I can tell, follow from his premises in a ruthlessly logical manner.
I'm calling his process logical, see. Not the actual beliefs. Tell me three made-up ideas about the behavior of the invisible purple leprechan hiding in the corner, and I'll be able to logically derive a limited history of leprechan culture.
the behavior of the invisible purple leprechan hiding in the corner
YOU CAN SEE HIM TOO OH THANK GOD THANK GOD I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE
Shhhh! He's looking this way.
don't let him bite us or kick us with his fearsome purple clogs - sing the happy happy song and make him go away!
You're laughing now, but that dude is going to wind up on the Supreme Court, you just watch.
Oh great. Now I'm back in the corner, sobbing and drinking heavily. Thanks a lot, furiousdork.
Does this leprechaun have a friend that tags along? Cos he always has a fairy with him when I see him.
Leprechauns on the Supreme Court? Naaah, that's about as likely as seeing John Ashcroft in the robes!
*gulp*
Invisible Purple Leprechaun/Tiny Sparkling Fairy '08. Start the campaign now.
I'm calling his process logical, see. Not the actual beliefs.
Perhaps you can explain, then, how one gets logically from the premise "abortion is against God's will" to "pro-choice is a slaveholder position". I tried to make sense of his argument. It seemed to boil down to:
a. Slaveholders treated humans as property.
b. Pro-choice people treat unborn fœtuses as property.
c. Therefore, "pro-choice" is equivalent to "pro-slavery".
Do you consider that logical? If two sets A and B have some property — say A is "apples", B is "bananas", and the property is "non-emptiness", to take an extreme but concrete example — it does not follow that A and B are equivalent!
His conclusions don't follow from his premises.
there should be a sitcom, "Oh That KEYES!" in which actors would read his speeches as dialogue. heh.
(that said, i do find him strangely hypnotic when he speaks.......)
I respect his refusal to congratulate Obama.
Keyes takes the position that abortion is murder. You can disagree with that position, but that is what he believes. He just lost an election to someone who advocates allowing many, many people to be murdered. I do not see why he should be congratulated.
If I ran against an opponent who wanted to kill black people, I would probably not congratulate the person for winning.
Keyes may have other lunatic views. But his view on abortion seems to be rational to me. People tend to think that abortion-bombing folks are hypocrites. I think the opposite. I think they are the real deal. They think that abortion is murder. They are trying to stop mass murdering. It makes perfect sense. Again, if I believed that millions of innocent people were being murdered in my own country, then I sure as hell would hope I would do more than stand on the side of the road holding up a fucking sign.
And that, I suppose, is why I don't believe that most "pro-life" people really believe that abortion is murder. If they did, then they would be doing something about it.
This just in: Alan Keyes is unbelievably batshit fucking loco, and is good for little other than chewing the furniture and staining the new rug.
Film at 11.
They are trying to stop mass murdering.
By committing and promoting murder themselves. Makes perfect sense indeed.
But it does.
How was the Holocaust stopped? I am pretty sure that some German soldiers were killed along the way. That is exactly how murder on a large scale is typically addressed -- murder the murderers until they stop.
Again, subsitute blacks or gays being murdered at that rate. Would you not be prepared to take up arms to make it stop? I like to think that I would.
You and I happen to not believe that abortion is murder. My point is that if one does believe that it is murder, then it is almost a duty to do whatever it takes to prevent it from continuing.
There are plenty of murders that we are not up in arms about — capital offenders, troops in vanity wars, poor people without healthcare, victims of enviromental mismanagement, etc., etc. Abortion is hardly the largest or most pressing of these socially sanctioned (or socially tolerated) murders. If Keyes really cared about murder, he wouldn't be in the party that's arguably in favour of all these other forms of murder. Why is it his duty to narrowly focus on abortion? Is it not because he thinks that this strategy is the most likely to win him votes?
there should be a sitcom, "Oh That KEYES!" in which actors would read his speeches as dialogue. heh.
He had a show on CNN, Alan Keyes Is Making Sense, didn't he? I always read that as a headline. I'm easily amused.
poor people without healthcare
I don't think that the liberal "conflate everything that I don't like with murder" meme is particularly helpful here.
And 'abortion = murder' is not a meaningless conflation, I suppose?
If you accept that a human life begins at conception, then abortion would subsume one party forcibly terminating a human life. It still wouldn't be "murder," assuming that the action was legally and socially sanctioned, but it'd sure as heck be tangential to it.
Poor people without healthcare and victims of environmental mismanagement die because of negligence. Aborted "people" die because of an intentional act. Those cannot compare.
Likewise, capital offenders are being punished for some act. Aborted "people" have committed no offense which merits punishment. I cannot say that I am sure what you mean specifically when you mention "troops in vanity wars."
I think that the language and framing of the abortion issue has to change.
You think it is murder? Okay, then it is surely pre-meditated murder. Are you prepared to sentence millions of women to death? Are you prepared to sentence some friends and family members to death?
Is it not murder? If it is not murder, then how in the world can it be illegal?
I challenge no one's belief that abortion is wrong. I like to use extensions-of-logic arguments to show people where their positions can lead them.
I think that it is fair to say that most "pro-life" people do not want to punish women as murderers. If they are not willing to do that, then they obviously do not actually consider a fetus to be a human life. If it is not actually a human life, then how in the world can we make any treatment of it be illegal?
And back to Keyes...
If we make the seemingly extreme view become the more logically defensible view, and the more "moderate" anti-abortion people become the hypocrites, then we have successfully re-framed the debate in such a way that the moderates feel forced to choose between the Keyes-view of convicting women of murder, or allowing for abortion to be legal but something that they consider to be immoral (like adultery, lying, etc.).
Anyway, that would be my theory and hope.
assuming that the action was legally and socially sanctioned
Yes. Exactly. You get my point. We tolerate a lot of injustice in our society because we don't have any obviously better way. Abortion is one such necessary evil. Pro-choice people are not chasing pregnant woen with a bloody coat-hanger and an evil gleam in their eye. They will first counsel you about alternatives to abortion. However whty are not willing to take abortion off the table. They are fighting for abortion as a last recourse for really troubled people. The anti-choice people seem to be unable to grasp this important distinction. Abortion is exactly as much murder as the death penalty.
whty → they
Also, incidentally, the distinction between fœtuses as "innocent" and death-row inmates as "guilty", and therefore more killable, and especially when this distinction is made on religious grounds, is nothing but intellectual truancy. The question is not "what kinds of people is it OK to kill?" The question is "is it justifiable to allow some forms of killing?" The sixth statement of the Decalogue is not "thou shalt not kill"; it is "thou shalt not murder". The statement is vague precisely because, according to some interpretations, certain kinds of "killing" are necessary for the social good and therefore just in the eyes of God. The Jews, for instance, don't interpret this Comandment as disallowing abortion.
It is hardly "truant" to reserve society's killing sanction to certain situations and classes.
People kill people. It happens. Sometimes we kill with premeditation, and sometime spontaneously; sometimes with intent, and sometimes accidentally; sometimes en masse, and sometimes individually. Unacceptable killings we call murder. The debate is over what grounds constitute acceptability. Mother Teresa to Pol Pot.
You may view it as a debate, and good for you, but to me a statement like 'abortion is murder' is conclusive. These anti-choice people will not accept anything but a ban abortion. I would urge the pro-choice people to see this wall and avoid running into it.
fuyugare: "Perhaps you can explain, then, how one gets logically from the premise 'abortion is against God's will' to 'pro-choice is a slaveholder position'."
I think "abortion is against God's will" might be a conclusion, not a premise, actually. I mean, there's not anything in the Bible that directly prohibits abortion, is there? But there's a whole smackful about eternal souls. And the soul issue seems key to the question of when human life begins.
Anyway, to get to the "slaveholder position":
1. You should only destroy what you own.
2. Slavery is the ownership of another human.
3. The unborn are human.
Therefore, to destroy the unborn is to be a slaveholder.
bernockle: "You think it is murder? Okay, then it is surely pre-meditated murder. Are you prepared to sentence millions of women to death? Are you prepared to sentence some friends and family members to death?"
Good, tricksy argument, but to raise issues with potential remedies does not remove the original problem. I could say that killing dolphins (or tiny sparkling fairies) is murder, and want it stopped, but still not support the death penalty for those that do kill them. Like grandfather clauses, the widespread nature of an undesired condition mitigates the punishment during transition phases.
That, and I'm not as sure as you that "most 'pro-life' people do not want to punish women as murderers." My faith in human nature was recently shook a touch.
[/Devils' Advocate]
1. You should only destroy what you own.
2. Slavery is the ownership of another human.
3. The unborn are human.
Therefore, to destroy the unborn is to be a slaveholder.
Much better. Your argument hinges on the concept of 'ownership'. According to this argument a mother may not 'destroy' a fœtus because she doesn't own it. Why doesn't she own it? Let's examine some possible answers:
1. Someone else—perhaps the state—owns it. Perhaps you can say that in licensing parents to marry and providing a safe harbour for their offspring, the state asserts an interest in the life of these offspring. Let us ignore for the moment that this is not a realistic interpretation. If the state indeed owns it, then it is the state's duty to prosecute all mothers who have chosen to abort their babies. That they haven't done so, and indeed Roe vs. Wade grants that the state will not do so, gives a de facto state-sanction of abortion. Anti-abortionists who take this path must therefore try to topple Roe vs. Wade in order to (re-)establish the state's control over unborn fœtuses.
2. No one owns it. The fœtus, being human, deserves the same chance at life and liberty as any other human. This view reduces the biological dependence between a mother and the fœtus to either a contractual obligation or munificence on the part of the mother. The first view is the anti-choice view. There if a mother wishes to abort the f&oetus;, she's answerable to some party who is charged with enforcing this contract. Who is this party? The state? The second view is, of course, the pro-choice view: the state does not demand the mother's generosity because it understands that mothers are naturally given to this generosity.
In either of these cases the anti-choice view which establishes that the mother indeed does not own the f&oetus; is that of the state protecting its interests. (The pro-choice one of individuals making choices.) Thus, pro-choice is a slaveholder position only if you are already against abortion. If you want to call this a decisive logical victory for Keyes, I shall be forced to smile.
Gah! f&oetus; → fœtus
Try œ, which will porably resolve into œ.
s/porably/portably/
That's what I've been using.
Oh, then you've been previewing, which eats the œ and replaces it with a nonportable embedded value.
Also that 'only if' is a mistake. Read that as 'if'.
It is not non-portable. It's utf-8. That is as portable as encodings get.
It's less portable than the HTML nmed entity. Consider what happens if the stream doesn't contain a BOM. Or if your browser doesn't grok UTF-8.
WHAT! Utf-8 doesn't need a BOM!!
No, it doesn't, but it helps. Signals that the stream's in UTF-8 instead of Latin-1 or {your codepage here}. Otherwise you need some sort of out of band signal to know to use UTF-8. It's hard to autosense.
Luckily MoFi is served in (mostly compliant) XHTML 1.1 that has a PI with the encoding specified. Also utf-8 is the default encoding of all XML 1.0 documents.
If browsers continue to force MoFi to display in iso-8859-1(5) then they are broked.
Holy derail, Batman!
Then lynx is broked. As is any brwsr that expects the char encoding in the Content-Type instead of in a tag.
Then lynx is broked.
Really? I tried with Lynx version 2.8.5 and here's what I see: [self link to screenshot]. Sure, the glyphs are wrong because I don't have a proper iso-10646-1 font, but it doesn't give me a '?' like for unrecognized characters.
It's true, you don't the multi-byte confusion that you'd see if it were failing to decode the sequence. I see much the same w/ 2.8.4rel1. But see? œ on that same shot does the right thing in an ambiguously charsetted tty environment.
Also, if I ask Lynx what charset it's assuming (the "=" command), it's not catching your XML-implied charset. Too lazy to take screenshot, sorry. What does your = show?
Charset: iso-8859-1 (assumed)
Motherfucker!
Say, can I interest you in the 1980s, gœtter? It's time to ditch this shoddy so-called browser.
See, now the title for this screen makes sense. First abortion, now character encoding.
Huh? What happened?
My browser thing won't default to UTF-8. I wish I could make it, but it won't let me! My other thing won't do it either. I v. much doubt I'm the only one in this boat.
I think that tangent fits right in with the non-abortion argument. Isn't parenting all about character encoding?
What? Abandon Lynx?? I'd just as soon abandon my beloved Gopher servers. Or my trusty VT102. *hobbles inside to take his medicine*
"If you want to call this a decisive logical victory for Keyes, I shall be forced to smile."
I think you misunderstand my point--I do not say that Keyes "wins," I'm saying that I believe his process to be sound. As I'm sure you know, use of logic != correct conclusions. Further, remember that I don't know Keyes' argument here, I'm just putting forth a proof-of-concept to show that the connections can be made. I also admire the hell out of Descartes and Aquinas (yes, much more so then Keyes), but that doesn't mean that I can't poke holes in their arguments.
"Thus, pro-choice is a slaveholder position only if you are already against abortion."
Well duh! Note premise 3: The unborn are human. Don't mistake the Slaveholder thing as an argument against abortion that is also compatable with our Lefty premises. If the Right could do such a thing, we'd probably all be convinced by now. I suspect that the conflation is a moral equivilency framing to try to pierce through the deaf ears of Pro-Choice people to try to get them to consider Pro-Life premises. That's all.
As for your counter-argument... You lost me. Keyes is using God, not the State, and seeing Law as the end point of moral reasoning, not the source.
No, oops, my "counter-argument" was to your outline. Fuck Keyes. I am not convinced that his logic is sound, but I have stopped caring.
My point is that "pro-life" is a garbage label. Either you believe that the mother has no choice but to see the pregnancy to completion, or you believe that the mother can choose to terminate the pregnancy under certain circumstances. Either you want the government telling you to birth that baby, or you think the government has no business in your womb. Whether or not the fœtus is "human" is irrelevant since it cannot survive without the mother.
"No, oops, my 'counter-argument' was to your outline."
I understand that, but I couldn't see how it mapped to it, and still can't. I'd be interesting in reading a second attempt, so I'm sorry that you've stopped caring about that line.
"My point is that 'pro-life' is a garbage label."
Eh? Howabout this:
"Pro-Life" is a garbage label.
Either you want the government telling you to not kill people, or you think the government has no business telling you what to do with your guns.
"Whether or not the f&oeligtus is "human" is irrelevant since it cannot survive without the mother."
Why? Say the (second to) last person on Earth has a baby, and this newborn obviously cannot survive without that mother. It is then ethically ok for her to kill the baby? I'd say not, because that baby is a human, has human rights. If one believes that an unborn at a certain stage is a human, the same moral conditions apply, no?
Interested.
f&oeligtus is a good band name.
I don't think I can state my position any better than I have already. Sorry that it sounds incoherent to you.
"Pro-Life" is a garbage label.
Either you want the government telling you to not kill people, or you think the government has no business telling you what to do with your guns.
I agree. The distinction is between the legality or illegality of owning and operating guns. The correct labels would be "pro-gun" and "anti-gun", or perhaps "pro-gun-regulation" and "anti-gun-regulation". It has nothing to do with the life of a third party: the government already is obliged to protect the life of all citizens to the best of its ability.
Ah, sorry. I implied when I should have stated outright. It should read:
...or you think the government has no business telling you not to shoot people in the face.
Regardless, if life is invloved, I don't see why life is irrelevant to the label.
Your second version is a false analogy. Killing people (without a really good reason) is illegal. Killing unborn fœtuses is (still) essentially legal. If you want to make this analogy stick you have to argue that fœtuses are equivalent to born humans, at least to the extent that they have a legal right to life. Then we are back to the question of ownership, or at least dominion. The pro-choice position is that until the fœtus is born, the government has no dominion over the fœtus. (Indeed, ius soli citizenship begins with birth.) The anti-choice position is that the government has enough dominion over the fœtus to override the wishes of the mother, should she wish to abort the pregnancy.
Hmmm, I think that's where we're not seeing eye to eye. I'm not talking legal, I'm talking moral.
I'm saying that the argument is not that unborn have the legal right to life, but that they have the moral right to life.
And, the way I see it, the Law is not the source of morality, but hopefully the product of it. So I think I'm not following you when you (apparently) start arguing from the law. Besides, in my analogy above, the woman is the last person on Earth. Government doesn't enter into it.
By the way, thank you for this conversation. It's been stimulating.
Thank you too for similar reasons.
I think there are "moral" and "legal" sides to the abortion debate that must inform each other, not become primary. Without question the law says that (most kinds of) abortions are OK. I've tried to outline above why I think the law is correct, and on what grounds one can challenge the law.
On the moral side I am most moved by the question: is it moral to force a mother to give birth despite her wishes? I am less concerned about whether it is moral or not to aid a mother in terminating her pregnancy. I don't think the answers are absolute here. If a woman is raped and becomes pregnant, I think she is morally right to attempt to reduce the lasting damage. Similarly if a woman makes horribly bad decisions (eg. if she marres a man who later turns out to be a serial polygamist), or if her life is in danger. On the other extreme, if there is a woman who has an irresponsible sex-life and has an abortion every six months, then I would call her choices immoral. Between the extremes surely there is an area where the answers aren't as clear-cut. People look to religion for absolute moral answers but religions don't agree either: as I already mentioned, the Jews don't interpret the Commandments as disallowing abortion. The pragmatic approach, which only angers the fundamentalists, is to decide the morality on a case by case basis.
Let me ask you this, since you seem sympathetic to the "pro-life" side: is there any situation where an abortion would be unquestionably moral?
Apologies for my tardiness here; life gets in the way.
And now, since you asked, I'll get away from the position of Keyes, and focus on my own shit. That means I throw away God and souls (I'm agnostic) and Keyes' absolute certitude of righteousness (He's a Judger, I'm a Perciever).
"I think there are 'moral' and 'legal' sides to the abortion debate that must inform each other, not become primary."
Certainly the position of the Law is not in dispute. But I don't see any moral authority in law itself. Laws are the product of reasoning and debate across a population, in their legislative body, and in their courts. The reasoning used may be convincing, but that does not seem to be what you put forward when you invoke the law. How would the legality of slavery effect your position? The legality of women's sufferage? I just don't see actions becoming more or less right depending on the legal context. If you have a path to that, you'll have to explain it to me.
"is it moral to force a mother to give birth despite her wishes? I am less concerned about whether it is moral or not to aid a mother in terminating her pregnancy."
Those generally are not the issues I think about. I see the core of the matter as: is it moral to have an abortion. Those other cases cannot be approached unless the prime case is first settled.
And that case seems to come down to this:
To avoid suffering, is killing another human moral?
Which invokes subproblems like:
At what point do the young become human?
Does the potential for humanness bestow rights?
What degrees of suffering are we talking about? Is there a tipping point, and if so, where?
I'm trying to work my way though these questions. I engage in the subject in the hope that these questions can be resolved or sidestepped, with abortion to be shown as alright. But I do think that until they're dealt with I have to give the benefit of the doubt to the side that is at least potentially saving life.
"is there any situation where an abortion would be unquestionably moral?"
That's a good and fair question. But to know that an abortion is 100% pure would require proof that no harm was being done. But hell, I've been known to scoop ants out the bathtub. So, the point at which sentience begins would have to be known and detectable, but that might not be enough. Further, I'd have to be conclusively convinced that the potential of humaness does not bestow rights. Finally, if the first two went south, there might be some argument that weighs extreme suffering against life in a way that I could accept.
But another intepretation of you question is, "when would I see the abortion is the right thing, on balance." To modify the above, extreme case, I must mention that I'd squish ants all day to keep a human from harm. I think I'd still need some resolution of the three main points. I'm not saying I'm condemning others, I'm saying that I don't know, yet must be "conservative" in analysis due to the stakes.
On the question of: when one must choose between the life of the mother and the life of the child... IF one accepts the unborn as human, I can't see how one can make that choice any other way but randomly. It makes my head explode.
I don't see any of this as being clear-cut.
catachresis and bernockle: ah, kindred spirits! So glad to make your aquaintance. Particularly I was pleased to see bernockle's argument about the pro-lifers, as it exactly my view and, gosh, I don't know if I've ever seen another pro-choice person stating that view.
Like bernockle, I'm not sure that I believe that the majority of ardent pro-lifers are really all about the "no murder" thing. I do agree with the feminist pro-choice view that this is largely a smoke screen. Wholly? No. And it varies from person to person. Unlike (apparently), bernockle, I think the majority of more moderate and casual pro-lifers may be earnest. It's just that they don't necessarily see abortion as exactly like murder. They have a moral problem with it; they're just not sure how serious it is and thus how fanatical they should be about it. Or, less generously and probably more true than I wish it were, just that it's the cultural status quo makes it somewhat acceptable to them even if they say that it isn't. Because, as bernockle says, if they think it's murder, why the hell aren't they doing anything about it?
I mean, like bernockle, it seems to me that if I were to believe as some of these folks do: that it's like the Holocaust and there's millions upon millions of people being murdered, I'd like to think that I'd sure as hell be blowing up some clinics. I'd probably try to do it without killing anyone, but I wouldn't be that concerned about it relative to the millions and millions of people that were being killed.
I think the pro-life premise that fetuses are human beings is wrong. But it seems to me that the claim that they are (or might be) ought to be taken seriously. And, like bernockle and like I've said elsewhere and repeatedly, I'd rather live in a world where there were people who'd take extreme action to prevent the murder of millions and millions of people than a world where because they majority finds it acceptable and it's legal they go, "oh, well, it's not my business". I can't have a world where some people buck the majority and act against extreme injustice without also having a world where some people who are wrong but think they're right also buck the majority and act against what they wrongly perceive as extreme injustice. The world I'd really like to live in is the one where everyone knew and agreed on what is right and wrong. I'm not holding my breath on that one.
What a great discussion, but I have a problem with kmellis' position. Non-crazed pro-lifers aren't saying, "oh, well, it's not my business," so much as they're saying, "I'm going to vote against state-sanctioned murder, and I'll participate in protests against it whenever I can, but I'm not going to blow shit up over it." There's a huge difference. While I think it's correct to say that pro-lifers should be doing something about their belief, it doesn't follow that blowing up clinics is the best thing for them to do, and I think there are a couple ways to justify this.
Argument from utility: never mind the ethical problems which arise when people are caught in the crossfire, blowing up abortion clinics doesn't achieve the goal, namely, to ban abortion. Instead it makes pro-lifers less sympathetic to others who might be willing to share their view. Furthermore, you can't do much good for the cause sitting in jail.
I think, also, that if you believe in a kind of Socratic conception of the soul, you don't pity the victim so much as the evil-doer. Don't judge here on earth and let God sort it out in the afterlife.
I do think yours is an interesting argument, though.
Charset: iso-8859-1 (assumed)Motherfucker! Say, can I interest you in the 1980s, gœtter? It's time to ditch this shoddy so-called browser.