Ilan Ben-Meir

PhD candidate in English at Brown, studying new media, alternative realities, and intersubjective time. Formerly @BuzzFeed Politics.

[Ilan Ben-Meir @ilanagain]

@AJCongress @AOC You’re fucking kidding, right?

We say “Never again,” not “Please pick darker people next time.”

Only one of you and @AOC is disgracing the memory of my murdered ancestors — and it isn’t @AOC.

[•ᴗ- @evadentz]

we should ban teenagers from ALL media. and then on their 16th birthday they are brought to a theatre to be shown a movie of a train coming directly at them to see if they react and flee in horror like they did in 1896

[Ilan Ben-Meir @ilanagain]

My government started an unnecessary war in the Middle East and all I got was to see Cake play their cover of War Pigs live at SPAC.

[Ilan Ben-Meir @ilanagain]

@seanrcallaghan @JoePostingg Kind enough to (partially, but not completely) ignore by…insulting me? You really are struggling with this whole “knowing what the words you’re using actually mean” bit, huh?

[Ilan Ben-Meir @ilanagain]

@seanrcallaghan @JoePostingg (I would never debate your faith. Happy to correct your facts, though!)

[Ilan Ben-Meir @ilanagain]

@seanrcallaghan @JoePostingg Ah, the sweet sounds of victory.

[Ilan Ben-Meir @ilanagain]

@seanrcallaghan @JoePostingg You’re right that I misread the “balls” insult, because very little that you’ve typed here is actually worth paying close attention to; note, though, that calling me “not a man” has nothing to do with what we’re discussing and everything to do with the fact that you’re flailing.

[Ilan Ben-Meir @ilanagain]

@seanrcallaghan @JoePostingg I promise you that I don’t misunderstand anything that you are saying; you are just powerfully confused and (if I’m being charitable) arguing in bad faith.

[Ilan Ben-Meir @ilanagain]

@seanrcallaghan @JoePostingg Nobody was performing “just-in-case-this-lady-is-pregnant” abortions; lots of folks were aborting pre-quickened pregnancies, and were adjudged by the Church, at the time, as having committed a different sin than the sin of abortion — despite deliberately terminating a pregnancy.

[Ilan Ben-Meir @ilanagain]

@seanrcallaghan @JoePostingg Okay — that isn’t hard. From the article I linked, in the Middle Ages,

“the underlying sin is the fornication that resulted in pregnancy. Penances imposed for abortions pre-quickening were minor, as they were even for post-quickening abortions for poor women.”

[Ilan Ben-Meir @ilanagain]

@seanrcallaghan @JoePostingg Show me where that was your factual claim by putting words that you said in an earlier message between quotation marks.

[Ilan Ben-Meir @ilanagain]

@seanrcallaghan @JoePostingg Right — and the *mechanism of that teleology is the immortal spiritual soul through which God differentiates humans from weeds.* The teleology that you’re describing is a *function* of spiritual ensoulment, not its *cause*.

[Ilan Ben-Meir @ilanagain]

@seanrcallaghan @JoePostingg …also ignoring the substantive record of medieval abortions prior to quickening, which also disproves your new and improved basic claim.

Being wrong doesn’t mean that you’re ballsier than I am; it means that you’re wrong.

[Ilan Ben-Meir @ilanagain]

@seanrcallaghan @JoePostingg No, I’ve understood what you were saying all along, as indicated by the time-stamped words that I wrote in response to you and posted on the public internet.

You just introduced the idea that we’re talking about *how men could know that women were pregnant,* and are still…

[Ilan Ben-Meir @ilanagain]

@seanrcallaghan @JoePostingg Right — your claims on that point are simply false. If the facts were as you represented then, you would be correct; they are not, which is what being wrong about a factual claim entails:

https://t.co/cZGmqZBuYf

[Ilan Ben-Meir @ilanagain]

@seanrcallaghan @JoePostingg Thanks — good luck with the second half of Hooked on Phonics!

[Ilan Ben-Meir @ilanagain]

@seanrcallaghan @JoePostingg You’re correct that abortion before quickening was not *licensed* by the church; it was, however, explicitly differentiated from homicide because the soul was not yet in the “unformed” developing body. But there were abortions performed before quickening, so your logic fails.

[Ilan Ben-Meir @ilanagain]

@seanrcallaghan @JoePostingg It’s okay that you have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about; just maybe don’t lecture others as if you do.