BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

Suddenly, Trump Derangement Syndrome is a thing, or is trying to become one.

We’re told by many wise and well-meaning people that it is a huge and even fatal mistake for liberals (and for constitutional conservatives) to respond negatively to every Trump initiative, every Trump policy, and every Trump idea. There are bound to be—in an Administration staffed not by orcs and ogres but for the most part by the usual run of military people and professional politicians—acceptable actions, even admirable initiatives, and we would do ourselves and our country a huge disservice by simply responding to them all with the same reflexive hatred. This may be especially true if that reflexive hatred, however unconsciously, mirrors and mimics the reflexive hatreds of the Trump White House itself. We owe it to our country and to our sanity to go on a case-by-case basis, empirically evaluating each action as it takes place, and refusing to succumb to the urge to turn politics into a series of set responses—exactly the habit, after all, that we so often deplore in Trump and the people around him.

This is a perfectly reasonable assertion, and one that would count for a lot in pretty much any semi-normal circumstance. The problem is that it refuses to see, or to entirely register, the actual nature of Trump and his actions. Our problem is not Trump Derangement Syndrome; our problem is Deranged Trump Self-Delusion. This is the habit of willfully substituting, as a motive for Trump’s latest action, a conventional political or geostrategic ambition, rather than recognizing the action as the daily spasm of narcissistic gratification and episodic vanity that it truly is.

The bombing of Syria, for instance, was not a sudden lurch either in the direction of liberal interventionism, à la Bill Clinton in the lands that were once Yugoslavia, nor was it a sudden reassertion of a neo-con version of American power, à la both Bushes in Iraq. It was, as best as anyone can understand, simply a reaction to an image, turned into a self-obsessed lashing out that involved the lives and deaths of many people. It was a detached gesture, unconnected to anything resembling a sequence of other actions, much less an ideology. Nothing followed from it, and no “doctrine� or even a single speech justified it. There is no credible evidence that Trump’s humanity was outraged by the act of poisoning children, only that Trump’s vanity was wounded by the seeming insult to America and, by extension, to him. It may be perfectly true that the failure of the Obama Administration to act sooner in Syria will go down forever, in the historical ledgers, as a reproach against it; or it may be that the wisdom of the Obama Administration in not getting engaged in another futile Middle Eastern folly will go down in its favor. But it is self-deluding to think that Trump’s action was meant to be in any way remedial. It was purely ritual, and the ritual acted out was the interminable Trumpist ritual of lashing out at those who fail to submit, the ritual act of someone whose inner accounting is conducted exclusively in terms of wounds given, worship received, and winnings displayed. (Perhaps his elder daughter, Ivanka, did play some small part in the action, as her brother Eric suggested in an interview, but this is hardly a comfort; the politics of a mad king with a court are no more reassuring than those of a mad king alone.)

Or one could note from the same paper that, of the 22.3 live births per thousand to girls in the US aged 15-19, only 2.1 of those live births were to girls who were married. Even if all of the married pregnant teenagers were from red states (and they were not), it would not overcome the red state - blue state disparity.

Substantial geographic variation also exists in adolescent childbearing across the United States. In 2013, the lowest teen birth rates were reported in the Northeast, while rates were highest in states across the southern part of the country (see Figure 2).1 See how your state compares on birth rates, pregnancy rates, sexual activity, and contraceptive use with OAH’s reproductive health state fact sheets.

This further explains U.S. teen births.

That's a nice site. I was aware that the teen age birth rate was declining but having all those numbers at hand is nice.

Characteristics Associated with Adolescent Childbearing
Numerous individual, family, and community characteristics have been linked to adolescent childbearing. For example, adolescents who are enrolled in school and engaged in learning (including participating in after-school activities, having positive attitudes toward school, and performing well educationally) are less likely than are other adolescents to have or to father a baby. 7 At the family level, adolescents with mothers who gave birth as teens and/or whose mothers have only a high school degree are more likely to have a baby before age 20 than are teens whose mothers were older at their birth or who attended at least some college. In addition, having lived with both biological parents at age 14 is associated with a lower risk of a teen birth.8 At the community level, adolescents who live in wealthier neighborhoods with strong levels of employment are less likely to have or to father a baby than are adolescents in neighborhoods in which income and employment opportunities are more limited.7

The tables yo cite show that the drop has been very substantial and I would be interested in explanations of why. We might expect the problem to be self-perpetuating: A teen age mother lives in pverty, the children are prought up ni poverty, the children grow up and have children before they are ready, and so on. But somehow this seems to be not the whole story. One could, optimisticall, thinnk that the child of poverty decided that s/he wants his/her life to be better and so decides to put off child bearing. Or maybe anti-poverty programs have helped. Pr community programs to help young people make better choices. Or some combination. Anyway, it would be interesting to hear what those who study this have concluded.

Another point of interest. I suppose few girls age 15 choose to get pregnant, or at least I hope not. Unintended pregnancies still happen. But how about the 17-19 year olds. For statistics to really be useful, details are often needed. Did the pregnancy just happen as one of those things or was it a conscious decision to bear a child? Sometimes one, sometimes the other no doubt, but the numbers would be interesting.

Anyway, it is good to see the numbers dropping. I was at a Bat Mitzvah sometime back where the father spoke: "You are now 13, an age where you can marry according to Jewish law. Your father has other ideas." I liked that a lot. What was right in Biblical times, and perhaps was manageable a hundred years ago, is a disaster today.

Disasters are sometimes from bad circumstances, sometimes from bad choices, often from a bit of both. The dropping rate of teen pregnancy is a very good thing, I would like to hear just how it came about. The answer might be useful in addressing our many other social problems.

The rapid declines in adolescent pregnancy and births from 2007 to 2012 occurred despite stagnant rates of sexual activity. Instead, we find that the contraceptive behaviors of sexually active adolescents have driven the recent shifts in fertility outcomes. The increases in overall contraceptive use at last sex from 2007 to 2012 are part of a longer trend. Between 1995 and 2012, any method use at last sex among adolescent women increased from 66% to 86%, while use of multiple methods increased from 11% to 37% [14]. Taken together, evidence from this study and our previous studies indicates that the substantial long-term decline of 57% in adolescent birth rates from 1991 to 2013 [1] can be primarily attributed to increases in overall contraceptive use.

This information is interesting to me:

Quote

These three statements, 53 words in all, are potent shots of unadulterated, time-tested Trump—short, confident declarations of success, in spite of object evidence of failure, uttered with total disregard for the parsing and fact-checking that constitutes so much of the coverage of him and his administration. Biographers, ex-employees, veteran New York City gossip columnists, public relations professionals and political operatives from both major parties say recognizing this well-established pattern of behavior—stumble, proclaim victory, move on—is imperative to understanding Trump.

It appears contraceptive use is the key: (emphasis added)

Or you could do your own research, a few minutes on the net (figures not perfect due to the date mismatch)

sources https://en.wikipedia...e_United_States https://en.wikipedia...te_legislatures

The top 13 if you ignore DC have 8 republican legislatures, one coalition and 4 democrat

For every 1,000 black boys in the United States, 29 of them are fathers, compared to 14 per 1,000 white boys.

This morning I was reading, again, how the government might rub out of money because the various politicians cannot agree. Like most of my fellow citizens, I am thoroughly fed up with this.

I know I have told this (true) story before. My friend Neal and I were in out cars at opposite ends of a block, we spontaneously moved to the center and accelerated. We both gave way at the last second, missing a collision by maybe a foot at most. The explanation is simple, we were sixteen.

These adolescent morons we have elected are screwing with the country. If any or all of them put getting their way in front of working together in the interests of the country then the whole mob of them needs to be gone. Neal and I decided it was a tie and that there would be no rematch. If these adults(?) lack the sense of a couple of sixteen year olds then they need to be shown to the door. All of them.

Teenage pregnancy rates sharply decrease after 19.

Truly, it baffles me that so many are so deeply conned.

The critical stat is the rate of teen pregnancy, not the the absolute numbers. There are 5 times as many whites as blacks in America.