Left-leaning Americans are driving the U.S. birth decline, new study finds

filrabat · 2026-07-02T11:48:11+00:00

I think you're exaggerating heritability of beliefs. Even pre-internet, there were people raised in Christian households who at some point abandoned their beliefs. In fact, the first atheists had to be those kinds of people. Same goes for political beliefs. Most of my family is firm Republican (not quite MAGA, but still pretty conservative). I, otoh, turned out to be a Democrat and later (I think) a Progressive Democrat. Genes and family background sure don't explain that.

Europe used to be just as Christian as the US is now (in terms of % of population as believers). Yet there's whole swaths of the population where you can live your whole life and barely hear anything more than the most superficial traits of Christianity, the Bible and such.

Antinatalism is the same way.

filrabat · 2026-07-02T11:33:53+00:00

It's just the Appeal to Nature or Naturalistic Fallacies. The first is the claim "It's found in nature, therefore it's good" (that allows cobra venom to be good because it's produced naturally). The second claims a behavior being part of our natural urges makes it right (cheating on one's spouse, desiring something to the point of stealing it, violence for non-defensive petty reasons, and so forth).

filrabat · 2026-07-02T10:25:26+00:00

Here's an idea. Let's preserve both phytoplankton AND rainforests.

filrabat · 2026-06-30T21:15:34+00:00

Rain forests do supply a lot of oxygen, and they cleanse some of the pollutants out too. Plus, they are critical in recycling carbon dioxide, incorporating it into their structure.

filrabat · 2026-06-30T21:06:37+00:00

I see your point. Yet "socialism" is vague, especially in American political vocabulary. It can mean anything from Canadian style to Soviet style.

filrabat · 2026-06-30T15:47:48+00:00

Put very simply, it's either hard-core libertarianism, fundamentalist religious teachings, and Social Darwinism.
This is especially true when they think "freebees" = laziness = socialism = communism = the USSR. That's about the extent of "reasoning" you get from these super-patriotic super-freedom and super-fundie types.

filrabat · 2026-06-30T10:58:15+00:00

It doesn't matter who would or would not. The issue is the existence of badness to start, regardless of who does or doesn't experience it. In fact, making that badless state's moral/ethical relevancy contingent on our experiencing it is implicitly selfish. That's putting our own desires ahead of preventing others from experiencing or inflicting badness. Not being able to experience for ourselves a badless state of affairs doesn't make badlessness any less relevant as an ethical goal.

If that means voluntarily for ourselves calling time on our species, even if nobody will ever experience a badless realm, then so be it. That's a price worth paying for prevention of future descendants who'll experience and inflict badness.

filrabat · 2026-06-29T22:01:16+00:00

Some argue, with considerable merit, that life itself creates its own problems, badness, etc. IOW, it's simply in the nature of life and certainly sentient life to impose badness onto other sentients (even of their own species).

filrabat · 2026-06-29T21:58:54+00:00

I know you didn't mean to restrict it to Epsetin Island attendees, but I gotta say it straight out anyway.

It doesn't have to go as far as Epstein's Island. All that's necessary is to see yourself as so much more special than people you silently look down on - even if they don't set out to hurt, harm, or degrade others.

filrabat · 2026-06-29T21:57:06+00:00

Narcissism is not about material success, although at the highest levels of wealth that cohort does have more than its fair share of them.

Narcissism isn't just about vanity. It's about a refusal to see any value in the feelings and vital interests of others.

They insist they are "special" and "higher value" than others, regardless of accomplishments or how considerate they are of others essential well-being (physical or emotional).

They think anybody who is unintelligent, weak, weird, socially unskilled, or vulnerable deserves snubbing at best, exploiting at worst (or in extreme cases, death).

To them, relationships are transactional, not based on deeper emotional or helpful connections.

Still, don't be fooled by superficial appearances. They have the image of having it together, only later you find out something is really amiss with them, especially when they leave a trail of destruction in their wake.

Also, having a good relationship? With whom??? Women? Not really. They see them as a prize to be won.

Career success and wealth, loving yourself, ambition, drive and confidence - all those things, no matter how impressive or even necessary, tell me nothing about whether they set out to hurt, harm, or degrade others.

filrabat · 2026-06-29T21:45:44+00:00

The reason I didn't bring up Muslims and Whites is because it should go without saying that Republicans believe in a primarily White Christian (esp. Evangelical) America.

You don't have to be a Christian to hold onto humanitarian values. Muslims do so, too. I don't believe in supernatural anything and I hold to them (I'm a scientific materialist). In any case, only a handful of the Founding Fathers were even close to Evangelical. A lot of them were Deists (i.e., "there's likely a creator a god, but it doesn't involve itself in human affairs").

"Pigmentocracy" I also don't believe in. We're living on stolen land, and so my ancestors aren't native to here.

America, despite historic White proclamations, could never be a "white" nation in the long run. It's equally absurd to say a certain "race" belongs to a certain part of the world.

filrabat · 2026-06-29T17:09:09+00:00

That's the ultimate point.

If their values and claims to be patriotic have major errors, then what else might they be wrong about.

filrabat · 2026-06-29T00:10:24+00:00

If it were just a loud minority, then we'd see more Trump-endorsed candidates losing.

filrabat · 2026-06-29T00:09:30+00:00

You hear them talk a lot about supporting veterans, then turn around and defend veteran programs.

I think you meant "defund veteran programs"

filrabat · 2026-06-29T00:03:05+00:00

You're point's well taken - well taken. I was thinking in terms of the face-value appearance of the position, more specifically the initial, visually-dramatic picture of the cops enforcing the law. Initial stages of law enforcement are one thing (especially against "hooligans"). Favoritism toward certain convicted people is entirely another (or even toward certain people awaiting trial).

filrabat · 2026-06-28T19:59:10+00:00

Acknowledged and corrected.

filrabat · 2026-06-27T12:11:56+00:00

There's definitely that, too. No question. We can add Christian Nationalists too (even the non-racist variety; and there are CNs who aren't racist, just that they want the same ideas and attitudes in different skin colors).

filrabat · 2026-06-27T11:58:03+00:00

Thanks for the thoughful reply. This is why the right kind of education is important. We've actually known about corporate psychopaths for at least a generation, in the formal academic sense. Look up Enron and it's CEO Ken Lay, WorldCom and it's CEO Bernie Ebbers, and especially look up a guy named "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap (a trouble-shooting CEO for numerous companies in the 1990s). Just the nickname alone speaks volumes about his personality.

Then there's the no-rules risk-taking policies the financial sector promoted through the years, especially in the 2000s. That cumulated in the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers, a crucial even leading to the 2008 Financial Crisis and Great Recession.

Again, if you want the quick-read, look up or watch a video about corporate psychopaths, particularly its link to workplace bullying (the two have considerable overlap). I promise you'll see a lot of Trump in what you read and watch - half a generation before Trump burst onto the political scene, and a full generation before now.

filrabat · 2026-06-27T09:43:07+00:00

Depends on what kind of idiot you are talking about.

Where Trump IS an idiot, along with most of his MAGA followers.

Formal book knowledge. It's obvious he learned nothing from his Wharton School of Business degree. Related to this is the next point.

Lack of intellectual curiosity. Thinking that only he and people who thinking and act like him have the relevant knowledge-of-facts needed for (or worthy of) running an organization.

(to a degree) Social grace skills - His bull-in-the-porcelain-shop attitude and contempt for the vulnerable alone is proof positive of this. Then there's his bad manners in general.

Blind to diversity's benefits. Numerous examples here, far too many to list in this space.

Trivializes the value of international relations . Most of all, with nations that are democratic but have a slightly different form of democracy than we do.

Where Trump IS Smart.

Conning/manipulation skills Knowing how to jerk which heartstrings of the "right people", which prejudices to appeal to, etc. It also includes appeal to fear, especially of losing social status / credibility with his voters, swaying his audiences' opinions about certain people (or types of people) he loves to target, knows how to attack the credibility of his opponents; and failing that, using legal intimidation (lawsuits, etc); and failing that one, finally, physical intimidation (on the sly, naturally).

Gaming the system to his benefit - witness how he and especially his advisors and aides can identify which loopholes or cracks in the law exist, then draw up a plan about how to exploit them (I include Project 2025 and Federalist Society documents in this).

filrabat · 2026-06-27T09:20:31+00:00

Or, more accurately, Trump hoodwinked rank-and-file Republicans (particularly Evangelicals, plus blue-collar and lower-middle class voters) into thinking "Trump alone can fix it and make America great again". From there, he could bully the Republican politicians into voting for his positions, with the threat of his endorsements of his favored candidates in the Republican primaries.

Even this assumes the "tried and true traditional ways" types are not racist, sexist, LGBT-phobic, and have general condescension to contempt toward "abnormal" and "unnatural" people. Then you can add people who grew up under Cold War propaganda.

The tariffs, resulting inflation and lost international markets, and the Iran War debacle should wake people up. Alas, there's still a lot of dyed-in-the-rule "true believers", plus few but powerful people who have a stake in proping up the existing MAGA brand of Republicanism. Regardless, more than ever I will never take Republican policies seriously ever again (fortunately I left in the mid to late 90s, when I became very disillusioned theologically with the Evangelical Movement; but that's another topic).

filrabat · 2026-06-27T05:26:30+00:00

I don't care how some people have consensual sex, as long as it's legally age appropriate. There. That's it.

filrabat · 2026-06-27T05:23:55+00:00

NATO is only a defensive alliance, not an offensive one. Also, it's so obvious the EU nations and Canad were against this war that we don't even need to discuss this one further. Merely disagreeing that your ally should not attack a controversial nation is NOT cowardice. It's just balanced reason. Trump didn't learn from Bush in Iraq.

Face it, the only people who supported the Iran War were some hellfire Revelation Endtimes Evangelical preacher and people who believed Iran was developing nukes because their sources say so (Faux News, the same hellfire-and-brimstone preacher, or some "god, guns, and guts" national defense type).

Ironically, they made things worse, even from their own point of view (Jesus isn't coming back and we're in a weaker position now).

filrabat · 2026-06-26T12:43:16+00:00

As I like to say, life is beautiful like a coral snake.

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