Their own children will, by the millions every year.
The Week: The kids are all Democrats
For over a decade, young people have been voting overwhelmingly for progressives and, more importantly, telling pollsters that they identify with or lean towards supporting the Democratic Party.
If you think that's always been the case, you're wrong…
Pew Social Trends: Millennial life: How young adulthood today compares with prior generations
Among registered voters, 59% of Millennials affiliate with the Democratic Party or lean Democratic, compared with about half of Boomers and Gen Xers (48% each) and 43% of the Silent Generation. With this divide comes generational differences on specific issue areas, from views of racial discrimination and immigration to foreign policy and the scope of government.
White Male Christian bigots have a shorter life expectancy than the US average. Their suicide rate is way up. They are pulling down the averages for all US Whites. Details in Dying of Whiteness, by Jonathan Metzl.
See also
- The Incredible Shrinking Church, by Frank Page
- The End of White Christian America, by Robert P. Jones
Of course, it isn't only their own children.
You will remember the White Supremacists, including neo-Nazis, at Charlottesville, with their revolutionary tiki torches, chanting
You will not replace us!
or
Jews will not replace us!
They are in a blind panic about becoming a minority in the US, with the assumption that Those People will treat them as they have treated the rest of us for so long. After all, us riff-raff can't possibly be morally superior to them, now can we?
/s
:<þ :<þ :<þ :<þ :<þ :<þ Bless their black little hearts.
But the rest of us aren't their real problem.
They are.
All that we are is the result of what we have thought: it is founded on our thoughts, it is made up of our thoughts. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage… If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him.
Dhammapada
Meet my friend Mahakala. He manages the wheel of time, which brings karma to fruition.
We want the best for everyone, including the most deplorable of Deplorables. They won't have any, and denounce it all as tyranny, because Those People would get some. I will tell you more about that in my next Good News Diary
There are two kinds of Republicans: the evil ones, and the ones who pretend it isn't them. Well, OK, one kind of Republican. Or ten kinds focused on different evils.
We agree that the Republican Party agenda is evil. So do they, but each faction claims that it is only the extremists (the Rightist
Adventurists, in an inversion of Communist jargon) or the RINOs (the Leftist
Running Dogs) that are the problem, not themselves.
No matter how you slice it, it's still, in the immortal words of clone Professor Cubert Farnsworth, weapons-grade bolonium. Like interpreting
Suffer little children to come unto me.
as
Make your little children suffer for me.
And then being surprised when their children want nothing more to do with the old fears and hatreds.
But there is, in fact, another kind: the ex-Republican, like Kos, a former Reaganite, or Hillary Clinton, a former Goldwater Girl. Or these.
George Will, Joe Scarborough lead midterm exodus from GOP
And now Tea Party darling Justin Amash.
The long-term trends for older Republicans are described in
- Dying of Whiteness, by Jonathan Mentzl.
- The End of White Christian America, by Robert P. Jones
You don't hear much from teenage ex-Republicans and ex-Evangelistic Christians, who weren't in positions of power or influence when they left. Well, there is ex-evangelist wunderkind MarJoe Gortner, from back in the 1960s. And more recently Nathan Phelps, son of Fred "God Hates [LGBTQ]s" Phelps of the hateful Westboro Baptist Church. Feel free to link to others in the comments.
Frank Schaeffer is one of the best current examples, having fallen away from his father's Evangelistic crusade.
Huffpo: Frank! As A Former Pro-Life Leader How Dare You Support Pro-Choice Obama?
Frank Schaeffer is a New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen books. Frank is a survivor of both polio and an evangelical/fundamentalist childhood
Pew Research Center: Trends in party affiliation among demographic groups
Democrats hold a slightly larger edge in leaned party identification over Republicans now than in 2016 or 2015.
When the partisan leanings of independents are taken into account, 50% either identify as Democrats or lean Democratic; 42% identify as Republicans or lean Republican.
Among registered voters, 56% of women affiliate with or lean toward the Democratic Party, compared with 44% of men.
…the share of women who identify with or lean to the Democratic Party has risen in recent years, to 54% in 2016 and 56% in 2017. The partisan breakdown of men is relatively unchanged over this period.
Higher educational attainment is increasingly associated with Democratic Party affiliation and leaning.
In 1994, 39% of those with a four-year college degree (no postgraduate experience) identified with or leaned toward the Democratic Party and 54% associated with the Republican Party. In 2017, those figures were exactly reversed.
n 2017, 49% of white voters with a college degree (and no additional education) aligned with the Democratic Party, compared with 46% for the GOP. As recently as 2015, 51% of white voters with a college degree aligned with the Republican Party, compared with 43% for the Democratic Party.
Millennial voters (born 1981 to 1996) have had a Democratic tilt since they first entered adulthood; this advantage has only grown as they have aged.
Democrats enjoy a 27-percentage-point advantage among Millennial voters (59% are Democrats or lean Democratic, 32% are Republican or lean Republican). In 2014, 53% of Millennial voters were Democrats or leaned Democratic, 37% tilted toward the GOP.
While there is a gender gap in partisan affiliation within every generational cohort, it is particularly pronounced among Millennial voters. A large majority of Millennial women (70%) identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, compared with 49% of Millennial men.
As recently as 2014, the Democratic advantage among Millennial women was a narrower – but still substantial – 21 percentage points, compared with 47 points today.
Among white voters, Millennials are the only generation in which the share of Democrats and Democratic leaners (52%) is greater than the share of Republicans and Republican leaners (41%).
Hope! Good News! You see? There are more of us, and our advantage is increasing. All we have to do is convince the kids to Show Up! It isn't a new problem, and it doesn't require new answers.
Children Worldwide
The job of the billion and more children in the world today is, of course, to take over the world, just as it is every day.
The children around the world need our help to learn how, and especially how to link up worldwide in the effort. That was the plan of One Laptop Per Child: powerful computers with sharp software tools, electricity and broadband Internet for every child in every country. It got derailed by the politics of numerous countries, and by corporate opposition to our program of Free Software and Creative Commons textbooks. The plan was killed in Nigeria by an election, in Thailand by a coup, in Libya by a civil war…But it continues in other countries, such as Peru, Uruguay, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Nepal, Gaza, and more. Other countries, such as Bangladesh and Brazil, have created their own versions.
Sharing in Gaza
For my 64th birthday last year, I played Beatles Rock Band with my family- I played drums while we sang, appropriately enough, “When I’m 64.” What made this birthday infinitely more memorable were the thousands of presents from a multitude of people I don’t even know—Palestinians, international charities, the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East), and the government of Israel. These presents were XO education laptops. On this birthday, April 29th, after ten months of delays, the UNRWA’s One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) celebrated the beginning of its program in Gaza. The UNRWA’s core team of administrators, parents and the children of Rafah Co-Ed Elementary School D joined OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte and UNRWA Commissioner-General Filippo Grandi for the donation.
Renewable Friday: Our Most Important Renewable Resource is Children
These millennials are going on “birth strike” because of climate change
Big mistake. We are going to need those children when we get to Carbon Neutrality and have to go Carbon Negative. Spread the word.
Bloomberg Opinion:
Want to Help Fight Climate Change? Have More Children
Don’t feel guilty about bringing children into a warming world. Be hopeful that they can help solve the problem.
I wrote this ten years ago. It has gradually gotten ever more so.
The Young South is Ours
KKK Rally At Ole Miss: Klan Outnumbered By Protesters (PHOTOS, VIDEOS)
Says it all, really.
I have pointed out the consequences of measurements showing that the South is shifting on race and other social issues by about 2% annually. We are within 15-20 years of the entire South tipping politically.
And now we see a Democratic Senator from Alabama, with North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Arizona coming into play ever more in each cycle.
Bishop William Barber likes to talk about this.
Rev. Barber: We are witnessing the birth pangs of a Third Reconstruction
Why were they doing all of this — rolling back voting rights, taking away criminal justice reform, and undoing equal protection under law? They said they wanted to “take back America.” They said “we came to redeem America.” Look at that word “redeem” — they used moral messages for immoral activity. And by the turn of the century, all of the gains of the First Reconstruction had been overturned.
This same pattern of progress and backlash repeated itself during America’s Second Reconstruction — what we often remember as “the Civil Rights movement.”
He also likes to remind everybody to stay above the snake line.
BTW, "redeem" is a Dog Whistle for the Redeemer Democrats during the first Reconstruction, who were building Jim Crow into a legal edifice.
Torturing Children
Human Rights Watch visits immigrant detention facilities (concentration camps, according to some), and litigates on behalf of immigrants. Rachel Maddow reported a while ago that they never talk to the press about what they observe, but in the current cases, they concluded that people would die if they did not speak out.
I am not going to detail the horrors involved. I mention this story because of the good and sane people taking them on. Feel free to support them.
A Win in the War on Women
June 7: Missouri Mandates ‘State-Sanctioned Sexual Assault’ For Every Woman Seeking Abortion
June 19: Planned Parenthood of St. Louis one step closer to losing license over state pelvic exam regulation
Planned Parenthood of St. Louis, Missouri's last remaining abortion clinic, told CBS News exclusively that it will no longer conduct a second pelvic exam that state regulators have recently mandated. Planned Parenthood doctors say the examination is "unethical" and stand by the decision even as it moves the clinic one step closer toward losing its license.
June 23: Missouri will no longer require pelvic exam before abortion
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
Gandhi
Then they claim it was their idea all along.
Me
Feel free to support Planned Parenthood of Missouri, and the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project. Its Deputy Director, Brigitte Amiri, was on Rachel Maddow last night. Missouri is still trying to shut down its last legal abortion provider. Kentucky and Mississippi are also down to one provider
Space!
SpaceX's Falcon Heavy is set to launch the first-ever 'solar sailing' spacecraft powered purely by light
That and two dozen other payload satellites were succesfully placed into orbit.
Carl Sagan's Solar Sail Is Finally Ready To Fly
The Planetary Society is launching LightSail 2 to fulfill a vision rooted in the future.
"Forty years ago, my professor Carl Sagan shared his dream of using solar sail spacecraft to explore the cosmos. The Planetary Society is realizing the dream," says Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye in a press statement. "Thousands of people from all over the world came together and supported this mission. We couldn't have done it without them. Carl Sagan, and his colleagues Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman, created our organization to empower people everywhere to advance space science and exploration. We are go for launch!"
After a few days in orbit, LightSail 2's 4 dual-sided solar panels will open, and a day after that 4 metallic booms will unfurl 4 triangular Mylar sails from storage. These sails will have a combined area of 32 square meters. Once open, they will move towards the sun, for half of each orbit. Situated in position, the craft will be receiving soft pushes from the sun's rays, which the Planetary Society estimates will be no stronger than the weight of a paperclip.
But being in zero gravity has its benefits. Around 30 days after sail deployment, the paperclip pushes will accumulate into a continual thrust that, if the experience of LightSail 1 holds true, will raise LightSail 2's orbit by a considerable amount.
LightSail 2 Has Launched!
Mission Operations Begin 2 July
Once LightSail 2 is released from Prox-1 on 2 July, the team will spend several days checking out the CubeSat’s systems before commanding its dual-sided solar panels to deploy. Following that, the spacecraft's solar sails will be deployed, roughly 2 weeks in total from launch day.
LightSail 2 Team Continues Tweaks and Tests for Sail Deployment
The LightSail 2 mission team is continuing to tweak and test the spacecraft in preparation for solar sail deployment, which is scheduled for no earlier than 21 July 2019. Flight controllers successfully uploaded a software patch that refined the operation of the spacecraft's electromagnetic torque rods, which are responsible for keeping LightSail 2 stable as it circles the Earth. Spare bandwidth during ground station passes has also allowed for the downlink of 2 new high-resolution images.
As ever, watch this spacetime.
Note: My thanks to arhpdx, who got me thinking of turning this comment in a Good News Diary into this Diary. And my thanks to all of the Good Gnusies who invite me to do a Diary from time to time.
Far too many people want to save the world whether the people in it want them to or not. We have to give the world options, not one size fits all Neo-Conservative delusions of making people stand up democracies by military force.
I worked for several years on the One Laptop Per Child version of giving a billion children (that is, all of them) sharp tools, rather than trying to tell them what to think. But part of the program is showing the children how to take over the world, which is their job in every generation, while far too many of their elders hold on to the levers of power until they are pried from their cold, dead hands.
Now I am trying to figure out how we do that in politics. I thank everybody here who understands the need for options, otherwise known as human rights, and works on one aspect or another of making them happen. I particularly thank everyone who provides facts to the millions of children of our opponents who thereby fall away from the hidebound thinking of their elders every year. Our opponents make a lot of noise. However, that is only to cover up their gradual but inevitable losses as they shrink toward irrelevance.
We will not replace them. Their own children will.