Trump voters are getting sick and dying

The higher the vote for Trump, the more COVID cases. The more cases, the more deaths.

It isn't just your intuition. 

Yesterday's post included a link to the "extremely detailed" report on the 2020 and 2016 presidential election. A close look at the detail at county and precinct level reveals how strongly people cluster into neighborhoods of like-minded people. That fine-grained report on election results combined with hospital and health department data allow people to examine the relationship between voting behavior and the incidence of COVID.

The conclusion is not surprising. It makes sense to think that how people voted in 2020 would be closely related to whether people get vaccinated and whether they follow behavioral practices like mask-wearing and social distancing. Trump downplayed COVID and the Fox/GOP vaccination message is about personal choice amid doubt and criticism of vaccines, masks, and social distancing. 

Two websites report on the county-level relationship between votes and COVID: 

The Why Axis:       https://thewhyaxis.substack.com  

ACASignups.net:   https://acasignups.net

This chart below shows the COVID case rate by counties, with each bar representing the Biden-Trump vote in a ten percent range. The bar on the left marks counties where Biden won 90% to 100% of the vote; on the right where Trump won over 90%. The intermediate bars represent ten percent increments, 80%-90%, 70%-80%, etc.

COVID cases: 

The chart below uses the same method for assigning a bar.

COVID deaths: 

The chart trend is smooth and it tells a vivid story: the higher the Trump vote, the more COVID sickness and death. At the extremes the death level difference is extreme: Nine-to-one more deaths.

A reasonable objection to these charts would be that the population numbers are not similar, and there are very few counties where the votes are 90%-plus for either candidate, or even 80% to 90%. Those are extreme places and are not generally representative. The charts below even out the population sizes, with each bar representing 10% of the U.S. population, approximately 33 million people.  Again, the bars are ranked from left to right, Biden vote to Trump vote, the 10% most Biden counties, the next 10%, up to the 10% most Trump-leaning counties.

COVID cases:

COVID deaths: 

The trend line is less smooth, but the pattern is clear, although less extreme. When using large, even sample sizes of 33 million Americans, the difference between the death rates drops from extreme Trump counties having nine times the death rate of extreme Biden counties down to five times the death rate when looking at two pools of 33 million people.

Vaccination rates as of September 18, 2021 show exactly the pattern one might expect.  Counties where people voted for Biden have higher vaccination rates than Trump-supporting counties. Again, each bar represents 33 million Americans, showing the lowest Trump-supporting counties (26% or less of the vote) up to the highest Trump-supporting counties (71% or more.)

Readers surely assumed something like this was taking place. What we did not know was the scale. 

Using large population numbers, based on county-wide votes, Trump-supporting counties have three-to-five times the COVID death rates as do Biden-supporting counties. In fact, if we incorporate what we saw in yesterday's post, that county data aggregates Trump neighborhoods with Biden ones, county-wide data obscures and softens the relationship between voting and COVID incidence. This is especially true in the middle bars, where counties are a mix of Biden and Trump precincts.  The two extreme bars on left and right, where the death rate difference exceeds five times, is a more likely representation of the actual case and death rate skew between Trump areas and Biden areas. In those extreme counties--urban ones like Multnomah (Portland) in Oregon where nearly every neighborhood is strongly pro-Biden, and rural bright red counties like Harney and Malheur in Oregon, where nearly everyone supports Trump--we see the relationship between Biden voters and Trump voters most clearly. Those are in the first two charts.

Whether the "true" skew is best understood as Trump voters having nine times the death rates of Biden voters, or only five times, we now have validation of our intuition and a scale for it.

 

Forget Red-State, Blue-State

America is not divided by states and not even by county. 

It is divided by precinct.

The marriage of the fifty states just isn't working out. I hear casual talk of political divorce. 

People on the left say Texas and Alabama and Wyoming and the Dakotas should do their own thing. They are standing in the way of what Blue-America wants and the planet needs. Go do your own country, where abortion is banned, where the minimum wage is $7.50, and where you can spread COVID to each other. Good riddance. Meanwhile people in "Heartland America" scoff at high-tax California and its West Coast ilk, with its expensive housing, the fussing over pronouns, and where people there illegally find sanctuary. There are red states and blue states and we don't even like each other anymore. 

The problem isn't at the state level. 

The New York Times publishes an "Extremely Detailed Map of the 2020 Election. Here is the link to it: Click: Extremely detailed 

There is an urban consciousness that votes Democratic and a rural one that votes Republican. Since there are urban counties, suburban counties, and rural counties, details at the county level reveal significant differences. But he real difference takes place at the precinct level. County numbers obscure the reality by aggregating diverse precincts. I looked closely at Jackson County, Oregon, my home. A large precinct in college town Ashland had 5,995 votes for Biden and 927 for Trump, an 84%-13% margin for Biden. Moving the curser two precincts away into a rural area showed a geographically large very rural precinct with a vote of 859 for Trump and 274 for Biden, a 74%-24% margin for Trump. Same county.

It is a mistake for Democrats to dismiss the Texas of Governor Abbott as foreign territory. After all, there is Austin, home of the University of Texas and a growing technology center. It is part of Blue-America, educated and diverse. It shows up as a big splotch of blue precincts with a 80%-20% Biden margin. But it isn't just Austin. All the big Texas cities are bright blue. A Dallas precinct shows a vote of 782 for Biden and 25 for Trump, a 95%-4% margin.

Pick an area of interest. I looked at Massachusetts. It is undeniably a blue state, but there are areas west of Springfield that are Trump country, with 10%+ margins for Trump. 

The differences in political orientation by neighborhood suggests both the sorting of people by lifestyle and the limitations of the message of each political party. Democrats are turning off rural people. Losing rural precincts 90-10 is a sign that Democratic message and policies have problems that go beyond race and cultural symbols. Rural people are the biggest beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act, with its expanded Medicaid that saved rural hospitals, yet they vote decisively against the Democrats who voted it in. Democrats are not being realistic about where a city-dweller's food and energy and building materials come from and what takes place to extract those things and get them to market. I liken it to the convenient blindness of people who eat meat but oppose slaughterhouses. 

Republicans speak of urban areas as hell-holes of violent crime, protests, arson, and racial conflict; something they will fix with better borders and hard-knuckle policing. The GOP under Trump represents and advocates for an America that was not so great for Blacks, Hispanics, women, gays, and people who are succeeding in the 21st century American economy. They lose those urban areas decisively. 

An American civil war won't take place between the states. It is taking place right now, as ongoing political disfunction because each party has retreated to the corner of its best precincts. It doesn't need to be that way. My U.S. Senator Ron Wyden gets out and around. His political home base is Portland, but until COVID he visited every one of the counties in Oregon every year, all 36, of which about 28  are undeniably rural. He won a majority of the votes in Oregon's sole bright red congressional district. He has said to me he isn't interested in running for president. 

Jon Tester of Montana, a Democrat with the approximate political orientation of Joe Biden, is doing the things a senator does when he is eyeing a run. He wrote his book, Grounded. Could a guy who operates a wheat farm and who looks like this possibly win a Democratic primary? Maybe not. He just doesn't look like a Democrat, and that is the problem.

Oregon Congressional Districts: Republicans took the deal

Republicans had something to lose.

Better to settle for what the bipartisan legislature came up with than what the Democratic Secretary of State might do.

The reality is that states that have the power to gerrymander Congressional Districts will likely do so. This especially advantages Republicans this year. Texas gained two Congressional Districts. Florida gained one. Both have Republicans in control of redistricting. It is a given that they are going to "crack and pack" which is the slang term for drawing CD lines in such a way that concentrations of opposition party votes get divided among larger areas with one's own party's voters in the majority. The other device is to "pack" the opposition into as few CDs as possible where they will win with huge majorities, thus wasting votes. 

Democrats do it, too, but have fewer opportunities. Maryland is a good example of a Democratic gerrymander. Oregon Democrats heard loud and clear from the national party that they had a national responsibility to Democrats to lend their weight to countering what Texas and Florida have done and will proudly do again. 

Oregon Republican legislators got what they thought was a good and fair map for state house and senate districts. This is no surprise; they shared in creating it. Republicans had something to lose if they blew up the overall redistricting plan because the federal side of it created a five-to-one Democratic congressional advantage. Democrats planned to pack Republicans into an eastern and southern Oregon district. Then their plan carefully allocated metropolitan Portland's Democratic voters among four congressional districts tilting them all slightly blue. Liberal Eugene's district, represented by Peter DeFazio, was to lose some Trump-oriented timber counties. 

Here is the proposed Democratic map:

Wasn't this unfair? Didn't Democrats feel guilty? Maybe a little. But they didn't want to feel like saps, either. 

Republicans take a narrow GOP advantage in Texas and divide its 36 districts by 23 Republicans and 13 Democrats. Florida takes its small advantage and divides its 27 seats by 16 Republicans to 11 Democrats. The message nationally was clear: Oregon, don't be fair with your extra seat. Be smart. This isn't civics class, this is real life. Play the game the way Texas plays the game. But in Oregon's tradition of politics, partisan power is denied, not celebrated, so the Democratic plan was arguably very reasonable and fair. It just happened to work out to create a likely 5-1 delegation.

Republicans had the power to stop the Democratic plan for Congressional Districts by denying a quorum, and they did so. Democrats adjusted the lines a little. Now the district boundaries create a tossup district, one that includes the area east of the Willamette River and the city of Bend. Bend is urbanized, prosperous, and it attracts well-educated people, making it Democratic. It is a competitive district, with a future likely to be growing more blue. Both sides can think they won; neither side need be embarrassed.

Here is the new map, just agreed to and signed into law:

Republicans took the deal, even though it might well be a 5-1 delegation. They sacrificed a potentially better deal on the congressional districts--one created by a panel of judges--to lock in the state boundaries as drawn with their help. They protected themselves against a a known threat. Had they not taken the deal a Democratic Secretary of State takes over redistricting of state legislative districts and could pack and crack herself. She could draw lines so that Republicans were put into the same district and forced to run against each other. 

In the end, it was hardball, threats, and hostage-taking. Democrats had the blunt instrument of a CD map that gave a 5-1 delegation, a strong opening bid. Republicans had the blunt instrument of denying a quorum which would blow everything up. Democrats gave Republicans power to share in making state district lines, which created a "hostage," a state legislative map Republican liked. Democrats had the blunt instrument of a Democratic Secretary of State. Republican state legislators chose their own electoral interests over pressure from the national GOP.

None of this is pretty, but in the end politics in a democracy worked. People acted on their own interests, compromised, were selfish and hypocritical, and they came up with something that a majority of people can live with.

Avoid the unvaccinated

Headline: 

"Oregon Nurses Association: Over 80 nurses to leave Asante after Oct. 18 deadline"

Comment e-mailed to me: 

"Don't let the door hit your butt on the way out the door."

A month ago I mentioned I got a haircut. About the time she was finishing, the stylist said she wasn't vaccinated.  "I did the research," she said. "Vaccinations are dangerous and COVID is a hoax." I observed here in this blog that I probably shouldn't have gotten a haircut, at least not from her. She wore a mask but haircuts are close work. She stands right next to 20 or 30 people every day and she isn't vaccinated. She is a risk to me. Breakthrough cases happen. It is important I not bring something home to my wife. Next time I get a haircut I will ask if the person is vaccinated. 

I have also written about a neighbor who opposes the COVID vaccination. His job is to deliver and install major appliances for a local company. That puts him in people's kitchens for a hour. I now know to insist that workers who come to the house be vaccinated, and in any case for me to stay well away from them. Are they COVID infected?  Who knows? That is the point. Their being vaccinated improves the odds for me.

We have seen protests on the side of people opposing vaccination requirements. There was a rally in Medford Saturday, billed as supporting workers' rights.

Employers are caught in the middle, but it is not clear they are hearing from both sides. Do they hear from customers who are hesitant to do business with people and organizations that are lax about mask requirements and who employ people at higher risk for spreading COVID? There are some like me out there. And what about employees who want safe working conditions and prefer not to share an office or delivery-truck van with someone who won't get vaccinated. Those workers have rights, too.

The e-mail correspondent who sent me the comment about nurses said, 

"I wouldn't want to be working next to a guy who won't get vaccinated against COVID during a COVID epidemic. I also wouldn't want to be working next to a guy who won't get vaccinated for typhoid during a typhoid epidemic."

Asante, Southern Oregon's regional hospital group, is insisting their employees be vaccinated. It is the Governor's order and they are complying. It is controversial. The County Administrator informed the local County Commissioners that Asante welcomed that order as a legal justification for requiring something they believed was good policy for the health and safety of patients and employees. Hospital employees who won't get vaccinated are placed on unpaid leave. The Jackson County Commissioners oppose vaccination mandates and questioned Asante's decision, given the nursing shortage.

I am happy with Asante's position. I applaud them. I have discretion on whether to get a haircut or to allow installation of an appliance, but if I am admitted to the hospital it probably won't be discretionary. I will likely have a "co-morbidity" at that moment, and breakthrough COVID would be a complication. Doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists, phlebotomists, all get up close to do their work and they all exhale. Their being vaccinated reduces my risk of their infecting me.  My correspondent said,

If nurses don't care about spreading COVID to the people in their care, then they are in the wrong profession, and should damned well get out of it. Peter, you can put them to work picking melons in the wide open outdoors of a melon field, but get them the heck away from sick people.

Customers and co-workers have an interest in avoiding high-risk people. Some employers are doing it willingly, and before the federal mandate. My former employer, Morgan Stanley, requires all employees who come into any office to be vaccinated. If I were still working there, I would appreciate the policy, and as a client of that office I appreciate it now. Unvaccinated people are more likely to get and spread the disease and I prefer to avoid that risk. I avoid Coastal, the handy farm supply store near my farm, because, although the employees wear masks, the store doesn't enforce the mask rule on customers very well, so many go unmasked. Will I catch COVID there? Probably not, but the odds are higher than if I shopped at a place where customers were masked and vaccination rates were high. I am not making a fuss about it. I just shop elsewhere.

Employees may not feel comfortable speaking out to say they want co-workers to be vaccinated. I liken it to smoking in offices 40 years ago. A person made uncomfortable by a co-worker's smoking just kept his mouth shut and put up with it. The smoker's right to smoke had priority. Their freedom. That was then. 

Now no one would insist on the right to smoke cigarettes in a hospital. It would be understood that their smoke risks and bothers others. Employers are more likely to feel empowered to require vaccinations if they understood that there is support for a vaccine requirement by customers and co-workers. The support is there.  

We need to speak up.

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Defending against Domestic Civil Unrest

     "I was not emotionally prepared for my fellow U.S. citizens killing me."

"Police actions" pit armed defenders against people they are supposed both to protect and protect against. 

It is an impossible job. It is also an emotionally conflicted one.

Slessler, 1971, with son Nathan

Larry Slessler is a veteran of the early years of the Vietnam War. He returned home and defended against college anti-war protesters. 

In the aftermath of the January 6th assault on the Capitol, four Capitol police officers have died by suicide. The actions of the Capitol police have come under intense criticism, sometimes for being too lax and accommodating and sometimes for being too aggressive. Supporters of the Capitol police point to video showing hundreds of people bashing through barriers, some shouting threats of death, and police officers under physical attack. The former president called Ashli Babbitt, the woman killed while crawling through the smashed window to enter the House chamber, a patriot who was "murdered." Today Portland, Oregon police are criticized in both directions; some say they are too lax, some say too aggressive. 

It is an old familiar problem, felt acutely by people doing the work of defending against civil disturbances. Slessler was one of them.

Slessler grew up in Medford and graduated from Medford High in 1957 and University of Oregon in 1961. He entered the military in the fall of 1961 and served until 1972. His service included Cuban Crisis of 1962 and Vietnam 1965-1966. His post-military career involved service to veterans and “Welfare to Work” programs.

Guest Post by Larry Slessler

My January 6, 2021 occurred in early May of 1970. I shared that event with Major Cleo Hill. We were both ROTC Instructors at the University of Washington in Seattle and also friends. Anti-Vietnam War activity was a normal part of my everyday life. Some days that got personal. For example; one day two college co-eds dumped a bucket of paint on me. I was in military uniform. It cost me a chunk of money to replace that uniform. My dignity was not so easily replaced.

Slessler, 2021

On Jan 17, 1970; Silas Trim Bissell and his wife placed a bomb at the University of Washington ROTC building. Luck was with us because Bissell had made a mistake and the bomb’s wiring was faulty. His story is long and winding and worthy of a separate writing. The short version is Bissell was soon captured, made bail and he went underground. In 1987, 17 years later, a tip to the FBI led to his re-capture. His sentence for attempted murder; two years in jail. He was released after 18 months. Silas Trim Bissell died of brain cancer in 2002 at age 60. I would like to say that as a man that believes in redemption I was sorry he died a terrible death so young. That would be a lie. I am getting closer to forgiving him two decades after his death.

Monday, May 4th of 1970 was historic for the United States. At Kent State University, Ohio, students protested against the Vietnam War and having ROTC on campus. The Ohio National Guard fired on the protesters, killing 4 and wounding 9. Students from campuses across the nation launched massive protests. Ironically; one of the four Kent State students killed was a ROTC student and future military officer who was observing the event.

I don’t remember if it was May 4th, or the next day. Students rose up in protest on the University of Washington campus. Soon a mob of angry students charged through our front door. Major Hill and I were isolated. One of the attackers leading the charge had a bike chain in his hand. Clearly we were a target for a violent attack. Cleo and I of like mind, decided that when outnumbered 50 to 1 don’t try and take prisoners. We ducked into our supply room and locked the door. There were no windows so the only way the mob could get to us was by breaking down the door.

The angry demonstrators gathered around the door and Cleo and I could hear them debate. There was a loud disagreement about breaking down the door and getting to us. The argument was not about the morality of their action. The debate was about if Cleo and I were armed or not. We were not and never were, but the mob did not know that. After some further discussion the group decided we were armed and would shoot them; so they left. Cleo and my safety and possibly our lives, was saved that day by chance and the mistaken belief we were armed and would shoot like the Kent State National Guard did to Kent State students.

I had already served in the Vietnam War. What I did not comprehend that day was that in Vietnam I expected the enemy to try and kill me. That was what you do in war; kill the other guy. I was not emotionally prepared for my fellow U. S. citizens killing me.

The difference is very clear. The students at Kent State, and me at the University of Washington, were experiencing what I call “Sanctuary” trauma. A university, a church, a hometown, a college campus…these are places where we are supposed to feel and be safe. When I/we are betrayed in our sanctuary by our own people, our fellow citizens, it inflicts a wound that is far more difficult to heal from than a wound from an enemy soldier, a tornado or other such events.

I feel a deep connection and kinship with the January 6th 2021 Washington D.C. police, military and members of congress that were killed or wounded physically and emotionally. It is a long term wound to the soul when any man or woman is attacked and harmed by our fellow citizens that we should be able to trust. If you doubt that ask one of the U.S Olympic women gymnasts molested and betrayed by a supposed protector/doctor and U.S. Olympic officials.

Postscript: another May 1970 and 2021 connection is a second campus shooting on May 15th 1970. At the Black college; Jackson State in Mississippi, police fired 460 rounds on a student dorm killing 2 and wounding 12. On May 15, 2021, 51 years later, a formal public apology was issued. At two college campuses during May, 1970 National Guard and police killed 6 students and wounded 21. Accountability…zero. The jury is out in 2021.

Celebrating Diversity in Medford (Notwithstanding Tucker Carlson)

Out of many, one.

Tucker Carlson is in the news, just in time for the 28th annual Greater Medford Multicultural Fair.

Carlson is the most popular opinion host on Fox News. He says that White Americans are victims of a "Great Replacement" policy, one intended "to change the racial mix of this country, that's the reason, to reduce the political power of people whose ancestors lived here and drastically increase the proportion of American newly arrived here from the Third World."  

He describes immigrants as making America less its real self, therefore taking something from him.

Everyone wants to make a racial issue out of it, ‘Ooh, the white replacement theory.’  No, no, no, this is a voting rights question. I have less political power because they are importing a brand-new electorate. Why should I sit back and take that? The power that I have as an American, guaranteed at birth, is one man, one vote. And they are diluting it.

Meanwhile, in Medford, done virtually because of COVID, we will have a Facebook version of the traditional September gathering of people and booths. It will be broadcast on Facebook beginning at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time. In Facebook, go to "Medford Multicultural Fair." The Fair is an affirmation of variety and diversity. The live events in prior years are feel-good events of people together. The gathering has a subtext. These people are Americans. Americans come in varieties. Variety adds to America. It doesn't dilute it.

Much of today's political buzz says that immigration and borders--not budgets and infrastructure--are the issues that will determine America's political future. Trump thrived in the GOP primary and 2016 general election with a message that Carlson has adopted:

When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

I will relate a conversation I had with a man about my age, and like me, White, married, and financially comfortable in retirement. He is a conservative Republican who voted for Trump. The dialog went about like this:

HIM: "Some new people bought the house next door. They are both doctors, nice people. They are young. Have kids. They are a bi-racial couple, like you and Debra. The kids are mixed-race, like Dillon. She looks Vietnamese and he is, well, American, you know, like us."

ME: "You mean he has European heritage."

HIM: "Yeah, regular American. White."

ME: " I probably wouldn't normally put it the way you did. Your neighbors are both Americans. I said "European" extraction because that's what we are, in contrast to the wife, of Vietnamese extraction. My Debra is American. The doctor whose heritage is Vietnamese is American. American isn't a race or ethnicity. American doesn't mean White. There are all sorts of races here."

HIM: 'Hmm. [pause.] Yeah. Of course. I guess I sort of assumed---well, you know, American is White. It was just something in the back of my mind, but yeah, I get it. American isn't a race. Right." 

That topic of conversation doesn't always go so smoothly, but he is a smart guy, and he got the point even if a media diet of Fox News obscures it. Real Americans come from a variety of backgrounds and ethnicities.

I am part of that American story in my marriage to a woman of Chinese ethnicity, and a son who is a mixture of the two of us. America is a country consisting mostly of immigrants. From my fathers' side, the first Sage came from Wales to Middletown Connecticut in the 1600s, David Dudley Sage. From my mother's side, I am the grandson of the two members of the "huddled masses" who came to Ellis Island from Greece in the great immigration period of the first decade of the 20th Century, Panos and Chrisoula Kostarelos. They became Americans. I, too, am an American. So is Debra, so is Dillon.

Painting by James Kirk, 1993.  American Family

 

Vice President Harris could discard electoral votes from red states

Why not?

Trump and the "Stop the Steal" crowd say the Vice President has the power to discard electoral votes.

OK, Vice President Harris, say you agree.

It is an empty threat because no one remotely thinks that the Democrats would attempt turnabout.

Recent reporting has made clear that the "Stop the Steal" effort was not just idle showboating. Trump had a comprehensive plan and Mike Pence was torn over whether to implement it. Plan A for Trump was to win the election; he came close, but lost. Plan B was for Republican election officials in key states to void or reverse their elections, either by "finding" votes in Georgia, by having a Republican governor in Arizona say the election was fraudulent, or by having legislative majorities in key states do it by claiming plenary power to choose an alternative slate of electors. Trump tried Plan B with phone calls and White House visits to election officials, but enough people with roles in election administration were unwilling to call foul, so that was unsuccessful.

Plan C was to have Pence use unverified accusations of fraud to justify claiming state elections were doubtful and to discard Biden electoral votes. It was expected to cause chaotic civil disturbances, requiring martial law. In that context, Pence would refer the election to the House of Representatives, a Constitutional remedy in the event of a failed election, letting the House with one vote per state choose Trump. 

Click: Poll

Trump's claims of a stolen election are loud and persistent. Polls this week suggest some 28% of Americans believe Trump and believe the election was stolen from him, and 8% of Americans tell polls violence is justified to restore Trump to the presidency. There is quiet maneuvering. In Georgia a U.S. Representative is giving up a seat to run for Georgia Secretary of State, the third highest position in the state. Trump gave his enthusiastic endorsement. Career election officials in states with Republican legislatures are being replaced with partisan ones. Plan B is underway for future elections.

Plan C, Vice Presidential power to choose the president, sits out there as an idea unchallenged by Republican officeholders and thought leaders. Their silence is validating Trump.

Is this an extraordinarily dangerous precedent, especially when the sitting Vice President is Kamala Harris? If the Democratic candidate lost the election in 2024, couldn't she just discard a few inconvenient electoral votes and elect a Democrat? 

Kamala Harris presiding

No. She won't do that. Republican officeholders can remain silent about Plans B and C in the secure knowledge that a presidential coup d'état is a one-way street. Trump would try it. Biden would not. The Democratic brand has been locked in: Elections matter. There is one "strong man" candidate, Trump. Biden is a legislator, an institutionalist, a senator who got kicked upstairs because he was too old to be dangerous. Strong man government isn't in Biden's nature.

The validity of elections is on the political table and parties are choosing their sides. Democrats support elections. So do Republicans when it comes to every office but the presidency. Republicans are in process of developing a different attitude on presidential elections. Republicans are praising partisan "election audits." The one in Arizona is the first of many. At Trump's urging the Republican governor of Texas agreed to do election audits in Texas counties that Trump won, even after the Texas governor had averred that the Texas election went smoothly. A new meme is settling in among the GOP electorate: Elections aren't a trustworthy way to choose presidents. 

Because Democrats are presenting themselves as virtuous defenders of orderly transitions in government, Republican officeholders are free to ignore the precedents they are setting. No one thinks for a moment that Kamala Harris will discard electoral votes in states that vote Republican to keep Biden in office. 

That lets discarding presidential elections be on-brand for Republicans and that idea isn't fading away. It is becoming normalized.

Women are primates, too.

Why would women tolerate male-led governments limiting their reproductive choices?

A primatologist offers a possible answer.

Throughout much of human history men have dominated women. Men are generally larger and stronger than women, giving them an advantage physically, but women control reproduction. One way males try to control females is by limiting their reproductive choices.

Today's Guest Post is the third in a series by Hogan Sherrow, an anthropologist and primatologist. Women, like men, are mammals, and in the family of great apes. Sherrow notes that women negotiate some of the same problems that female gorillas and chimpanzees face. He is a Fulbright Scholar and has a Ph.D. in Evolutionary Anthropology from Yale University. He has studied the behavior and ecology of humans and other animals on three different continents. Hogan now consults for individuals, organizations, and campaigns, here in the Rogue Valley as Owner of You Evolving, LLC, www.you-evolving.com.

Guest Post by Hogan Sherrow

Texans and the Taliban III: The Female Paradox

In my first two contributions I discussed the stone-age laws enacted by the men of the Taliban and Texas in an attempt to control the sexual behavior and reproduction of women. I said they were displaying primal, evolutionary male behaviors that have no place in modern society. I also said giving voice and power to females, and individuals with other perspectives was our best chance to rein in bad male behavior. However, I left out what other roles women play in both situations. What do they want? How are they working to get what they want?

Some women in Texas and Afghanistan have rallied around laws designed to control and limit their behavior and reproductive options. In Afghanistan, women fully covered in traditional garb recently organized and counter-protested in Kabul, in support of the Taliban. Women rally supports Taliban They wanted traditional values upheld, including segregation of men and women in public settings. They also wanted women opposing the Taliban to stop claiming to represent all women in Afghanistan.

This may seem impossible, when viewed through a western lens, after all, how could any women support the Taliban? We need to remember, though, that in 2016, Donald Trump received 47% of the vote from white women. Pew Research.  (That number increased in 2020 with 53% of white women supporting Mr. Trump. Pew: 2020) Another Pew poll found 52% of Texas women felt abortion should be illegal in nearly all cases. Pew, abortion view by gender

Why would women support policies that explicitly restrict or attack their rights? Cultural forces are important. Religion serves to reinforce the subjugation of women and the dominance of men, further institutionalizing patriarchy. Seventy-nine percent of all adults who believe that abortion should be illegal in all cases also believe in God. Beyond religious motivations, in Texas ethnic identity strongly influences beliefs around abortion as well. 

Cultural influences don’t fully explain why the majority of white women voted for a known, admitted misogynist for President in 2020. Although direct comparisons aren't possible, it is enlightening to consider why non-human female primates support male behavior, even when it’s dangerous or goes against their apparent interests. Among over 350 non-human primates species, each with their own distinct behaviors, similar circumstances often elicit similar behaviors. For example, in some species males are twice the size of females and can easily dominate them one-on-one. This is common in gorillas, along with multiple old world monkey species. Those large males are potentially dangerous to females and their infants. Why do those females choose to mate with large, dangerous males and raise their offspring? One explanation is that large, powerful males can protect females and their infants from predators, and other bachelor males.

In chimpanzees, males bond together to defend territories, and females benefit from the resources inside those territories. As a result, males are large and very aggressive, and they regularly dominate and coerce females. Despite the frequent violence and stress experienced by female chimpanzees, most of them choose to mate with high-ranking, aggressive males, many of whom are directly responsible for the violence and stress those females experience. Chimpanzee females are attracted to bellicose males, despite the inherent risks involved because they provide territorial defense.

Both gorilla and chimpanzee females leave the groups they were born into and attach themselves to one or more males. However, the groups are open and females can leave at any time, although that carries with it its own risks namely infanticide. Both male chimpanzees and gorillas engage in infanticide, attacking and killing unrelated infants, and there is evidence that it has had a strong impact on female behavior. It is a dangerous world and primate females often must seek protection. Powerful males are one way females can find safety and females appear to cooperate with those males in order to gain a competitive advantage in the struggle to survive and produce living offspring.

In both the Taliban’s Afghanistan and Governor Abbott’s Texas, powerful men control resources and some women seem willing to support them, despite the obvious threats their sexist laws and policies present to the health and safety of all women. Combined with the cultural influences mentioned above, females adopt a strategy of accepting and supporting the domination of males as the price of surviving in a society in which dominant males are the primary danger.

Hypocrite!!!

People don't like being told what to do. 

Democratic leaders sometimes get noticed not wearing masks.  

It is hard to be consistently good.

This blog has made the point repeatedly that the most powerful political language is body language. I argue that the denoted words of a political actor are almost irrelevant, and the only thing that matters is the visible policy actions they take, combined with the emotional signals they project when they take them. Words don't matter as much as physical body movement, tone, posture, demeanor. People want to know what makes politicians angry or happy or fearful, not what their policies are. People infer the policies from the direction of the emotion. My saying denoted words don't matter at all would overstate my point, but only slightly. Actual words mean something, but actions and revealed emotions speak louder than words. Much louder.

Hollywood celebrities are perceived as being on the blue team. They were photographed at the Emmy awards crowded together, indoors, maskless. The media could not help but notice. It fed a meme, that Hollywood stars are elitists who don't think the rules apply to them. Worse, they required the hired help at the award ceremony to wear masks, but celebrities did not require it of themselves. It was proof positive of elitist hypocrisy. People noticed. 

Nancy Pelosi was photographed without a mask when she got her hair washed. California governor Gavin Newsom ate dinner at a fancy restaurant without a mask. Oregon governor Kate Brown was photographed outdoors near her security detail, all maskless. Mistakes happen.

Democrats are taking the hard path. They say people should be virtuous: Get vaccinated, wear a mask, social distance. Do it for your own health and for the health of others. Be good. And because "being good" helps everyone, the public must be good. Therefore, we mandate it. 

People resent mandates and they resent rule-makers.  Regardless of party or position, we want rule-makers to follow the rules. Democrats howled when they discovered that Donald Trump lives and spends like a billionaire and paid a total of $750 in federal income taxes, less in taxes than a person living in near poverty. We pay burdensome taxes and he doesn't. Unfair. Inconsistent. Hypocrite.

One does not need to be a Fox-viewing Trump supporter to resent mask requirements. The San Francisco Mayor, London Breed, publicly urges SF residents to avoid big gatherings, yet she was noticed and called out for dancing maskless at a crowded club. Her response: "We don’t need the fun police to come in and micromanage and tell us what we should or shouldn’t be doing,”  Even the rule-makers resent the rules.  

Trump made a virtue out of being bad. Darned right he breaks the rules, and he is proud of it. He sold himself as the guy sticking a thumb in the eye of the Democratic elitists and Deep State tyrants and the fun police with their PC rules about what to say and think. He whipped off his mask and would not be photographed with one. He said it was about freedom, and he sold that idea to his supporters. It was an easy sell. Everyone resents the "fun police" a little, and maybe a lot. The GOP approach makes it easy to be consistent. If you choose to wear a mask, it is because you are considerate, a sign of virtue. If one chooses not to wear a mask or get vaccinated, it is a sign of independence and courage.  Either way is on-brand. "Do your own thing" is a "win-win" message.

Democrats have a lose-lose one. People are on the lookout for cracks in the facade of virtue. Eventually, in a world where everyone has a camera, and where political leaders are always "on," someone will slip. The slip de-legitimizes the person promoting virtue and the causes they promote. It is body-language proof of hypocrisy.

Democratic "slips" as regard masks go a long way toward justifying the Republican message on COVID as illegitimate over-reach. Ninety-nine percent compliance is not enough. People saw photographs. They saw body language. 

Fertility, Part Two: What about men?

Women's Lib isn't just for women.

It changed the role of men, too.

Are men even necessary anymore? Are they worth the bother? The old deal between the sexes was that men were the primary breadwinner. Increasingly women in the workforce are the primary or equal provider. Moreover, they aren't poisoned by the testosterone that makes men prone to anti-social violence, crime, and foolish risk-taking.

College classmate Jim Stodder returns to finish his reflection on fertility, this time looking at the role of men in America. He has a PhD.in Economics from Yale (1990) and is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Administrative Sciences at Boston University, where he teaches financial regulation and international economics. He maintains a website at www.jimstodder.com

Guest Post by Jim Stodder

The ‘Deal’ Between the Sexes-- is Falling Apart.  Part Two

Sex roles are changing, and the focus has been on women empowerment. Now female-to-male enrollments in college are a 60-40 split in the U.S and trending toward two to one. We read about the rage of "incels"--involuntarily celibate males--against feminists they consider hypocritical in preferring male partners to be successful or attractive in traditional ways. Incels aren't, and they are losing out. The media report conflicts that were unknown a short time ago, the conflict between male-to-female trans women and "cis" women, and complaints by TERFs (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists) who do not want "women-only" spaces like changing rooms and women’s shelters used by those not born as biological females.

Changing roles for women mean new roles for men. On one hand, in the world of #MeToo consciousness, men are instructed to be more respectful of women -- or else. But there is a growing male reaction. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, in her Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present, has shown how a wounded “national masculinity” and resentment at falling prospects can lead men (and women) to long for a strongman who can win it all back. Donald Trump has supporters like the Proud Boys, with their biggest guys marching in front, muscles bulging beneath tight t-shirts.

Trump revels in his reputation as a stud, bragging about his ability to "grab pussies" and get away with it. Most white American women voters in 2016 or 2020 cast their ballots for him. What most of them would probably consider disqualifying in their own workplace was apparently OK when it came to their Commander in Chief.

For most jobs, a rational sexual division of labor has vanished. Few jobs anymore require male upper body strength. But one job has always been for women alone: Childbirth. Shulamith Firestone argued over 50 years ago in her Dialectic of Sex–to the incredulity and outrage of most–that the liberation of women requires abolishing the division of reproductive labor. Firestone predicted that technology would advance to free women from childbirth itself.

This seemed quite sci-fi in 1970. But in 2017, researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia maintained healthy sheep embryos in artificial wombs for up to 4 weeks and said that they can go much longer. The lead researcher says that complete extra-uterine delivery is still “a pipe dream,” but bioethicists (and techno-feminists inspired by Firestone) are already smoking that pipe. Today’s children may well live to see artificial wombs. It will be for the safety and health of mother and child, of course. But it will also destroy the last reason for a sexual division of labor.

There will still be sex roles and sexual preferences. But one can predict that both may be more broadly defined and variable. In the hands of a great sci-fi writer, Ursula LeGuin, it is a possible future: In her Left Hand of Darkness, she imagines gender as relationship-specific, depending on the dynamics between partners. Our new world of gender transition and fluidity makes this 1969 novel seem prescient. (Shockingly for a heavily male readership like sci-fi, it won both the Hugo and Nebula awards for 1970.)

The old sex-role deal was essentially the man providing physical protection and support in return for the woman providing sexual access and an explicit guarantee of paternity. But many women now get that protection and support from other sources and are deciding to have few if any children.

So our old deal is dying, what is our new one? I would be crazy to say I know, but there are clearly better options possible for both sexes. The opportunities on the women’s side are more obvious. But men too are benefitting from less constricted sex roles, by being freer to explore new careers, parenting, and emotional territory.

I will end by citing the mytho-poet Robert Bly, and his book, Iron John. He shows how today’s “men’s issues” echo back from the ancient Sumerian myths of Gilgamesh. (Gilgamesh was part-god, and many scholars see the much later Greek Odysseus, 600-800 BCE, as based on this earlier work form 2,000 to 2,500 BCE.) Gilgamesh’s inseparable first antagonist is his wild-man “double,” Enkidu, sent by jealous gods to kill him. But they become more than friends, almost two halves of the same soul. The wild-man winds up being “tamed” by a female sex-priestess and only then is he reliable and disciplined enough to be of much use to Gilgamesh.

When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh breaks every rule to visit him in the Underworld. As a punishment, Gilgamesh has to stay there a long time alone, a most terrible punishment. But he comes out the other side. Bly’s interpretation is that modern man must, like Gilgamesh, descend into the underworld of his own unconscious before he can begin his hero’s quest in earnest.

Bly, I think, is not at all surprised by the tortured displays with which I began this section, modern males in search of their identities. He sees much of our quest as our search for how we can be a good father, a painful journey inasmuch as many of us had only the most limited and formal relations with our own dads. He sees our current race of males as stunted half-men who never learned or even discussed with their own fathers what it means to be a man. We have to do better for our own sons, and this requires reliving our own pain and confusion as boys.

But I am convinced that there are deeper and stronger men, braver and more beautiful men, waiting to greet us and become us. There’s really nowhere else to go, so let the journey begin.

Fertility: Women are choosing fewer babies

     "So as far as controlling the means of reproduction, you can say that in the rich countries at least, women have been 'on strike,' or are at least maintaining a 'work slow-down'.”

                  Jim Stodder

It is no secret. The birthrate for American women is below replacement rate.

College classmate Jim Stodder is an economist with a special interest in "decision sciences." American women--indeed women worldwide where women have choices--are having fewer children. He has prepared a two-part Guest Post on what is happening and why. Today's post looks at the data--what is the reality of family size. A subsequent post will look at the reasons why a traditional cultural "deal" between the sexes is falling apart. Men were breadwinners; women were child bearers. Now, not so much.

Jim Stodder has a PhD. in Economics from Yale (1990) and is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Administrative Sciences at Boston University where he teaches financial regulation and international economics.  His current research is on the best design for carbon taxes and on digital "local community currencies" developed for Barcelona, Brussels, Switzerland, and Bavaria.  He has consulted professionally with all of these. 

Guest Post by Jim Stodder

The ‘Deal’ Between the Sexes -- is Falling Apart, Part One. What the Data Say.

Something big has been slowly building over the last 50 years. In 1970, Shulamith Firestone wrote her brilliant Dialectic of Sex. In it she predicted that just as socialist workers’ movements aimed to control the means of production, the women’s revolution must seize the means of reproduction--the control of sex and childbirth.

That revolution was already underway at the time Firestone was writing, as shown by the World Bank time-series on Fertility--the average number of children born per woman--in “High Income” countries like the U.S. Click and Click Falling steadily over the last 60 years, in 1960 that number was 3.03, and in 2019 it was 1.57. So as far as controlling the means of reproduction, you can say that in the rich countries at least, women have been “on strike," or are at least maintaining a "work slow-down.”

And not just in the rich countries. Here I’ve plotted that same fertility measure from 145 different countries against per-capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as adjusted for purchasing power in each country, or “Purchasing Power Parity” (PPP).  Click  I’ve labeled the 12 richest countries. ‘Predicted’ and ‘Actual’ Fertility for each country are plotted against the same GDP, so predicted and actual quantities are always lined-up vertically. But predicted how?

I ran a statistical regression that best “fits” the data to explain variation in fertility. The three explanatory variables are (1) GDP per capita (PPP); (2), an Index of Gender Equity. The four top countries are Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden, with scores ranging from 87.6% to 82%.) Variable (3) is the joint effect of (1) times (2) – so a rough ratio of female-to-male economic power.

As is clear from the graph, variable (1) or GDPpc is doing most of the work. This variable alone explains 36% of the variation in fertility between countries. Adding Gender-Equity gets us up to 41% of variation. And finally, looking at Equity times GDP – female-centered economic development--we can explain 46% of total variation. All three variables were “highly significant,” with less than a one-in-a-thousand chance that the apparent correlation is merely by chance.

Now explaining 46% of the variation in fertility might not seem like much. Those 145 countries differ in so many ways that explaining this much fertility variation among those 145 countries, with just 2 variables (plus their joint product), is a big deal.

I think the most interesting thing is the negative effects on fertility from the 1st and 2nd variables--GDPpc and Gender Equality, in contrast with their positive joint effect--GDP weighted by gender equality. Click This says that at low levels of economic development, more female choice often means fewer children. But when a higher level of development is reached, more resources controlled by women can mean an increase in their willingness to have kids.

Let’s look at a subset of richer countries, all of them fairly “Westernized” in values, ordered here by fertility (not GDP). France is at the front of the line with South Korea bringing up the rear. Most of those at the rear are not famous for their gender equity. The four Asian countries are rich but patriarchal; Spain and Italy are famous for their macho cultures. Women in such cultures may face a stark choice: You can put on a pantsuit and conquer the world, or you can stay home and be a mother, but it’s very tough to do some of each. 




France, the rich country with the highest fertility rate, has famously 'pro-natalist' policies: three years of paid leave for either parent, generous tax breaks, and subsidized or free day care up to school age. And yet even France is still well below the crucial "replacement rate" of about 2.1 children per woman. That’s true throughout the rich world.

I think they have interesting political implications. I think all our rich low-birth societies need to re-evaluate immigration and become even more pro-natalist than France.

It’s always been unfair that women had to invest so much more time in childcare, but with birth control and more economic opportunity, it’s now unsustainable. If we want women to be highly educated and have children--and as a society, we do--we must support them in both. This also gets us more healthy well-educated children--the most important factor for long-term economic growth. France shows the limits of what can be achieved by mild economic incentives--or else not rely on women’s bodies to bear children. And they have a monopoly on that.