the places that scare you

 

When I was in basic training in North Carolina in 1970, the highlight of the day was when we got letters from home. Other than the time that was allotted for polishing our boots or cleaning our weapons, it was about the only time of the day when we actually had some free time.

More than 30 years later, I got the same thrill about getting letters from home when I was in China. Although my daughter was with me for part of the year, I spent more than 6 months in 2004 living in China by myself. One of the books that my sister sent to me was “The Places That Scare You”, which was written by a Buddhist nun named Pema Chodron.

Here is the summary that was posted on Amazon:

 

Lifelong guidance for learning to change the way we relate to the scary and difficult moments of our lives, showing us how we can use all of our difficulties and fears as a way to soften our hearts and open us to greater kindness.

We always have a choice in how we react to the circumstances of our lives. We can let them harden us and make us increasingly resentful and afraid, or we can let them soften us and allow our inherent human kindness to shine through. Here Pema Chödrön provides essential tools for dealing with the many difficulties that life throws our way, teaching us how to awaken our basic human goodness and connect deeply with others—to accept ourselves and everything around us complete with faults and imperfections. She shows the strength that comes from staying in touch with what’s happening in our lives right now and helps us unmask the ways in which our egos cause us to resist life as it is. If we go to the places that scare us, Pema suggests, we just might find the boundless life we’ve always dreamed of.

The last place I worked in China was the College of International Studies, which was located well north of the city of Guangzhou. To get there from my apartment in Guangzhou Country Gardens, I needed to walk a few blocks to the bus stop in the complex, where I caught a bus that took me to the White Star Hotel in what amounted to be downtown Guangzhou. From there, I could with take another bus to the main bus terminal on the west side of town, where I could catch another bus to get to the college.

From start to finish, the commute was roughly 3 hours each way. As a result, I took the bus north on Monday afternoon, and stayed at the college on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights. On Thursday afternoon, I reversed the process.

When I got back to the main bus stop, I could either take another bus back to the White Star hotel, or I could ride on the back of a motorcycle, which both Kelly and I had done numerous times.

On one occasion, I felt confident enough that I felt I could negotiate a cheaper price from the dozens or so motorcycles that were parked there, and I eventually achieved what I wanted - which should have been a warning.

When the driver took off, he went a different direction than I thought that he should have, so for a few minutes, I assumed that he was taking a shortcut. As we got further away from the hotel, though, I realized that I had a made a serious mistake by jumping on the back of the cycle, but I was far enough along that jumping off and walking back was not a solution either.

As we meandered further away from where I wanted to go, he made a couple of phone calls when he made stops for a light. Eventually, we wound up in an area that was less inhabited, and he pulled into a lot next to a couple of manufacturing buildings. Almost immediately, one of the buddies that he called on the phone charged out, and quickly took a punch to my face, which split my lip, and caused my glasses to fall off. Inside the back pack that I had been carrying was my dirty laundry for the week, a few papers, and the book that I had finished reading that afternoon, which happened to be “The Places That Scare You”, a bit ironic, since I was now in a place that DID scare me.

They got my phone, my wallet, and my back pack with my dirty laundry, and took off.

After my glasses got knocked off, I could not find them in the dark, so I gave up.

Fortunately, I was close to a busy road, so I walked to it and stuck out my thumb.

Since I looked a bit disheveled, and had blood on my shirt, a passing motorist felt sorry for me, and picked me up. In Chinese, I explained to him that I needed to get back to the White Star hotel, which he did. Since I no longer had my wallet, I explained to the bus driver at the hotel that I had been robbed, so I was able to ride back home at no charge.

I had planning on going to a Toastmaster meeting that night, so as soon as I got home, I called my friend Sayed Hahoub, and told him I would not be attending that night.

Within an hour, Sayed and few other of my friends came to my apartment. They then went with me to the local hospital, where Sayed paid for my treatment and my medicine. To the folks who think all Muslims are killers, they can kiss my ass.

 Since the next day was a Friday, I did not have to go to work, but I DID go in the following Monday, where I explained to the students that I could not see them.

The following weekend, my friend Maggie Woo went with me to the optician so that I could get new glasses, which is that pair that I wore for the next few months. Since the lenses were fairly thick, some of the managers at The Autobarn called me “Mister Magoo” until I could afford to buy more stylish glasses.

If you believe in ironies, you’ll appreciate that fact that on the afternoon that I finished “The Place That Scare You” on the bus that I found my self at a location that DID scare me.

I stayed in China for roughly six months after that, at which point, I returned to the Chicago area. However, for the remainder  to my time in country, I never again rode on the back of a motorcycle.

 Fortunately, our local library has a copy of the book in their shelves, so I put it on hold today. 

It should bring back a lot of memories.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The great melting pot, version 2

 

America has long been a home of immigrants. With the exception of the Native population, literally everyone who lives here is descended from immigrants, and that includes Donald Trump, whose mother was born in Scotland, and whose paternal grandfather came from Germany.

Both his first and third wife were also immigrants. Ivana came from Croatia, and Melania came from Slovenia.

In less than 20 years, Caucasians will be a minority in this country, due to declining birth rates of white folks, and increased immigration of people from places like Mexico and the Orient.

The reason that we now have the strongest economy in the world is due to immigrants. Not only do they pick farm crops, they also have founded some very successful companies.

Apple founder Steve Job’s birth father was born in Syria, and one of the founders of Google (Sergi Brin) was born in Russia. He was wealthy enough that he could afford to pay his ex-wife $1 billion in their divorce settlement.

The face of immigrants was brought home to me today when I monitored an ELD (English language learner) class at a local high school.

 Just for fun, I asked the students to write down their first languages.

 7 spoke Arabic

7 spoke Spanish

1 spoke Wolof (a language spoken in west Africa)

2 spoke Farsi

4 spoke French

1 spoke Turkish

1 spoke German

1 spoke Samali

1 spoke Swahili

Using Google Translate, I asked the Swahili speaker in his native language how many languages he spoke.

His answer was “eight”

As you know by now, a person who speaks two languages is bi-lingual)

A person who speaks three languages is tri-lingual

A person who speaks many languages is a polyglot

A person who speaks one language?

An American

There are still people in this country who feel that English should be our official language.

Why that makes no sense can be found in the article below:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/09/should-english-be-americas-official.html

 I’ve used the “melting pot” title once before:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-great-melting-pot.html

What many surprise is how many languages are spoken in America.

The answer is 430, but there are countries where even more are spoken.

#1 on the list is Papua New Guines, where 840 languages are spoken.

Indonesia, Nigeria, and India are also in the top 5, and China is right behind, with 301 languages spoken.

 https://www.pangea.global/blog/top-10-countries-that-speak-the-most-languages/

I’m of the opinion that languages can be fun, which is why is have studied 6 (English, Latin, Spanish, German, ASL sign language and Chinese.) However, English is the only one that I can actually use to carry on a conversation. If you like to speak another language, Google Translate and Babbel can make things easier for you.

Even in America, though, English itself can be a foreign language.

I was on a bus once in Chicago where a few people were speaking Ebonics, the “native tongue” of the south side of Chicago.

Here is what it sounds like:

I Speak Jive - Airplane! (5/10) Movie CLIP (1980) HD

There is also a large difference between how English is spoken in Boston, New York, Chicago, Milwaukee, Indiana, and Dallas.

When I first moved to the Chicago area, I was accused of having an accent.

My response was that I did not have an accent because I was from Minnesota.

Minnesota, of course, has its own language system:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-talk-minnesotan.html

For now, that’s all I have to say.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abortion and the Catholic church

 

Like all major religions, the Catholic church takes a dim view of abortion, so it may surprise you to learn that a Catholic publication just published an article in support of abortion under certain circumstances. The publication is the National Catholic Reporter, and I read it occasionally, even though I do not have a paid subscription.

 

The National Catholic Reporter (NCR) is a progressive national newspaper in the United States that reports on issues related to the Catholic Church. Based in Kansas City, Missouri, NCR was founded by Robert Hoyt in 1964. Hoyt wanted to bring the professional standards of secular news reporting to the press that covers Catholic news, saying that "if the mayor of a city owned its only newspaper, its citizens will not learn what they need and deserve to know about its affairs". The publication, which operates outside the authority of the Catholic Church, is independently owned and governed by a lay board of directors.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Catholic_Reporter

According to Thomas Tweed, director of the Ansari Institute of Global Engagement with Religion at the University of Notre Dame, "I think the same thing that has happened in American political life and media has happened to some extent to Catholics. Progressive Catholics read Commonweal and the National Catholic Reporter, and traditionalist Catholics watch EWTN and read newsletters from the Blue Army

NCR has won the "General Excellence" award from the Catholic Press Association in the category of national news publications six times between 2008 and 2014.

The Catholic Press Association in June 2017 awarded former NCR editor and publisher Tom Fox its highest honor for publishers, the Bishop John England Award.

Since I was educated in Catholic schools at both the elementary and high school levels, I became I staunch critic of abortion for a couple of decades after the passage of Roe v Wade. As I became more educated over time, my position softened to the point that I now believe that strict abortion bans now longer make any sense, especially in the states that have no exceptions for incest or rape.

In theory, even states that prohibit abortions up to six weeks have exceptions to save the life of the mother. However, many women have found that the exception is only a theory – and many have died because of the theory.

The article that recently appeared in the National Catholic Reporter can be found at the link below:

https://www.ncronline.org/news/catholic-hospital-offered-bucket-towels-woman-it-denied-abortion-california-ag-said

Although I would encourage you read the entire article, here are some of the main points:

When Anna Nusslock showed up at her local hospital 15 weeks pregnant and in severe pain earlier this year, she said, a doctor delivered devastating news: The twins she and her husband had so desperately wanted were not viable. Further, her own health was in danger, and she needed an emergency abortion to prevent hemorrhaging and infection.

Providence St. Joseph Hospital, in the small Northern California coastal city of Eureka, refused to provide the care she required because doctors could detect fetal "heart tones," Nusslock said at a news conference Monday. California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against the Catholic hospital detailing Nusslock’s dangerous experience and alleging the hospital violated multiple state laws when it discharged Nusslock — with an offer of a bucket and towels — to go elsewhere for what he described as standard medical care. Bonta also filed a motion for a preliminary injunction in Humboldt County Superior Court, asking that it require Providence to treat anyone with an emergency medical condition. "The need for immediate relief is about to intensify," the motion said. That’s because Mad River Community Hospital, where Nusslock ultimately got care 12 miles up the road, is slated to close its birth center this month.

The case involving Anna Nusslock is similar to a situation that I wrote about in January of 2011:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2011/01/

Here are the main points:

 

The National Catholic Reporter newspaper put it best: “Just days before Christians celebrated Christmas, Jesus got evicted.”

Yet the person giving Jesus the heave-ho in this case was not a Bethlehem innkeeper. Nor was it an overzealous mayor angering conservatives by pulling down Christmas decorations. Rather, it was a prominent bishop, Thomas Olmsted, stripping St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix of its affiliation with the Roman Catholic diocese.

The hospital’s offense? It had terminated a pregnancy to save the life of the mother. The hospital says the 27-year-old woman, a mother of four children, would almost certainly have died otherwise.

Bishop Olmsted initially excommunicated a nun, Sister Margaret McBride, who had been on the hospital’s ethics committee and had approved of the decision. That seems to have been a failed attempt to bully the hospital into submission, but it refused to cave and continues to employ Sister Margaret. Now the bishop, in effect, is excommunicating the entire hospital - all because it saved a woman’s life.

 

Make no mistake: This clash of values is a bellwether of a profound disagreement that is playing out at many Catholic hospitals around the country. These hospitals are part of the backbone of American health care, amounting to 15 percent of hospital beds.

Already in Bend, Ore., last year, a bishop ended the church’s official relationship with St. Charles Medical Center for making tubal ligation sterilizations available to women who requested them. And two Catholic hospitals in Texas halted tubal ligations at the insistence of the local bishop in Tyler.

The National Women’s Law Center has just issued a report quoting doctors at Catholic-affiliated hospitals as saying that sometimes they are forced by church doctrine to provide substandard care to women with miscarriages or ectopic pregnancies in ways that can leave the women infertile or even endanger their lives. More clashes are likely as the church hierarchy grows more conservative, and as hospitals and laity grow more impatient with bishops who seem increasingly out of touch.

 

Catholic hospitals like St. Joseph’s that are evicted by the church continue to operate largely as before. The main consequence is that Mass can no longer be said in the hospital chapel. Thomas C. Fox, the editor of National Catholic Reporter, noted regretfully that a hospital with deep Catholic roots like St. Joseph’s now cannot celebrate Mass, while airport chapels can. Mr. Fox added: “Olmsted’s moral certitude is lifeless, leaving no place for compassionate Christianity.

Since January of 2011, I have written two additional articles about the topic:

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2018/07/roe-v-wade-is-in-news-again.html

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-day-of-unborn-child_3.html

Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, a number of states have passed restrictive abortion laws, and the bans in Texas and Florida are among the most severe. Naturally, women have died because of these laws.

The link below has a graph that shows which states have limitations or bans on abortion:

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/texas-abortion-ban-deaths-pregnant-women-sb8-analysis-rcna171631

29 states (more than half of all states) have either restrictions or bans, much to the detriment of women living in those states, and Texas is one of the worst states.

The number of women in Texas who died while pregnant, during labor or soon after childbirth skyrocketed following the state’s 2021 ban on abortion care — far outpacing a slower rise in maternal mortality across the nation, a new investigation of federal public health data finds.

From 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose by 56%, compared with just 11% nationwide during the same time period, according to an analysis by the Gender Equity Policy Institute. The nonprofit research group scoured publicly available reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and shared the analysis exclusively with NBC News.

“There’s only one explanation for this staggering difference in maternal mortality,” said Nancy L. Cohen, president of the GEPI. “All the research points to Texas’ abortion ban as the primary driver of this alarming increase.” 

“Texas, I fear, is a harbinger of what’s to come in other states,” she said.

The SB 8 effect

The Texas Legislature banned abortion care as early as five weeks into pregnancy in September 2021, nearly a year before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade — the case that protected a federal right to abortion — in June 2022. 

At the time, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, lauded the bill as a measure that “ensures the life of every unborn child.”

Texas law now prohibits all abortion except to save the life of the mother. 

The passage of Texas’ Senate Bill 8 gave GEPI researchers the opportunity to take an early look at how near-total bans on abortion — including cases in which the mother’s life was in danger — affected the health and safety of pregnant women. 

The SB 8 effect, Cohen’s team found, was swift and stark. Within a year, maternal mortality rose in all racial groups studied.

Among Hispanic women, the rate of women dying while pregnant, during childbirth or soon after increased from 14.5 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2019 to 18.9 in 2022. Rates among white women nearly doubled — from 20 per 100,000 to 39.1. And Black women, who historically have higher chances of dying while pregnant, during childbirth or soon after, saw their rates go from 31.6 to 43.6 per 100,000 live births while maternal mortality spiked overall during the pandemic, women dying while pregnant or during childbirth rose consistently in Texas following the state’s ban on abortion, according to the Gender Equity Policy Institute.

“If you deny women abortions, more women are going to be pregnant, and more women are going to be forced to carry a pregnancy to term,” Cohen said.

Beyond the immediate dangers of pregnancy and childbirth, there is growing evidence that women living in states with strict abortion laws, such as Texas, are far more likely to go without prenatal care and much less likely to find an appointment with an OB-GYN.

Doctors say the feeling among would-be moms is fear.

“Fear is something I’d never seen in practice prior to Senate Bill 8,” said Dr. Leah Tatum, an OB-GYN in private practice in Austin, Texas. Tatum, who was not involved with the GEPI study, said that requests for sterilization procedures among her patients doubled after the state’s abortion ban.

That is, women prefer to lose their ability to ever have children over the chance that they might become pregnant following SB 8.

“Patients feel like they’re backed into a corner,” Tatum said. “If they already knew that they didn’t want to pursue pregnancy, now they’re terrified.”

Because the law in Texas makes absolutely no sense, 20 women are currently suing the state:

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/11/15/1213188342/20-women-sue-texas-over-abortion-laws

Amanda Zurawski is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights against Texas. Here, she arrives at the Austin courthouse where a hearing was held on July 20.

SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty Images

Cristina Nuñez's doctors had always advised her not to get pregnant. She has diabetes, end-stage renal disease and other health conditions, and when she unexpectedly did become pregnant, it made her extremely sick. Now she is suing her home state of Texas, arguing that the abortion laws in the state delayed her care and endangered her life.

Nuñez and six other women joined an ongoing lawsuit over Texas's abortion laws. The plaintiffs allege the exception for when a patient's life is in danger is too narrow and vague, and endangered them during complicated pregnancies.

 

 

The case was originally filed in March with five patient plaintiffs, but more and more patients have joined the suit. The total number of patients suing Texas in this case is now 20 (two OB-GYN doctors are also part of the lawsuit). After a dramatic hearing in July, a district court judge agreed with the plaintiffs that the law needed to change, but the state immediately appealed her ruling directly to the Texas Supreme Court. That move allows Texas' three overlapping abortion bans to stand.

In the July hearing, lawyers for the Texas Attorney General's office argued that women had not been harmed by the state's laws and suggested that their doctors were responsible for any harms they claimed.

For Cristina Nuñez, after she learned she was pregnant in May 2023, her health quickly worsened, according to an amended complaint filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights, the organization bringing the case. Nuñez had to increase the amount of time she spent in dialysis, and suffered from painful blood clots. She told an OB-GYN that she wanted an abortion, but was told that was not possible in Texas. She called a clinic that provides abortion in New Mexico, but was told she could not have a medication abortion because of her other health conditions.

Her health continued to deteriorate as the weeks went on and her pregnancy progressed. In June, when one of her arms turned black from blood clots, she went to a Texas emergency room. She was diagnosed with a deep vein thrombosis, eclampsia and an embolism, but the hospital would not provide an abortion. She worried she would die, the complaint says.

She finally received an abortion 11 days after going to the E.R., only after finding a pro-bono attorney that contacted the hospital on her behalf.

Also joining the lawsuit is Kristen Anaya, whose water broke too early. She developed sepsis, shaking and vomiting uncontrollably, while waiting for an abortion in a Texas hospital. The other new plaintiffs are Kaitlyn Kash, D. Aylen, Kimberly Manzano, Dr. Danielle Mathisen, and Amy Coronado, all of whom received serious and likely fatal fetal diagnoses and traveled out of state for abortions. The Texas Supreme Court is set to consider the Center's request for a temporary injunction that would allow abortions in a wider range of medical situations. That hearing is scheduled for Nov. 28.

 

Ever since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, a number of states have voted on whether abortion should still be legal. In every case, abortion rights one – even in conservative states like Kansas.

The measure is now on the Arizona ballot in November, as proposition 139. Since 58% of the Arizona voters support the measure, it should pass.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/23/us/politics/arizona-abortion-ballot-measure.html

There is little difference between religions about abortion.

The latest survey conducted by the Alan Guttmacher Institute, was completed by more than 10,000 women. Staffers in hospitals, clinics and physicians’ offices where abortions are performed distributed the questionnaire. The Guttmacher Institute, which researches sexual and reproductive health worldwide, says it used the survey data along with data on the number of abortions performed nationally to estimate abortion rates and the size of certain demographic groups. The institute found that more Protestant women obtained abortions than Catholics: Forty-three percent of women over age 17 in the 2000-2001 survey said they were Protestant, while 27 percent said they were Catholic. But Catholics were more likely to get an abortion: The abortion rate for Catholic women was 22 per 1,000 women; the rate for Protestants was 18 per 1,000 women, according to study author Rachel K. Jones.

Abortion has been an emotionally charged topic for more than 50 years. For most of those years, it has been a key issue for many voters. Even though every newspaper in the country said Donald Trump was not fit for office in 2016, many women voted for him because they could not support a candidate (Hillary) who felt that abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.

This election, abortion will again be a key issue, but this time it will work AGAINST the Republican party, just as it did in 2022. J.D. Vance believes that women are only valuable if they have children, and the more the merrier - an attitude of the Catholic church from the 1950’s.

To quote Kamala Harris, “we not going back”.

“We Are Not Going Back” Wasn’t Written to Be a Campaign Catchphrase. Kamala Harris Voters Had Other Ideas. | Vanity Fair

 

 

 

 

childless cat ladies

 

Childless cat ladies

 

J.D.Vance is the first person that I am aware of who discussed the term shown above. He has a number of goofy ideas, including his belief that women without children are somehow not as valuable to society. He has even proposed allowing families with children more votes because “they have a larger stake in society”.

He is ignoring the fact that many women either can’t have children, or do not want them.

There ARE a number of childless women who have made significant contributions to society. Both Taylor Swift and Oprah Winfrey have donated millions of dollars to society, and there are numerous women who lead major corporations.

Kamala Harris has not given birth to any biological children, but she IS stepmother to the children of Doug Emhoff. She also has been a prosecutor, a senator, a vice-president, and a presential candidate. Her adopted children call her MOMala.

 

Remember Sara Huckabee Sanders?

She was a press secretary for Donald Trump, but later got elected governor of Arkansas.

SarahHuckabee Sanders blasts Harris for not having biological kids (usatoday.com)

During a campaign event for former President Donald Trump Tuesday, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders suggested Vice President Kamala Harris is not humble because she does not have biological children.

The comments came during a town hall the governor moderated in Flint, Michigan, at first joking about how her children’s innocent remarks can make her feel humble despite her high-profile position.

“You can walk into a room like this where people cheer when you step onto the stage and you might think for a second that you’re kind of special,” Sanders said. “Then you go home and your kids remind you very quickly that you’re not that big of a deal.”

She kept on the theme of humility before pivoting to the Democratic nominee for president. “So, my kids keep me humble,” she said to the crowd, pausing for a few seconds. “Unfortunately, Kamala Harris doesn’t have anything keeping her humble.”

Harris has two stepchildren through her marriage to Doug Emhoff, Ella and Cole Emhoff, and has often spoken about her role as stepmom or, using her nickname, “Momala.” Kerstin Emhoff, the ex-wife of Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, has been a vocal supporter of Harris’ campaign and has repeatedly celebrated Harris’ role as stepmother to her two kids.

“Kamala Harris has spent her entire career working for the people, ALL families,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in response to Sanders’ comments. “That keeps you pretty humble.”

Sanders’ brazen comments are not out of the norm, as the governor has become known for making bold claims and embracing ‘culture war’ issues, especially concerning gender. She has fought against the Biden administration’s IX updates, and last year signed an executive order banning what she calls “woke, anti-women” words in government. The order states that the government should “reject language that ignores, undermines, and erases women,” and should “celebrate gender distinctions between men and women—not erase them.”

The demographics of our country has changed dramatically since I was a child.

DemographicTurning Points for the United States (census.gov)

The year 2030 marks a demographic turning point for the United States. Beginning that year, all baby boomers will be older than 65 years of age. This will expand the size of the older population so that one in every five Americans is projected to be of retirement age. Later that decade, by 2034, we project that older adults will outnumber children for the first time in U.S. history. The year 2030 marks another demographic first for the United States. That year, because of population aging, immigration is projected to overtake natural increase (the excess of births over deaths) as the primary driver of population growth for the country.
 
Beyond 2030, the U.S. population is projected to grow slowly, age considerably, and become more racially and ethnically diverse. Despite slowing population growth, particularly after 2030, the U.S. population is still expected to grow by 79 million people by 2060, crossing the 400 million threshold in 2058.

21charts that explain how the US is changing | vox.com

 The US population is changing drastically, particularly in the areas of race and ethnicity. By 2050, white non-Hispanics will be a minority of the American population, according to Census projections. The biggest reason for that decline is the growth of the Hispanic population, whose share is set to nearly double between 2010 and 2050, from 16 to 30 percent. Though immigration is one reason for this shift, a large part of it is that white non-Hispanics aren't having as many babies as minorities. As of 2012, the majority of all babies born in the US were minorities.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/partisanship-by-race-ethnicity-and-education/

In April of this year, 56% of white voters were registered as Republicans, versus 41% who registered as Democrats. Hispanic voters favored Democrats 61% to 35% Republic. Black voters were overwhelmingly Democrat (83%) to 12% Republican. Asian voters also favored Democrats (63% to 35% Republicans.

White Republicans are nervous because their numbers are shrinking, and minority groups are increasing As a result, they have resorted to voters suppression tactics to make it harder for minorities (who favor Democrats), and they got a lot of help from the Supreme Court (in Shelby County v Holder) that Section 5 of the Civil Rights Act was no longer necessary, which opened up more restrictive voting rules in the majority of the states in the country,

In effect, what J.D. Vance is promoting is similar to what Nazi Germany did in the 1930’s.

https://owlcation.com/humanities/lebensborn-program-the-woman-who-gave-birth-for-hitler

In 1935, Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the holocaust, decided to redefine motherhood.

The reason was the declining German population. World War I resulted in the decimation of the country's young male population. More than 2,000,000 German soldiers had been killed, and intermarriage with Jews and others deemed "inferior" by Nazis had made the population "racially impure," as Himmler termed it.

In addition, more than 800,000 pregnancies ended in abortion every year. This decline was unacceptable to Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, who were dreaming of creating a racially pure Nazi-Aryan nation.

It was in that context that the Lebensborn “super baby” breeding program was created. “Lebensborn" means "wellspring of life" or "fountain of life." The Lebensborn project was one of the most secretive and disgusting Nazi programs ever created. Heinrich Himmler himself initiated the Lebensborn project on December 12, 1935.

The disgusting program was a system of supervised selective breeding in which unmarried ‘racially pure’ women were instructed to have children with Nazi officers and create a “super race” for the German Reich that would rule for a thousand years — the ultimate goal of Lebensborn.

The plan started with Germany and gradually expanded to occupied countries, most notably in Scandinavia, where the Nordic gene with its blond hair and blue eyes was considered classically Aryan and was particularly favored by Himmler, who set up the majority of the Lebensborn centers in Nazi-occupied Norway.

As a first step, the mother and father must pass a “racial purity” test to be admitted into the program. Blond-haired and blue-eyed people were preferred, and family lineage had to be traceable and pure up to at least three generations. The criterion was strict; only 40 percent of women passed the purity test. Most of the mothers were unwed.

 

The first Lebensborn family home was opened in 1936 in Steinhoering, a nondescript village near Munich. The furnishings and the décor for these homes were best in class, looted from Jews and other people in occupied countries.

In these homes, “racially pure” German women were encouraged to meet and have children with SS officers who occasionally visited. The SS then took the children when they were born. The program supported expectant mothers and enabled them to have their children safely, secretly, and comfortably.

Himmler, the mastermind, also has an incentive system in place that was equally diabolical. A Mother’s Cross of Honor was created in three classes: bronze, silver, and gold. The bronze cross required a woman to give birth to and raise at least four children, while the highest honor, the gold cross, recognized a woman who had given birth to eight or more.

In addition, these mothers received government subsidies designed to take care of the kids. “Lucky” mothers with three and more children under ten years old got 'honorary cards' allowing them to get preferential treatment in shopping queues and discounts on their rent payments. They were also given the best meats from butcher shops and were entitled to zero-interest state-sponsored loans.

Himmler soon expanded the program to include non-German mothers. In a bizarre policy formed by Hitler in 1942, German soldiers were encouraged to socialize with native women, with the instruction that any children they produced would be given to SS. “Racially pure” women were encouraged to have one-night stands with SS officers in Lebensborn homes where they could have children in secrecy and confidentiality.

The worst part was kidnapping “Aryan children” from occupied territories.

In 1939, under Himmler’s directive, the Nazis began systematically kidnapping thousands of children who they regarded as “Aryan-looking” from other countries, mainly Poland, Yugoslavia and Russia, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Estonia, Latvia, and Norway, for the Lebensborn program. While some of these children were orphans, it has been well-documented that many were stolen from their parent's arms.

In these centers, these children were “Germanized” and forced to forget their birth parents. Those children who refused were beaten mercilessly or even sent to concentration camps for “re-education.” Ultimately these re-educated children were adopted by SS families. Himmler himself reportedly justified this brutal kidnapping when he stated that “It is our duty to take [the children] with us to remove them from their environment… either we win over any good blood that we can use for ourselves and give it a place in our people, or we destroy this blood.”

As the Nazis started losing the war, they destroyed almost all the documents on the Lebensborn program leaving an estimated 200,000 children separated from their families. Only 25,000 children were retrieved after the war and returned to their families. Some made it home, but others could not remember enough of their original families to find their way back.

It is also believed that several German families even refused to return the children they had received from the Lebensborn centers. In some cases, the children refused to return to their original families as they were brainwashed by the Nazi propaganda and considered themselves “pure” Germans for better or worse.

But for most of them, it was a long life of shame, loneliness, and ostracization by society. Many of the Lebensborn women were beaten or killed by the angry, starving public, and their children were bullied for their Nazi roots throughout their lives.

After years of enforcing the “one child rule”, China is now encouraging more births because their economy is declining. They also are no longer encouraging abortions as they once were.

 China is far from alone in experiencing declining birth rates.

It is also true in Japan, South Korea, and other countries.

Across Europe, East Asia and North America, many governments are, like Japan, introducing measures like paid parental leave, child care subsidies and direct cash transfers. According to the U.N., the number of countries deliberately targeting birthrates rose from 19 in 1986 to 55 by 2015.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/13/world/asia/birth-rate-fertility-policy-japan.html

I’m not implying that today’s Republican Party is made up of a bunch of Nazis, but consider these facts:

1)    Republicans are pushing for abortion bans because they want more children

2)   They have a strong preference for white people

3)   If you looked up the word “fascist”, you’ll discover on the list fits Donald Trump exactly

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2017/01/31/the-12-early-warning-signs-of-fascism/

In 2017, there were “very fine people of both sides”, but not all of them were chanting “Jews will not replace us”