aacj

September 25 2024

Religion gender gap / Self-censorship / Brett Favre has Parkinson's / Visa monopoly lawsuit / Sinaloa cartel civil war

Greg Loving

25 Sep 2024 • 6 min read

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1 Young Men Now More Religious Than Women in Historic Shift

For the first time in modern American history, young men are now more religious than their female peers. They attend services more often and are more likely to identify as religious. “We’ve never seen it before,” Ryan Burge, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, said of the flip. Among Generation Z Christians, this dynamic is playing out in a stark way: The men are staying in church, while the women are leaving at a remarkable clip. Church membership has been dropping in the United States for years. But within Gen Z, almost 40 percent of women now describe themselves as religiously unaffiliated, compared with 34 percent of men, according to a survey last year of more than 5,000 Americans by the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute. In every other age group, men were more likely to be unaffiliated. That tracks with research that has shown that women have been consistently more religious than men, a finding so reliable that some scholars have characterized it as something like a universal human truth. The men and women of Gen Z are also on divergent trajectories in almost every facet of their lives, including education, sexuality and spirituality. This growing gender divide has the potential to reshape the landscape of not just religion, but also of family life and politics. In a Times/Siena poll of six swing states in August, young men favored former President Donald J. Trump by 13 points, while young women favored Vice President Kamala Harris by 38 points — a 51-point gap far larger than in other generational cohorts. Ed note “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” may need to be updated

Article Source: NYT

The belief that there is social pressure to have the “right” opinion is pervasive in America today. In fact, a majority of Americans (58%) think that most people cannot share their honest opinions about sensitive topics. They are not wrong: In the last year alone, 61% of Americans reported that they have avoided saying things that they believe because others might find them offensive. This includes a majority of all demographic groups — regardless of race, gender, age, income, or political affiliation — with Gen Z having the highest rate of self-silencing of any group (72%). Across demographic groups, college graduates and political independents self-silence the most often, with double-digit gaps between public and private opinion on 37 of 64 issues. For two-thirds of the sensitive issues studied (43 of 64), ranging from abortion rights and school choice to legal immigration and voter ID requirements, 90% of demographic groups are privately on the same side of the issues.

Article Source: populace.org

3 NFL Legend Brett Favre Diagnosed with Parkinson's

A Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre disclosed during a congressional hearing on Tuesday that he was recently diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a degenerative nervous system disorder that causes parts of the brain to deteriorate and affects movement. Appearing before a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on welfare reform, Favre spoke about Prevacus, a company making a concussion drug that received $2 million of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds. Favre was the top investor in Prevacus, and text messages show he began asking state officials for help securing funds for the company in November 2018. A 2020 study found that having a single concussion increased the risk of developing Parkinson's disease by 57% and having multiple concussions further compounds the danger. When asked in a 2018 interview how many concussions he suffered, Favre, 54, said he knows of only "three or four" but believes he could have suffered more than 1,000 concussions during his 20-season NFL career.

B A study published in JAMA Neurology surveyed 1,980 former professional American-style football players from a pool of 4,180 participants. About 34% of respondents reported they believed they had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). This perceived CTE was linked to health issues such as cognitive difficulties, depression, and pain. Those who reported perceived CTE were more likely to face these challenges than those who did not. The study emphasizes the importance of medical evaluations for former athletes who perceive themselves to have CTE to address potential underlying conditions.

Article Source: ESPN, JAMA

4 Visa Sued by DOJ Over Alleged Monopoly

A America’s Justice Department sued Visa, alleging that the firm, which processes over 60% of the country’s debit transactions on its payments network, is an illegal monopoly. The trustbusters say that Visa unlawfully limits competition and charges merchants exorbitant fees for processing debit-card payments—conduct that affects the “price of nearly everything”. The company did not immediately comment.

B America is home to the heftiest interchange fees of any major economy—costs are an order of magnitude greater than in Europe and China. That largely benefits two firms: Visa and Mastercard, which facilitate more than three-quarters of the country’s credit-card transactions. Doing so has made them two of the most profitable companies in the world, with net margins last year of 51% and 46% respectively. Rank every firm (excluding real-estate-investment trusts) in the s&p 500 index by their average net-profit margins last year, five years ago and a decade ago, and only four appear in the top 20 every time. Two are financial-information firms, Intercontinental Exchange and the cme Group. The others are Mastercard and Visa.

Article Source: Economist

5 Cartel Violence in Mexico Spirals into Civil War

Violence among cartels in Mexico is devolving into civil war in some regions. The Sinalo cartel, formerly led by El Chapo, operated as a business with strong internal organization and minimized friction with local populations. However, after El Chapo’s arrest and extradition to the U.S., his successors struggled to maintain unity. Recent events, such as the arrest of Ismail "El Maio" Zambada—likely betrayed by El Chapo’s son—have exacerbated internal conflicts. Multiple factions within the cartel are now vying for power, causing a breakdown in leadership. This internal conflict is likely to spread violence beyond Sinaloa and into other regions, including the United States, where local distribution networks could become similarly destabilized. This could result in both increased violence and rising drug prices due to disruptions in the cartel's operations.

Source: Peter Zeihan

9/25/1867 Cattle pioneer Oliver Loving dies of gangrene

On September 25, 1867, the pioneering cattleman Oliver Loving dies from gangrene poisoning in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. A few weeks before, Loving had been trapped by 500 Commanche braves along the Pecos River. Shot in the arm and side, Loving managed to escape and reach Fort Sumner. Though the wounds alone were not fatal, Loving soon developed gangrene in his arm, a common infection in the days before antibiotics. Even then he might still have been saved had his arm been removed, but unfortunately the fort doctor “had never amputated any limbs and did not want to undertake such work.” Sometimes referred to as the “Dean of the Trail Drivers,” Loving had been braving the Commanche territory along the Pecos in order to make his second pioneering drive of cattle from Texas to Denver. In the 1860s, the Texas cattle herds were booming, but as long as the cattle were in Texas they were essentially worthless. To make money, they had to be moved over thousands of miles to the big cities where Americans were becoming increasingly fond of good fresh western beef. To overcome this challenge, a number of Texans pioneered the technique known as the “long drive,” hiring cowboys to take massive cattle herds overland to the first cattle towns like Wichita and Dodge City where they could be loaded on trains for the East. Along with his partner Charles Goodnight, Oliver Loving tried a brilliant alternative approach. Goodnight and Loving proposed to drive a herd of cattle directly to the growing population centers in New Mexico and Colorado where they could avoid middlemen and earn higher prices per head. The result was the Goodnight-Loving Trail, a 700-mile route through west Texas and New Mexico that eventually brought the cattle right into the booming mining regions of Colorado. During the course of their first long and often treacherous drive in 1866, Loving and Goodnight lost more than 400 head, mainly to dehydration and drowning. But the 1,600 cattle that survived the trip brought good prices, and when Goodnight headed back to Texas his mule carried $12,000 in gold. Encouraged, the two men were preparing to follow the same route the next year when Loving’s fatal encounter with the Commanche abruptly ended the partnership. However, Goodnight and others continued to use the Goodnight-Loving Trail, and it soon became one of the most successful cattle trails of the day.

Sources

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/23/us/young-men-religion-gen-z.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

2. https://populace.org/research

3. A https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/41417497/favre-announces-parkinson-diagnosis-congressional-hearing
B https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2824064

4. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2022/08/17/can-the-visa-mastercard-duopoly-be-broken

5. https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/the-civil-war-of-the-sinaloa-cartel?e=9aef90278a