So here's a thing I got asked when I was talking about teen birth rates and the national birth rate generally:
"If girls/women are most fertile from 15-30, why are we losing more than a decade to that for education for no good reason?"
I'm not going to entertain "why 15-17 year olds shouldn't have babies" because I think it's self explanatory, but I want to make one thing really clear.
If the reason a woman doesn't have babies until she's in her 30s is "because she wants to," that is not only an excellent reason, but the only reason that matters.

Things I Have Been Told Tariffs Do by Twitter
1) Raise IRS revenue by raising prices
2) Raise IRS revenue by charging other countries money, which US consumers don't pay
3) Bring back unionized manufacturing jobs
4) Bring back non unionized manufacturing jobs but hey at least it's a job right
5) Create jobs for STEM grads on the coasts, but that's really it, yeah
6) Protect small businesses
7) Wipe out small businesses but that's good because we don't need them
8) Replace the income tax (there is no plan for this)
9) Replace property taxes (literally

There's some interesting online pieces of data showing the extent to which it really does seem men think that the point of tariffs is to cause economic hardship *specifically for American women.*
Most of the articles I've read where women business owners are talking

https://twitter.com/maxlugavere/status/1908646961764589937

about the fear they will have to close up shop are besieged with comments like "you should make an OnlyFans" or "get married."
Not to be Freudian about this but I really do think the sub rational reason for a lot of this (and why no one can articulate a rational reason) is the

Hi Victoria.
One thing you and I don't have in common is -- I actually grew up in Indiana and I know what Hoosiers look like.
Crunchy Hoosiers are in Bloomington and, ten years ago, maybe Broadripple. They don't look like this. These are Waffle House Hoosiers. They were

https://twitter.com/RepSpartz/status/1906062431421714508

yelling because they are mad at you because you're doing a bad job. Go to a sports bar during the NCAA tournament and you'll see them doing the same thing at basketball coaches. They're not mad because they're far left plants, they're mad because you suck and they know it.

So if DOGE doesn’t decrease the deficit, and it doesn’t decrease taxes, why do people like it?
I don’t think it’s any deeper than the joy of knowing that somewhere in the country, you wiped the smile off the face of someone who was working happily and comfortably in their chosen field.
I think that’s where most of this comes from. People who are miserable who see other people going to school, making money, working in the field they’re passionate about, and having a family, and for MAGA it’s thrilling to feel like someone is finally making

You know, I really think "I'd love to stop Musk, but I can't get primaried and people are threatening my family" is weak sauce.
There are 435 reps and 100 senators. A little over half Republican. Ten of you get together and say "sorry, our districts come first, we are with the car manufacturers and farmers and veterans and children, we don't care what a drug addict from South Africa says."
Do you really think that Elon is going to drop one billion in liquidity in response? Or that Trump supporters are going to kill 10 congresspeople? No, of course

I've said this a lot and I'll say it again.
There is a very particular cultural construction of "sex trafficking" that exists in conservative religious/political spaces that concerns very small children, and sometimes cannibalism.
It exists to provide a contrast for the kind of

https://twitter.com/JediGhostBear82/status/1895257687501484307

trafficking those people agree is fine, which is the sexual exploitation of teenagers and women. They think that is okay, because the domination and abuse of young women is a core part of their ideology.
That is why it's not hard to find people who think of themselves as cultural

I think a huge part of the draw of tradwife content is that it markets the idea that we actually don't need social services, schools, or a government because everyone has an endless possibility of bootstrapping inside them.
Tradwife content usually deliberately obscures or misrepresents where the money is actually coming from, or creates a fictional narrative of the guy with no education who just works really hard and owns his own business and can provide for a family entirely by himself. And, of course, the wife figure herself doesn't need

One thing I remain convinced of is that I'm the only evangelical or post evangelical who has ever actually read The Screwtape Letters.
So many of y'all out here confidently explaining that it's good for other countries to stumble because that means the US is doing better.
No, and also, the idea that Christians ought to be deceived into thinking that all of life is a 0 sum competition is Letter 19 from Uncle Screwtape

Okay, we clearly need to re-evaluate the whole "ordered love" conversation because some of you are applying it in some really screwed up ways.
1) "So I'm supposed to let my kids starve and feed someone else's because their child is hungry?"
No, but also -- is this actually a situation you're in right now? I'll talk to anyone who is, but are you really, really sure the situation isn't "So I'm supposed to enroll my child in only one travel sport so someone else's kid doesn't go hungry?"
2) Appealing to Calvinism -- the "God plays favorites so I do too"

The "hold your nose and vote for Trump for president, not pastor" to "oh my gosh, the child he trafficked wasn't even that young, stop being such a prude" pipeline turned out to be exactly eight years long. Same with the "God works through imperfect people!" to "if we don't cover up for this Christian rapist, the other Christian rapists will start to get worried" pipeline.
Would you guys really recognize yourselves now? If you told yourself in 2016 what you now believe?

You know, the thing that bums me out the most about the Oklahoma SSI saying there have to be Bibles in classrooms:
The Bible is a religious classic. Having them available for kids to read is a great idea.
But most kids can’t read a KJV. But that’s the one they have to have with the stipulations because it’s the kind Trump can sell because of the public domain.
The instruction is geared around helping one guy cash in on the Bible. Kids actually reading the Bible is an afterthought.

Okay, so here's the thing.
In the historical tradition, and in the global scene, evangelicalism is a diverse movement, and I'm not speaking about the whole field (which continues to shape my theology).
But in American evangelicalism right now, in the way you will primarily see it practiced, there is no such thing as a moral or immoral action.
There are immoral and moral *people* and *groups.* Not behaviors.
The question is never "did this person commit rape" or "did this person cheat." It's "where is that person situated," and that determines whether

I don't know what to do about the appeal of the "easy fake solution" versus the "complicated actual reality" issue in messaging.
Because when I think about the misinformation I've encountered in the last few months ("tariffs mean other countries have to give us money! Getting rid of the DOE means that schools will be better! Deporting immigrants means crime will stop and I'll have lots of money!") the primary thing they all have in common is that it's very pleasant to imagine that paradise is just one small choice away and someone just

You know, I don't think women are more emotional than men.
I think we have more of a problem with a range of women's emotions and we also have a protected class of men who are entitled to tantrums.
We never expected Trump to concede the 2020 election because that was way too hard for such a special boy. We all had to be patient with Biden finally accepting he wasn't in shape to run again.
But it's 1 in the morning and Kamala isn't out there conceding with a smile on her face and everyone's like "wow this is super unacceptable."

Halloween memory:
When I was a little girl, my first year of grade school I had a TON of behavioral issues. Now know it was ADHD but also, I was a little shit.
Second grade rolled around. My teacher was Sherry Hyslop. And Mrs. Hyslop, I thought, hung the moon. She loved the weird homemade outfits my grandma had me in. She thought I was smart. She tested my reading level, she said I was a great reader, sent me home with books (and affirmed everything my mom and dad probably wanted to hear, lol). I went from being the most difficult

I really want to encourage people who think “if enough people don’t vote for Harris because of Gaza and Trump wins, then the DNC will favor Gaza more in their platform” to realize they have not thought about this nearly enough. “Then the next Dem candidate will be pro Gaza!”
Well, that’s nice, I suppose. You might be able to influence the government to pressure Netanyahu harder, in four years, if the cause and effect works the way you want it to (it won’t) and if voting is still a thing.

I'm going to give some free advice for the mid-thirties.
I spent a lot of years feeling like I had to find some deeper reason when people were being really awful or find some way that maybe I wasn't understanding them. "Well, maybe that's how they do things here." "They have valid feelings." "They've been through a lot." "They've got a lot on my plate."
Yeah, that's all true, and your instincts can absolutely be wrongly biased against some people. It happens.
But there are 2 kinds of people I have been right about every single time

One thing I think we don't quite reckon with enough in Christian spaces is the phenomenon of fads.
There are a thousand things I can remember having happened throughout my life that came, became a huge deal, suddenly it was weird and your faith was suspect if you didn't participate, and then suddenly we bury it and we sort of pretend it never happened. Or we all sneer at it later.
Examples:
Wild at Heart
The Passion of the Christ
WWJD bracelets
The Purpose Driven Life (I should note that sometimes the fad manifests as anti-fad-

Sorry, I guess I still have some thoughts on this.
I guess the feeling I just keep having thinking about all those big suburban churches and the moral majority and being not conformed to the pattern of this world is “I got played.”
I defended pro life people *for years* even after I stopped being persuaded by all the talking points. When people said “why do they want to control women so much?” I said “well, imagine if you really thought that hundreds of kids were killed every day in your metro! That’s their lived reality!”
But I got played there too.

So, some thoughts after finishing A Well Trained Wife.
1) I am sure the primary rebuttal to this book is going to be "this isn't what we want, look at all the good hierarchical trad marriages out there!"
And I think that the book contains its own rebuttal to those on two fronts: A. What people say in public is not what they say in private. As Levings notes, in her Covenant Reformed Church men would privately joke about hitting their wives and mutually acknowledge they did that. "Join our church, you can beat your wife into submission here"