Guardian UK: US denialogues don't care if their own children end up with syphilis

[marmar]

These denialogues don't care if their own children end up with syphilis
US conservatives can add teenage pregnancies and STDs to climate change and all the other things they love to disavow

George Monbiot
guardian.co.uk, Monday 27 July 2009


All of us are in denial. Without it we couldn't get through life. Were we to confront the implications of mortality, were we to comprehend all we have done to the world and its people, we wouldn't get out of bed. To engage comprehensively with reality is to succumb to despair. Without denial there is no hope.

But some people make a doctrine of it. American conservatism could be described as a movement of denialogues, people whose ideology is based on disavowing physical realities. This applies to their views on evolution, climate change, foreign affairs and fiscal policy. The Vietnam war would have been won, were it not for the pinko chickens at home. Saddam Hussein was in league with al-Qaida. Everyone has an equal chance of becoming CEO. Universal healthcare is a communist plot. Segregation wasn't that bad. As one of George Bush's aides said: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

Collective denial has consequences. A new study by the US Centres for Disease Control (CDC) shows that during the latter years of the Bush presidency, America's steady progress in reducing teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases was shoved into reverse.

Between 1990 and 2004, the birth rate among teenage girls fell sharply: by 46% for 15- to 17-year-olds. The decline was unbroken throughout these years. (The same thing happened in the rest of the western world, though about 20 years earlier). But between 2005 and 2006, something odd happened: the teen birth rate increased by 3%. In 2007 it rose by another 1%. I think most people would agree that this is a tragedy. According to the UN agency Unicef, women who are born poor are twice as likely to stay that way if they have children as teenagers. They are more likely to remain unemployed, to suffer from depression and to become alcoholics or drug addicts (all references are on my website). Similarly, the incidence of gonorrhoea dropped for more than 20 years, then started to rise in 2004. After a long period of decline, syphilis among teenage boys began to increase in 2002; among girls in 2004. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jul/27/teenage-pregnancy-syphilis-bush-obama

[tabatha]

1. They should not be called American Conservatives....

they should be called American Denialogues.

[imdjh]

2. It's always interesting when VD rates in boys differ from those in girls.

It's also interesting when high school boys report much higher "have had sex" rates than high school girls.

Either some of these girls are really getting around, or some of the boys aren't messing around with girls.