This web page represents a compilation of the posts
originally published on a different blog, but later moved to here;
most of them are written within a couple of month before or after 11/08/2016
(the order of the post differs from the original order).
The list of the post on this page:
Bye-Bye The Pathetic Democratic Party! (one way or another)
Liberals! Stop living in a bubble!
What is wrong with being “neutral journalist” (published before the election)
Who will be the real President of the United States? (published before the election)
Statement of Massachusetts Democratic Committee.
Why did Hillary Clinton Lose the Race?
What Could Liberals Learn From Physics?
Intellectual stagnation, social conformism, and the crisis of logical communication.
American Republicans are just Russian Bolsheviks! (published before the election)
The election is just over. What's now?
To everyone who has been emotionally attacked, called names, threatened, verbally degraded!
“A failure of imagination” has lead to 11/08/2016.
Were Democrats Doomed, or There Was a Path to The Victory, and Does It Still Exist?
A mob revolution (published before the election)
The newer post are available at https://the3dforce.blogspot.com/
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Bye-Bye The Pathetic Democratic Party! (one way or another)
There are two distinctly different types of personalities.
Some people accept the realty the way it is.
Others change that realty – for the better or for the worse.
The latter ones have in common at least two very strongly functioning organs:
1) a brain
2) "balls".
The latest events have clearly proved that the Senate Democrats do not have a brain, or "balls", or both.
They had an opportunity to show to us - and to themselves - that they could stand up to Trump.
They could have said to Trump: “You have to stop attacking the media, you have to give us a guaranty that all major media will be granted the same access to the White House as before you took the Office, and you have to do it during the White House correspondents’ dinner. Or, you will be addressing your speech to a half empty Congress, with the whole world seeing this.”
Democrats and liberal media keep acting like it still matters what Trump would say.
But to make him to promise something would look at least as a small win for the Democrats, even if he would break his promise afterwards.
Even worse, Democrats and liberal media keep acting like they need to win a war of ideas. They have already lost a war, and was not a war of ideas, it was a war emotions and political machinery.
It is like watching two teams playing a game. The first team plays by the agreed rules (more like just is trying to play). The second team regularly breaks the rules. The first team screams: “Hey, you broke the rules”, and the second team just shrugs (at best).
And there are eight referees, and every time they give a four-to-four decision, which basically keeps the second team to allow doing what it is doing. And the half of the audience is hailing for the second team, and screaming at the referees. And another half of the audience screams at each other: “They cheated again, did you see it, did you see it?”
But the second team scores again and again. And everyone keeps playing and watching like nothing happened.
Many many many movies had proved a simple rule: “Do not negotiate with a person who has "psychopathic" inclinations (that includes terrorists)”. Simply, because that person follows a completely different logic (a.k.a. moral), which, in part, always justifies his or her change of mind. In the best-case scenario, that person thinks something like: “It is not lying, or deceiving, I believed in what I said before, but now I believe in the opposite, so what?”. In the worst-case scenario that person was deliberately lying (“They are my enemies, and to win I must to feed them disinformation”).
But the actual human history also provides many examples supporting the rule.
For example, in 1938 Germany succeeded to make Europeans (France, Italy, and United Kingdom) to sign an agreement, according to which Germany would annex the prats of Czechoslovakia (BTW: with NO representatives from Czechoslovakia).
In 1939 Russia and Germany signed a pact, according to which the countries would not fight with each other (also, they would divide Europe between Germany and Russia).
In both cases, Europeans and Russian did it hoping to prevent Germany from invading their land.
It took years, millions of lost lives, and economic destruction of Europe, to correct the results of those pacts.
It seems, that the Senate Democrats, Democratic Party leaders, liberal media have not learned any lessons neither from movies, nor from history.
Recently there is one word which comes to my mind again and again.
That word is “pathetic”.
I drive to work, and I think that the condition of the roads is pathetic.
I read the report on physics teacher preparation, and I find that the numbers are pathetic.
I watch the news, and I see the Senate Democrats, Democratic Party leaders, liberal media doing a pathetic job of understanding what and why is happening, and what to do about it.
And I think to myself, what a declining world.
In my defense: read Cowen, or Brooks.
Bye-bye the Democratic party!
Bye-Bye Democracy at all!
(BTW: someone should write a song with these lines; today it is just a joke, but in a year or two it might become an anthem!).
At least I have an experience in escaping a politically stagnated country :)
Canada – you are my plan B (or C; BTW: Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, or Finland also look attractive – FYI: this is a joke).
There is still little time to form an actual forceful resistance, but to that to happen people need to accept the fact that just going out on the streets is not enough ("Occupy Wall-Street" - where are you?!).
In order to make a difference the movement must be coordinated and directed (http://www.gomars.xyz/4s.html; https://youtu.be/OwzKlFpIt_E).
Let’s look back, for example, at the Anti-Vietnam War protests.
The Anti-Vietnam War protests had taken place for more than ten years.
The current administration may destroy all the social security supportive networks much sooner than that.
When on November 15, 1969 a half of a million of people went to protest the War, people did not see President Nixon organizing his own rally to excite his own supporters.
Today the situation is completely different. Liberal protesters have to fight the Administration, which also has its own social and media layer of a mass support.
Trying using ordinary methods to solve extraordinary problems is just – not smart.
There are two clinical terms which we can use to describe the current behavior of many Democrats (especially at the top of the party):
1) idiotic;
2) cowardly.
Well, this is just in a direct correspondence with the absence of the two functioning organs, they – Democrats – have lost some time in the past.
NB. Pleas, pardon my English. My native language is Russian. My official foreign language was German (completely gone by now). I have learned English mostly by listening to a radio, watching TV, and reading (teaching physics does not really help to learn English – you never know why don’t students say a word, because you speak “Russian”, or because they are in the awe for the universe).
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Liberals! Stop living in a bubble!
Everyone, who watched in 2015 – 2016 “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart” and “The Colbert Report” should remember that they often used a bubble analogy to describe how disconnected Republicans were from the people of the Country, in that “Republicans are in a bubble”.
Lately, I was watching some late TV shows, and listening to NPR radio.
The TV shows are funny, the radio shows are exposing contradictions and flip flopping in Trump statements.
However, it has become clear to me that liberals are those who live in a bubble.
Laughing is a good thing, and pointing at contradictions or even plain leis is also important.
However, without a deep analysis of the reasons for the past and current events, and without drawing and evaluating for the audience different paths to achieving specific goals, all that laughing and pointing out is no more than an emotional relief.
It is like touring through a historic place, and all your tour guide says is: “Look, this is big building, and this is a small bulging, this wall it broken, and this roof has a hole in it”, and not a word about people who lived there, and what had happened to them.
The only indication that the November 8th had happened is the word “President” (instead of “Candidate”) the hosts and guest of shows associate with the name “Donald Trump”.
“Look what stupid thing he did again”, or “He lied gain”, or “This is what he said yesterday, but this is what he said a year ago”, etc., etc.
Well, yes, we know all that.
We did our “ha-ha-ha” and “boo”.
And?
We have known for a long time that Donald Trump is not suited to be the President of the United States.
But he has become such.
What now?
Now it is time for the liberals come out of the bubble into which THEY have been for a long time.
The first thing to do for getting out of the bubbly is to reflect on what they – liberals – have been wrong about, what mistakes have been done, and what changes must be done within the liberal movement as soon as possible.
From here I want to direct everyone to a short post:
“What Liberals Can Learn From Physics”
at
The 1st one from @TheDemocrats
who says:
“If it wasn’t for the manipulations at the top of the Democratic Party we would have now President Sanders!”
will be the 1st Democrat with BALLS.
So far the count it ZERO!
Basically, Democrats have to admit first they screwed up the elections.
Until then Democrats have NO chance to get back the Congress!
People will NO be trusting them.
On a personal note, I will give NO single penny to any “Democratic” outlet until some TOP Democrat will accept their fault in losing the elections.
http://the3dforce.blogspot.com/2017/02/sanders.html
What is wrong with being a “neutral journalist”?
Right now, every single news channel is holding panels to discuss the first Presidential debates. One of the most “exciting” questions is “Will Trump look presidential?”. In plain words, will Trump be able to hold himself and pretend for a couple of hours that he is a sane person?
What if he will? Will it change a thing?
2016 Presidential election is special due many reasons. That includes that fact that we do not really need Presidential debates this time.
Anyone, who by this time has not made yet his or her mind, is a baby, or a coward, or an ignorant person, or a monk.
Anyone who is still really trying to make a decision needs to spent several hours to watch Fox news, and then some of the liberal TV shows (the best hosts to watch would be Bill Maher, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel, James Corden, Jimmy Fallon, and Trevor Noah). If that would not help, nothing would, even the debates.
When all TV news was about Hillary’s health, I thought that even half-live, blind and deaf Hillary would be better than Trump. Same day later Bill Maher expressed a similar sentiment when he said that he would rather vote for Hillary’s body double than for Trump.
On one side we have a liar, a shady businessman who had ran his business into a bankruptcy and who does not disclose his taxes using a fake excuse, a person with an attention span of an 8-year old boy, and with the temper of the same boy, but more importantly, a person who has never done in his whole life anything for anybody else but himself just to feed his huge ego.
One another side we have a person who may have done some questionable things – as every other politician in the country – but who has a long record of being smart, and strong, and honest, and who for years has been directing her political energy to help common folks to leave better.
And yet so many people still need to make their mind, even after so many prominent Republicans said they would vote for Hillary.
Some of the republicans are brave enough to state that the will not vote for Trump, but scared to say that they would vote for Hillary: one of the examples was Lanhee Chen (the guest of 404th episode of “The Real Time with Bill Maher”). Wikipedia says about Mr. Chen that he “is an American public intellectual”. I guess, that is the problem with some of “intellectuals”, they do not know what to do when things get “dirty”, a.k.a. complicated (too complicated for an intellectual, evidently).
When the polls show almost 50-50 chance for each candidate to win, not voting for Hillary is the same as voting for Trump – simple as that.
I had been growing up in a country where I HAD to vote every year for the same list of people. Then the Perestroika happened. It was a spark of an actual democracy (which has not survived, though, and is dead now). There was a time when I had to cast my vote choosing between a communist and a drunk clown. I made my choice, because at the time voting stopped being an empty obligation and became a privilege to be responsible.
So, when now I see people saying "I do not like him, but I will not vote for her" I think "What a baby" - a “true” "prudent" person who wants to keep the hands/conscience "clean" - "I am above of all this social nonsense".
They say (and I believe it is true): "In the time of a crisis the "neutral" people are the worst".
How does being the “neutral” help with keeping “clean conscience”?
It doesn’t.
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Who will be the real President of the United States?
Donald Trump is a fighter, there is no doubt about that. I bet, when he started his campaign, even he did not expect the victory (what a shock he must have had on November 8th!). After being featured in nine movies, running a popular TV show, a run for the Presidency of the United State seemed like a natural and final step in his career as an entertainer. That would bring to his huge ego a new wave of attraction he would get from people, which would peak all the attraction he had had during his whole life.
If Trump starts a journey, he goes all the way. His goal is to win. There are no rules.
Fight. Hit. Adrenalin.
It is not Trump’s fault that he became the President.
It is not even the fault of people who voted for him.
The blame must go to the establishment of the Democratic party.
I have a large post on this matter and the rest of this piece is not about it.
I want to address an issue which none of the news outlets addresses.
Donald Trump will NOT be our President.
Well, formally he will.
But in actuality he will NOT.
Have you seen pictures of Obama eight years ago and now?
Do you see what to be the President does to a person?
The President has to do a hard actual work, which requires 24/7 a huge amount of physical and intellectual power.
Anyone who thinks that Donald Trump is capable of reading (forget about writing) long and complicated documents is just delusional.
I dare everyone who voted for Trump to take a piece of paper and write: “I voted for Trump because …” and add at least 5 specific reasons. On the back side of this page write “In four years my life will be better …” and write at least five specific improvements you expect to happen in your life. Save this paper and take it out in four years.
The best-case scenario, he will become America’s “Quinn Elizabeth”. Which, as we all know, was the actual plan of his team. When Trump became the nominee, the team was looking for people who would run internal and external political affairs, leaving Trump “making America Great Again”.
The worst-case scenario, Trump will become America’s Leonid Brezhnev, or Boris Yeltsin. Both of them during last years of their reign did not do any actual governing. Trump is already out of the governing – he cannot govern any more even his own Twitter account.
Why do you think the FBI became a “Trumpland”? BFI detail has been watching 24/7 both – Hillary and Trump. They saw who was easy to be manipulated and who not. Hence, FBI was not rooting for “an iron lady”.
When a silent voter casted his (mostly) or her vote for Donald Trump, it was an act of “screaming”: “I exist, you mother f*&%^#@rs! I hate you and I want you to go!”. They saw Trump as a “King Kong” who will destroy “those f#$%&*ing corrupt establishment pigs”.
Firstly, I doubt that the same people would vote for Trump if they saw him as a puppet incapable of actual governing. This image could have brought a real opportunity for Democrats to beat Trump – if they were smart enough to see it.
Secondly, there is only one way to fight corruption – it is making a society as open and transparent as possible. This is just a historical fact: the more decisions are getting brokered within a narrow circle behind closed doors, the higher and wider the level of corruption. When a government starts cracking down on media outlets criticizing it – this is it; it is corrupt; and the more cracking down is happening, the more corrupt the government is. People who for four years have been sitting on a couch waiting for crumbs of prosperity would trickle down to them, and when it did not happen channeled their anger and frustration by electing a “Big Gorilla”, have to look in a mirror and ask: “Hey, why didn’t you vote in any local elections, or primaries, or didn’t participate in town halls? What have you done on an everyday basis to make America greater than it is now?”
Anyway, let’s go back to the original question: who will be the actual President of the United States?
Who, despite the fact that NO American voted for him (I am absolutely positive – it will be HIM), will de facto govern the country?
Who will be America’s “Grigori Rasputin”, or possible “Vladimir Putin”?
This is what I would like to hear from the people on a TV screen.
Because, it is very probable, that that person will indeed become America’s “Vladimir Putin”.
I will not be surprised at all if in a year or two Donald Trump gets ill (President’s work is hard, too hard!). For a while Mike Pence will take over the White House. But then the real puppet master will emerge.
Would be nice to get to know him as soon as possible.
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Draft
Statement of Massachusetts Democratic Committee.
Like 63.4 million Americans who voted for Hillary Clinton we deeply disappointed in the result of the Presidential elections.
Massachusetts Democratic Committee is aware of many possible reason for the loss in the Presidential elections.
However, Massachusetts Democratic Committee want to stress that the most important reason for failing the Presidential elections is failure of imagination shared by the majority of the party establishment.
We accept the fact that the sign of a high probability of the loss have been presented, but the most of the people involved in the campaign failed to see those signs. Intellectual blindness, or arrogance, complacency, short-vision of the party establishment is the most significant reason which had led to the Donald J. Trump Presidency.
We share the blame as one of the people personally involved into planning and executing the Presidential campaign in Massachusetts.
Our immediate goal is to reevaluate our former approaches to selecting political strategy, as well to selecting people who should take over official position inside and outside of the party.
November 14, 2016
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To Everyone Who is Deeply Disappointed.
Why did Hillary Clinton Lose the Race?
Or.
Conformism and Arrogance of The Establishment.
And.
What To Do Now?
Today’s Democratic Party
1. My first president was an idealist dreaming of a perfect society.
My second president was a power-grabbing irrationally acting drunk.
My third president was a former low level army spy.
In a case, you did not recognize them, they were Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, and Vladimir Putin.
When I realized that my third president was becoming my last president I moved in the U.S.
I never would have thought to have again “Boris Yeltsin” as my president (only speaking English and not drinking).
Of course, I am very disappointed with this. However, as a scientist I find a relief in knowing that social forces do obey social laws in a way very similar to physical forces obey physical laws.
Despite the popular belief, Trump’s victory WAS predictable (all pollsters – go back to school).
What happened on November 8, 2016 was a bloodless revolution of a certain type, called a mob revolution.
It was not the first mob revolution known in the history of mankind (but one of the few of bloodless, at least so far).
Two of the most well-known are: the French Revolution of 1789-1790 (http://www.history.com/topics/french-revolution), and the Russian Bolshevik coup of 1917 (http://www.history.com/topics/russian-revolution).
The designer of the Bolshevik coup Vladimir Lenin studied the French Revolution (among many other studies) and wrote books on the matter. Then he successfully used his theory to design and to organize the coup.
Those books have been available in many languages for about a century. In different countries, many Marxists extremists used them successfully to take over a power. The theory works like a clock! But only under certain conditions (like any scientific theory). To win a power takeover organizers have to ride a wave of a deep populace disappointment and to direct it into actions (hopefully, just a massive voting turnout). That deep populace disappointment happens when the social establishment concentrates all energy on an internal power struggle and loses touch with the needs and feelings of common folks.
All mob revolutions had been based on a frustration masses felt due to economic downturns in the countries. People felt tricked, lied upon, neglected, exploited and powerless. As the result, they embraced leaders with strong rhetoric and simple solutions. “The system is rigged, those … (rich, Jews, intelligent, foreign powers, immigrants, …) are our enemies, we have to destroy them, demolish the system, and start from scratch”. “The International” (the hymn of Socialists and later Communists of the 19th and 20th centuries) has these words: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale):
“Stand up, damned of the Earth
Stand up, prisoners of starvation
Reason thunders in its volcano
This is the eruption of the end.
Of the past let us make a clean slate”.
The latter line describes the typical emotion of people who have been feeling frustration for a long time. When negative emotions have been brewing for a long time, eventually logic just gets shot off. People just don’t care anymore about current social structures and what to crash them. It is like a movie detective who has to let go a criminal and in frustration brakes his beloved coffee mug against a wall.
If Clinton’s people read the books and knew the theory, they would be on guard and would be able to develop the right strategy to curb Trump’s enthusiasm.
But that exactly is the problem. Neither Clinton nor her team were able to step outside of a circle of traditional views on politics.
2. All those pundits, political scientists, sociologists, media analytics professionals, think tank members, pollsters, etc. have to admit that they have no idea how to access populace mood and how to predict populace behavior in extraordinary social circumstances. The current school of polling has completely failed.
One of many pollsters said today on a radio: “Clinton’s numbers were within the margin of error”. Another one said: “Evidently, many of those who did not show any indication to vote, voted for Trump.”
If the “margin of error” included the losing scenario, did you warn your client? Did you even know that the losing scenario was within the “margin of error”? Did you consider a scenario with a large percentage of hidden voters? Did your polls show a possibility of the last-minute voters? Did you even try to assess how many last-minute voters might exist? Questions can – and should – go on and on.
Right after Trump’s nomination it has become extremely clear that this election is far from regular, the social landscape is highly abnormal. It should have become self-evident (like it has now) that current technologies of social predictions work only for regular social events and cannot help with analyzing this race. Instead of asking "Who will you vote for?", right questions would be "What do you talk about when you are in a bar with your friends?", "What are your fears?", "Describe the leader you want to see in the WH?", etc. The problem is that no one from social-analytical establishment – on both sides – really saw how distorted the social landscape was, hence no one tried to developed methods which could capture those hidden abnormalities and irregularities. Well, now they have four years to figure it out.
3. For the Democrats this loss is the result of “a failure of imagination”. November 8 2016 is Democrats’ 9/11.
Number 1 reason for this loss is the arrogance of the Democratic establishment. They saw how Trump just broke the establishment of the Republicans, but they didn’t believe that this could happen to them, they didn’t even consider this option (instead of thinking “I know I am right” they should have asked a question “What if I am wrong?”). That is why they didn’t try to listen to Trump supporters, didn’t really try to understand their motives, just dismissed them as “deplorables”. If they did, maybe they would see that in addition to “deplorables” there was – and still is – (a) a layer of people who felt tired of hard living and just wanted to feel for once as a winner (sport team psychology); (b) a layer of people who felt ignored and wanted to feel relevant (teenager psychology); (c) a layer of people who did not want to be pushed to vote for Hillary merely because “Trump is bad” (rebellious psychology: you want me to do this – here is the opposite!).
Currently I am an Independent.
During the Primaries, I voted Democratic. I was walking to the voting booth ready to vote for Hillary. I loved Bernie Sanders, but I knew he had no chance to get the nomination. And in the last second with a pen in my hand I changed my mind and voted for him. Yesterday I voted for Hillary. But I am sure that lots of people just could not force themselves to vote for her. We will discuss soon why couldn’t they do it. But the fact of the matter is that no one in the democratic camp even thought of this possibility and hence no one even tried to work with it.
Arrogance results in rejecting any ideas which do not belong to an established set of views. That is why Hillary’s team has been using the same old playbook used by Obama. I do not watch news on a regular basis. Lately, when I did – randomly and sporadically – I saw Trump and crowds of people speaking out, or I saw Hillary on a stage with celebrities. If you see these images again and again you get an impression of who is with people and who is above. But Hillary’s team did not try to dig into a psychology of undecided voters. They just kept pushing the “bad Trump” agenda.
We – humans – love our independence, we do not like to be forced into something to do, even if that is for our own benefit (ever tried to make your kid to eat green stuff?). We want to be convinced, not forced. We do want to feel as a winner. If we feel frustrated for a long time our logic just gets shot off. We react like a movie detective who has to free a criminal and brakes his beloved coffee mug against a wall. We just stop caring about consequences of our actions. We just want to break something to feel just a little bit better, do something unexpected, out of order – to feel power again. And this part of human psychology is very well known. However, even when the polls showed a big and sudden (!) drop for Hillary, which was a clear indicator of something unexpected, her team did not try anything from the outside of the playbook they used.
You cannot treat unexpected using methods established for well expected cases.
Arrogance results in surrounding yourself only with people with whom you feel yourself comfortable, which means, talking only to people who confirm your views. During my Russia days, I watched Putin’s closest advisers expressing views almost opposite to the boss’s. Maybe it was just a play, but maybe it was a deliberate politics. What I see around me now is a strong motivation to avoid any disagreement. No one wants to have any discussion if there is a chance to be criticized. Everyone wants to talk only to people with whom one feels comfortable. Conformism within Democratic establishment is the real reason of “a failure of imagination”. But the same conformism has taken place in all social establishment strata, including government, science, education. People within the same circle do not argue with each other, do not criticize each other – that would mean for them that they do not belong to the same circle. The only arguing these days, or years, is happening between opposing camps.
This division is clear when you watch or read news media. Different media outlets have very different audiences, which do not talk to each other. For more than a year late show hosts laughed at Trump, mocked him and his supporters, but for the last couple of months they’ve been communicating to the same group of people, who made their mind a long time ago (hence, didn’t help to grow the number of Hillary’s voters). These hosts also mocked Hillary, but for her singing, or dancing, or dressing. No one mocked her for not trying to step out of her circle and to reach out to people with unorthodox ideas.
Because no one wants to hear unorthodox ideas.
Because that would require unorthodox thinking (a.k.a. thinking).
Much easier to rely on names.
If a big fish establishment name says or writes something – we publish or promote it.
The result is – The Boston Globe (just as an example) has not published any interesting view, any unexpected opinion, any unusual examination, because who would read something extraordinary (a.k.a. outside of ordinary), if the most of the readers represent that establishment which representatives got published in The Boston Globe?
4. Republican establishment did not see a large stratum of people who brought Trump to the win. Democratic establishment did not see the same stratum of people who could bring Hillary to the win. That stratum is not composed of the obvious Trump supporters, who truly believe in his ability to build the wall, who hate minorities, LGBT, and abortions.
A typical representative of this “hidden” social stratum said on a radio, that her brother is a gay, in her school they have and love many people from minorities and immigrants. Why did she vote for Trump? Because she felt ignored. Establishment was busy solving their own problems and simple folks got neglected, left on their own.
The meaning of this is simple:
(A) If I vote for Trump it does not mean I am a bigot or hate immigrants.
(B) My vote for Trump is me screaming – I’m hurting and I want to be noticed!
The first statement represents a form of a psychological escape tactic – by doing this (voting for Trump) I do not do anything immoral.
The second statement is the expressions of fears and feeling of being trapped and helpless. Those fears come from many sources, like dying local economy, stagnated wages, rising cost of leaving, seeing other social forces growing up in power (yes –immigrants taking jobs, minorities whose life matters). Hence – revolt against the current status quo; the current system does not work, we need to break it.
Vladimir Lenin wrote books and successfully used his theory to organize and to win the Bolshevik coup of 1917. I doubt that Trump’s or Hillary’s teams read those books (which is another sign of being conventional). But Trump was following his gut feeling, replaced his team three times searching for people with similar gut feeling, and who, like him, were able to think outside of the ordinary set of ideas (for good of for bad). Hillary relied on people using the same old strategy, which was her own strategy.
Arrogance of Hillary Clinton pushed her to enter the race. Then her arrogance made her say: “We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought”. This is just silly (at the minimum). We all have clearly seen the big division in the country. Hillary did it, too. But she hoped that this division would be in her favor. That did not happen.
Arrogance of the Democratic establishment led to nominating the worst possible candidate.
Party culture led to that no other valid candidate, including Biden (!), risked to challenge Hillary’s party rank. Only one outsider stepped in, but due to arrogance of the party apparatus he was outmaneuvered. And even with all this arrogance Hillary still had a chance to win, if she and her team would be able to step outside of the playbook they used for the campaign. Instead they just have been running ahead like horses with blinders (in this case a narrow-sightedness is worse than a short-sightedness; hope this explains the picture – this how
I see today’s Democratic party).
5. Whose fault is it? What do we do now? (Two beloved Russian unanswered questions)
Previous parts of this piece answered the first question.
The answer to the second one comes automatically.
Everyone who cares about the future has to become an active Democrat.
Has to participate in all local party events.
Has to vote out all current selected party officials and replace them with new ones.
Remember the lady on a radio who voted because she felt ignored and neglected?
I bet she has not been voting for a long time, she did not go to primaries or local elections. She did not want to participate in routine social activities, did not want to read various analytical articles and to participate in lengthy discussions. All she and many others want is having “a strong and fair king” who would make all important decisions to make their life better but without making them to participate.
Well, everyone who cares about the future needs to do just the opposite.
That lady also represents “whites without college degrees” who brought Trump to a victory. She does not see the big disconnect in her own logic. Yes, she personally is not a bigot and does not hate immigrants. But she elected a person who on his own just incapable of being a good political manager (yes – this statement is based on personal view of “political management” and facts about Trump). Hence, like it has happened in the history of mankind many times before, he will be an object of constant manipulation. He will not be managing the country, but his circle of influence will (among so many historic examples, check this one about Grigori Rasputin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Rasputin).
But to see that, one needs to know a history, and to know basics of political management, and just management, and just be able to derive relatively long logical conclusions, and act upon facts and reason instead of upon emotions.
All these skills come from good education.
All these skills come only from good education.
This is why the 2016 Presidential elections has been a testament of the U.S. educational system.
This is why the number one goal for all activists across the country should be fighting for making education great! (not again, though, because so far it has not been great, so – just great).
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What Could Liberals Learn From Physics?
Below is the transcript of my 4-minute video: https://youtu.be/OwzKlFpIt_E
Hello I’m Dr. Valentin Voroshilov.
What I have here is a 200 g weight, a 500 g weight, a cylinder made of iron, and a bar magnet.
And of course, if I use a magnet, I can lift the weight; it is not strong enough to lift a 500 g one,
but the iron cylinder doesn’t do anything at all.
Why? What’s the difference?
Well if we look inside of an iron cylinder and a magnet, we will see atoms and electrons. And the simplest model which helps to understand the difference is: they both have billions and billions of tiny magnets inside, but in the bar magnet those tiny magnets are all aligned; each tiny magnet exerts a tiny force, but because they all point in the same direction, they exert a strong force, strong enough to lift the weight.
But here all tiny magnets point in all possible directions, and they cancel each other out. That is why this bar doesn’t produce any force.
How can we change this? Well, we need to align all those tiny magnets in the same direction.
To do that we can apply an external field.
Like, if we take this coil or a solenoid, and we connect a battery, in that case what we see, this magnet now is strong enough to lift a five-hundred-gram weight.
What lesson can we extract from this simple experiment?
Well, in a social world, social forces work in away very similar to physical forces work in a physical world.
If you have been following the Presidential campaign, you should remember, that as soon as one Fox News anchor would say something, the next anchor would repeat it, and they would repeat if again, and again, and again.
Liberal media used to make fun, they used to laugh at conservatives.
Well, we are liberals, we are so creative, we don’t need to repeat the same things again, and again, right?
But, who’s laughing now?
Nowadays, liberal media are happy to report about every single outburst of a “resistance”.
Clearly, they have forgotten the fate of “Occupy Wall-Street” movement.
They keep laughing at conservatives for repetitiveness of their news and analysis.
They don’t understand that conservative media generated that media field that aligns all the conservative movement in one direction.
Liberals just keep laughing.
Well, they just happy to have a material, I guess.
They are happy to have a job.
Well, the question is for how long?
If anybody would like to know how liberals can start aligning their forces in one direction, please, check my open letter to four senators.
Fight smart!
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Intellectual stagnation, social conformism, and the crisis of logical communication
We live and have been living for a long time in the crisis of logical communication. People do not try to understand what other people say. People try to recognize what other people say. If one hears something similar to one’s own views, one accepts it. If one hears something contradicting one’s view, one stops listening and at the best starts ignoring the opponent, at the wots tries to destroy the opponent (“he/she is dangerous, is a threat, my enemy!”).
Lately, I have been watching many late-night shows. Take Bill Maher, for example. He had many high ranking Republican guests supporting Trump. Their conversations usually went like this: Bill “Trump is bad”, opponents “But people are hurting”; “But Trump is bad”, “But people are hurting”, “But Trump is bad”, “But people are hurting”, …
You get an idea.
It was funny, and smart, but not deep.
It was assumed that the phrase “People are hurting” was used as an excuse for supporting Trump, for being on his team. No one tried to analyze if people have really been hurting and how wide and deep and painful that hurting was.
I have mentioned in this post (http://the3dforce.blogspot.com/2017/04/why.html) that when people feel a pain for a long time the logic just gets shut, and appealing to logic just does not work anymore.
When we see this kind of conversation without listening on TV, this is just a tip of an iceberg.
Talking without listening is happening on all social levels.
Someone tells you that he or she thinks this and this about that. You ask one simple question “Why?”. At first you get a weird look, meaning “Isn’t this obvious?”. “Well, maybe it is obvious to you, but not to me. By the way, do you remember these two statements you just made? They contradict each other.” This usually bring the conversation to its end. You have become a pariah (at best). People do not to you anymore. People start avoiding you. Because you make people feel – Silly? Uneasy? Uncomfortable?
People have stopped talking to people with whom they feel themselves uncomfortable.
All kind of people: scientists, educators, managers, official, politicians.
OK, I have to make a small correction.
People have stopped willingly talking to people with whom they feel themselves uncomfortable. When scientists, educators, managers, official, politicians are forced to talk to each other, they do – but without listening.
I have already describe how wide spread political conformism lead to Clinton’s loss.
If people representing the Nation’s intellectual establishment cannot really reason with each other, or just cannot reason, what to expect from a regular guy?
If people representing the Nation’s intellectual establishment do not hear each other, it is just natural that they do not hear a regular guy.
And a regular guy said – “basta”!
The signs of the crisis of logical communication are everywhere.
When you talk or write to someone the logic of your words is not important any more. In order to get through you have to pass to filters. If what you present is very much similar to the ideas of the receipting party, you get through the first filter. Then you are judged: “Who the heck is you?”. If your persona presents any use for the receipting party and you are comfortable to deal with, you are in. You are now one of the pack (more at http://www.teachology.xyz/sc.html).
The first filter filters out all people with unusual ideas. The second filter filters out uncomfortable people. And here we are. Intellectual stagnation.
It is nothing new that intellectuals get broken down in factions and concentrate their energy on keeping status quo, instead of searching for new ideas. Unfortunately, intellectual stagnation greatly affects education on all levels. No one teaches to think, to reason any more, instead “my textbook must become your bible”.
I understand that this picture represents some exaggeration of the actual state of education, but it is done on purpose.
The result of 2016 Presidential race is – in a great part – a testament of the current educational system.
“Whites without college degrees” brought Trump to a victory. They did not see the disconnect between their personal goal (more jobs, better life) and their action (voting for Trump). It is unfortunate when people mistakenly make a decision which goes against their own benefits. However, it is even worse when they know that, and make the same decision anyway. There is a tale: The God tells a guy “Tell me what you want and I will give it to. Anything you want! But know, that I will give twice to your neighbor”. And the guy said “Take out one of my eyes”. This is how much he hated (envy?) the neighbor. In this election many votes had been based on hatred (due to different reasons). But in the end, people voted for a person who on his own just cannot be a good political manager (yes – this statement is based on personal view of “political management” and facts about Trump). Hence, like it has happened in the history of mankind many times before, he will be an object of constant manipulation. He will not be managing the country, but his circle of influence will (among so many historic examples, check this one about Grigori Rasputin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Rasputin).
But to see that, one needs to know a history, and to know basics of political management, and just management, and just be able to derive relatively long logical conclusions, and act upon facts and reason instead of upon emotions.
All these skills come from good education.
All these skills come only from good education.
It also means that when graduates of some educational institution do not know a history, and do not know basics of political management, and just management, and just cannot derive relatively long logical conclusions, and act upon emotions instead of upon facts and reason, that educational institution does not give a good education. Period.
In the former USSR every school student had to take a world history courses starting from the 7th grade (and BTW: also the best subject to train logical thinking - physics). Every college student had to take various philosophy courses. They had to study Marxists philosophy, of course, but also the world philosophy in general: Plato, Aristotle, … Obviously, all those courses were biased toward “Inevitability of the Communists World Revolution”. However, a reasonable person was able to detect that bias. If one takes that bias out of an equation, one has left with very valuable philosophical, historical and social views (what to do after that is a different question). Those views help to understand reasons behind past and current social events, and even to identify the trends and – maybe, just maybe – start doing something about it, if those trends are dangerous.
In this piece https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/11/09/trump-won-because-college-educated-americans-are-out-of-touch/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_3_na Prof. Charles Camosy writes that “college-educated Americans are out of touch”. If so, the reason for that is that college educators are out of learning.
They do not want to learn how to teach better. Many are too deep into the research they do and have to fight for each grant-delivered penny; for them teaching is the last thing on the list of things to think about. Others cannot accept the fact that they may not be already perfect teachers, that they have to constantly work on improving their teaching methods. And there are many who are just incapable of changing their teaching (too old, too stubborn, too arrogant).
Unfortunately, as we see now clearly and painfully, decades of reformation of education have not made much of a difference.
That is why we MUST start reforming the way we reforming education – at all levels!
These posts detail what have to be done in this direction:
Education reform needs a new paradigm: http://www.teachology.xyz/np.htm
What Infrastructure Do We Need to Build to Promote Education Research to a True Science?: http://www.teachology.xyz/30uS.html
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Great point, resonates with what I told to my friends all along
You can’t say to anyone anymore “No, I think you are wrong”. You will hurt feelings and people will be avoiding you till the end of life. No one will discuss issues, steps, actions, if that conversation will make them FEEL uncomfortable.
You have to say “I see your point, it is very interesting, clearly you put a lot of thoughts and effort into it, may I ask you for just a minor alternation, just to help to escape some possible confusion some people – not many, but just one or two, but we should care about all of them, right? – may have”. _ There is a difference between people who voted for Trump, and people who MADE him the President. The latter ones voted for a guy with balls. That’s it.
The meaning of the words coming out his mouth was absolutely irrelevant. The guy had to have balls to say all those things, and “we all tired of trying to not hurt anybody else’s’ feelings; I also have balls, I am with balls, he’s with balls, we all are with balls, let’s use our balls, who cares about ball-less people!” BTW: it means one simple thing. If it wasn’t for the arrogance of the top leaders of the Democratic party, we would have now President Sanders.
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American Republicans are just Russian Bolsheviks!
When I came to the U.S. I wanted to become a part of the greatest democracy in the world, so I decided to register as a member of a political party. After checking the general ideas of the two largest parties I decided to become a Republican. In Russia there was only one political party and in order to become a member, one had to get through a lot of scrutiny. The first surprise was that to become a party member here in the U.S one has to do one thing – make a small payment at least once a year. That was easy. So, for a number of years I was a dormant Republican. The Hell broke during 2008 Presidential elections. Firstly, I personally liked senator Obama as the best of all candidates from both parties. Secondly, I started getting a lot of crazy letters from RNC, with internal contradictions, or no logic at all. Those letters brought a lot of plain lies, they assumed that I was a stupid uneducated person who is angry and they wanted to make me even more angry (remember, it was the time of a financial crisis and a lot of people were very angry already, including me). The authors of the letters clearly did not want me to think, they did not reason with me, did not lay out arguments. I saw patterns of brainwashing and emotion manipulation. Very similar patterns, indeed. Very soon I realized that RNC was using exactly same technologies Russian Communist Party has been using for decades. Among many common themes were “Everyone hates us and we must defend ourselves even if we need to sacrifice our individual freedoms”, and “We must have a strong leader”, “We are the only people who know the truth, all others are liars and influenced by our enemies”. Anyway, I do not lake being manipulated (one of the reason I left Russia; and one of the reasons I recognized the patterns), so I quit being a Republican (but I have been getting that kind of letters for a long time; in hindsight, I should have collected them).
I observed again a very similar behavior in 2008. But this election year was the craziest of all. I already posted a couple of posts on similarities between the current attempt (at least as it is seen today) of a mob revolution in the U.S. and some of the mob revolutions in the past. That includes the fact that all of the mob revolutions are based on emotional manipulating and directing people’s anger to an uncritical support and destructive actions. Here I want to add a couple of more.
The majority of people supporting an odious leader do not want to participate in an everyday social building. They want to have “a strong but fair king/tsar” who would rule with “an iron fist”, mercilessly eradicating all enemies (of course the “king” will never turn onto his current supporters, or will he?). Those people are looking for an easy way out, they want somebody else doing the work for them – like reading, thinking, comparing, analyzing, communicating, compromising, writing documents, etc. However, the history proves that the new “king” never does what he promised, and just uses the opportunity to strengthen his power by getting rid of anyone who disagrees.
Another group of people who support an odious leader is ones who are just looking for a personal political gain (of course, when it happens, it will never go away, or will it?).
It has been interesting to see how many prominent Republicans lined up behind a candidate they all initially ridiculed – not as a candidate but just as a human being. And now they all praise the same human being they ridiculed and laughed at. Did they change their views about Trump as a human being? Of course not! But they swallowed their feelings anyway. One might wonder - why? The main answer is – because they have become afraid of being pushed out of the politics by the aggressive Trump supporters who brought him up the ranks. To the public those high-ranking Republicans say that they do it “for the Party”. Some of them may say it even to themselves – a common version of self-manipulation (no one wants to admit the lack of integrity – even to themselves).
However, even this phenomenon is not new in the history. For example, in 1938 in Russia, more than a dozen formerly prominent party and government leaders were charged with espionage and treason, and with killing other prominent Russian leaders. Eighteen persons out of twenty-one were executed (including Nicolai Bukharin who for many years was one of the closest allies of Josef Stalin). The most astonishing thing was that they all confessed to the bogus offenses. In personal letters found and published much later many made a statement that they confessed (not because of being tortured, because many was not) to preserve the Party unity, because they wanted to avoid the Party to be broken into factions fighting for the power, especially in front of looming war (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Case_of_the_Anti-Soviet_%22Bloc_of_Rights_and_Trotskyites%22).
In hindsight, that practically finalized Stalin’s path the Russian throne.
I do hope that Donald Trump will not win (when I student asked me who would I vote for – I said: “For the lesser of the two evils”). However, I hope even more that the Republican party will be broken in factions, and the aggressive, racist, faction of “deplorables” will eventually shrink down (like KKK did) taking with it all the current Trump endorsers. But the healthy part of the party will eventually reconstruct itself as a true conservative movement – because the democracy needs two strong parties (at least) to function.
BTW: many of those who in 1938 manufactured bogus trials soon were purged, too.
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The election is just over. What's now?
The election is over. I am very disappointed with its outcome. If you are with me, you should ask yourself a hard question – why did it happen? And you should give yourself a difficult answer – because Democratic party establishment failed to recognized the importance of thinking “outside the box” (bad teachers?).
Democrats must replace the majority of the party establishment with new people, who accept the need for a radical reformation of the party.
You may ask, how is this related to education reform?
The connection is stronger than you may think.
Now it should be self-evident to almost everyone that the current social situation in the country is far from ordinary – we can call it extraordinary :)
It is impossible to solve extraordinary problems using ordinary approaches established for solving ordinary problems.
Solving extraordinary, unusual, unexpected, even bizarre problems require invention of new approaches, which, in turn, requires a new kind of thinking.
Of course, there always have been, are, and will be some “Amish people of political world”.
But if you are not such a person, you should agree that social reformation in the country must take a different direction. Pedaling harder and harder in the same direction is just stupid.
What should be that new direction? We do not know yet. We have to find it together.
We have exactly same situation with reformation of education. Decades had passed without any real change in the outcomes. That is why I have been calling for reforming the way education is being reformed. That is why I started this campaign. And one more thing.
“Whites without college degrees” who brought Trump to a victory do not see the big disconnect in their own logic. Yes, personally they might not bigots and do not hate immigrants. But they elected a person who on his own just cannot be a good political manager (yes – this statement is based on personal view of “political management” and facts about Trump). Hence, like it has happened in the history of mankind many times before, he will be an object of constant manipulation. He will not be managing the country, but his circle of influence will (among so many historic examples, check this one about Grigori Rasputin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Rasputin).
“But to see that, one needs to know a history, and to know basics of political management, and just management, and just be able to derive relatively long logical conclusions, and act upon facts and reason instead of upon emotions.
All these skills come from good education.
All these skills come ONLY from good education.
This is why the 2016 Presidential elections has been a testament of the U.S. educational system.
This is why the number one goal for all activists across the country should be fighting for making education great! (not again, though, because so far it has not been great, so – just great).”
The latter was a quote from a larger version of this post.
Don’t just take my word. Read the post and scrutinize the logic. And if you agree, support my campaign.
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To everyone who has been emotionally attacked, called names, threatened, verbally degraded!
I have spent my day off reading, thinking, writing, reading again, thinking again, writing again.
Today especially interesting reading was Facebook replies to comments to posts. It is time consuming, but once in a while it is time worth spent.
To everyone who has been emotionally attacked, called names, threatened, verbally degraded!
Know this.
There is such a science, called “psychology”.
And this science has proved as a fact, that everyone who was emotionally attacking you, called you names, threatened you, and tried to verbally degrade is a looser.
This is a fact.
Everyone from that side hates you and others because they hate themselves, but cannot accept this. When they look into a mirror they see a person who does not have much of a respect, who has not achieved much in life, for whom the only way to feel better about themselves is to put someone down.
What should you do about it?
Nothing.
Or almost nothing - it is up to you.
First, stay calm. Do not get provoked. If you feel an emotion, do not react, take a walk.
But if you want to write something back, write something cold, or even sarcastic.
Every time when you write something smart, those guys get more and more wound up, and eventually just got tired.
In a way, the more obscenities you are getting, the bigger is the victory of your side.
If your page got showered by vulgarities – you win big league!“a failure of imagination”
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“A failure of imagination” has lead to 11/08/2016
For the Democrats this loss is the result of “a failure of imagination”. November 8 2016 is Democrats’ 9/11.
Number 1 reason for this loss is the arrogance of the Democratic establishment. They saw how Trump just broke the establishment of the Republicans, but they didn’t believe that this could happen to them, they didn’t even consider this option (instead of thinking “I know I am right” they should have asked a question “What if I am wrong?”). That is why they didn’t try to listen to Trump supporters, didn’t really try to understand their motives, just dismissed them as “deplorables”. If they did, maybe they would see that in addition to “deplorables” there was – and still is – (a) a layer of people who felt tired of hard living and just wanted to feel for once as a winner (sport team psychology); (b) a layer of people who felt ignored and wanted to feel relevant (teenager psychology); (c) a layer of people who did not want to be pushed to vote for Hillary merely because “Trump is bad” (rebellious psychology: you want me to do this – here is the opposite!).
Arrogance results in rejecting any ideas which do not belong to an established set of views. That is why Hillary’s team has been using the same old playbook used by Obama. I do not watch news on a regular basis. Lately, when I did – randomly and sporadically – I saw Trump and crowds of people speaking out, or I saw Hillary on a stage with celebrities. If you see these images again and again you get an impression of who is with people and who is above. But Hillary’s team did not try to dig into a psychology of undecided voters. They just kept pushing the “bad Trump” agenda.
You cannot treat unexpected using methods established for well expected cases.
Arrogance results in surrounding yourself only with people with whom you feel yourself comfortable, which means, talking only to people who confirm your views. During my Russia days I watched Putin’s closest advisers expressing views almost opposite to the boss’s. Maybe it was just a play, but maybe it was a deliberate politics. What I see around me now is a strong motivation to avoid any disagreement. No one wants to have any discussion if there is a chance to be criticized. Everyone wants to talk only to people with whom one feels comfortable. Conformism within Democratic establishment is the real reason of “a failure of imagination”. But the same conformism has taken place in all social establishment strata, including government, science, education. People within the same circle do not argue with each other, do not criticize each other – that would mean for them that they do not belong to the same circle. The only arguing these days, or years, is happening between opposing camps.
What happened is a mob revolution. There are books which describe how to use masses with this type of thinking in order to take over a power. Vladimir Lenin wrote such books, and successfully used his theory to organize and to win the Bolshevik coup of 1917. I doubt that Trump’s or Hillary’s teams read those books (which is another sign of being conventional). But Trump was following his gut feeling, replaced his team three times searching for people with similar gut feeling, and who, like him, were able to think outside of the ordinary set of ideas (for good of for bad). Hillary relied on people using the same old strategy, which was her own strategy.
Arrogance of Hillary Clinton pushed her to enter the race. Then her arrogance made her say: “We have seen that our nation is more deeply divided than we thought”. This is just silly (at the minimum). We all have clearly seen the big division in the country. Hillary did it, too. But she hoped that this division would be in her favor. That did not happen.
Arrogance of the Democratic establishment led to nominating the worst possible candidate.
Party culture led to that no other valid candidate, including Biden (!), risked to challenge Hillary’s party rank. Only one outsider stepped in, but due to arrogance of the party apparatus he was outmaneuvered. And even with all this arrogance Hillary still had a chance to win, if she and her team would be able to step outside of the playbook they used for the campaign. Instead they just have been running ahead like horses with blinders (in this case a narrow-sightedness is worse than a shortsightedness).
Everyone who cares about the future has to become an active Democrat.
Has to participate in all local party events.
Has to vote out all recently selected party officials and replace them with new ones.
Also, check my last campaign update at https://www.gofundme.com/teachology
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Were Democrats Doomed, or There Was a Path to The Victory, and Does It Still Exist?
That's funny how everyone is jumping on the same wagon explaining to us what happened AFTER it has become already obvious. What is it – the need to still feel being relevant? "I wasn't the prophet, but now I have a clear vision!"
That includes so-called political pundits and various late show hosts.
In the aftermath of the Trump’s victory we see a storm of publications trying to explain why did this happen (one example is here https://www.propublica.org/article/revenge-of-the-forgotten-class).
In particular, almost everyone blames pollsters.
But what about people who tried to warn and was not heard? Who should be blamed for not listening to those people?
Turns out, there have been people who used logical reasoning and warned about Trump’s win.
Prof. Allan Lichtman
After reading this piece in Washington Post about Prof. Allan Lichtman I posted short comments.
1. I agree that Trump’s victory was brought by voters who for years have been feeling economic and social pain. For those voters Hillary symbolized at least four more years of that pain.
2. But I disagree that Democrats were doomed and could not do anything.
First, Democratic party establishment selected the worst possible candidate.
3. However, even with Hillary running, Democrats still had a chance to win if they would address the sources of the pain many “regular folks” felt. Instead, they based all race on a “Trump is bad” banner. Fixation on Trump – that was what brought Hillary down (and this is why they did it: https://teachologyforall.blogspot.com/2016/11/intellectual-stagnation-social.html).
She and her surrogates and all the pundits and hosts should have used a different line of attack. Instead of attacking personal traits of Trump they should have been attacking obstructionist policies of the Republican congress, like “Why do you feel your pain? Because you do not have good jobs! Why don’t you have good jobs? Because Republicans blocked all infrastructure projects, which could give here and there millions of jobs! Why did Republicans do that? Because the do not want to associate anything good with Obama. But if we keep the White House and take back the Congress, we will make Americans’ work again!”.
4. I agree with the statement that Trump will not last as the President.
But I disagree with the reason.
The fact that he is unpredictable is not important. He is a big baby and a smart person always can find a way to manipulate with a big baby. No one will even need to impeach Trump. The true reason for he will not finish his term is he does NOT want to be the President! Here never had!
Below I want to extend my comments.
We got ourselves in a very serious situation. There is no way to just scream out of it, or joke out of it. Having a discussion is important, but only if we try to find a common ground on what to do now (https://teachologyforall.blogspot.com/2016/11/intellectual-stagnation-social.html).
After we agree (more or less) on reasons why Trump won, and on what danger his victory brings, we have to stop pointing fingers at each other “it was your fault”, and start acting. Some people will have to leave their current chairs; new people should run the party.
Who?
People, who share the view on reasons why Trump won, on what danger his victory brings, and on what to do now.
I offered my view on the matter in the series of posts at https://teachologyforall.blogspot.com/ (now almost all for them are presented on this page).
Here I only add a couple of new points.
1. Many of the people who voted for Trump do not follow logic.
It is really interesting/funny/sad/ridiculous/hilarious/ that many Trump voters did it because they felt forgotten and economically degraded. They didn’t realize however that they have been screaming “take care of me, give me good jobs” to people who have been saying all the time “we give you an economic freedom, now it’s your turn, go ahead and make your own money!”, or “wait until billionaires get so much money so some of it will spill over to you”.
Ironic, isn’t it?
Our takeaway from this is simple: it is impossible to reasons with those people. If we want to penetrate their irrational barrier and make ourselves understood, we will have to find correct means to address to their emotions directly.
2. One of the emotions many Trump voters share is “I am”, meaning “I exist”, “I matter”.
This can be used be calling them to a dare. “If you are so confident, do this!”
“Do you consider yourself strong, smart, honest? Do you stick to your decision? Well, the difference between responsible decision making and just “f@#$k it and forget it” (a.k.a. decision faking) is what we do AFTER that.
I consider myself a responsible educated, smart, and honest person. When I make a serious decision, I can provide a list of parameters, and for those parameters - critical values, which I will use to asses if my decision was right or wrong. Why? Because, as an honest person, I cannot assume that I am always right. But, as a responsible person, I need to know how to asses in the end was I right or wrong?
Do you consider yourself strong, smart, honest, responsible? If yes, you have to do the same.
That is why I challenge you!
I may don’t understand your logic, or disagree with it. I might be blind, or brainwashed, or just stupid.
It does not matter, because it is not about me. It is about you – everyone how voted for Trump.
Do you consider yourself smart and honest and educated and confident enough to take a dare?
Take it!
Take a piece of paper and write down “I voted for Trump because …” and add at least five specific reasons. On the back side of this page write “In four years my life will be better …” and write at least five specific improvements you expect to happen in your life in four years. Save this paper and take it out in four years. Or just put it on your wall and look at it every day.
Of course, only if you are so confident in your vote.
And in four years you will be pointing your finger at me laughing and saying “I told you so, you moron!”
Or not.”
3. It has become a common place that not all Trump supporters are racist, or bigots. Should we fear only those who are, or all of them pose a threat?
Those who are radicalized would love to bring Inquisition on all who disagrees (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquisition). What should we expect from the moderates?
In fact, if history teaches us anything, moderates may be even more dangerous that open radicals/extremists.
If a college educated science teacher, defends a person who is easily ready to misplace millions of people based on their ideology, what to expect from folks chanting “Lock her up”.
Radicals want to destroy everyone who disagrees. They just want to use a force, and a force is the only force they understand (sorry for tautology). But – they understand it clearly.
Moderates what to bring light to “people in darkness”.
There are millions of them – moderates, as well as people who they consider to be in darkness.
Many of the moderates see themselves as messiah and think of themselves as unique in their mission.
That only means, of course, that they don’t know the history.
This simple story has been repeating itself again and again.
First, you get a very bright idea. Then you become confident that everyone must share this bright idea. Then you decide that the end justifies the means.
And one historic blink later we see people in concentration camps.
Because “they were too damn stubborn to accept our light”.
You are a moderate Trump voter, you read this, and you think “This is bulls@$t, I’m a good guy”.
Well, do you think that the guy who was pouring liquid lead into “witch’s” throat, or the guy who was killing Jews in gas chambers thought “I am so terrible person, I am so awful, that is why I kill them”?
I am perfectly aware of the fact that Trump supporters do not present a uniform social layer.
But I am absolutely convinced that many of them – if allowed – would love to lock up millions of immigrants and minorities in ghettos. The only reason they will not do it is the resistance coming for the opposite camp.
But every moderate Trump supporter needs to realize that right now they all are in the same camp with those radicals and extremists.
And we have to remind them this fact again and again.
4. What to do know?
Firstly, there are always people who say – everting is f@#$ed up, nothing can be done, just go with it. There is no reason to argue with such people – it is useless; it is just a waste of time. If you want to achieve some goal, and someone else wants to achieve a similar goal – the first thing to do is to have a discussion about how to achieve that goal.
Unfortunately, having a good and productive discussion is not as easy as it seems (I have a large post on this topic: “Intellectual stagnation, social conformism, and the crisis of logical communication, or how to start thinking again”.
But it is possible if all participating parties have the same goal, which is NOT “to make America think as I do”, but “do the best to make America understand what I mean.”
It is a common misconception that the goal of every discussion is to convince everyone that you are right.
No.
The goal of every discussion should be to present your logic and to understand the logic of the opponent and then to find the parts of the two logics which are the same or similar. Looking for differences is less productive than looking for similarities.
Sometimes similarities are too small and differences are too large to start building common actions. But hopefully if the ultimate goal is the same, there is still some room for a cooperation.
Unfortunately, not everyone can cooperate/collaborate.
No one is perfect, everybody makes mistakes. One of the very important quality of a person who can collaborate is an ability to admit his or her mistakes. If a person cannot say “I was wrong”, no way that person can collaborate with people who have some disagreement with his or her ideas. If a person cannot say “I was wrong”, trying to work with this person is usually a waste of time.
When we meet someone for the first time, we heavily relay on the first impression.
However, it is important to get beyond it.
When we look at someone for the first time and think: “If I don’t like you; why would I listen to you?”, very often we mean: “If I don’t know you; why would I listen to you?”
One of the best techniques to get past the first impression is to get to know each other, to learn about each other roots, dreams, setback. Of course, it takes time, but it worth it. To save time, people can prepare a short essay about themselves and exchange those essays ahead of a meeting.
Maybe you and I will never meet, but I still have prepared my essay about me.
An extended information about me is available on my sites:
https://teachologyforall.blogspot.com/
https://www.gofundme.com/teachology
So, here I just want to present a short version of my story and my vision.
I was born and grew up in Russia, which at the time called Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I had a very good career and a good prospective, but after Putin rolled back Gorbachev’s freedoms of speech I decided to move out.
I wanted to become a part of America’s democracy, and initially I joined the Republican party. I left it when I realized how similar the Republican party is to USSR’s Communist. In part, one of the most important similarities between the U.S. Republican and USSR’s Communist parties is that both parties want to impose their political and social views on others. The ideology in both parties is “You can do whatever you want, you can have your economic freedom, but only if you follow OUR ideology”. Both parties want to control what people think. And their ideology is always more restrictive than democratic one; it prescribes more what people CANNOT think and do, than what people can think and do. In democracy restrictions only come from rights of others; democratic idea is that you can do anything you want until your action starts limiting the freedom of another one. In democracy, if you have a conflict you cannot just impose your will, you have to negotiate. However, both, the U.S. Republican and USSR’s Communist parties want to impose their world view on everyone around, and lock in chains (figuratively, of course – or not) everyone who disagrees. And that is why I left.
I believe that I was brought to this world for a reason.
I have a mission!
That mission is teaching!
I have been teaching physics for many years. Well, also algebra, geometry, trigonometry, problems, solving, logic. But lately, mostly physics.
And I am good at it. I can teach physics or mathematics everyone who is willing to put some effort in it.
Because physics and teaching physics is based on a very straightforward logic. And I can show that logic very clearly and explain all the logical steps which will lead to a solution of a given problem from any textbook.
What happened before and during the election day also has its own logic. I saw that logic and tried to warn.
Unfortunately, people in the Clinton’s team did not see that logic and did not want to hear anybody from the outside of their circle.
Now, we cannot teach that logic to people who did not see it in the first place.
We have to replace those people.
That is why, everyone who cares about the future of this Country has to become an active Democrat.
Has to participate in all local party events.
Has to vote out all recently selected party officials and replace them with new ones.
I told to all my friends that Trump would not be the President. But my reasons were more than just "Trump is bad". I saw historic precedents and a strategy which could be used to stop Trump.
We all make mistakes.
My mistake was that I was expecting from people in the Democratic party establishment to be smart enough to see what I saw, or to hear what regular folks tell them.
I was wrong.
And now I have to do something about it.
I do not want to move again in a different country. This is not the solution for me this time. Hence, I have to get involved.
This is what my logic tells me to do. Get involved. Get on a new mission.
My new mission is to form a coalition or a movement within the Democratic party, which would be able to bring the reforms needed to "make the party viable again!"
Ambitious? Maybe, but it is better to "aim high" than to regret again.
We could call this coalition "New Democrats" (do not confuse with young democrats, because you do not have to be young to be new; take Bernie Sanders, for example).
Within this coalition we have to map all the upcoming elections. We have to prepare our own candidates, and our own policies. Probably, people who have been selected to their position less than 4-5 years ago may stay (but still have to be scrutinized), but people who have been in the ruling layer for a long time have to go, their time has passed. We may need to setup our own Super PAC (“New Democrats for America”) to finance our own website and a paper. The party needs a “new blood”, and those new Democrats will need to lead an internal party “revolution”.
And then when it happens we take the party to the new heights.
What about my old mission, teaching physics?
It does not go away.
The result of 2016 Presidential race is – in a great part – a testament of the current educational system.
“Whites without college degrees” brought Trump to a victory. They did not see the disconnect between their personal goal (more jobs, better life) and their action (voting for Trump). It is unfortunate when people mistakenly make a decision which goes against their own benefits. However, it is even worse when they know that, and make the same decision anyway. There is a tale: The God tells a guy “Tell me what you want and I will give it to. Anything you want! But know, that I will give twice to your neighbor”. And the guy said “Take out one of my eyes”. This is how much he hated (envy?) the neighbor. In this election many votes had been based on hatred (due to different reasons). But in the end, people voted for a person who on his own just cannot be a good political manager (yes – this statement is based on personal view of “political management” and facts about Trump). Hence, like it has happened in the history of mankind many times before, he will be an object of constant manipulation. He will not be managing the country, but his circle of influence will (among so many historic examples, check this one about Grigori Rasputin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grigori_Rasputin).
But to see that, one needs to know a history, and to know basics of political management, and just management, and just be able to derive relatively long logical conclusions, and act upon facts and reason instead of upon emotions.
All these skills come from good education.
All these skills come only from good education.
It also means that when graduates of some educational institution do not know a history, and do not know basics of political management, and just management, and just cannot derive relatively long logical conclusions, and act upon emotions instead of upon facts and reason, that educational institution does not give a good education. Period.
In the former USSR every school student had to take a world history courses starting from the 7th grade (and BTW: also the best subject to train logical thinking - physics). Every college student had to take various philosophy courses. They had to study Marxists philosophy, of course, but also the world philosophy in general: Plato, Aristotle, … Obviously, all those courses were biased toward “Inevitability of the Communists World Revolution”. However, a reasonable person was able to detect that bias. If one takes that bias out of an equation, one has left with very valuable philosophical, historical and social views (what to do after that is a different question). Those views help to understand reasons behind past and current social events, and even to identify the trends and – maybe, just maybe – start doing something about it, if those trends are dangerous.
In this piece https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/11/09/trump-won-because-college-educated-americans-are-out-of-touch/?tid=hybrid_experimentrandom_3_na Prof. Charles Camosy writes that “college-educated Americans are out of touch”.
If so, the reason for that is that college educators are “out of learning”.
They do not want to learn how to teach better. Many are too deep into the research they do and have to fight for each grant-delivered penny; for them teaching is the last thing on the list of things to think about. Others cannot accept the fact that they may not be already perfect teachers, that they have to constantly work on improving their teaching methods. And there are many who are just incapable of changing their teaching (too old, too stubborn, too arrogant).
Unfortunately, as we see now – clearly and painfully, decades of reformation of education have not made much of a difference.
That is why we MUST start reforming the way we reforming education – at all levels!
This why reforming the way education is being reformed must become one of the important parts of the New Democrats’ platform.
These posts detail what have to be done in this direction:
Education reform needs a new paradigm: http://www.teachology.xyz/np.htm
What Infrastructure Do We Need to Build to Promote Education Research to a True Science?: http://www.teachology.xyz/30uS.html
Answering my questions in the title of this paper:
Were Democrats Doomed? – NO
Was There a Path to The Victory? – YES
Does It Still Exist? – YES
**************
In his latest “Real Time with Bill Maher” Bill described the Trump movement as a right-wing coup. I call it a mob revolution. This is not the first one mob revolution in the history of the mankind. Three of the most well-known are: the French Revolution of 1789-1790 (http://www.history.com/topics/french-revolution); the Russian Bolshevik coup of 1917 (http://www.history.com/topics/russian-revolution); and the 1932 German Federal elections (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_federal_election,_July_1932).
All mob revolutions had been based on a frustration masses felt due to economic downturns in the countries. People felt tricked, lied upon, neglected, exploited and powerless. As the result they embraced leaders with strong rhetoric and simple solutions. “The system is rigged, those … (rich, Jews, intelligent, foreign powers, immigrants, …) are our enemies, we have to destroy them, demolish the system, and start from scratch”. “The International” (the hymn of Socialists and later Communists of the 19th and 20th centuries) has these words: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale):
“Stand up, damned of the Earth
Stand up, prisoners of starvation
Reason thunders in its volcano
This is the eruption of the end.
Of the past let us make a clean slate”.
BTW: All three mentioned mob revolutions had eventually led to the establishment of a dictatorship
Who is the next?
Just saying.
Hi, I'm Dr. Valentin Voroshilov.
Yesterday Nancy Pelosi made a statement.
She said that the reason for Hillary Clinton’s loss was the email scandal generated by the FBI director.
This is the kind of BS which makes even me want to vote for Donald Trump.
By the way, BS stands for “Beyond Sense-making”.
Let’s assume for the moment that Pelosi is correct. That would only mean that Hillary Clinton's campaign was so blipping weak that this scandal tipped it over.
In reality of course that wasn't the case. In reality people who embraced this scandal weren’t going to vote for Clinton anyway, and the people who were going to vote for Clinton just shrugged it off.
And the number of undecided flip-flopper voters couldn’t be so large to make a difference.
You see, that at this point it is “she said he said” situation.
The difference is - I have no money, but she does.
Well, National Democratic Committee has the money which it can use to run a nationwide survey to find out how many people really changed their vote because of the email scandal.
They could but they wouldn’t because they know the result we’ll be against the statement made by Nancy Pelosi.
I understand that all she wants is to cover her behind.
But this is the kind of behavior which repulses regular folks like me.
Yesterday I also attended the celebration party.
I thought it would be a meeting where Democrats discuss policies, but turns out it was really just a party.
Representatives from different groups, mostly unions, celebrated upcoming holidays.
I’ve met several interesting and nice people.
When I talked to a seasoned activist I asked him why did Hillary lose? He didn’t Say a word, he did this.
Index finger up, palms over eyes, palm s over ears.
This is a clear proof that people on a grass root level perfectly understand why Hillary lost.
Two days ago, I also met Young Democrats for Massachusetts. I was delivering a letter to the new Chair. I was late, he was gone, but I met Young Democrats. They were not really young, biologically speaking, thirty something. They were really surprised to see me. When I asked for two minutes of time, they said, okay but next time please call.
They were so tense.
Those guys really have to work on how to deal with unexpected guests.
That’s it for today.
Thank you.