Ideological Dishonesty -- an old perspective

From ninety years ago:  Ideological dishonesty in national leadership is the same as sloppiness in a surgeon.  Both inevitably lead to infection of the organism. Dishonesty in a leader, however, is not an accident; it flows from a contradiction between established principles and the determination of  leadership to exercise control.

A ruling elite will slander outside opposition.  It will gain cooperation within the bureaucracy (the apparatchik) by requiring absolute loyalty to leadership.  The press will become the bureaucracy's press. The non-influential masses will be propagandized and kept in the dark regarding decision-making and negotiations.  Transparency will be selective.  Objective discussion will be limited.

~ Lessons from the post-revolution era in Russia and Stalin's rise to power. (ref)(ref)(ref) 
Trotsky was a leader of the opposition which simply wanted to explain its views and participate in public discussion.  He was opposed by the bureaucracy - including the editors of Pravda.

Trotsky -- he goes on to note that, "The dying out of inner-party

democracy leads to a dying out of workers' democracy in general.

His response (below):

" ... It is quite a different matter when you have an unceasing,
furious, one-sided discussion being conducted in the press
and at party meetings ..."

The increasing separation between leadership and the general population erodes the very heart of democracy.

Leon Trotsky was Lenin's choice to succeed him as head of the party.  He fought for open discourse during Stalin's rise, hoping perhaps to limit the runaway corruption of the powerful.

He failed. After leading opposition to the policies of Joseph Stalin and the increasing role of bureaucracy, Trotsky was removed as Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs (01/1925), removed from the Politburo (10/1926), from the Central Committee (10/1927), expelled from the Communist Party (11/1927), exiled to Kazakhstan (01/1928), and exiled from the Soviet Union (02/1929). Trotsky continued to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy from exile. He was assassinated on Stalin's orders in 1940 and removed from history books.

The Soviet Union was launched with high hopes.  Planning was to be done by a central committee, insuring plenty for everyone and serving the common good, but their course changed quickly.  The Soviet state became one of the most oppressive in the world, and millions of Russians starved in the 1920s and 1930s.  

Communism, fascism, socialism, capitalism, even democracy -- as we've seen, each reflects the ethics of the leadership segment.  Every sociological and economic construct includes opportunity for dishonesty and corruption.

Page images are from "Leon Trotsky and the Organizational Principles of the Revolutionary Party" By Dianne Feeley, Paul Le Blanc, Thomas Twiss 

Cause and Effect

Narrowing things down to something we can point at ... this is what we do.

We point at politicians and say they're this or that ...
We point at a kneeling athlete and say he's this or that ...
We point at countries, racial groups, political groups, ...
We point at government ...
We point at organizations like schools or churches ...
We point at people ...

... we categorize, judge, and dismiss, then move on without further thought.  That's the western cultural norm.

Having simplified things ... we tend to place ourselves outside the equation so we can observe and evaluate and perhaps think we're not a contributor.

For the record, nothing is quite that simple.  We can't explain our own thinking with a few words on social media, much less the reasons others might have for their life decisions.  It can take decades to understand our own choices, to understand the overlap between reasoned and self-justified response.  It can take even more years to grasp the impact our lives have on others ... unless we ask that question today.

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Without any religious interpretation, there's a practical truth in 'judge not lest you be judged'.  If we point and categorize, judge and dismiss, others will see us rather clearly and judge us accordingly.  True?  Of course.  You needn't take as many years as I to understand.  :)

Alan Kurdi, age 3

Little Alan Kurdi (lower right photo) was found, having washed up on the beach in Turkey.  He was 3 years old when he and his brother drowned while escaping with their father from the violence in Syria.  The photos captured international attention for a few days.  In the years since, thousands more have been driven from their homes, and another 8,500 have died like little Alan did.  

When we think of the crisis in Syria,
we think in broad strokes, but it's
personal.  This is Abdul Hamid
al-Youssef whose wife Dala and
twins Ahmed and Aya were killed
in a sarin gas attack.  He released
photos of himself holding the 
lifeless bodies of his precious
twins. He lost his wife and
children and a dozen more
family members.  He wants
us all to know.

There are five million Syrian refugees now, regular folks who've lost everything, running for their lives and the lives of their children.  The Assad regime has used chemical weapons, and the civilian casualties (Ref: NC-17) are horrific. Following an attack in April, rescuers found adults and children, conscious and gasping for breath as they died before their eyes.  It was the latest chemical attack the war-torn country has witnessed. (Ref)(Ref)

A sarin gas attack in April this
year killed 89 including
20 women and
 27 children.

Hundreds of civilians have died in the last 30 days, collateral damage from strikes by all sides.

Here, if we felt that there was a need to protect our kids, we'd do a neighborhood watch or ramp up our police presence.  If folks were threatened, we'd defend them, and our community would step up and help.  If some radical group sprang up, armed and violent, we'd mobilize at whatever level was needed to squash such wickedness.  Folks in Syria have tried everything, and 400,000 have died.

How might we respond to such need so far outside our own community?

Our own disaster in Houston is on our minds, of course, and we'll respond appropriately.  Volunteers and givers and governments will step up and help.  Our neighbors in Mexico have joined in to assist like they did during Katrina.  
Let's remember the larger world as well.

There are good organizations we might support.  

The Salvation Army is perhaps at the top of the list for crisis response, in Houston as well as international work.  

With a long history of helping effectively, World Vision is among the best developmental assistance organizations.  They're extraordinary.

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"World Vision has scaled up our response in places where families have fled, and your help is needed more than ever.

We must help Syrian refugees, half of whom are children, by giving them the vital resources they need to keep their children safe, healthy, and secure. Please pray for these families, and give a gift that to help them today."

Photojournalist Steve McCurry commented , "In seeing this current global refugee crisis, it's almost like people in Europe and the US are scared of refugees. Or they simply don't want the burden of hosting them. But we forget none are actually more scared than the refugees themselves. They are forced from their country, their homes."

Preferential Opportunity

Veterans returning from WWII used their benefits to buy homes and get educated.  Owning your home was the first step in wealth-building, and the funded education guaranteed employment.  The result was an explosion of economic growth, the blossoming of suburban life, and the emergence of the American dream.

It only worked for white people.


We were trying to do well with the GI Bill, but our banks wouldn't lend to African-Americans.  Of the first 67,000 insured mortgages, less than 100 were issued to non-whites despite thousands having applied. 

In the years that followed, millions took advantage of the home loan guarantee. From 1944 to 1952, the Veterans Administration backed nearly 2.4 million home loans for World War II Veterans.  Blacks, with wages  39-52% lower than whites, were ineligible for or denied most opportunities.^(note)  

Suburban development areas often had formal or informal covenants against racial integration.^(ref)  Agents and sellers resisted sale to black families.  If an African-American did manage to buy a home in a suburban setting, whites would often sell and move out.^(ref)

Few colleges would admit African-Americans.  In the south where 80% of African-Americans lived, only a few black colleges were available.  They were generally underfunded and lower quality than the white schools.  Their limited number and capacity resulted in thousands of applicants being turned away.  Only a small percentage of African-American veterans benefited from the program.

Discrimination was aggressive for returning veterans.  Employers preferentially hired whites under most circumstances and were hesitant to promote non-whites who did manage to find employment.

An entire generation blossomed and moved ahead, and the country became a world leader through economic progress, but African-Americans were systematically held back.  It was deliberate.  The effects are visible today.  In the race to get ahead, "Whites have a hundred-yard head start in a four-hundred yard race."

The result:
The ghettos were born.  African-Americans were generally constrained to urban living, lower-paying work, and limited opportunity for improvement.  It had nothing to do with their intellect, work ethic, or virtue.  Other minorities were affected similarly.  Social stability declined predictably and inevitably in the neighborhoods.^(ref)  

Long-term impact: in 1984, the median white household has a net worth of $39,000; median black household, $3400, mostly accounted for by differences in homeownership. Nearly 70% of whites own homes, with average value of $52,000; only 40% of blacks do, with median value of under $30,000.  (Figures for net worth in 2000 are $81,000 and $8000.)

During the civil rights era, we passed laws against discriminatory business and banking practices. We changed laws regarding school admission. Today's assistance projects and equal opportunity programs are attempts to mitigate the harm done by individual and group bias, discrimination, and selfishness. We've worked hard to adjust our national attitude about accepting differences. Such cultural efforts were (and continue to be) vigorously resisted by conservative elements. 

Conscious and unconscious discrimination persists today.  It's an artificial constraint imposed without reasonable basis.  We've made progress, but our bias seems to resurface with each generation.   

This isn't a new issue for America's majority.  Without a reasonable basis to support our reasoning:
- we presumed we were superior to native Americans.
- we presumed we were superior to Africans.
- we presumed we were superior to Irish, Italian, and eastern European immigrants.  And Jews.  And Mexicans.
- we presumed men were superior to women.
- we presumed white folks were superior to non-white folks.
- we presume the comfortably established and privileged are superior to the non-wealthy.

- did you know? we've discovered in many universities today, white males are presumed to be intellectually superior to females and minorities despite performance metrics to the contrary.  These are institutions that aggressively pursue equality and diversity, so study results like this are a bit of a surprise.

What might be the root of such inaccurate thinking?
Is there a single character point that covers it?  Of course.

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Discrimination is common but fortunately not universal.  While bias persists in the culture, some have seen with clarity and deliberately pursued a different way.  By itself, information like this does little to avert a life of self-centeredness and separation.  Perhaps until we are profoundly changed, such bias will resurface throughout our lives.

What do rich people worry about?

Overall, 91% of wealthy folks say maintaining “their lifestyle” is a key concern. About 81% say it's “not being able to meaningfully enhance” their current lifestyle. That's what rich people worry about.

As Russ Prince (author, the wealth industry) describes it, it’s the mindset of, “I have the $5 million jet. I want the $10 million jet.”  But he doesn’t see it as greed.  Rather, he says, it’s simply a reflection of what everyone at every income level wants: something more.

” ‘Greedy’ is the wrong word,” Prince says. “ This is not a bad thing. This is the capitalist model. The desire to keep moving up, to enhance their lifestyle, is critical to having this entrepreneurial society.”

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Awhile ago, this young fellow came to the teacher and asked what he needed to do to finish well.  He was told to love God and obey the rules.  The guy said he'd done all of that, and the teacher told him to prove it, but he couldn't or perhaps wouldn't, and he went away unhappy.  His wealth, it seems, had tainted his thinking, his view of his lifestyle and future.  He couldn't imagine changing course to a better purpose.

It's hard, the teacher said, for a rich person to finish well.  Really hard.  Later, the teacher's friends were struggling to understand.  "If that rich fellow can't do it, how can we or anyone?"   There is a way, but it's perhaps not obvious once wealth and class obscure things.  Wealth becomes an impediment at a surprisingly low threshold.

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Interestingly, the not-rich folks are the most hospitable, the most generous, the most ethical.  The rich, not so much.  Where's the dividing line?   Around $20k/person/year is the dividing line between the richest 5% of folks in the world and everyone else.  Your $20,000 per person, per year puts you in the richest 400 million people in the world with 7.1 billion folks below you on the ladder.  Statistically, one group is normal and the other is an outlier, an aberration, and unconnected to 'normal'.  

Charlottesville

There is not a single pure heart among us, and the most judgemental are perhaps the most tarnished.

The less time we spend loving and enjoying and encouraging others, the less our life is worth living.  The more time we spend criticising and judging and blaming others, the more we corrode our minds and waste our years.

The racist extremists in Charlottesville don't need me to protest against them.  They don't need me to throw rocks at them.  They don't need me to crash my car into their midst to convince them they're on the wrong path.  It wouldn't change their minds.

They do need a better solution than the one they've got.  They need a hope that's real and healthy and noble.  The need to see magnificent life for themselves.

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Extremists are a small fraction of of our population.  For every one such dark mind, there are a hundred or a thousand reasonable folks. So then, do we hide ... or step in? And how might we take advantage of this opportunity?

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One unusual fellow sought out the KKK members and made friends.  They ate dinner together and talked things through.  His friendship lead to two hundred KKK members changing their minds and leaving the organization.  He is Daryl Davis, the famous musician.  And he is black.

"When two enemies are talking, they're not fighting," Davis said.  A Chicago-born Christian, Davis traveled the world in his youth.  After many countries and racially mixed cultures, coming home to America where folks could throw rocks at him because of his color was confusing, to say the least.  It lead to a lifetime of confronting racism.  His surprisingly successful tactic: friendship. 

Not everyone agreed with his tactics.  Davis recounts:  I had one guy from an NAACP branch chew me up one side and down the other, saying, “you know, we've worked hard to get ten steps forward. Here you are sitting down with the enemy having dinner, you're putting us twenty steps back.”

I pull out my robes and hoods and say, “look, this is what I've done to put a dent in racism. I've got robes and hoods hanging in my closet by people who've given up that belief because of my conversations sitting down to dinner. They gave it up. How many robes and hoods have you collected?” And then they shut up.

Davis's father, a senior Foreign Service officer, believed that his son engaged with the Klan because he needed to make sense of their hatred, to seek common ground. He remarked to The Washington Post that his son "has done something that I don't know any other black American, or white American, has done."