On Facebook, someone asked: Is there a way to reach Trump supporters? Trump supporters sometimes wonder: Is there a way to reach Liberals?

On Facebook, Tolly Burkan, enlightened author of The Self-Empowerment Trilogy posted about spiritual enlightenment: Continue reading →

Acceptance is not embracing “reality”, it’s embracing “your reality.”

In her April 26, blog post, psychologist Robin Chancer writes great advice about coping emotionally with Trump. But she oversimplifies a bit. She probably does this on purpose, but to me it creates two serious mistakes. Continue reading →

Non-American heroism

Plus the heroism of the millions in the Middle East in countries that have been destabilized and had many of their own killed or injured by the violence. They, too, struggle with heartache and PTSD, but without our Veterans Administration and hospitals. Many have no haven of a peaceful homeland in which to heal.

For many, it began when their husbands, brothers and fathers were thrust into unemployment when the US dismissed the Iraqi police and army. And then it exploded in the civil war that rash act unleashed. Many were tortured by Americans and humiliated as well. Some of those created Isis as their last hope. Since then, many saw their sons and daughters lured into Isis, only to have them abused and enslaved and lure others.

In my job building a new way for Americans to communicate politically, I often need to be non-partisan. It’s often challenging. To be non-partisan, I need see that my own opinions arise from my point of view, rather than from truth. One of the ways I do this is by seeing the falseness of generalizations. Recently I ran into an assertion that Democrats were better at war.

I read this interesting piece from David Brin from 2012 on how Democrats and Republicans wage war:

One of these retired flag officers told me: “Democrats admit they don’t know anything about military matters. They consult, they ask questions, they listen.”

He added, “Republican presidents all assume they’re some mix of John Wayne and Patton. Plans are for nerds. Caution is for wimps.”

My initial feeling was that the article is wrong in its generalization.

It says Clinton made a small mistake at the beginning of his presidency, learned from it, and then was careful and successful. Obama has been careful and successful from the start. And Bush made huge blunders for years before finally turning Iraq over to the military, resulting in a third of our deficit, a half million lives lost, and the continuing destabilization of the whole region.

But are Democrats really better at war?

So does that mean that Democrats were better than Republicans at war? As far as I know, Bush senior, a Republican, did fine at it. He had the discretion to not overthrow Saddam Hussein, foreseeing all of the problems that Bush junior did not. And before that, while Reagan (R) seemed like a cowboy in the Iran-Contra affair, I think Nixon (R) and Johnson (D) made very similar mistakes about the Viet Nam war.

It simply means that a person who’s willing to proceed cautiously, listen to experts, exercise judgement and learn from his/her mistakes is probably going to be better at war. That’s regardless of political affiliation. And it probably means they’ll be better at all aspects of governing they bring these skills to.

Have the parties changed?

But I’ve found myself agreeing with many others that the parties have changed over time. Republicans have catered to a base that values emotions, belief and philosophy more and thoughtfulness less. This population is more susceptible to the emotional propaganda from right-wing media. And they are alienated by both political-correctness and scientific facts.

The leadership has similarly changed. John McCain chose the inarticulate Sarah Palin as his running mate. Romney and Ryan seemed more thoughtful in 2012. But Trump’s current stupidity, contradictions and childish temperament are obvious, but many Republicans are swept away by his confidence and self-righteous anger.

So perhaps since Bill Clinton was president, Democrats in the White House have been better at war than Republicans. But I think we should emphasize and value the traits that make this true. Perhaps one day soon, the Republican party will value wisdom and judgement again.

History can be seen as a long struggle to make progress, as a battle between progressives and regressives. In the previous post, we saw how regressives are driven by a dislike of change, or a greed for what’s working for them. In this, we’ll look at the challenges facing progressives. And perhaps they can achieve more by a change of marketing.

Progressives accept the way things are. They are simply trying to see how to keep the progress we’ve made and still enable people to have better lives. They face challenges.

Many people find change hard to fathom

Progressive solutions aren’t easy to understand in terms of yesterday’s culture. Whether ending slavery or giving women equality, these were tough concepts for many people in their day. For two thousand years Christianity inculcated most westerners with the acceptance of slavery and the subservience, even ownership, of women.

One way of looking at this is that a person’s notion of the world can’t stand change. If you change something, it disturbs the world. The notion that “women are equal” makes the whole biblical history wrong. Maybe it was okay for Abraham to have multiple wives, but only if they both agreed. Did they? Did they have a choice? What does it say about Solomon’s thousand wives and concubines?

Many people can’t stand cognitive dissonance. Either the Bible is true or fiction. And many people believe it’s true. They don’t realize the fluidity of world views and that a lot of good and evil is defined by humans. Killing a friend out of anger may always be wrong, but owning your spouse was once right and is now wrong. That’s a challenge for many.

My point is that a lot of people are uncomfortable with thinking. So they don’t want to do any more of it. They don’t want to revisit what they’ve known to be true.

The lure of philosophy

And often, progressives get caught up in philosophy instead of solutions. They may even fight against each other. Like the “small government” or”states rights” progressives who end up siding with regressives.

Another example is the libertarians who confuse the usefulness of motivation and competition with the notion of an ideal “free market”. They often think government can’t be efficient if it’s a monopoly. So they work to eliminate it instead of figuring out how to motivate it or provide competition for parts of it.

Or the socialists who oppose capitalism when they really object to the abuses of capitalism due to inheritance, abuse of corporations and the tax system. Inequality isn’t bad, but huge inequality is, especially when it leaves many people destitute and suffering.

Progressives handicap themselves in marketing

The biggest handicap for progressives is self-imposed, in marketing. Progressives often market solutions to problems instead of pictures of a better future.

Giving women equal rights sounded horrific to many. But allowing women the freedom to work safely and be paid fairly sounds great.

Giving rights to homosexuals and transexuals sounds weird! But it’d be great to let people express themselves and their sexuality without fear of bullying, ostracism or shame.

Getting rid of coal for heat and electricity and getting rid of gas for cars sounds dreadful. But it sounds great to build up our green energy production, create jobs, become energy independent and end funding of radical-muslim countries.

Stopping climate change seems hard and expensive. But restoring the environment of the 1900’s seems wonderful.

Similarly, fixing politics sounds impossible. But it’ll be great to have our politicians to be truly accountable to citizens. If this kind of political accountability is appealing to you, please add your email address to our mailing list.

History can be seen as a long struggle to make progress. It can be viewed as a battle between progressives and regressives. A regressive is someone who wants to keep the status quo or “return” to a simpler time.

Regressives come in two flavors.

There are two kinds of regressives. The first are people who can’t accept the world the way it is. They live in old, simpler stories and want to minimize or evern reverse change. The second are people who are prospering. They want the world to stay as it is now, even glue it to its current state so their prosperity is assured or grows.

Can’t accept change

Many people can’t accept the world as it is because they have low intelligence. Trump supporters are a great example. They are angry about Hillary’s supposed lies, yet ignore Donald’s obvious ones. They accuse Hillary of crimes she’s been proven innocent of, but ignore Trumps bankruptcy’s and lthe many times he’s been sued. They even ignore the current allegations of bribery and tax violations with his foundation. Plus there are the allegations that Trump is a rapist including of minors, and his diagnoses of being narcissistic and a sociopath.

These people look to a warped view of a “great” past. They easily commit the sin of pride. Many have pride in America, ignoring Bush’s lies that started the Iraq War and its huge costs in money and misery and the huge evil it created in ISIS. They ignore the America that lost the Viet Nam war (which was also started with a lie). Many ignore that America is racist, obviously in the practices of slavery and in butchering native Americans. And blatantly racist in the 1940’s in locking up Japanese Americans, and in the 1960’s fighting about jim crow laws.

Many of them idealize a simpler past. Why was it simpler? Maybe only because they were younger and had simpler thoughts. Plus, knowledge has appeared to blossom over the last 20 years as people have used the web to publish, search and communicate more easily.

And many of these people have been listening to Republicans tell them how horrible America is and how liberals are a threat. They’re worse off economically as tax laws favor moving more money to the corporations and the wealthy, while they’ve believed their party line that it’s due to central government and high taxes.

The desire for nostalgia does not lead to solutions

The world of the past led to today’s problems. We can’t expel half of our citizens to reclaim the days when there was still plenty of desirable property to homestead. Nor can we go back to pre-World War II days when fewer women wanted to work, nor the 1950’s when manual-labor jobs paid well. Not even to the 1960’s when homosexuals and transvestites kept to the shadows so rigidly religious people could pretend they didn’t exist.

America’s founders laid the path to “All people are created equal,” though they were not wise enough to say it. In their little world, about 1/100th the size of America today, they had no notion of cars or phones, much less television, airplanes, computers, nuclear or solar energy, or even America spanning the continent.

In particular, we can’t return to the days before science. The Earth is not flat. Creationism and trickle-down economics are childish fantasies. And the planet is warming. Denial and impractical desires may be winning formulas for many Republican candidates, but they don’t help us design our future.

Greedy regressives

The second kind are the greedy. These are led by the wealthy. This includes those that inherited the base of their wealth, and those newly wealthy from business.

Some are insecure and want to protect their wealth. Many feel entitled to a decadent lifestyle paid for by their previously-earned money working for them. Others want to multiply their wealth no matter what the cost to society. These are people in industries that protect future oil, gas and coal profits with climate change denial, steal tax money by controlling congress and elections, and try to get society to eliminate business risk by passing the TPP.

For these people, morality is expendable. Newt Gingrich lies on purpose. An example is his claim that “the truth” is all about what people believe, rather than the facts. And he’s been spreading lies for years that keep Republicans in power, like the lies about Hillary.

A better life means going forward

We can’t go back. As we’ve seen with our society, prejudice and bigotry lead to oppression, hate and backlash. As we’ve seen with the environment, unrestrained industry leads to pollution and global warming.

And it’d help to accept the facts. Rather than stick to naive slogans, we need to accept what we’ve learned. For instance in our economy, trickle-down economics just makes the rich richer and the debt greater.

To create a better life, we must go forward. We must accept the world the way it is now, and build on it to create the world we want. We must progress. The next article will be about the challenges facing progressives.

In a Facebook post, someone added a quote about the power of words.  In an article yesterday, I said that words had no power at all. The real power comes from how you listen. The author of the post disagreed. He said that this takes responsibility away from the speaker.

Communication isn’t just the speaker’s responsibility

The listener is also 100% responsible for the communication. The listener is 100% responsible for being receptive and getting value out of it. The listener is responsible for how it lands. You can shirk that responsibility, sure. Or you can try to master it. In fact, if you get good at taking responsibility for your listening, you’ll be amazed at what you begin to hear.

Another myth is that the responsibility is 50/50. Do you know how, in a marriage, 50/50 doesn’t work? It’s true in communication, too. Being half-listening rarely works well. Often it doesn’t work at all.

Listen for value from a lousy speech