Anti-Social Media

       We're all connecting on social media but it seems that no one is connecting in face-to-face interaction anymore. We get addicted to craving the instant gratification of “likes” and “favorites” and we forget about real quality friendship and meaning in the world. It’s great that we can also find meaning on the internet but it’s disconnected from reality. It’s a facsimile or simulacrum of the real. By constantly having one's cellphone to their ear or their eyes in public, people are restraining themselves in the present moment, closing themselves off from the possibilities of interacting with other humans in a shared space, and limiting their potential physical contacts with humanity. We have bypassed the 'physical' reality for the 'virtual' reality enabled by modern technology.

       In 2017, internet addiction has become a ubiquitous phenomena. Despite the over-optimism in the 1990’s about the internet and how its responsible use was going to revolutionize the planet, it has taken a disastrous turn. As philosopher Martin Heidegger warned us, technology has its unintended consequences. I like to hold two opposing views about technology simultaneously. One is the optimistic “utopian” view that technology connects us, helps us solve problems faster and ultimately makes the world a better place. Technology is supposed to unite humankind and bring us together (which it has in many ways made the world a smaller place).

       On the other hand, there is the pessimistic “dystopian” view that technology divides us, creates more unnecessary or unintended problems, and makes the world a more miserable place. It has also divided us into increasingly smaller social “bubbles.” We’re creating political “echo-chambers” of thought where people segregate themselves according to their beliefs and worldviews. We’re becoming more susceptible to confirmation bias because we only wish to subscribe to media channels, forums and groups that we agree with. More and more people are becoming okay with the idea of limiting other people’s free speech rights (simply because they don’t agree with them), not realizing that this endangers freedom of speech for everyone. The President’s attack on journalists and the free press is certainly not helping, and is completely antithetical to what enlightenment thinkers like Thomas Jefferson sought for a thriving democracy. As Dan Carlin points out, we can’t even have rational political debate anymore because people can’t seem to agree on objective truth.

       Our focus and concentration gets swept away by distractions from social media. Humans are prone to use any gimmick to help us ignore reality. We will rationalize anything to keep us from seeing the world and our minds for how things really are. Internet addiction is leading to shortened attention spans and vision/hearing problems. Continued use of cellphones and television causes neck and back problems. Our communication suffers as a consequence of social media addiction. We have phones with voice calling yet we choose to text instead. Meaning is lost in the process. The only communication that our brains recognize as real is face-to-face social interaction. With technology we are replacing real communication with artificial virtual “reality.” 

       People rarely speak to strangers in public anymore. People used to engage in small talk. Nowadays everyone retreats to their cellphones and everyone ignores each other when faced with an awkward moment of silence or seemingly uncomfortable situation in a waiting room. Via social media we have the ability to talk to people across the nation but we won’t talk to our neighbors. When I was in high school (graduated in 2008) the lunchroom was a place for socializing, joking and laughing. Now every scene of a school cafeteria that one sees on the television news depicts everyone looking down at their cellphone. It’s a microcosm of what is happening across America- we are surrounded by people yet we are all alone, segregating ourselves to our own personal digital worlds.

       It’s no secret that social media becomes an addictive behavior, and the companies like Facebook know this and manipulate the user with its algorithms. Studies have shown that there’s a dopamine surge that occurs when we get a new message, comment or “like” on Facebook. After a while, our brains begin to crave this dopamine surge. Consequently, one may feel “down” when you log-in to find no new messages. It’s no surprise that people who frequently use social media feel more loneliness and depression.

       Social media takes advantage of a primal need for social interaction and the social need for belongingness to a group. As evolutionary biologist E.O. Wilson explains in ’The Social Conquest of Earth,’ for millions of years of human evolution we were part of a small tightly-knit band of thirty to fifty people. In our modern age, we lack this support group and thus seek out this network on-line, but it is insufficient for our needs as social group animals. As a result we are promoting individual self-interest at the expense of losing empathy and altruism. Without community and shared responsibility, humans begin to act out in unproductive and anti-social ways. Without social bonding and closeness, our self-esteem and self-worth diminishes.

       Not to mention, social media brings up concerns over issues of privacy. Facebook and Amazon sells your information to Google who then sells that data to advertising firms who direct their products forcibly onto your computer and/or cellphone screens. This is an ethical dilemma because these companies can prey on our innate weaknesses and persuade us to buy things that we don’t need. How many of us have seen an advertisement on Facebook for a product related to what we were searching on Google? These companies don’t need to physically spy on you because they already know what you’re searching, what you’re sharing, what you’re watching and what you’re buying. We have unwittingly made a deal with the devil and received nothing in return. I fear that in the end the devil might just take our “souls.” We’ve bought into the myth that consumer culture will somehow give us what we want, but unfortunately we’ve been sold a false promise. As Zeynep Tufekci points out in her TedTalk, “we are the products being sold.” We have created for ourselves a surveillance society where we willingly give up our information and privacy to the highest bidder. We have created for ourselves the Panopticon that Jeremy Bentham predicted and feared. Many people fear that our world is looking more like the vision prophesied by George Orwell’s ‘1984.’

       “The medium is the message,” wrote Marshall McLuhan. The ways in which we communicate now with social media affects the way we think about ourselves, society, and our place in society. The technological interfaces that we use influence the way that we behave, whether we know it or not. We have all witnessed firsthand the horrors of Instagram addiction: self-aggrandizing, unbridled narcissism, attention-seeking, “look at me” mentality. This is a consequence of celebrity worship and a new perverse attraction to fame. We have created an unobtainable standard for people to live up to with the images of men and women portrayed in our popular culture.

       People get addicted to checking their Instagram feed multiple times per day to see what their 'following' posts and to see how many new 'likes' they have.  These devices and apps give us the illusion that we are more connected and know more about what’s going on in the world, when in actuality it erodes our closeness and trust with people at the interpersonal level. How often are you trying to have a conversation with someone, but they’re busy checking their Instagram feed and not listening to a single word you're saying?

       Another seemingly benign neurological addiction is Netflix and YouTube bingewatching. Studies show that bingewatching leads to impaired cognitive development in young adults. Also, people are more likely to bingewatch an entire season of a show if they are lonely and depressed. These factors are also the case with pornography addiction which is an increasing phenomena among men. The human brain has a predisposition to be fascinated with images and sounds. We are a visual and auditory species. With movies and television, we are dulling the mind by bombarding it with such intense stimuli, over-stimulating the visual cortex. We are desensitizing our minds to graphic images of sex and violence to the point where it has become “normal” (which I would argue it is not psychologically normal). It is no wonder that people are unhappy, despite having more advanced technologies and more widespread access to knowledge than ever before. No wonder patients are overprescribed with antidepressants and pain relievers (which has directly led to the current opioid crisis). Many of these epidemics in our society are self-induced. We feel unfulfilled because we cannot possibly satiate the monster of our own creation.

       Since I have laid out a list of social problems here, it is practical that I present a solution to the modern social media and entertainment addictions: books. Books are the nutritious brain-food which increases our knowledge and ability to navigate the real-world, as opposed to the internet and social media which is like unnutritious junk food for the brain. Reading improves memory. It also makes one a more interesting person. We have forgotten that learning can also be entertaining. It is not required that media to be visually stimulating for it to be beneficial, although quick “soundbites” have become the trend with overstimulation and shortened attention spans. Taking a break from social media and reading a book instead is a sure way of recharging the brain’s neural capacity and bringing more fulfillment and enjoyment in your life in the long-term. Just like we must exercise our muscles with a daily workout routine, we must exercise our brain muscles in order to stay cognitively alert and healthy into old age. We must remember that boredom and sitting with one’s thoughts is good too because it causes one to reflect on one’s self, to contemplate life and generate new ideas.

       To me, the most troubling new occurrence is that parents are no longer reading to their children. Two-thirds of American parents do not read to their children. It is imperative to the future of our children (and the future of our society as a whole) that we read to our children. Books activate the imaginations of developing humans. I would argue that its neglectful not to nurture the minds of maturing adolescents with stories and non-fiction books alike.

       Community is also important. Join a local community organization or find a group of like-minded individuals, even if you only meet once a week or once a month. It is important to socialize and share ideas with people off-line, not just on social media. It’s important to learn how to have civilized discussions and rational debates with people that you might not always agree with 100% of the time. We get an incorrect view of how people behave by limiting ourselves to interactions on the web. It’s too easy to isolate ourselves in this digital era.

       In more ways than one I suspect that American society is shooting itself in the foot. I worry that we have become complacent and are now witnessing the decay of our civilization. This decay is imperceptibly slow but it will eventually catch up to us. We are fooled by the delusion that technological progress will magically grant us with prolonged health and mental well-being. Unfortunately it does not seem like the American education system is going to pick up the slack either. We could sit idly and blame the politicians but -needless to say- the American people elected those in power, so we have no one to blame but ourselves. We must all take responsibility for our failings. We must find solutions that address the root causes of our problems. No one has an excuse to not work towards making this world a smarter and better place.

Response to Adam Gopnik’s New Yorker Article “Is Science Kind of a Scam?”

I think that saying that science is a scam (or another kind of ‘faith’) is intellectually dishonest. Adam Gopnik, in his New Yorker article “Is Science Kind of a Scam?,” makes a number of logical fallacies and erroneous claims about science. These are common misconceptions about science so I think it’s worthwhile and beneficial to discuss a few of them in rebuttal to his widely circulated article. I might add that many scientists do not spend enough time to refute ‘anti-science.’ Unfortunately this is at the expense of a scientifically illiterate population that can be duped by authors such as Gopnik.

It’s possible that there are many people who believe the things that they hear out of conformity (or “out-of-faith”) but these are not ‘good scientists’ or critical thinkers. Good scientists are true 'scientific skeptics' who want to see the empirical evidence. There is a hierarchy of knowledge from which one can gain insight and wisdom. To say that there is no way of knowing is to claim that all truth is relative (truth relativism), and that deters us from searching to find the truth. One cannot possibly research everything that there is study, so one defers to the experts who sift through the data for us, and then tell us their findings. One could degrade this process by calling it a kind of “faith,” like Gopnik does, but that seems to be drastically missing the point. To some degree we take one’s word for what we read in 'Nature' magazine or 'Scientific American,' because the authors and editors have the credentials and qualifications backed by research institutions. These journals are peer-reviewed and go through a rigorous process of fact-checking and correction before publication. They are careful not to publish false or misleading information. It’s not having ‘faith’, but rather trust and confidence in a method of acquiring knowledge and epistemology (how we know what we know) that works.

What makes science great is that anyone can help with the process, as long as one is courageous enough to test the limits of one’s own understanding. That is the beauty of the 21st century: science has become democratized. One does not need to be an evolutionary biologist in order to grasp the fundamentals of evolution. One does not need to be an astrophysicist to share in the wonders of the cosmos. One does not need to be a physicist to become curious about the nature of atoms and subatomic particles. Granted, it’s not easy to understand some of these concepts- that goes with the territory- but it can be done.

Of course there are limits to our knowledge. After all, we are only human. Also, there are human biases which often enter into science and there are often implicit biases in specific fields. It's unfortunate when people interpret one specific bias (or simply a “quack”) as a reason to write-off the entire scientific method and scientific achievements of humanity as a “scam." Yes, scientists are human and humans are fallible, but the scientific method takes this into account. It has error-correcting measures that make sure that one’s findings conform to reality and not conform to the preconceived ideas of what the experimenter wanted to discover. That’s why a good experiment is replicable. Scientists encourage others to repeat the experiment/observations to test their results. If one wishes to challenge/disprove a "scientific theory” (a scientific fact) then one must devise an experiment and testable theory which is more universally valid and fits the data better than the previous theory. Much of science relies on Karl Popper’s notion of ‘falsifiability’- that a good theory must have a way of proving it wrong. If one finds new data that does not conform to the theoretical framework then we must re-work the theory. Proving that a theory is false (or has “holes” in it) is a way of furthering our knowledge because every test result that supports the theory makes it stronger, and every result that falsifies a theory teaches us a lesson.

When one discovers a more accurate theory which overturns the old, this creates what Thomas Kuhn called a “paradigm shift.” Facts change as scientists find better models that approach a closer approximation of the truth of reality. This process is called learning- and it is necessary that scientists are allowed to learn and adapt with new data findings. It’s possible that there will be a "new Einstein”- a grand unified theory (GUT)- that will replace the current “paradigm” of the theory of gravity, but a lot of theoretical physicists like Lawrence Krauss & Neil Degrasse Tyson say that it’s unlikely in their lifetimes (StarTalk Radio).

I think that it’s intellectually dishonest for Adam Gopnik to imply that the 20th century paradigm shift in science (namely quantum physics in the 1910-20s) raises questions on scientific knowledge today. I think that this is a typical ‘red herring.’ The differences between Niels Bohr & Albert Einstein’s views seem to me like fundamental disagreements on the most valuable aspects/implications of the paradoxical equations regarding quantum mechanics. When Einstein referred to “spooky interactions” it involved the “quantum entanglement” of atomic particles in the Double-Slit experiment. Everyone was puzzled by how a particle can act both as a wave and a particle, existing in a "quantum state,” where according to the Heisenberg principle, the results of the experiment (the observed) become inextricable from the observer. Bohr & Einstein admittedly did not comprehend the vast implications of their own equations. For example, Einstein wrote a paper (On the Quantum Theory of Radiation) describing the fundamentals of LASERs decades before anyone found a practical use for it. A brilliant theory can be way ahead of its time and it’s true that it took a long time for theoretical physicists in the first half of the 20th century to adjust to the newer paradigm of Einstein's relativity. This should not be a point of criticism but rather a triumph of science. Science does not proceed by what one thinks is true. It proceeds by what experimental data shows us to appear to be true, even if the results are bizarre and puzzling as is the case with quantum physics. Shared understanding comes about through rational debate and collaboration.

Gopnik’s question, “Why, then, did Einstein’s question get excluded for so long from reputable theoretical physics?” is therefore not a very practical question and rather a moot rhetorical point. The answer is that no one (or very few) in the 1920’s understood what was going on in terms of “non-locality” with the Double Slit experiment. The Einsteinian paradigm was brand-new and physicists were still conditioned to the “machine-like” view of the world from Newtonian mechanics. Plus I would argue with Gopnik’s claim that there was not “decisive debate” because (in my understanding) the paradox was later clarified by the Einstein-Rosen-Podolsky paper in 1935 and the collapse of the wave function was later explained by David Bohm (Bohmian mechanics). “Quantum entanglement” can still be explained by Einstein’s theory of special relativity. It seems to me that Bohr and Einstein simply disagreed on why or how the particles act with “indeterminacy” (i.e. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which shows that either a particles’ speed or locality can be measured accurately, but not both at the same time). Their misgivings about the consequences of the experiment is not a mark of sciences’ failings, as Gopnik implies, but rather a testament to these two scientists’ rigor, fortitude, and intellectual curiosity. I think Gopnik is right about the fact that the public could benefit from stories about these men’s lives but not for the reason which he proposes. We could show that science & physics equally involves brilliant creativity as much as the greatest art & music.

It should not be surprising that the nature of the universe eludes our understanding at the atomic level. The universe did not evolve to make sense to humans. Likewise, humans did not evolve to make sense of the atomic world. This example of Einstein’s equations reveals another characteristic of physics: that when we find answers to hard questions, it often raises more questions. This is a unique feature of scientific knowledge, that the answers lead to more questions which broadens our horizon on what can be known. This hypothetically unending set of questioning is often mischaracterized by dogmatists as a shortcoming of science- an example of its inability to find definitive answers about the universe. This is simply not true. It frankly shows the power of science in its ability to ask questions which we would not have previously thought to ask about the universe.

The author also appears to be intellectually dishonest to bring up Galileo & Copernicus without really discussing Newton’s laws of motion, or even mentioning Kepler who accurately discerned the laws of planetary elliptical orbits. The author cites a moon crater drawn by Galileo presumably as an example of ‘bad science,’ not mentioning that Galileo was the first to ever use a telescope to view celestial objects in the night sky. To me it shows a lack of knowledge in the history of science (anachronistic thinking) to not acknowledge how in the 15th-18th centuries science was still co-opted by the Catholic Church, and not to mention how Galileo was punished by the Inquisition for not accepting authority and forced under threat to change his public views.

Then Gopnik cherry-picks a theoretical physicist (Lisa Randall) who wrote a book hypothesizing that ‘dark matter’ is a plausible explanation for why large comets occasionally get flung out of the far reaches of the solar system towards the gravitational pull of the Sun. He ridicules this idea but I don’t see this hypothesis as a harmful one. Carl Sagan, in his book ‘Comets,' proposed that comets are simply jostled out of the Oort Cloud as our solar system revolves around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. And Sagan proved to be right about a lot of the things that he predicted, like the presence of organic compounds on Titan, the largest of Saturn's moons. Sometimes the seemingly “wacky” and “out-there” ideas have relevance in science because it implores other scientists to test the hypothesis and prove it wrong. That does not mean that we take these notions for granted, or outright ridicule them. We test the hypothesis for what it’s worth. We sometimes discover truths by testing radical theories and we often make new discoveries when we choose to look in a new place in a new way. One can discover truths by finding out what’s not true. This is an example of the ‘natural selection’ of ideas in science. If a hypotheses is proven incorrect, one can adapt the model to better fit reality and re-test it. This is not a flaw of science- in fact it shows the flexibility & strength of science to change in the light of new evidence to work towards solving new & complex problems. The ‘trial and error’ method is sometimes cited as proof that scientists don’t know what they’re doing, but ‘trial and error’ is a way of arriving at knowledge when faced with a complex problem with numerous data points. The important lesson here is that it often takes a lot of error before one reaches an informative conclusion. It’s the nature of human inquiry into how the physical world works. Luckily the scientific method has an in-built error-correcting mechanism for determining what works and what doesn’t work.

To me, the line between science and magic is not so “fuzzy” or complicated. It’s simply the line between what is known, unknown and unknowable. The “lunar tides are occult” when they seem like mysterious unknowable forces; “the next day they are science” when they become describable as an interaction between the gravity of massive objects in space. What Gopnik seems to be struggling to point to is the fact that many times in the history of science, the biggest mental ‘revolutions’ occur when people come up with a novel concept which radically overturns the previous paradigm. For Copernicus it was observing that the Earth revolves around the Sun rather than the geocentric model. For Newton it was observing the existence of a force of attraction between massive objects, called gravity, which is proportional to the inverse square law. For Einstein it was that space-and-time are inseparable dimensions in one space-time continuum, and that gravity is due to a curvature in space-and-time. This ought not to be surprising that a radical new scientific idea is contrary and counterintuitive to what came before it. What makes it seem “magical” to the average person is that these discoveries were not made in nature but they were intuited from the mind with the use of mathematics. This is not ‘magic’ but perhaps just the work of brilliant minds that are able to unshackle themselves from the ordinary mainstream ideas of their time and use the new tools and instruments available to them. Scientists might seem like ‘magicians’ to those who do not understand science but this does not make it ‘magic.’ Although I would argue that learning about the wonders of nature can be a magical and often spiritual awe-inspiring experience. 

Gopnik makes it seem like science is part of conspiratorial cover up. “Why,” Adam wonders, “weren’t we told about the puzzle until after it was solved?” The answer: because unlike religion, science doesn’t claim to know the answers before it does the experiment and gets the results. As an example, Einstein’s theory of relativity predicted gravitational waves as a consequence of his equations, one hundred years before they were discovered. Unless you previously understood the theoretical consequences of Einstein’s equations, this would seem like “magic” (although it’s fundamental physics using the tool of mathematics). It might seem like Einstein just made up gravitational waves out of thin air, but no. In fact, it took civilization nearly one hundred years to build an apparatus large and precise enough (the LIGO detector) to measure these gravitational waves. But in science, it isn’t until we actually get a measurement that scientists are able to confirm that something like gravitational waves exist. Adam Gopnik seems to be laboring under a common misconception about science and the history of science. One could easily look back and say, as Gopnik does, that it looks “retrospectively engineered.” We might ask post-hoc: why didn’t anyone make a big deal about gravitational waves before they were discovered? Well, duh. Physicists were making a big deal about it and searching for the answers- but no one else noticed. No one in the general public seemed to care (or needed to) because there was no evidence for it yet. Scientists must wait for the concrete evidence before claiming a new discovery, no matter how convincing the clues are. Gopnik asks “What makes science different from faith?” The answer is evidence.

It’s good in a way that people like Gopnik are skeptical about science but I question what their ulterior motives for doing so are. I wish they would use this same inquiry to ask questions about the universe and ask how we discover these truths. If one does not know enough about how science proceeds, one might be tempted to agree with Gopnik that “science is a scam.” In my view, this is a dangerous canard. It is not the right kind of skepticism- the kind which requires reasoning and logic to further our understanding. Questioning things is good, but sometimes asking misguided questions can lead us to a troublesome place where there are no good answers. Sometimes questions lead us to answers which do not make us happy because they challenge our preconceived notions and do not conform to what we want to think is true about the universe.

On Bret Weinstein & The 'Day of Absence' Debacle

The attempts at Evergreen State college (in Washington State) to falsely accuse professor Bret Weinstein of ‘racism’ and, in a confrontational way, demanding that he quit is absolutely absurd. The context, as always, is important: in an e-mail, Weinstein challenged a recommendation by a campus group that people who are “pro-minority” should absent from going to classes that day: a policy which Weinstein rightly saw as discriminatory. It was the reversal of a thirty plus year tradition where once a year people of color would absent from going to classes at Evergreen in solidarity in order to show how important that community is to the campus population, based on the Douglas Turner Ward play ‘Day of Absence.’

Bret Weinstein got in hot water for rightly calling out the new version of "day of absence” for being discriminatory against non-black people (which in turn of events became demonstrably true). But of course, the one thing that’s intolerable to the “social justice warrior” activists who protested him is calling them out on their “bigotry of low expectations." So instinctively, they’ve flipped the script on Weinstein, calling him a ‘racist’ and forcing him to resign through acts of intimidation and physical threats to his person and family. It is apparent that these Evergreen state student protesters are confused. Their views on free speech (that your "free speech doesn't matter anymore" when you start inciting violence) is ironic, because the student protesters can’t look in the mirror and realize that they are the ones suppressing the free speech of professor Weinstein and that they are the ones inciting violence. Many of the college students appear to be jumping on the bandwagon of "social justice” without squarely looking at the facts of the situation and without really thinking about what terms like ‘justice’ and ‘fairness’ mean (or "social equality" for that matter). Ideally in a free and open democratic society, we all want equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. But they don’t get it. Free speech is threatened on campus by this regressive ideology.

Verbal dissent and non-violent protest is allowed for. We have the right to protest and the freedom of assembly. But when one person or a group of people are disrupting the classrooms and the school environment where students are trying to learn and get an education (that they’re paying for) then that can’t be allowed. The student protesters actions are just ridiculous and counter-productive to the causes which they purport to be fighting for. For example, the student protesters refused to have a dialectic with Bret Weinstein, instead shouting him down and chanting slogans at him. Also, how they took the president of the college, George Sumner Bridges, hostage in his office (even not letting him use the bathroom without their supervision). As absurd as it is what Bridges has done (or rather not done), I can see why the president of the school has given in to the students’ demands. The fact is that he shares their same ideology and admittedly has guilt that he’s in a position of power. He doesn’t want there to be any suppression of dissent, but in so doing he has missed the opportunity to support the free speech of the school’s professors and the suppression that they’re facing from radical protestors.

The “social justice warriors” want to “weed out people like Bret” because it’s easier to kick out the professor that doesn’t agree with their views than actually contend with his rational arguments and sane position. This strategy of “weeding out” the people that disagree with you (especially by labelling them a ‘racist’) is not going to work, people! History is not just a “power play," as much as the lense of “oppression”- a dynamic between oppressor and oppressed- is a simple and convenient way of seeing the world. Some ideologies are self-destructive and the regressive “far-left” has sadly become one of them. Let me add that all extremes on the political spectrum are bad because both far-left and far-right extremes “horseshoe" into the realm of authoritarianism. To be clear, I am not in support of far-right groups who think we need to quell the protests with more police presence. That can not be the answer either.

Many of us have succumbed to this mob mentality which is causing people to go on a witch-hunt for anybody who appears to question their belief system. Unfortunately, many young people are succumbing to 'group-think' and accepting a militant ideology. When I was at a college campus, I had some experience with what I saw then simply as a virulent strain of anti-intellectualism & 'confirmation bias.' To me then, it was just an abstract academic viewpoint but it was not yet fully operationalized. Fortunately there were enough teachers & faculty at my college who understood the importance of freedom of speech, freedom of the press & freedom of religion (the First Amendment, Enlightenment principles and 'classical liberalism') that my concerns were mild. But now on various college campuses across America it seems to have become a visible danger to critical thinking and free speech.

During my academic career I read a lot of “social constructionism” and many of the thinkers whose ideas make up the core of the post-modernist philosophy, like Michel Foucault. Understandably I did not make any sense of Foucault's books. It was gobbledygook. I thought it was a function of not having enough knowledge to understand the complicated systems of “oppression" and “intersectionality” (highly popular terms in the “social justice warrior” community because anyone can claim that they are oppressed [even the wealthiest and most “privileged” among us] and anyone can claim that their subjective experience is proof of systemic social problems). Now I’ve come to realize that I’m not alone in thinking that this is a bunch of highly stylized nonsense. It’s a belief system based on emotions and not on facts and evidence. 

But nowhere in that post-modernist philosophy did I get the sense that these philosophers advocated for violence as a "means to an end” to fight against perceived oppression, or that the “ends justify the means.” Where did this idea come from? This seems to have stemmed from an anti-capitalist anarchist mentality which has also given rise to groups like the anti-fascists. What happened to the cherished ideas of civil disobedience and non-violent protest? People fought hard (and died) for these principles during the civil rights era in the 50s and 60s. Now it seems like people have forgotten our history- where we came from- and where we’re going. We’re at the point now where any perceived act of “oppression” is labeled a “micro-aggression” and this trivializes the real prejudice and discrimination which exists in the world.

The First Amendment is not in place to give a “carte blanche” to everyone to say whatever they might want (like hate speech, incitement to violence, death threats, etc.). The principle of free speech is there to protect people who have unfavorable views. Unfortunately, Bret Weinstein’s anti-racism has been misconstrued by students on the liberal campus of Evergreen State College as being antithetical to their “social justice” ethos. The irony kills me. This is an example of how the far-left has become like an ouroboros, eating its own tail and cannibalizing its own members. They have become so “triggered” that they are unknowingly demonizing self-proclaimed 'progressives' that ought to be on the same side as they are- on the side of fighting against true discrimination.

I implore everyone to read a history book (instead of reading one’s Facebook and Twitter). History does not repeat itself, but we’re bound to make the same mistakes over and over again if we don’t learn from them quickly. I am in full support of Bret Weinstein. If we continue to demonize our brightest and most courageous intellectuals in this country, we will eventually pay the price.

On Google's Firing of James Damore

The firing of engineer James Damore from Google is an example of how one can be punished for simply trying to understand the world around us. It’s an example of how authoritarianism does not like it when its cherished beliefs are challenged. Oddly enough, what offended most people about the Google memo was that Damore introduced the term 'neuroticism,' which is one of the measurable personality traits on the 'Big Five Personality Model' in psychology, and he gave supporting evidence for how women score higher than men on this psychometric scale in personality tests. Many interpreted this as an "insult" to women but its merely scientific data. It sounds like a pejorative if you don't know what it means. In multiple podcast interviews (like the Rubin Report and the Joe Rogan Experience) Damore said that, in retrospect, he regrets using the word 'neuroticism' but I think that this is silly and wrong to back down from knowing something when faced with undue criticism. We cannot be forced to self-censor ourselves simply because some people are ignorant and uneducated about psychology and the historical definitions and terms used in scientific literature. Anyone at Google could have easily searched the definition of 'neuroticism' and the historical use of the term but instead people decided to take offense as part of this new 'outrage-and-victimhood culture.'

In many ways, it’s not surprising that James Damore got fired from Google because a lot of the "social justice left” is very open about their policy which is: 'Shut them down. If they don’t agree with you, get rid of them. If they don’t go away easily, threaten & tar them with accusations of “racism” and “sexism.” Shout them down.' The irony is that in a quest for “diversity,” Google has set up policies which explicitly discriminate against people on the basis of race & gender. They claim to be all about inclusion when in secret they are enacting policies which are non-inclusive. As they say, "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions." Not only will individuals suffer as a consequence of this, but the society as a whole will suffer from censorship and the shutting-out of ideas. We want “equality of opportunity,” not “equality of outcomes.”

We witnessed this tactic with the example of Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College in Washington (see stevenrepka.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-attempts-at-evergreen-state-college.html). The tactic is to stifle the debate, suppress the dialogue and prevent a real discussion or dialectic from occurring. The “social justice warrior’s" way of ‘winning’ the argument is to make sure that the opposition is not heard, and often making false accusations and claims about the person (i.e. ad hominem attacks). Many have surmised that this tactic is used because they have no supporting evidence for their claims. Their argument is based solely on emotions, feelings, and irrationality. Like Christopher Hitchens said, if you have a better argument, one must have the courage to have an open and public debate about it. Let the audience decide who wins the argument. This is called civil debate. The level of suppression of free speech on liberal college campuses across America in the 21st century is astounding to me. Did we not learn from our history? The point of 'freedom of speech' (and the First Amendment) is not for speech which conforms to our pre-existing beliefs but rather to protect people who may have unwelcoming perspectives or non-conformist views. 

There’s a strain of anti-intellectualism which seems to have become more predominant in the past decade in America with the advent of the internet (I personally did not realize how controversial the findings of psychology and psychometrics were in many academic circles until I went to a liberal arts college and discovered many of their ideas in the social sciences). We have entered into the “twilight zone” where subjective meaning outweighs objective truth. This is very dangerous and this development ought to be considered an affront to logic and reason. Good science questions everything. In science, a good theory must be testable and falsifiable. The scientific method works so well because it has built-in measures to prevent cognitive biases from influencing the results.

To Google: this is what happens when radical social constructionist ideology overshadows reality. This is what happens when people are lead by dogma instead of empirical evidence, knowable facts and objective truths. This is what happens when people ignore scientific consensus in favor of their personal biases. Biological sex differences exist; that is evolution, that is science. The exceptions do not disprove the rule. [Can we move on to bigger things and more important discussions now?]

Religion Does Not Belong in the Science Classroom

Halfway through the semester of my freshman high school biology class (in a New York State public school) when we got to the chapter in the textbook about Darwin’s theory of evolution, our teacher sat down on the front of her desk & explained to us calmly that we had to skip the chapter on evolution because one student’s parents did not approve & it did not match their household’s religious teachings. I was quite upset because I had been looking forward to the teacher’s discussion about evolution, especially since I wanted to talk about dinosaurs & fossils which had fascinated me ever since childhood. 

I understand now that our biology teacher and the science department did this because of fear of litigation. If the parents sued the school district then presumably the high school could potentially lose its funding. It’s a shame because I know that most of the students would have loved a discussion on prehistoric animals and I felt like we were unfairly punished by an imposing religion. Somehow the curriculum was affected by a religion that was not even the choice of any of the other thirty students in the classroom (or their parents for that matter). Kids are put into school to learn, not to regress to their parents’ ideologies and religious dogmas. What perturbs and saddens me the most is the way that our lovely teacher had to break the news to the classroom, that we couldn’t learn about evolution because someone’s parent objected to the known facts.

I consider this to be a foolish mistake on the part of the New York State educational system, to let science get taken over by religious superstition in the science classroom. The science curriculum ought to stay as it is whether objectionable or not to parents. The scientific consensus of reality does not change because one likes it or not. Even as a freshman in high school I thought we had grown up enough as a society not to let tribal religion enter into our science classroom and overturn the work of thousands of scientists simply because it challenges someone's religious convictions. I think that this is emblematic of a bigger problem which failing American school systems face. I feel like our education and the students’ learning experience in that biology class was unjustly deprived because of one parent’s beliefs that the Book of Genesis is literal truth - and the false implication that the empirical fact-based reasoning of Darwin’s theory (fact) of evolution would somehow impart knowledge that would damage their child.

The opposite is obviously true. The ‘theory of evolution’ (“fact of evolution”) has mountains of evidence for its support (and it would require extraordinary evidence to become discredited (i.e. fossil rabbits in the Precambrian strata of rocks). On the other hand, the Book of Genesis (and the Bible largely) is an 'allegorical cosmogony' (a term from Lloyd M. Graham) filled with fairy-tale nonsense copied from earlier Bronze Age myths. A literal interpretation of Genesis presumes that there is no prehistory, that God created everything in seven days ~5000 years ago for which there is no evidential support. As Carl Sagan said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." This is the kind of junk that one hears proffered from creationists like Australian Ken Ham and the "Focus on the Family's Truth Project." It’s ridiculous claims like this that make me sick knowing that this BS (belief system) is being taught to children. As Richard Dawkins states in his book “The God Delusion,” to deny a child scientific knowledge and indoctrinate him/her with these erroneous beliefs is akin to “child abuse.”

Scientists do not run into churches shouting and waving the ‘Origin of Species’. Why do religious people go into science classrooms waving the Bible? Threatening that knowledge defames their beliefs? And claiming that we need “equal time” for infactual unsubstantiated claims? By and large, most American citizens understand that we have freedom of religion which means that one is allowed to have whatever stupid belief they want behind closed doors. But this is only “freedom,” by definition, if religion does not impose itself on the beliefs of others- especially not imposing itself on the understanding of science in a public school. We all have the First Amendment right to freedom of religion, but this also entails the right to freedom from religion (in a secular setting i.e. public education). It’s not that our biology teacher had to teach us the Book of Genesis instead of the chapter on biological evolution but the act of preventing us from learning about evolution is a real-life example of how religion often co-opts science for its own nefarious purposes. Whenever religion overcomes science in the public sphere (schools, courts, government), we lose value as a society.

Why don’t we leave the scientists to do science and leave the religious to do their religion? I think it’s OK for religious people to “believe” and go to their places of worship, but it's not OK impose their beliefs on people's education. Don’t impose one’s falsities on a group of growing developing individuals in a public school with a well-qualified teacher simply because someone told you that one’s ‘holy book’ has divine authority. One ought to teach Genesis in Sunday school but not in a public school science classroom. Certainly I think it is worth studying ancient peoples and their creation myths in the context of history and comparative religion. They reveal to us how the ancient intuitional mind functioned (and how they interpreted experiences under the influence of psychedelic drugs). But this does not give much meaning for us in observable reality. The theory (fact) of evolution is the study of “objective reality” whereas ancient religion, for the most part, is the handed-down accounts of peoples’ “inner experiences.”

Religious people feel they are being “attacked by science” because science overthrows their entire worldview and up-ends their whole system of lies. No wonder they feel threatened because these ancient texts no longer hold up to any modern rational scrutiny. Religion also claims to be an authority on morality which it simply is not. A person does not become a “good” ethical moral person simply because they fear punishment from a capricious surveilling celestial dictator entity that watches every minute to see if you’ve been “good” or “bad.” Plus, the scientific studies of psychology in the 21st century have revealed much more about ethics/morality than religion ever has. Religion has only granted us with one universal (not culture specific) worthwhile commandment which is ‘the Golden Rule.’ But I argue that humanity does not need religion to figure that out for ourselves. Religion wants a monopoly on this domain of knowledge and morality because it protects them from any skeptical inquiry. And of course they target the youth because it's understood that children are the most impressionable and vulnerable to become inculcated by religious teachings. Science is not “attacking” religion. In fact (if you were reading carefully) it’s apparent that it’s quite the opposite, that religion is waging an assault against science for dismantling its paradigm and weakening its control over civilization (and it has been since before the times of Giordano Bruno, Galileo Galilei, etc.).

Religion does not belong in the science classroom. That’s not how science (or the scientific method) works. It relies on questioning, verifiability, testability and falsifiability. Religion works in exactly the opposite way - believing things essentially on “faith” and taking the truth-value of its books’ claims based on the notion that it’s the “Word of God.” It is important to inform children about the benefits and usefulness of science and teach them the tools of questioning, experiment and discovery - the scientific method, the best tool we have of understanding the universe and how it works. It is not good enough to teach people what to know, we must teach growing adults how to know. Without a scientifically literate population, America will not succeed in the future. We have already been surpassed by dozens of developed nations in terms of science, math and technological innovations because we have not yet removed the shackles of ancient religion. Without giving our children the adequate knowledge of our modern scientific achievements we are neglecting them the full intellectual life which everyone deserves.

Twelve years later I’m still appalled at the fact that our 9th grade biology teacher in a New York State school could not teach a chapter in the course textbook which focused on evolution and dinosaurs because one of the student’s parents did not wish it to be taught since it contradicted with their faith. Presumably it was more practical for our teacher & the administrators to skip the lessons on evolutionary theory rather than risk the student’s parents suing the school district. Thus the entire class of students missed out on a valuable lesson in empirical evidence-based evolution because of one family’s absurd religious teachings (a.k.a. the creation myth of Genesis). For me, this was one of the first signs that the American public education system has problems. 

This is a personal anecdote but I know for certain that it cannot be an isolated case. This is an example of how creationism not only affects the people who wrongly believe it, but also that religions’ nonsense claims that its beliefs must have protection does more harm to others than good. In a democracy everyone ought to have access to information and truth, especially in our institutions of learning. Science taught in public schools ought not to be censored by religion simply because it offends the sensibilities of fundamentalists. Churches (and places of worship) are allowed the freedom of religion in America. Science classrooms ought to be granted freedom from religion.

First 100 Days of President Trump

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"You gotta keep your ethics intact because ‘good and bad’ is a compass. It helps you find the way. And a person that only does what’s 'better or worse' is the easiest type of person to control. They are a mouse in a maze that just finds the cheese. But the one that knows about ‘good and bad’ will realize that he’s in a maze."

- Dave Chappelle

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I really hope that the world understands that Trump does not represent all 323 million Americans (although he is the President of the U.S.A). Sadly, 26% of eligible voters in the U.S. voted for Trump. Trump didn’t get elected because he had huge support. The contrary is true. He got elected because millions of voters didn’t show up to the polls in opposition. The electoral college system & the Constitution was written the way it is to protect the people from an authoritarian leader who might want to impose changes that oppress people. But the system necessitates people who are educated & well-informed. I think Trump won because of his populist message and conversely people's reluctance to vote for Hillary.

On Sam Harris’ “Waking Up” podcast, General Michael Hayden reiterates the sad truth about Russian influence on the election through hacking, cyber-trolls and propaganda. “The Russians did it...It’s the most successful covert influence campaign in the history of covert influence campaigns.” Hayden also goes on to say that "covert influence campaigns do not create fractures in a society. They exploit fractures in a society and make it worse.” (See SamHarris.org)

The Russians plan to weaken our fragile democracy, by making people question our political system to the point of absolutely losing trust. Europe recognizes what Trump really is. They know what modern Russian propaganda & hacking looks like because they’ve been dealing with it for +10 years in their elections. Few people could have guessed though that the Russian propaganda & “fake news” would actually take hold in America & work to elect the President of the United States. We all assumed that the Fourth Estate (the American press) would help us at this confusing moment in American politics and clearly sort out the facts from the fictions. Instead the corporatist media seemed complicit in Trump’s agenda, for example, over-hyping Trump’s support and under-hyping Americans’ support for other populists like Bernie Sanders. (Later in this article, I'll discuss Trump's tactics to diminish trust and confidence in the TV & press media.)

It isn’t smart to assume that because America is a democracy that we are always safeguarded against authoritarian leaders. Certainly, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the electoral college were all designed by the Founding Fathers to safeguard against dictatorship but the system is not foolproof. And I mean that quite literally because if fools are electing fools to govern, that’s a disastrous recipe for a systems collapse.

The “America First” slogan (which now litters the WhiteHouse.gov website) was originally created by Sputnik, the Russian “news agency” (a.k.a. propaganda machine). In my understanding, former campaign manager Paul Manafort most likely knows this (if not engineered it), having previously worked as campaign manager for former president of Ukraine, Yanukovich, propping up another one of Putin’s "puppet presidents.” Manafort is paid $10 million a year (since 2006) by a Russian aluminum tycoon to promote pro-Russian agenda in the U.S. politics (a.k.a. straight up Bolshevik-style propaganda paid for by Russian oligarchs & Putin’s allies). The slogan now adorns the "America First Energy Plan” which aims to end all the “burdensome” regulations on big producers of carbon & methane emissions (the two most dangerous greenhouse gases which are contributing to global warming, ocean temperature rise, sea level rise, and the exponential rate at which glaciers in the arctic and ice in Antarctica).

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"It’s not all slogans from the far-right [like 'American First'], there are also slogans from the far-left. When Mr. Trump refers to journalists as enemies of the people, he is quoting none other than Joseph Stalin. And yes, of course, Steve Bannon’s idea that we should de-construct the administrative state does recall Leninism. So we’re in a dangerous & confusing place." 

- Timothy Snyder

[Comment: The White House administration can’t even make up their mind on which totalitarian regime to adopt.]

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The White House has cut 31% of Environmental Protection Agency funding & eliminated Obama’s initiatives to reduce carbon emissions. This is obviously corporate interest, plain and simple. Trump & Scott Pruitt (head of the EPA) have killed the Clean Power Plan because they claim it’s "killing jobs,” when in actuality the energy industries like coal companies claim that they can't create more jobs in those sectors. This makes it apparent to me that this removal of regulations is solely motivated by these corporatists who want to make more profit for themselves. They could care less about the health of our environment. It’s sickening. Scott Pruitt, now head of the EPA, sued the EPA 13 times as governor of Oklahoma (4 of the 13 times were to fight the regulations which prevented a company from dumping toxic mercury thus contaminating water for generations). Rex Tillerson clearly does not represent the people of America either. He only represents the interests of those profiting from the oil & gas industry. We know that Rex Tillerson has financial ties with Russian oil oligarchs. I think that’s un-patriotic and it’s un-American for Trump to have Tillerson as an adviser. They have basically eliminated all of Obama’s initiatives to reduce carbon emissions solely so that the energy companies can make more profit than they already do, at the expense of a clean & safe environment for us & our kids. I just don’t see how any of the citizens of America (or the world) are benefiting from this. The oil & gas companies already make enough money. In addition, this is not wealth that the American people will ever see in their pockets.

Just because someone becomes the President doesn’t mean that they receive a “get out of jail free” card. And just because someone becomes the President does not mean that they have the necessary competency for the job. These are two very big misconceptions.

The first 100 days of Trump aren’t over yet & it’s already getting crazy. Every day it looks like things are getting worse & the bad news hits us faster every day. News saturation bombards us with more information than our limited brains can compute. Just when everyone thinks it could not get worse, we wake up to news about airstrikes in Syria and talk about a pre-emptive strike against North Korea.

But it might be worth trying to dissect the chaos. We know that Micheal Flynn was paid $45,000 by Russia Today (RT) for a speech in 2015 (and he did not disclose it as is mandatory for a national security advisor ([which is a felony]). He was warned by the Pentagon in 2014 not to receive payments from foreign powers before he left the Defense Intelligence Agency. He's seeking immunity to testify in front of the House Intelligence Committee. And as of April 28th, 2017, it looks like the White House administration is attempting a "coverup" by withholding key documents which Elijah Cummings says are pertinent to the investigation.

The Russian connections keep adding up. And with Trump's actions clearly violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, impeachment seems plausible within the next four years. We will have to wait for the FBI investigations to unfold.

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“What possible reason other than spite could they have for killing the agreement Obama made with the car companies to get all cars up to an average of 55 miles a gallon in eight years. This was a done deal! An industry that we taxpayers bailed out and is now making record profits already agreed to it. It makes the air cleaner, it makes us more energy independent, it saves people money that they can spend on other things… it was a win, win, win, win!...

That’s called a no-brainer, which would lead you to believe even Republicans could get it right! All they had to do was nothing, their specialty. But no! No, no, no! It goes against the prime directive of… let’s say it together, ‘being a dick.'"

-Bill Maher

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I resist the mandatory nationalism which people disguise as “patriotism.” That’s not what I understand as true liberty. What is one to do when the people in power do not represent the true will of the masses (yet the majority of the masses elected the people in power through the electoral college system)? The people must never become complacent about the government's actions. “Freedom ain’t free.” Democracy requires much work when freedoms are in danger. Citizens must speak up against the people in power who want to limit our liberties, our freedoms & our right to live a free and healthy life. If we don’t stay vigilant, rights won’t mean anything. To me, access to clean air & water is the most valuable right. Without a safe & healthy environment, we are dooming ourselves as a society.

I hope that people wake up and recognize what’s going on. I hope people don’t feel too fearful to speak out. Tyranny can only exist if the people lose the courage to speak out because of fear of backlash from friends & people in their community. I wish we could all lay back and watch the newest TV drama thinking “It will all work itself out,” but I’m afraid that it won’t work itself out unless we work it out together.

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"With great power comes great responsibility."

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In Trump’s worldview, there are "winners and losers,” and this is how he thinks about business deals, and now political negotiations. In this view, there can’t be two winners at once in a deal. If one side “wins” the other side by default has to “lose.” There is no mutual benefiting between sides or else it’s a “bad deal.” This is a dangerous philosophy when it comes to working out international trade deals with our neighbors & allies. Trump has already shown that he’s incapable of maintaining positive foreign affairs with our biggest allies because of this worldview. Trump has already managed to tick off the Australian prime minister, the chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel by not shaking hands with her, and Britain by falsely claiming that British intelligence hacked his phones.

He even questioned America’s support for Israel in a number of speeches along the election campaign trail (which surprised some people like Kasich and Cruz who expressed their “100%" support for Israel during the debates). In a speech Trump said, “A lot will have to do with Israel and whether or not Israel wants to make the deal – whether or not Israel’s willing to sacrifice certain things,” like him & Kushner are single-handedly going to broker peace between Israel & Palestine. But this is his view on deals. Of course his views on Israel did a swift 180 degrees once he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. Then Trump flip-flopped on policy with China, saying that they're "not currency manipulators." And he instantaneously changed his mind about terminating NAFTA after the Canadian prime minister Trudeau & Mexican president Nieto asked him to re-negotiate instead.

Trump says “I think we’re weak.” America spends more on military than the next 8 nations combined and America still looks weak. In the same sentence, Trump said that we should use torture against terrorists and later said we should even torture the family members of ISIS terrorists (both of which are against the Geneva conventions). This is the irony because much of the world perceives America as “weak" because of its recent human rights track record, especially on torture and indefinite detainment (Abu Ghraib prison, Guantanamo Bay, etc.). The international community holds a higher standard for America when it comes to upholding international law for reasons which are fundamental to our history but for which many people have taken for granted. America sets an example for the rest of the world to follow. Trump & his cabinet are already setting a bad example which will damage our reputation even more. So when Trump proposes to “strengthen the laws,” most people understand that this will only backfire on our country and we’ll see the repercussions in violent ways abroad if not on American soil. We’ve seen it time and time again. ‘The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.’ This is “tough guy” talk and it’s the kind of talk that could get us into a wrong fight (like North Korea) and that’s what I’m worried about as an American for my fellow American citizens.

A lot of self-proclaimed ‘patriotic' Americans have parroted these false insinuations about America’s weakness internationally but this is dangerous rhetoric.

Will we show the world that we’re "strong" by ramping up our military? Anyone who studies history knows that ramping up the military of a state is not a sign of strength; it’s usually a sign of the state falling apart (one only needs to read about the fall of Greek democracy, the Roman Republic, the Weimar Republic, etc.) (See Timothy Snyder).

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"Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty"

- Plato 

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We’ve all heard it or probably said it ourselves at one time. "Politics is corrupt. All politicians are liars. The system is broken. We must destroy the system.” “We’re going to drain the swamp.” In 2016, America’s reaction to this feeling was to vote for Trump who literally promised them ‘everything’ and told people what they wanted to hear, despite what most of Trump says is not grounded in any evidence and he has only shown to embolden the money interests which most people innocently thought that he promised to eliminate. And oh, he "drained the swamp" alright. He killed everything that breathed in the swamp & replaced a living ecosystem with mechanistic money-making monsters that don’t mind ripping out the guts of the government at the expense of Americans’ suffering all to replace it with a profit margin.

That’s anarcho-fascism. And it’s even easier for them to get away with this because they already have a political enemy (Obama & the Democrats) who they can wrongly blame for everything that they become responsible for.

Republicans (especially Paul Ryan) whined the past 8 years about how Obama increased our debt (even though he was saddled with most of that debt from ongoing wars initiated in the Bush era). But then they don’t say anything in opposition when Trump & Pence propose to cut the entire budget in order to appropriate another half trillion dollars for the military budget (which will help kill terrorists overseas but not make America a safer place to live in Hillary Clinton’s opinion). This is important because the second largest expense that the military has is interest on debt from defense-related activities (and it appears to be increasing every year). In 2016, debt surpassed spending in the federal budget. This is more evidence to me that the Republicans have no principles. They claim to have principles but whenever it’s time to make a choice between their principles and corporate interests, it appears that “dark money” & lobbyist interests win every time. “Why is that?” you may ask. “Isn’t congress supposed to represent the people?" What people don’t seem to understand is that the system does work. America’s representative democratic system works, but only if there exists an informed & participatory populace. I think we’re simply not electing the right people. We’ve let it become overrun by corporate interests, and Trump’s cabinet is the newest evidence of us.

Like Rep. Seth Moulton points out on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher, the military was opposed to Trump's cuts on the State Department because it makes it harder for them to keep America safe.

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"A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction... 

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together." 

- President Dwight D. Eisenhower 

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Don’t take what you hear for granted; search for the truth for yourself. Tyranny only happens when the people unwillingly give up their power to someone who wants take their power away. Don’t be fooled by people who want to erode your trust in facts & reality. "Reality is that which continues to exist whether you believe in it or not." Be weary of people who peddle mis- and dis-information in order to sow mistrust in the public & warp people’s worldview into fear. People will distort reality (or create “alternate realities”) in order to sell you false hopes. An apathetic, distrustful & disgruntled & therefore disinterested public is the easiest to manipulative + take advantage of. Apathy kills democracy. Doing nothing in a time of crisis only seals our fate. Now is the time to speak out against injustice. The system works, we’re just not working with the system; we let it get hijacked by con-artists & corporations with special interests. The Presidents tax cuts for the top 1% will not help the rural poor people in America that voted for him. Trickle-down economics is a hoax perpetuated by the Republicans to make the rich richer & the poor poorer. Republicans seem eerily content about the wealth divide….probably because their proposed policies pad their pockets too.

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"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every humanbeing. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" - 

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

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If these first 100 days of Trump is what he means by “winning” then I’m already "sick of winning"…

Trump fired the attorney general Sally Yates in the first 10 days in office. Trump’s presidency has set a bad precedent on so many levels when it comes to upholding the constitution. Trump's administration is actively trying to diminish the checks and balances on the presidential powers.

Conversations between the Trump team (Flynn, Kushner…) and Russian intelligence operatives were under surveillance because the NSA records phone calls between the U.S. and foreign enemies. As we’ve seen, the White House administrations' way of trying to sneak out of it is to claim that 'mass surveillance is wrong,' pointing the finger at Obama and his administration. If 'mass surveillance is wrong,' how was it OK when Bush signed the PATRIOT act and conducted the largest mass surveillance program in history on its own citizens? If 'mass surveillance is wrong,' then why did Congress just pass a law that allows internet providers to store your browsing history data? (It’s O.K. when corporations do it, but not when the CIA listens to phone calls with foreign leaders?)

I don’t believe in mass surveillance in principle, but I can understand how limited surveillance of Americans might be necessary, but only in extreme cases with a warrant provided there is sufficient proof of evidence of probable cause. I’m amazed at how moral philosophers like Jeremy Bentham predicted the rise of a surveillance society with his Panopticon.

The Republicans (like Devin Nunes and Rand Paul) are on a "mole hunt" for the people in Washington who leaked the information to the media about Mike Flynn’s contacts with Russian diplomats, which led to his resignation. This is just ridiculous because Flynn's name was unmasked because he was most likely doing illegal activity. Is it not possible for two things to be illegal at the same time? The Russian contacts and the leaks?

But the Republicans (like Matt Schlapp) want to pretend that somehow "two wrongs makes a right,” or that somehow the “illegal” surveillance overshadows or puts into jeopardy the finding that numerous officials on Trump’s team had contacts, meetings and financial ties with Russian oligarchs (a.k.a. allies of Putin and the Russian government). Trump says the leaks are “un-American,” but are they? I argue that the American people deserve the right to know whether these allegations are true, which would settle the question of unwarranted influence by Russian intelligence in the Trump campaign. It's evident that Russia wants to weaken our democracy so that they can emerge as a world superpower and I believe that bribery and blackmail are a possibility, or even more malignant is the possibility that Trump’s team is involved with political deals in exchange for business deals with Russia.

To me it appears that the only time mass surveillance is wrong to the Republicans is coincidentally when the Trump team is implicated in possible Russian collusion and/or Russia's significant influence on the elections. The only time when surveillance is “un-American” is when the Republicans are doing shady things (like secret million dollar deals with Russian oligarchs) and they get caught red-handed. Of course Jeff Sessions had to recuse himself from the investigations after revelations that he had met with Sergey Kislyak, Russian ambassador (aka the #1 spy recruiter for Putin's government, which of course Russia denies but of course they deny everything). I predict that this FBI investigation will not end quickly.

In addition, here’s my theory about Ivanka Trump’s recent inclusion into the White House. Ivanka Trump was given clearance since she is married to Kushner (and of course daughter to Trump) so there must be classified information that they spill over the dinner table. So the White House administration is probably legally forced  at this point to give Ivanka government clearance to justify her new knowledge. Because they’re probably all talking about classified information and it would be illegal if they were talking about classified information without being cleared, even if it’s your spouse.

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"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way..."

- Charles Dickens

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The biggest problem in America is wealth inequality. I think people are suffering and the easiest way for people to explain their suffering is to find something or someone to blame it on. They see the gridlock in Congress and they become apathetic. It appears as if the government isn’t helping them but only taking their tax dollars. We live in a divided nation. I think that this partially is a consequence of the Republican party being a "party of obstruction" the past 8 years under the Obama administration. The discord & gridlock in Congress sowed a seed of distrust & apathy in people and created an anti-government sentiment in the country which Trump used to his advantage in order to win the election.

Most people vote for the Republican who vows to cut taxes, even though they don’t themselves belong to the higher tax bracket who would receive the tax breaks. But they vote on the principle that the government shouldn’t tell us what to do with our money. And they vote on the hope that we live in an utopian “land of opportunity” and that we all have the possibility of becoming a millionaire one day. Meanwhile the Republicans are removing the rungs of the economic ladder to make it impossible for social mobility.

In times of uncertainty like this it is easier for a "strong man”-type leader to take power, claiming that he will fix all of the problems (fix healthcare, defeat ISIS, jobs for everyone, etc.). The people wanted someone to stand up to the 'elitists' in Washington and that's what Trump vowed to do, although the disturbing irony is the fact that Trump is part of that business elite and he is only giving the corporatist Republicans more of a reign on American life. He's a millionaire businessman who knows next to nothing about what’s best for the American working class, let alone international affairs and foreign policy.

I fear that our democracy became susceptible to an authoritarian leader who validates and magnifies false perceptions about external threats and/or internal threats to our country. Perceived external threats may include minorities (like Mexicans and Muslims) which spawns ideas like building a wall and led to Trump's "Muslim ban." Perceived internal threats lead to de-construction of the government and consequentially a strengthening of the police/military state (especially in poor neighborhoods). 

Trump's scapegoat rhetoric is a persuasion tactic of making people feel like their problems are not their own but rather the doing of a (demonized) group of people- or the "government"- the "status quo" politicians and "the establishment." The Republicans have perpetuated a myth about "illegal immigrants" being "rapists" and criminals. People have become fearful of terror attacks inspired by radical Islam and groups such as ISIS & Al Qaeda (after a number of attacks such as in Paris, Nice, San Bernardino, Orlando, and many others). People have become suspicious of the government after Wikileaks and the Snowden leaks about the NSA spying programs. Trump became the spokesperson for the culture of fear (and conspiratorial mindset) in America. 

Of course all of the solutions that Trump has for these threats are costly, impractical and they're an idiotic attempt to attack the symptoms of the nation's problems instead of addressing the root causes of the world's problems. But of course Trump doesn't use logic & reason. And he certainly doesn't use observable truths or facts to form his opinions or inform his actions. Trump relies solely on emotion & 'gut' feeling. That's primarily why the people who did voted for him in the first place. Trump "tells it like it is." He says and does what feels good.

Trump's main message in his inauguration speech was that he would bring 'law and order' back to America. This is a frightening thing to hear when you know that there's less violent crime in America than ever before. This is classic fearmongering. But scare tactics are not surprising after all the other negative campaigning Trump did during the election like the attack ads & smear campaign against his opponents. 

Trump's demagoguery is reminiscent of the early 20th century dictators because he speaks the same rhetoric of fear and mistrust. One way in which Trump did this was by attacking his critics in the media, calling various news channels "fake news." This is also a tactic used by Putin in Russia: to disseminate so many lies that the public has no idea what to believe so that they eventually succumb to the sole authority of the state. Trump won the election in an environment where lying became a sport (See the Election Debates). Trump lies constantly and there is consistently no consequence to his lying. 

Trump and the White House administration have created their own version of reality. And of course he didn't do it alone; the Republicans over the past couple decade have helped to author this "alternative" version of reality (comically coined by Kelly-Anne Conway with her "alternative facts" remark). This is also Trump's way of ignoring criticism by shunning news outlets like CNN which arguably have a civic obligation to question Trump and his policies. But like an authoritarian leader, Trump doesn't tolerate criticism and questioning, something he showed by disregarding the conventional rules of how a free press operates during a presidential election while actively trying to undermine the press' ability to function properly. In Putin's Russia they kill dissenters. In Trump's America they just ban or limit your media access and violently expel dissenters from their rallies.

Trump managed to delegitimize the press and people's lost confidence in traditional media left them to gravitate towards fake conspiracy theories promulgated by Russian trolls on social media. This is a symptom in many ways of the death of American journalism. People don't read newspapers anymore. Most people get their news from their Facebook feed which we discovered after the election is filled with fabricated news stories from Russian propaganda engines.

The anarcho-fascist ideology is simple. The state is failing, so we must dismantle the state. And as we know throughout history, in order to exhibit “power” and “domination," the leader often chooses a scapegoat to destroy, symbolically and then literally. Trump & the Republicans will never accept the blame for anything. If they encounter a problem, they blame something or someone else. That’s the Republican strategy. 

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As a high school kid in history class, we were taught that we had learned the lessons of Hitler’s rise to power in Germany & Mussolini's in Italy. We were told in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall that we could close our textbooks because we wouldn’t have to think about those forms of authoritarianism & totalitarianism ever again. 

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To Be Continued...