Ilya Shambat's Open Salon Blog

Republican Women and 1960s

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 01:06:54 -0400

There are any number of Republican women politicians who have as a centerpiece of their agenda undoing everything 1960s.

There is a problem with that stance. Without what happened in 1960s, these women would not be able to be politicians or entrepreneurs or anything else they are. The only thing they would be able to be is housewives, which is what the bulk of American women were in 1950s.

The same women want lower taxes at the same time as they want 1950s institutions. I got news for them. In 1950s, the highest bracket tax was an outrageous 92%. Do they really want to have no choice but to be housewives? Do they really want to pay a 92% tax? Then for what reason do they attack everything 1960s when they owe to that time as much as they do?

You want 1950s? Be prepared to pay 92% of your income in taxes. You want 1950s? Be prepared to be at the mercy of your husband, however nasty and violent he may be. You want 1950s? Be prepared to lose your ability to be a politician or an entrepreneur.

Michele Bachman, Sarah Palin and any number of others take note.

I am not against there being Republican women politicians. I am however against ignorance and ingratitude, and what we see in these politicians is vast amounts of both. Without the social revolts of 1960s and 1970s these women would not be able to do any of what they are doing. They wouldn't be able to be politicians; they would not be able to be businesswomen; they wouldn't be able to divorce their husbands however badly their husbands choose to treat them. They would be tied to the housewife role and be at the mercy of their husbands however badly their husbands choose to behave.

The 1960s liberals paved the way for there being large numbers of women politicians; and that also means Republican women politicians. And without 1960s those women would not be able to be politicians in the first place. So whenever we hear a Republican woman politician attacking the 1960s and 1970s values, what we are hearing is vast ignorance and ingratitude.

And neither of the preceding qualifies as righteousness or as values.

Feminism and Parenting

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 03:06:35 -0400

There are conservative men who want to have families but choose to be tyrannical and violent to their children and wives, and there are liberal men who are not violent or tyrannical but want nothing to do with nuclear family.

Family-minded women do not benefit from either stance. They benefit from men who are willing to be responsible parents and who are also willing to be good to their wives and children.

Is there such a creature? As a matter of fact there is. My friend Arindam, who is from India, has been a responsible engineer and has been warm, attentive and loving to his children and his wife. He is as much against domestic violence as are the feminists; and he has also been a committed and responsible husband and father.

People who are willing to act that way, I regard as the best of all worlds. They raise their children responsibly, and they treat their wives right while at it.

Many liberal-minded men are against nuclear family because they identify it with violence, tyranny and misogyny. They however do not have to act that way as husbands and fathers themselves. Many of these men will make excellent fathers and husbands because they are against violence to women and children. It is possible to have a nuclear family that does not involve oppressive and brutal practices, and these men can and should take the lead in creating such arrangements.

And one direction that feminism should take, if it is to actually benefit most women, is to teach men how to be good husbands and fathers.

Most women will want to have children; most women will want to be with men. While the anti-family directions benefit those women who do not want to have families, they do nothing for the majority of women. The majority of women will want to have families, and feminism needs to account for that and to direct its energies toward teaching men how to be good husbands and fathers so that family life is a positive experience for the women.

And that will vastly benefit the women's well-being.

Men should not be taught to be brutes and tyrants, nor should they be taught to be flakes. Men should be taught to be gentlemen. Men should be taught to be good to their wives and children and to be responsible parents at the same time. The more this is done, the greater will be improvement in women's condition.

One great feature of democracies is that anyone can become a leader if he comes up with a right idea. The men who are liberal-minded and are against violence toward women should not cower behind but rather should lead the way. They have the superior idea: That men should treat their wives and their children better. They stand to gain much - and the world stands to gain much - through them applying and implementing this better idea.

Liberal-minded men should stop identify family with patriarchy and oppression and should instead start families where they are not practicing patriarchy and oppression. They should lead by example and show other men how family life can be done better. They should apply their ideals and make them relevant to reality of people's lives.

And that will go a long way toward improving the world for women; in fact it will go a long way toward improving the world for everyone.

Incentives In Man-Woman Relationships

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 06:06:19 -0400

I've been called everything from feminist to misogynist, and mostly these statements say more about people saying them than they do about me. I am neither for nor against either women or men. The world will always have both, and we will always see good and bad choices made by both.

I am for the better choices that stand to be made by both.

I am for men being good to women and for women being good to men.

And I am against men being unwilling to be good to women and against women being unwilling to be good to men.

I work here with the concept of incentives, gained from economics. Incentives refer to the balance of rewards and punishments in the economy. The point in economics is to arrange incentives in such a way as to reward positive outcomes such as creation of wealth and punish fraudulent and destructive practices. The same concept can and should be used in social studies as well.

While man-on-woman ugliness is generally worse around the world than woman-on-man ugliness, there are places where it is the other way around. One of these places is American academia and the liberal city cultures that are influenced by it the most. And my concern is that the men who are willing to be good to women tend to get appropriated by these misandrist cultures, and their attention is denied to women who are willing to be good to their male partners. Which women, with men of goodwill having been appropriated by women of misandrist persuasion, have nowhere to go to except men who are brutal, misogynistic, and worse.

This results in a very perverse and unjust state of affairs, in which the women who are willing to be good to men - and the men who are willing to be good to women - wind up in situations of abuse or exploitation, while the women who are not willing to be good to men wind up matriarchs, and the men who are not willing to be good to women wind up tyrants.

And this creates an inverted set of incentives that rewards the evil and punishes the good.

Really, which woman deserves better treatment: the one who is willing to be good to her male partner or the one who isn't? For that matter, which man deserves better treatment: the one who is willing to be good to his female partner or the one who is not?

Should Taliban creeps be treated better by their wives than liberal city men in America?

And should the warm and beautiful women all around the world be treated worse than the harpies of the politically correct persuasion?

Some see only man-on-woman injustices and want feminism, and others see only woman-on-man malfeasance and want patriarchy. But I look at the whole picture, and what I see is wrongdoing by both sides. Basically, they both have a false concept of what is justice. One side sees anything a man might do that might upset a woman as criminal (and nothing a woman might do that might hurt a man as any kind of wrongdoing), and the other sees brutality and oppression against women as the divinely ordained way of life.

Both sides are in the wrong. I define justice as getting what you give. If a man chooses to be terrible to his woman, or if a woman chooses to be terrible to her man, then justice means having that person lose. Whereas a man who chooses to be good to his woman, like a woman who chooses to be good to her man, deserves to win out.

This of course pits me against the wrongdoers on both sides of the debate; but it is a stance that holds out a promise for everyone except these wrongdoers. The more men are encouraged to be good to women - and rewarded with good relationships when they are - the more men will see hope and promise in being good to women, and the more men will be good to their female partners. The more women are encouraged to be good to men - and rewarded with good relationships when they are - the more women will see such hope and promise and will act accordingly. The incentives on both genders will be to be good to their partners. And this will result in more good done by people of both genders to one another, creating a vastly superior way of life.

Right now the incentives are completely wrong. The Taliban and other brutal men get complete obedience from their warm and loving wives, whom they treat absolutely horribly, while liberal city men who believe in gender equality get attacked and mistreated by cold and abusive women. The women of ill will appropriate the men of goodwill, denying their attention to women of goodwill and leaving the women of goodwill with no choice but brutes and misogynists. Goodwill on both sides gets punished and exploited; ill will on both sides runs the show. And this is bad for everyone except the people of ill will themselves.

Of course, the more women are in situations of abuse, the more the practicioners of political correctness - who are themselves misogynists in everything except the name and believe themselves to be better than other women - can lord it over the other women, especially the ones nicer and prettier. And the more well-intentioned men are being mistreated by women, the stronger grows the case for the misogynistic men who can come to them and say that they have been right about women all along. This, once again, empowers wrongdoers on both sides while making life ugly for everyone who is not these wrongdoers. And that is a terrible direction into which to take the world.

It makes sense to neither support nor attack either men or women. It makes sense to support men and women who are willing to act rightfully, and it makes sense to confront men and women who choose to act wrongly. In matters of man-woman relationships, this means supporting the men and the women who are willing to be good to their partners and confronting the men and the women who are not.

The more incentives for being good to one's partner, and the more disincentives for being bad to one's partner, the more people will treat their partners better.

And that will result in a better world both for women and for men.

Correcting Corruption Potentials

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 19:06:08 -0400

The founders of the United States of America realized that government, by its nature, had potential for tyranny and corruption. Out of this consideration they created a government of checks and balances, in which someone who chose to act in corrupt ways would be stopped by others. It occurs to me that the elected officials in the government are not the only entity capable of corruption.

One obvious example of an entity not subject to checks and balances that has potential for corruption is the CIA. As a secret organization with vast amounts of knowledge, they can easily do things that they are not supposed to do. I do not say, as some do, that CIA is universally evil; I say that it has an inherent potential for corruption; and it should be checked just as vigorously as are the potentials for corruption in Congress or in the White House.

Another example is the banking industry. While I disagree with those who claim that a group of bankers is secretly running the world, I have every reason to expect bankers to wield political influence. They control vast amounts of capital, and there are many things that they can do with it. I would expect bankers to influence elections, and I would not be surprised to see bankers controlling politicians, government workers and military personnel.

One place that does not get exposed for its corruption potentials is the family court. The family court proceedings are secret, which means that if a judge wants to enter a corrupt ruling, he can. The lack of transparency in family court is an open door for corruption; and whether or not that was the intent in making these courts secret in the first place, it has been a logical and inevitable result.

Police, social services and mental health also have strong potential for corruption. In these situations, one side has all the credibility and the other side has none. If a mental health worker wants to do something ugly to a patient, or if a jail warden wants to do something ugly to the prisoner, he can do so knowing that the court will not believe the patient or the prisoner. This makes these entities inherently capable of corruption; meaning that there need to be strong efforts to correct these corruption potentials.

There are also major corruption potentials in communities. Being sustained by strong internal loyalties, communities have ways to prevail upon one another to hide wrongdoings done by their members. They also have ways to prevail upon the victim to not prosecute, or to attack her should she insist on prosecution. These people have loyalty to one another, but not to anyone else; which means that they will do terrible things to others and think themselves justified in doing these things. For them, the loyalty to one another is paramount, and nobody else matters. This kind of thinking inevitably results in wrongdoing; and that is the case whether the entity is the Russian mafia or an American or Australian country town.

In families, there is also potential for very wrongful practices. The person who wants to batter his wife or has sex with his children is in many cases immune from prosecution, knowing that his wife or his children are either loyal to him, have nowhere to go, or are afraid to do anything about it. The problem is complicated by corruption in family courts and collusion between police, courts and social services in places supportive of violence to women and children. The sanctity afforded the family under "family values" complicates the situation still more.

With regular business - such as computers, manufacturing and food industry - the potentials for corruption are lesser, but they still exist. Some of these are corrected by competition, and others are corrected by law. If someone wants to charge exhorbitant prices or sell inferior goods, then the customer can go next door. And if someone wants to sell a defective product, there are laws to hold him accountable.

What all this means is that, to truly defeat corruption, it is necessary to fight it in other places besides the elected government. It's not only the President or the Congress that is capable of corruption; many other entities are as well. And there is a need to confront all of these entities based on their nature and hold them to a standard of integrity comparable to what is demanded of the government if any real progress is to be made against corruption.

Why Isn't FBI Using Their Data to Catch Criminals

Sun, 9 Jun 2013 20:06:59 -0400

As somebody who at age 12 came to America from the former Soviet Union, I have had a predisposition to respect American government.

I have strong loyalties with some people in the American government, and I have seen the American government as, for the most part, a benevolent force. Better than Soviet government; better than Chinese government; better than Taliban; better than Ayatollah; better than Exxon Mobile; better than Russian mafia; better than Leesburg, Virginia; better than Westboro Baptists, the Tea Party or Glenn Beck.

So that when I write anything negative about the American government, it must be about something absolutely egregious.

For a long time any potential inquiry into corrupt practices has been stonewalled. We were told such things as that what we see in others is a reflection of ourselves; that paying attention to negativity only increases the negativity; that a person with good self-esteem minds his own business; that anything that happens to people is a result of what's in their conscience; or that a righteous person never gets angry. All of this plays very handily into the hands of the corrupt. The people who have it within themselves to fight the corruption get stonewalled, allowing corruption to continue.

By corrupt I don't mean only official organs of power; I also mean unofficial organs of power. One of the less known offenders have been the conservative communities that corrupt the police and the social services to hide domestic violence and incest perpetrated by their residents. The representatives of these corrupt places then go on the political stage posturing about how they have family values and principles and how the rest of the country - and the rest of the world - does not.

By corrupt I also mean doctors who murder patients in their care and then enlist corrupt coroners to remove affected organs prior to autopsy or hire corrupt lawyers to bury the case of the person suing against them. By corrupt I also mean family courts who use the racket disorder of Parental Alienation to claim children reporting abuse by their fathers to be getting brainwashed by their mothers and then use the secrecy of the family courts to get away with machinations that would be unthinkable in the climate of open courts. By corrupt I also mean those in the liar media industry who spread such fictions as that AIDS is God's way of controlling the homosexual population, that 9-11 was God's punishment for America, that global warming is a Communist hoax, that Obama is a Hitler, or that a Satanic conspiracy is running the world. By corrupt I mean everyone associated with these entities, everyone enlisted by these entities, and everyone who enables these entities in their loathsome conduct.

The motto of Bob Woodward, the reporter who broke the Watergate story, was "Question Authority." More appropriate to our time is a different motto: Challenge Corruption. Not all authority is evil, and some people in positions of authority are well-intentioned and competent and possess better character than many people who are not in positions of authority. Whereas corruption is always evil, wherever it is found.

The following was not written by me. It was written by a lady named Gail Lakritz, who has worked for a long time on Wall Street and has knowledge of some information that concerns secret dealings by FBI. What you are about to see should be seen as a wake-up call as to who represents you and how they are using your money.

I warn you, reading this may require gumption.

Why Isn’t the FBI Using the Data They’re Collecting To Catch Criminals?

By Gail Lakritz

The ACLU asserts the NSA, with the help of the FBI, is collecting “1.7 billion email, phone, texts and other electronic communications”[i] daily. If the number of people on the watch list is the 120 million that is bantered about, and you happen to be one of the (un)lucky ones, that means your phone provider, ISP, credit card company and bank are sending them 14 things with your name or other identifier in the subject line. Hallelujah, You' re famous, and you didn’t even know it. You don’t even know how you got on that list. Frankly, none of us know how we got on the list, but we do care.

What happens to this data? If, in fact, the FBI is collecting the data as is stated in the Surveillance Order[ii], it’s passed onto the NSA for storage and retrieval in case you are ever suspected of being a terrorist. It is our understanding that a check, by whatever identifier they have assigned to you, phone number or ISP address, can be run on all of this data in a matter of hours so your records can be reviewed. Those records will include all those phone numbers you have called and how long you talked, the texts you sent and how many characters they contained and ISP addresses you have contacted or web pages you visited. They will also include the information of who has contacted you. If there is a pattern of calling Aunt Sonia who lives in Syria with her husband and his family, they will request the contents of those calls, emails, and pictures of the family, whatever they have, to aid them in deciding whether or not you are a terrorist.

That seems fairly straight forward, but it may not be. What happens if dear Aunt Sonia and Uncle Naseer happen to have names that happen to be the same as real terrorists? You are placed under investigation. Agents may talk to people you work with, including your boss, they will talk to your neighbors, your friends and anyone else who might have “unbiased” information on you. They will go through your garbage. They might even go so far as following you. It could take months to clear you of their suspensions. By that time, due to the continuing investigation, you have lost your job, your home and all your friends. Your life has been ruined.

In the meantime, the FBI does not divulge the average cost of an investigation. Some take only days while others take months, even years. We, the taxpayers, and that means you, the suspect, are paying for everyday you are under investigation.

But you are only one of 120 million people. Who are the rest? We have no way of knowing. Again, no one is willing to say anything about the super secret information gathering program, other than acknowledging it exists. That had to be forced out of government by a leaked Freedom Of Information request issued by a foreign news organization, the Guardian domiciled in the United Kingdom.

So, the FBI is spending all of this time and money chasing tails. It appears they are not using the information to find real criminals. It has been postulated that most people on the list are just us ordinary citizens who happened to have voiced our displeasure with the government for one reason or another. If that is the only requirement to being placed on the list, we are frankly surprised that all 310 or so million Americans aren’t on the list.

But what of those who aren’t on the list. Surely, suspected corrupt elected or appointed officials are. Not to our knowledge. How about cops who are suspected of corruption or brutality? Nope. What about suspected pedophiles, drug dealers, child pornographers, sex traffickers, corrupt military contractors, members of organized crime? Think again, that would be the logical use of such a list, but that data base doesn’t exist that we can ascertain. In fact, in testimony before Congress, Eric Holder was specifically asked if members of Congress were on the list. His answer was no.

So here we have it. Ordinary citizens are on the list, but criminals are left off.

Way to go, FBI/NSA. Protect the public from people who are family members that we happen to call or email, but let the bad guys go. Protect and serve the criminals while making criminals out of law abiding citizens. You may have stopped one terrorist attack, but how much have you contributed, albeit, indirectly, to rape of children and women, to murder and drug deaths, to illegal activities of bankers and corporations, to organized crime and to bribery and corruption?

We are so proud of the job you are doing, protecting the criminals, because you do it so well.