I am ... !

I have been trying to find a short but clear description of who I am, 

what I like,
what I believe in.
I absolutely convinced that any extremism is bad.
That any idea, even a very good one, if taken to its extreme becomes its own opposite.
I would say that I am extremely anti-extremist.

I am
A conservative liberal
A knowledgeable wonderer
A believing atheist
A constructive disruptor
A logical artist

A loyal oppositionist
A passive activist
A modest braggart
and
A serious laugher
© Dr. Valentin Voroshilov 

 I was lucky to work side-by-side with extremely smart and educated people, including my mentors. People who had an incredible knowledge of human nature. People who “by a single look at a raindrop could deduce the existence of the oceans”. People who walked toward a challenge and found a pleasure in solving complicated problems. People who would tell things as they are. People who taught me what does it mean to be a professional, including five top professional qualities: curiosity, imagination, an ability to reason, an ability to laugh at themselves, and having strict criteria for the quality of their own work. The type of people to whom I feel deep admiration and respect.

As a long-term teacher at times I may be judgmental, and may challenge people, but I have trained myself to keep it down.

There is a type of people who I don't really like to deal with. People who are arrogant, full of themselves, believe they know everything and tell everyone what to do, avoid logical conversations and always silence the opponents by loudly screaming emotional trivialities and calling people names.
Those people come in all possible forms: all genders, races, ages, wealth, education.
Those people demand to be treated with the utmost respect, but do not respect anybody else.
I believe, there should be no gap between laws, moral rules, and the actual culture. 

The Golden Rule does not mention race, gender, ethnicity, age, IQ, education, wealth, religion, political bias, the planet of birth.

I guess, this is one of the reason Stephen Colbert repeatedly said "I do not see race". Well, following this logic we all should say "I do not see gender", "I do not see ethnicity", "I do not see IQ", "I do not see age", "I do not see education", "I do not see wealth", "I do not see religion", "I do not see political bias", "I do not see an alien".
The problem, however, is that for someone to actually follow the Golden Rule, that one needs to have:
- an ability which allows to see how other people see the person - a.k.a. imagination.
- the willingness for "trying on  someone else shoes".  

These are some of my favorite sayings (meaning, I love them, I did not invent them):
“If you didn't succeed first time, try and try again.”
“Repeating again and again the same actions and expecting a different result is an insanity.”
"Question always; question everything".
These are mine:
"Mistakes are inevitable and unavoidable. There is no shame in making a mistake. The shame is in insisting that you're right even when you already know that you are not."
“If you look in a mirror, and do not like what you see, do not blame the mirror.”
(BTW: a mirror is an object or a person interaction with which activates the process of reflection on (a) personal appearance; (b) external environment; or (c) internal psychological state).

Thank you for visiting,
Dr. Valentin Voroshilov
Education Advancement Professionals
GoMars.xyz

To learn more about my professional experience:
The voices of my students 
"The Backpack Full of Cahs": pointing at a problem, not offering a solution
Essentials of Teaching Science

Are the political parties usable? That is a ... question

some thoughts on

http://independentvoting.org/national-conference-call/

I wonder what was the logic behind the question for the call.

The history of politics has demonstrated a simple fact: there are different governing structures (check the CIA: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2128.html;

or just read

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forms_of_government - textbook on political history would be better, but wikipedia is better than nothing).

The next fact: different governing structures are based on different distribution of mass involvement.

The third fact: a democracy is based on wide involvement of the masses into the decisions making process; no mass involvement - no democracy.

The forth fact: to present their power the masses form groups based on the similarity of their interests - how do you want to call those groups - parties, or something else - it is irrelevant.

Mechanics (technical methods) for group formation may be different, but in the end, the bigger is a social support and people representation of a group, the more it has political power, meaning, the more influence it has on a decision-making process.

Those all are very well known and long time ago established FACTS - denying those as facts is not different from denying the existence of the correlation between the climate change the human activities.

Asking "are the political parties usable?" demonstrates either (1) political infantilism; or (2) the intention to manipulate people into doing something - here I start wondering - into what?
Currently, progressives of all sort are busy with fashioning a big fiery GALA (http://the3dforce.blogspot.com/2017/11/3dforcedown.html).
At the same time Regressive Republicans developed a network of disinformation: http://the3dforce.blogspot.com/2017/11/disinformation.html.
Who is a real revolutionary here?

For progressives Convergence seems yet elusive - but still possible!

Part I: just a copy of a recent short Facebook post (09/12/2017)

So, the convergence2017.org (The People's Convergence Conference) meeting is over.

I just checked the websites of the three hosting parties (https://draftbernie.org/, https://progressiveindependentparty.org/, https://www.socialistalternative.org/).

None of them has ANY mentioning of the event which supposedly had to change the political landscape.

Jackie Salit from http://independentvoting.org/ was there, too, but Independentvoting.org does not mention the event as well.

What happened to the converging?

It is a very well known fact that political collaboration requires a special set of goals, and skills, and more. So far the leaders of those old and new political groups have not shown the presence of those goals and skills and more.

So far all they do is opening a debate club (National Conference Call at independentvoting.org), or running a conference on political science (convergence2017.org).

Instead of initiating cooperative managing, they have slid in agitation and propaganda.

Agitation and propaganda are important! But without solid collaboration all those political groups will NOT make any difference.

The right approach is at

www.3dForce.net

Part II: reflection on part I

If you read a mission statement or the goals of many new and old progressive groups and parties, you will find that they all look very similar. You read about anger people feel toward the dysfunctional government, about a minimum wage, about the health care, student loans, etc., etc., etc.. 

None of those ideas are new; they just have risen to the political surface during the 2016 presidential campaign. But no one knows for how long people will be feeling frustrated and agitated. That is why nowadays every political group is trying to attract as much attention as possible.

The leaders do understand that none of the groups will ever have enough followers to compete with the two major parties. That is why – the hunt for the “big fish” (everyone wants to be able to say “Bernie sanders is with us!”). That is why some motion to build a collaboration (convergence2017).

The first problem is that the leaders of all active political groups would like to absorb all other groups and have everyone under their tent, but no one wants to be absorbed.  

The second problem is that all those groups live in an illusion, or in a dream, so to speak. They dream of the 3d-party President of the United States.
Freshly grown groups, like "DraftBernie", dream that the next President will be one of them. They don't understand that this would be like trying to run a marathon before learning how to walk. 
Experienced, seasoned political figures, like Jackie Salit, look for one candidate from all the independents. Take, for example, her recent piece “Finding Otherness”(independentvoting.org). It is worth to read. But the most of the reading will be about options for the presidential run in 2020.

Each problem has a solution, though.

To solve the first problem, group leaders need to reject an idea of building one new super-party. It is impossible (at least for a foreseeable future), but also not needed.

They have to build a coalition which is not based on ideological principles (which for many are dogmas), but based on (a) mutual enemy; (b) mutual goal – but the goal has to be specific.

To solve the second problem, the leaders need to set one specific political goal – such that they all would benefit from its achievement; and which is also achievable – so, not the Presidency.

Such specific and achievable goal is to take three seats from the Senate Republicans.

This will demonstrate the power of the people not affiliated with the Republicans or the Democrats.

But most importantly, this will give the “outsiders” real political power.

After that the Republicans will fear the “outsiders”, and the Democrats will notice them (and both parties will hate them – the price to pay for having real political power).

I call all “outsiders”, i.e. active members of political groups not affiliated with the Republicans or the Democrats – the 3-d Force.

The website: www.3dForce.net gives more reasons for the goal I just outlined above.

The question is – if the leaders of the groups do not want to build an effective practical (I would say – pragmatic) collaboration, can we do anything about it?

Yes, we can!

It does not matter if you are in “DraftBernie”, or “SocialistAlternative” or else.

Ask yourself, do you want to march, protest, collect signatures, write petitions, and more, and feel good about yourself; or you want to march, protest, collect signatures, write petitions, and more, and feel good about yourself, and also having real political power?

If you like the latter, you should put some pressure on your leaders, you should tell them to set aside the ideological differences and reach out to all other political groups with establishing a coalition for achieving one specific political goal – bringing both parties in the Congress down to the minority, by taking down three Republican Senators.

The current political climate makes this task possible!

But this climate may not last for long.
 Currently, progressives of all sort are busy with fashioning a big fiery GALA (http://the3dforce.blogspot.com/2017/11/3dforcedown.html).
At the same time Regressive Republicans developed a network of disinformation: http://the3dforce.blogspot.com/2017/11/disinformation.html.
Who is a real revolutionary here?

Who are the real wealth creators?

Part I: it is a copy of the Facebook post by Dr. Reich (@RBReich)

"This morning Trump tweeted: "We are the highest taxed nation in the world - that will change."

Baloney. The most meaningful measure is taxes paid as a percentage of GDP. As you can see from the graph below, the U.S. has the 4th lowest taxes of any major economy. (Only South Korea, Chile, and Mexico ranking lower.)

And the wealthiest 1 percent in the U.S. pay the lowest taxes as a percent of their income and total wealth of any country anywhere – and lower than they’ve ever paid even in the U.S.

Once again, Trump and the Republicans are dealing with a non-problem, while ignoring the biggest problems.
What do you think?"

Part II: Some of the thoughts generated by this post

Let’s use our brain to do what it is supposed to do, i.e. think.

Imagine that one day all WallStreet brokers disappeared, the NY Stock market isn’t open, all bankers are gone, too. And everyone who owns more than a hundred million bucks is out. What would happen? Well, at first – confusion, chaos, even panic, but soon enough new people would come and make the wheels run. It would have been a bumpy ride, but at the end a new structure would be put in place and functioning.

Now imagine that all low and middle level working folks are gone. No more baristas, drivers, nurses, teachers, professors, policemen, firemen, engineers, etc., etc. The world is left with only people who own more than $100,000,000. I am pretty sure, soon enough most of them would just die from starving.

This mental experiment is an illustration of the important fact, that people who own a lot of money are NOT wealth creators. People who work every day helping each other and creating new things – food drinks, cloth, devices – those people are wealth creators. The only reason rich are rich is because they collect from everyone – from every single one – some of the wealth created by that one. And the portion they collect has been growing and growing – disproportionally, without any reasonable explanation.  Simply because the rules have been bent in such a way that the most of the wealth created by people is taken away from them – the distribution of the wealth is being skewed greatly to the benefit of very few. And taxes play a huge role in this distribution. Not to see it means being blind, or bought, or brainwashed.

I got more specific publications on the matter:

Basic Income: From an Ideology to The Working (!) Mechanism 

Creativity, Tax Code, and Human Psychology.

 Conservative Liberals – future Porgs of the political America (hopefully).