Suggestions for Improving Inner City

Having given much thought to the situation in inner city, based on both what is known in the media and much of what I gathered from the experience of good friends who have lived there, I would like to make some suggestions. While I do not see this as panacea, I believe it has the possibility of achieving positive impact for many. And it is as follows:

Increasing interest among black people in business and technical fields;

Setting up recruitment offices to direct young men who would otherwise join gangs into military service;

Doing away with the anti-educational youth culture;

Providing better guidance for the youth.

I will go through these one by one.

Business and Technical Fields

One part of the solution that I see is getting more black people interested in business and in technical professions. American black people have done very well in politics, law, sports and entertainment; but they are underrepresented in business and technical fields. This results in black people remaining poor on the average even in spite of great successes by individual black people in America.

There was a job flight in 1980s out of the inner city as businesses moved their production centers overseas. This led to many not being able to find jobs; but ultimately the question becomes, Why rely on white man to create jobs? A white businessman will only set up shop in a black neighborhood for as long as that is convenient for him, and will go elsewhere, taking the profits with him, when there is a more commercially attractive option. The only way to make sure that the money stays is to be in charge of the money as an entrepreneur.

In a 1990s film, there is a scene in which a black man is demonstrating outside of the bank after the bankers have told him that he is "not economically viable." There is a real way to avoid this kind of scene. Black people should be learning business and finance, and they should be setting up shop and creating jobs instead of competing for them. And that requires black people to themselves learn business and banking and

practice it at a level appropriate to their share of the population.

After the fall of apartheid in South Africa, there were not enough qualified black businesspeople to take over the running of the companies that had prior to that been managed by white businesspeople. The reason was this: The anti-apartheid leaders were socialists, and they did not favorably look upon capitalist system. The people now do not need to make the same decision. The businessperson is the person who creates jobs while providing something that people want to buy. And that means that business can be a worthwhile and even noble endeavor when it provides a way for one's people to escape poverty.

As for technical skills, these are always in demand, and someone who has them is far less likely to be economically nonviable. If enough black people learn engineering, computers, and related technology skills, then they will be competitive, in highly-paid fields, and will be able to get good jobs in different economic conditions. On the collective level, this will improve the mean income of black Americans and help many to rise out of poverty and to stay out of poverty.

Setting Up Military Recruitment Offices In the Ghetto

The inner city has many young men who aspire toward strength and toughness. The military cultivates strength and toughness; it also disciplines it. The same macho character that in the ghetto turns into gang violence, the military structures into controlled, principled strength that knows how to fight well enough to know also when not to fight. The inner city youths would be influenced by the military into not only being the strong men that they want to be, but also self-controlled, disciplined,

effective strong men who can both manage their behavior and exercise positive effect on their community.

The military has college scholarships, job skills training, and in case of an honorable discharge a recommendation that can take one to many places. To people in the inner city, that spells a ticket to better life. The habits that are taught in the military help make a person more effective and more employable. The black people who've been in the American military have done well - in many cases exceptionally well, going as far as to becoming the Secretary of State.

With military training and scholarships and references, the person from inner city will have everything that he needs to be able to pursue a better way of life.

A person from the inner city who goes to the military can then go on to pursue a middle-class or upper-class life outside the inner city; or, should he return to the inner city, stands to become a force for improvement of the inner city. With military training he would be able to stand up to the gangsters; with principles he would be able to steer them toward superior actions. A person with disciplined strength will be able to not only stand up to people with undisciplined strength, but to steer them away from

destructiveness and toward more responsible conduct - which is something that someone lacking either in strength or in discipline will find a lot harder to do.

There are of course downsides to the military. The military is tough and brutal; however the ghetto is also tough and brutal, and having lived in daily brutality the people from inner city would have an advantage of experience over other recruits. The people who serve in the military are at a risk of dying in combat; however the inner city is a war zone already, and one stands a greater risk of being killed or imprisoned for life if one remains there than if one joins the military. Most people who go into the military never see combat, whereas the people who live in the inner city are facing daily conditions of war.

For these reasons, for many residents of inner city, the military would be a major improvement over what they otherwise would be facing. And that - creating improvement over people's present condition, rather than expecting everything to be immediately equal - is the standpoint for constructive, workable social policy. Sweatshop labor would not be an improvement for most American citizens, but for hundreds of millions of Chinese people it has been a huge improvement over their previous lives.

Similarly, joining the military would not be an improvement for everyone in America; but for many inner city residents, it very much will be. So that, when Beyonce says that she needs a soldier (rather than a gangster), she is speaking a home truth. The army people are not angels, but they do develop useful skills, habits and mindsets, and are more likely to work and to stay with the family and to teach the children to be

effective individuals. And while Beyonce stands to expect the military person to be just as domineering as she would expect the gangster to be, he would be a better influence on the children and will be more likely to keep them on a more viable path.

Finally, there are enough black officers in the military that those who don't want to take orders from the white man would be able to take orders from a black one. And with a black person being the president of the United States, the claim that they would be serving "the Man" is not as credible as it once was. Volunteering for the professional army would be, for a person in inner city, a ticket to a better life for himself and a path toward improving the lot of the inner city residents. I recommend stepping up military recruitment in inner city as a path toward improvement of the inner city and of the lives of its residents.

The anti-education culture

Finally, there is a cultural problem that apparently is shared between the inner city and the population known as "white trash." This is as follows: Total lack of respect for education. While the failure of inner-city schools is frequently blamed on their lack of funding, in fact that is not the case. The DC schools, for one, have high funding levels compared to schools in many other places. The problem is that the students do not want to learn, and those who do get savagely attacked for it by other students and

frequently by their families.

It must be made clear that the students who take studies seriously are not "acting white" or "think they're better than everyone else." It is not acting white to study; it is acting intelligent to study; and Asians for one, not being white, are frequently better at it than the white. As for the "think they're better than everyone else" line, the world consists of 7 billion people, most of them nothing like the people who ridiculously believe they are "everyone else" and that the other 7 billion people aren't; and for

these people to claim that they speak for "everyone else" is a far greater arrogance than any of which they may be accusing the serious students. And from the perspective of most in the world, it is the people such as ones who believe such things - and, pursuant such beliefs, create a culture of brutality and stupidity - that are held in most contempt, and not those students in inner city who take studies seriously, have respect for knowledge, and want to have a better life than that of drugs and crime.

Money spent on inner-city schools is money wasted unless the children actually want to learn. There must be a profound cultural change among inner city youth for education there to be effective. Having seen black people do exceptionally well in highly demanding learning environments such as the Moscow State University, America's prime universities, and St. Stephen's and St. Agnes School, I can say with full certainty that there is nothing keeping black kids from doing well at school except for bad attitudes and bad beliefs.

The more black youth do well at school, the more they will be able to go into middle-income and higher-income economy. Also, the more the educational system will work for them, and the more the schools of the inner city will be a success rather than a failure that they are now. With more respect for education, the black people will be able to achieve a higher intellectual standard and be able to achieve in such fields as

science, mathematics, and medicine. This will give black people more presence in these fields - fields in which they likewise are under-represented at this time. The more black people win Nobel Prizes in science or pioneer great inventions, the more respected and

internationally powerful the black people will be.

The anti-intellectual youth culture must go. Nothing good has come from it, and it is a disgrace to every race - black, white or Latino - which it infests. Smart must be cool, and knowledge and ambition must be respected and cultivated. This is the only way that the black youth can avoid falling into the underclass and have a fighting chance at a better life.

Better Direction

Finally, there is the problem of coercion among the youth toward gang involvement, drug use, and pregnancy as minors. The males end up in the prison or shot; the females end up working exceptionally hard to raise the children alone. There are those who think that the solution to this is "traditional values"; but the traditional societies of Afghanistan, rural India, central Africa and Middle East aren't better than the ghetto, they are worse than the ghetto. The real solution to this is better direction for the

youth.

The better direction comes from taking the interests and propensities and directing them toward a positive manifestation. Thus, the desire to be strong and tough can and should be directed toward military, where the recruits become disciplined and effective strong and tough men with the skills and the habits they need to be effective and to improve their communities. The desire to have money or status or power can and should be directed toward business and technical fields, where these are constructively earned. The desire to be validated as a woman, rather than having to express itself through teenage pregnancy, can be directed to artistic pursuits and professional fields that give the woman admiration.

And the competitive interest can be directed toward achieving in school and then later in the economy in comparison to the white man, rather than into shooting the next black man and raping the next black woman.

The inner city youth does not suffer from lack of talent. It suffers from lack of direction, bad guidance, and self-defeating beliefs. It is this problem that must be addressed for the situation in inner city to improve significantly. I fully believe that this improvement is possible.

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Who actually deserves credit for America?

The Republican propaganda has had much effect in reaching people both inside America and without. Coming from Russian immigrants who settled in Northern Virginia, I saw the effects of this propaganda on both demographics. I am writing this to correct two commonly-held errors that resulted from this propaganda. One is that of comparing Democrats to the Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU). The other is that of equating Republican Party with America and giving it credit for America and its achievements.

On the first I ask this: What labor camps have Democrats built? How many millions have they imprisoned and murdered for their political convictions? What countries have Democrats invaded and made their satellites by force? All evidence points instead to CPSU-type activity by Bush Republicans, who have used fraud and corruption to get into the White House; murdered over a million civilians in Iraq; instituted torture, even of teenagers; lied to Americans and to the rest of the world; and have consistently used bullying and deception to push their party line against public opinion while claiming that they are America and that the rest of America is not America, when they in fact not only not America but a minority of America and not its better part either.

Another error is that of equating Republicans with America and giving Republicans the credit for all of America's accomplishments. It is largely for the sake of transparency that this claim put to rest. Here are the facts:

- The Democratic administrations of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt won, respectively, the First and the Second World War;
- The Democrats form the vast bulk of America's scientists and innovators, with over 90% of its Nobel Prize winners being Democrats and only 3% of academics being Republicans;
- Of America's 10 foremost educational institutions, 9 are in solidly Democratic states and are centers of Democratic Party's activities;
- The computer industry, which has been the main engine of prosperity of 1980s and 1990s, is largely Democratic. The personal computer was invented by a hippie. The computer industry is located in solidly Democratic San Francisco Bay Area and Washington State, as well as in the Democratic-voting Northern Virginia. The Democrats make up the bulk of both its management and its rank-and-file.
- The Clinton Administration gave America its greatest peacetime economic expansion (the greatest wartime one having been under Franklin Delano Roosevelt). Its policies created 23 million jobs, the first balanced budget in three decades, international peace and prosperity, and a revamping of the government to become efficient and user friendly (Reagan only whined about the government while being its head). It also brought about a significant reduction in violent crime - which grew under Reagan and peaked under Bush Sr. Meanwhile the Bush Jr. administration added $5 trillion to the debt, with no jobs created, amid collapsing family incomes, and at the end the worst economic crisis America has had since the Great Depression.
- Democrats form the bulk of America's teachers and journalists, whose contributions are not easily measured monetarily but are of greater significance than those of many far higher-paid professionals.
- Democrats have fought for civil rights, human rights, and women's rights, while Republicans have done all they could to sabotage all of the above.
- Democrats have fought to bring to public attention the facts about global warming. Republicans have done nothing but aggressively deny reality - on this, as much as on federal debt.

The people who blame all things on "liberal government" or "big government" or compare American government to the Soviet Union know nothing of what they're talking about. Without the government Interstate, the anti-government truckers would not have the roads on which to deliver the farming goods, created by government-subsidized anti-government farmers, to the big liberal cities that are the market for their products. Without the government academia, the academic research that has been necessary for the hardware and technology that are at the core of business production would not have taken place. Without the government Internet, the computerization and Internet commerce that was the source of 1990s growth would not have been possible. Whining about taxes was a big trend under the Clinton administration. Being in the high-income bracket, I had a lot of taxes to whine about. I did not whine about my taxes, because I knew where the money was going and saw it as my civic duty to pay it. Under Bush I would have had less taxes to whine about; but there was a problem. Like many others, under Bush, I no longer was in the high-income bracket - or, for some of that time, in any bracket at all.

But beyond personal experience, let us look at the big issues. Who has given America a $10 trillion debt? Who has aggressively for three decades denied global warming? Who has done this to the country they claim to love, and to the children and grandchildren for whose sake they claim to practice "family values?" It wasn't the Democrats. It is the Republicans who have done this to America and to their children's and grandchildren's future.

So to put it shortly: Democrats are not Communists; Republicans are not America, nor do they deserve credit for America. Case closed.

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Charlie Chaplin, J. Edgar Hoover, and American Character

The character of Charlie Chaplin and the character of J. Edgar Hoover offers an insightful glimpse into the forces that were formative to American character of 20^th century. With Charlie Chaplin, one sees ingenious, innovative, creative, iconoclastic character that is not afraid to shatter convention in order to show a different perspective, reveal facts not frequently known, or give a glimpse of the truth of people's lives. With J. Edgar Hoover, we see the invasive, oppressive, paranoid character that used blackmailing and extortion in order to manipulateAmerica’s elected leaders under the stated claim of protecting America.

The same characters have been seen in the last two decades of American politics, with the characters of, respectively, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. With Bill Clinton, we have seen the greatest economic prosperity in American history, the first balanced budget in 30 years, an overhaul of the government to make it efficient and user-friendly, a drastic drop in violent crime, international collaboration on matters of common import, and a serious effort toward achieving understanding and coexistence between different sections of American society. With Bush, we have seen an extra $5 trillion debt, no new jobs, wrongful wars all around the world, an aggressive inattention to the climatic disaster facing the world, bullying of all countries resulting in international isolation, and an economic collapse. That there was much howling about the character of Bill Clinton, but not about the character of George Bush, offers valuable insight into the character of the people who were behind the said howling and valuable insight as well into what they describe as their values and which values they wrongfully claim to be the values of America and use this false claim to bludgeon America and the rest of the world.

In fact, America achieved its greatness through innovation, ingenuity, and creative thinking. It leapt to the forefront of the world in early 20^th century – a time of scientific and technological ingenuity; a time also of the rejection of the Victorian norms. It is in this time that Charlie Chaplin produced most of his work, and it is in this time that J. Edgar Hoover began his campaign against what made America great. And as the same character, refashioned in different times as psychology or religion or “traditional values” or “family values,” persisted through later history in destroying America’s genius, it is valuable to examine this character and its effects on America through its history, and examine also its validity as well as its merit to the country.

There is one thing that character voters are right about: Character is of importance. The problem is that the character that has been behind most of the problems in American history is their own. The invasive, oppressive, paranoid character that would seek to remove an exceptionally successful and benevolent president for a personal mistake, but would accept a puppet being put into office through fraud and corruption and having this puppet bring America to disaster, is the only real ongoing problem with America. And it is this character that has been behind its greatest failures, from 1930s isolationism to the McCarthyist nightmare to the abuses of FBI under J. Edgar Hoover to the politically correct hysteria of 1990s to the unmitigated disaster that was the Bush regime.

America owes its existence as the country, its technological and commercial success, and its greatest scientific inventions, to the people whom these voters would describe as evil. Thomas Jefferson, John Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Bill Gates, Steven Jobs, Bill Clinton, Walt Disney, and everyone else who has been a major contributor to America, would be described by these voters as possessing a narcissistic or a sociopathic character. So would of course the ancestors of all white, Hispanic, and Asian people living now in America – people who have rejected their homes, their countries, and their traditional way of life, to seek a better way of life in America; something that people who have such beliefs would claim to be a narcissistic or a sociopathic action. For that matter, psychology owes its existence to people like Sigmund Freud and Karl Jung who likewise would be described as possessing the same character. And it is to these people that the modern America person owes not only one's country, but everything that one knows as American way of life.

In 1960s and 1970s, the fix-all solutions was more government. By the time Ronald Reagan ran for office in 1980, a case could be made - and was made - that the government had far outstepped its proper parameters and became the problem rather than the solution. More recently, the solution for all things was more social control, until the same was being applied not only to people's actions, but also to people's minds and personhoods, aiming to control all that could be controlled and destroy what couldn't, to the point of claiming people criminal by virtue of how they think. The result of this has been unofficial entities far outstepping their proper prerogatives and, as the government of 1970s, becoming a problem in themselves. These unofficial entities, from old-boy networks to small country towns to religious organizations to practitioners of "personality psychology" to self-proclaimed spokespeople for society or for America, being unofficial, unaccountable, unchecked and unbalanced, have the capacity to commit greater violation against people's lives and liberty, and to oppress them in far greater manner, than the American government is allowed to do.

Empowering these entities resulted in a de facto totalitarianism of these entities, along with the predictable and associated abuses: runaway corruption, aggressively enforced similitude at all levels, destruction of all meaningful liberty, inquisitions against ever greater numbers of people, aggressive fear-mongering convincing people to give up their freedom and to destroy freedom in others, and subversion of psychology and law enforcement into participating in these and related crimes against Constitutional law. Until the very freedom, originality, ingenuity and innovation that made America great in the first place became a danger to the power of these entities and, being falsely portrayed as "narcissism" or "sociopathy", itself became the target of their wrath.

In 1990s America, the young people on college campuses were faced with a manufactured hysteria that brainwashed young women into being afraid of everything and everyone. This resulted in a state of affairs that was injurious especially to young women – a state described by Gwen Stefani as “I’m just a girl, living in captivity.. I’ve had it up to here.” The panic thinking extended to the economy by 2001, as the investors who were burned by the collapse of the dot-com bubble thought that real estate was a more safe investment. It was not. The computer industry boom of 1990s resulted in real prosperity. The panic-driven real-estate bubble of the Bush decade did nothing but make life more costly while no wealth was generated and incomes declined. And as it popped at the end of the decade, the result was predictable: economic collapse. So much for the wisdom, the value, and the moral authority, of the security drive. It is Benjamin Franklin who said that the people who would sacrifice liberty for security are not worthy of either. And, as history shows, neither do they get.

It is time that America remember what made it great in the first place. It was very much the innovative Charlie Chaplin character that has resulted in its greatest accomplishments, not the invasive, oppressive J. Edgar Hoover character that has resulted in greatest violations against American people. The character voters are right about one thing: Character matters. But the problem is their own character, not that of the innovative, ingenious people whom they want to demonize and to destroy.

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