Misreading The American Public

Soviet analysts in the CIA and Soviet rulers throughout the USSR failed to anticipate the collapse of the communist political system. How can that be? And how does that effect American politics?

 From PJ Media - an article by Richard Fernandez:

"In the years leading up to 1991, virtually no Western expert, scholar, official, or politician foresaw the impending collapse of the Soviet Union, and with it one-party dictatorship, the state-owned economy, and the Kremlin’s control over its domestic and Eastern European empires."

Because They Couldn't See It Coming.

In his book Private Truth, Public Lies, social scientist Timur Kuran argued that people, under pressure to conform by culture leaders often told public lies to get the pollsters and thought police off their backs, even as they nurtured a largely undetected private resentments inside them. Over time two divergent perceptions would emerge: the public lie would determine how the regime thought about itself while the private truth contained the real, but hidden data.

American politicians, and I believe many think tanks, suffer from the same perceptual malady; they believe the public lie because it benefits them.Not only in the US, but also in Europe where there is a groundswell of anger and resentment against the policies of liberal politicians.

It's becoming evident that the European elites failed to understand how explosive the migrant issue was until it detonated full in their face. Now it is in the midst of a crisis which could literally bring down the European Union. Why didn't they see it coming? Because they believed their own Narrative, even when they should have suspected it was a lie of their own making. If the PC Western elites are overtaken by a cascade similar to that which collapsed the Soviet Union, the ultimate irony will be that the very migrants which they had counted on to create the Curley Effect will turn out to be the engine of their own destruction.

And what is the Curley Effect?

James Michael Curley, a four-time mayor of Boston, used wasteful redistribution to his poor Irish constituents and incendiary rhetoric to encourage richer citizens to emigrate from Boston, thereby shaping the electorate in his favor. Boston as a consequence stagnated, but Curley kept winning elections. We present a model of the Curley effect, in which inefficient redistributive policies are sought not by interest groups protecting their rents, but by incumbent politicians trying to shape the electorate through emigration of their opponents or reinforcement of class identities. The model sheds light on ethnic politics in the United States and abroad, as well as on class politics in many countries including Britain.

The Fernandez article uses the Soviet regime of Romania's General Secretary of the Communist Party, Nicolae Ceaușescu, to illustrate the flash point when the public lie and the private truth finally merge. It isn't pretty.

The following is a rather graphic presentation of the public lie/private truth flashpoint reached in Romania. After 25 years of abuse, Romania finally had enough and on Christmas, 1989, executed Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena. I wonder if America will reach this point?

I found it fascinating; the similarity between Ceausescu and Bernie Sanders. Both were lazy and did not like to work. When queried by his employer (a shoemaker) on how he intended to make a living, Ceausescu replied, "I'll become the Romanian Stalin." 

Ceausescu became a socialist so he wouldn't have to work; to live by taking from others who do work. Sounds about right for a socialist.