When you tell liberals that slavery existed throughout history in every human civilization, they interpret it as a prescriptive statement. They think you are telling them that you want to re-enslave African Americans.

The roots of the misunderstanding lie in a different view of human beings. For conservatives, human beings are naturally extremely flawed. The default human existence is “nasty, brutish, and short.” Human beings can get better and live more civilized lives by constantly editing their originally shitty nature.

For liberals, on the other hand, the human nature is originally that of a noble savage. We are all good at first, but then social relations distract us from our original goodness. We have to disinter this original un-polluted self in order to achieve true happiness.

You can see this difference in my story about the local perv from yesterday. I believe that he should edit down his need to pose as a little girl in front of children for the good of the community. Defenders of his behavior believe that, as he sits there in his brightly pink skirt and pink sandals, he is accessing some deeply authentic part of his self, and that that experience is so valuable that any societal considerations pale in comparison. I also think he’s accessing a deeply authentic part of himself. The difference is that I think this is a bad thing.

To return to the example with which I opened this post, for a conservative, the idea that something was bad and then we worked together to control our mean evil impulses to get things better is completely normal. But for a liberal, the original state means something good. If primitive tribes did it, it must be wonderful. This is why, for example, Howard Zinn argues sincerely in his books that primitive indigenous tribes of the Americas were feminist and pro-gay. Because if they weren’t, it means that feminism and gayness are bad.

The freedom that is so important to liberals is freedom from civilization, because civilization requires limits to individual whims and appetites. Their ultimate goal is complete freedom of humans from each other. The ecstasy of the (neo)liberal subject is to be completely alone and not participate in society through work, relationships, or procreation. All of these activities require experiencing discomfort for the sake of others. And that makes them unbearable.

I can still eat my favorite pasta soup because its most important ingredient isn’t pasta. It’s the raw egg. With a lot of parsley and young carrots, it’s amazing.

Who else puts raw egg into pasta soup?

We are in the midst of a serious heatwave, and parents are looking for indoor activities for their kids. The bookstore is a big local favorite for families to hang out with children.

When we arrived at the bookstore today, we discovered that a very middle-aged man in a skirt, rainbow pigtails, and makeup was sitting in the bookstore café. He could have easily gone to a bar. Instead, he chose to display his little girl outfit in a place where the audience for his performance is limited almost entirely to parents with small children and retirees. Practicing his fetish in front of little kids is the whole point. The cafe was almost entirely empty because, even in spite of the heat, parents understood that the guy was there to provoke a conflict and kept the children out of there. All it would take is one toddler to ask, “Mommy, why does that man look like that?” and the crossdresser, who sat with his phone at the ready, would start freaking out and filming.

Chirbes wrote some fascinating stuff about my other most favorite Spanish writer, Juan Goytisolo. Critics fixated on the gossipy stuff Chirbes said about the other writer, but that is the least interesting thing about his comments. What’s fascinating to me is Chirbes’s analysis of himself and Goytisolo as being at the opposite sides of the spectrum in what concerns national literature.

Goytisolo was anti-nationalist to an almost comical extent. As such, he wanted to make the point that the national iterary canon of Spain did not exist. The only worthwhile Spanish authors, in his opinion, were some obscure dude with an English name and himself.

Chirbes was the exact opposite. He loved the national literature and studied it with profound attention his whole life.

This attitude was reflected in their lifestyles. Goytisolo left Spain and resided outside of the country for decades. Chirbes lived in a small farmhouse inside the Spanish countryside and never considered moving overseas. Both writers were gay, but Chirbes’s gayness was enormously more honest than Goytisolo’s. To give a single example, Goytisolo wrote a two-volume autobiography explaining why he never wanted to have children and how crucial this desire not to have children was to his political beliefs. Yes, he was a raging commie, but then who in Spanish literature isn’t? But that’s not the point. The point is that the writer ends this deeply child-free autobiography by informing the reader that late in life he did become a father. Don’t get me wrong, Goytisolo is an artistic genius. But an honest person he was not.

These are both mega-talented authors, and it’s interesting how one of them understood the other.

In the meantime, Germany is tying itself into knots to counteract the effects of mass migration that was supposed to save the country’s economy:

Germany Mandates First-Day Doctor Notes to Curb Corporate Sick Leave

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is abolishing telephone-based sick leave to combat high corporate absenteeism. Workers must now provide a medical certificate on their first day of illness, a measure aimed at reversing the country’s economic and competitive disadvantages.

Merz cited severe economic pressures, pointing to elevated rates of absenteeism across the corporate sector.

https://clashreport.com/world/articles/germany-mandates-first-day-doctor-notes-to-curb-corporate-sick-leave-lehm8p06tdq

First, the Chancellor informed his countrymen that they would have to delay retirement age. Now he wants to police corporate sick leave. I can’t even imagine what would be happening had the German economy not been saved by the mass-migration wave of 2015 that brought all of those highly skilled and extremely hard-working migrants into the country.

I was a lonely kid, tragically shy, deeply unpopular. I invented all sorts of strategies in first, second, and third grade so that it wouldn’t be quite as noticeable at recess how alone and ignored I was. I understand that this mom has good intentions, but she should absolutely stop. Children need to spend time with each other without parents or teachers managing their relationships. The lonely girl will grow up and get over it, or not, but that will be completely up to her.

Children at play or in the midst of devising their sociability strategies need to be left in peace. When they are at school, this and not math problems or exercise sheets or music lessons is the most important thing that they do. Unless somebody is getting physically beaten, which clearly is not happening in the situation in the tweet, the adults should just buzz off. They are too far removed in time to remember what it is that their children are doing. They are projecting their problems from today onto the behavior of the children. For example, the woman in this post is, for some reason, extremely uncertain of her value as a parent, and she engages in these little competitive outbursts on social media. It’s clear that that’s what it is because the language she chooses is uncomfortable and unnatural. “Scum of the Earth… because they are not inclusive.” Two completely different speech registers are clashing uncomfortably. The strength of the emotion breaks against the official slogan-like vocabulary.

Leaving that aside, efforts to manage one’s children’s relationships with other children is a mistake. If you want to show that approaching a lonely, shy person is a great thing to do, lead by example. Start approaching. There are tons of adults, including on the playground, who would love to make a friend, but they don’t know how to do that.

One of my aunts was desperate to raise her son to be a reader. She would spend all summer barking at him to read, but she herself never picked up a book. My mother, on the other hand, thought that I read too much and wanted me to learn to play the piano instead. I had to wear shoes two sizes too small my whole childhood, but my mother found money to pay for seven years of piano lessons. Today, when my cousin and I are both middle-aged, guess who doesn’t read and who doesn’t play the piano.

It’s brilliant and I want something like this for my diabetic needles.

The reason why the footage is old is that Russians raped the Texan dude to death.

The 4 Russian soldiers who did it were sentenced to jail time and then immediately released and sent to the front lines again.

The story is very symbolic of all pro-Russian Americans. Russians don’t care if you are on their side. If you are American, they hate you.

Why was she annoyed, though? I wouldn’t be annoyed. I would be mega happy for my husband getting some positive reinforcement at a doctor’s visit.

People are way too touchy about things. The dude is in his late 70s! He should enjoy all the compliments he can get at this stage in life.

The husband of the new department chair is a judge. Meaning, he is very busy at work. But he came early to campus this morning and found somebody to unlock the department for him to leave a bouquet of flowers and a sheaf of patriotic balloons to mark his wife’s first day as department chair. He is a Republican, and she is Venezuelan hence the patriotic balloons.

These people have been married for over 25 years and have three children. And they still have such a romantic, beautiful marriage. I’m not saying that this is because they are Republicans, of course. My closest friend at the department is far left and also in an extremely loving marriage with a bunch of happy children. He lights up like a Christmas tree whenever anybody mentions his wife, even in passing.

It’s beautiful. It makes me so happy to observe these wonderful, profound, long-lasting marriages.