I like Blumenthal’s book already because he dedicates the very first chapters to the Russian-speaking post-Soviet immigrants to Israel. He even demonstrates a pretty good understanding of this group, which is extremely rare for Americans writing about Israel. See the following, for instance:

As the home of the world’s largest population of racist skinheads, Russia exported its neo-Nazi plague to the Jewish state. Starting in 2007, mobs of Russian teens who received automatic citizenship under Israel’s Law of Return began spray-painting swastikas on synagogue walls and attacking Holocaust survivors, reportedly screaming, “Heil Hitler!” during several attacks.

Crowds upon crowds of people with no Jewish origins whatsoever bought fake paperwork in the FSU countries to gain Israeli citizenship. Obviously, nothing prevented them from bringing their anti-Semitism with them, and being surrounded by huge numbers of Jews exacerbated these feelings of hatred.

I also like it that Blumenthal keeps referring to the population of Israel as “deeply traumatized people.” Every analysis of Israel needs to begin and end with this because otherwise you are not saying anything meaningful about the country.

So guess who was driving in circles in an empty parking lot today while listening on the radio to a sermon by an Evangelical preacher?

Yes, that was me. I’m trying to have every hour of the day occupied with new and unusual (for me) endeavors because the alternative is to sit and brood.

I’m thinking of starting to learn a new language.

Today we went to listen to Max Blumenthal present his new book Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel. He is a very good public speaker, extremely knowledgeable about his subject, and very passionate. I haven’t read the book yet but I most certainly will and I will post a review as soon as I’m done. What I liked is that Blumenthal didn’t do one of those weird readings where an author reads from his own book as if he were meeting a bunch of illiterates who can’t read for themselves. Instead, this author spoke in an unscripted way about his experiences in Israel as he was researching this book.

During the book-signing, I mentioned to the author that Russian-speaking immigrants both in Israel and in North America tend to go to the far far FAR Right in their efforts to fit in. Blumenthal responded that he noticed that, too. He obviously found it somewhat unusual to see people like me (Russian-speakers, I mean) at his book presentations and asked me what made me go in  different direction from members of my immigrant community.

I responded that for my post-Soviet brothers and sisters it is extremely difficult to adapt to life as immigrants. So they overcompensate for their incapacity to fit in by becoming ultra-conservative. Not that it does them much good and makes them feel more comfortable in their new countries because this need to please looks desperate and off-putting.

During the presentation, Blumenthal said that he was neither pro-Israel nor pro-Palestine. Instead, he was pro-human rights. This is a position I share completely and I’m as disturbed as Blumenthal is by the idea that an ethnic state is something that is worth defending.

“The greatest enemy of Israel today is democracy,” he said. From what I heard at this talk, this just might be true.

There weren’t many people at the talk, and Blumenthal shared that this was the smallest audience he had had so far for his presentation. Given that my students have no idea what the word ‘Jew’ even means, I’m not surprised.

I like to support independent local bookstores because I would hate for them to disappear, so I also bought Jeff Guinn’s new book on Manson. This means that several interesting reviews are coming soon to this blog.

There seems to be a huge craze for books that offer a discussion of history through objects. Wherever I go I see books titled something like “The History of the US / World / Civil War / Something Else in 1,000 Objects.” To me this sounds like a very silly, gimmicky approach to history that caters to people with hopelessly short attention spans.

Talking about books, I just saw this new book on MANSON that Hattie recommended and now I’m dying to buy it. I should be banned from bookstores. Is there an “Obsessive Book Buyers anonymous” group I can join?

How is it possible  that a very sick and disturbed person can remain mayor of a huge and important city?

When a driver maims or kills a pedestrian, nobody in this country will take the side of the pedestrian. This is why I took my first driving lesson yesterday and will take the second in an hour.

A notorious prude turns into a defender of pedophilia. Extreme prudishness does conceal serious sexual disorders, so I’m not surprised that the prudish freak who horrified me in the first months of my life in North America turned out to be a fan of pedophiles.

An interesting discussion of whether childhood reading shapes your opinion of what is good. The books I loved more than anything in childhood were saccharine stories about little Lenin who, according to these books, was the most judicious, virtuous and perfect child in the world. I can’t say that these books (which I loved so much that I even stole two of them from an exhibition) shaped my literary preferences all that much. We didn’t have access to a whole lot of good reading matter when I was growing up. Things were especially dire when I was a teenager for all we could find in terms of books were horribly written potboilers.

How many hours does it take to get a PhD?

“The Medieval Emperor Charlemagne famously said that “to have another language is to possess a second soul” but the idea that we express different personality traits when we speak another language has usually been left as anecdote.” By whom? Anybody who speaks more than one language knows that Charlemagne was right. It really bugs me when people waste time and resources on “studies” that prove something trivial and painfully obvious.

I have no idea what sense it makes to discuss the opinions of a Russian priest whose religion is practiced by exactly 2% of his country’s population and debate them through the use of a study of poverty in Britain. I really wish people realized that it is important to know something about a country before blabbing about it.

I’m really shocked by this post in defense of reproductive rights. I don’t know if the author was trying to be funny or is simply an idiot but the language of the post is extremely offensive. Here are some examples: “Everyday women close their eyes and let it happen”, “women sigh and spread their legs”, “women have accepted that too; accepted every last indignity, like an abused woman who thinks there is nothing she can do to end the beatings but try not to make her abuser angry”, “instead of objecting, women take time off work, find someone to watch their kids, and stay alone in cheap motels, or sleep in their cars.” The part about staying alone in motels is very mysterious. Do women need to be defended from assaults on their reproductive rights or  from spending time without a chaperon?

The reason why fundamentalists condemn their children to this idiocy instead of a normal education is that they want the kids never to get educated, find good jobs and make good money. They want them perennially stupid and terrified.

I really dig this “sex educator” whose expertise on sex is limited to the obsessive insistence that women don’t need to have orgasms. Of course, as long as men climax, women should be happy to be used for that purpose and shut up about their own pleasure. This is the caliber of sex experts in this country.

Fundamentalist fanatics are all the same.

The top five mistakes women make in academic settings.

“A robot-friendly way of raising the minimum wage.”

I will never understand people who feel entitled to the property of a relative after his or her death. What is meaner and more pathetic than trying to subvert the last will of a person to feed your own greed?

People who believe that human beings are “hard-wired” to be the way they are make perfect consumers. They don’t believe that it is possible to solve their psychological, relational, occupational, etc problems. If their personal lives suck, that’s because men and women are hard-wired in a certain way. If they are depressed or anxious, that’s because of hormones or chemical imbalances. If they have no friends, that’s because they were born with a disorder that makes them shy. If they struggle academically, that’s because they have ADD.

All that these sad, lonely, flailing people can do to mitigate the hardships of their existence is buy stuff. Buy medication, buy self-help books, buy membership in a social network. Buy mind-numbing distractions like alcohol, video games, junk food. Buy, buy, buy.

This hard-wiring belief wouldn’t be so wide-spread if it weren’t so damn profitable.

One place I should not be allowed to visit is a furniture store. I’m become possessed with a consumerist frenzy once I see furniture on offer.

Look at this great makeup table I just found for $198 (the stool is included). It’s been a dream of mine to have one since at the age of 9 I read in a book about pre-revolutionary times that such tables existed. So of course I had to buy it.

The most successful restaurant in our town has found the winning formula that makes it immensely popular. There is a selection of dishes to please the locals: very cheap, very salty, enormous portions, fries, bacon, steak, eggs, biscuits, gravy. And there is a selection of more expensive dishes for more foreign inhabitants: chicken liver pate, fois gras, Cuban goat casserole, lamb tongues, quail. The dishes are small, dainty, and very pretty.

Today, N accidentally ordered a dish from the locals’ menu and realized he is still ages away from getting fully Midwesternized.

N says he is getting tired of Breaking Bad because we are in the middle of season 3 already but there has been absolutely no character development. The protagonist has not changed the tiniest little bit.

I told him that this isn’t a Bildungsroman (or, rather, its alternative for middle-aged people, the novel of awakening) but a situational comedy. People get into funny situations and scramble to get out of them.

We never see any character development in movies or TV shows any longer because the concept of a human being as a work in progress, as a project of life-long development has been substituted by the idea of people being “hard-wired” a certain way from birth and hence unlikely to experience any major change. This sad form of determinism finds its inspiration in insipid musings of evo psych peddlers and is especially pleasing to those who are terrified of any threat to any status quo. If we agree that the only explanation for human behavior is “well, that’s just how s/he is”, then it follows that every injustice or wrong we encounter can be dismissed with “well, that’s just how things are. There is nothing one can do about it.”

My WordPress app corrects the word “untenured” to “I tenured.” It must know something. 🙂