N finds it hilarious that he’s listed as “Subject” on the mortgage paperwork. We are now trying to figure out whether I’m an object of time, place, or circumstance.

What I like about talking to a mortgage specialist is that now they say things like, “Without a down payment, there’s nothing to discuss” and “If your credit score is under 640, we’ll have to end this conversation.” I don’t know how serious they are about it, but at least they now show a willingness to be more serious.

I’ve got to tell you, folks, there’s got to be something seriously wrong with a system where a person who

a) defaulted on a card;

b) has a history of missing 1-2 payments in a row;

c) is very much into the concept of minimum payment;

d) is genetically predisposed to be irresponsible with money;

e) is a wastrel of major proportions

has a higher credit rating a person who

a) never defaulted;

b) never missed a payment;

c) has always paid every single balance in full;

d) is extremely responsible and careful with money;

e) embraces a Spartan lifestyle.

It is obvious that the system that calculates these ratings is primitive, doesn’t take into account some pretty obvious variables, and is going to make a wrong judgment more often than a correct one. So the events of 2007-8 are not at all surprising.

“While claims for victimhood used to be in the past not so well-regarded phenomenon, sometimes even viewed as a sign of inadequacy and failure, now they are power tools. . . Victimhood has also been absorbed by an all-encompassing consumer society that is eager to experience safely controlled aseptic “emotions” but that does not have the taste to analyse the implications and contradictions behind them” (45).

Cazorla-Sánchez, Antonio. “From Anti-Fascism to Humanism: The Spanish Civil War as a Crisis of Memory.” Memory and Cultural History of the Spanish Civil War: Realms of Oblivion. Ed. Aurora G. Morcillo. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2014. 21-50.

This is very interesting. I never looked at the enjoyment of victimhood as a way of experiencing emotions in a controlled and “safe” way, but this analysis makes sense. Remember the idiot we discussed the day before yesterday? The one who thinks his cushy office job is “like slavery”? This is definitely somebody who is terrified of reality and is borrowing the emotions and experiences he saw in some stupid movie to pretend like he is alive.

There are people who think that paying $12 to see a movie about slavery purchases them the right to speak in the name of a slave.