The post is based on this discussion.

Rule #1. Ask a Westerner where s/he is from. When s/he answers, exclaim, “Canada / Scotland / Spain / Texas / Germany / Quebec, etc.! By the way, it used to be a dream of mine to emigrate to your beautiful country. But then I decided to stay home and try to make it as wonderful as Canada / Scotland / Spain / Texas / Germany / Quebec, etc.”

Rule #2. Figure out what the Westerner’s political leanings are and say either,

a) “I’m a neo-Marxist with Anarcho-Syndicalist sympathies, and by the way, can I borrow your copy of The Parallax View just for a second? I’m going to quote it tomorrow at the meeting of my cooperative of queer feminists.”

or

b) “I’m a believer in free markets because this is what our Lord Jesus Christ mandated, and by the way, I stayed up reading Ayn Rand all night long to inspire me to do the best at the five full-time jobs I’m working today.”

Rule #3. Tell all your buddies that there is a gullible Westerner with a loose pocketbook in the vicinity.

Yesterday’s geography student sent me another e-mail. In it, he refers to me as “a gal.” Like in “I can see you are a Tuesday/Thursday gal” (meaning that I teach on these days.)

I find this completely inappropriate. Unless this student is 90, something is wrong here.

I have a tendency to fixate on something and then not being able to move on. So in order to exorcise the ghost of this house that I’ve been staring at for two weeks, I will post the pictures here. Tell me what you think.

It’s a slideshow, so keep clicking or give it a moment to move through the pictures.

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Ukraine’s corrupt and Putin-loving President Yanukovich finally announced his resignation. He also initiated a return to the 2004 Constitution which limited presidential power. The Constitution that was being used more recently is modeled after the Russian one, in the sense that it grants the president vast and almost unchecked powers. Historically, the Russian people are used to having an absolute monarchy. Ukrainians, however, had a functioning democracy back in the XVIIth century, so a president who has dictatorial powers bothers them.

This is important because the fall of this corrupt president was one of the main goals of Ukraine’s protesters. However, the goal of re-electing the parliament has not been reached yet.

Compared to the Russian White Ribbon protests in 2011-12, the Indignados movement in Spain, and Occupy Wall Street, Ukrainians actually achieved something. And this is a big deal.

However, what Ukrainians achieved – and once again, it’s more than all other Western protesters did – is quite limited. There isn’t really anybody vastly better than Yanukovich to run for president. The country is still located between the authoritarian Russia and the exploitative EU. People now won’t be killed in the streets, which is obviously great. But all of the larger issues remain.

I read the following article and wondered why it was so reasonable:

For much of this discussion over Ukraine, we have been told that the country is divided between the pro-European West and the pro-Russian East. While there is some truth to this, the real divide in Ukraine is not East versus West, but up versus down.

The question is will Ukraine move up towards more freedom and the rule of law or will this country fall further down towards despotism and crony capitalism. There are very few people in Ukraine who benefit from the country going down further.

And then I saw the author’s last name (Zapesochny) and had my answer.

And this suggestion makes a lot of sense:

To keep Ukraine out of Putin’s orbit, it will require Ukraine’s protestors to discredit the KGB with the older generation in both countries. . . As the older Ukrainians finally learn the truth about their relatives, it might even encourage a similar movement in Russia. The KGB’s successors would eventually be forced to concede if enough people stand up to them.

Good article, I recommend.

A student just had a tantrum in my Intro to Literature class.

“I’m in math!” he vociferated. “We don’t do creative and original! Math is not creative or original! You don’t need imagination to do math. You barely even need to think. Everything is clear and direct.”

Then he started throwing things on the ground and generally thrashing about.

So I did the most unusual thing and made a little speech in defense of the creative and intellectual merits of math.

Here is what I don’t get. When Americans march on Washington, they are the heroes of the Civil Rights movement. When Egyptians come out into the Tahrir square, they are defending democracy. When Spaniards protest in Madrid, they are fighting against global injustice. But when Ukrainians do the exact same thing, they are “nothing but a pawn”:

When I am not being cynical and flip, I do (ineffectually) wish the Ukrainians the best–some maximum of liberty, some minimum of loss of life. It doesn’t mean much, but I don’t really regard them as nothing but a realpolitik pawn.

What do Ukrainians need to do to stop being “nothing?”

Note that when Russians protested in 2011-12 against their own corrupt president just like Ukrainians are protesting against theirs, nobody said Russians were “pawns.” Except Putin who said they were Hillary Clinton’s puppets.

And how obnoxious is the quoted sentence? So much posing, so much self-admiration, and all just to say that Ukrainians are nothing.

A student in Geography just wrote to me to ask for my help on a research project he is doing. The project consists of locating at least one person (and I quote directly)

that is from one of 12 regions of the world.  As you are from Ukraine, you region is the Russian Domain.

WTF, geographers? What’s “Russian Domain” and how come I’m placed in it?

High points on antagonizing Ukrainians right before interviewing them.

Since when are geographers in the business of inventing weird geographical categories?

I don’t even know if I should help this student.

Tony Judt is one more in the line of eminent historians who acknowledges that WWII was won by the Red Army. He also correctly points out that blaming the allies for Yalta agreements is idiotic. There was no way Stalin would have agreed to relinquish the occupied territories. And he had no need of the Allied forces to win the war.

Judt says that Stalin’s mistake was refusing to participate in the Marshall Plan. This is a weird statement because Stalin had nothing to gain from participating.

The material well-being in the USSR soared in the 1950s and earky 1960s anyway.