The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

― Arthur Schopenhauer

I just received an email from Russia that explains the peculiar workings of the book-publishing business in the country.

A single monster publisher has a monopoly on the book-publishing market. An author who wants to get published needs to pay an enormous bribe to the publishers. This is how things always are when you remove the capitalist competition for the consumers’ attention from the market.

A recent book fair in St. Petersburg concentrated on showcasing books and projects that promoted the creation of governmental bodies that would eradicate all ideas that departed from the party line. This is now said openly and nobody even tries to conceal these plans.

The state supports writers with grants. However, in order to get state support, you either need to denounce Jews all day long or collaborate with the secret service.

A recent state-sponsored poetry contest only  accepted contributions that celebrated the occupation of the Crimea or promoted saccharine Orthodox religiosity. The quality of the poetry presented there was awful but nobody cares about small things like these any longer.

Putin invaded Ukraine in order to defend the Russian language and culture (from whom it is still not clear but whatever). Those of us who actually care about the preservation of the Russian language and culture can’t fail to see that the real danger to it stems from the current government of the Russian Federation.

Writers from Russia are sending these messages to foreigners because that’s their only way of being heard. Nobody in Russia (or Ukraine) speaks any language but their own, so there is an enormous sense of isolation from the world. At the moment, the entirety of the Russian intellectual life has been ghettoized on the Livejournal website. Livejournal is owned by one of Putin’s pocket oligarchs who obviously does what his master tells him to. Livejournal differs from WordPress or Blogspot in that it is next to impossible to leave a comment on a Livejournal blog if you are not a Livejournal subscriber. I think it’s important to help these dissenting voices to break through.

Russian mass media are too funny for words. They became so attached to their favorite talking point that radical nationalists had come to power in Ukraine (hence the need to save the country by invading it) that they were reporting that a radical nationalist candidate was leading in the presidential elections.

In reality, said radical nationalist got 0,9% of the vote. To everybody else on the planet this means that only the guy’s extended family and a few friends voted for him. To Russians, however, this means he won.

Another important election yesterday revealed a lot about Spain. In the European election, Spaniards demonstrated that they are ready to let go of the two-party system.

I strongly believe that it’s time to let bipartidism go in the US. Both parties have discredited themselves on every level and have degenerated to the point of forming dynasties. They are too inert even to pretend they are trying. When Bush #3 and Clinton #2 are offered to us as the only choices.

And yes, I like Hillary. But my question is: would I like her as much if there were anybody else to choose from?

These two parties are done. Nobody cares about them, nobody wants to come to the elections. They need to go away.

As if to put every Russian propagandist to shame, Ukrainians gave more votes at the presidential election to a candidate with the last name of Rabinovich than to the only two candidates (out of a dozen) who are actual Ukrainian nationalists.

I happen to think that it matters far less who was elected than that there finally is a president. Change in Ukraine (and Russia) doesn’t lie in the hands of the leaders. The myth of the good tsar who will finally solve every problem has to be relinquished. Now it is only up to Ukrainians if the country moves to a civilized European future.

I want to remind everybody that I don’t see their comments as trees and have no idea who is answering to whom and in what subject.

People who want me to answer questions need to make sure that the meaning of every “it” and “that” is clear from their comment (and not from the context which I don’t see).

Leaving questions like “But why do you think this happens?” prevents me from knowing who “you” refers to and what “this” means.

Most people seem to agree that one of the best things about this blog is that I always try to answer everybody’s comments. I enjoy doing that, too, but as the blog’s popularity grows, I simply can’t keep on mind every iteration of every discussion.

Thank you for your understanding! I feel very important that I can write a post like this one. 🙂

I finally read the famous article in the New Yorker about a Facebook- facilitated billion-dollar attempt to improve Newark’s schools whose only tangible result was angering everybody to the degree that a riot almost happened.

This is one of two very good articles in the mainstream media that appeared this week (I blogged about the other one yesterday). Short on insights, it is at least well-researched and well- written.

Insights, however, are there for any one who cares to read the piece. The school-reforming philanthropists threw away insane amounts of money on consultants, trying out new hiring practices, metrics to test student success (in the absence of success, it totally matters to improve ways to measure it), conferences, superintendents, charters, merit pay, motivational posters, and God only knows what else. The students and their families were treated like circus animals without the slightest degree of humanity. Of course, the objects of these improvement techniques responded in kind, throwing pouty tantrums of the, “But how am I supposed to get my kid to this new good school when nobody offers any transportation?” variety.

The whole debacle was permeated with such a childish belief in the power of social engineering that it’s scary. Were you aware that Zuckerberg, who was one of the creators of this plan was such an idiot? I wasn’t.

The underlying problem here is that, among all of the narratives floating around the issue, the most crucial one is absent. The attempts to throw money at the problem disregard how unimportant money is here. Yesterday we were all shocked by a story of a mass murderer who slaughtered seven people and wounded seven others. He was from a very wealthy family and neither he nor the schools he attended could have lacked for money.

Money doesn’t raise human beings. Parents do. Tragically, the American culture resists this idea with desperation. Whenever a kid shoots up a school, everybody pities his parents instead of demanding that they take responsibility for inflicting a messed-up product of their faulty upbringing on society.

The most notorious evil-doers known to humanity did not come from schools where teachers were not too bright and there was a lack of motivational posters on the walls. Extremely wealthy families almost never produce brilliant scholars, talented artists, stubborn over-achievers, famous scientists. The majority of biographies of people who made an especially great contribution to human civilization start with, “He was born in dire poverty / she never had a dime to call her own.”

There are things money can’t buy and it’s time we all accepted it.

Ta-Nehisi Coates’s article confirmed that many Israelis knew from the start – as I’ve been saying only forever – that accepting Germany’s reparations was a great act of charity on the part of the Jews towards the Germans.

Coates describes the passionate opposition of Menachem Begin and his followers to accepting the reparations.

Paying the reparations is the only thing that stands between Germany and its horrible legacy.

As you know, I have relatives in Donetsk, so here is an update from there. Donetsk and Lugansk will not participate in the Ukrainian presidential election. Polls are usually located in schools, and people armed with machine guns have occupied the school buildings to prevent polls from being organized.

One school principal tried to comply with the law and organize the polls but the terrorists said they would hang her. They have already killed and tortured many people so she believed them.

My relatives say they are terrified of going outside because heavily armed bandits are roaming the streets.

A young woman from Kiev who had the misfortune to visit Donetsk was taken hostage by the terrorists. Today she was liberated and shared horrible stories about her time in captivity. There were some Ukrainians among the captors but the majority were from Russia. They spoke with Russian accents and betrayed unfamiliarity with Ukrainian reality.

A scary doubt just assaulted me. If people find it so hard to get it through their thick skulls that there are no innate differences (other than in the way their reproductive systems work) between men and women, do these same sorry excuses for human beings fail to realize that there are no differences but the very insignificant physiological ones between people if different races? Or has civilization conquered at least this bastion of barbarity?

By the way, I just read Ta-Nehisi Coates’s “The Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic and I highly recommend. Very well-written, very insightful. I’m an immigrant, so maybe everybody who’s from around here already knows all this stuff but for me it was a revelation. I now want to find out more.