And just look at how pathetic Putin is. On the one hand, he says “not everybody needs democracy, Americans should stop stuffing their recipes down everybody’s throats, we are not part of Western civilization and should be left in peace to do things our own way, democracy is not our way, leave us alone already.”

Yet he still keeps holding elections and goes out of his way to rig them in a way that gives him an overwhelming majority.

Putin – or anybody else – can writhe and wriggle but he can’t remove himself away from the logic of history and turn back the clock. Democratic elections are the only legitimating force left. There is no other way for power to present itself as legitimate.

Putin and his infantile tantrums will be swept away by the tide of history. Of course, he will manage to do a lot of damage before that.

Everybody laughed at Fukuyama with his “end of history” but today even Putin, even the puppet regime of the DNR, even the most entrenched little dictator somewhere in the boondocks feel the need to hold “elections.” Nobody really elects anything at those “elections.” But the need to hold them anyway is proof that Fukuyama was right.

So. Who do you think is getting her own research assistant? 

Yes, that will be me. It turns out I could have had one this entire time but, for some reason, it had never occurred to me to ask. Until I finally did and got one.

The RA will be helping me throughout next semester. And I will be hiring the RA on my own. It will be a relief not to have to struggle with a hiring committee.

I just created my very first multiple – choice test. Of course, I hate multiple choice tests but I don’t want to die without having had the experience of creating and administering one. I need to know what it is I hate, don’t I?

So far the experience has been bizarre. I have felt like a total idiot making the test. But it’s a new experience, and that is already valuable.