Westerners share a curious fantasy. They imagine that everybody in the world wants to live just like they do. In this fantasy, everybody is dying to work 60 hours a week 52 weeks in a year in order to pay off an enormous mortgage and buy a bunch of things the TV told them they urgently need.

Depending on their political leanings, Westerners either pity the poor losers who have no access to these extraordinary joys or engage in gloomy fantasies of how the hordes of the poor losers, starved for work and debt, are coming to take all of it away.

No evidence suffices to convince Westerners that there are crowds of people in the world who have no interest in this lifestyle. The greatest punishment they can imagine inflicting on their enemies is preventing their existence in the work / debt cycle.

This is precisely the delusion that motivates the Western sanctions against Russia. The sanctions are expected to work because Russians should be devastated if they are not allowed to keep buying and borrowing.

But just like an enormous number of people around the world  (the people whom we either pity or fear), Russians don’t see this way of life as hugely attractive. They don’t want all of this stuff we keep buying and they really don’t want to work all the time to buy the stuff. Sanctions are making them happy because they are offering an exit from the onerous work / buy / borrow cycle.

Russian troops are moving forward inside the territory of Ukraine. Now they are shelling Mariupol, a peaceful Ukrainian city that has the misfortune of being located between Russia and the Crimea.

Peaceful inhabitants of Mariupol are dying.

No action against the Russian invaders is being taken on the basis of the bill passed by Congress and signed by Obama. There is no indication that the Russians are planning to end the hostilities. To the contrary, they are being very open about the plan to keep spreading the hostilities to an ever greater territory of Ukraine.

In the following post, I will explain why economic sanctions against Russia don’t work.

The university administration proposed to address the budget cuts by raising the instructors’ work load from 4 to 5 courses per semester without raising their pay in any way.

One of the instructors responded that a greater amount of money could be saved by docking the pay of everybody who makes over $120,000 per year by 5%. For those who are not familiar with public education in the US, these are people who do absolutely nothing of any value at a university.

Of course, I’m in complete agreement with the instructor. I hope the instructors (and their union) stand strong and united in this fight.

In other news, I’m being invited to Oxford (to speak at a conference) but we are in anew round of the eternal budget cuts and the Dean’s Office told us we should not broach the subject of scholarly travel while it isn’t clear what is going to happen with the budget. I have no hope that it will ever be clear what is going to happen with the budget but I really want to go to Oxford. I’m going to win $700 in a “Good Driver” contest (have I mentioned the contest?) in June, so that money can go towards paying for the trip. 

I hope Oxford doesn’t disappoint like London did in 2012.

The Russian government is calling on the country’s citizens to eat less in support of Putin. 

But that’s not the saddest part.

The saddest part is that the Russians are happy to oblige. 

I’m really embarrassed that I share a language and a culture with these sad fucks.

I read two articles in a row with the eternal wailing of “Why, oh why are we friends with the nasty Saudis?” and then went and filled up the tank for half of what I used to pay back in the Fall. Strangely, there are no bloggers bemoaning the cheapness of gas. But what’s even more bizarre than the idiocy of these moaners is that I’d be in a position to notice the price of  gas.

Still, let’s not exaggerate the extent of my sophistication. Gas stations still cause me a lot if confusion. First, the pump I chose ran out of gas. At 11 am. Has anybody heard anything like that? I never considered this possibility, so I kept trying to milk the poor empty pump with relentless dedication until the attendant interfered and wrestled the hose out of my hands.

In the end, I got out of there reeking of gas even though I have finally learned to treat the pump with the care of a person diffusing a bomb.

Isn’t it curious that people who find it easy to see the connection between the Saudis and the price of gas, as well as among a million other things, are usually the ones who see a mundane task like filling up the tank as a serious challenge.

The most hilarious thing is that the debate whether Russia has anything to do with what’s happening in the South – East of Ukraine rages on.

A Russian newscast shows a Russian soldier, dressed in the uniform of the Russian army and armed with Russian military – issue weaponry standing in the midst of ruins in Donetsk and discussing “the civil war in Ukraine.” And it doesn’t occur to anybody in Russia to ask what a Russian soldier is doing in the midst of an alleged civil war.

I decided a while ago to check out of these debates because people who are still not convinced that Russia is waging a war on Ukraine will not be convinced no matter what. Many Ukrainians believe that if we try very hard, provide even more incontrovertible evidence, then we will finally be believed. But this isn’t about lack of proof. It’s about a cynical attempt to make the suffering of the victims even greater while draining their energy.

And while I’m on it, here is another idiot who keeps popping up in my blogroll:

According to a new World Bank report [ht: sm], on inequality in South Asia, among the United States, Bangladesh, India, and Vietnam, the probability of moving out of poverty within a generation (from 2005 to 2010) was highest in Vietnam.

Just to put a point on it: upward mobility from poverty was the same in the United States and Bangladesh.

The freak forgets to mention, however, that the US poverty is a tad different from poverty in Bangladesh. 

There is nothing that annoys me more than the way some pseudo-progressives brandish about the word “Bangladesh” whenever they need to feel sorry for themselves. I have no idea why, but it’s always Bangladesh they evoke when they want to make some excruciatingly stupid point about how hugely miserable they are. Not Myanmar, not Laos, not Vietnam, but always Bangladesh. Since the folks who keep prattling about Bangladesh know nothing about any of these countries, I’m guessing they choose the one whose name has the greatest number of syllables. A longer word makes them feel smarter and gives some weight to their idiotic statements. “See? Ban-gla-desh! It’s a long word I have mastered, so I must definitely know what I’m talking about!”

Obviously, the people who keep using Bangladesh to stand for “the most horrible place on Earth where everything is horrible and now let’s all feel sorry for me because of how horrible Bangladesh is” have never been to Bangladesh and will not be able to find it on a map on the first try. They haven’t read a single book by a Bangladeshi author and have no Bangladeshi friends. Yet they love to make use of the word “Bangladesh” to make points and win arguments. Curiously, the same people love to denounce colonialism with a passion and quote Edward Said like he’s their Jesus. They all agree that Orientalism is bad, yet see no problem with using “Bangladesh” as a rhetorical device.

If you read the stinky Putinoid “Naked Capitalism” website with any other goal but that of making fun of these cheap freakazoids, then please go away from my blog and don’t soil this website with your presence.

I have no idea who recommended that I place this garbage dump of a website on my blogroll but this person did me no favors. I already knew that there was a bunch of pathetic Western pseudo-Lefties who loved placing their lying tongues deep into Putin’s anal cavity. No reminders were needed of their pervasiveness. I work in academia. I see these Putinoid losers every day. They come up to me on regular occasions and mumble, with their wimpy half-smiles, “But Putin is a good guy, right?”

If anybody wasn’t convinced that the Republican Congress doesn’t want to do anything about abortion except for talking about it, here is proof.

Obviously, there was no “women’s revolt” in the Congress. It’s all just a show. And we’ll keep witnessing the show for the next 8 years.

We all know what the anti-abortion hysteria (with its outgrowth, the insane 39-week law) has done to me. But I’m still convinced that this outburst of abortion talk is a very clumsy ploy aimed at distracting us from what is really going on. Let’s not allow ourselves to be dragged into this insanity.