A whiny letter from an irresponsible teacher shows us how the terror of the “government” is created and stoked in kids:

Our state and federal government say that I have to give these tests to you. That you must take them. And I need you to know how very sorry I am about that.

I have no control over this. I have no control over whether or not I give you this test. But, like I always tell you, I do have complete control over my own thoughts and my own words. So here is what I need to say to you.

I do not agree that these tests will tell me what I really need to know about you as a learner or as a human being. I do not agree that these tests will make me a better teacher. I do not agree that these tests will improve our schools. I do not agree that you need to sit in front of a computer for over five hours in order for the government to find out what you know and what you can do. I do not agree that you should not have a choice in how you are able to show all of the things that you are capable of doing. I do not agree that in order for the state to know that I am doing my job that you have to suffer through tests.

I believe that standardized tests are quite useless but that doesn’t cancel the dishonesty and nastiness of this open letter. Standardized tests are aimed at testing, first and foremost, how well teachers do their job. Yes, the tests often suck at reaching that goal but this is not a battle that should be fought through kids. The only responsible thing to do here would be to get kids excited about the test and eager to take it. Making them feel anxious and scared of the big, evil, scary “gubmint” is completely useless short-term and enormously counter-productive long-term. Children who grow up to the lullaby of “nothing good can come from the government” will not be equipped to preserve a functioning and strong government when they grow up.

In the era when the nation-state is collapsing and the governments of the eroded nations are retreating from all functions but half-hearted policing, I find the people who are fretting about too much government to be quite puzzling. When the “gubmint” goes away with its (admittedly silly) standardized tests, it will take many other good things with it. Public schools at every level are likely to be one such thing. One would think that teachers might have some interest in preventing such a development but not a single one of the massively popular secondary ed authors that I follow cares about anything but this idiotic war on the standardized test du jour. 

International relations are so fucked up these days because of the Iraq war of 2003. The war was

either completely pointless or was allowed to be framed as completely pointless to the general public. And now, everybody is so freaked out about the possibility of getting into another pointless (or seemingly pointless, which is the same thing) war that nobody is willing to do anything about anything.

The ISIS bandits have destroyed the treasures of Nimrud. Their Russian colleagues have razed Debaltseve. All that is left for the two is to organize supply lines for nuclear weapons, and then they will be able to proceed to destroy the world that angers them so much.

In the meanwhile, US and UK, the only countries that ever had a consistent foreign policy different from this rage at modernity we see in ISIS and Russia, are reacting to the mess of the Iraqi war by retreating into a weak and reactive position in international relations. This will obviously not change whatever happened in Iraq back in 2003 but will mess up the present and the future for a long time to come because “let’s close our eyes and pretend nothing is happening” is not an effective foreign policy approach.

Further reading: Great Britain is disappearing from the world stage.

Aside from the extraordinarily offensive Muslim – bashing side of the Putinoid explanation for the murder of Boris Nemtsov, there is another part that bothers me.

Nemtsov was Jewish. And now the whole story has been turned into “Muslims and Jews are killing each other, as usual, so who cares?”

“Ethnic Russians” will now have multiple orgasms as they enjoy this lovely opportunity to hate Muslims and Jews at the same time.

This is all beyond disgusting.

Russia’s propaganda machine has reached the heights of extreme shamelessness. The official version of the murder of the dissident Boris Nemtsov goes as follows: Nemtsov expressed sympathy with the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attacks, so several Muslim Chechens got upset and executed him for disrespecting Islam.

This explanation serves several useful purposes:

1. Russians can indulge in yet another bout of feeling aggrieved. They have now become victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack, yet nobody will celebrate them with a wave of “Je suis Russian” placards and marches. Once again, Russians will be denied recognition for their suffering.

2. Putin will give his voters a spot of some sweet, enjoyable Muslim – hating. The Russian neo-Nazis could never get over Putin ‘ s payouts to Chechnya. They will definitely be pleased with this development.

3. Identifying as one of the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack allows Russia to deflect the suspicions that Putin was behind organizing them in the first place. And these suspicions have been getting awfully strong lately.

This is well-done on various levels. Yes, the story sounds insane at first, but Putin only cares about how it’s perceived inside Russia, and evidence shows that Russians are gobbling it up.

And we all know how easy it is to sell a “Muslims did it” story to people who are desperate to buy it.

The crazy Russian Orthodox priests are trying to prevent a theater in the city of Novosibirsk from bringing to the viewers Tannhäuser, an opera by Wagner. The opera supposedly hurts the feelings of the religious people. Given that less than 2% of people in Russia practice religion (according to the Russian Orthodox Church), this is a very inventive argument.

Banning operas for religious reasons in a historically non-religious country is a sign that all attempts at looking reasonable have been abandoned by Russia’s authorities. Russia is not managing to enter into modernity and is currently fighting a war against Ukraine to punish the neighboring country for its eager and joyful acceptance of modernity.

You can’t understand Russia without knowing who the vatnik is and how vatnost manifests itself in every area of existence in Russia.

Thanks to reader Cliff Arroyo for this great link. It isn’t often that one reads anything in English about Russia that actually has value and is well-informed.
These days, I mention “the stupid vatniki” more often than “vile freakazoids,” and that’s telling something. The best thing one can do to understand what’s going on in Russia is figure out who the vatniki are.

Today is the International Working Women’s Day. Let’s celebrate!

People have interesting friends:

Recently, I politely declined to debate with one such baffled male friend, who followed up by sending me some well-intentioned advice on how I could be a more effective feminist. Having never thought much about feminism before, he said, he just didn’t find my social media posts appealing. Too shouty and academic. What I needed was to explain things in a way that appealed to men.

Considering himself as the sort of bloke who “could be part of the solution”, he helpfully sent me a link to a twelve-minute TED talk which contained, in his words, “a basic yes/no test” for misogyny together with proposed steps to solve the problem. In an impressive gesture of hubris, he suggested the next time I was asked to educate a man who was genuinely trying to learn about feminism, I forward this snappy sound-byte resource he had just found for me.

The long post misses the most interesting part: how the author trashed the “friend” for being a condescending, self-congratulating freakazoid and made him curse the horrible day on which he was born, exposing himself to the dark future of crossing paths with her.

In the meanwhile, one is sitting here, itching to brutalize somebody for using the word “shouty”, yet never getting a chance. Life is unfair. Some people

basically already won the life lottery just by showing up

while others never get any luck.

Happy International Women’s Day, everybody, and remember that trashing freakazoids is a great way to celebrate.

Several Chechens have been arrested for the murder of the dissident Boris Nemtsov in Russia.

N said this was going to happen the second after I told him of Nemtsov’s assassination. This has been a regular pattern in Russia: do something horrible, then blame the Chechens.

Putin has lost some of his recent gains among the Russian neo-Nazis with his slow and bumbling progress in the invasion of Ukraine. Chechen-bashing is a great way to get the neo-Nazis back into the fold while distracting everybody from the murder of the dissident.

For everybody who’s been following the events in Russia for the past 20 years, the triumphant “the Chechens did it!” is nothing but obnoxious. This card has been played so often and so shamelessly that it just got boring.

P. S. One of the Chechens accused of killing Nemtsov blew himself up with a grenade.

For many people, religion is nothing but a way to project their unhappy parent-child model on something outside themselves to make it less painful.

In this model, God is a strict parent whose love is conditional and has to be deserved. Former unloved children invent the original sin, the profound sinfulness of humanity, the need for a savior, etc to explain why they were never loved unconditionally as children.
Of course, there is a lot of rage attached to the knowledge that, for your parent, you were always damaged goods, always not good enough. This rage is displaced in this kind of religious people onto the sinners, the unfaithful, the atheists, etc. We all know that few things can equal in their destructive power the rage of the religious hordes that are destroying everything in view because the pain of being unloved, unwanted children burns them up.

For this sort of religious people, religion is all about fulfilling series of mechanical and meaningless obligations  (fasting, praying in a certain way and during certain time of the day in a specific position, controlling one’s diet, not having sex on certain days, etc). These rituals allow them to feel like good, obedient children who are trying to deserve the strict parent ‘ s approval. “God” controls their lives in the same areas – food, sex, clothing – that their unloving parents did.