Russian media are experiencing paroxysms of enjoyment as a result of the European refugee crisis. Bits of saliva appear in the corners of the TV commentators’ mouths and their eyes bug out in orgasmic glee whenever they talk about the refugees. And talk about them they do. One celebratory report after another on the refugees is appearing on Russia’s state-owned television.

Russia’s Foreign Affairs minister Lavrov says that Russia will not even consider diminishing its support of Assad. Among other reasons for Russia to stay in Syria, ensuring that the flow of refugees towards Europe grows looms large.

Putin sees in the refugee crisis a real opportunity to kick the EU out of its role as the world’s #2 major player. The #1 spot obviously belongs to the US, and Putin never made any secret of his intense desire to see the planet subdivided between its two owners and commanders: Russia and the US.

The EU is getting in the middle of this cozy arrangement, which is why Putin’s propaganda has been vilifying Europe as a degenerate place where gay pedophiles run around unchecked, destroying everything good they encounter. This EU-bashing has been the staple of Putinoid propaganda for years.

The refugee crisis has given Putin’s media an opportunity to announce that the closing stage of the “decline of the West” has finally begun. Once the degenerate, gay-loving, feminism – infested Europe finally collapses, says Putinoid propaganda, Russia will step out of the shadows to which it had been unfairly relegated and bring the world the true light of its profound religiosity and traditional values.

For the past week, I’ve been a New York Times subscriber. This makes me feel like a real grownup academic, so I’m happy.

Today, the newspaper that I got delivered weighed about 10 pounds and had mountains of magazines and inserts sticking out of it. One of the magazines is called The NYTimes Style and it features photographs of men in various stages of dress and undress. The men are way too feminine for my taste but the magazine itself is a very welcome development. I’m tired of having magazines filled with photos of half-naked women stuck in my face all the time. I’m not gay, why would I want to look at women? The most attractive, endlessly fascinating woman I might want to look at is always easily available in the mirror, anyway.

Sorry for a long quote but this is literally the funniest thing I’ve read in a year:

“If you’ve never fucked a fat person, take a minute and ask yourself why. Is it that you truly find their bodies ugly? Are you afraid that fat stigma is going to rub off on you, that people will see you loving a fat person and think that means there’s something wrong with you? Are you fat and unhappy with your own body? Are you not-fat and unhappy with your own body? Has the media conditioned you to believe that sex with fat people is somehow more difficult and less enjoyable (spoiler: it’s not)? Or is it that you have fucked a fat person but insisted to yourself or to them that they’re not fat, instead of telling them what part of their fatness you consider sexy?”

Here is more. I hope the author was trying to be funny because nobody is really that dumb, are they?

The moment I heard Corbyn sigh about the good old times he wants to  bring back, I knew that in a fellow of his age this can only mean one thing. The good old times he misses are the ones when women stayed hidden from view and didn’t try to access power and resources or express opinions.

And it turns out I was right. Corbyn supports gender segregation as a way of “protecting” women and is enamored of Putin, Europe’s most woman – hating leader.

Left, schmeft, forget labels and look at substance.

Speaking at Saturday’s pro-refugee demonstration, Corbyn told the crowds: “Surely, our objective ought to be peaceful solutions to the problems of this world. To spend our resources on helping people not injuring people. “To try to bring back that world of decency, human rights and justice.”

Back from where, exactly? When in history did “that world” exist?

God, where do these Trumpazoids come from in such numbers?

“Trumpazoid” is my new term for idiot politicians who promise easy-peasy recipes that will take us all to some prelapsarian happy past that never existed. Of course, they have always existed but I only just now came up with a term for them. I have no idea who this Corbyn fellow is but he sounds like a right fool.

The Catholic Church was, at its origins, the wellspring of Western civilization. To see it return to these origins, to that part of it which is essential and therefore truly catholic or universal, the wellspring, perhaps, of a universal civilization in the making, is no mean spectacle.

This is not from a Ross Douthat column, by the way. This is from The Nation. That would be the same periodical that sees no value in the efforts of Ukrainians to get rid of their corrupt, cynical oligarchs and find dignity in popular organizing and activism.

That’s the shitty kind of progressive media we get.