The Sunday Review of the NYTIMES regaled me with a story that made me contort with laughter. The story is titled “A Toxic Work World” and is a great example of the recent efforts to convince the Unhireables that they are better off without evil, nasty work. In the process, the article allows everybody else to engage in sweet, delicious self-pity:

For many Americans, life has become all competition all the time. Workers across the socioeconomic spectrum have stories about toiling 12 to 16-hoyr days and experiencing anxiety attacks and exhaustion.

I’m sure it’s all true. People have stories of misery that would terrify the most cold-hearted and cynical. There can be no doubt that they perceive themselves as hugely overworked even when they don’t really work that hard.

I’m on sabbatical right now, which means that I don’t have to be in my office. Still, when a student asked me to meet to sign some papers, I agreed, warning the student that I don’t have anything else to do at the office and asking her to arrive at 12 pm sharp.

Obviously, the student didn’t show up at 12. Instead, she sauntered in 40 minutes later, offered no explanation or apology, and informed me that she hadn’t had time to fill out her papers, so could I sign the empty sheets instead.

When she fails to become as successful as she wants, she will savor the articles about the evil world of work that only rewards the lucky few and casts aside the hardworking victims like her.

Does anybody understand why VW gamed its emissions controls? What was it trying to gain?

Of course, the reason doesn’t change anything. The company richly deserves to pay its 18-billion fine, and then some. I’m just curious what could motivate them to do something this shitty. Do they profit somehow from sabotaging the emissions controls?

People are so easy to manipulate. Donald Trump bombed at the second debate. He looked tired, confused, and mumbly. As a result, his ratings began to drop.

So what did he do? He planted a fellow at one of his rallies to make some stupid comment about Muslims. And now everybody is so busy discussing the entirely idiotic question of whether a Muslim should be US President that nobody remembers the debate. Moreover, nobody even remembers that there are no Muslims running and that, instead, we have a whole bunch of very unqualified, ignorant, confused people trying to get elected president.

Once again, Trump manages to exploit the love of cheap outrage that his compatriots have and push them away from discussing issues that will directly impact their lives.

I wonder, is nobody ashamed of being so easily manipulated by a creature as primitive as Trump?

NYTimes reports that the US military personnel operates under harshly enforced orders to tolerate the Afghanis raping children, often right on the American military bases.

American soldiers are forced to listen to the screams of raped children on their bases and are severely punished when they can’t take it any longer and try to intervene.

The rapists of kids are given free reign to rape at American military bases (paid for by my and your money, by the way) because of “a reluctance to impose cultural values.”

Question: what’s so wrong with imposing cultural values that are obviously vastly superior?

American taxpayers end up paying for rape pads as a result of “the American policy of treating child sexual abuse as a cultural issue.”

Question:  why are we so in thrall to the largely meaningless word “culture” that we are ready to stand by and stare impotently as barbarity proliferates?

So who are the people that insist (somewhat shrilly, I might add) that being an unqualified, ignorant outsider is the perfect qualification for a job?

These are the future unhireables, the folks who are vaguely aware that success on the job market is increasingly reserved for the highly qualified and the very educated. They find solace in a fantasy that one day somebody will appreciate them precisely because they have no knowledge, no sophistication, no connections, and no qualifications.

To a large extent, the pool of presidential candidates represents a fantasy that gives solace to those who are in danger of being left behind and slipping into the role of lumpenized unhireables.

In the soporific news of the month, the painfully boring discussions of whether Fiorina was a good CEO keep raging on.

The point of these debates eludes me entirely. Let’s say she was the best CEO known to humanity. So what? How would that make her more qualified to perform an entirely different set of duties?

By participating in the debates as to whether Fiorina was a good CEO or Carson a good doctor, we are allowing the congenitally stupid among our compatriots to define the terms of discussion and colonize the public space. We are letting the most lost and confused among us have an impact that they do not deserve to have.

The problem with Fiorina, Trump and Carson is not how well or how badly they performed in their professions. The problem is that, politically, they are rank, arrogant amateurs who can only appeal to those who are too intellectually limited to understand the complexities of the modern world.

Remember, the moment you let somebody else define the terms of the conversation, you are halfway down the road to losing.

Russians have now installed surface-to-air missiles in Syria and brought over combat aircraft armed with air-to-air missiles.

“But this is all to battle ISIS, right?” John Kerry begged. “This is all about you helping us to defeat ISIS, right? Please, tell me it’s all about ISIS. Pretty please, somebody?”

Of course, it is painfully obvious to everybody that one can’t fight ISIS with surface-to-air missiles. It is also painfully obvious to everybody whom one can fight in Syria with combat aircraft  and surface-to-air missiles. Hope springs eternal, though, and the White House keeps clinging on to the belief that if you shut your eyes really tight, unpleasant, scary things will disappear.

Few things disgust me more than professional relatives, people who, in the absence of any achievements of their own, milk the fame of a relative for unearned respect.  Here is one such creature:

Aleida Guevara, Che Guevara’s daughter and the director of the Studies Center named after her father, has criticized the call from the authorities for Cubans to attend the Masses that will take place during Pope Francis’s visit to Cuba.

It is undeniable that the Catholic Church sucks, the Pope sucks, and greeting the Pope in Cuba is one big joke. This message, however, should be delivered by anybody but this woman who has turned the title of “Che Guevara’s daughter” into a source of profit, attention, and adulation.

I will never forget how this horrible, nasty creature praised the Cuban medical care system in Michael Moore’s movie. I was shocked by the shamelessness of this white woman who was coddled and spoiled rotten by the party while the overwhelmingly black population of the island was abused and pushed around by the so-called doctors in dirty, smelly barns called hospitals and was forced to sell their bodies to Western tourists in return for a life-saving asthma inhaler or a vial of insulin. (I saw these people and talked with them, so arguing with me about this makes no sense.)

I’m sure Che Guevara – who, with all his faults, was an earnest believer in the revolution – would have little cause to celebrate if he saw how fat his daughter grew, sucking out the blood of the Cuban people and making grand pronouncements in his name.

It’s easy for Aleida Guevara to criticize the miserable, debased Cubans for whom God is the only hope in their sad, hopeless lives. Aleida’s god is the party that allows her to run a nifty little business of deriving profit from the memory of a father who, when he was alive, didn’t give a crap about her. Of course, she doesn’t need any other sort of divine intervention. The Cubans who don’t have famous dead relatives they could peddle, though, really do.

We were driving to a party at the house of a local family. As we turned into their syreet, I spotted a car with a sticker supporting Ben Carson for president.

“Oh God,” I started to fret. “What if these crazy people are going to the same place we are?”

I shouldn’t have worried, though. These are wealthy people we are visiting. They even have a very chic live band performing. There aren’t likely to be any Carson supporters here.

And the most insane sentence I have heard all week (and mind you, it’s a week of a Republican debate) also appeared in the NYTIMES:

Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, called Pope Francis to brief him on the “ongoing Israeli aggression in occupied East Jerusalem, and particularly against Al Aqsa Mosque.”

This is the only time the Pope appears in the article, and the reasons for his appearance remain forever shrouded in mystery. The words “brief” and “particularly” are especially mystifying.