One of the gifts N gave me for New Year’s is a new wallet. It’s beautiful, red but I just noticed that credit cards slide out of it very, very reluctantly. To the point where it might be easier not to buy anything at all.

Unsurprisingly, Canada’s Justin Trudeau has already raised taxes on my sister who’s the epitome of the middle class. And obviously on all hard-working Canadians like her. Aside from posing for endless photo ops and raising taxes, Trudeau hasn’t done anything. And I see no reason to hope he will.

The manner of waging war transforms with every transformation of the state model (Many people say that it’s the other way round: the state form follows the changes in the ways of waging war. Ultimately, the warfare methods are indissolubly linked to the state model, no matter what “comes first.”)

As we discussed before, the nation-state model arose, to a significant degree, in response to a need to find a less costly way than any that had existed before to wage war on an unprecedented scale. This goal was achieved in full, as we all know from the example of the two world wars. Without the nation-state, this kind of warfare would not be possible.

As the nation-state withers away and a new state form comes to replace it, warfare changes as well. Today we are seeing a gradual consolidation of what I call “consumerist warfare.” (This is just my own term. Other people use different terminology. In Ukraine, for instance, it is called “hybrid warfare.”) Here are some of the characteristics of consumerist warfare:

• every attempt is made to take the warfare as far away from the consumer-citizens as possible. (Russians, for instance, first brought the war to Ukraine, where the Russian citizens would not see it and then took it even farther away, to Syria.) Of course, this is a luxury that only some states can afford. There will be a huge stratification among the states that can take their warfare far away and those who have to host the battlefield. As you know, this was not the case for the nation-state, which saw the greatest casualties to the civilians of the warring countries in human history. 
• warfare is made as impersonal as possible through the use of technology (drones, airstrikes, terror attacks, etc.)
• the success of war effort hinges on the warring parties’ capacity to deploy non-military resources (economy, propaganda, social media.) A country that is much weaker in military terms can now win the war if it uses these non-military resources effectively. 
• the surveillance state model flourishes because it’s easy to justify it by the fear that outsourced warfare can come back in the form of terror attacks;
• consumer-citizens participate in the warfare through safe, sanitized long-distance means. They can experience the benefits of the war (adrenaline, excitement, a legitimate way of releasing their aggressive impulses, feelings of heroic abnegation) without having to risk their lives. Once again, this is something that citizens of more advanced consumer societies can afford better than citizens of less advanced consumer societies. 
• societies that cannot afford to export their wars far away can assign the status of a permanent war zone to a territory within the state or close by. Consumer-citizens will use it in the same way as I described in the preceding point but, of course, it will not be as safe and cheap for them.
• since mass conscription is not needed in this model, both the state’s interest in regulating the morality of consumer-citizens and its interest in guaranteeing their welfare will diminish. A state that outsources war also outsources its welfare system (to private companies, beneficent individuals, collective efforts by volunteers, etc.).

I think we can all agree that much of this is already happening. 

I don’t like the expression “people of color.” I see in it an attempt to appropriate the uniquely tragic history of African Americans for the self-pitying  needs of willing and eager immigrants or their descendants.

Curiously, the only people I ever hear use this expression are quite comfortable economically. An undocumented immigrant from Guatemala who washes dishes for $3.50 an hour will not refer to himself as “a person of color.” What would that even sound like in Spanish? At most, he might refer to himself as “latino” but even then would ensure that nobody conflate his experience with that of a Mexican or a Dominican (let alone a Pakistani or a Singaporean.)

Anything positive that might come out of the expression “people of color” is, I believe, erased by the damage created as a result of refusing to acknowledge the unparalleled nature, in both its history and today’s consequences, of African American suffering.

I understand that those who use the expression have no intention of strengthening racist discourses, but ultimately that’s the result. Everybody in their right mind has to acknowledge that the level of poverty, criminality, drug addiction and hopelessness is extremely high in African American communities. There are two narratives that explain this:

1. The racist narrative of black people being genetically predisposed, etc. etc.

2. The narrative that acknowledges that the unequaled violence inflicted on African Americans throughout their history as a group creates these effects.

The moment you reject the narrative of the unparalleled history of African Americans by collapsing them into the vague “people of color”, you automatically slip into the racist narrative of genetic predispositions because that’s all that there is left.

The favorite argument of all racists, by the way, is “But why do Asians do so well academically and economically while African Americans don’t?” This enormously annoying argument is based precisely on a refusal to see a difference between groups with the past and the present that don’t overlap.

Reader Crystallizing Chaos asks a crucial question: is there such a thing as love at first sight?

The answer is that there is nothing but love at first sight.  Sexually and psychologically healthy people know if they are attracted or not immediately. Of course, there are cultures where this powerful instinctive pull towards a person is stigmatized as “not really love.” People only allow themselves to name their feelings “love” if the feelings pass the muster of being socially acceptable.

The belief that sex is dirty and robs people of their full humanity by making them “like animals” generates the tortured distinctions between “in lust but not in love but not love.” The easier a culture finds it to name the powerful initial attraction “love”, the more sexually healthy it is. The longer people feel they need to wait until their feelings will qualify for the name of “love” and the more ritualized the process of renaming “lust” into “love” is, the weaker is their capacity to defend their personal space from the colonization by the social mandate. 

People who can’t accept first – sight attraction as love because it’s “just sex” will be comforted by knowing that it really isn’t. Our brain processes information a lot faster than we can verbalize it. Within the very first few minutes of an encounter (but a real encounter, not an on-screen one), we know on a non-verbal level whether this person fits our relationship scenario. The need to bury this knowledge under a mountain of words and social codes betrays the desire to hand over the control over and responsibility for one’s personal life to the authority of one’s peer group.

For Soviet people, the New Year’s celebration was so enormously significant because people couldn’t just go out and buy all of the ingredients that went into their massive food spreads on December 31.

The ingredients had to be sought out, amassed and jealously guarded throughout the year. The entire year would be like a treasure hunt driven by the vision of that opulent, overflowing New Year’s table. When people sat down to eat on December 31, they wouldn’t just be eating food. They’d be symbolically consuming the reminders of their own greatest achievements throughout the year.

The consumption of the food was accompanied by a prayer-like recitation of these crucial milestones:

“This can of sprats I found back in July, completely by accident. And this chunk of cheese is from all the way back in February. I had to stand in line for 4 hours in the cold to get it!”

The traditional end-of-year list of achievements would transform into “My Greatest Victories in the Art of Food Hunting.”

The overwhelming majority of the food thus treasured obviously had to be canned, smoked, salted or otherwise preserved or it wouldn’t keep. People had to invest a lot of ingenuity into making this food look attractive and stand out from the similar spreads of their acquaintances.

1. I discovered that, to my great shock, I no longer detest Sinatra. I actually preferred his music to Pitbull’s last night. That must mean I’m now very old.

2. I also discovered that I can still party until 6 am, which must mean I’m still quite young.

3. Although both N and I dance really well separately, we can’t dance together to save our lives. He constantly tries to lead! And what are the chances of that working with me? Curiously, we’ve never had any power struggles in other aspects of our lives. I mean, we’ve had tons of struggles because ours is a very intense relationship but never as to who’ll lead.

4. The New Year’s address by Ukraine’s president Poroshenko was a lot more festive and optimistic than last year’s. This is understandable given that last year he was addressing the nation (and supportive immigrants) in the midst of very intense hostilities at the front. This year, although the war with Russia is not over, there was major positive news (and visa-free travel regime with the EU! a free trade zone!) to report.

5. The Russian New Year’s concert was a lot less opulent than usual. Compared to what the Russians usually put on, this year’s show was downright beggarly. And the reason why we couldn’t watch the Ukrainian show instead is that our immigrant TV subscription service doesn’t transmit Ukrainian programming live. Which is a huge oversight.

6. I manage to buy books even in the midst of New Year’s festivities. (Thank you, the beautiful people who gave me Amazon gift cards!) Next year, I will not be doing any academic writing but I hope to get a bit of reading done instead.

7. N can’t have TV playing in the background. If there is TV on, he’ll have to watch it and won’t be able to talk. I’m the exact opposite in this and many other ways, and that makes us fascinating to each other.

8. I’ve done something to my brain that makes me no longer capable of enjoying mystery novels. I read the most recent installments by my formerly favorite Lisa Gardner and Michael Connelly (finished last night) and was hugely bored.

Happy New Year and let’s all have as much fun in 2016 as we can.

Happy New Year!