Did you know that in the aftermath of the war in Iraq the American officials who were sent to Baghdad in order to organize a functioning state were asked in their job interviews how they felt about Roe vs Wade? It mattered a lot more to the Bush administration that they hate Roe vs Wade than that they speak Arabic or know anything about Iraq. Which is why most of these officials had no knowledge of the language or the country.

I’m reading Michael Mandelbaum’s Mission Failure, and the discussion of the Iraq war is absolutely devastating. I knew, of course, that the decision to invade Iraq was asinine but I had no idea about the extent of said asininity.

In case you think Mandelbaum is being partisan, though, you should see how harsh he is on the subject of Bill Clinton’s foreign policy. 

The review of the book will follow in due course but so far I like it.

I’m getting increasingly tired of the entirely specious argument that “there have been no reported case of a trans woman ever entering a women’s restroom and abusing anyone” (NYTIMES quote).

No, there hasn’t. But it isn’t trans women that are being feared. It’s male perverts. The fear is that, as the reality of transgender people becomes more visible and socially acceptable (which is a good thing), pedophiles, perverts, rapists and abusers will use this development to gain unhindered access to female bathrooms and locker rooms.

Once it becomes unacceptable to question anybody’s gender identification, what will be the mechanism of getting a male (not transgender, but male) pervert out of a women’s shower room? What are the words you use to ask him to leave? If it’s not ok to say “You are not a woman / man” because we now believe that the only reliable source of this identification is oneself, how is one to proceed in this situation?

This is an important issue that needs to be discussed and addressed collectively. Instead, both sides of the argument are convulsing in the midst of a massive and completely pointless freak out.

Forget toilets. In a society that worships at the altar of “identity”, there needs to be a consensus as to who has the right to name identities. Is it only the self that gets to decide on his or her identity? Or do others get to participate? 

Of course, I personally will lose nothing if Trump becomes president. I will probably stand to gain a pretty solid amount of cash if he wins because once he removes sanctions against Russia, we will be able to sell N’s apartment in Moscow, and that’s $160,000-$180,000 right there. 

In the unlikely case I want an abortion, I’ll travel to Canada. Another global economic crisis doesn’t scare me because I did fine in the wild capitalism era of the post-Soviet bandit economy, and after that everything is child’s play. I’m neither Hispanic nor a Muslim. 

But even with my lower-than-average capacity to empathize, I can’t say, “Ah, just screw them all while I scream pretty slogans and engage in pleasant fantasies.” If there was ever a time for solidarity, it’s now. I hope Bernie’s supporters realize this and start pushing him to quit the race and start campaigning for Hillary.

Just wait and see, Trump will now start siphoning off Bernie voters by very slyly working many of Bernie’s rhetorical devices into his own speeches. And he’ll be successful, too, because there are so many folks in the Bernie crowd who are looking for any excuse not to vote for Hillary. These are people who – each for reasons of their own – are experiencing existential angst and are projecting their pain onto their vision of politics and economy. It’s very easy to exploit their unacknowledged psychological issues and make them dance like puppets. They are in too much private pain to care about any potentially deported Mexicans or persecuted Muslims. They’d throw every Mexican on the planet under a freight train just to hear a soothing, “Yes, Mommy is bad, how dare she not to nourish you constantly?”

Trump is now pivoting towards the general election and is very slyly appealing to “the poorly educated” (c) with “NAFTA was horrible, it took jobs away from American workers and sent them to evil Mexicans.” This line pleases both the haters of Mexicans and the more intellectually limited among Democrats who are desperately looking for reasons to avoid voting for Hillary (aka Bad Mommy who didn’t come running whenever they needed her).

Of course, blaming any single person or trade agreement for the inevitable (and largely quite positive) results of the technological revolution is very dumb. Dragging out the agony of Fordism and keeping the attendant lifestyles on life support would only have managed to hurt more people, selling false hope to younger generations. The sooner everybody realizes that the world has changed and manufacturing jobs have vanished forever, the better.

But try explaining this to the “poorly educated” and to the perennially pouty. Once the slogan of “NAFTA is bad; Mexicans stole jobs” has lodged in their confused brains, there’s no reasoning with them.

Trump knows this and is exploiting this infantile belief very deftly. Those who enjoy calling him a clown and a buffoon will be eating out of his palm in a couple of months because he knows how to soothe the anxieties they feel when facing the world’s inevitable complexity.

Establishment-shmeshtablishment, super PACs – super schmucks, Idiots United, and all the rest of the stupid talking points in between can now finally be laid to rest. Trump is the presumptive Republican nominee, and none of this supposedly oh-so-crucial stuff has managed to counter the will of the people. Yip-dee-doo.

The political establishment has been defeated, and we can now observe what remains once it’s brought down. Time to celebrate.

Hey, folks, I’m out at a restaurant and in need of an update. Did Cruz drop out? Is Trump the nominee??

Look who I just met on my walk with Klara! The turtle was crossing the road and, as turtles tend to do, was doing it very slowly. In the middle of the crossing, it decided to stop and go in the opposite direction.

I’m very glad I was there to stop the traffic and get the turtle to safety.

Are turtles indigenous to this area? Does anybody know? Or was it somebody’s pet?

In a book on foreign policy written by a college professor no less I read the following:

The Taliban. . . prohibited music, kite flying, dog races, and education for women.

Yes, Jack had sunglasses, a backpack, a dog, and thyroid cancer. He enjoyed killing time and elderly grandmas.

I won’t name this novel for fear of attracting trolls but I want to point out that the reason why I love contemporary Spanish literature is that it’s alive. Spanish authors write about the transformations of the global economy, the collapse of the concept of work, the erosion of the nation-state, the rise of the precariat, the impact of consumerism on human relationships, etc. Of course, novelists don’t use this terminology because they create works of art and not sociological studies or political manifestos. But they write about real issues faced by real people. Their art is poignant, it’s powerful because it speaks about important stuff.

It makes me sad that I see nothing of the kind in American literature. All that’s ever published these days is either escapist crap about vampires or some other fantasy genre pablum or endless enumeration of the trivial problems of rich people.

I’m very open to hearing that I’m mistaken and that there are American authors who write about important things. I’d love to be mistaken and hear that people are finding American novels that don’t fixate on mansions and vampire crypts.