Folks, an absolutely brilliant essay on the real failing of academics. The part about multilingualism is the best:

We should be beautifully multilingual in a range of nested, situated ways of talking and being–a good humanist should be able to walk into a room of advertisers, a room of Hell’s Angels, a room of soldiers, a room of drag performers, a room of hiphop artists, a room of soybean farmers, a room of car salesmen, and adapt to the conversation given time and opportunity. Not master it, not own it, not remake it as a knowledge product–but to understand what flies and what doesn’t, what’s being said and unsaid, what’s sayable and unsayable. We’re plainly not able. Perhaps less able than an advertiser, a Hell’s Angel, a soldier, a hiphop artist. 

Sorry for a long quote but I want to save it here for myself. The author is so right when he says that we often forget to wonder how we sound to anybody outside the bubble and that leads to tragic consequences.

We get together and recite a litany of talking points we all know by heart at each other. And then we call it intellectual conversation. 

People who seriously use the expression “flyover country” are limited, small-minded, parochial fools. If they got over their terror of Otherness and drove or, better yet, took a Greyhound bus, through the small towns of the Rust Belt and the Midwest, they’d enrich themselves intellectually and emotionally. And if you find such places boring, it’s because you project your own emptiness on them.

Talking about clowns, a bunch of folks started a petition for California to secede. I’m sure it’s the same people who ridiculed Texas secessionists for years.

One thing has become clear in this election: the traditional way of running campaigns – raising money, building a good ground game, putting headquarters and phone banks all over the place, filming ads, etc – is dead. Today is all about grabbing as many twitter and FB space with any means at your disposal. Outrageous statements that make for good memes, attention  grabbing insults, hysterical outbursts on Twitter that give pundits a chance to talk about nothing else for days – this is the new winning strategy.

For 2020 Democrats need a clown.

From a Kremlin propagandist:

Trump was sent to us by God as a weapon that Putin will use to destroy all evil in the world, once and for all.

The very first Uber driver I get in Houston tells me that his family lives next door to me and his nephews attend my university.

It’s uncanny. 

My whole life I thought Madonna was singing “I fell in love with some Pedro.”

H e y , I’m not hating Houston so far. It’s not that hot, and  everything looks very generic, which I like.

All eateries and drinkeries I’ve seen give calorie content for absolutely everything. It’s hilarious. Traffic lights yell ” Wait! Wait!” at pedestrians. There are sidewalks even though I’m in somewhat of an industrial zone (university budget doesn’t cover fancy hotels.)

Putin loses no time before starting to collect on the debt Trump contracted with him:

Russia said it was in contact with President-elect Donald Trump’s team during the U.S. election campaign, despite repeated denials by the Republican candidate’s advisers that any links existed. “There were contacts” before the election, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Thursday, according to the Interfax news service. “We continue this work of course,” he said, without giving details of what the contacts were.

As Russians say, repayment is what makes a debt beautiful.

Gosh, I wish dumbo Reagan could come back to life for just a minute to see his own party eagerly hand over the White House to the KGB.

And this is proof that, as I said, people voted for Trump out of boredom.