I have to say, I’m bothered by the stories I’m seeing on Facebook from colleagues  (not at my university, obviously) who dedicate class time to an anti-Trump weeping session.

First of all, what if there is a student who is a Trump supporter? What right do you have to make him feel uncomfortable or weird when he’s paying for your time just like anybody else?

Also, infusing a teacher-student relationship with the possibility of emotional caretaking is dangerous because once you start to caretake, how will you find a way to stop?

Another thing that bothers me is that a person who is not qualified to offer mental health tries to do that and a person who is not a professional poli-sci person is offering unqualified opinions on politics. That’s not education, that’s a spinster sewing circle. Why should anybody pay tuition for this? Especially, as I said, if they don’t feel and think the same.

It was the same after 9/11. I wasn’t forcing anybody to come to class but once they came, there were no touchy-feely conversations. We worked like we usually did. Some students thanked me later because, as they said, it was nice to feel normal for a change. 

My sister, the businesswoman, said that Hillary lost because her branding stank. There was no recognizable slogan to match “Make America Great Again.” The message wasn’t primitive and aimed at total dumbasses. The candidate was not a funny clown. Hillary didn’t send out any tweets that people would wake up to read at 5 am. On social media, she didn’t dominate. 

We need a candidate with a really funny brood of pet kittens. The candidate will plaster Facebook over with cutesy photos and saccharine stories, and we’ll win. I’m completely serious.

It’s all about entertaining the bored and the sated.

I’m a Bernie supporter, and I believe he would have beaten Trump in the general election, and I hope he runs again in 2020.

Yeah, sure, let’s lose once again because it’s such a drag to have to look for new candidates whose ideas are not totally prediluvian. I’m sure Bernie won’t run unless he develops an aggressive form of dementia but I’m shocked by the people who have not been jolted out of their laziness even by the recent events. Anything goes, as long as one doesn’t have to learn a new name and process a new idea or two.

Trump also had debate questions leaked to him. Yes, as we have seen, debates mean nothing. But that’s not the point. The point is how pathetic, dishonest, and childish these people are. I would have never debased myself in such a way. And hey, these candidates are extremely, fabulously rich people. The stakes for them personally were beyond low. A lot lower than the stakes are for some poor sod who’s interviewing with 7/11 for a minimum wage job. But the poor sod in question has convinced himself that these people are capable of caring about him.

Also, I dislike the narrative that “at least, Trump recognized the suffering that fluidity is causing.” Big whoop. Bernie Sanders recognized it, too. And he was all about addressing it. That was THE central issue of his program. But he couldn’t even win the primary because his way of addressing fluidity did not include a possibility of acting out the rage against it by pouring it out against people who symbolize it. 

Here is a great article about Trump. It would be hilarious if it weren’t so damn tragic that people who are tired of the elites voted for a guy who is the embodiment of the elites. They think that some academic who is in constant fear for his job and struggling to pay the bills or a journalist whose newspaper is destined to die within a couple of years are elitist. But a fellow who was born with a platinum spoon encrusted with diamonds up his asshole is the man of the people.

1. If in the Midwest people are kind, here in Texas they are even more so. It’s overwhelming how nice everybody is.
2. At the conference lunch yesterday we were served a salad with fresh berries and roasted pecans that finally made me understand why people eat pecans. The Midwestern pecans are garbage. Or maybe it’s all in the way they cook them. 
3. Save for the palms and the Hispanics, I’m not seeing any difference from anywhere else. I’m not feeling any special Texanness. Not a single person in cowboy attire.
4. People are a lot more cosmopolitan than in St Louis. Houston is a cultured city, a lot more so than Baltimore, Philadelphia and Chicago. 
5. The stereotype of dumb, redneck Texans is stupid. 
6. Save for the climate and the bizarrely horrible roads, I could be very happy in Houston. That’s something I did not expect. 

People who write for fun are always bigger than their writing. I, for instance, am larger, more complex, more interesting in person than my writing in this blog.

But people who create art are always smaller than their writing. You meet the author of an incredibly powerful piece and it’s always a disappointment. The person is so much smaller, less profound than the writing.