The worst that can happen to Team Trump is what’s happening now. John McCain and Lindsey Graham are expressing concern. Orrin Hatch is saying, “I don’t think this is relevant to the Trump administration.” The same 36 to 42 percent of America that has backed Trump since the spring still backs him. Repeat, ad infinitum.

Precisely. This is why I scroll down as fast as I can whenever I see yet another one of those Trumpo- Russian revelations in my newsfeed. 

This test says that my color perceptions are those of an 87-year-old.

Erm.

Overeating, smoking, alcohol, drugs, anxiety – these are all the results of oral stage traumas. This is why many people move so easily between them. Recovered drug addicts start drinking. Former smokers overeat. And so on. 

An unhealthy relationship with money is a result of a different kind of trauma. It’s called anal-stage trauma. There are two general kinds of these traumas: the accumulating type and the dispersing type. 

If you want to see a perfect enactment of the accumulating type, turn on Shark Tank and observe Kevin O’Leary, the billionaire who chants “I just want more MAAAHNAAAAY.” I know nothing about his real-life persona but the character he plays on the show is deeply anally wounded. 

The dispersing type is somebody who is constantly haunted by money troubles irrespective of how much they make. Such people are always one bill away from disaster. They will engineer situations where they are always one step away from ruin because it’s their way of exercising control over life, strange as it might sound. They might have enormous incomes and be constantly skint because that state is their normal. 

Another manifestation of anal-stage traumas is one’s relationship with things. Hoarders, for instance, are a classic example of these traumas. And so are obsessive neatniks.

This is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read:

I have been all over the world and have witnessed some rough scenes, but . . . America is still one of the harshest places I have ever been to. For a large fraction of the American population, this country is a coast-to-coast school of hard knocks and sucker punches.

And the best part is that the darn narcissist seems actually to mean it. Must be one of those people who refer to themselves as “a survivor” after having a bad hair day.

It doesn’t matter how much information is available, how easy it is to travel and learn about the world, people will still believe whatever self-serving bunch of lies makes them feel more important.  

Bernie Sanders went to West Virginia. This is good. I believe all politicians should go there and not come back until they can tell us WTF is going on and how is it possible to have this kind of devastation and penury in the richest country on Earth. 

I was in West Virginia long before I knew anything about the region, the coal, the drugs, or liquid capital. It was one of the most poignant experiences of my life. Folks, it looked worse than Ukraine. Literally. In Ukraine, we obviously have a very good understanding of deindustrialization. We saw it happen in the late 1980s and all through the 1990s. But I’ve never seen anything this bad in Ukraine. 

And it’s not just poverty. Latin American countries are poor. But the people there are not defeated, they are not devoid of joy and life like I’ve seen in West Virginia. 

Since then, I read every article that mentions West Virginia. I live in a very pretty and well-to-do area now, but I feel that I can’t preserve my humanity if I pretend that what I saw doesn’t exist. 

I’m reading this very interesting article on Wal-Mart leaving West Virginia and there’s a sentence I don’t understand. It must be something cultural:

Already, she spends half her $1,200 post-tax monthly salary on car insurance and repayments.

What are “repayments”? $550 a month sounds like an enormous expense. It’s more than 1/3 our mortgage payment. Does anybody know what it is?

When a colleague heard we were going away to the beach for 15 days, she was all, “OMG, you are SO European. I’d love to have one of those long vacations, like you Europeans do.”

“You could,” I said. “We aren’t back to teaching until the end of August.”

“No,” she said. “I don’t have the mentality. I’d feel guilty all the time.”

I just stared because I can’t begin to imagine feeling guilty about a staid family vacation on the beach. It’s not like I’m suggesting she go shopping to Paris with a lover for 2 weeks while the husband is home with the kids. How European do you have to be to allow yourself a trip to the beach with your family?

I’m trying to teach Klara emotional facial expressions from a baby book. Turns out she can identify a sad face a lot easier than I can. I need to consult the accompanying text to find out what the expression means. 

I’m great at teaching her how to express anger, at least. 

Russian state propaganda has photoshopped Putin into an empty chair to make it look as if world leaders huddled around him for instructions. 

Of course, the photo was revealed to be fake within hours because it’s super easy to search images these days. 

This is how dumb these propagandists are. And yet we allowed them to overrun The New York Times, The Nation, countless other papers, blogs, and Facebook pages. 

The very first Uber driver I got here started ranting about refugees in Germany. I didn’t even register if he’s for or against because I’m on vacation and don’t even care about the G20, let alone some stranger’s views on Germany.