I especially love it when people say, “But it’s democratic socialism!”, as if the adjective made it all ok.

“Oh, it’s not colonialism I support. It’s democratic colonialism. Well, it’s not slavery I’m into. It’s democratic slavery. It’s not like I favor rape. Only democratic rape.”

I don’t dispute anybody’s right to believe in whatever they want, no matter how strange. It’s weird, though, that people expect this argument to be successful with me, somebody who is normally the only person in the room during these discussions who experienced socialism. And it’s not my ancestors, not someone from a hundred years ago, not someone I read about. People seem sincerely to expect a truly horrible experience I personally had to lose its power because they tacked on an adjective.

Every time I hear this, it makes me think of that horrible “legitimate rape” fellow from a few years back. He honestly saw a difference between “rape rape” and “not really rape rape” and was stunned that people didn’t agree.

Even the word “socialism” seems to turn people who use it into rambling idiots:

The libertarian sees the market as synonymous with freedom. But socialists hear “the market” and think of the anxious parent, desperate not to offend the insurance representative on the phone, lest he decree that the policy she paid for doesn’t cover her child’s appendectomy. Under capitalism, we’re forced to submit to the boss. Terrified of getting on his bad side, we bow and scrape, flatter and flirt, or worse — just to get that raise or make sure we don’t get fired.

In socialist societies, people are total shits to each other in a much higher proportion than in any capitalist country. They are terrified of the bosses a lot more, they submit a lot more, and they turn on each other like hungry animals because that’s what the system makes them.

But this is not the dumbest part of this article. The author tells us that the young socialist politicians are great because:

The stories of these candidates are socialist for another reason: They break with the nation-state.

This is militant, aggressive idiocy and hatred of books, learning, or anything that has to do with the life of the mind. This is why such folks promote censorship and howl against free speech. Anybody who has read absolutely anything whatsoever will see that their doctrine makes no sense.

You give these creeps a tiny bit of power, and the first thing they will do is start censoring. The second thing they do is start terrorizing and labeling. After that, they start building networks of corruption. And that’s it. They don’t do anything else. Censorship, fear, corruption. Socialism doesn’t know another path.

Americans are known around the world for a curious incapacity to rank problems in the order of magnitude. It’s a supermarket mentality where everything is equal to everything else. Take as an example this article about the harassment experienced by female politicians.

The article starts by discussing really bad abuse that a candidate received:

It has been two years since Ms. Schrode, now 27, lost her Democratic primary and moved on. But the abuse — a toxic sludge of online trolling steeped in misogyny and anti-Semitism that also included photoshopped images of her face stretched into a Nazi lampshade and references to “preheating the ovens” — never stopped.

Aside from the anti-Semitic comments, the candidate also received many gang rape threats. I’m sure that any normal person will agree that this is truly horrible. But the article that starts out this strongly, then trivializes the message by listing completely ridiculous examples of “abuse.” An example:

Lauren Underwood, 31, a Democratic House candidate in Illinois, recalled that when she was visiting a supporter, a local Republican stopped by and was affronted when he learned that Ms. Underwood was challenging his friend in Congress. “He threw his shoulders back and stood at his largest and leaned into me, as if he was going to launch at me for having the audacity to run for office,” Ms. Underwood said, adding that her supporter came to her defense.

That somebody stood in a manner she disliked without ever saying or doing anything offensive or abusive is described as equally bad as rape threats and anti-Semitic online trolling.

And this is just one article. If you grew up in the supermarket mentality, you don’t notice it, like fish in the famous joke don’t notice water. People don’t even notice anything wrong with statements like “when I read about the Rwandan genocide, that reminded me of the horrific time when my coffeemaker broke.” OK, I’m exaggerating but only slightly.

A gushy article in my favorite newspaper announces the good news: there are states, the truly progressive ones, that are solving the opioid crisis! The more conservative, i.e. evil, states should learn how it’s really done.

“Wow, great news!” I think and latch on to the article only to discover that the great progressive victory over addiction consists of making more people switch from fentanyl to suboxone. They’ll overdose less, be less of a nuisance, and who cares that they are still addicted? I mean, other than the manufacturers of suboxone and Co and the very progressive politicians whose electoral campaigns they pay for.

I just got my US passport! It only took a little over two weeks. The people in line at the post office kept complaining about the complexity of the process but that’s because they never tried getting a passport in Canada where you study the photo with a magnifying glass to make sure there isn’t a trace of a smile on your face. For those of us whose faces are not naturally grim, it’s very hard to contort our visages into a look that will satisfy the Canadian passport officials.

“Nah, it still looks like you are smiling in this photo,” they keep telling you.

My penultimate Canadian passport sported a photo where I puckered my lips to the point of looking like an angry aardvark. In comparison, the US passport application process was a breeze.

I’m still not feeling American and I won’t until I cross some borders with this passport and finally vote.

But officials said there has been no concrete intelligence pointing to Mr. Putin ordering his own intelligence units to wade into the election to push for a certain outcome, beyond a broad chaos campaign to undermine faith in American democracy.

Chaos is the certain outcome that Putin wants. And he already achieved it. The next goal is even more chaos.

And as a small addendum to the previous post, it’s the end of August, and I have no idea who is running for office in my area and what they are about. I’m a registered Democrat and since I’m OCD, I check if I’m still registered once a week. But there are no flyers, no canvassers, no yard signage, nothing. Maybe it’s too early. Let’s hope there is still time to do something to educate voters.

I finally found time to read an article about the Cohen debacle. I didn’t understand any of it. Except for the example about marijuana. That was a good one. The rest is absolutely mystifying. I don’t believe that any of the people who voted for Trump will understand it. This will be, to them, what Hillary’s emails are to us.

Besides, Bill Clinton was impeached for something similar but a lot worse. The boat of righteous indignation over this sort of thing sailed a long time ago.

One could say, screw Trump voters. And ok, I get it. But screw them for which wonderful, important purpose? President Mike Pence? What is this all in aid of? I have lost the plot of any of this brouhaha a long time ago.

I want to share with you, folks, the most stupid article I have read in a while. It’s so stupid, it’s like a work of art. The article is on neoliberalism, the subject we all know I like. But God, is it ever stupid. It’s a triumph of stupidity of uncommon proportions.

This is what happens when, instead of reading the truly interesting and abundant scholarly treatments of the subject, people try to invent the wheel.