Day: February 12, 2020

Here are some observations I want to make about Bernie.

1. I’m really over the people who say that Bernie got a lot fewer votes in NH than back in 2016. Of course, one gets more votes running against one person than running against five million candidates. What kind of an idiot takes that as indication of anything but that basic arithmetic works?

2. If Bernie is the nominee and he loses the general, everybody will say that it’s because he’s too radical and nobody buys into his program. But that’s crap. If he loses, it will be because the Democrats have worked extra hard to turn themselves into a poisonous brand nationally. Bernie polls better than a socialist than a Democrat. And it’s not because everybody is suddenly so into socialism. It’s because people break out in hives when they hear the word “Democrats.” I don’t think he’ll lose, by the way. But I do think that Democrats need to get their shit together and get to work.

Lloyd Blankfein says Bernie will “ruin our economy.” (Source: NYTimes).

I rest my case.

P.S. Does anybody here remember the dustup that resulted from my attacks on the evil Blankfein on this blog 10 years ago? My hatred of this man was legendary back then, and it never diminished.

I’m so busy that I’m falling behind on my text messaging.

It’s Klara’s birthday today, so I took a day off. But I still have to do everything I have to do. Plus, I’m planning two birthday parties (one regular and one at church).

So forget email. I have a backlog of text messages.

I have no idea why my pictures, links and comments aren’t posting. I apologize and promise to look into it later today.

In the meantime, I took Klara to the swimming pool. It’s fun for her but I’m deeply traumatized by the barbaric methods of teaching tiny babies to swim. After hearing the poor creatures struggle for their lives and scream desperately for an hour, I’m traumatized.

I have no idea why it’s so important to teach anybody to swim – or do anything – in this ridiculously cruel way.

P.S. Anybody who wants to defend this ridiculousness should go somewhere else because I’m just about to get very angry. I’m sensitive today, and seeing kids suffer is not helping.

A horrible story out of Georgia. The shamelessness and the corruption are shocking.

I have no idea why Bloomberg’s Aspen comments are so controversial. He says the most obvious, boring things everybody knows. What’s the big deal?

Also, the obsession with the supposed evilness of frisking belongs entirely to well-to-do white people.

All of the drama over Bloomberg’s utterly trivial comments comes from this cohort of privileged white lefties over the age of 40. Curiously, it’s the same cohort that loved the TV series The Wire.

Catalonia is trying to pass some half-assed measure to prevent people from switching from catalán to Spanish when speaking to immigrants. The campaign has some pouty slogan that makes me wish for catalán to die out as fast as possible.

What always bugs me about the efforts to goad immigrants into minority languages is that all the measures are punitive and seem aimed at making immigrants hate the language and its speakers. Nobody ever tries to make their culture more attractive or their community more welcoming so that immigrants would be eager to speak their language.

In Quebec, for instance, there’s a constant fight to get non-Muslim immigrants* to speak French. But the French-speaking community is so closed, so utterly impenetrable, and so actively hostile towards anybody not of the community that, of course, immigrants adopt English instead. English-speakers aren’t going to snub you and tell you that you aren’t supposed to have opinions even after 20 years living in the country (true story).

In Ukraine, too, the efforts to make the culture more attractive and more known are currently at an ebb. Ukrainians are notoriously bad at making their achievements known to the world.

In my small and unpopular parish**, there is always somebody standing at the door to welcome newcomers and to make them feel comfortable and wanted. As a result, we had 6 converts last year and two more this year. But if instead of welcoming people, we entered into pacts to be as demanding as possible with newcomers (like the Catalonians are trying to do), people wouldn’t stay.

Make your culture attractive, and people will want to join. The only way to learn to speak a language is through love. And you can’t mandate love. Quit ordering people to like you and show them why they could. And if you are a small, unpopular, largely unknown culture, do what my priest says and “always be humbly grateful for any interest.”

* Muslim immigrants already do. That’s why they have much easier entrance to Quebec.

** Orthodoxy is hard. The most popular church in the area is a clappy-happy Baptist affair with rock music, loud yelling, and zero expectations. And we are about to start a 40-day-long Great Lent.