Yesterday we had a really tense, really angry meeting of the department chairs and the Dean. People split into two groups:

1. Those who believe that austerity measures are being imposed in good faith and for good reasons. They believe we need to throw ourselves eagerly into implementing them because “the numbers” show that the situation is dire and “we” have “difficult choices to make.”

I really loved that “we”. As if the new austerity administrator sought our opinion instead of issuing edicts that we are supposed to obey. I’m quoting verbatim from what I said at the meeting.

Curiously, group 1 ended up being 100% male.

2. Those who have noticed 15+ years of budget cuts and no longer believe in “the numbers” or that austerity solves anything. This was a group that was both male and female. It’s also older and has no immigrants except for me.

I’m sure everybody can figure out which group is mine. I honestly can’t understand how people still take the yearly announcements of “crucial” austerity measures that are supposed to solve everything but always lead to the need for more austerity. This year, “the numbers” were so obviously cooked that people burst out laughing when we were first given them.

The only restraint I showed was not saying the word “neoliberal.” I’m saving it for later. But I went all out otherwise.

Is it true that he wants to run for president? Of the United States? Because he can stick his stupid flex alerts, or whatever the neoliberal terminology of the moment is, deep into his anal cavity.

I can’t imagine how anybody with an intact brain could want to vote for this idjit. But then, Canada has been voting for an identical one for years.

I saw the mealy-mouthed expressions of support for labor unions from the officials of the Biden administration, and they really raised my hackles. Hundreds of thousands of Central Americans are being dragged across the border precisely because they’ll never organize and never demand any rights. Yes, organized labor was a great invention of humanity but it’s been destroyed by this habit of flooding the labor market with cheap, mute, terrified workers you can abuse as much as you want and them throw out like discarded Kleenex when a fresh shipment comes in.

Yes, Republicans have been terrible to labor, too. But they aren’t running around, congratulating themselves on being the party of labor. I have no beef with people who sincerely believe in free markets and see unions as an obstacle to economic development. I disagree but I respect their position. It’s the dishonesty I can’t stand. You can’t simultaneously be for unions and for open borders. It’s not possible. Choose one and stick with it. Don’t tell us you are pro-union as you are marching a crowd of strikebreakers across the picket line.

Neoliberalism wants people to stay out of politics. Politics becomes something that the Twitters and the Googles of the world decide among themselves. People, with their needs, demands, thoughts, feelings and expectations, get on their nerves. Neoliberalism really dislikes people.

Here’s what neoliberalism does to push us out of politics:

1. Identities. Pronouns, endlessly proliferating gender identities, lists of sexual preferences, and the anti-racism that pits people against each other – all this aims to convince us that we are so unique that it’s impossible to find anything in common with anybody else and that nobody fully shares our interests and needs. Politics is all about people putting aside their individual differences and uniting around a common goal. If they can’t do it, there’s no politics.

2. Trauma. Micro aggression workshops, trigger warnings and the habit of seeing every minor inconvenience as trauma teach us to perceive other human beings as a threat. Any contact with others can wound. Once again, you won’t be able to get together and put forward a political program if you are terrified of human contact.

3. Fault. The idea that everything is always your own fault and every mishap that happens is of your own making turns politics into an exercise in futility. Instead, people compete who’s a better manager of his or her life, posting boasty and highly curated social media narratives.

4. Both Sides. Once we decide that there are no meaningful differences between political parties or individual politicians, our goose is cooked. We are not going to participate, and this leaves the field clear for those who do.

5. Rigged. The idea that the system is rigged against you is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If it’s rigged, we don’t need to participate. If we don’t participate, we have rigged it against ourselves by our abstention.

6. Feeling Good. In absolutely no other realm of our existence does neoliberalism let us privilege feeling good over producing results. Try telling your boss that instead of fulfilling your sales quota you’ll let him repeat the words “huge sales” many times. Crazy, right? But in politics we easily accept that all we’ll ever get is feeling like good, virtuous people. Our standard of living will go down, crime will rise, schools will deteriorate, roads won’t get fixed – but we won’t care as long as we get regular injections of feel-good slogans.

7. Anti-personality Cult. In neoliberalism, everything is about personalities. It’s all about who has the best personal brand, who attracts the most followers, who is most accomplished, most worthy of admiration. This works in every area of life. . . except politics. Our top politicians are all extremely physically unattractive, old, unwell, with unappealing personal lives, shady and skanky family members, and, invariably, some physical disfigurement or defect. There are no interesting stories, no great personalities, no history of admirable achievement among them. Everything that neoliberalism teaches us to treasure is very conspicuously absent.

What other ways of devaluing politics are you noticing?

Looks like a significant majority of Chileans has rejected the proposed new constitution that is crazy woke. Why it was necessary to spend three years coming up with a happy wokester manifesto posing as a constitution is unclear. What the people of Chile had to vote on today was less a constitution than a wish list cobbled together by a bunch of uninformed hippy-dippy children.

My husband happily informed me a moment ago that it turns out there’s no work tomorrow!

Happy surprises abound for people who don’t pay attention.

I always vote for our local state representative who is a former colleague. Her opponents are always some spoiled trust fund brats and she is a normal person. But in this electoral cycle she’s doing everything to annoy me. Her campaign ads are everywhere and all she talks about in them is how much she supports Planned Parenthood. This gets on my nerves not because I don’t support Planned Parenthood, which after the “livers, we’ve got livers” video I definitely do not, but because abortion is not a problem in Illinois. We have the entire state border with Missouri decorated with billboards saying “Come to Illinois where abortion is easy.” What I’d like to hear instead is what she’s doing to make sure Illinoisans have a higher standard of living and have all the children they want. We are in a state of demographic collapse in Illinois because people are leaving in droves.

I so don’t want to vote for her opponent who is a multimillionaire heiress posing as “a small business owner.” But it’s getting so, I don’t think I’ll have a choice.

This symbolizes perfectly what the Russian culture has become. A bunch of degenerates living in insane opulence are siccing the hungry, stupid population on the rest of the world for fun.

I’m calling them degenerates not because of the costumes. Kirkorov is a horrible person. Purchased babies from a surrogate mother and chucked her away. The babies are accessories, dragged out for photo ops and then left with servants for months. He hates women and got in a huge public scandal for beating a female employee for annoying him. But he’s an idol in Russia, adored with religious fervor by the population.

“What is this, Klara?” I ask, pointing at a very messy corner with toys and books. “What do you call this, young lady?”

“It’s chaos, Mommy,” she says calmly. “The adjective is chaotic. The synonyms are messy and dirty. The antonyms are…”

Of course, I collapse with laughter and don’t manage to tell her off for the mess. Thankfully, she was so gratified by the effect of her response that she cleaned up with needing further imprecations.

For white collar workers, #MeToo, BLM and the rainbows are what strikes were for factory workers 100 years ago. They are the picket lines created in an attempt to prevent employers from firing them in favor of cheaper workers who’ll agree to work in poorer conditions. It’s usually the low-rung, most dispensable people at an organization who do pronouns and BLM slogans in email signatures.

Since I’m on this topic, yesterday I was asked about the difference between capitalism in the manufacturing stage and today. Here’s the answer: factory capitalism needed people. It needed them to come and stay put, showing up dependably every day at the conveyor belt. Digital or neoliberal capitalism doesn’t need people. It wants them to go away. The capitalism of firing substituted the capitalism of hiring.

The first thing our new top administrator said to us is that there are too many people. These were his literal words, too many people. He proceeded to firing everybody in sight with fanatical zeal. Nothing is more annoying to a neoliberal than workers, payrolls, all these people expecting to be paid, demanding working conditions, vacations, sick days, leaving at the strike of five pm, encumbered with families – what a bother.

This is why there’s a vogue of putting “diverse people” in leadership roles. They can do the firing without the employees managing to BLM or LGBTQIA+ them. They are the strikebreakers.