Decolonization now simply means “imposing the far-left dogma on everything”. This is why I blame Timothy Snyder for his efforts to connect this term to Ukraine. Ukrainians don’t know any better but he should.

I also absolutely hate the phrase “amplify voices”, and it’s another horrible, left-wing expression that a bunch of useful idiots are trying to connect to Ukraine.

Very rich people are all globalists. Nations annoy them because national borders stand in the way of a ceaseless rapid movement of money and people.

A delegation from Hamas is visiting the Kremlin, being feted and greeted there. Moscow is issuing calls for a ceasefire and blaming the US for “an increase in tensions between Israel and Palestine”. There’s no observable difference between the proclamations of the leading BLMers and the Kremlin’s position on the issue.

There are many people who should be feeling pretty stupid right now but they are too stupid to see what’s happening.

In an effort to find more economical dishes, I made pasta e fagioli. I don’t like the soupy kind because I can’t take soup to work as lunch. I made it like a regular dish. And finally I managed to make it right.

Turns out the secret is to add a lot of garlic. I was peeling garlic and got distracted, so there ended up being a lot of it. I didn’t want to waste it, so I went ahead and added all of it to the sofrito. And the dish became completely amazing.

The problem with amazing dishes, though, is that they evaporate fast. I’ll have to cook again today because there’s very little left.

What are your favorite economical dishes?

Cancel culture is a product of the neoliberal society and will be solved by neoliberal means.

Here’s how.

Neoliberalism stratifies. There’s no middle in anything. It’s all extremes.

It’s also all about individual choices. If you have discipline and willpower, you win. If you don’t, you lose. Those who can boundary up win. Those who gush out lose.

It’s all quite new but soon enough the stratification will become very clear. The gushing, the emoting, the structurally oppressed and the perennially unsafe will run around with their outrage campaigns, cancellations, and dramas. That will be all they’ll have.

And then there will be those who won’t want to collapse into a mental heap. They’ll realize that they need to boundary up against the drama. They’ll know that they need to keep themselves under control because nobody else will. They’ll observe the cancel crowd like entomologists observe gnats.

In short, cancel culture won’t go away but nobody with anything resembling an actual life will notice.

Neoliberal mentality is seeping into the brain of each of us. Some have accepted it completely, others are trying to, and many more can’t or won’t join. Which category are you? This simple test will help you figure it out.

When I think about changing my profession or occupation to a completely new one, it feels

1 – exhilarating

2 – scary

3 – stupid

4 – completely detached from reality

How many apps do you use to track and enhance your productivity?

1 – one or two

2 – three or more

3 – none

4 – what are productivity apps?

Do you agree that traveling is one of the most important things in life?

1 – it’s fine but not crucial

2 – it is very important to be able to travel

3 – I don’t have money to travel

4 – it’s pretty unimportant

How do you feel about the expression “pushing the boundaries”?

1 – depends on the context

2 – positive

3 – negative

4 – I don’t understand the expression

What is more important, duty or freedom?

1 – duty but only if you freely chose it

2 – freedom

3 – depends on the context

4 – can’t say for sure

What are you most scared of from the following list:

1 – chronic illness

2 – a climate catastrophe

3 – going broke

4 – war

Do you agree that it’s crucial to have children to continue your bloodline?

1 – it’s important to have children but not for that reason

2 – every person has their own reasons to have or not have children, and these reasons are equally valid

3 – I agree

4 – it’s great if you can afford it

Mental illness is unfairly stigmatized

1 – nobody can stigmatize you if you haven’t chosen to be stigmatized

2 – it’s true

3 – to the contrary, it’s fashionable to be a mental basket case

4 – this is a woke talking point

I help my children do their homework (or would help if I had them)

1 –  there is homework? How quaint

2 – yes. Academic success is very important

3 – I homeschool

4 – I know I should but I don’t have the time

I don’t have enough money because

1 – I have psychological problems, and I’m working on them with my finance coach

2 – I don’t work hard enough and spend too much

3 – the economy is shit

4 – there’s no fairness in life

How many personal development courses have you taken in this calendar year?

1 – two or three

2 – do my yoga classes count?

3 – none

4 – are you trying to be funny on purpose?

Do you (or would you) read books on child-rearing?

1 – who has the time?

2 – yes, a lot

3 – I read articles online on the subject

4 – my parents raised me perfectly fine without any books

Where do you get most of your news?

1 – LinkedIn

2 – Twitter or Facebook

3 – TV

4 – I’m too busy for the news

What are your most used apps?

1 – email and reader apps

2 – social media apps

3 – I don’t use smartphones

4 – gaming / betting apps

Work/life balance is important

1 – that’s stupid because work is life

2 – very important but hard to achieve

3 – no, one is much more important than the other

4 – only snowflakes say that

You find yourself having to take care of an elderly relative you don’t much like, and you think…

1 – this is an opportunity for personal growth

2 – I hate having to take time away from my kids to take care of this relative

3 – I have to do what I have to do

4 – I need to have a drink. Or five

Ready for the responses? Here they are:

If none of the options fully describe you, place yourself into category 2 and remember that everything that is true for the 2s is even truer for you.

If you have more 1s than other numbers:

Congratulations! You have been completely neoliberalized, and neoliberalism is rewarding you very well for being a smart, loyal adherent. You must really love your life, even if many people think you are a cold bastard who has been very lucky. Neoliberalized, by the way, is not an insult. Neoliberalism can be bloody exhilarating if you do it right. And you definitely mastered it.

If you have more 2s than other numbers:

You really want to be part of the neoliberal game but you are not doing it right. The way you are playing it, you’ll end up on anti-anxiety meds and sleeping aids in no time. You are being hit with every negative consequence of neoliberalism and are catching no positives. Do you feel like what you just read means you aren’t trying hard enough? Wannabe neoliberals always feel like they aren’t trying hard enough. Guilt and self-blame are their constant companions. Want to move out of this category? Quit the guilt game.

If you have more 3s than other numbers:

Neoliberalism goes against your every instinct. And it doesn’t like you either. Neoliberalism and you are filled with well-deserved mutual resentment. You know exactly what you hate about it and why. Your courage is to be admired.

If you have more 4s than other numbers:

You are lost and confused in the neoliberal storm. And probably very pissed off. I don’t blame you but you’ll feel better if you calm down a bit and look over at category 3. These are your friends in the anti-neoliberal camp but they aren’t freaking out and can help.

What you feel when you hear “from the river to the sea” is exactly what the wokes feel when you say “all lives matter”, “abortion is murder” and “men can’t give birth”.

Do those feelings justify silencing and cancellation? If they do, that should work in all cases. If they don’t, that should also work in all cases.

It felt extremely unpleasant when on 9/11 my professor was celebrating and blaming the US in class. It feels even more unpleasant today when that same professor is plastering the social media with Russian propaganda. But I’m not naming this person. I’m not writing letters to the administration to get him fired. Because I won’t cede my principles to a short-lived pleasure of punishing him. All of our lives become worse when we do this.

If “feeling unsafe” justifies forcing people to do things, then COVID lockdowns and forced vaccinations were completely justified. Anything is justified because anybody can claim to feel threatened, wounded, unsafe and genocided at any time and for any reason.

What happened with feelings having an internal locus of control? What happened with being able to master your feelings? Are we all now completely at the mercy of our raging emotions? Are we going to reshape the world endlessly to avoid unpleasant feelings?

I’m shocked and horrified at the people who up until two seconds ago supported free speech and opposed cancellation and have now gone completely in the opposite direction, calling for the persecution, firings and cancellation of the people who made pro-Hamas statements.

People, what are you doing? In the name of everything reasonable, what the flying fuck are you doing? If your psychological discomfort and feelings of being “unsafe” justify the persecution of others, then why isn’t a persecution of you justified? Surely, it’s not hard to find somebody wounded and made unsafe by something you once said.

What are you doing, people? You want to hound somebody as part of a morally outraged mob? You want to support and grow cancel culture? As long as you get to do the cancellation, it’s all good?

For shame. For absolute crying shame.

And those who say “liberals should have a taste of their own medicine now that cancel culture has turned against them” need to remember this moment well. For an extraordinarily important chance to feel momentarily smug on social media, they have given away every argument in favor of free speech. An actual moral advantage has been pissed away to cosplay an angry, self-righteous wokester for three minutes. What an achievement.

Imagine a woman who spends many years fighting against abortion. Organizes political campaigns, goes to clinics. But then an inconvenient pregnancy sends her right to Planned Parenthood for an abortion. “Well,” she says. “I’m not the one who made abortion possible. This is on the libs. I’m just living in the world they made.”

Everybody should say whatever they want. Everybody. Even the people I don’t like. Even the Russian propagandists. Nobody should be coerced into being silent. Freedom of speech only exists if it extends to everybody, not only the people I agree with.

You either have foundational principles or you don’t. Otherwise, you are a wokester who’s been unsuccessful at imposing your wokeness until now.

These are the stages of the formation of a nation-state:

1. First, the intellectual elites work to create the feeling of nationhood, of a national community, of cultural togetherness and value.

2. Then, once this work is done, the people demonstrate that the message sank and come out – maybe peacefully, maybe not – to proclaim and defend their nationhood.

3. A national government is formed, and it starts imposing uniformity and cohesion.

These are always the steps. The intellectuals, the people, the government. It was like this in Spain where the intellectuals battled all through the 18th century to create the concept of “the Spanish national character” (today we’d say ‘identity’). And then in 1806, people came out to fight for the independence of Spain from the foreign invader when much of that same elite had run away to the country of the invader.

In Ukraine, intellectuals worked all through the Soviet tyranny to keep Ukrainianness alive. And as a result, in 1986 people started raising Ukrainian flags in public. In 1990, still in the USSR, Ukrainians stood, holding hands, across 700 kilometers of the country’s territory to show their support for the Ukrainian independence.

And only after all that the statehood came.

It works the same with the post-nation state. Intellectuals create the ideas, spread them around, people accept them as “common sense” or normal, and the state molds into the new form. Intellectuals, people, state.

Them are the steps.

OK, folks, I’ve had a really shitty month. I get rejected for publication, I get sued, my Arabic instructor quits. I need to brag a little to make myself feel better, so bear with me.

I gave a talk today at a local community together with two other speakers and I slaughtered. I was so good. People came up at the end to say they envy my students because I must be the most amazing professor they’ve ever met. I spoke about what it feels like to be a Ukrainian in the US, so it’s great that I represented in a very positive way.

This is big because I used to be a tragically shy person. I couldn’t buy clothes or a cup of coffee at a coffee shop because I was so shy. And now I entertain large groups like it’s completely normal. I refashioned myself completely to achieve this. It was an effort of willpower and doggedness. If I had always been this way, there wouldn’t be anything to brag about. Some people are naturally outgoing and entertaining. But I was a kid who stood alone in a corner during recess and went hungry because I couldn’t muster the strength to buy anything at the school cafeteria. I was a young woman who missed class because I was terrified of going outside, scared that people would think I was ugly, fat, and awkward.

This whole “be who you are” thing is rubbish. If I remained who I was, I’d still be cowering in fear of every human interaction. Don’t be who you are. Be who you need to be.