Here’s a great question from a reader that I really want to answer. Thank you, reader, for asking it.

Voters are asking, “why should we invest money into defending Ukraine’s borders when we aren’t defending our own?” I’ve been asked this in person, on social media, and during a public talk. This is a very good, reasonable question. I don’t blame people for asking it. They should be asking it.

There’s no good answer to this question. Do you have one? I don’t. I mean, I do but it’s all about the nation-state and the Budapest Memorandum, and you need to be capable of a high degree of abstraction to understand it. Nobody owes me or anybody a higher degree of abstraction.

I don’t know if Mike Johnson is sincerely for closing the border. Maybe he’s pretending, like all politicians. But he’s responding to the genuine and valuable concern of the voters by trying to say, “here’s what I got for you, American citizens, in exchange for Ukraine aid.” There’s no US citizen who is more pro-Ukraine than I am but I don’t blame Mike Johnson for trying to get something for American voters. I do blame the people who are so opposed to doing anything at all for our country that they’d sacrifice Ukraine for that shameful goal. Biden should agree to close the border. He should agree to the natural gas export licenses. Not for Ukraine but for America. And if Ukraine benefits as a result, all the better.

Now my question is, why is Biden refusing? These are good measures that have overwhelming support among voters across the political spectrum. Why can’t we get all three of these things that are beneficial for our economy and the preservation of our nation-state?

I have a wasp nest in my office at work. I mean this literally and not as a metaphor for the state of things in academia. It’s the busiest time of the academic year, and now I’m.an internally displaced person with no office.

It’s barely above freezing outside and I have wasps buzzing over my head in the office. It’s unfair.

When the wasps see me, they perk up immediately because I probably look like their best chance for a meal.

I’ve been invited to write a paid article for a Ukrainian literary portal. Obviously, I won’t accept the money but I will gladly write. It will be about why the word “nationalism” has acquired such negative overtones in the West while it’s seen as a positive thing in Ukraine. I’ll write about the struggle between the nation-state and open-border globalism.

Finally, I’ll be able to bleat excitedly about Zygmunt Bauman to people who aren’t yet sick and tired of me doing it. It’s all good, I’ll get them sick and tired of it soon enough.

Does anybody know? Why is Scotland so… unusual? Why, in general, do separatist societies these days tend to be so far left? And why are they so heavily into the police state? It’s like they want nationhood to snitch on each other all day.

Yes, Je me souviens, I’m looking straight at you and your intense COVID-era snitching. And the rest of your leftie antics because the stories I could tell are quite out there.

I’m happy that I don’t watch the news anymore. It does wonders for my blood pressure not to listen to blatant lies and manipulation.

But the downside is that I have no idea how to pronounce the names of the people in the political process. I only read about them from a large hodge-podge of trusted sources. For instance, I’ve been accenting “Vivek” wrong in my head this whole time.