I know of no other national literature that would be as obsessed with high school sex as American literature is. I’m not talking about YA stuff but serious literature for real adults. It’s one author after another. I can’t think of any Spanish author right now who has written a novel about this topic. There might be somebody but it isn’t a recurring theme. In American literature, I can’t think of an author who hasn’t written at least one book about it.

Right now, I’m reading a novel by Jennifer Egan (probably the most talented US writer of our time). And while I’m doing that, a new novel by Laura Lippmann dropped. And what do you think they are both about?

Exactly.

The brilliant Ohio by Stephen Markley is also obsessively about high-school sex.

And it’s always, ALWAYS depicted in the exact same way: miserable, confused, wallflower girls sexually abused by loud, mean, uncaring boys. Why middle-aged authors would be so into this topic is something I’ll never figure out.

Egan, Lippmann and Markley write extremely well, so I put up with everything else. But the mystery remains.

I could list many more of these books but you get my point.

My kid brought a book to the kids’ gym, hid in a corner and is reading it.

Genes are powerful, indeed.

Let’s go back to our scale of different levels of development.

People on the first 2 levels project themselves onto other people and situations. They are completely unable to process reality without reflecting it back to their own life.

These are the people who can’t read books or watch movies where they can’t find a character to “identify with”. When you tell them about something that happened to you, they respond with “Yes, this happened to me, too”. If you say that you are from Australia, they start listing everybody they know or heard about who’s from there. Any event on the news sends them to dig through their experience in search of something similar.

These people are incapable of understanding others or analyzing events. They reduce the world’s complexity to the the dimensions of their self. It’s not their fault. They are simply stuck on those levels of development.

On the third level, people start realizing that other levels exist, people with a different experience exist, and a road opens for them eventually to stop projecting themselves onto everything.

I used to get extremely annoyed with such people but now I know they aren’t trying to be obnoxious on purpose. It’s simply their level. They honestly have no idea anything else exists.

In contrast to the whiny, self-pitying Barbie speech, I have a life-affirming story about human agency, dignity and civilizational drive.

As you all know, on June 7 Russians blew up the Kahovka dam, creating an environmental catastrophe of enormous proportions. Ukrainians could sit there and feel sorry for themselves but that is not our way. In the humid soil at the bottom of the former reservoir, they have planted vegetable gardens.

It’s still a catastrophe but you can either drown in self-pity or plant some vegetables and guarantee a nice dinner for yourself in the Fall.

When I first went to Cuba, I was stunned to see groups of people sitting at entrances to buildings all day long, drinking rum and smoking. They sat in the most abject filth and it never occured to them to get up and clean their own space. That’s the lack of agency fostered by an authoritarian regime, and it’s sad to see. One of the things that makes us human is the capacity and the need to change our environment and to make it beautiful. Another is our individual agency. Once that’s gone, we turn into a sad shell where a human being used to live.

So everybody has heard about the “iconic” It’s impossible to be a woman l speech in the new Barbie movie, right? I cringed in embarrassment when I read it. The pouty infantilism of this text delivered by a middle-aged woman would be funny if so many women in their forties and fifties didn’t post it on their social media in complete seriousness. Of course, it’s filled with the passive-voice whiny complaints about how “you are supposed”, “you are accused” and “is rigged” that allows the posters to weasel out of who’s doing all this supposing and accusing.

Nothing mentioned in the speech exists in reality. The list of complaints is pure wish-fulfillment. The narcissistically wounded recipients of the speech want to have their every move observed but nobody has time or interest to pay attention. The speech validates their fantasy that the whole world is in thrall to their weight, appearance, behavior, etc.

Yes, Barbie is entertainment that nobody is supposed to take seriously. This is why it’s disturbing that so many women took it seriously.

The full text of the speech is below. I can’t even re-read it, it’s so embarrassing.

It is literally impossible to be a woman. You are so beautiful, and so smart, and it kills me that you don’t think you’re good enough. Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong.

You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas.

You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behaviour, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining.

You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood. But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful.

You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line. It’s too hard! It’s too contradictory and nobody gives you a medal or says thank you! And it turns out in fact that not only are you doing everything wrong, but also everything is your fault.

I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. And if all of that is also true for a doll just representing women, then I don’t even know.”

Today I watched the first episode of Buffy for old time’s sake, and it took me back to 1997 when I first saw it. It was back in Ukraine and the show was introduced with a 15-minute warning that we have to be understanding and tolerant of other cultures. The subtext was “these crazy Americans are very crazy but what can we do, we got to show it.”

The whole thing gave me a bit of a panic attack because I did not enjoy being young and don’t want to be back even momentarily.

It’s an excellent show, though.

Please observe the length of Putin’s pants in that famous conversation the other day when it was announced that Wagner wants to invade Poland:

The old fool was so embarrassed that now Russian newscasts cut the picture at the height of the knee. Mind you, he’s embarrassed about the pants not the hints regarding an invasion of Poland.

I agree they will desist but the idea of being sex-attracted before puberty is lunacy. This is a case where the counterargument fails because it adopts the same bizarre ideas that undergird the original delusion. People who “knew at 9 years of age” that they were gay (or straight) are as deluded as people who “knew” at that age that they were trans. This “knowledge” is a backwards projection from their adult sexuality. Before puberty, I was “attracted” to Vivien Leigh. If I grew up and became a lesbian, I could use that as “proof that I knew”. But since I didn’t, the confirmation bias doesn’t kick in.

Let’s stop sexualizing kids. It’s perfectly fine to be gay (or straight) without “knowing” anything about it in infancy.

The next logical step for Russia is to send an incursion of the Wagner troops from Belarus into Lithuania, a NATO state. Russia can repeat the 2014 trick and pretend that these are rogue troops it doesn’t control. The NATO will eagerly pretend to believe this.

This will be the first time when a NATO country will be hit with complete impunity.

Then Poland will be attacked. Again, complete impunity.

The culminating moment of this process will be a Russian hit on a target in the US that will not receive a response. An explosion, something. And America swallowing it and inventing some self-blaming conspiracy theory like “the CIA did it” or “we brought this on ourselves by being evil”.

The Transfiguration Cathedral is the most important Orthodox cathedral in Odessa. It existed since 1794 but during the Stalin era it was razed, like so many churches. It was rebuilt when Ukraine gained independence. It was crucial for the revival of Orthodoxy in post-Soviet Odessa.

Tonight Russians destroyed it.

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