Speaking of college acceptance, my Ukrainian instructor was almost refused admittance to our grad program because she scored poorly on some stupid online test. Grad school admission is a formality for our language instructors who don’t get diplomas or degrees. But I almost was refused an opportunity to bring her over because of this test score.

I tried explaining that, as she was taking the test, she had to interrupt it twice to go to the bomb shelter. And yet she still came back and finished the test. Yes, she scored a little below the cutoff. It was probably a little hard to concentrate. But this is clearly a person who won’t find whatever we do at our university to be too challenging.

I think I found a way around the stupid requirement but I’m still annoyed. I wouldn’t say anything if this was a person seeking an actual degree. But this is somebody who is coming to teach at my department. If I’m willing to be understanding, why should anybody stand in my way?

Juan Manuel de Prada traces how worker rights were dismantled in Spain and how sex freedoms were used to make the impoverishment more palatable:

Divorce was legalized at the same time that at-will firing became law; abortion became legal at the exact same time that the dismantling of our industry was undertaken; gay marriage became legal at the same time that “labour reforms” were introduced, turning workers into disposable rags; and, finally, transgender postulates are being imposed at the same time that the mockingly called “sharing economy” and the cynically called “entrepreneurship” are being established, turning the worker into a scatterbrain who has to make a living in the most unseemly ways and beggarly ways.

La enmienda a la totalidad

Yesterday, I saw photos from a manifestation of asexuals, demanding their “rights”. Obviously, none of them could remotely define which rights they were lacking in the sexual sphere. Then, I’m sure they all went to their crappy rented apartments and their miserable, half-indigent lives. Yet they are sure that it’s in the realm of sex where they are most aggrieved. This is the real mass delusion of our times. We believe that main transgressions against us and main freedoms we should seek lie in the genital area.

Since I started the day with quoting Arestovych, here are his July 4th well-wishes:

247 years ago, the most curious social experiment in the history of mankind began. It was the United States of America.
Today, everybody criticizes the United States.
America is controlled by a leftist mob. Its bureaucracy has grown to be almost as bad as the Soviet one. It has renounced its role of world leadership. It can’t decisively put Putin in his place, and much more.
But the United States remains a laboratory whose workings determine where the world is heading and how humanity understands itself.
I criticize the American leadership a lot for its half-hearted measures in helping Ukraine – and not only because this makes things difficult for Ukraine, but because it makes everything worse for America itself.
I love what America used to be. I love what it was until 2001, after which it went in the wrong direction in a pronounced way.
And now I’m following with great curiosity where America is heading in a historical perspective.
– I wish her good luck and best wishes on its birthday!
God bless America in spite of everything.)

I agree that America will be fine and will emerge from this somewhat pathetic moment eventually. There aren’t big, unsolvable issues, there is mewling uncertainty but that’s not a big deal. All we need to do is lose the crippling tendency to catastrophize everything which is rampant both on the left and on the right.

Life is good, let’s go enjoy our barbecues or roast turkeys, as the case may be.

Arestovych spent a month touring meetings with Western political and military leadership. He’s shocked by what he saw. The safetyism, the incapacity to make a decision, the crippling uncertainty, the passivity – it’s sad to watch. He says they start every other sentence with “we fear that” and “we don’t know what”.

“I came there to talk to them as a politician but realized that what they need is a psychologist,” says Arestovych.

We are seeing evidence of all this every day. We are bickering over tiny, insignificant things because we are confused and intimidated by serious stuff. We fret over Harvard acceptance rates and dudes in dresses to avoid noticing real issues. We boycott woke companies over culture war issues but can’t manage to protest bad working conditions.

Trump supporters on Breitbart and DeSantis supporters around Pedro Gonzalez are bickering over who is more racist.

There’s no better evidence of being completely clobbered by the opponent than to accept his worldview as the norm.

Next step: a primary debate among GOP candidates as to who is more guilty of “misgendering”.

Prada links the financialization of the economy with the inflation and vaporization of the concept of freedom. The latter, he says, was done to assist the former. This might sound confusing but this is what it means in simple terms.

We all know that the Great Recession took place in 2007-9. We all felt or at least observed its effects. But we can’t explain why it happened. Or rather, we can explain it emotionally but we don’t understand the mechanics. The economy had severed its attachments to the physical reality and moved into “the space of flows”. It’s no longer about who makes the best tangible physical products. It’s about who is best at the obscure machinations with “financial instruments”. Normal people can’t remotely understand how these “instruments” work but those instruments have an enormous impact on our lives.

A parallel process took place with the idea of freedom. People used to seek (and defend and die for) specific freedoms aimed at clear, well-defined goals. A freedom of religion to worship God. A freedom of speech to speak truth. A freedom of national self-definition to preserve a culture and a language. But now freedom is not sought for a purpose. It’s sought for its own sake that nobody attempts to explain or understand. Like the freedom for a man to “breastfeed” a baby. Nobody asks or explains why it’s needed. Why is it necessary to be free to do it? For what purpose?

Or the freedom to invite drag queens to read to kids. People are really attached to that one. But why? Why is it necessary? What is the purpose? So much effort is expended for something extremely unnecessary and, frankly, deeply boring.

The opening up of the idea of freedom, Prado argues, ties people to a pursuit of a growing array of these very earthly “freedoms” just as capital flies away into the ether, taking much of our property (which is necessary for any actual freedom) with it.

I want to give a little example of Juan Manuel de Prada’s writing so people know what they are getting into if they decide to check him out:

Robotization will generate huge economic benefits, of which only a tiny portion —under the guise of a philanthropic handout— will be used to cover the “basic income” of the unemployed masses. The rest of the UBI will be paid for by milking the dwindling workforce even more. The so-called universal basic income is a fundamental component in the plan that the globalist elites have designed to destroy national economies and establish a hegemonic plutocratic reign. UBI will serve to keep in a state of “controlled poverty” the huge masses of workers condemned to structural unemployment, after the productive fabric of the nation will be destroyed. Some people will be delusional enough to see the UBI as a joyous liberation from the Biblical curse of hard work. But instead it will be contemptuous alms, not so much in what concerns its amount (which will be enough to guarantee “sustainable poverty”) as in its meaning. Human beings need to love and feel linked to what they do. We need to commit to the product of our effort and create associative networks through work. And, once that link between a human being and the product of his labor is removed, all we will have left is a life of idle vermin.

Juan Manuel de Prada, La enmienda a la totalidad

This 4th of July I celebrate not only Independence Day, one of my favorite holidays, but also the 25th anniversary of my arrival in this hemisphere.

N came up with a great plan to have a memorable celebration: we will have a traditional Christmas meal on July 4th.

Yes, I said Christmas. Roast turkey, mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts, cranberry sauce. It’s a quarter of a century anniversary, folks. It deserves a celebration.

N and Klara got locked in the local bookstore. They were sitting on the floor between the book stacks, absorbed in their reading, and didn’t notice it was closing time and everybody had left.

I don’t often feel envy but being locked in a bookstore is supposed to be my personal fantasy.

I love Ruth Rendell’s standalone novels but dislike the Inspector Wexford series.

Rendell’s Wexfords were way too liberal for me even when I was on the left. Each novel defends some leftist cause while portraying anybody the least bit conservative as a complete moron at best and an evildoer at worst. There’s a million novels in the series, and they are all equally preachy in the most predictable way.

Curiously, Rendell’s standalone novels are imbued with a deeply conservative sensibility. Look at what I wrote about The Face of Trespass the other day. It doesn’t get more Christian than what she does in that novel.