A Weird Brain

I have the weirdest brain. Today, the Chancellor was giving a budget talk and I really wanted to listen and understand what he was saying. So I read short stories in German and answered questions about them in German in my mind while I listened to the talk. Then I saw that the Provost noticed that I was reading the whole time and was giving me dirty looks. I don’t blame her because it is truly weird that I need to be doing German exercises in order to hear a budget talk in English. Otherwise, I’d get tragically distracted and not hear a word.

People often think I’m being rude when I’m trying to do the exact opposite.

I’m freaked out by being this way as much as anybody else.

The Real Villain

I decided to listen to Tucker Carlson’s video about Israel to understand his perspective. Ten minutes in, he started repeating like an unhinged parrot that, “I don’t blame the government of Israel for any of it. The real villain is the United States.” Truly, this guy hasn’t found any situation or occurrence for which he doesn’t blame the United States. It seems he’s not doing anything any more except blaming the United States.

We used to call such people leftists, and I don’t understand why we no longer do.

A Bill Ayers Throwback

As I’m reading Days of Rage, I want to introduce everybody to my 2013 review of a book by Weatherman Bill Ayers.

I still vividly remember from the book how these mega rich people employed the services of a psychoanalyst who was something crazy famous like Jung’s disciple, or something. They’d have their every whim catered to while they played at being working class revolutionaries.

As a student from Bolivia said today in class, “In South America, all of the rich people are right-wing. But here in the US, the richer they are, the more they are to the left.”

Another thing I remember from the book is what an absolute soul-crushing ogre Ayers’s wife Bernardine Dohrn was in his portrayal. I think she probably abused him because he sounded completely beaten down by her. Mind you, he doesn’t complain. To the contrary, he behaves like a typical abused wife, protesting how hugely important and wonderful Bernardine is in a shrill, terrified tone.

Ayers and Dohrn were such African-American wannabes that they called their very white children Zayd and Malik. Both sons turned out well, though, because the rich parents bought a gigantic amount of psychological help for them.

I usually forget everything I can’t use for work immediately after reading it. That I retained so much from a book read over a decade ago is a sign that Ayers is a talented author. The writing was just so gosh-darn upbeat. Nice, nice book.

Worse Than Rape

I saw this tweet at the time when I was taking a break from reading Days of Rage where the following quote from Eldridge Cleaver was cited:

This book was a mega bestseller, named as one of the best books of the year by NYTimes. The Black Panthers are celebrated as heroes by the Left, specifically at my university this semester where every freshman must read a book glorifying them.

Vulgar

I found an evil Mormon:

The vulgarity in both the Mormon and the Chinese guy is through the roof. The next step is truly to whip out their penises and start measuring them publicly.

To clarify: I don’t remotely believe that all Mormons and all Chinese are like this. It’s these two that I find objectionable.

Q&A about Old Reagan Posts

You are referring to the discussion about Reagan, right? If there’s one topic where my opinions didn’t change, it’s that one. I don’t like Reagan. He was a neoliberal before neoliberalism migrated to the Left.

Speaking of migration, do you know how Reagan used it to make sure California never voted conservative ever again? That dude was toxic on so many levels.

I do like the other great Original Neoliberal, Margaret Thatcher, though. At least, she was smart and gave great speeches.

On the end of the USSR, every day that passes proves that I was right from the beginning. It was a planned action aimed at leaving the exact same people in power while tricking the West into abandoning caution. Reagan had ef all to do with it.

So on that particular post, I stand by absolutely everything. If you find the one with the saucer-sized badge of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, I do take that one back. And the Michael Brown posts. I was duped beyond what words can describe. I’ll never stop feeling embarrassed over that.

The First Bucket

Sent the book to a publisher today. And to add to what I said in the previous post, I don’t exactly kill myself working. I don’t work past 3 pm. Except Wednesday when I finish at 1 pm. I haven’t graded or prepared class on weekends in years. But look at my productivity. I haven’t broken a deadline either in publishing or administratively ever. I’m editor-in-chief of an academic journal, and I’m equally effective there. Everything is graded the day of or the day after, at the latest.

I see colleagues work crazy hours and they are still stuck on that article from 2 years ago. And they are great people, very hard-working. But they aren’t doing it right. They aren’t filling the first bucket. They think that the first bucket is for whatever is left over after filling the third. But it doesn’t work like that.

You know how Ayn Rand said that before you are able to say “I love”, you need to be able to say “I”? It’s the same thing. You aren’t creating because you haven’t allowed yourself to say “I”. The I lives in the first bucket. You are feeding it leftovers and wondering why nothing satisfactory comes out of it.

Q&A: Career Reinvention

Great questions today. Great, great questions.

It’s the same reason why childhood and adolescence last much longer today than they did in 1825. The world is more complicated. The subjectivation (meaning becoming your own person with a stable sense of self) lasts about a decade longer than it did 200 years ago. Learning anything that counts as a career (and not just a job) and brings status and money takes longer because everything that is valued has grown in complexity. Everything simpler has been automated or doesn’t count as a career.

How does this coexist with constantly reinventing yourself? I have bad news. Or good, if you are really neoliberalized. You need to be preparing for the new career while working full-time in the existing one. If you split your time investment in 3 buckets, this is what the result should look like:

A good neoliberal does not work an 80-hour week and fall asleep over a stale takeout burrito. That’s the life of a good neoliberal’s slaves. A good neoliberal does 3 hours of tennis a week and an hour of yoga / jogging daily, spends 30 minutes slowly preparing The Very Special Salad with The Very Special Drink, practices ukelele, meditates in a forest, and works in the short bursts between tending lovingly to himself. And achieves more than the slave does in 80 miserable hours. His career is to be himself and manifest this himself-ness in whatever area comes by without any specific one meriting emotional attachment. You can’t look at the time dedicated to any area as wasted if you spend most of it feeding the first two buckets.

Not If

Not if but when. This will happen as certainly as the Sun rising in the East each morning. Absolutely nothing whatsoever has been done to dissuade the left from doing this.

There’s still time but at the moment it’s inevitable that this is exactly what will take place.

Q&A: My First Marriage

Well, there would have been no marriage at all under those conditions. Maybe I didn’t explain this before but the only reason I got married at 19 was to get my parents to stop harassing me. I grew up in an environment of relentless psychological abuse. I had not a shred of privacy. I was constantly invaded in every possible way. Last spring when I was preparing for surgery, the nurse said I had to remove my underwear. I threw a hysterical fit because I had learned since childhood to bundle up my genital area for sleep. Even to give birth it was a struggle and a half to remove my underwear. You only know if you know, and I pray that you don’t.

When I was growing up, there was no door to close when I went to sleep. No lock on the bathroom door. Not the tiniest space or occasion to not be observed and vilified for everything I was. I had to read my books in secret. I’m sure you’ve noticed what reading means to me. But I could only do it in complete secrecy. I couldn’t have friends, receive phone calls, be anywhere except at home and in school. I couldn’t have an unapproved facial expression or any emotion except gratitude and joy. I was called the most atrocious things for undergoing the normal puberty because it didn’t happen at the same age and in the same way as my mother’s had. I couldn’t have a bra because it drove my mother to fits of extreme rage. When I finally did acquire a bra, I had a whole elaborate procedure to conceal that I wore it. For several days each month we weren’t allowed to sneeze, chew, flush the toilet, or breathe loudly. And this is only the beginning. We were in a religious cult with no God. That’s what it was like.

What do you think all of these years of psychoanalysis are in aid of? Entertaining me?

If I had to fake-marry to get out at least physically, that was a small price to pay. But if I’d known that there would be no escape from that form of escape, I would have found a different way.