Understanding neoliberalism is actually not hard. Yes, there are many definitions, and volumes upon volumes have been written. But all you really need to get it are two words: freedom and choice.

Neoliberalism is the belief that you should be free from everything. From the hell that are other people, from unpleasantness, age, your physical nature, the past, the tradition, God. You should be free to choose. The only thing you are not free to choose is to stop choosing. Nothing can be left as-is, unmessed with. Nothing is to be accepted as lying outside of the human freedom to change it. And then change it again.

There’s no off-ramp from this on the left side of the road. You can notice that the cult of freedom and choice has gone too far, that people are lonely, that many are miserable and drugged out, that life in general is becoming more uncomfortable. You can notice it but there’s nothing you can do because the moment you say, “no, that’s not working, let’s stop and go back to how it was”, you become the worst of all possible things, a right-winger.

Tony Tulathimutte is an extraordinary talent but he’s looking for an off-ramp on the left and not finding it because it’s not there. I have not yet found a better, more talented and poignant depiction of how neoliberalism devastates people’s lives than his novel Rejection. But he’s terrified of the solution. It’s right there, even on the purely narrative level the novel could have been closed out so much stronger. Instead, it dissolves into word games and the usual over-investment into the inflamed, belabored self.

A negative finding is as important as a positive one. Liberalism has no solution for the ills it created. No amount of talent can locate what is not there. The off-ramp is located on the right.

🚨 NEW: Keir Starmer will use his conference speech tomorrow to say he will rebuild Britain into a "new country"

"A fairer country, a land of dignity and respect. Everyone seen, everyone valued, wealth creation in every single community"

— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) September 29, 2025

Again, I have to ask, is Starmer mocking the Brits? “Everyone seen”, he’ll say exactly at the time when Britons are protesting against his plan to introduce a massive new surveillance regime.

Also, a new country? What if people like their actual country? Is it OK to like your country, or is it necessary always to try and create a new version?

People, I thought Joyce Carol Oates’ Fox was going to be my book of the year but the genteel Old World wordsmith Oates was slayed by this young dude Tony Tulathimutte. Oates is still brilliant but even she can’t do with language what Tulathimutte does. I want to finish his book, re-read it five times in a row and then possibly lick it. God truly loves me to have given me this book.

I have to issue two warnings, though, if people decide to read it.

One is that it gets very sexually explicit in stomach-turning ways. I had to skip 3 whole pages, and I’m a literary critic, I never skip.

The second warning is that unless you are young(ish) and terminally online, you’ll need a dictionary to understand parts of it.

This book is a novelistic rendering of Neoliberal Love. And it’s extremely funny. And talented. It’s so good that drops of linguistic ambrosia are practically dripping off its pages. It was long listed for the National Book Award that was won by the ideological propaganda slog James, which goes to show how stupid the literary establishment is. Rejection wasn’t even short listed, which is insane.

It’s generally believed that the very beginnings of a relationship are beautiful, romantic and tingly, and then everything settles into routine which is boring at best and dreary at worst.

In reality, it’s the other way round. The start of a relationship is uncomfortable and has to be borne with patience to get to the really good stuff. You have to do a lot of learning, self-editing, and self-explanation as you integrate the other person onto your life. Ten years in is when you get to the really amazing stuff. The wordless dialogue, the seamless taking over of each other’s burdens, the ease of handling the other’s intolerable affects. The discomforts of the beginning are only justified by the eventual arrival of the delayed bounties of permanent love.

This is why the endless scrolling through partners that we are offered as the most important expression of freedom is so depressing and miserable for everybody who tries it and is not a sociopath.

I’m inspired to write this by Tony Tulathimutte’s excellent novel Rejection which I mistakenly referred to as a short story collection yesterday. You only figure out it’s a novel on page 60, so I do have an excuse. I’m still reading the novel, which has been referred to as the first truly incel work of fiction, and will say more about it later.

Trump withdrew the prohibition on Ukrainian strikes on Russia. I don’t care about words, only actions. This action is good.

Here’s a very 😭 Russian vatnik:

❗️"Everyone is silent. HIMARS hit Belgorod, there is no power! Drones are striking Belgorod, Kursk regions. And Peskov is telling us how our economy is doing. What economy? People are being killed every day – Russian military z-bloggers are raising panic against the backdrop of… pic.twitter.com/L2jejIQL59

— 🪖MilitaryNewsUA🇺🇦 (@front_ukrainian) September 29, 2025

He says that Trump is copulating Russia both orally and anally which, strangely, he does not seem to enjoy as much as he should.

This raw footage at a Hooters restaurant raises a brutal question for police departments everywhere: policy or reality?

In the push for diversity, many agencies forbid pairing based on gender or physical risk. On paper, it sounds noble.

But on the street? Operational safety… pic.twitter.com/k382MVh5DG

— Desiree (@DesireeAmerica4) September 28, 2025

And this is a scrawny little dude. What if they had to arrest somebody with the body type of the guy in the green shirt?

Given that violent criminals are almost all men, it’s a very nutty idea to put women in the roles where they have to make arrests. This endangers the public and the women themselves. This insane practice should stop. 

And it’s not about pairing like the linked tweet claims. The brunette in the video should never have been accepted into this job at all. She is physically incapable of doing it like a paraplegic isn’t capable of being a professional dancer.

Did the family stuff all day. Had an incredible time. Come late evening decided to check the news and immediately alighted on this:

28 September 2025
A woman has been raped by a group of men in a churchyard in Banbury.

The woman, in her 30s, was attacked in the grounds of St Mary’s Church and the surrounding area of the town centre in the early hours of Sunday morning, Thames Valley Police said.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly622k0jm4o.amp

The police are searching for a good samaritan female witness who tried to help the victim. Of course, things being as they are, the good samaritan would have to be mental to make herself known. She’ll end up getting locked up for longer than the rapists by identifying them.

In any case, news suck. Family life rocks.

In Tony Tulathimutte’s short story “The Feminist”, a young man whose faithful application of the principles learned in a Gender Studies program fails to result in any dates writes the following online dating app:

He/him/his (or whatever pronouns you are most comfortable with). Unshakably serious about consent. Abortion’s #1 fan. Loves books, Thai food, a glass of vinho verde on my balcony, endless conversation… and did I mention books? I can usually be found haunting the bookstores and bakeshops of our fair burgh, when I’m not dismantling the imperialist male supremacist hetero patriarchy. But I’d also be fine saying “To hell with it!” and staying at home for an Agnes Varda marathon sesh followed by discussion… and perhaps a wee snogfest? I *always* do my own cooking (thanks
Mom!) so I’ll make a killer brunch for you! Trans women are women, duh. All races, ethnicities, and body types-but NOT all ages-very welcome! Mutual GGG.

I hope this put a smile on your face on this beautiful Sunday afternoon.

As I read JK Rowling’s new Cormoran Strike novel, I never cease to be amazed by how profoundly leftist the author’s every sensibility is. Yet she’s been vilified by the Left because even that kind of complete devotion is insufficient.

At the left-wing festival held annually in our town, half of the booths are in support of boutique sexual identities and another half offers bookmarks, slap bracelets, and other merch featuring either rainbows or the word “change.”

It’s fascinating how this word became uniformly positively coded. The interdisciplinary courses at my university were renamed this year into “changemakers.” Nobody knows what it means and how it’s a synonym for interdisciplinary but it’s about change, so it’s got to be good, huh?

This goes against every human instinct. We all experience nostalgia which is an emotion with which we respond to the loss and pain of change. We know that it’s the unchangeable things that make us happiest. Yet we worship change because we are constantly told it’s the right thing to do.