Clarissa's Blog

They Are Totally the Same

We subjected every statement made by both the Republican and Democratic candidates — in speeches, in interviews and on Twitter — to our magazine’s rigorous fact-checking process. The conclusion is inescapable: Trump’s mishandling of facts and propensity for exaggeration so greatly exceed Clinton’s as to make the comparison almost ludicrous.

I also want to remind everybody that “It’s just like” or “they are the same” is a slogan of a lazy mind that is too primitive to handle complexity. 

The Confident Generation 

Men aged 16-29 are more likely to hold traditional attitudes towards gender roles than older men, a new study has found. 35 per cent of young men were shown to believe that the man should assume the role of primary earner whilst the woman should remain home – shouldering the responsibilities of childcare, cooking and cleaning. In comparison, only 26% of men aged 30-44, and 21% of men aged 45 and over, shared these views.

Young men have experienced such economic security and comfort that they are confident they can guarantee the family’s well-being alone. Older people have experience of economic adversity and are more fearful. That’s all there is to it. 

Of course, I know that the predominant narrative is that the young generation is the most desperate and deprived ever, but this is a fantasy constructed by older folks who envy youngsters their youth and want to imagine them as pitiful. The reality is that this is a very fortunate, prosperous generation. And that’s great. 

Debate Wishlist 

What I hope for is that at the debate Hillary pushes Trump on the tax returns. People care about taxes and they need to know if their candidates do, too. 

Also, I hope she brings up the issue of how readily he has always exported jobs to China and imported Mexican workers to work for him. 

And I’d like to hear something like, “Many people say that Trump University is a scam.” 

What is your wish list for the debate? I’m not wishing for anything that moderators might do because I have no confidence they’ll do anything but suck. 

Who Can Help Aleppo?

It would be comical if it weren’t so tragic:

Secretary of State John Kerry on Saturday called the situation in Aleppo “unacceptable.”
“It is beyond the pale,” Mr. Kerry said at Tufts University, before a meeting with European foreign ministers. “If people are serious about wanting a peaceful outcome to this war, then they should cease and desist bombing innocent women and children, cease cutting off water and laying siege to an entire community, and work with the international community in order to be able to bring peace to people who are starving.”

What is it that “people” need to do to make Kerry understand that they are “not serious about wanting a peaceful outcome”? That they don’t want to “bring peace”?

This game of fake ceasefires has been going on for a very long time. How many more Syrians need to die for Americans to take their heads out of their asses and acknowledge what’s happening?

There was an article in The NY TIMES this week where Jimmy Carter was saying the same crap that Kerry is. “If Russia really wants peace, it should this and that.” It’s like a boutique if collective insanity. 

Civilization and Barbarity 

I just read a story of a guerrilla fighter who lost both arms and his eyesight fighting against Russians in the same places in Ukraine where I spent much of my childhood. 

If somebody told me, even two weeks or two days before it happened, that Russia would invade Ukraine and there’d be guerrilla fighters getting killed or wounded, I would have never believed it. 

We keep thinking, ha ha, this will never happen, we are way too evolved, things like that don’t happen any more. And then they happen. 

Nobody has truly evolved past anything. Barbarity needs to be kept at bay constantly. Because the moment you snooze, it comes out and obliterates all gains of civilization. 

More on Homework 

And by the way, the reason why many professors are assigning less homework is not that they suddenly discovered that this strategy is pedagogically beneficial  (which it might or might not be depending on a wide variety of factors). It’s simply that enrollment caps have been raised and instructors or graduate students who used to teach different sections of the same course were fired. And now a professor simply doesn’t have time to grade homework in a class that went from 25 to 70 students. 

The Real Enemy

This is so ass-backwards. This stupid article- published in Illinois, of all places – blames professors for assigning too much homework and interfering with all the part-time jobs and internships that students need to juggle to make ends meet. 

The possibility that the shameful disinvestment of the state in higher education might have something to do with the issue is not even being discussed. It’s all the fault of evil professors who are trying to prevent students from working at McDonalds by trying to educate them. 

This is the perfect example of two groups that suffer at the hands of the same enemy turn against each other. 

Students! Professors are not to blame. 

Professors! Students are not to blame. 

Team Dispossessed 

Just saw another dispossessed with a “Team Trump” slogan on a shiny new Hummer.

Exceptionally Exceptional 

Many people exist in the mode of, “I’m tired of our (American, Spanish, Russian, etc) exceptionalism. It is exceptional how exceptionalist we are!”