In 1990, there was a historic chance to disarm, partition and de-ideologize Russia in exchange for food. That chance was pissed away because of the inane “free market” dogma. The idea was that free markets usher in democracy. It was a majorly stupid idea and it’s been priven wrong.

Free markets are utterly indifferent to political regimes. They don’t have much use for the concept of a “country”, so what countries do politically is unimportant to them.

Still, if another historic opportunity comes by to disarm Russia and bring it to heel, it will once again be pissed away because of the same free-marketeering dogma that refuses to die. We are not learning anything, is the problem. Free marketeering means open borders. It’s in the name. Markets are to be free to transcend all limits and drag workers / consumers wherever it’s convenient at any given time. You can’t be for one but not for the other.

Be a free marketeer, by all means, but at least look at what it actually means.

Oh yeah, it rocks so much that your marriage is 50 percent more likely to end in divorce if your wife earns more than you. It rocks so much that both wives and husbands consistently report being less satisfied in their marriage when the wife earns more. Yeah it absolutely rocks… https://t.co/nGYCvKSK8p

— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) May 26, 2025

N wouldn’t mind if I made more money. Both more than he makes and more in general. He’d never say no to more money because he’s worried about having enough in old age.

I would mind, though. I don’t want to be a standard Soviet woman with a decorative husband.

The bad news is: there are 140 million of them, just as crazy as their leader.

The good news is: ————–

The largest country on Earth is armed to the teeth including with nukes and is in the grip of a terrible rage. It doesn’t want money, trade deals, or anything that anybody has to give.

We always have to live in reality and not fantasy. This is reality, and nobody has any answer to the problem. Pretending such an answer exists is magical thinking.

We watched the last episode of a TV series where a tiny, skinny woman physically fought a ripped, much larger man for a significant period of time and did not lose.

I have no idea why this kind of fantasy scenario is so beloved in film and on TV. In real life, that woman would last exactly a second and a half against a man seriously interested in taking her out.

Viewers who grow up watching this stuff sincerely don’t understand the difference in the upper body strength between men and women. It’s impossible to explain to them why men on women’s sports team are a horrible idea. They sincerely wonder why a rape victim just lay there instead of doing what every female character in every movie does and pummel the assailant. They don’t understand history or the extreme value and preciousness of civilization where women live peacefully and unmolested.

We went to one of those children attraction events that in Europe we call Luna Park.

All of the children are white, and all the workers are Guatemalan, which does feel a little weird but OK, that’s not the point.

Klara started playing a game where you throw darts at balloons to win prizes. She missed several times, and I said, “wow, you throw like a girl.”

She got so mad at my comment that she hit the target 7 times in a row and won the grand prize. I truly know how to motivate the young generation.

“Do you want to go on the upside down ride?” I asked.

“Have you considered how that will mess up my hair?” Klara asked venomously.

I thought it was an article on intermittent fasting and thought that it must be a total hoax given the results for this poor woman:

Jokes aside, who will not be sorry to see MSM go?

Isn’t it lovely that President Trump is so dedicated to Israel, he’d dismantle Harvard to please it?

This sort of loyalty is truly rare.

I’m being sarcastic, just in case.

Percentage of all homicide victims who are women.

Honduras: 6%
Nicaragua: 7%
Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela: 8%

South Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong: 53%

— i/o (@avidseries) May 23, 2025

And look at their respective birth rates.

Yes, it’s crucial to withdraw from Trump supporters the welcoming environment they have enjoyed on US campuses so far. Only until Trump backs down from whatevs the new grievance is, of course. After that, the friendly, open-minded interactions can resume. MAGA hats will fill classrooms on par with BLM tees all over again.

Minor quibble with JD Vance: Nowhere is it easier to have a family than in Europe, where they live close to other family members and have massive social safety nets and cheap housing. And yet, birthrates are still at an all-time low.

Economics seems to have little to nothing to… pic.twitter.com/dEsI09yDMU

— Douglass Mackey (@DougMackeyCase) May 23, 2025

Economics has nothing to do with birth rates in the very limited sense of money payments being useless in motivating births. But it has everything to do with bringing to life neoliberal subjectivities that are intensely consumerism and narcissistic.

Capital needs fewer people. It needs people who aren’t tied down with obligations. It needs us to be a raging maw of desire whose primary libidinal object is the self. A person who says “I don’t want to have children because they will prevent me from going to the movies whenever I feel like it” privileges unbridled consumerism over any other consideration. This person is concentrated on what she can ingest over what she can create. And yes, at its root, this is a function of the neoliberal economy.

A while ago, we talked about a woman who doesn’t want children because she wants to make shakshuka in the morning instead of tending to a child’s needs. This is an example of the need to ingest being put ahead of the need to bring forth. All she will produce is literal excrement and digital excrement in the form of photos of the shakshuka she’ll post online.

We are not doing anybody any favors by conceptualizing everything in the neoliberal language of choice. Choices people make, especially on such a massive level, are a result of objective conditions. That’s what we need to look at if we are to reach any understanding beyond platitudes.

Now, who’s eager to read Neoliberal Love where I talk about this at great length?