When nation-states were being created, their stories of why they deserved to exist were based on achievement. “We are a real country because we did this important thing” would be the meaning behind the narrative of the national identity.

Spain, for example, defended Europe from a Muslim invasion and brought God to the Western hemisphere.

France also defended Europe from the Muslim invasion and created the Enlightenment.

Italy gave Renaissance to the world.

The US became the City upon a Hill, the exemplary beacon of freedom for the whole world.

Look at any nation, and you’ll see its origin story of achievement.

Things changed when the nation-state started withering away. The narratives of national identity changed and split into two groups:

1. We are a victim of endless historic abuse which prevents us from flourishing.
2. We are perpetrators of endless historic abuse and need to be punished.

If you want examples of (1), look at the entirety of Latin America. If you want (2), look at Canada, US, Great Britain. Both are ultimately the same thing because they are part of the same S&M dynamic which is, by its very nature, ego-oriented and completely barren.

Apply this method to any country you want and you’ll see where exactly it is on its nation-state journey.

“We have achieved this great thing” = strong nation-state. People want to identify themselves with this important achievement and love the nation-state.

“We are victims / victimizers” = the nation-state is going out of business. People are repulsed by the S&M dynamic and emotionally disengage from the nation-state.

What does all of this have to do with the novel Vera by the Spanish writer Juan del Val?

Absolutely nothing whatsoever. The novel is crap. Don’t read it. It’s about a rich woman who finds a male prostitute and becomes “sexually liberated”. I only read it because it received the most prestigious literary award in Spain this year, and it’s my job to follow this stuff.

Just so you all see what I’m going home to and  understand the nature of my weather plight. The temperatures are in Celsius.

I’ve been enjoying it so much here in Canada where it’s snowing non-stop and everything looks like real winter. But I have to return to a place where the temperature jumps from summer to winter overnight and it’s very stupid.

Why was the turkey so bad? I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years of cooking. One side of it was cooked and the other was completely raw. How do you even achieve such a result?

No, it wasn’t a frozen turkey.

Yes, I used a thermometer.

This is a mystery that will haunt me forever.

Don’t forget what was done and who did it.

For Christmas Eve dinner, I made the worst turkey known to humanity and the glompiest mashed potatoes in existence. Which is why I won’t post the photos of this culinary horror of my own making and will instead share this image of a happy family enjoying a meal that did work out.

And for a bit of humor on this festive evening:

Far-right parties are claiming the festive season as their own, recasting Christmas as a marker of Christian civilization that is under threat and positioning themselves as its last line of defense against a supposedly hostile, secular left. https://t.co/6QMMomhHHX

— POLITICOEurope (@POLITICOEurope) December 24, 2025

It would be great if the people who kept linking to Politico as a source of news instead of comedy could recognize their mistake but it’s OK. I know they know.

Merry Christmas, a holiday which, to the surprise of many, has something to do with Christianity.

What a great, lovely question. Whoever left it wanted to do something kind for me on Christmas and I really appreciate it. All I want is to talk about books. And I’ll do it now by offering the penultimate book review of this year.

The novel I finished today is the most recent installment in Elizabeth George’s Inspector Lynley series titled A Slowly Dying Cause. I’ve been disappointed with some of the books in the series but this one was very enjoyable. George finally decided to move away from trying to depict “diverse communities” that FGM and rape each other all over the place (but only for extremely good reasons, of course). This novel is very non-diverse and much the better for it.

I’m sure this wasn’t by design but the many stories which converge in the novel all depict the ugliness of people who destroy family life because of their incapacity to school their egos into any sort of order. This is a crucial question of modernity. Why should a person not follow every passing whim and stomp over people’s heads in the process? One example in the novel is policewoman Bea Hanaford. She abandons a good, loving, faithful husband and a teenage son because… being by herself “makes her feel more like herself”, whatever that means. Bea is not religious. The only philosophy of life she ever learned is that human whims are more important than anything. She abandons husband and child not to do anything special but to sit at home alone over a styrofoam box of takeout curry.

Bea’s case is not the most egregious one in the novel. Other characters destroy relationships and throw away friendships over a passing caprice, too. We keep hearing that one doesn’t need religion to be moral because one can develop an inner code of ethical behavior. But that’s all empty blabber. What George depicts is real. Inner ethics always accommodates the selfish, covetous bastard one tends to be without external limits.

Let’s all think this over as we prepare to celebrate Christmas.

Anhedonia is an inability to feel pleasure in a normal way. People who have anhedonia are usually completely unaware they have this condition. As a result, they don’t do anything to resolve it.

It’s easier to catch anhedonia around holidays, which is why I’m posting this now. People with anhedonia over-shop, over-eat and over-party around the holidays. They know they are supposed to enjoy the season but they don’t feel the pleasure they know should be there. They chase the elusive joy by inflating every holiday-related activity. It doesn’t work because joy comes from the inside. You can’t shop and party your way into it.

People with anhedonia see the same reality as everyone but they can’t connect with it through pleasure. It’s as if they lived in a glass cube, never really feeling what other people do.

On one of my Uber rides here in Canada, the driver spent the entire ride listening on loudspeaker to a woman going about her day. She was doing the dishes, coughing, breathing, humming a tune, walking. She was clearly alone. I have no idea if she knew that he was spying on her.

I was transporting my mother from her first immunotherapy round (hence the Uber) and didn’t want any aggravation but we were both very creeped out.

Who can guess what the driver’s name was and why it wasn’t either Jack or Jacques?

Today I found out that my child, an American child in year 2025, doesn’t know the word racism. I’m the best parent in the fucking universe.