My students are geniuses. Geniuses, I tell you, because this is what other people have to contend with.

Thank you, Alex, for the link. I’ll be exuberantly happy to see my students tomorrow because whatever they do, it won’t be that. Or maybe it will but I won’t understand it because their Spanish won’t allow them to express it. 

Forgot the most important thing about the yogurt. It’s made and sold in little glass jars, and the spoon clinks against the jar instead of scraping against plastic. It’s a very nice experience. Also, it’s made directly in the jar and not in a huge vat.

OK, I need to go collect myself because the yogurt made me a little hyper. 

Folks, I just discovered this great thing, and please don’t tell me it’s horrible and I will die an instant death for eating it. It’s called “French-style yogurt”, and it’s fantastic. It’s nothing like the horrible “Greek yogurt” that you see everywhere. It’s more like that delicious thing I tried once in London but without sugar because I can only have the plain variety now. 

So Merkel won, eh? It feels good to be able to cheer the loss of ultra-right nationalism. But it’s sad the the only possible winner is aggressive neoliberalism. 

It’s still a win but a disappointing one. 

I have many weird little hobbies, and one of them is to read blogs and FB pages of Ukrainians who recently moved to Scandinavian countries. It’s really funny because they always start out thinking they are moving to this really great place. And then there is always a gradual realization that they hate it there. You have to work a lot more to be able to afford a lot less than back in Ukraine. Everything is super expensive. Everything in the area of service is downright unaffordable yet of ridiculously poor quality. The possibility of professional growth is non-existent because nobody cares about your hard work and talent. It’s all about seniority. Life is regimented in the extreme. There is no space for standing out, deciding for yourself, etc. 

These blogs are like Bildungsromane in miniature. People have this whole awakening within a couple of years. It’s fascinating.

Why did I ever discontinue the habit of working in coffee shops? I get a lot more done there than at home. 

We visited Klara’s best friend Chloe on Friday. Chloe’s Dad was doing yard work outside. When he came into the house, Chloe exclaimed, “Papa!” Klara lit up with joy and turned around to see papa. When she realized it wasn’t papa but some other man, Klara grew very anxious.

“No papa, mommy! Zis is no papa! No, mommy, no papa?” she kept saying, desperate for me to confirm that I wasn’t planning to pass this uninteresting man off as her papa. 

“Papa is at home,” I said. “Do you want to go home and see papa?”

Usually, I have to drag her away from her best friend, but this time Klara was eager to leave the place where people were confused about who papa actually is. 

“Yes! Home papa! Driving home car! Papa!” she declared and started dragging me towards the car. 

“Football players against Trump! Extremely rich vs fabulously rich!”

Next.

All of these sad little whelps of, “George Washington was a slaveowner! Benjamin Franklin was a sexist! And I’m not, I’m not! I’m better, mommy, right? Say I’m better and you love me more!” make me feel vicarious embarrassment. 

Washington and Franklin believed things that were normal and acceptable in their age. And so do the sad whelpers. But Washington and Franklin achieved something aside from that, and this means that the thirst of the whelpers for praise and recognition will not be quenched. 

This is, of course, as oedipal as it gets. A little boy discovers that daddy is not perfect and can be fought for mommy’s affections. A little girl discovers that mommy isn’t perfect, etc. To make the conflict that tortures them as obvious as possible the sufferers concentrate on those known as “founding fathers.” 

None of this does anything for racial justice. It’s not outwardly oriented at all. If a person with OCD touches a photo of MLK 5 times as part of his anxiety-reducing exercises, none of this has a political meaning. It’s part of his individual pathology. 

Remember, substituting politics (i.e. acting together for common good) with exhibitions of unshareable individual pathologies is neoliberalism’s way of destroying public life. People think they are very politicized when in reality they lead the most apolitical existence imaginable.