This is one of the rare times that I don’t envy the environment in the world of business. At my work, we are practically exhorted to take students out to view the eclipse instead of teaching regular classes. 

But this feeling is as rare as the eclipse. Just an example. We had a 2,5-hour all-faculty meeting on Friday. A huge group of people, free coffee, free food, the eve of the new academic year, finally we have a budget and can pay for academic travel and other good stuff. You’d think anybody could get people energized and excited under these circumstances. At least, you should get me excited because I don’t require all that much. But no. It didn’t look like a single person got a shot of energy out of it. 

(It used to be different back when I first came here but the administrators who knew how to do this have all left).

It’s beyond unfair that I work among such a large collectivity, and I have to do all this for myself.  All of my motivation, energy, drive and fire have to come from within. And it’s tiresome. 

In contrast, you should experience the environment at my sister’s business. The air is crackling with energy. People look happy to be there and convinced that what they do has value. Nobody mopes. Or at least not 💯% of the time. So yes, I envy that. 

I don’t get this. Why shouldn’t kids play in the backyard if they are lucky enough to have one?

A beautiful piece on why it’s important to read books we don’t understand.

How is it even possible to fit souch stupidity into such a short post?

Just as I started kind of liking Applebee’s, it decided to dial back the good changes. 

Walmart came up with a very dumb idea. 

Turns out that school vouchers are supported by the majority of African Americans.

Nothing else this time because the blogroll has been signally boring this week. 

And within the same trend, a fellow I’ve been following on FB has announced today that he has to quit FB because he’s about to lose his job. His employers are getting tired of hearing from endlessly indignant right-fighters who are outraged by his posts. He’s the kind of writer who can’t be easily identified as being on the left or on the right. Meaning, the only kind it makes sense to read. 

Anybody with even a glimmer of originality always ends up broken down and pushed out of blogging or social media. The only alternative is to avoid any subjects that can prove remotely controversial. Or somehow find a way to burrow into the deepest obscurity.

Internet enthusiasts used to warn against the dangers of governmental censorship of the Internet. Now they are all saying that in their wildest nightmares they couldn’t have anticipated how eagerly and happily users would self-censor until turning the Internet into a place to shop, gossip, and stare at cute kitties. 

Very, very sad news about Fredrik deBoer. I have no idea what happened but the linked post sounds very desperate.

I hope Freddie finds help in the place where he’s going. 

The article I liked in the collection is by journalist Paul Mason. He is from a working class family, so he tends to idealize the working classes, especially the way they were in his childhood. But at least, he’s not engaging in a wholesale condemnation of workers as racistsandsexists that is so fashionable right now. 

Mason explains that working classes withdraw their consent for mass migration into the country not because they are innately evil but because they legitimately feel that their working class culture is being eroded into oblivion. Plus, there are great observations on how neoliberalism tries to annihilate “space, community and non-abstract labour.”

Here is a quote I liked from the piece: 

The authoritarian populism that is mobilizing working class voters is, essentially, a demand for deglobalization. It’s reactionary nature lies. . . in its complete ignorance of the complexity of the task.

But, Mason says, those under 35 have so interiorized the lingo of joyful acceptance of globalization that it’s not going to be turned back. Mason is very optimistic about the “young networked internationalists” while I’m not, so he sees a very positive scenario of “saving globalization by ditching neoliberalism.” I don’t always want to be a negative scarecrow, so I’ll just let it stand for the moment. 

The way it works is this. You recruit some excitable young people into neo-Nazi groups. You recruit some more excitable youths into the Antifa. Then you sic them on each other. 

While they whoop each other’s asses, they represent no threat to the neoliberal order. Thus, the young population that could potentially question this order is declawed, defanged, and distracted.

In the meantime, the general public is horrified and will that more easily accept one of the pillars of neoliberalism, which is securitization. 

​“The local Indivisible chapter organized a peace vigil downtown here last Sunday in solidarity with Charlottesville. It was one of many such vigils around the country. Not a Nazi symbol in sight. Yet the local antifa group that attended seemed bent on taking over what was intended to be a peaceful rally. There was a shouting match with police the organizers had requested. Later, the group split off and marched through downtown chanting slogans.” 

Oh, come on, folks, let’s stop being childish already. These facile Antifa fools – not to be confused with the many thousands of anti-Nazi protesters who are wonderful people – are being revved up from the same place that gave us our current president. You know, the one that rhymes with gremlin.

The role of the Antifa (that the excitable little tools play mostly unwittingly) is to discredit the protesters and cast a shadow over the entire progressive movement. They are fulfilling this role extremely well. And the protesters aren’t managing to throw them off until it gets too late. 

I had high hopes for this collection of articles on the current political climate but it proved a disappointment. Most of the articles offer nothing but superficial, trite slogans, the likes of which you can easily find on your Facebook wall in great abundance. Here is a small recap of each author’s ideas:

Arjun Appadurai – Germany is the only truly European country and if only it decides to practice its true Europeanness by disregarding the wishes of the not-really-European everybody else in Europe and brings in more immigrants, soon enough golden age will begin.

Zygmunt Bauman – intolerance is bad, Pope Francis is good, and everybody must become cosmopolitan because it’s the only decent thing to be.

Donatella della Porta – Occupy and Indignados achieved great success. Nobody knows what it consists of but it was still a great success. 

Nancy Fraser – this article also has a ton of empty sloganeering but at least it introduces a very useful concept of progressive neoliberalism. So this piece was not a waste of time. 

 Eva Illouz – this was actually a useful read. Illouz traces the history of Israel’s political divide. I knew very little in the subject and enjoyed the article. The conclusions are dumb (the Mizrahim are just like Trump voters because they don’t live in big cities), but the body of the piece is OK.

Ivan Krastev – you can’t have globalization, democracy and self-determination all at once. Something has to go. And it won’t be globalization, that’s for sure. This is an important point, so I’m glad to have read the piece by Mr Krastev.

Bruno Latour – the reason for Brexit is that the UK wants to restore its 19th century empire (huh?) We are all on the Titanic! Oblivious to the approaching demise! It’s all in the same overwrought vein and utterly useless. 

[To be continued. . .]

My 18-month-old daughter follows me around the house and points out imperfections in my cleaning strategy. 

“Mess! Dirty!” she says whenever she sees something that isn’t up to her high standards. “Ewww! Wash! Wash water!” She keeps repeating it until I do wash the offending bit of floor or furniture with water. 

Yes, I taught her the words, complete with a disgusted facial expression that accompanies “ewww”. It seemed like a fun thing to do at the time. Little did I know she was going to put this fun skill to use so fast.