Opinions, art, debate
This tragedy happened during the Biden administration and was directly caused by its insane immigration policies. But the Senate Democrats decided to pretend that this happened recently because they want to use the poor child’s death for political purposes.
You don’t need to “reform detention.” The only solution for this is to stop accepting immigration applications at the border. This solution is being practiced now, preventing many such tragedies.
Wow, this is so great.
On further consideration, no, it’s completely useless. My clutter is exclusively books and clothes, and I love those puppies, and would not give them up even if a herd of elephants visited them for defecation purposes.
By the way, a consumerist personality feels the greatest joy not at the point of buying but at the point of throwing away. Because throwing away frees up space for more buying. Decluttering is the most consumerist activity out there.
A blind diabetic 28-year-old was euthanized in Canada. The horror of this makes my heart stop. Yes, he “wanted it” but he wouldn’t have if he hadn’t been led to want it.
This year I’m working with two blind students. Together (and shh, please keep it a secret) we threw away all the insane requirements of the Disability Office and came up with a system that works for us. These are great young people who will get an education, find jobs, form families and be productive members of society. They have friends, one of them is engaged to be married, and they are both a joy to be around. The idea that we should just get rid of all the blind, diabetic, elderly, infirm and depressed people is deeply immoral.
Yes, the nation-state didn’t exist until the 19th century. Penicillin is even younger. Computers are younger still. Yet we greatly enjoy the benefits of young technology. The newness of something isn’t reason enough to ditch it especially since the post-nation state is even younger than the nation-state. So we aren’t talking about going back to some time-hallowed tradition but embracing something even newer.
I would love to participate in a serious discussion of the nation-state but all I ever get are the same two very vapid objections. One is that the nation-state is an imaginary community, meaning, a recent invention. Which, duh, but so bloody what? As if the post-nation state were a form of government that spontaneously arose in nature thousands of years ago. Whatever comes after the nation will be just as invented and even newer, which in and of itself is neither good nor bad.
The second objection is invariably that the nation-state made the two world wars possible. Again, yes, obvs. The Stating the Painfully Obvious Prize goes to everybody who makes this observation. One would think that if we already paid this humongous price for the nation-state model, then let’s keep it around to reap the benefits. Especially since nobody is advancing an argument that warfare will end once the nation is gone. The nation-state didn’t come into existence because there was no war. To the contrary, it was invented in response to endless warfare that was consuming Europe. War is the natural state of humanity, which sucks bullets (no pun intended), but any fantasy about a complete elimination of warfare is just simply dumb.
No interesting, meaningful objections to the nation-state are being advanced by anybody anywhere. Nobody is trying to list the benefits of the new form of statehood. It’s all childish, inane talk.
In the meantime EU once again shows its great commitment to thwarting Putin’s allies by giving them free reign in Europe.
Please note that the expression “free trade” is now a standard mark of being on the left.
Liberalism is always about exactly what it says. Freedom from limitations, boundaries, traditions, and anything that could place any constraints on it. Of course, it’s only the kind of freedom that pleases capital that it encourages.
Yes! I can recommend! The best, most readable and insightful one is the biography of Stalin by Edvard Radzinsky. Here’s the link. It’s available on Kindle and Audible. Read it, I promise it’s beyond good.
Of course, you could always read Kotkin, and he’s good, but there’s no joy in that reading. Kotkin is boring. Plus, Radzinsky had access to incredible materials.
Read it and tell me what you think. We can discuss right here because Radzinsky’s interpretation of Stalin’s personality can absolutely be debated.
I’m practically jumping up in joy that somebody is about to discover this excellent book.
I have read several books by John Marrs, and I still believe that his novel The One is the strongest of all. This is a writer who’s great at depicting dysfunction, especially the female kind. What Lies Between Us has dysfunction galore but it’s the weakest novel by this author I have read so far.
What Lies Between Us depicts Maggie and Nina, a mother and her 40yish yet eternally immature daughter. Maggie is a typical Boomer who stole her daughter’s capacity to procreate and have a life of her own out of selfishness. Nina is a typical Millennial, entitled, lazy, and angry at the whole world for not living up to her fantasy life. The selfish Maggie and the immature Nina torture each other for decades. There’s no place for men in the mother-daughter fixation on hurting each other, and the duo ends up killing the men who appear in their lives.
This sounds like a premise for an interesting thriller but the novel ended up being quite boring. Even the brilliant performance by the seriously talented actress Elizabeth Knowelden who did the Audible version couldn’t save it. The generational stereotypes are so strong that the plot becomes predictable. Maggie and Nina never manage to sound entirely real.
Not a total waste but nothing like the other novels I read by this author.
There was a famous sci-fi novel in the USSR where a Soviet scientist created a clone who was supposed to be the perfect human. The scientist thought that if you design a creature that can satisfy all of its material needs with ease, this will liberate the creature to pursue feats of intellectual and artistic creativity.
When the scientist finally grew his “Perpetually Satisfied” clone and activated him, the clone grabbed every possession he could reach, cocooned himself in these possessions, and stopped time. No intellectual or artistic pursuits interested him. All he wanted to do was possess everything, including time.
This reminded me of that old Soviet novel:
The incredible bravery of Ukrainian rescue workers is a source of inspiration:
While some people are debating and leaking emotions, others are doing a cold-nosed monetization.
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