Clarissa's Blog

Students are great, even in crazy places. I love students.

I want to see more pieces on higher ed that are like the linked one. Students and professors going about their work and groups of lazy-ass freaks reveling in their freakishness.

An example of brilliant messaging on our side is “marriage equality.” Leading with “marriage” is like leading with “cute, cuddly puppies.” Everybody likes marriage, everybody is more likely to approve. And the movement has been very successful.

Now take “pro-choice.” Who is the messaging supposed to appeal to? The adepts of “Consumerism Above All” sect? Nothing is easier than to demolish the message by countering it with “pro-life” because you turn into a creep who values consumerism more than life. 

No, messaging is not everything. But it’s a lot. If you keep losing on messaging because you can’t be bothered to try coming up with something that makes sense, prepare to lose. Even more, that is.

You got to be desperately willing to lose to come up with the term “single payer” and keep using it obsessively. As a slogan, it has zero power. Go outside, stop people, and ask them if they want single payer. Isn’t it obvious that most will hear “single payer” as a vague threat? Like in “you’ll be this single payer and will pay through the nose, like always, without getting anything in return”? 

What kind of an impotent idiot includes the word ‘payer’ into their messaging? Do you know anybody who is excited to pay and wants to do more of it? The main objection to your plan will be that it makes people pay more in taxes and you confirm that by making it all about paying? The words “health” or “doctor” are nowhere near the title of the project. If you really want to lose, why not just call it “a tax raiser” and be done with it? Just to make sure that no voter finds their way to you by mistake.

But hey, the adepts are excited about the term, all three of them. They’ve been waiting for it since 1976, and it’s their dream come true. So let’s tank more elections by catering to their excitable asses because we haven’t lost enough yet. 

Look at the Oval Office. The guy sitting there has no brain, no experience, no ideology, no politics. But he knows messaging. And he showed us all how far this takes one today. Instead of debating what Hillary did to Bernie and vice versa, we need to come up with the kind of messaging that will get people energized. 

Klara’s best friend came over to our house with her parents. They are 42 and 50, Bernie supporters who voted for Hillary in the general and watched all of the debates. I’m very grateful because in this region it’s a lot more likely statistically to meet toddler parents who are 26 and wearing red baseball hats. 

Klara and the friend don’t really know how to play together yet but they love being in each other’s company. It’s so cute to observe.

Did she really say this? And if so, for what purpose? 

“Women will have no empathy for you because they will be under tremendous pressure — and I’m talking principally about white women — they will be under tremendous pressure from fathers, and husbands, and boyfriends and male employers, not to vote for ‘the girl,’” Clinton continued”

The statement is clearly dumb, offensive and counterproductive. Aside from everything else, when a 70-year-old grandma refers to herself as “the girl”, it sounds beyond pathetic. Clinton is not an idiot. Is she trying to sabotage her own party to punish it for not getting her elected? 

One sentence that is lacking in the (entirely fake) effort to help the Dreamers is “The kids did nothing wrong so we shouldn’t punish them but we need to make sure that we don’t end up with another group of 800,000 such kids after we help the current ones get papers.” 

The problem is that even if all Dreamers receive US passports today, this will in no way prevent the restoration of the underclass of the perennially scared and insecure two seconds down the road. We need to ask ourselves if we want there always to be a large group of traumatized young people who grew up in conditions that are designed to thwart in them the very qualities needed to be successful and well. We need to ask ourselves if we are refusing to see how much the existence of this group benefits our own children who have an enormous in-built advantage of growing up without this profound anxiety over deportation. 

There is such a thing as collective will. If a phenomenon exists for a long time and doesn’t go away, we need to look at which collective need it nourishes. 

The real reason why the Democrats are making deals with Trump is that they are already preparing excuses for why they will lose in 2018, 2020, and then in perpetuity. “We were tarnished by Trump and voters didn’t show up to vote for us” will be their favorite narrative when that happens.

Yes, Amazon is deleting fake reviews. It always does that. They prize their review system very highly. Of course, they are not going to let crowds of unhinged trolls who are still obsessed with Hillary pervert it. 

The organizing committee of the conference that will take place in the Dominican Republic is sending out promotional materials for their “cultural events.” Trips to museums and exhibitions are shrewdly marketed to American academics as activities that will allow us better to understand our identities. The word “identities” is always bold-typed.