Clarissa's Blog

I keep coming back to this because of all things I couldn’t have imagined being bothsidesed it was… Nazis. I mean, sure, that there are white supremacists in this country is not news. But actual Nazis. Our entire 20th century mythology is about how “we” fought Nazis.

Mythology, that’s precisely what it is. You tolerated them then, you tolerate them now. It’s all in keeping with a long-standing tradition.

We thought watching House of Cards would be boring in the current political climate so we put it off for months. Now we are finally watching it, and the show is actually quite engrossing. Especially the strategy on how to avoid holding elections if you know you won’t be reelected. 

I think this is a possibility we all need to consider. It’s not that hard to accomplish. But of course it will only become a concern if the Democrats stop scaring away voters and make even just a half-assed little effort to come up with a platform. Ending the ridiculous debate over who was more evil, Hillary or Bernie, would be a swell idea. 

By Democrats I mean all Democrats, not just the elected officials. If the same number of people who FBs ridiculous weepy memes showed up to the regular meetings held by our hard-working state representative, things would begin to change. 

A real “breaking news” headline on TV:

Trump Pardons Arpaio Amidst Category 4 Hurricane and New Revelations about Russia Probe

I care about the hurricane but the rest can go bite itself on the elbow. 

I just got as a promotional gift this great notebook that has a different design on top of every page that you can fill out, color or doodle on during boring meetings. I’m now sorry I’m not on any boring committees where this could be a lifesaver.

I collect notebooks, by the way.

Is this a serious job posting or a mockery? Can anybody figure it out?

Finally, scientists are getting a taste of what we in the Humanities live with as a matter of course. Of course, most of us are by now very good at doing it to ourselves so no external censor is required. You either internalize the censorious ideology or you seethe. That’s unfortunately how it works. At least, the unknown Jennifer has an easy villain she can blame this on. For us, it’s a lot harder. 

Klara is so smart. When I give her two pieces of pear and she only has one free hand to grab them, she doesn’t take the bigger piece first. Oh no, that would not be a smart thing to do. She grabs the smaller piece first because she can stuff it in her mouth fast and then reach for the big piece. This was she has control of both pieces as fast as possible.

Somebody came to the blog with the following query:

why rich russians dont try to escape such oppressive country

The answer is that it’s not oppressive to the rich. It’s oppressive to everybody else because the rich oppress them. Who do you think is oppressing people? The poor?

The not-very-rich are not trying to “escape” (whatever that means in this context) because emigration is difficult, and for Russian-speakers it’s harder than for many other people.

When I was 12-13 years old, whenever I got any pocket money, I’d save it to buy chewing gum. Of course, it wasn’t sold in stores. One had to go to the underpass and but it from the “gypsies” who somehow had access to all kinds of tempting stuff: lipstick, Hungarian cigarettes, hair barrettes, sometimes even shoelaces.

I waa so desperate for the gum not because I liked it – I didn’t and still don’t – but because each hugely expensive piece (1 rouble, which would be something like $40 to me today) had a colorful insert with pictures of Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. I had no idea what these characters meant and I was too old for cartoon animals anyway. The reason why I went without lunch for weeks to buy the gum was that the inserts were so colorful. I did not possess any other object that had such bright colors. 

Before seeing the gum, I had no idea such colors even existed. I was mesmerized. I could stare at those inserts for hours, trying to imagine what else could exist in the world that could be brightly colored. 

A couple of years later, we all started wearing these really horrible electric orange and electric green outfits that looked pathetic and that I wouldn’t be caught dead in today. But they were crazy popular back then for the same reason that I loved the gum inserts. They weren’t drab. 

So just imagine people who for generations experienced this kind of sensory deprivation and then suddenly saw a show like Santa Barbara. Of course, it was a huge deal. I still remember the names of all the show’s characters. And I’m normally so bad with names that I can’t remember a single one even from the mystery novel I read yesterday.

This is how Nancy Fraser describes progressive neoliberalism:

In its US form, progressive neoliberalism is an alliance of mainstream currents of new social movements (feminism, anti-racism, multiculturalism and LGBTQ rights) on the one side, and high-end ‘symbolic’ and service-based sectors of business (Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood) on the other. In this alliance, progressive forces are effectively joined with the forces of cognitive capitalism, especially financialization. However unwittingly, the former lend their charisma to the latter. Ideals like diversity and empowerment gloss policies that have devastated manufacturing and the middle-class livelihoods that were once available to those engaged in it.

This is precisely what I meant with the preceding post.