Opinions, art, debate
Of course, I had to discover the best book of the year, 672 glorious pages long, the day before the beginning of the semester. Now I stare in mute resentment at anybody who wants me to do anything except read this book.
Details to follow but American literature is alive and thriving.
I very sincerely could never understand this. Maybe it’s the autistic thing. But Taylor Swift’s audience isn’t male. Her fans are very young girls. How is this on target?
Also, and again, maybe it’s the autistic thing, but I can’t understand why a rich woman would want to do this. Isn’t the whole point of having money not to have to do this?
And finally, let’s say you do want to show your butt at age 35 for reasons beyond my comprehension. Why does it have to be shown against the background that reads like a truck stop toilet?
The music sucks, too, by the way.
It is simply cruel to post this without giving the slightest hint as to where these centrist professors can be found. My friends in academia have cut contact after I mildly criticized Pritzker on FB. I’d love to meet a few centrist profs who can survive an occasional criticism of Pritzker.
I was helping my Fulbrighter select courses for this semester, and it’s shocking. There are no courses. A lot of intro stuff but that’s it. I never come in contact with other departments’ offerings, so I didn’t know how dire things were.
Nobody is filling the vacated tenure lines, so there’s nobody to teach. I felt embarrassed. In the end, I set her up with courses at my own department but her contract specifies that she must take a course in something related to US culture, and there’s nothing. US-related stuff is limited to African Americans and immigrants. We tried history, English, political science. Bupkes. The Fulbrighter is from Ukraine, and if there’s one thing that’s not in short supply in Ukraine, it’s college courses about the country, its people, history, literature, culture.
The only course we found on US politics is titled “Political Scandals in the US.” In history, there’s nothing about independence, the Vietnam War, or anything at all.
It’s embarrassing, is what this is.
If you are stuck in your project and can’t progress, remember to introduce little changes into your process. Change small things about your routine.
Example.
I was stuck on one of the chapters because I’d published on the subject before and felt tired of it. No progress was happening but then mice were found in my office. The exterminator decided to extract them humanely (I don’t know the details) and the process lasted for weeks. In the meantime, I had to write in the lab instead of my office. I have found that writing in an unusual place gives me a huge boost, and this time was no exception. The difficult chapter was finished before all the mice were gone.
To achieve flow, disrupt routine.
Forget blastocysts and religious views. What message do you think it sends to a child to know that her parents only want her on the condition that she causes no difficulties? That they wouldn’t want her if she were sick or imperfect in any way? What would it do to her to understand that, unlike other children, she’s deprived of the unconditional love of her parents from the start? These parents won’t become different people after she is born. The child is bound to be imperfect in some way like all people are. And with these particular parents, that’s not allowed by default.
These same people would be horrified if their spouses or friends cut off the relationship the moment they become sick or problematic in any way. And they are not dependent on these people in every way like a child is on her parents.
If you can’t get unconditional love even from your parents, where can you get it? This whole mentality is terrible.
Because it’s a way to shuffle large sums of public money to private companies. This childish pouting about who can afford what prevents people from seeing that it’s always about the transfer of public wealth in the most undemocratic ways possible.
The problem with this plan lies in the “men can give birth” arena. Russia decides over and over again that another country is not really a country. And that its sovereignty is not real sovereignty. And then it attacks that country with complete certainty of not having violated its commitment to not attack other countries.
What needs to happen for people to understand the underlying principle of neoliberalism is that there is no reality? Reality is whatever I say it is at any given moment. The fight against the manifestations of this approach is doomed until you at the very least understand the rules of the game.
Yes, you should stop and do what’s natural to you. You aren’t helping anybody by torturing yourself. There are other ways to help which are much more effective. The road to finding those ways lies through inhabiting your neoliberal self as fully as possible because that’s how you’ll know what it’s really like and why it won’t work for many people.
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