Here is an endless screed on how the insignificant issue of emails handed the election to Trump. It’s bizarre that one can go on and on proving the insignificance of emails and not understand that all they are managing to demonstrate is that people were looking for any silly excuse not to vote for her. It sucks beyond belief but that’s what happened. If it weren’t for the emails, it would have been something else. 

I am convinced that if the people of the US really wanted a Democrat in the White House and really didn’t want Trump, neither Comey nor Putin would have done anything. We are drowning in minutiae instead of looking at the big picture. I have students who come to my office to argue over a comma in an essay with 250 grammar mistakes that got a grade of F. Rehashing the email debacle is that kind of crazy.

Just like the appearance of poverty has changed in developed countries from the Dickensian emaciation of ragged street beggars to the poverty of overweight people with big TVs, so did the nature of war change from the way it looked back in 1914 or 1941. Many people are not catching up, though. It’s impossible to get them to recognize that poverty means death from obesity and not death from starvation in 1st world countries and that war is no longer waged according to the rules of 100 years ago.

We live in the age of fluid warfare known as hybrid war. Warring parties farm out conflict to poorer proxies in the same way as they farmed out their manufacturing. Russia is mad at the US and bombs Syria, a country Russians don’t know or care about. 

But bombing is only a small part of it. Hybrid war relies much more on terrorism, propaganda, cyber attacks, economic attacks, etc. Why go to the trouble of sending tanks to breach Germany’s borders and risk getting a very painful blowback when you can send a million refugees followed with money invested into political sponsorship and propaganda? The latter method brings zero negative consequences, no loss of life at home, and costs a pittance compared to traditional warfare. Throw a nuclear bomb at the US and you’ll be erased from the face of the Earth within minutes. Who needs that trouble when you can simply use Wikileaks, Facebook and willing collaborators in the target country?

Russians have been sending pop stars to Syria to entertain Syrians. Yes, really. First, they bomb them into the ground, then they sing to them.

Yesterday, another military plane was on its way from Russia to Syria, bringing more singers and dancers as well as more military personnel. The plane crashed. Everybody died. 

Putin is refusing to entertain the possibility of an act of terror and I don’t blame them. Russian planes are in a terrible state and keep crashing because they are old and rickety. 

Yesterday we had our healthy American Christmas meal, after which I woke up 2 lbs lighter (in the spirit of full disclosure, I’m on BP medication that I call “my diet pill” because it’s making me lose weight like crazy. We all know I hate medication but I’m now addicted to the childish wonder of seeing this pill work. So I’m giving it one more month).

On New Year’s we will have our extraordinarily unhealthy Soviet meal that will represent a barbaric mix of everything salted, pickled, cured and processed, doused in enormous quantities of mayonnaise and smothered in caviar. But it’s a once-a-year indulgence, so it can’t be that bad.

This is the traditional American Christmas meal I made. Turkey, mashed potatoes, peas, roasted mushrooms, braised cabbage, and cranberry sauce. I made everything from scratch. 

Merry Christmas!

Theodore Dreiser, one of the 3 greatest American novelists*, was immediately recognized as a genius when he published his first novel Sister Carrie. But for decades his novels didn’t sell, and not just because they were suppressed and persecuted by censors. The readers didn’t like his realism. Even his greatest admirers and friends asked the writer to add uplifting, inspiring stories about the good being rewarded and the bad being punished. Dreiser, of course, refused, preferring to live in penury. 

The funny thing is that today he is not read either. Realism suits this country so incredibly well. American realist writers are the best in the world, better than the French even. But Americans are forever divorced from their true nature. They reject realism and go for grand fantasies. Reality offends them and they offend it right back.

* In my opinion, of course. The other two are Twain and Faulkner. 

There is somebody here for whom it’s her very first Christmas, so she gets two stockings. 

It turns out that the formidable and acidly cruel in his writings H. L. Mencken was an incredibly kind, generous, patient, gentle and loyal person in RL. And a phenomenal friend. 

There truly is an enormous distance between a writer and a text. 

What I always wonder when I read writers’ biographies is how they managed to write anything with the insane number of people they all were constantly meeting. Not only would I have taken my own life with one hundredth of all that socialization but I would have never written a word. Even just reading about all those meetings with all those people freaks me out. 

I’m so glad I’m not the person to do the editing on my book. This kind of work makes me go all confused in the head. I spent a lot of time one-spacing all the long quotes when they were supposed to be double-spaced. It’s just not something I should be doing.

I have a funny brain. People install apps that lock down their computer and prevent them from accessing Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other distractors while they work. I, on the other hand, can only work in the mode of 

“As borders grow increasingly porous to the flows of capital and the migratory currents that accompany the unconstrained – ah, wait! let me Google that turkey brine recipe – a new blog comment, let’s see – by the way, what is the English for “despotricar” – ha ha, that’s a funny show I’m watching on etvnet – to the flows of capital and the migratory currents. . .”

And that’s how I produce huge quantities of text. Put me in front of a screen with no distractions, and I’ll never write anything. I have very intense and fascinating thoughts and if I don’t drown them out with all these media, I won’t be able to write.