Mellifluous fools are exhorting everybody not to say that Trump is a narcissist because that will hurt the feelings of diagnosed narcissists and prevent them from “seeking help.” I’m not sure I can imagine what kind of help a narcissist might possibly seek anyway. A person who comes to a psychotherapist and says, “Please help me stop hurting people with my narcissim” is not a narcissist. At the core of the condition lies an incapacity to face one’s imperfections and the need to blame others for everything.

These fussy idiots who berate others for calling a crazy motherfucker just that because that might hurt the feelings of people in the mentally unstable incestuous community are part of the reason why Trump is successful. Their efforts at censoring everybody are inherently aggressive, and so is a response to them.

We are watching the fourth season of House of Cards, and it’s all about scary Russians. Before that, we watched Blacklist, and it was all about scary Russians. Putin has achieved his most cherished goal. Russians are important, scary, and central to every conversation.

It’s a crazy dumb goal, especially if you need to crash your country’s economy and kill many people to achieve it. But it’s been achieved.

It’s on days like today that one remembers just how dirty and cynical a business politics is. Obama’s visit to Cuba goes against everything good, noble, and worthy, yet it’s unavoidable. This is a moment where we all collectively lay down and roll in the muck to prevent something even worse.

And Cubans are once again sacrificed for somebody else’s greater good.

This is very sad.

Turns out that Jamie Oliver, the celebrity chef, has been running around informing women that “breastfeeding is easy and convenient.” I’m afraid to ask how the poor fellow found out and who it is he’s been feeding with his breast milk.

Seriously, it would be so much better if cooks cooked, doctors treated patients, teachers taught, and politicians ran for president.

Klara is screaming.

“Look how angry she is!” I say. “She’s enraged.”

“No,” N says. “She’s sad because she thinks nobody loves her.”

(Of course, in reality she’s probably just hungry.)

As for actual parenting books, I have a great reading recommendation. In spite of the clumsy title, Emotional Muscle by Kerry and Jack Novick neither guilt-trips parents nor condescends to them, like so many patenting manuals do.

The book was written by psychoanalysts who run a daycare where they help parents and children navigate the complexities of emotional growth from birth to age 5. There is not an ounce of theory or terminology in Emotional Muscle. The book is written in an extremely accessible way but it’s inspired by the latest advances in psychoanalytic theory.

Every time I sat down to read this book, I wept because the many parents described in it are all such wonderful, loving people who are ready to change and grow for the sake of their children. Of course, I was also pregnant and hormonal, so that added to the weepiness. But the book offers such a comforting, feel-good glimpse into what life would be like if everybody followed psychoanalytic principles of emotional competence that it’s really touching.

I got tons of useful suggestions from this book and will keep consulting it for years to come.

I never even heard of Margaret Forster before reading The Unknown Bridesmaid but it turned out to be quite an outstanding novel. Most writers who explore childhood trauma in their novels go for the sensational and the outlandish in order to sell books by titillating the reader’s appetite for the lurid. Pat Conroy, for instance, does just that. His depictions of extreme forms of child abuse shock but fail to offer any insight. Obviously, children who are raped, tortured and brutalized since infancy grow up to be pretty messed up. There is nothing in these depictions to nourish one’s intellect.

Unlike Conroy’s novels, The Unknown Bridesmaid has no artistic value whatsoever. It does, however, offer the most insightful, nuanced portrayal of the origins of “infant rage” that I have seen in any work of fiction. Julia, the novel’s protagonist, is not beaten, molested, or subjected to anything that could be called abuse. Even after she grows up and becomes a counselor to “difficult” children, Julia is incapable of articulating the reasons for her rage and provide an explanation for her blighted life. The damage done to her by careless, superficial, dismissive adults is hard to put into words because we don’t yet have a habit of articulating it. The suffering of children like Julia isn’t nearly as glamorous and shocking as that of Conroy’s characters or talk show participants. Forster, however, finds a compelling – albeit a tad pedestrian in terms of style – way of talking about it.

This single short novel will be a lot more useful to people than a stack of parenting books. Highly recommended.

The object to the left of me is not a toilet seat, in case you think we live like pigs. It’s a cushion used for breastfeeding.

I know nothing about Michelle Obama and have no interest in finding out because I’m not into gossip and tabloid stuff. But I just caught a glimpse of her on TV saying that she will not run for president because. . . she has two young children. Not because she has zero experience in politics and is woefully unqualified even to think about holding such a responsible position in a field that is alien to her – which is the real reason. No, instead, she mentions children, which is something that never prevented anybody from running for president or any other political office.

Not only did Michelle Obama squander a great opportunity to remind voters that people who never held political office should not be running for president, but she also reinforced a deeply barbaric stereotype about mothers. Of course, not everybody is good at public speaking, but you’ve got to try really hard to mess up this badly.

Paul Krugman blasts Republicans, in the NYTIMES, for not recognizing that “the white working class. . . is a victim of external forces.” The really important question to ask, however, is for how long can one be a victim of the same external forces before becoming first an accomplice and eventually the cause of one’s victimization?

When the USSR fell apart, none of us caused or expected it. We all found ourselves in a completely different reality where every aspect of existence was, in some way, new. I understand extremely well what it feels like to have the rug pulled out from underneath your feet and to see your entire world slip away, leaving you in an unrecognizable new reality.

But I also know that you do get to choose whether to move on or keep stewing in resentment until it feels like a good idea to vote for Putin / Trump and fantasize about harming Ukrainians / Mexicans to feel better about yourself.