Spain’s greatest living writer Juan Goytisolo says that Putin keeps winning in Syria because he knows exactly what he wants to achieve there, and Americans are losing because they only know what they don’t want to happen. Obama doesn’t want to be embroiled in another endless Iraq/Afghanistan type of conflict. But there is no proactive, concrete vision of what the US does want to happen in Syria. Putin, on the other hand, has a very specific goal: to position Russia as a superpower and get the US to forget about the sanctions.

You can’t exist without a specific, detailed and clear foreign policy. If all you have is strictly reactive, you’ll keep ending up in situations where you hemorrhage resources and achieve nothing.

But even the most educated, intelligent Americans don’t care about foreign policy. And elected officials have no reason to fashion a foreign policy agenda. Which means that we have many Afghanistans and Syrias in our future.

A colleague and her daughter came to see Klara and brought a mountain of gifts and food. When I first saw them, I thought they were moving in, with all the stuff they were carrying.

“Guys, you didn’t have to bring all of this,” I said modestly.

“Yes, we did,” the colleague replied. “Because we are Americans. We bring things.”

One of the reasons for the Russians’ deep-seated animosity towards the US is the belief that Americans want to steal Russia’s precious oil and gas. The country’s leaders are convinced that Madeleine Albright came up with the idea to annex Russia’s Siberia and Far East, and the subsequent US leaders are carrying out Albright’s plan. How did Russians arrive at the conclusion that Albright was planning to invade? Here is how:

Albright’s thinking on the matter, it turns out, was originally “unearthed” by a former KGB general who had worked for the organization’s special paranormal studies bureau. In 2006, the elderly general claimed on TV that his unit had telepathically connected with Albright’s thoughts in 1999—by carefully studying photographs of her—and found that she pathologically hates all Slavs, and had designs on Russia’s mineral wealth.

Insanity is contagious, especially when the delusional system it feeds on is flattering to one’s sense of importance. I have personally talked to two Russians who are absolutely convinced that Obama is trying to put in place Albright’s annexation scheme and is somehow using Ukraine to do that. The logistics of using Ukraine to annex the Far East will befuddle anybody who has ever found oneself in the vicinity of a map but this argument never seems to make an impression on the believers in the annexation myth.

People told me that having an infant led to tons of television watching but I could never imagine how much television watching. We are wearing out our Netflix subscription like never before.

Come to think of it, what else can one do between feedings and diaper changes? One’s brain is still on the fritz, so reading is not happening. So television it is.

It’s a good thing a new season of House of Cards is approaching.

And now that Hillary slaughtered in SC, the poor, sad MSNBC journalists still don’t quit.

“A win like this for Sanders. . . sorry, for Clinton,” one says with a hangdog look.

“But there are still the emails! The FBI might still bring charges!” another one ventures hopefully.

Most Ordinary Americans in 2016 Are Richer Than John D. Rockefeller in 1916.

A great English-language article on the anniversary of Boris Nemtsov ‘ s assassination. It’s so rare that one sees anything intelligent written about the post-Soviet space in English.

Ursula Le Guin keeps embarrassing herself. This time, she makes a fool of herself by lecturing somebody who actually is a serious writer. This lack of self-awareness is very sad.

The Putinoid Ian Welsh is a Trump admirer. Color me unsurprised.

A historian attempts to follow Tudor hygiene with a daily regime of linen underwear.

How Evangelicals explain their support for Trump. Very enlightening.

Teju Cole on one of my favorite novels ever.

No, Bernie Sanders is not electable.

The MSNBC coverage of the SC primary is egregious. They are doing their damndest to present Hillary’s impending win as not a real win, saying that people are only voting for her because they think there’s no other choice and that voters have no enthusiasm or interest in the primary.

None of this is helping Bernie, so I don’t think this show is being put on for his sake. This helps Trump, especially given that the same newscasters portray his campaign as provoking great enthusiasm among voters.

We are turning into such a peach of a state, folks. Our lawmakers can’t get a state budget passed two years in a row but they do have the time to come up with a bill that will deprive children of single mothers of birth certificates. This was an important practice back in the tsarist Russia, a barbaric joke of a state that refused to accept the full humanity of children who lacked official fathers. The state of Illinois decided that now was a good time to bring back to life this ridiculous, uncivilized practice.

What an absolute disgrace is this state becoming.

Chris Christie just endorsed Trump for president.

I guess this answers the question of why Christie never attacked Trump during the debates.

I didn’t expect this. Is anybody else as stunned as I am?

Different names for the exact same thing evoke intensely differing reactions.