We often hear about young people freaking out and declaring themselves hugely victimized by non-existent offences, but this is something that older people do, too. A 47 – year-old Italian man claims to have been victimized by a few dirty plates:

A man from Lazio is taking his wife to court for “mistreatment of the family” because she did not cook or clean enough, Italian media reported on Thursday. The 40-year-old woman from the town of Sonnino has been charged with “mistreatment of the family” due to what her husband describes as “poor management of the household chores”. The charge could result in a jail sentence of up to six years.

Victimization has turned into such a badge of honor that people literally run around desperately looking for a reason to present themselves to the world as victims.

Within the consumerist model, the only satisfying contact is the one we have with inanimate objects. Other human beings have a will of their own, and thus, any encounter with an actual person is fraught with the danger that our desires might be thwarted. A consumer sees that as the greatest injustice and rebels.

People who battle their mother- and father-in-law in reality want to battle their parents but don’t dare to. In-laws are “parents for dummies” or “parents light” and going after them is a less scary, easier version of rebelling against the actual parents.

Fathers- and mothers-in-law who battle their children’s spouses are playing out an unconfessed incestuous scenario. It doesn’t involve any sex. It’s all about seeing their own children as substitute romantic partners.

When the incestuous scenario on one side and the thwarted rebellion on the other side come together, painful, protracted battles that span decades ensue.

P.S. This isn’t about me, these are general musings. I saw my mother-in-law twice on Skype and she was very cordial yet indifferent. Which works perfectly for me.

The question of the night: will Trump make a comeback or sink himself even deeper?

Stay tuned!

19:17 – Carson forgot he needs to keep walking? That’s embarrassing.

19:18 – they FORGOT about Kasich? This is so damn embarrassing. What a fiasco. What’s happening? Is everybody drunk at this debate?

19:20 – these questions have already been asked verbatim. Is everybody having a neurological episode?

19:22 – Cruz needs to stop scratching the podium. It’s making him look even more creepy.

19:26 – I’m not surprised somebody in Carson’s campaign died. Probably died of boredom.

19:28 – Cruz’s explanation of the Carson debacle makes him look weak and dishonest.

19:30 – Rubio is pouting already and asking everybody not to vote for Biden. Who is not running.

19:33 – Christie hit Rubio hard with the barb about his canned 30 – second responses. Rubio tries to defend himself and the audience boos him down. I like!

19:39 – Cruz sees no difference between North Korea and Iran. And this is the caliber of politician we have running for president.

19:46 – Trump’s foreign policy is more dovish than that of any Democrat. He’s completely opposed to any foreign involvement. He’s only aggressive in internal affairs.

19:52 – Cruz lays out the creepiest deportation scheme ever. The fellow is ill, folks.

20:00 – is Cruz reviving the death panels myth? What a piece of ugly Canadian trash.

20:05 – Trump is a bleeding Liberal, people. A stupid one, but a Liberal. He hates the wrong kind of immigrants but that’s the only departure I’m seeing, and it’s not a huge one.

20:16 – Rubio is right: Republican governments do tend to be very limited intellectually.

20:39 – Trump seems to have brought a single supporter who claps for him amidst silence.

20:42 – the Ham woman looks drunk.

21:14 – why are we talking about the draft all of a sudden? It’s ridiculous.

Two inventive young women have been using Tinder to attract voters to Bernie Sanders. Tinder kicked them off the app  but it’s still very cute that they were doing it.

We are coming from our yearly visit with our accountant, and I’ve got to say, once again, how eminently modest federal taxes are even on high earners. It’s a bloody shame to complain about taxes in this country.

Let’s look at a single small example of how Wall Street is an enormous asset that needs to be exploited for common good. Please observe the following list:

Barclays, BNP Paribas, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Bank of China, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Crédit Agricole, Credit Suisse, Landesbank Baden-Wuerttemberg, Morgan Stanley, Mizuho Financial, Nomura, Citigroup, Societe Generale, Scotiabank, TD Securities, China Construction Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, HSBC, RBC Capital Markets, UBS, UniCredit.

These are, of course, the world’s leading financial institutions, many of which are referred to as “Wall Street.” Do you know what else they are? They are the institutions that Putin asked to lend him money this week. And can you guess why Putin needs more money? Given that on the same day he asked for money Putin expressed disappointment with the slow progress of Assad’s troops in Syria and ramped up warfare in the East of Ukraine, it becomes clear that the money is needed for more war.

And what does more war mean? It means more death, more destruction, more refugees, more likelihood that the EU will collapse and the Western European social welfare net will be destroyed, more power to the far-right forces in Europe and, eventually, the US. Which, obviously, are exactly the results Putin wants to buy with the money he is trying to borrow.

Now, let’s think logically. Is it a good thing or a bad thing to be able to reach out to the companies listed above and get them to refuse (and convince their partners to refuse) Putin the loan? Or is the opportunity to rant about how evil they are (and they absolutely are that and more) more valuable? 

This is only a single tiny example among a bizillion and one of why every US government is kissing up to Wall Street. 

Now, let’s conduct another small exercise in logic. Let’s say the US conducts a “political rrrrrevolution” and sends all of the vicious Wall Street evildoers to jail. We can now remove all of them from the above-cited list. What’s left? Barclays, BNP Paribas, Bank of China, Mizuho Financial, Nomura, Scotiabank, etc. There is now no way of convincing them not to lend Putin money. To the contrary, they are angry as hell and willing to hit you where it hurts. And we end up with more death, more destruction, more refugees, the collapse of the EU, etc, etc. 

So unless the goal here is “world political rrrrrevolution” (and if it is, please accept my deepest sympathy for your tenuous mental state), that doesn’t sound like a fantastic plan. Even if it were remotely realistic.

And to conclude, the capacity to accept the world in its enormous complexity and not to respond to it with a neurotic need to simplify reality with reductive emotional slogans is a sign of psychological maturity.

It is absolutely hilarious, albeit in a sad, hopeless way, that Liberals have found their own deeply inane equivalent to the Right’s obsession with Hillary’s emails. It’s called Hillary’s speeches. Seeing a woman who has the power to make money is as intolerable for them as it is for their opponents to see a woman who wields political power.

Of course, if our public space were not overrun with tantrumy children, we’d all be thanking our lucky stars that we have a candidate who has an in with Wall Street. Wall Street is one of the country’s greatest assets and, like all assets, it’s paid for dearly. An intelligent, mature thing to do would be calmly and shrewdly to negotiate lowering this cost. A dumb approach that has already failed pathetically would be to shriek like an unhinged rabbit that greed is bad. When the shriekers are faced with the need to contemplate a successful woman, the burden becomes too heavy and they get completely deranged.

The rest of us is now doomed to witness an electoral campaign conducted by the perennially aggrieved and confused to the tune of “Emails! Speeches! Emails! Speeches!” while the Republican nominees heave a sigh of relief.

I just heard Kasich say on TV that the President of the US is “the father of the American people.” And here I almost thought he wasn’t a creep.

And since I’m on the subject of illustrious Patriarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church, I want to mention that the only person whom Stalin always came out to greet personally on his frequent visits was the elderly Patriarch. Stalin would hug the Patriarch lovingly and guide him towards his office.

Of course, Stalin had every reason to love the Patriarch. Every Sunday, every church held a service in honor of “our God-given leader Stalin.” And every priest joyfully snitched on parishioners, making sure that everything that was said during confession was immediately known to the KGB.

Just so you understand the caliber of the human being the Pope is so desperate to suck up to, let me tell you a single story about Goondiayev, the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Goondiayev lives with his mistress in an enormous two-million-dollar apartment in Moscow. Upstairs from Goondiayev, in an apartment just as huge, lives an elderly, frail doctor whose last remaining joy in life is the massive library he’s been collecting his entire life. The doctor is a medical superstar who, when he was younger and healthier, saved hundreds of people.

Goondiayev decided it would be cool to steal the doctor’s apartment and turn his own place into a two-story abode. So he sued the old, sick doctor for somehow spilling a lot of invisible dust into Goondiayev’s apartment and damaging the health of Goondiayev and his mistress. With said invisible dust. That, allegedly, came from the doctor’s large library.

The Putinoid court obviously took the invisible dust very seriously and ordered the sick, old doctor to pay Goondiayev damages in the amount equaling the entire value of the doctor’s apartment. After which the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church gleefully ordered the elderly doctor to vacate the premises together with his library.

This is not even remotely the worst story featuring Goondiayev. It’s one of so many that they have become completely mundane and expected. There are many people who have been destroyed by this greedy bastard and his gang of cronies.