I’m doing a bibliography review and watching a pre-recorded Kitchen Nightmares marathon. The structure of the show is identical to that of another personal favorite, The Profit. Successful multimillionaire professionals try to help failing businesses by giving them money, paying for renovations, freeing them from debt, finding cheaper suppliers and huge contracts, etc. Every single time, though, it turns out that the problems of the business can’t be resolved this way because they stem from the psychological issues of the owners or messed up relationships between the workers.

Kitchen Nightmares‘ Gordon Ramsey has zero sensitivity to these issues, which is why he fails so often in comparison to the more sophisticated Greek fellow on The Profit who always begins with an effort to get people to talk about their psychological problems.

With all the talk about the crucial importance of early childhood experiences, it is important to remember that these experiences are not an unappealable death sentence. People absolutely can liberate themselves from the childhood trauma that is sucking them dry in adulthood, making them depressed, listless, underachieving, lonely, addicted, sick, etc.

One thing people need to seek such liberation is an external source of energy. Their own energy is spilling out of them through the breaches created by the trauma, and they need to supplement it from something that comes from the outside. This external source of energy can be falling in love, interacting with friends, pursuing a hobby, practicing a religion, doing work that one likes – in short, energy comes from healthy, constructive enjoyment (and not from enjoyment derived from self-destructive practices.)

The problem is that many people are too traumatized even to seek these sources of supplemental energy. What they see as love, sex, work, hobby, friendship and religious practice is actually self-destructive, masochistic engagement with the world that reinforces their childhood trauma.

Everybody is discussing a great study by Stanford economist Raj Chetty on childhood development and gender gaps, and I want to say a few words, too. Here is the paper’s central finding:

First, gender gaps in employment rates, earnings, and college attendance vary substantially across the parental income distribution. Notably, the traditional gender gap in employment rates is reversed for children growing up in poor families: boys in families in the bottom quintile of the income distribution are less likely to work than girls. Second, these gender gaps vary substantially across counties and commuting zones in which children grow up.

First of all, it’s great that geography is mentioned in the study because it is an enormous factor. As for the poorest families, the reason for the gender gap is obvious: children model their adult relationship with work and money on the same-gendered parent. In the poorest families, the father is usually absent and the mother works. This arrangement teaches the girls to be financially self-reliant while the boys don’t have a model to follow in this respect. Not surprisingly, the paper points out that:

The reversal of the gender gap in low-income families occurs only among children who grow up with unmarried parents (Appendix Figure 3). Among children with married parents, men work more than women across the entire parental income distribution

In a very cute way, the paper shows the authors’ almost infantile surprise that childhood experiences shape adulthood:

Together, these findings demonstrate that gender gaps in adulthood have roots in childhood, perhaps because childhood disadvantage is especially harmful for boys.

Where the analysis fails is its male-centric interpretation of the word “disadvantage.” Since the era when the concept of a middle-class came into existence, the greatest freedom for women existed among the very rich and the poor. And the greatest constraints on female lives could be found in the middle classes. This has not changed. 

To conclude, I want to reiterate the central finding of the paper and point out how crucial it is that this is finally getting recognized:

More generally, our findings illustrate that gender gaps in adulthood can be better understood by starting one’s analysis from childhood.

This is precisely what Cameron said in the brilliant speech he made recently. Way too many people act as if we were all produced in incubators from which we emerged at the age of 21 with entirely identical manufacturing specs. People beat themselves up for not achieving as much as their friend or neighbor, condemning themselves as weak-willed and unmotivated when there are potent objective reasons for the difference.

Canal+ in France is airing (and re-airing, and re-airing) a Putinoid documentary about Ukraine, trying hard to sell Putin’s propaganda to the people of France. It’s clear that the French have decided to forget the recent scare they’ve had with the success at the polls of Putin’s shill Marine Le Pen and want to convince themselves to push for the removal of the sanctions against Russian oligarchs.

This is a curious moment to consider lifting the sanctions. A British court was forced to admit – against the ardent wishes of the political establishment – that the very oligarchs the sanctions censor have been conducting criminal activities on EU soil, growing so comfortable that they actually used radioactive polonium to kill a British citizen. At the same time, Putin’s personal participation in corruption at a global scale was – again, very reluctantly – recognized by US officials.

One has to have a death wish of massive proportions to try to facilitate things for a corrupt foreign government that sponsors an extremist neo-Nazi organization on your territory but it seems like this is precisely what the French are experiencing.

Spaniards were very happy to break out of the bipartisan system they had existed in throughout its entire post-1975 democracy. Finally, not 2 but 4 parties have obtained enough votes to disrupt the hold that the two major parties had on the government!

Of course, now Spain has no government at all because the 4 parties can’t figure out who’ll be the president and how to form a coalition. This goes to show that there are potent reasons to hold on to the seemingly limiting bipartisan system. Maybe most human beings find anything that contains more than two ingredients to be way too complex.

What I find tiresome is that, for way too many people, their support for Hillary / Bernie is not about politics at all but about their obnoxious and vapid tribal allegiances.

I, for instance, have no problem saying, “I want Hillary to win but I recognize that Bernie is a fantastic candidate, too. He is honest, he gets the base super energized, he has some great ideas. It’s good to have two promising, good candidates.” I don’t need to convince myself that Bernie is a white supremacist and a sexist evildoer who will destroy the universe if he is nominated.

I wish I saw more people who could say this or, alternatively, say, “I want Bernie to win but I recognize that Hillary is a fantastic candidate, too. We have managed to come up with the first truly viable and vastly supported female candidate, and that’s a huge achievement. And look how fantastic Hillary stood up to the Benghazi panel bullying! That was very inspiring. It’s good to have two promising, good candidates.”

At the same time, it would be nice if people could liberate themselves a tad from the overpowering need to pursue tribal allegiances and could actually say something critical of their supported candidates.

For instance, “Hillary is great but I’m convinced she is not being honest about her lack of support for the TPP.” Or, “Love Bernie but he might have trouble getting his free universal healthcare through Congress.”

One of these people will be our nominee, we will have to support her 🙂 in the general election, no matter what.Maybe it’s time to look at the positive sides of our candidates and reserve the unhinged vitriol for the actual opponents. All of this juvenile in-fighting is weakening our field. There is absolutely nothing useful that comes out of it other than an opportunity for lonely infantile people to feel less alone. Let’s do more politics and less junior high clique forming.

With the results of the Iowa caucuses, people who are simultaneously sexist and anti-Hispanic can indulge in full displays of their nastiness.

By the way, we all know that my hatred of Ted Cruz borders on pathological, don’t we? Still, I have to point out that referring to Cruz as “Rafael” is as much of a dickitude as hissing out “Hussssssein” when talking about Obama.

I have an idea for a national campaign for Bernie. He could run on the idea of decency. Bernie is such an obviously decent fellow that it could be a powerful image to promote nationally. And he wouldn’t need to fake anything, just act naturally, that’s all.

I believe people could respond to this very authentic kind of goodness. There is a nostalgia for something like this even in the most cynical among us. And it seems like Bernie’s campaign understands this, if we look at the recent commercials they’ve put out.

I keep hearing the following:

Clinton has held a lead among nonwhites of nearly 40 percentage points in national polls.

Does anybody know why black and Hispanic voters (who, I’m assuming, are referred to here as non-whites) don’t want Bernie?

I hope this is not true, and Hillary’s campaign doesn’t really plan on using this dumbass strategy against Trump:

The emerging approach to defining Trump is an updated iteration of the “Bain Strategy” — the Obama 2012 campaign’s devastating attacks on Mitt Romney’s dealings with investment firm Bain Capital, according to a dozen Democratic operatives and campaign aides familiar with the accelerating planning inside Clinton’s orbit. This time, Democrats would highlight the impact of Trump’s four business bankruptcies — and his opposition to wage hikes at his casinos and residential properties — on the families of his workers.

First of all, I followed the 2012 election very closely but have retained no memory of even the words “Bain Capital.” Devastating that shit was not. Romney tanked his own campaign by being a completely wooden and tone-deaf individual with zero charisma. And, of course, making a very poor Veep choice.

Be that as it may, the strategy against Trump is plainly stupid. The fellow is a bona fide billionaire. Past bankruptcies only make him more attractive. People dig stories of redemption, of coming back from failure, of overcoming hardship. Feeding that mythology is simply counterproductive.

As for “the impact on the workers’ families”, who is this strategy trying to convince not to vote for Trump? Bleeding heart Liberals? Do Trump’s supporters really look like people who’ll suddenly exclaim, “Oh God, the worker’s families! How they must have suffered! I would have never supported Trump had I known”?

This is all very ridiculous. You can’t project yourself onto people and talk to yourself while staring at them. If the were like you, they’d be voting for the same candidate already.