I was discussing immigration with somebody right now, and my interlocutor exclaimed, “But shouldn’t the refugees be grateful to Europeans? If they come to the EU to save their lives, they should feel grateful to those who welcome them!”

The answer is NO. No, no and no. That’s not how human beings work. The words “should” and “be grateful” go together as well as “must” and “love”.

A psychologically healthy individual will, above all, struggle to preserve the sense of self-worth. People need to see themselves as valuable and important. If you want somebody to lick your hand and look at you with devotion for a plate of food, get a dog.

The best way to engage with people is, instead of thinking of reasons they should be grateful to you, to concentrate on how you might be grateful to them. And after finding that sense of gratitude, ask yourself for how long it would exist if the other person began to expect and demand it. I’m betting not for long unless you have a strong masochistic streak.

Germany desperately needs immigrants. 700,000 people emigrate from the country every year. [These are people who leave something great for something even better. Migrants like these constitute an enormous part of all migratory flows but they are rarely talked about because their comfort with liquid modernity is threatening. It’s much more pleasing to imagine an immigrant as invariably pathetic.]

There are 2,000,000 vacancies in Germany that are begging for highly qualified, educated personnel to fill them. There is also an aging population that needs young people to work in these high-tech jobs and feed the elderly.

Germans could say, “Hey, we need help here. We need immigrants who’ll assist us in solving this problem.” Then they’d go around the world trying to make themselves attractive to such immigrants.

That, of course, would require acknowledging vulnerability and need. And that’s not very pleasing. So instead Germans try to solve their problem in the same way as one of my colleagues asks for favors. Instead of coming to me and saying,

“Hey, I need a favor. Could you substitute me next week?”

she says, “Hey, there’s something really great I can do for you. I know you need experience teaching this kind of course, so I’ll let you substitute for me next week and you’ll gain some much needed experience!”

If you are desperate to preserve moral superiority at all costs, all you’ll end up doing is alienating people. Germans cling to their superiority through positioning immigrants – whom, once again, they desperately need – as subhuman, inferior, incapable and lacking in agency.

[And I’m not just ragging on Germans here. They are only an example. There is hardly a rich, developed country these days that doesn’t play this game.]

Moral superiority always comes at a great price. If you are desperate to play the Savior, you will never be free from endless crises and total collapse. And the only way to avoid that is to stop trying to be superior, acknowledge vulnerability and ask for help.

So you know how I like to have the TV on in the background when I read, blog, play my app game, etc, right? (Not when I eat, though. I detest having the TV on anywhere in the vicinity when I eat.)

Yesterday I had “Sex and the City” playing in the background. Then the show went to a commercial.

“This is the place where you can do anything you want, be anything you want,” a velvety voice intoned.

“Must be a commercial for a sex club,” I thought.

As I glanced at the screen, I almost fell off the bed. It was a commercial for my university. This is the first TV spot I saw for my school and I still can’t figure out why anybody would think that prospective students might be found among the fortyish fans of this old show.

Bernie Sanders piled on Planned Parenthood because “it’s part of the establishment.” Of all the reasons to be dismissive of PP, this is the most pathetic one. What is the point of competing with the likes of Ted Cruz as to who freaks out more loudly about the mythical “establishment”?

Yes, we’re close to the primaries and it’s time for empty, stupid slogans. But is it too much to ask that one come up with empty, stupid slogans that at least differ a tad from those of the opponents?

We are drowning in laziness and immaturity.

What’s really bizarre is that in St Louis, where we barely ever have snow and only 5 sad little inches were expected, the local authorities knew that the roads had to be salted in advance. In Washington, DC, on the other hand, it was a total surprise yesterday that it’s important to prepare for a snow storm.

This is our snow, by the way:

The following list of demands by Oberlin students is not only hilarious but also very pleasing. After seeing each deranged demand, I feel thankful that my students are normal, intelligent people and not these useless brats. Here are some of the crazy demands of the spoiled little things:

The immediate firing of some Oberlin employees, the immediate tenuring of some faculty members, specific curricular changes, a review and possible revision of the grading system (to be overseen by students), the creation of “safe spaces” for black students in at least three buildings on campus, the creation of a program to enroll recently released prisoners from a nearby prison as undergraduates, divestment from Israel, and a requirement that black student leaders be paid $8.20 an hour for their organizing efforts.

The students also demanded changes at Oberlin’s noted conservatory. For instance, the list of demands said that students should not be required to take “heavily based classical courses that have minimal relevance to their jazz interests.” Stating that classical music students are not required to study jazz, the list of demands says that students of jazz “should not be forced to take courses rooted in whiteness.”

Priceless shit. My students throw an occasional tantrum but it’s on an entirely different level than this entitled garbage.

Oberlin’s president refused to discuss the demands. Good for him because it’s demeaning to discuss this kind of thing as if it had merit.

A UK court declared that Putin had, in fact, ordered the murder of former KGB spy Litvinenko. Litvinenko was poisoned with polonium in London back in 2006.

People are celebrating but I find the whole thing to be barf-worthy in the extreme. The assassination took place 10 years ago. Before his death, Litvinenko named the assassins. This has all been known to everybody interested in knowing for a decade.

But the British government found it inconvenient to notice that KGB agents were running around London, poisoning folks with fucking polonium all over the place. It was more convenient to sell the country piece by piece to Putin’s gangsters, driving property prices in London sky-high and turning the place into a cesspit of corruption. It was more convenient to fill Britain’s best schools with the drunken, bullying, whoring, criminalized spawn of the gangsters, turning the formerly prestigious British education into a joke. It was more convenient to turn the country into a launch pad for Putin’s criminal activities.

Today’s revelations about the hit he took out on Litvinenko will do no damage to Putin. He can rightfully and convincingly say that it’s suspicious that the accusations suddenly surface now and not at any time before he tried to assert Russia’s importance on the international arena.

The Litvinenko scandal is helpful to Putin because it allows him both to dismiss the murder and rev up his people even more with claims that Americans trying to bring him down because they fear is growing international prestige.

Jeb Bush finally did something important in this campaign: he released an ad that depicts Hillary winning the election. Everybody cheers, Hillary looks radiant, the voice over makes it clear that the win was unavoidable. The ad is supposed to be a dig at Trump but it’s much stronger at promoting Hillary.

It’s great that Jeb is spending his campaign money on preparing voters for Hillary’s inevitability as president. Let all of the money he has finally serve a good purpose.

In Germany, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg are following the example of Denmark and searching the refugees with the goal of finding money and objects of value to confiscate.

The authorities of these countries leave no stone unturned in their search for ways of making newcomers feel as dehumanized and disaffected as possible. It’s clear that the refugees are not bringing huge wads of cash or sacks of diamonds. Taking away the sad €50 a refugee might be carrying over the limit of €350 in Baden-Württemberg or snatching a family ring will not have a large impact on Germany’s economy. But the policy is not pursuing economic goals. It’s all about pushing the refugees into a ghetto from which they won’t be likely to emerge.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio says he bought a gun on Christmas Eve to protect his family from Islamic State militants.

Or, in the words of Charles Pierce, “this is still the best country ever in which to peddle complete public lunacy.”

When I imagine Rubio, with his whiny little boy voice and his scared doe eyes bravely clutching a gun to his chest as he sits at home staring at the door through which scary ISIS fighters can irrupt at any moment, I thank Providence I’m not a comic because there is no chance of outdoing this in terms of comedic effect.