Clarissa's Blog

I’m very proud that Michelle didn’t humiliate herself and her country by covering her head or body to suck up to stupid Saudi woman-haters:

The Clintons have both been accused of engaging in nation-building in the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean. This is a very idiotic accusation because nation-building looks completely different. It’s all about manufacturing a sense of common puprpose, inventing a shared history, engineering emotional attachment, and creating meaningful symbols. None of this was done by either Clinton or by Obama.

Instead, they tried to engage in state-building. This is a lot easier than nation-building because creating functioning institutions of a state requires no passionate emotional attachment. And even at this much easier task they all failed, every single time. Because it’s not something anybody can impose from the outside. People will figure it out on their own. Or not.

Confusing nation-building with state-building is a sign of sloppy, lazy thinking. Language deserves respect and loving care. Let’s not treat it with contempt that it doesn’t merit.

Kasich wants to arm Ukraine

, and that’s all there is to it. Even if doing what he wants would lead to more conflict and more damage done to Ukraine, he’s not going to worry about it.

And this, precisely this, is why Americans are not extremely liked overseas. Make your argument, you stupid piece of condescending garbage, without making a show of fake concern for the welfare of Ukrainians about whom you, you brainless reject of humanity, know absolutely nothing but whom you, you idiotic object of universal derision, despise so much that you think you know what’s good for them.

It is out of this world annoying that this senseless sample of stupid superiority would chide Kasich for something he’s just as guilty of.

Freaks.

To illustrate the preceding paradox, let’s look at the Crazy Baker drama that played out last year and is likely to keep playing out for a while to come. Free-market right-wingers defined “freedom” as the right not to sell. At the same time, anti-free-market left-wingers defined freedom as the right to buy.

For the free-marketers, following the market dictates of responding to demand with supply was, all of a sudden, intolerable.

For the anti-free-marketers, a tiny and insignificant limitation on their capacity to buy was, all of a sudden intolerable.

Both sides, however, avoided discussing what was happening in terms of consumerism. Both, instead, took it to the realm of morality. Hence, both must agree that morality = exchange of money and goods.

Conservatives support market economy but reject the culture and the way of life that this economy engenders. Free markets need consumers ⇒ consumers like to shop around for everything and anything ⇒ it is unavoidable that consumers will start shopping for (and easily discarding in order to shop for even more) sex partners, gender identities, etc.

At the same time, Leftists resist the idea of free markets and see the evils of consumerism yet are obsessed with forcing everybody into the ideology that market economy engenders.

Thus, both Leftists and Rightists are ideologically and intellectually inconsistent and are doomed to run around in a vicious circle of condemning the very thing that gives them life and celebrating the very thing that kills them.

The onesie, pants, socks, gloves and diaper that Klara is wearing and the sleeper where she is sleeping are all gifts and all come from different people. 

This is the night for egregious campaign managers, it seems. Bernie’s campaign manager just said that even if they lose both the popular vote and pledged delegates at the end of the primary process in June, they will not give up and will try to talk superdelegates over to their side.

What a dumbo. Well, at least he was not on Putin’s payroll. I think.

OK, people, this is really shocking information. You know Paul Manafort, the fellow Trump recently chose as his new campaign manager?

Do I just discovered that he was helping Putin put in place his puppet president of Ukraine Yanukovich. The same Yanukovich who ran away from Ukraine as a result of the Revolution of Dignity.

So Trump and Putin have been in cahoots and working together on political projects for many years.

My university is holding a conference on microaggressions. And not with the goal of mocking them.

It’s the same university that didn’t have funds to pay for my trip to an actual scholarly conference at Oxford. The microaggressions conference is being organized by the same administrator who denied me that funding and is currently sending out anti-union missives, arguing that unions are divisive.

I want everyone to note that it isn’t students who are coming up with the initiative to give intellectual validity to the concept of microaggressions. It’s an anti-union administrator who is trying to distract our attention from organizing a collective political effort (a union of workers) towards interpersonal squabbles and grievances. See how masterfully it’s done? Now everybody’s attention will veer towards their personal identity (and attendant grievances) and away from the feeling of solidarity as workers.

Smart, eh?

The department I graduated from failed to recruit any graduate students for the second year in a row. This means there won’t be any graduate courses taught at all in the next year.

The people who applied to the program this year were of inferior quality than usual (says the department) and those who were admitted declined the offer. This is weird given that the program has one of the most generous compensation packages on the continent (i.e. in the entire world.)

Yale Daily News gives an explanation but it’s so idiotic that I don’t even want to repeat it. I think the problem is that the program is outdated and needs urgent revamping. But that’s just my take on it. Who knows what prospective students are thinking.