Let’s put to rest, finally, the idiotic idea that Sweden is a socialist country.

Once again: socialism is state ownership over means of production. Communism is the death of government and the ensuing collective ownership of means of production.

Currently, socialism exists in North Korea. Communism doesn’t exist and it never has existed anywhere.

Socialism is NOT the same and is not even related to a strong social safety net. The USSR was a socialist country yet social mobility was non-existent and welfare services were inadequate.

A social safety net is a concession that capitalism makes to people in order to make itself more palatable and prevent social unrest. When the possibility of social unrest disappears, the social safety net begins to fray. Today, we are witnessing an erosion of the welfare state everywhere because capitalism no longer needs it. The probability of serious social unrest is nil (remember the pathetic fiasco of Occupy Wall Street? Did it look very scary to you?).

The reason why it’s crucial to remember the differences between socialism, communism, and the prettified capitalism of Sweden and Co is that we need to preserve the mindset where some alternative to capitalism is possible. If we haven’t found that alternative yet, this doesn’t mean it can’t be found. There is no physical space for that alternative yet, but let’s at least preserve a mental space for it to appear. Because having an alternative is always better than not having it, even if you totally dig the status quo.

And as for Bernie Sanders, he does an enormous disservice to his own cause when he calls himself a socialist. He empties the word of all meaning and fills it with a slightly diluted capitalist content. As a result, the very possibility of something radically different from the status quo is denied.

Bernie suggests that all we can aspire to is maybe getting the capital to show us a tiny bit of mercy with some tiny social program that might exist for some tiny period of time. That’s all Bernie can hope to achieve right now as a politician, it’s a noble goal, and I admire him for pursuing it. But does he have to pave the road to this achievement with the coffins of radically different possibilities?

A horribly offensive Halloween photo that is causing an uproar at the University of Louisville.

[Russian] The truth about the Russian airplane that crashed yesterday. It was a very dilapidated vehicle.

[Spanish] Zygmunt Bauman has written a weepy, useless article on the refugee crisis. But he’s a genius, he’s allowed an occasional blubber.

Cecile Richards says something deeply stupid. Color me unsurprised.

Feminism today doesn’t cease to amaze. But not in a good way. A feminist website is defending the interests of. . . deadbeat dads. [Just a small warning: there are few groups of people I detest more than fathers who don’t pay child support. It’s useless to try to defend them on this blog.]

Here is a fascinating discussion of the “shadow CV” concept. Please remind me to write my own version.

Ferguson effect, schmerguson schmefect. The crime is on the rise here in St. Louis is on the rise because it’s always on the rise here. There is a million reasons, and they are not Ferguson.

Fertility and the fate of nations. Long, detailed, and fascinating.

Dogs shoot people, too!

After just 9 days without sugar, extremely obese kids see an improvement in their metabolism and lose weight!

Dan Savage hates women with a fiery passion.

Your junk mail shows if you are rich or poor.

The open borders fantasy.

So it looks like Rubio will be the Republican nominee.

Hillary will eat him for breakfast because he doesn’t look serious or presidential by her side.

But Rubio would beat Bernie in a debate because he offers a counterbalance to all of Sanders’s weaknesses.

Rubio is young, calm, not grumpy, and his “my mother was a bar maid” spiel, tiresome as it may be, is the perfect dam to Bernie’s populism. Rubio is Hispanic, which brings him to a draw with Hillary who’s a woman (I’m into platitudes this week). But Bernie doesn’t have an exciting enough identity to beat Rubio’s claim to “the first ever” title. Jews are not an oppressed group, nobody stands in their way to anything, nobody will feel sorry for them. Hispanics win that contest any day of the week.

In short, for lack of anything better, the Republicans are betting on Rubio who will at least be able to beat Sanders.

As I said before, hello President Hillary.

The chapter that I wrote for a collection with the famous contributors (the one that was freaking me out and causing me to experience my very first instance of the impostor syndrome) was not the only chapter for a collection that I wrote on my sabbatical. As if it weren’t enough just to write a whole damn book over the sabbatical, I had to undertake these (completely unrelated) projects, as well.

This second collection is also filled with famous people. And some of them are actually the same famous people as the ones who are contributing to the first collection. (Which means that the famous people and I are thinking in the same direction.)

So today I got the feedback on this second submission, and the reviews are glowing. The editors are still suggesting some changes but words like “wonderful” and “impressive” were used to describe my piece.

The impostor syndrome is receding. Thank you for the support, everybody!

It’s cold, windy, foggy, the sky is overcast, and there’s a drizzling rain.

“What a beautiful day,” a neighbor says.

“Yes,” I respond, beaming. “This is the best weather ever.”

“She was being sarcastic,” N whispers as the neighbor walks away.

Over 200 people died in the horrible crash of a Russian plane in Egypt. The aircraft has been having engine trouble for weeks but the Russian pool of airplanes is so outdated that there are crashes all the time and nobody is interested in renewing the aircraft pool. By the way, a fighter jet crashed in Russia today because of engine malfunction. This happens all the time with Russian planes. 

I only hope that the Russian media will abstain from using the tragic deaths of the passengers to promote the narrative that Russia is, indeed, fighting ISIS and this is some sort of terrorist revenge. It would be intolerable to see the crash used for political purposes.

There is a debate going on in Russia as to whether in his youth Putin was a thug.

Putin claims he was definitely a thug but his detractors accuse him of lying and insist he wasn’t as thuggish as he says he was.

The revelations about his 13 palaces, the prostitutes he ships in by an airplaneful, a private plane runway that cost a cool billion, etc did nothing to lower Putin’s prestige. But if the voters find out that he might have actually been a good boy in his teenage years, that will be a stain on his reputation.

“My Mum has dementia and quite a few of my family were concerned about what would happen if I came out to Mum, whether she might be too stressed to handle it. . . When I eventually came out to Mum, I kept it very simple. And she said—at the end of it, she said, ‘Well,’ she said, ‘What do you know? I’ve got a beautiful new daughter.’ And she said, ‘Come here, love.’ …I go and see Mum every few weeks and she’s forgotten each time, and every time I tell her again, she gives me just the same beautiful reaction that she did exactly the same, almost word for word every time. I’m kind of the luckiest one of all because I get to come out to Mum 100 times a year, and every time, she’s beautiful.”

To me, the story is creepy. I mean, good for the daughter, yippee, but think of that poor old Mum. It’s not her fault that her memory’s gone, and one would think a grown child would be more sensitive to the mother’s illness. The old lady is still human, in spite of the dementia. She doesn’t deserve to be treated like a senseless robot.

There was this Spanish movie about a fellow who found a key chain shaped like a woman’s head. The key chain repeated “I love you, I love you” in a mechanical voice whenever he wanted it to. The guy grew so attached to the key chain that no actual woman could compete because women kept trying to say and do more than just mechanically repeat, “I love you.”

It seems like the daughter in the story wants a key chain like that and not a human mother.

After seeing groups of kids in costumes in the street, I made a mad dash home and was in time finally to greet trick-or-treaters.

The kids don’t recognize my Ukrainian candy (manufactured at the candy factory of Ukraine’s president, by the way, and massively better than anything you can buy at Walmart), and keep asking, “What is this???”

I knew this would happen but I’m an educator. Everything needs to be an educational opportunity. The lesson here is: if you are too scared to open yourself to new cultural experiences, you might be depriving yourself of something delicious.

Finally, finally I have managed to greet trick-or-treaters.

Americans, I’ve had it with you, seriously. Once again, you’ve had to go and move Halloween? What’s wrong with doing it on October, 31? Why does it always have to be on a different date?

October 31 falls on a weekend this year. It can’t be inconvenient or whatever. Why? Why can’t I ever figure out when it will happen?