Dr Phil is not airing because somebody has decided that everybody needs to be forced to watch the stupid arrival of the stupid Pope live.

I thought this kind of crap only happened in Putin’s Russia where people are regularly inconvenienced by the idiotic events of the idiotic Orthodox Church that are pushed in their faces. I thought we had separation of church and state in this country, yet everybody has to be exposed to the disgraceful spectacle of our political leaders smooching some boring old wanker.

This is so obnoxious.

Back in 1999, a politician said,

It is wrong to blame all of our problems on the West and the United States. They are not causing everything that’s wrong here. We are causing our own problems. Only we are to blame for everything that doesn’t work in our own country.

This politician was called Vladimir Putin.

As we all know, today he is passionately defending the opposite point of view. And it’s not that he changed his opinion. He’s a politician, so he’s not in the business of having opinions. He simply realized that “we are responsible for ourselves” is not a message that his people want to hear. So he changed the message. Russia didn’t turn into a cesspit of ethnic and racial hatred because of Putin. It did so because that’s what the people of Russia want their country to be like.

And it’s the same with Obama’s “weak” response on foreign affairs. It is only weak because he knows that voters want it that way. There is zero support among his voters for any engagement overseas. So he gives them what they want.

Paraphrasing Putin,

It is wrong to blame all of our problems on our political leaders. They are not causing everything that’s wrong here. We are causing our own problems. Only we are to blame for everything that doesn’t work in our own country.

It turns out that Russia and Syria aren’t responding to American gestures of goodwill and conciliation by restraint and retreat. Rather, they are coordinating efforts in Syria to frustrate American objectives.

Yet again, Americans discover that other human beings are, indeed, human and pursue their own interests as they see fit. They don’t lick your hand and wag their tails gratefully when you pet them to show goodwill. How extremely shocking.

A fellow academic writes:

In my department, we can often manage to schedule our teaching for four days a week, which gives us one “non-teaching” day to grade and do prep with fewer interruptions.

Wow, I really get to appreciate my university when I hear this kind of thing. We always get 2 days of teaching scheduled in one semester and 3 days scheduled in the next semester. Plus, I get a semester with a single teaching day every three years. This is how I manage to do as much research as I do.

We are considered a teaching institution but college-level teaching that is not based on an active and busy research agenda is not serious teaching. It’s a scam.

Last week in Montréal, people who identify as Russian organized a big alcohol-fueled, Putin’s portrait-waving bash. Everybody ate, drank, and toasted Putin for hours.

In the meanwhile, the city’s Ukrainian community under the leadership of my Jewish father held a conference on Ukrainian literature and culture at one of Montréal’s universities. There was no alcohol and no glorification of politicians.

And so it is. While some folks express their drunken Putinomania, others live the life of the mind.

I fell asleep and woke up in a beautiful world where Scott Walker dropped out of the race. I was really afraid of this one, people. His face of a stubborn, clueless fanatic kept reminding me of Dubya in a disturbing way. He’d get this inward – looking expression that you see in people who have lost contact with reality, and that freaked me our every single time.

This is real democracy, my friends. Everything is so beautifully unpredictable. Just a few months ago everybody  (me included) were certain he was a major possibility, and now he’s out.

This is a great development.

The Sunday Review of the NYTIMES regaled me with a story that made me contort with laughter. The story is titled “A Toxic Work World” and is a great example of the recent efforts to convince the Unhireables that they are better off without evil, nasty work. In the process, the article allows everybody else to engage in sweet, delicious self-pity:

For many Americans, life has become all competition all the time. Workers across the socioeconomic spectrum have stories about toiling 12 to 16-hoyr days and experiencing anxiety attacks and exhaustion.

I’m sure it’s all true. People have stories of misery that would terrify the most cold-hearted and cynical. There can be no doubt that they perceive themselves as hugely overworked even when they don’t really work that hard.

I’m on sabbatical right now, which means that I don’t have to be in my office. Still, when a student asked me to meet to sign some papers, I agreed, warning the student that I don’t have anything else to do at the office and asking her to arrive at 12 pm sharp.

Obviously, the student didn’t show up at 12. Instead, she sauntered in 40 minutes later, offered no explanation or apology, and informed me that she hadn’t had time to fill out her papers, so could I sign the empty sheets instead.

When she fails to become as successful as she wants, she will savor the articles about the evil world of work that only rewards the lucky few and casts aside the hardworking victims like her.

Does anybody understand why VW gamed its emissions controls? What was it trying to gain?

Of course, the reason doesn’t change anything. The company richly deserves to pay its 18-billion fine, and then some. I’m just curious what could motivate them to do something this shitty. Do they profit somehow from sabotaging the emissions controls?

People are so easy to manipulate. Donald Trump bombed at the second debate. He looked tired, confused, and mumbly. As a result, his ratings began to drop.

So what did he do? He planted a fellow at one of his rallies to make some stupid comment about Muslims. And now everybody is so busy discussing the entirely idiotic question of whether a Muslim should be US President that nobody remembers the debate. Moreover, nobody even remembers that there are no Muslims running and that, instead, we have a whole bunch of very unqualified, ignorant, confused people trying to get elected president.

Once again, Trump manages to exploit the love of cheap outrage that his compatriots have and push them away from discussing issues that will directly impact their lives.

I wonder, is nobody ashamed of being so easily manipulated by a creature as primitive as Trump?

NYTimes reports that the US military personnel operates under harshly enforced orders to tolerate the Afghanis raping children, often right on the American military bases.

American soldiers are forced to listen to the screams of raped children on their bases and are severely punished when they can’t take it any longer and try to intervene.

The rapists of kids are given free reign to rape at American military bases (paid for by my and your money, by the way) because of “a reluctance to impose cultural values.”

Question: what’s so wrong with imposing cultural values that are obviously vastly superior?

American taxpayers end up paying for rape pads as a result of “the American policy of treating child sexual abuse as a cultural issue.”

Question:  why are we so in thrall to the largely meaningless word “culture” that we are ready to stand by and stare impotently as barbarity proliferates?