Clarissa's Blog

Kirchner lost in Argentina, chavismo suffered a huge defeat in Venezuela. This looks like a very hopeful moment for Latin America.

Even as recently as the 1960s it was still perfectly acceptable for an eminent historian to speak of “the Spaniards of the paleolithic era” and the temperamental qualities they share with the Spaniards of the XXth century.

Today such a statement would cause a huge burst of laughter.

Is the idiot who was telling me that tenured professors can’t be fired because his brain-dead bozo buddy told him so still around? Hello, loser, this is for you:

At least a dozen faculty at the College of Saint Rose were informed Friday that their positions are being cut.

The faculty who are being let go include several longtime and tenured members.

Whenever I mention that I watch Dr. Phil, people begin to snob over me in a way that makes me suspect they only interrupted their rereading of Baudrillard to notice my blog for two minutes.

Of course, there are many silly Dr. Phil segments but there are also very important ones where Dr. Phil educates the woefully ignorant audience about some basics of human psychology.

To give an example, the favorite argument of the proponents of “there is no connection between the process of parenting and its results” philosophy is that children who grow up in the same family are always very different. Often, these idiots claim triumphantly, one sibling is good and another is bad, so what is this if not proof that some people are born bad and nobody is responsible for their badness?

In yesterday’s segment, Dr. Phil explained to the stunned audience that roles are assigned inside families and children have no choice but follow the script. Many families have a black sheep because it’s easier to revel in one’s goodness against the background of losership or evilness the black sheep provides.

We’ve all known families where one sister is pretty and the other one is bookish or one brother is athletic and another one nerdy. In reality, neither we nor these siblings know what they really are like. They are playing roles handed to them (mostly, but not always, without consciously meaning to do so) because it’s easier to control them this way. Pretty and Smart will always feel too different and too resentful of each other to form a profound relationship. And people who lack an ally are easy to control.

This is also a strategy that induces a permanent sense of guilt in a person who feels that s/he can never be all s/he needs to be. Athletic will feel guilty for not being as smart as Nerd, and Nerd will feel clumsy and unpopular next to Athletic. People who are perennially guilty and who feel not good enough are, again, very easy to control.

You don’t need to have siblings to be part of this dynamic. A super neat mother might have a messy daughter who’ll never even suspect that her messiness is nothing but a way to please Mommy by letting her cleanliness shine brighter against the background of the hapless daughter. A professionally successful father might have a deadbeat son who has no idea that his incapacity to hold down a job is a favor he keeps doing for Daddy. And so on. It’s important not to be confused by the protestations of Mommy and Daddy that they want the exact opposite of what they are getting. What we really want can best be seen in what we actually have (constantly and not situationally, of course) and not in our protestations.

Even a local jewelry store is mocking me in my woe. Its promotional message is, “IF IT SNOWS OVER 2 INCHES ON CHRISTMAS, YOUR DIAMOND PURCHASE IS ON US!”

I just went out to pick up the paper in the sundress I wore in Florida back in August, so yeah, the diamonds are safe.

Italy and unnamed Southern European allies are trying to block anti-Putin sanctions. That will bring them nothing positive whatsoever but yelping like stupid little puppies is all that these countries can do in the direction of the parental EU authorities. 

If Italy and Co tried to make something of themselves on their own, that would be one thing. But they want kind Uncle Putin to adopt them instead of the mean Auntie Merkel, and that’s just pathetic.

Sic transit, indeed, my friends. What Italy and Greece used to be and what they are now. . .

So. . . the San Bernardino terror act story has found the only element it was missing: Russian prostitutes. Now the crazy tale is complete.

The Farook brothers were both into importing women from foreign countries. Syed brought in an ugly, religious, shrouded wife and his brother hauled in a beautiful non-religious woman who often forgot to get dressed at all.

Of course, a Russian hooker is better than a Saudi fanatic, so let’s all be grateful things didn’t turn out any worse.

Hey, folks, the article in The Atlantic somebody linked earlier today did turn out to be very good. It’s long, so here are some quotes:

Like the country receiving them, immigrants to the United States are cleaved by class. Approximately one quarter of immigrants arrive with high formal educational qualifications: a college degree or more. Their record and that of their children is one of outstanding assimilation to the new American meritocratic elite, in many ways outperforming the native-born. By contrast, about one-third of immigrants arrive with less than a high-school education. They too assimilate to American life, but to the increasingly disorderly life of the American non-elite. Their children make educational progress as compared to the parents, but—worryingly—educational progress then stagnates or retrogresses in the third generation.

The underlined bit is mostly about Latin American immigrants, and my personal observations confirm this.

When children of immigrants grow up poor, they assimilate to the culture of poorer America. While Mexicans in Mexico are slightly less likely to be obese than Americans, U.S. Latinos are considerably more likely to be obese than their non-Latino counterparts. The disparity is starkest among children: While 28 percent of whites under 19 are obese or overweight, 38 percent of Latino children are. American-born Latinos likewise are more likely to have children outside marriage than foreign-born Latinos.

Note that obesity, not emaciation is now a standard measure of poverty.

While Mexican immigrants are less likely to be sent to prison than the native-born, U.S.-born Hispanics are incarcerated at rates 50 percent higher than their parents and grandparents.

That’s what I’ve been saying: children of immigrants bear the brunt of their parents’ untreated emigration trauma.

Americans talk a lot about the social difficulties caused by large-scale, low-skill immigration, but usually in a very elliptical way. Giant foundations—Pew, Ford—spend lavishly to study the problems of the new low-skill immigrant communities. Public policy desperately seeks to respond to the challenges presented by large-scale low-skill immigration. But the fundamental question—“should we be doing this at all?”—goes unvoiced by anyone in a position of responsibility. Even as the evidence accumulates that the policy was a terrible mistake from the point of view of the pre-existing American population, elites insist that the policy is unquestionable … more than unquestionable, that the only possible revision of the policy is to accelerate future flows of low-skill immigration even faster, whether as migrants or as refugees or in some other way.

And then everybody goes, ‘Oh Lordy, why on Earth would Trump be so popular?’ Yes, really, what a mystery.

And my favorite part:

Also disquieting is the way in which refugee advocates toggle back and forth between reassuring the West that there is nothing to fear—and warning of terrorist violence if the refugees are refused.

That’s so true. Don’t fear the refugees, they are just poor, innocent widows and orphans. Remember, though, that upsetting the refugees in any way will make them start exploding buildings and shooting into the crowd. Yet the ridiculous argument that “We are doing ISIS’s recruitment work for it” is being advanced with the insistence of unhinged parrots.

Reader richmondguide asks a crucial question about what one can do to help preserve the nation-state.

I don’t believe anything can be done to preserve the nation-state in its familiar form because the course of  history is inexorable. However, we can take some of the features of the nation-state that we really like into the new state form with us. Here is what we can be doing right now:

1. Know what’s happening and be aware of the major societal transformation we are undergoing.
2. Respect the ways in which the nation-state derives legitimacy from its capacity to conduct foreign policy.
3. Suspend your obnoxious post-modern need to piss on national holidays and the invented traditions of the nation. Yes, they are all invented but they give you the possibility of a welfare state. Don’t they deserve some respect just because of that?
4. A nation-state withers and dies if it’s not watered with love and admiration. Find things to like about your nation-state. Puerile denunciations of a nation’s invented history are very passé.
5. Within the next year, make 3 friends (meaning, people not related to each other) who physically live close to you.
6. Vote in local elections, including at the lowest level.
7. The next time you meet an immigrant, talk to her like you do to anybody from your country. Because that’s who she now is. If you can volunteer to teach the official state language(s) to immigrants, that’s fantastic. Work constantly on improving your own command of the official state language(s).
8. Get married and have children, buy a house, buy a plot of land and grow something on it. Hey, nobody said preserving the nation-state would be easy.
9. Participate in or start an organization that brings people who live locally physically together ( a book club, a worker’s union, a charitable organization. Hell, go to Weight Watchers but only to the kind that requires physically being in the same space with people.)
10. A nation-state exists only for as long as its invented marks of identity manage to evoke emotional attachment: the flag, the anthem, the soldiers’ uniform, the national monuments, the symbolic capital (e.g. the names of the greats) that it managed to co-opt, the national bird or whatever. If you can’t muster any positive feelings when looking at the flag, consider that it’s your free public secondary schooling, your unemployment benefits, your Social Security and your Medicaid waving in the air. If that doesn’t give you any warm and fuzzies, let’s just take the nation-state behind the barn and shoot it to spare it further agony.
11. Prepare a list titled “11 Ways in Which My Nation-State Is the Best.” (Eleven is my favorite number. But 10 is OK, too.) If after you make the list you realize that by “my nation-state” you do not mean the place where you reside right now, then let’s just take the nation-state behind the barn, etc.

Yes, many of these things sound naive and kind of embarrassing for our 21st-century sophistication. Cynicism and mockery are way hipper but remember that the liquid post-national world is capable of such cynicism and coldness that any old-world naiveté will feel cute in comparison.

Mark Kirk is a Republican senator from Illinois. The guy is horrible, incapable of performing any duties at all, and has done absolutely nothing for Illinois. (Like Rauner, he’s not a whole lot into working.)

Kirk is being challenged for his seat by Democrat Tammy Duckworth who had every chance of winning. That is, until she decided that now is a good time to promote the idea of bringing 100,000 Syrian refugees to the US.

Illinois is a state without a budget that can barely manage to keep its 911 lines open, with a dysfunctional political process and a tanking economy. The last thing voters of any political persuasion want right now is a debate on refugees. But the stupid twat just had to go and step into it, and now Kirk is milking this mistake to death.