Clarissa's Blog

This is a Russian cartoon from almost a hundred years ago (1917):

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OK, so remember how we discussed why words are important? And how no word is uttered accidentally? And how it’s my profession to analyze words? Right?

Good. Now let’s look at a quote from a fellow who tries to explain why he’s bothered by the Trans-Pacific trade deal:

In other words, if you’re accused of downloading anime in America, the Japanese government can force your American ISP to hand over all of your parents’ online records.

Anime? Parents? Of all the words he could have chosen, he went with these. I checked, he’s a middle-aged man. Here, however, he speaks in a voice of a 13-year-old boy. And it’s not just this excerpt. The whole text is like that.

I find this very curious. 

And by the way, this is why China is not a superpower. It doesn’t export ideas, a lifestyle that anybody wants to imitate, or technology. All it has to offer is products of cheap labor. And that doesn’t a superpower make.

India has a higher potential in this regard. It has the ideas and the tech. Now all that’s left is exporting an attractive lifestyle.

The favorite argument of every Putinoid on the planet is this:

“If Americans can interfere in conflicts all over the world and impose their will on faraway countries, why can’t Russia? Americans are not even that good at it! They’ve made mistakes, huge ones! Isn’t it time for somebody else to offer alternatives to the flawed American approach?”

Whenever I hear a variation on this argument, I always have this fantasy of hoisting myself onto the scene of the Bolshoi Theater and starting to whine, “But why can’t I dance here if these other women can? I want to dance, too! They are not perfect! I read an article by a famous ballet critic last week who said these ballerinas made mistakes in their rendering of the Swan Lake! It’s my turn to try! We need an alternative to their flawed performance!”

On the world arena, Russians are as prepared to act as I am to perform in the Bolshoi. Nobody who is utterly inept at managing things at home can make a legitimate bid to teach others. Russians have nothing anybody in the world wants.

And what are their achievements at home? Russians haven’t even managed to prevent a quarter – that’s 25% – of Russian men from dying before reaching the age of 55. Their stats on violence against children and on rape are sky-high. They have elderly people starving to death – in the literal sense and not in the American sense of “I’m totally starving for a burger” – and hospitals that are stocked with neither the IV fluid nor even the most basic painkillers. The standard of living is abysmally poor. The inequality levels make all of the prattle about American inequality sound like a joke. All of the media are state-owned and 8 – graders are taught that the mentally ill are subhuman. There is no literature, none at all. No science, no scholarship, no literary criticism even!

When the US made its first bid for the role of the world’s next emerging superpower in 1898, this was the result of the country doing phenomenally well at home and overtaking everybody else on the planet in most categories. In terms of the economy, women’s rights, military prowess, industrialization, education, political process, cultural vibrancy, nobody was managing to catch up.

It will take Russia 200 years of hard work  (which nobody there seems interested in investing) to catch up with the US of 1898, let alone the US of today. It’s much more likely that I will make it to the Bolshoi than that Russia will finally catch up.

To resume, a superpower is a country that creates ideas, technology and lifestyle that everybody else wants. Piss poor malcontent losers, however, do not a superpower make.

Remember how Caitlyn Jenner was hailed as a hero? How she appeared on magazine covers and TV shows, sharing the details of her battle to overcome the great limitation of not being able to buy nail polish?

In the society of consumers, says Zygmunt Bauman, the only way to position oneself as a valid human being is by demonstrating as actively and flamboyantly as you can that you are ready and willing to consume. You have to be on the lookout for new opportunities to consume and make your consumption conspicuous.

One of the best ways to spur consumption is to effectuate an identity change. A “new you” will need to be outfitted with tons of stuff. It is the opportunity to purchase all this stuff that motivates every new identity change.

The society of consumers hails every successful bid for increased consumption as an act of heroism because that’s the only kind of activity it knows how to value. What can constitute a greater achievement in the eyes of consumers than refashioning yourself entirely to ensure that there is no product left that you won’t be able to buy?

At the same time, whenever the consumption – oriented identity construction is undermined, consumers erupt in rage. Remember Rachel Dolezal? She made consumers doubt that identities have any meaning. And that cast doubt on tons of sweet purchasing opportunities. So consumers freaked out.

Obviously, Bauman doesn’t mention Jenner or Dolezal in his book Consuming Life. The book was published in 2007, well before these events. But Bauman is a philosopher. He describes trends, and he’s really good at it.

In this post, I illustrated a single idea from his book. Bauman, however, packs every page with one such idea after another.

According to Bauman, our only road to success in the society of consumers is to offer ourselves up as an object of consumption on the job market. This product needs to be constantly perfected, marketed and rebranded. Curiously, such a campaign of marketing and rebranding of self is precisely the reason (aside from enjoyment) why I read Bauman’s books.

I know whom exactly I will support in the new round of conflict in Israel. Whoever is the first to say, “Fuck this, it’s crazy to kill and die in the 21st century because of an argument over whether a temple was built someplace 3,000 years ago” is the side I can support.

Everybody else is too scary for my taste.

I’m not managing to explain to N why I would want to go to a Russian restaurant “if we can eat all that same food at home.” The joy of a person who eats “all that same food” and knows that, for once, she didn’t cook it is alien to him.

Mr Obama views suggestions for more robust action as a prescription for disaster. His advisers are exploring whether anything can be done to protect Syrian opposition allies targeted by Russian forces, but they are unwilling to provide defensive arms to use against Russian warplanes.

This year it’s Syria instead of Ukraine but the rest of the sentence could have  (and probably did) appeared verbatim in the same periodical a year ago.

I’m trying not to laugh because bombings are not funny but the situation is too reminiscent of the old joke where a masochist says, “Hit me, hit me!” and a sadist responds, “No, I wont, no, I won’t.”

Russia and the US are totally locked in an S&M dynamic here. Please see the preceding post for a prognosis how this relationship will develop.

People, who’s been to Washington, DC? What did you do, see, visit and eat there that you think is a must?

I’m off to DC for a couple of days next week and I welcome suggestions. I wanted to go to this famous Russian restaurant there but N says the visit he’ll have to make to the Russian embassy there will be as much Russianness as he is ready to process for now.

You have no idea how hard it is to be a decent Russian person these days. We were at the gym yesterday, and a newscast about Putin’s birthday came on. A bunch of former NHL stars played a faux hockey game with Putin, letting him score 7 times and awarding him a Stanley Cup at the end. As one commentator said, every time Putin hit the puck, the goalie moved away from it as fast as if it were filled with polonium.

So I look over at N and imagine how humiliating it must be to come from a country whose president is so pathetic that a bunch of NHL stars have to treat him like a 5-year-old with a disability just to make him feel good about himself. Which is why I’m not pressing the Russian restaurant idea.

So, DC fans. Suggestions?