Opinions, art, debate
So. Who do you think is getting her own research assistant?
Yes, that will be me. It turns out I could have had one this entire time but, for some reason, it had never occurred to me to ask. Until I finally did and got one.
The RA will be helping me throughout next semester. And I will be hiring the RA on my own. It will be a relief not to have to struggle with a hiring committee.
I just created my very first multiple – choice test. Of course, I hate multiple choice tests but I don’t want to die without having had the experience of creating and administering one. I need to know what it is I hate, don’t I?
So far the experience has been bizarre. I have felt like a total idiot making the test. But it’s a new experience, and that is already valuable.
Putin ‘ s goal now is to prove that NATO is a fiction. He will provoke, and provoke, and provoke some more. Then he will strike. There will be no retaliation because NATO is US and US finds it almost impossible to strike blond, blue – eyed people.
And there are only 2 years left for Putin to make sure NATO falls apart and is revealed for a baseless fantasy it is.
Andrew Cuomo Makes it Official: He’s at War With Teachers http://danielskatz.net/2014/10/31/andrew-cuomo-makes-it-official-hes-at-war-with-teachers
When will everybody just stop futzing with the stupid testing systems, teacher evaluations, test scores, common cores, NCLBs, etc and realize that it’s a total waste of time? Teachers are fine. Testing systems are fine. The only problem is that they are asked to perform functions that are not theirs.
Remember how well Putin’s speech started? He actually found the courage to talk about the collapse of the current state model and the profound changes the contemporary state is undergoing. Such a great introduction that was but it was only a huge red herring. All Putin wanted was to engage in his favorite game of US-bashing. And he doesn’t stop at blaming the expiration of the nation-state on. . . the United States!
Let’s ask ourselves, how comfortable are we with this, how safe are we, how happy living in this world, and how fair and rational has it become? Maybe, we have no real reasons to worry, argue and ask awkward questions? Maybe the United States’ exceptional position and the way they are carrying out their leadership really is a blessing for us all, and their meddling in events all around the world is bringing peace, prosperity, progress, growth and democracy, and we should maybe just relax and enjoy it all?
Let me say that this is not the case, absolutely not the case.
Putin is lucky in that he has somebody to blame for the developments of modern history. It’s very easy to choose a bugbear (or, in psychoanalytic terms, a shadow) and blame everything that goes wrong anywhere on the planet on that single evil figure.
A unilateral diktat and imposing one’s own models produces the opposite result.
Let’s remember that “one’s own models” in Putin-speak refers specifically to representational democracy and individual rights. He is saying that they are not what everybody needs and it is unfair of Americans to push these values onto the people who have no interest in them.
Ready? Here goes:
In a situation where you had domination by one country and its allies, or its satellites rather, the search for global solutions often turned into an attempt to impose their own universal recipes.
We all know what “one country” Putin has in mind, right? His ideology is pretty simple: it’s unfair that there should be a single global power (the US) that pushes its own recipes (democracy, human rights “Western values,” gay marriage, separation of church and state) on everybody. So it’s only fair, Putin says, that there should be another world power who would promote the exact opposite to create a more balanced system.
The profound cynicism of this position lies in the attempt to convince the world that Putin’s assault on democracy and human rights in Russia and neighboring countries is only done for the benefit of the planet.
“Don’t you see what I’m doing, you dummies?” he says. “I’m killing Ukrainians, rigging elections, and bashing gays (to name just a few favorite pursuits) to benefit you! So that our shared planet is a more objective and just place!”
I knew before starting to read the speech that our dear friend Mr. Snowden would make an appearance and serve a useful purpose. And so he did, even earlier in the speech than I thought:
It is not for nothing that ‘big brother’ is spending billions of dollars on keeping the whole world, including its own closest allies, under surveillance.
Obviously, I’m no longer naive enough to think that this will in any way influence Snowden’s fans to abandon their hero-worship.
“So, Professor, have you prepared treats for trick – or – treaters?” students asked me today.
I said yes and explained about the multicultural candy.
N and I made a point of getting home early, turned on the porch light, prepared the candy, and sat down to wait. Five hours later and not a single trick – or – treater in sight, we realized that something had gone terribly wrong. The street was empty and deserted and nobody’s lights were on.
So we went online to investigate. And that was when we discovered that our town had decided – for no reason we have been able to discern – to move Halloween this year to yesterday. It was held from noon till nine pm. I’m not sure who can be expected to be at home at noon on Thursday and why anybody would want to move Halloween. But here we are, having missed it completely and feeling like total immigrants.
At least, my students will be happy because I will give them the multicultural candy.
P.S. And please, please, please don’t tell me I should have asked colleagues with small children about Halloween’s date. Who in their right mind would even think of asking people if Halloween has, by any chance, been moved? It was done on October 31 last year. Google says Halloween is October 31. There are people in costumes all over the place every October 31, including today. How the flying fuck should I have known to ask?
One good thing is that I was too tired to get a costume tonight. Or I would feel even more stupid.
Putin has something that Obama, Merkel, and Co either don’t have or don’t feel like sharing.
He has a vision. It is a consistent and appealing vision that he has shared very openly in this speech (as well as in many others.) The appeal of the vision is that it offers relief from the scary, fluid, rapidly changing modernity. He is telling people, “You feel scared, confused and lost? I have a recipe for what is ailing you. The problem isn’t that you are backwards, barbaric, uncivilized and incapable of keeping up. The problem is that this fluid world is the product of American efforts and ideology. I can offer you an alternative. I will not force you – like the evil Americans do – to accept this new reality. I know what to do to take you back to the times when you didn’t feel as lost and confused.”
Of course, it’s a lie. Nobody can turn back the clock. The world has changed and will keep changing. But the fantasy of being able to check out from the demands of the rapid transformation is very powerful.
Putin will keep selling this Brooklyn Bridge for as long as he needs to grab world dominance. He will not deliver on his promises because that is not within human power. But the world will pay a very high price for allowing the nostalgia and the fear of change to lure us under Putin’s wing.
Putin’s favorite justification for his invasion of Ukraine was that the US made him do it:
But the United States, having declared itself the winner of the Cold War, saw no need for this. Instead of establishing a new balance of power, essential for maintaining order and stability, they took steps that threw the system into sharp and deep imbalance.
Putin has been reiterating this overwhelmingly stupid idea for years and doesn’t seem to tire of it. This is understandable since it’s his only justification for invading one country after another (the one before Ukraine was Georgia, and before that there was Chechnya.)
The Cold War ended, but it did not end with the signing of a peace treaty with clear and transparent agreements on respecting existing rules or creating new rules and standards.
Here, of course, Putin is treating his listeners as the idiots they probably are. The world is changing for a variety of reasons, and none of them are even remotely related to the absence of presence of post-1991 treaties. Putin himself has been breaking the post-1991 agreements like a man possessed. This doesn’t seem to bother him a whole lot when he is the one violating “clear and transparent agreements.”
Pardon the analogy, but this is the way nouveaux riches behave when they suddenly end up with a great fortune, in this case, in the shape of world leadership and domination. Instead of managing their wealth wisely, for their own benefit too of course, I think they have committed many follies.
There is nobody who knows what nouveaux riches are like better than Putin because his oligarchy is based precisely on surrounding himself by this sort of people and ensuring that nobody but them ever has a chance to do anything in Russia.
The hand-wringing over the end of the “objective and just” Cold War era goes on for a while:
We have entered a period of differing interpretations and deliberate silences in world politics. International law has been forced to retreat over and over by the onslaught of legal nihilism. Objectivity and justice have been sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. Arbitrary interpretations and biased assessments have replaced legal norms.
I want everybody to stop and ponder the excruciating shamelessness of calling the world order that existed between 1945-91 “objective and just.” We are arriving at the extremely important part of Putin’s speech and it is crucial that we understand exactly what he is saying.
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