Obama comes to a bank and tries to withdraw some money.

“Can I see your ID?” the teller asks.

“I left it at home,” Obama says. “But I’m President Obama, don’t you recognize me?”

“I’m sorry,” the teller says. “Could you demonstrate some skill that would prove you are Obama?”

“Like what?” the President asks.

“Well, the other day Tiger Woods came by and he hit a golf ball straight into a small wine glass. Then Pelé came by and he put a soccer ball straight into a garbage bin on the other side of the road.”

“OK, I have no idea what to do in this situation,” Obama says.

“Oh, President Obama!” the teller exclaims. “So good to see you! Do you prefer twenties or one hundred dollar bills?”

 

One of Putin’s favorite weapons in his arsenal of humiliating everybody he comes in touch with is being from 1 to 6 hours late to all of his appointments. In Russia, his chronic tardiness is notorious. One of his favorite trick is to announce that he will be at some public event, surround the place where the event occurs with a crowd of security personnel, and let the guests, the performers, the athletes or whomever to stew in their juices for 3-4 hours until he deigns to arrive.

Finally, however, there is somebody who has the backbone to stand up to Putin.

After dropping my car at the mechanic’s, I found myself marching down the highway towards our town. Thankfully,  two gentlemen in a worn truck stopped and offered me a ride. We all huddled in the front seat and rumbled into town.

In the back of the truck there was a beautiful dog called Snowbear:

She was the quietest, politest dog in the world.

Here is me with Snowbear:

I haven’t slept at all tonight thanks to an ill-considered cup of chai I had at 10 pm, hence the exhausted look.

I think this adventure counts as hitchhiking,  and that makes me feel very American.

I wish public radio just accepted advertisement instead of running these endless programs soliciting donations. At least, advertisement offers me value instead of just wasting my time.

I just listened to an endless segment on donations only to discover that a program on the evils of “oversexualized music” that perverts 7-year-olds was to follow.

I’m not in the best of moods as it is because I’m on my way to a car mechanic and, as it turned out, the only mechanic in the area that is qualified to service my car is “a luxury vehicle auto service” with a pretentious frenchified name.

So did you hear about the woman who was standing next to President Obama at the voting poll today,  trying to vote, and was humiliated by her loser of a boyfriend?

“Don’t touch my girlfriend,” the freak told Obama.

“This is a brother who just made a fool out of himself,” Obama commented, looking understandably annoyed.

“I cannot believe this is happening, ” the woman said.

It is really sad to make the news as the girlfriend of a sexist freakazoid.

I hope she dumps him.

Who are all those scary people who followed Monica Lewinsky on Twitter?

The world is a scary,  confusing place at times.

Bauman says that the “arousal and beefing – up of emotions” needed to maintain patriotic attachment to a nation has been outsourced to private entities. Patriotism is, in this sense, not that different from all of the other functions that the state has been outsourcing with what I could describe as near desperation: incarceration, education,  war – waging,  welfare, etc.

I’m very interested in the outsourcing of patriotism as a new practice. Does anybody have examples?

Thinkers on both ends of the political spectrum agree that the nation-state is dying. For the first time in my memory,  Marxists and anti – Marxists speak in the same voice on this crucial matter. (In the spirit of full disclosure,  I haven’t read Fukuyama ‘ s new book yet, so I can’t say what position he takes. I’ve read his followers, though,  and they agree the nation-state is dead.)

The difference between the two sides is in how they see the post – national future. One group believes that the state will manage to preserve itself by dramatically reducing its functions in the areas where we expect it to act and take control while proving its relevance in combating global threats, such as climate change,  international terrorism,  cyber wars, etc. The other group believes that the state will fail at this task and eventually (not tomorrow or the day after but eventually) humanity will have to move towards a shared global governance. Obviously,  this is an enormous shift in human governance that will be accompanied by massive loss of lives, dramatic and often terrifying transformations,  etc.

Can you guess which scenario comes from which of the groups on the political spectrum?

And this is from Carlo Bordoni who co-authored State of Crisis with Bauman:

The tragedy of the modern state lies in its inability to implement at a global level the decisions taken locally.

Everything of importance happens at a global level where the decisions made at the state level simply don’t reach. As a result,  democratically elected politicians look impotent and irrelevant. Voters get disillusioned and see no point in participating in the political process. Electoral promises become more and more trivial (“we promise not to be as bad as our opponents,” “We promise to be against big government since government decides so little anyway.”)

Electoral campaigns concentrate on silly meaningless issues of whether a candidate treated his dog right or ate tuna conserves as a student. The public treats elections as entertainment because it knows they have little value beyond that.

Bauman says we have to prepare for

th

e crushingly toilsome leap from the ‘imagined totalities’ of nation-states to the ‘imagined totality’ of humankind.

The EU, he says, is valuable because it is at least an attempt at going in that direction.

All of the problems we are facing today, Bauman says, are globally produced and it is a waste of time to look for their solutions locally.

Let’s hope that the transition from many imagined communities to just one will not cost us as much as the nation-state did.