Deservedly so. Dude has worked miracles for Ukraine. He has many severe flaws, but I will die deeply grateful and humbled by what he did for Ukraine. Without Musk, there simply wouldn’t be Ukraine right now.
Isn’t it great to be free of any duty and obligation that you haven’t freely chosen? Not to have to follow a course of action because of your biological sex, nationality, or social class? Not to be obligated to follow a certain set of behaviors imposed by unchosen religious dogma and familial or societal expectations? Isn’t it great to wake up every day and know that you can take the day in absolutely any direction of your choice and nobody will have as much as a timid criticism to make?
There are people, a small minority, for whom this is, indeed, wonderful. They will calmly reject the daily gift of freedom and step into their duties and obligations without any external motivator. But for most people, freedom from others and freedom from externally imposed constraints, is poison.
I’m reading Sara Barquinero’s novel, Escorpiones, and that is exactly what it is about. Some of her characters are very young, others are middle-aged, but they’re all falling apart because of freedom. They try to hide from the horror of nothingness, which is what freedom is for most people. They hide from it in drug addiction, conspiracy theories, depression, transgenderism, and suicidal fantasies. They are endlessly self-destructive because the self that exists without severe constraints becomes an intolerable, suppurating boil for its bearer.
The novel is almost 1,000 pages long and very overwritten. I understand, though, why the author and the editors allowed the repetitive parts to stay in the book. Without them, you don’t fully feel the horror of the lives of these characters who are trapped in unbroken, purposeless, and seemingly inexplicable misery.
Barquinero is very talented. Her novel offers the best explanation of transgenderism that I read anywhere in fiction. She isn’t getting canceled for it solely because the people who would do such a thing are unable to plow through a thousand pages of literary text.
This is a young author, and already I’m seeing a second outstanding novel from her. The two books are extremely different in what concerns style and structure. But both are about freedom as nothingness. If you read either novel, ask yourself what UBI will do to the people depicted in it, which is the majority of people. And okay, you’re not one of them. You’re highly organized and self-motivated. Yippee. But what about everybody else? What will this do to them?
Sara Barquinero correctly concludes that it will be nothing good.
There’s a lot of retarded crap both on the left and on the right. The difference is that the right doesn’t try to impose its retardation on me administratively. We’re halfway into Trump’s second term in office, and nobody has forced me to read any pro-MAGA books at work. Nobody has to write essays justifying hiring candidates who are not white men. Children aren’t taught Candace Owens’ conspiracies as fact. I’m not afraid to say publicly that Candace is a low-IQ moron. Our program isn’t stripped of credit hours in languages to teach obligatory classes on right-wing dogma.
Sex stops being a fun, enjoyable activity when you are forced to engage in it against your will. Right-wing and left-wing politics differ like sex and rape. You can say “no, thanks” to the former and it’s fine. But the latter doesn’t care about your consent.
I honestly think that that was the best Windows.
OK, Windows 7 was also not bad. But everything since has been disappointing.
This is not a defense of Lindsay Clancy who should get the death penalty.
However.
Saying “but how did women 100 years ago give birth to 16 children, bury most of them and not get sad?” is retarded. People 100 years ago had an entirely different inner architecture. Their inner world wasn’t structured like ours is. They were not people in the same way as we are people. This is neither good nor bad. It simply is.
This is why conservatism is so important. We experience enormous changes at the very core of our selves. This happens because of factors that are external to us and that we can’t control. If there’s nothing stable at the core of your self, you are going to go mental. Look at the vast mental illness gap between conservatives and liberals. This is why.
In response to the Jason Arday debacle, leftists have started an extremely weird campaign of arguing that race isn’t real and is a social construct. This has gotten to the point where I don’t understand these people at all.
As a right-winger, I’m extremely happy to accept that race isn’t real, that it’s a social construct, that it’s one of Santa’s reindeer, or that it’s a big helium balloon. I am beyond eager to accept all of this and never to talk or think about race ever again. We, on the right, are not the ones who made everything about race. We are the ones who have been persecuted for using the word “colorblind”.
Let’s absolutely accept that there is no race. We’re all part of a big human family, so let’s immediately cancel all of the racial considerations, trainings, seminars, and reporting during hiring, teaching, admissions, etc.
It’s just completely out there that the people who made everything about race and lectured us for years about how water is racist are now freaking out for a week about how race isn’t real.
There is an old Soviet joke about a guy approaching two people who are in the midst of an animated conversation. He listens in on their conversation for a while and then loudly exclaims, “Oh, just leave me the fuck alone,” and goes away.
Such are the leftists. After racializing everything down to the elementary particles, they are having a gigantic meltdown over people who mentioned race. “Why are you so race-obsessed?” they shriek. Truly the least self-aware people in existence.
Here’s the leftist freakout I’m talking about:
This person is yet another Cambridge professor. Clearly, she was not hired because of her utterly non-existent race.
It’s week two of my sabbatical, and I’m happy to report that I have already figured out how to have an extremely productive sabbatical. You need to go to the office and stay there like it’s a regular work day.
The Dean was very puzzled yesterday when he came across me in the hallway at 7:45 AM. “A sabbatical is not a vacation,” I said virtuously and strutted away.
This is my first real sabbatical, and it’s an amazing experience. I spend each day writhing with enjoyment. I have hours of uninterrupted thinking and writing each day. It’s so good that I don’t even care about the regularly scheduled university lunacy, such as, for example, the fact that our union has negotiated for us a 20% drop in salary for summer courses. And then got upset when we pointed out that this is not an impressive achievement
I have no interest in what the butthurty costume is, but look at the date and tell me that woke is over.
By its nature, it can’t go away, get better, or lighten up. It can only get worse.
The widespread, massive, and global support for Lindsay Clancy is the most effective argument for a total ban on abortion. After observing it, for the first time in my life, I am less supportive of abortion rights.
Like gay marriage, trans rights, and every other progressive cause, it’s become clear that abortion has no off-ramp. The only reason for abortion is because pregnancy and childbirth would inconvenience the mother. One would think that the first 3 months of pregnancy would be enough to figure out if a woman is too beaten down by this inconvenience. But we are now seeing that large groups of women don’t believe that 6 years is enough.
Today is the first day of the academic year, with me not being department chair. I am strutting into the office feeling ecstatic that I don’t need to care about anything this semester except for my research.
At the same time, I am realizing that I made a big mistake in the six years that I was in this role. I invited lecturers – part-time temporary faculty members – to department meetings. Nobody had done it before I became department chair. I started doing it unthinkingly, and I now know it was a false move. We ended up in a situation where the hierarchical order is broken and lecturers behave in unreasonably demanding and prima donna-ish ways. And it’s all my fault. I allowed this mold to fester and grow.
I, of all people, should have known better. I love hierarchies. I understand why they’re important. I can’t even fully explain what led me into this pig-assed behavior. I most certainly don’t care if people like me, so it wasn’t about that.
The new department chair immediately kicked out everybody who is not tenure-track out of the department meetings. And the craziest thing is that I hadn’t even realized that I’d been making a mistake before I found out that she did that.
A conservative literary critic and college professor
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I’m hoping things work out for your nephew. This is a terrible devastation. I’m so sorry.
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@Demotrash: you are absolutely correct.
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Wow, that’s an amazing story. Thank you for sticking around. I’m honored.
Ha!! I am thrilled! I’m also very happy you are far away from Corbyn who is a total shitstain.
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Social media helped by drawing away the worst bots. In this sense, social media have been a positive development.
So win win?
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This blog seems to have found an audience, which is mostly what keeps me coming back.
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I mean, he is a very uncouth and larger than life character.
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Thank you. What a sweet and kind thing to say. I really needed this today.
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