Clarissa's Blog

The amount of propaganda from all traditional news outlets has reached COVID-era levels. I highly recommend practicing informational hygiene and being very alert that this is happening. Let’s hope that this is temporary but it’s truly a tsunami of the most egregious lies on every possible topic.

If USAID really spread the “soft power” of the US around the world, I would be completely in favor of it. If it promoted the greatness and the power of the American nation-state, I’d say let’s totally spend more money on it.

But in the past 30 years, USAID has been doing the exact opposite. It spread ideas that undermined not only ours but any nation-state. It promoted the idea that cultures and people are interchangeable widgets with interchangeable parts.

The idea of soft power is amazing. It’s a great achievement of the nation-state model. Today, it’s as infected with neoliberalism as we all are, unfortunately. But if it could take a cure, that would be great.

For the concluding chapter of Neoliberal Love, I’m rereading Guillermo Arriaga’s wonderful novel Salvar el fuego. If you love the Spanish language, I implore you to read the novel, or better yet, listen to it on Audible. It’s narrated in the purest Mexican accent that is a delight to hear. I’m experiencing paroxysms of joy listening to this book.

I don’t think Salvar el fuego has been translated into English because Mexican slang is the best part of the novel. I’m listening to it in my office to the great delight of the Mexican GA sitting next door. I can’t write about a novel without at least three readings. Or maybe that’s the excuse I use to justify coming back to beloved texts.

I began my study of the nation-state model in 2001. Originally, my Master’s thesis adviser pushed me to take a negative stance towards it but the more I read and pondered, the clearer it became to me that it was the best available option.

There are two objections to the nation-state that get repeated ad nauseam:

1. It’s an artificial formation, an imagined community. Its borders are randomly drawn. Nothing about it is natural.
2. It caused the two world wars.

Both objections are absolutely, completely, and totally true. The first one is childish, and it makes little sense even to address it. Many of the best things in life are artificial and not natural. Look at the life span in modern developed societies and contrast it with the life span in the prehistoric hunter-gatherer communities. Who wants “natural” when you can have civilized? Ever been to the dentist? Used a computer? Watched TV? Driven a car? Had a healthy child at age 40? Peed into a toilet? None of this arises spontaneously in nature. It’s a product of civilization, and civilization is utterly artificial.

The second objection is a serious one. The two world wars were horrific. They alone should be enough to disqualify the nation-state model forever if it weren’t for the fact that they will look like child’s play in contrast to the wars that the post-national state will bring. And is already bringing in some parts of the world. The difference in the post-national wars is that they can’t end. There’s no stable entity to declare victory or concede defeat. Because of modern technology, they are just as (and more) devastating as the wars of the twentieth century. But they also can’t conclude.

Advocates of the post-national model bother the memory of world wars to death because these wars are the only argument that the post-nation can offer in order to legitimize itself. “But Nazis” is literally the only argument. Nazis were despicable, it’s true. So is the 21st century equivalent of the death-loving Nazis. We aren’t destroying the prospect of another world war by abjuring the nation. Instead, we are guaranteing that war becomes permanent.

As proof that German air agrees with me, here is the new video where I look sensational:

I don’t understand Americans’ love affair with JFK. He was left-wing and vulgar. He and his terrible wife made vulgarity the norm not only in politics but in society. He died tragically but isn’t it time to move on? No victim status should last that long.

I do recognize, however, that since I wasn’t born here, it’s normal that I don’t understand the attraction of the Kennedy mystique. I do, however, understand the nation-state and the only existing alternative.

The recent release of the JFK files revealed absolutely nothing new, as was to be expected. But the perennially excitable online personalities immediately concluded that “the CIA killed JFK” which nothing in the released papers indicates.

The CIA is only possible and necessary in the world of nation-states. It’s not needed when there are no nations and we have, instead, an undifferentiated space of flows where liquid capital moves at lightning speed. “Defund the police / FBI / CIA / the national military” is a neoliberal dream. We are parroting neoliberal slogans — be they left or right-wing — because we’ve been infected with neoliberal mentality.

The nation-state is the only model of statehood that legitimizes itself through the consensus of the governed. It was born with the words “we, the people”, and that was a revolutionary idea in the 18th century. The post-national neoliberal state doesn’t seek the consent of the governed. It acts on behalf of the oligarchy. We can see it in big things and small. At my university, the neoliberal leadership decided to destroy physics without caring in the least that neither students nor faculty want to get rid of physics. We used to have academic self-governance, and it’s now gone. Decisions are made by a small group of people who act on principles that are alien and incomprehensible to the plebs they rule.

The nation-state gives a lot. A high standard of living for the majority. A large middle class. Rights. Welfare in the broadest sense. Good things that we all enjoy. But it asks for something equally big in return. We need to be “we, the people.” Not a raging maw of individual need but a group that perceives itself as such. The Chair of Physics acted as a perfect neoliberal subject when he said “close other departments before mine.” As a result, he didn’t save physics. He made sure that we all get picked away one after another. The hyper-competitive “me, me, me” mentality feels good but has terrible results for almost everybody except a small bunch of the very malleable and exceptionally lucky.

The CIA, the police, and the nation-state (which is the mother of them both) are wildly imperfect. When I speak in defense of the nation-state, people begin to list its catastrophes and imperfections at me as if I were unaware of them. I am very aware, though. The problem is, that the neoliberal post-national state has all of the same catastrophic imperfections without any of the good stuff. The only thing it offers is that it flatters our inner hubristic ego maniac. And we are sacrificing the standard of living, the safety in the streets, the good roads, the vast middle class, the chance to study physics at a cheap state school, and our good life as “we, the people” to the narcotic pleasure of this ego stoking. We are turning away from the nation-state, robbing it of any need to exist.

My conservatism is entirely dedicated to the idea that we need to stop our death march towards the shiny new thing of neoliberal post-nation state and consider everything we are discarding in the process. Neoliberalism makes even family a class-based privilege that increasingly fewer people can have. It destroys the possibility of being at peace with our bodies, our past, and our culture. It puts us against each other in a battle for constantly dwindling resources without giving us a chance to wonder why they are constantly dwindling.

We need to stop wailing and wanting. We need to stand still for a bit and get a hold of ourselves. We are destroying something very imperfect for something much, much worse. There is no narrative that actually defends neoliberalism. Nobody has come up with an idea for why it’s good because there is no such narrative. This is something that simply can’t be defended. It seduces us by never even trying to argue its case. And we’ve accepted that like the weakest, most manipulable of pawns.

A very, very familiar issue that I experience regularly. The why lies in the depths of your and my psyche, so let’s leave that aside for a while and concentrate on how to overcome this.

Imagine what it would be like if you were the person who is learning new math. How would your life be different? How would you be different? What would it feel like to be that person? Wake up in the morning and spend some time putting on the persona of somebody whose day is about learning new math. Brush teeth and have breakfast as that person. Make it part of your vocabulary by saying things like “as somebody who always learns new math…” Instead of imagining a future self who learns new math, start each day as if you already were that person.

The results won’t be instant. It will take some time but it’s worth it because you are trying to shed the inner belief that you don’t deserve too much enjoyment. It’s a big, serious issue that afflicts many people. It’s hard to overcome but absolutely not impossible.

"Buying American weapons is a security risk that we can not run": Leading Danish conservative MP.

"I can easily imagine a situation where the USA will demand Greenland from Denmark and will threaten to deactivate our weapons and let Russia attack us when we refuse (which we… https://t.co/9dPd9aiNiL

— JP Lindsley | Journalist (@JPLindsley) March 19, 2025

That’s ok, though. There’s always a war in the Middle East that the US can fight on behalf of Israel, so US weapons will be needed there.

Russians proudly displaying the skull of a Ukrainian child, calling the child an animal.

This is the regime now backed by America. https://t.co/34y9fuDsh9

— Jay in Kyiv (@JayinKyiv) March 19, 2025

The pig-headed US policy has now made conservatism toxic for Ukraine for the next century at least. The largest country in Europe that had every inclination to be conservative is now lost for conservatism.

Similarly, Canada that was ready to a right-wing turn now no longer is interested. This was also now pissed away with absolutely no gain.

This wasn’t done to us by evil libs. This is completely self-inflicted and done to please a bunch of overheated bimbos on social media.

I apologize for graphic images but this is 0.01% of what I see daily, so welcome to my reality.

Witkoff on yesterday’s Russian drone strikes that hit Sloviansk’s energy infrastructure, causing a blackout:

He suggests the attack likely occurred before Putin’s order to halt strikes on energy facilities.

Time of call 9am EST
Time of strikes 3pm EST pic.twitter.com/BhoTOJpMg4

— Polymarket Intel (@PolymarketIntel) March 19, 2025

What can I say? It’s embarrassing. I’m deeply embarrassed on behalf of my country.

None of this humiliation was even necessary. The Europeans could have handled it and they were eager to handle it. Instead, Putin gets to mock Trump, and Witkoff has to offer bumbling excuses that betray impotence, befuddlement, and subservience.

But at least this administration is ready to go to war for Israel. Let’s take a W where we can.