Clarissa's Blog

Woke Putin has run Russia into the ground with one of the highest abortion rates in the world, lowest church attendance, highest domestic violence, highest divorce rate, and highest alcohol use. This is not a model to emulate!

— Joe Wilson (@RepJoeWilson) March 25, 2025

This is always a result of neoliberalism. Call it woke, call it a blue giraffe with white dots, it doesn’t matter. That’s what neoliberalism always leads to. We are behind Russia on neoliberalism and can observe what our future will look like if we don’t stop careening towards it.

Because we respect national sovereignty, yes, but also because of this:

A 5-year-old girl was hospitalized last week after overdosing on a deadly narcotic found in a home in Mission, B.C. Paramedics were called to the home on Nottman Street around 9 p.m. on March 20 following a report a young girl had handled fentanyl and was unconscious, Mission RCMP said in a statement Monday. . .

Anyone who keeps fentanyl in their residence should ensure it is always stored in a secure place, out of reach of anyone who is not intending on using it.

https://www.cp24.com/news/canada/2025/03/25/5-year-old-girl-overdoses-on-fentanyl-in-mission-bc/

We’ve got enough of our own problems to saddle ourselves with whatever this is.

If you don’t understand what the problem is with the quoted article, then happy Canada Day!

Do you talk to random people in public?

— Crémieux (@cremieuxrecueil) March 25, 2025

I do, yes. On days when I appear in public, I do it about once a day. Small random comments about weather, local happenings, kids, outfits if I talk to women. For a while, the inflation was a regular topic. When I’m somewhere with Klara, then many people make friendly comments and it’s easy to establish a short conversation.

Talking to strangers is great. It’s lightweight, small-dose sociability that requires very low effort.

Text, schmext. Why is nobody questioning whether we need yet another Yemen war? The previous one brought absolutely nothing but a tsunami of migration and a burning need for yet another war. Are we going to be playing this game forever?

The reason why libs are fixated on the texts and not the war is because they support the war. But where are the conservatives? Have they also accepted that “Yemen war” is a normal and necessary thing to have? Is anybody questioning this or have we all drowned in the details of whether it’s best to plan the war on this platform or that?

There’s always a crucial reason for the US to bomb the Middle East. It always leads to more problems and more powerful reasons to bomb the Middle East.

There seems absolutely nothing whatsoever that can prevent the US political establishment from being obsessed with waging war in the Middle East.

This image perfectly symbolizes me today because Klara’s on spring break, and I brought her to work with me. Writing a book while running a department while occupying, feeding, and supervising an active, gregarious 9-year-old is a balancing act of major proportions.

I did great, really enjoyed myself. Feel free to share important news updates that I missed while doing all this.

We spent Sunday doing sporty activities, and decided to treat ourselves to a visit to the local poke bowl place. These are $12-$18 bowls but really delicious and totally worth it.

The guy in line in front of us bought a $17 bowl. He didn’t have enough money on his card to cover it and had to run out to his car for the remaining $2 in cash.

Every US administration since 1991 has tried a Russia reset. Every single one. The idea seems to be that it’s possible to make Russians peaceful by being nice to them. Every single effort in this direction ended up with Russians getting ever angrier and invading somebody. Yet every new US administration does the exact same thing as the previous one and hopes for a different result.

Trump is doing exactly what Obama did with his Hillary-led Russia reset. And what GW Bush did with his. And what Bill Clinton and Bush Sr did. Why does he want to repeat the same failed policies of every single one of his predecessors of the past 3 decades? Because the American political establishment is senile. There are no fresh brains, no interesting ideas. Nobody has the energy to try something new or even to conclude that something new is possible.

I predicted that Trump was going to try another Russia reset and would make friendly overtures to Putin. I also predicted Putin would spit in his face. It was easy for me to predict all this not because I’m some sort of a clairvoyant but because it’s exactly what happens every single time. A monkey would be able to figure this out after 3 decades of repetition.

What I didn’t predict was that Trump would eat up Putin’s mockery and pretend it didn’t happen. I misjudged Trump’s age and energy level. I tend to want to be optimistic, and while often a great trait, it can also lead to mistaken judgment. I was hoping Trump would surprise me by being different from every preceding US president. In this specific area, he didn’t. He’s still obviously enormously better than Kamala but we are still stuck with the same old foreign policy of the US being obsessed with the Middle East and dumb about everywhere else.

Yes, I can give some suggestions even though there’s zero chance anybody will listen to them.

Rule #1.

If you catch a source in a lie, never access it again.

Examples: “police officers were killed on J6”, “children are at the same risk from COVID as elderly people”, “COVID didn’t come from a lab.” Now that we know that these were not mistakes but lies and were spread by people who knew these were lies, there’s no excuse ever to listen to these information outlets again.

Rule #2.

If you hear the same turn of phrase repeated by different people verbatim, it’s propaganda. Avoid anybody who uses these ready-made phrases and never trust them about anything.

Examples: “walking us straight into WWIII”, “Russia wasn’t going to tolerate NATO military bases on its doorstep”, “CIA organized color revolutions”, etc.

These are good, simple rules that people could use to avoid getting duped. But they won’t. Emotional dysregulation feels good. It’s destructive but it’s very enjoyable in the process. These propagandistic lies are like heroin. They soothe and lower anxiety. People will come again and again to get their hit.

This is a completely bipartisan affliction. Self-indulgent, undisciplined behavior is the norm. It’s normalized because people who indulge in it are easy to dupe, deprive, control, lock up, and rob. And it’s hard to argue that they don’t deserve it if they can’t get their emotions under control enough not to repeat every slogan they are fed.

DoorDash and Klarna have signed a deal where customers can choose to pay for food deliveries in interest-free installments or deferred options aligned with payday schedules.

— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) March 20, 2025

While we argue about the nation-state and neoliberalism, there are people who want to pay for their DoorDash with payday loans. There are many of them, and we depend on their voting choices.

If that’s not disturbing to you, I need to hear about your meditation routine.