Clarissa's Blog

Elon Musk is much more interesting than other mega rich dudes in that he symbolizes where we all are right now. He’s a mirror we are looking in with fascination because the conflict he enacts for us daily mimics ours.

On the one hand, we are mesmerized by the possibilities of the fluid lifestyle. It liberates creativity, frees us from every shackle, makes us feel powerful, flatters our sense of importance, and offers the rush of accomplishment. Fluidity wouldn’t be so powerful if it weren’t so darn enjoyable. We all feel its pull. I’m following a writer who wants to live a carless trad lifestyle in rural New York, and every word he writes is neoliberal, aka fluid, aka post-national, aka whatever you want to call it.

But at the same time, we all feel that something that matters to us a lot is being traded for the fluid freedom of ceaseless productivity and idolized choice. There’s no audience to observe our feats of lonesome striving because everybody is busy performing their own. There’s no “us” at all. It’s lonely, and there’s so much anxiety that even the richest man in the world can’t get through the day without being medicated to the gills. We are all on something by Musk’s age of 53, and probably earlier. We are all chronically ailing.

And we all feel nostalgia for the now irrelevant idea of rights. We pine for politics in the sense of an expression of the life of the polis. There is no polis and there are no citizens in any sense that matters. We have convinced ourselves that wanting anything other than complete freedom is a betrayal of the ever-important self but the desire for something bigger than the compulsion to keep choosing is there, nagging and begging for attention.

We look at Musk’s clumsy reenactment of the role of a statesman and a family man, and it’s both cringe in its parody-like shamelessness and endearing in its naive cluelessness. Choice is a jealous deity and won’t tolerate any other gods on its pedestal. We all want to be the agents but not the objects of choice. But that’s impossible. We don’t want to accept anything given, anything we haven’t chosen but we also want to be accepted as given, as unchosen, as endowed with rights just because we exist. In this, we are all Elon Musk, and he fascinates us because we recognize ourselves in him.

Alea Iacta Est pic.twitter.com/gvVaFNTGqn

— Ashley St. Clair (@stclairashley) February 15, 2025

I unfollowed immediately. Why be a conservative if petty whorishness of this kind is to be lionized? Making everybody privy to her Valentine’s freakout over being discarded like a used Kleenex is vulgar and we should all be better than this.

As I say in the book I’m writing, neoliberalism is a moral catastrophe. Even saying the word “morality” makes one sound fuddy-duddy and stupid. And children are the first casualties.

What is it with eggs? People are posting videos of shoppers dragging out huge stacks of egg cartons. My Twitter comments are filled with references to eggs. What’s happening? Are there supposed to be egg shortages? There are none where I live, and prices have improved. Is there a meme I missed?

I feel like a teenager who broke her leg and missed a huge round of school drama.

Why do people think authoritarianism and communism are the same thing? There are endless permutations to authoritarianism, the vast majority of which aren't "communism".

— i/o (@eyeslasho) February 14, 2025

It’s funny that the guy whose best writing is on IQ has to ask this question.

Because people are lazy, sloppy, careless, with rusty, unexercized brains that enjoy nothing as much as repeating the same slogan memorized decades ago.

Communism, by the way, by definition can’t be authoritarian because there’s no government, police, army, or any coercive apparatus in communism. That’s precisely why communism never existed and never can.

To celebrate the day of lovers, here is a great quote from Zygmunt Bauman:

‘Creating a family’ is like jumping headlong into uncharted waters of unfathomed depth. Having children means weighing the welfare of another, weaker and dependent, being against one’s own comfort. The autonomy of one’s own preferences is bound to be compromised, and ever anew: year by year; daily. One may become, horror of horrors, ‘dependent.’ Having children may mean the need to lower one’s professional ambitions, to ‘sacrifice a career’. . . Most painfully, having children means accepting such loyalty-dividing dependence for an indefinite time, entering an open-ended and irrevocable commitment with no ‘until further notice’ clause attached; the kind of obligation that goes against the grain of liquid modern life politics. Awakening to such a commitment may be a traumatic experience. Post-natal depression and post-childbirth marital crises look like specifically ‘liquid modern’ ailments, in the same way as anorexia, bulimia, and countless varieties of allergy.

Liquid Love

This is the origin of the Western fertility crisis right there. The idea that you can throw money at the problem and buy greater fertility is a neoliberal solution to a problem that neoliberalism creates. It won’t work.

I recognize that I have not read the constitution of Israel. Or whatever foundational document they have. I don’t even know whether there is a constitution or what stands in its place. I became a citizen of Canada and then of the US, so obviously I had to get very familiar with the Charter and the US Constitution. Another country whose constitution I know almost by heart is Spain. And I know the history of all Spanish constitutions, how they were created, argued, destroyed, etc. All the other foundational documents of other countries are a mystery to me.

For instance, I wouldn’t be able to say what Germany or Poland have. I’m sure there’s a document but I never laid my eyes on it. In what concerns Israel, a reader shared that they even have a different system of legal rights for illegitimate children. I had no idea about that. So I wouldn’t venture to make any guesses about any documents I haven’t studied.

So much information is coming in that it’s impossible to track everything. Please give a link where Hegseth said this because I need to know what I’m responding to. In the video posted earlier, I discussed what Hegseth said yesterday. Then today he backtracked on that but from your comment it sounds like he went much further since today’s NATO presser? I looked but I’m not finding anything.

Please, whoever knows what this question is in reference to, leave links or, ideally, quotes.

While we wait, I can say that I’m grateful for everything Hegseth said yesterday and confused as to why he decided to backtrack today.

Except for my haircut. That’s completely my own.

I have such severe issues with recognizing people that nobody believes it’s possible. For instance, you know that guy who interviews me every week? I talked to him for an hour today. And not only am I completely unable to imagine his face, I can’t even say if he has facial hair or what color eyes he has or does he wear eyeglasses. Which I assume he does because everybody does at this age. Bit I don’t have a specific memory of it.

On the other hand, I remember by heart large portions of texts that I read 20 years ago. And I remember where in the book they were located. And where on a page.

It takes me years to remember the faces of my lab workers. Every time I discover what I think is a complete stranger at the front desk, and people have to tell me, “It’s Pedro. You didn’t recognize Pedro? He’s been with us for 3 years.” And to me, he’s a complete stranger.

Do English-speaking readers have a way to understand my videos? Is there a technology somebody is using? I spoke for 50 minutes on tomorrow’s video about Trump and Ukraine. I have a new haircut, by the way, and I look ferociously good. But in any case, will anybody be able to understand it? Or should I repeat it here in writing? Or in video form in English?