In the meantime, the Trump campaign is plastering social media with “are you better off now than 4 years ago?”

Well, obviously we are all massively better now than in August of 2020. Can anybody in the campaign subtract 4 from 24 and figure out that drawing attention to the summer of COVID, lockdowns and BLM riots is not a brilliant move?

In August of 2020, parents were receiving news that schools weren’t going to reopen. It’s a very bad idea to invite people to think back to that time.

I definitely wasn’t better off 4 years ago because I couldn’t live my life as freely as I do now. I couldn’t see my sister and my parents, I couldn’t travel, I had to go to restaurants illegally, I had to go to battle and be excoriated to teach in person, my kid couldn’t go to preschool without a stupid mask.

Maybe don’t remind me of that because no matter who’s specifically to blame for it all, I was not better off. And I’m still angry about it.

Governor Walz oversaw an explosion in the violent victimization of black people in his state.

All of these excess deaths of black people happened during Walz’s term in office. Why would anybody vote to bring his policies to the national scale?

Then again, white people seem to be doing great in Minnesota according to this graph.

What is it with this campaign?

Kamala plagiarizes like Bidenhttps://t.co/b2Kqp0V29e

— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) August 11, 2024

Few things are as moronic as the idea that policy can be plagiarized. If I’m for free speech, am I plagiarizing everybody before me who said they are for it?

The worst part is that the policy itself is stupid. There’s no reason to exempt a specific category of earnings from taxes. It’s all silly, inane pandering.

I have started working on my literary translation of the play The Song of Israel, and it’s not going easy. I know where I’m going to send it for publication, and that’s not great because now I’m writing for a specific person who will read the translation. And good writing, as we know, happens only when you address it to God.

I’ll have to snap out of it in some way.

I’m also annotating the play with relevant historical and cultural information. If I started doing it, then why not just do it right, you know?

Iran collusion is as stupid as Russia collusion. It’s a loser game and it’s lunacy to play it when we already know the result.

Iran is hacking the Trump campaign to interfere in the U.S. election in order to aid Kamala.

If Iran wants Kamala over Trump that badly maybe we should take that as a hint. pic.twitter.com/Teqsw2FFtZ

— Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) August 11, 2024

I have been undecided and persuadable until now. There was a possibility that I’d vote for Biden. But Kamala managed to put me off in just a couple of weeks to the extent that my persuadability is gone. This has nothing to do with any of this Iran silliness, of course.

Folks, these Clean perfumes are so cool. I don’t know how to explain it but they do smell clean. Usually “clean” in scents means “smells like fabric softener” but this is a completely different kind of clean. It’s understated and gentle.

There are advances in everything, including scents.

Also, I’m finally going to church because I’m completely healthy for the first time in 40 days.

Turns out people have already memed the scary joy campaign:

People would go to any lengths to abjure the freedom of the press and of thought.

Klara loves playing ball. She shoots hoops, practices volleyball, and generally brings her ball everywhere.

Her ball has a name – Gloria – and a personality that Klara invested it with and constantly develops. Gloria experiences minute shades of emotion that Klara narrates non-stop as she plays. Half of the fun of ball-playing for her is the interaction with Gloria’s emotional states.

I swear to God, I did not believe in innate sex differences in behavior before I had a child.

Please, people, can somebody let me know if you understood why I wrote the previous post or am I being too subtle?

Just Google it already if you didn’t. It will be in current news.

In 1935, Stalin made a public speech where he said his famous phrase, “Life has become better, comrades. Life has become more joyful.” This moment marks the beginning of a full-scale campaign of terror that lasted until Stalin’s death, and it was accompanied by appeals to joy at every stage.

You were supposed to be joyful, beaming, ecstatic. Absence of constantly burbling joy was evidence that you were an enemy who did not appreciate the extraordinary advances achieved by the Stalinist regime. People started trying to outcompete each other in feverish demonstrations of joy. Humorous cartoons became popular that mocked moping weaklings who were unable to experience true Socialist joy. These were in need of being removed from the society of ecstatic achievement and transformation.

People often imagine Stalinism as grey, somber, miserable, with everybody shaking with terror. But it wasn’t like that at all. Our great-grandpatents remembered the 1930s as a time of endless picnics with colleagues, parades with colleagues, outings with colleagues, celebrations with colleagues. Soviet joy was collectivized. Trying to be joyful with your family was considered bourgeois and unprogressive.

Joy was obligatory. No personal tragedy could free you even temporarily from participating in collective celebrations. What, your grandma died and that’s why you don’t want to party? Are you valuing your bourgeois feelings more than the luminous achievements of the proletariat in its struggle against Western imperialism? You must be a spy!

People didn’t feel terror during Stalinism. “Grammy, were you scared back in 1937?” I asked my great-grandmother when the atrocities of the purges became widely discussed.

Grammy was visibly confused. “But why would I be afraid? I wasn’t an enemy,” she said.

She remained a faithful Stalinist until her death in 1993. “We had nothing,” she would reminisce. “One dress, one pair of shoes.  But we were so happy. You, youngsters, have no idea how to be this joyful anymore.”