Opinions, art, debate
For the first time in my life, I managed to make good syrnyky:
These are hard to make because they end up raw on the inside, burnt on the outside, and generally clumpy. I finally got them right, though. (The blackish bits are raisins).
The recipe is from here. You can translate it but where would you find tvorog, anyway
We all know I’m not a fan of JD Vance, to put it very mildly, but what does it matter what he believed or said in 2017? Changing one’s mind when new evidence comes in is a sign of a functioning brain. It is a sad sight, indeed, when somebody proudly informs one that they “have said the exact same thing for 30 years.”
Vance grew up in a lumpen family. He went to Yale where the intellectual authority of people around him overwhelmed him. As a result, it took him a while to figure out what he actually believes. This is neither shocking nor bad. His journey deserves enormously more respect than that of those who keep parroting whatever line they are fed.
Also, after seeing the outlandishly sexist attacks on Vance, I kind of begin to warm up to him. I am waiting for just one Dem voter to say openly that falsifying a person’s autobiography to include ridiculous pornographic confessions is not OK. All I’m seeing, though, is widespread glee on the Democrat side. “Yes, it’s false but it’s so funny!”
A huge difference between right-wingers and left-wingers lies in the degree of their knowledge of each other’s narratives.
Right-wingers have an exhaustive knowledge of the left’s interpretation of every event, be it current or past. It’s impossible to avoid that knowledge because it’s everywhere. It’s being stuffed down one’s gullet whether one wants it or not.
Left-wingers, on the other hand, have not a whit of knowledge about the worldview of the right. They debate with their fantasy of the right that is not grounded in anything resembling reality.
The right-wing narrative of America’s past and present is one of this country’s most closely kept secrets. I am still not over the feeling of utter shock I experienced when I discovered it and realized how different it is from what I was told. Also, how logical and not at all insane it was unlike the competing and dominant narrative maintained by the left.
Evil needs a philosophical justification, a collective recognition of its appropriateness. It seeks the moral sanction from God.
Dmitry Bykov, VZ
This is precisely why evil will, time and again, inflict itself on everybody’s notice. It acts in showy ways because it needs everybody to become complicit. By making us look at its actions in silent impotence, it receives our seal of approval.
Above everything else, evil needs to convince us that, not only it has been approved by God but that it is God, making and unmaking reality in its own image.
Bykov calls both such things – the ugly French opening of the Olympics and the pathetic Russian attempt to mock it – the two faces of the Devil. The former is smug and the latter is aggrieved. The worshippers of each of these disguises of the Evil One think they are enemies. But in reality they serve the same master.
The defining Russian idea of the twentieth century is that evil is acceptable because it’s useful.
Dmitry Bykov, VZ (2024)
Bykov is correct but he forgets that Dostoyevsky wrote in the mid-nineteenth century, and this vision of evil was already all over his work.
Another great quote from his new book is this:
The Enlightenment era is ending, and this has a great (and maybe an only) benefit. We are no longer limited to analyzing history through the lens of economic and geographic determinism. As a result, we don’t have to keep looking at history exclusively as an arena where material relations manifest themselves. That is why I insist that a religious interpretation of world politics is legitimate.
These are all my translations, in case anybody wonders.
Bykov is a great admirer of the Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski, and that’s one of the things that draws me to his book.
I promise I’ll write about VZ at length very soon, but for now please enjoy the quotes. Bykov is a truly great writer (and a really exceptional poet) who lost his audience. For a writer, there’s no worse fate. Spanish dissidents in the 1930s and 1940s could go to Latin America, join literary life there, get published, hang out with other writers, read their work, find readers, and do all this in their own language. The tragedy of a writer who has nowhere to go and who suddenly lost not only his readers but his literary circle is deep.
This isn’t an issue of finances. Bykov is mega famous. He’s been hired by Cornell and will not become a starving artist. Which might actually have been a good idea given his girth. But he’s bereft by his loss even though he doesn’t whine or pout and insists it’s the right thing to happen and he’s fine with it.
Many more people in this country know who Jennifer Aniston is than who JD Vance is. And I mean, enormously more. But instead of turning on some charm, complimenting Aniston, and using this interview as an opportunity to moderate his remarks and say something nice about a mega popular celebrity, this useless fellow loses his cool and flutters around like a hysterical spinster. “Disgusting!” he whines, showing that he can become unsettled by a social media remark and can’t be trusted to keep his cool even in the most trivial situations imaginable.
This is somebody who couldn’t bring more voters to the campaign to save his life.
As a daughter of a math teacher, I have some bad news.
The article is pay-walled but here’s an excellent breakdown (in English) by a Ukrainian professor:
It’s a thread, and you have to see all of it to understand the whole plan.
Obviously, I think it’s a phenomenal plan. It’s definitely miles better than the Democrat plan which is that there is no plan at all.* If I believed that it’s truly Trump’s peace plan, I’d be a happy, happy bunny.
Problem is, I don’t believe that a) this is actually Trump’s plan and b) that any results will be delivered even if it were. I already believed an excellent plan on immigration that came to nought.
But yeah, what a fantastic plan. It’s so good I want to kiss it. It would be amazing to have people with a clear plan that can be widely publicized in charge. And I mean a plan for not just Ukraine, of course. I mean a plan for America.
* If there is, I will be very grateful to be pointed to it.
Note to the wise: the expression “black and brown bodies” has been expanded to include “yellow bodies.” Not by me, mind you. It would have never occurred to me to use it.
In the book I’m reading – which is a mainstream novel and “A Good Morning America Book Club Pick”, as well as “Best Book” by Glamour, TIME and Cosmopolitan – “yellow bodies” are Japanese, and I’m not sure I want to know who else might count.
Unlike “black and brown bodies” where only the “bodies” part is iffy, the expression “yellow bodies” is even more disturbing because isn’t “yellow” an insult when applied to East Asians?
The novel, titled Mika in Real Life, is actually quite good but I’m only 12% in. I’ll post a review when I’m finished.
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