Clarissa's Blog

Tried to check the news before going to bed and discovered that people are discussing whether Trump went to a cemetery and whether Harris worked at a McDonald’s.

Starting to think that neoliberalism can’t come soon enough.

Without her, we would have elected McCain, and everything would be different. Dude really understood geopolitical dangers like nobody since.

Here’s what we need to know about Communism. It was never tried anywhere on Earth ever. A Communist society never existed. The USSR was a socialist country. Cuba is socialist with elements of capitalism. Venezuela is trying to build socialism. Soviet leadership never – and I insist, never, not once – claimed to have built Communism. We were promised that Communism would be achieved some time in the future, and the date of when that was going to happen was constantly pushed forward. Think climate apocalypse. It’s supposed to be imminent but it’s always 10 years away.

The reason that not even the USSR claimed to have built a Communist society is because Communism means no money, no army and no government. Not in the sense that “you won’t have any money” but in the sense that money as a concept would go away. Soviet ideologues knew even they couldn’t convince citizens that there was no government or money when people clearly observed them every day. I’m starting to think that the Soviets only failed at this task because they lacked the shamelessness of Politico but that’s another issue.

The way Communism is supposed to be achieved is that, as a result of living in a socialist society for a long time, human beings were supposed to evolve into “an entirely new breed of humans.” That was the terminology that was officially used in the USSR. This new breed of humans would be so evolved that they wouldn’t need the “repressive apparatus of the state” (another official term) to live in peace and mutual, willing assistance. Money won’t be needed because people will gladly and eagerly share everything. Taxes and the mechanisms of tax extraction will be unnecessary because we will all understand the need to share. It will be as natural as the need to compete and struggle for status is natural to us in our present unevolved state

There won’t be such a thing as politicians in the Communist world because people will live as one and the need to negotiate competing interests of different factions of society will fall away. Of course, such a state of existence by necessity has to be planetary because if a single group refuses and maintains an army when everybody else abolished theirs, that group will dominate everybody before you can say Karl Marx.

It is obvious to everybody who is not hopelessly naive that this state of humanity will never be achieved. It is completely contrary to the human nature. Socialist regimes did their darndest to change human nature and failed most catastrophically every single time. Hoping for Communism is like hoping that every day will be Christmas. It’s childish. The idea is attractive to people with very low intellect. But there’s enough of those to keep the Communist fantasy alive.

Calling political opponents Communists is as dumb as calling them Nazis.

Talking endlessly about Kamala’s cackle is as tedious as talking about Trump’s hair.

Saying “color revolutions” is as obnoxious as saying “white woman tears”.

“The Deep State” is as non-existent as an epidemic of lynching.

Worrying about WWIII is as neurotic as worrying about a climate apocalypse.

Expecting either Trump or Kamala to destroy democracy is silly.

Seeing people battle imaginary Communists and Nazis is embarrassing.

We get exactly the politics we deserve because we are sloppy and let ourselves be swayed by meaningless slogans.

I remember just a couple of weeks ago somebody came here to offer Politico as a reliable news source.

Politico:

One has to lack even a shred of self-respect to access this propaganda outlet for news. These people urinate in their readers’ faces and, I’m sure, mock their readership mercilessly during drinks after work. As well they should.

There are 5 Tesla Cybertrucks in our small time. Five!

Is it that popular or do we have a lot of wealthy people in town?

Emmett Till was murdered in 1955. He was only 14 years old.

As a U.S. senator, I led the effort to make lynching a federal hate crime.

As Vice President, I proudly stood beside @JoeBiden as he signed the Emmett Till Antilynching Act into law.

As President, I will continue… pic.twitter.com/KbKdQQmZ9j

— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) August 28, 2024

Thank goodness lynching is finally recognized as a crime. It was a heavy burden to live in a country where you could lynch people with complete impunity.

Hopefully, when Harris is president she’ll make lynching illegal again and again.

I looked at my kid’s third-grade math assignment and couldn’t complete it. Not because I’m particularly bad at math but – and this is the funny part – I’m apparently not good at language. The task asks children to “use the Commutative Property of Multiplication.” That’s the actual spelling, and I don’t have the foggiest what it’s supposed to mean and why the words are capped.

On the one hand, I’m glad third-graders are assumed to be able to read this kind of words. On the other, this seems like a way to scare very young children away from math because what is a fun activity at this age is made to sound prohibitively complicated and boring. “Hey, kids, let’s do this fun game about a guy who had two buckets of pears and had to share them equally among his friends” might attract 8-year-olds more than “let’s use the Commutative Property”, is what I’m saying.

During the Spanish conquest of the New World, Spaniards were legally obligated to pronounce a set of statements that, according to their legal system, would entitle them to the conquest of the new lands they encountered. This statement they would pronounce was called requerimiento, or demand. The aborigines had no capacity to understand the language of the demand or the concepts it used. As a result, they couldn’t access or not to it in any meaningful way. But Spaniards still considered the locals obligated to abide by its terms once they heard it.

Today’s land acknowledgements are exactly like that. In the images above, you can see a land acknowledgement used by an Australian writer as an opening statement of her novel. Australian aborigines did not have the concepts of nation and sovereignty. The writer’s insistence on calling them “nations” is actually quite disrespectful. It’s very similar to the Spanish requerimiento because it uses the aborigines as props or mannequins to achieve self-serving purposes.

This is supposed to be a historical novel but now I don’t know if I want to read it because the author’s knowledge of history is scant.

Have you ever wished you could have a private viewing of your favorite painting? One lucky man named Stefan Kasper in the Netherlands was granted that opportunity and more when he became the 10 millionth visitor to the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.  He was granted his very own night at the museum, including a dinner and bed underneath Rembrandt‘s masterpiece The Night Watch.

This incredible event occurred in 2017. It was business as usual at the Rijksmuseum until Kasper had his ticket scanned and came up as the 10 millionth guest. He was immediately presented with a special ceremony, where an official of the Rijksmuseum explained what was in store for him. After the museum closed for the day, Kasper was allowed his own private evening with Rembrandt’s painting, and many other famous works of art.

10 Millionth Visitor to Rijksmuseum Is Granted Private Evening With Rembrandt’s ‘The Night Watch’

First of all, it wasn’t private because the poor dude was filmed and footage was plastered all over social media. And second, the whole thing must be fake anyway. It’s too big of a coincidence that the 10-millionth guest just happened to be a person who doesn’t want or need to be at home at night and possesses a strongly exhibitionist personality that would make this not a dreaded punishment. And that he’d be male, adult, and fairly young because women and older people can’t go to bed in a random place.