I can’t watch my own book trailer to the end because the creators put such terrible war imagery in it that I break down two minutes in.

But at least finally somebody understood that my book isn’t that much about Spain or literature at all.

I read Revolutionary Road years ago, and I remember it was very good. This was his very first novel, I believe, and I’m guessing that the later novels should be even stronger.

Should I read something else by him? How about The Easter Parade? Does anybody recommend?

Yeah, right. He’ll just tweet at them, as always and do nothing. If I had the slightest hope he would do it, I’d be glad to vote for him.

An anonymous question has arrived to distract me from my unbearable heartache over the daily bombing of my native city of Kharkiv:

I’m grateful for the question but I highly recommend looking at every word in it in terms of how non-vague and specific it is.

Pretty much every word in this question lacks definition, which is why the question itself has no meaning.

Who are Palestinians, for instance? Do you have a definition? Where exactly are “Palestinians” defending “themselves”? Was the October 7 incursion into Israel by HAMAS an instance of Palestinians defending themselves? What were they defending themselves from by murdering kids at a music festival?

And let’s not even get started on “rights”. For rights to exist, somebody needs to provide and guarantee them. Who would that be in the instance of the vaguely defined selves that vaguely defined Palestinians are vaguely defending? Who will guarantee the right to conduct another October 7 again and again? I mean, the way things are going, this sacrosanct right of “self-defending Palestinians” to unpunished Jew-slaughter will be guaranteed by President Biden in no time. But that’s his personal whim, not an actual right.

This question is an ideological manipulation similar to when one says, “online learning doesn’t work in languages” and gets accused of wanting to murder thousands of students (this is a true story that happened to me). Or when one says, “I don’t support removing admission requirements” and gets accused of denying the humanity of “students of color” (this is also a true story that happened to me).

“You don’t want Palestinians to defend themselves! Shame on you, you evildoer!” I want Palestinians and everybody else to live normal, good lives. I even want that for Russians. I want everybody to stop being a gigantic victim and defending themselves from non-existent dangers by murdering people. Is that too much to ask? If only both Russians and Palestinians stopped pouting and started building, that would be great for everybody, themselves included.

Please observe how easily Ukraine could have organized a dozen October 7ths for Russia in return for Bucha, Irpin, Mariupol, Bakhmut, etc. Three hundred and sixty years of oppression and genocide. The Palestinians’ whining about 1948 is nothing compared to this. But do you see a difference? We don’t rape the enemy’s women, kidnap its babies and slice up its old folks. Because that’s not “defending yourself.” It’s being a genocidal piece of trash maniac who has forever forfeited the right to bleat about self-defense.

I hear that “self-defending Palestinians” are still keeping a baby hostage. Ukraine holds zero Russian hostages. No babies have been kept away from Mommy (and no Mommy was raped and murdered) to defend Ukrainian selves. It’s strange how different selves need a very different kind of defense. I wonder what causes that difference.

And one last thing. The concept of rights that just kind of exist in the ether is a completely Christian concept. It’s a culmination of our Judeo-Christian civilization. It’s our great achievement and our gift to the world together with the nation-state and the concept of “self”. You are trying to squeeze Palestinians into a framework that is alien to them, and that’s why even the question you ask sounds strange.

A woman at work told this story. She has two boys, 3 and 5 years old. One evening a couple of weeks ago she heard them yelping excitedly in their bedroom,

“I’m white! I’m white! I love being white!”

The woman was terrified. White supremacy! The kids must have been exposed to white supremacists somewhere.

Was it at day care?

Was it through Gramps who votes Trump?

Who had done this to her little boys?

The distraught mother ran to the bedroom to put an end to this celebration of whiteness and discovered that the boys had put on their new white pajamas and were expressing joy about the color of the garment and not a belief in racial superiority.

She works on campus. I don’t really blame her.

How are you, people in Israel? Please stay strong. We are all very worried over here about the possibility of an attack by Iran. Also, we are ashamed of the terrible anti-Israel protests. There are none where I live, obviously, but things have been downright shameful in Toronto and NYC.

This is the result of the Howard Zinnification (or Zinni-zombification) of secondary education:

Here’s a great question from a reader that I really want to answer. Thank you, reader, for asking it.

Voters are asking, “why should we invest money into defending Ukraine’s borders when we aren’t defending our own?” I’ve been asked this in person, on social media, and during a public talk. This is a very good, reasonable question. I don’t blame people for asking it. They should be asking it.

There’s no good answer to this question. Do you have one? I don’t. I mean, I do but it’s all about the nation-state and the Budapest Memorandum, and you need to be capable of a high degree of abstraction to understand it. Nobody owes me or anybody a higher degree of abstraction.

I don’t know if Mike Johnson is sincerely for closing the border. Maybe he’s pretending, like all politicians. But he’s responding to the genuine and valuable concern of the voters by trying to say, “here’s what I got for you, American citizens, in exchange for Ukraine aid.” There’s no US citizen who is more pro-Ukraine than I am but I don’t blame Mike Johnson for trying to get something for American voters. I do blame the people who are so opposed to doing anything at all for our country that they’d sacrifice Ukraine for that shameful goal. Biden should agree to close the border. He should agree to the natural gas export licenses. Not for Ukraine but for America. And if Ukraine benefits as a result, all the better.

Now my question is, why is Biden refusing? These are good measures that have overwhelming support among voters across the political spectrum. Why can’t we get all three of these things that are beneficial for our economy and the preservation of our nation-state?

I have a wasp nest in my office at work. I mean this literally and not as a metaphor for the state of things in academia. It’s the busiest time of the academic year, and now I’m.an internally displaced person with no office.

It’s barely above freezing outside and I have wasps buzzing over my head in the office. It’s unfair.

When the wasps see me, they perk up immediately because I probably look like their best chance for a meal.

I’ve been invited to write a paid article for a Ukrainian literary portal. Obviously, I won’t accept the money but I will gladly write. It will be about why the word “nationalism” has acquired such negative overtones in the West while it’s seen as a positive thing in Ukraine. I’ll write about the struggle between the nation-state and open-border globalism.

Finally, I’ll be able to bleat excitedly about Zygmunt Bauman to people who aren’t yet sick and tired of me doing it. It’s all good, I’ll get them sick and tired of it soon enough.