The long biography of the Spanish writer Carmen Laforet reads like the scariest horror novel in the last third of the book. Laforet’s life is a warning to all of us who tend to be a little weird.

Laforet was always weird. But she married young, had a lot of children, wrote a weekly magazine column, and the structured nature of this lifestyle kept her from melting into a murky puddle of strangeness.

But when she got to my age, Laforet decided that she needed complete freedom to be her true self. She ditched the husband and the children, got rid of all scheduled writing obligations, and started prancing around Europe in hopes that this lifestyle was going to release her full creative potential.

What happened in reality was the exact opposite. Laforet never wrote anything again. Without the organizing presence of her busy family life, she didn’t know how to keep her weirdness in check. Soon enough, weirdness conquered every aspect of her life. She started dressing like a bag lady, hacked her hair off to achieve an “original” hairstyle, stopped eating anything except ice-cream, and progressively slipped into such eccentricity that people would get scared off.

The space formerly occupied by husband, children, obligations, daily routines and work became filled with weirdness. Laforet’s true self turned out to be that of a lazy liar with poor hygiene.

Reading about Laforet’s unraveling is scary. None of it needed to happen. If only she hadn’t believed in the myth of complete freedom and true self, she would have been able to have a normal, productive life, surrounded by family, and not tortured with loneliness, hunger, humiliation and weirdness in the last 30 years of her life.

Professors are funny people. I’m talking on Zoom to a colleague in Florida and she says, “So, get this. I was in a car crash, and the paramedic who put me on the stretcher was a former student of mine! I asked him…”

“Wait,” I say. “You were in a car crash??”

“Oh yes,” she responds. “Broke my arm in five places. But this paramedic – he was actually my student back in 2011, and so I’m lying there on the stretcher, and all of a sudden, the paramedic says, hello, Professor B., and I say…”

“Wait!” I interrupt again. “What happened? Are you OK? How is your arm?”

“Oh, I just ran a red light, it was really stupid. The arm hurts terribly. But isn’t it cool that I would run into a former student like that? He did a Spanish minor, and I knew he was interested in the medical field…”

As part of our seasonal entertainment, we went to see a play at the community theater titled The Christmas Story. It’s supposed to be a Midwestern Christmas tradition, and it’s a story of castrated masculinity that starts in childhood and lasts all the way to adulthood. It’s kind of disturbing with all the beaten down, squashed masculinity.

N was repeating “what horror” all through the play.

There is such a deep political polarization because people are disconnected from other humans and don’t know how to feel a sense of purpose. So they use political partisanship as a substitute. It helps them feel like they are part of something.

The need for the crutch of partisanship gets to the point where people completely evacuate all capacity to act in their own interest, observe evidence and avoid being exploited.

I was talking to a woman who works for a neighboring department, and she said she really missed her adult son.

“Oh, where is he?” I asked.

“He lives two blocks away from us,” she said and explained the exact position of the houses in respect to each other.

“So what happened?” I asked, thinking there had to be some serious conflict.

“Nothing,” the woman said. “We are just so busy with our lives. He’s busy with his family.”

Another woman standing nearby piped up with a similar story about her adult children.

This strikes me as very American and very bizarre. For the life of me, I don’t understand this absolute desperation to sever all contact with one’s children the moment they turn 18.

These two women are support staff. They aren’t college-educated. With my professor friends, it’s not as bad but they pretend it is. One friend tried to conceal that her adult daughter moved in with them in the summer between college and nursing school. It took me weeks to pry it out of her. She thought I’d decide her daughter was a loser if I knew about it.

I had a very profound relationship with my father until the day he died. He knew everything about my writing, what stage each article was, the names of all my colleagues and the details of their lives. We talked every day for long stretches of time. And none of this prevented me from having my own life or made me a loser. To the contrary, it made my life enormously better.

I just don’t get how you live two minutes away from your relatives and you are too busy to see them. Busy doing what, exactly? What do people do? My sister comes with the kids to live with us for two months every summer. I go over to stay with her in Canada every time I can. How come we aren’t too busy? I know every detail of her life, the names of all her friends and colleagues, everything. I know what my mother ate for breakfast yesterday. And the day before. She’s a very difficult person but we talk. Every day. For at least an hour. And before her sisters moved in with her last September, they talked on Skype several times a day. I don’t get how people are too busy for all this.

This is a cultural thing I’ll never understand.

This is exactly what I’m talking about. Embracing the inane language of safetyism instead of talking about how merit is squeezed out of these prestigious schools by DEI is a loser strategy. For every wounded sufferer of unsafe conditions there will be 10 who are wounded and unsafe because of his very existence. You can’t win at the game of “I feel unsafe.” It’s a stupid game that needs to be abandoned.

The Irish fought for centuries for freedom from the English and then caved to the powerful invading force of the BLM. Invented by the English, obvs.

All those movies about Irish bravery and independent spirit – I feel kind of duped.

Yeah, I had no idea that Ireland did the George Floyd thing. I would have preferred to continue in ignorance.

I don’t think they should have done a minute of silence for the stabbed children, either. Staying silent in the face of street crime would signal complete impotence. These are the country’s leaders. They shouldn’t mourn crime. They should fight it.

Israel is grievously mishandling the fight for the public opinion in the aftermath of October 7th. All these photos of hostages, parades of women in bloody pants imitating rape victims, pouting about pro-Palestinian protests – it’s all a mistake. Israel chose to position itself as a victim, and that’s not going to work.

Here’s why.

First of all, Israel isn’t pathetic. This whole pretending to be Anne Frank schtick is unconvincing because today’s Jews aren’t Anne Frank. Israel isn’t pitiful. It has Mossad, world’s best medicine, nuclear weapons, and the garden it created in the desert. Chances that Israelis will out-victim Palestinians are non-existent. You can’t project an image of strength and excellence for 75 years and then expect everybody to see you as piteous and abject.

Another problem is that competing with Palestinians in what concerns the victim count is an exercise in futility. Life has different value in the two cultures. Palestinians can come up with a thousand dead to each Israeli victim of October 7 on the spot. They will roll out every dead, wounded, dispossessed and upset since 1948, and there’s nothing to respond to that.

So what would be a good alternative?

There’s an easy answer that was provided fairly recently by the United States.

Remember 9/11? A lot more victims than during October 7. But did Americans paper the capitals of major cities with photos of the dead? Stage shows with people throwing themselves out of windows? Ask the world to pity them? Collect footage from anti-American protests around the world and pout over it? Ask to be counted as an oppressed minority overseas?

No, of course not. Because nobody will ever pity the United States of America. It’s not going to happen. The price of being the superpower, the superstar, the leader, the achiever is that nobody will pity you even in your very pitiful moments. When you suffer, you can’t suffer like a victim. You have to do it like a superstar, a champion, a winner. You can’t beg for compassion.

Remember the position that the US took pretty much immediately after 9/11? The narrative was “we are fighting terrorism. We are saving the world from terrorism.” That’s what Israel should have done. “We love Palestinians, Palestinians are great, we are helping them to free themselves from terrorism.” This should be a conversation about terrorism. And the pro-Hamas bastards know that this is the killer narrative. They go nuts whenever you mention the word “terrorism.” Don’t compete with Palestinians in the victim status. Be their kind, compassionate protector.

I’m not saying don’t go into Gaza and blow the Hamas evildoers to smithereens no matter what the cost. I’m saying do all that but change the narrative. I can’t look at these “Jewish students hiding in a college library from a bunch of campus protesters” debacles anymore. They make me want to go re-watch movies about successful Mossad operations for images of Jews who are good at something.

God, these people are losers. We are stuck with geriatric presidential candidates because Gen-X politicians are mega cringe. They want to get together and debate regressive sales taxes.

I also heard that they dedicated a chunk of time to debating COVID death counts.

I wonder how many people watched this snoozefest.

OK. Here’s a question. Who shouldn’t be covered by DEI protections? Who’s the big bad wolf who’d exclude all these persecuted identities and has to be thwarted by DEI measures?

Ay yay yay, my Jewish brothers and sisters. You’ve learned nothing. You want to strengthen the DEI in hopes it will protect you. You still haven’t understood that you’ll never out-diverse the pro-Palestinian crowd. You are seeking allies among people who despise you and trying to sic them on those who support you.

Enjoy the learning curve.