A Propositional Nation

~ Clarissa ~ 22 Comments

Here’s a question to ponder. We’ve been hearing a lot from the leaders of both political parties that America is based on a set of beliefs, and anybody who shares them is automatically American.

But how do we know anybody’s beliefs? Because they say so? Words are cheap.

Also, what do we do in cases like Zohran Mamdani who gets elected to a position of great power and immediately declares that he’s against American principles and wants the opposite ones?

When words become more important than reality, the results are always bad. Propositional or credal mean “based on words.” A propositional nation means no nation.

Come to Nothing

~ Clarissa ~ 28 Comments

Who else thinks that these revelations of fraud will come to absolutely nothing whatsoever?

I don’t want to be cynical but what is the solution? Dragging screaming, tearful black women in hijabs away from their nine kids? Having that be the news story for months? And then what? Even if several of the fraudsters go on trial, what prevents an army of new ones replacing them? Nobody is getting deported, that’s all a fantasy. We couldn’t deport Kilmar Abrego GarcĆ­a who is illegal, and these are all citizens. So then what? Even taxing remittances has not been passed and there seem to be no plans to do it.

And what’s the motivation to do anything? Voters will move on from this story to some imaginary war on Venezuela (if they are on the right) or war on Denmark (if they are on the left).

You should see the procedure I go through to expend state funds on buying printer paper for my department. We keep the paper under lock and key. There’s pre-order accountability and post-order accountability. I know everything that was bought with department money in the past 6 years, and I can guarantee that no state funds were wasted or misappropriated. I’m an honest person, and the recent revelations of mass fraud didn’t tempt me to start stealing. But now whenever I file a request to buy a package of printer paper in the amount of $6.55, I’ll feel stupid. And cynical. That’s the only effect of this debacle. To make honest people cynical and disappointed in the very concept of a country as a meaningful category of engaging with reality.

Rugged

~ Clarissa ~ 5 Comments

All day I’ve felt like absolute donkey’s vomit. I had no alcohol yesterday, ate very sparingly, and engaged in no excesses. The only explanation for feeling like the world has wiped its rugged butt with me today is that I caught a virus. Which is extremely bad timing as I have tons to do in the next few days.

Thank you to the person who recommended the book about Matthew Shepard in the anonymous comments. I’ve been listening to it and it’s kept me very entertained on the day when I’m utterly useless. Great book, mega shocking.

Looking for the Positive

~ Clarissa ~ 20 Comments

Is it humanly possible to be any more gay than Mamdani?

His gayness is the only endearing thing about him, which is why I bring it up.

New Year’s Surprise

~ Clarissa ~ 3 Comments

White Rex is alive:

Maybe there’s hope for Russian nationalism after all.

It’s a great way to start the year. I hope everybody is celebrating their hearts out today.

No Reset for the Owls

~ Clarissa ~ 2 Comments

When school is in session, I get up at 5:45 am. To make that possible, I’m in bed by 9:30 pm. And it’s fine.

But the moment school closes, I’m blissfully back to my natural state of going to bed by 1am and getting up by 9. My mental health experiences paroxysms of delight when that happens.

You can’t change us, fuckers. So don’t even try.

Anti-white

~ Clarissa ~ 13 Comments

At least somebody gets it:

The whole idea of the “Global South” which is incongruously led by Russia is about this form of ethnic resentment. Why Russians decided to turn non-white is completely beyond me but there you have it.

The Second Stage

~ Clarissa ~ Leave a comment

Anson Frericks believes that the current version of neoliberalism should be abandoned in favor of its original form. His idea is that Milton Friedman’s “shareholder capitalism” should be brought back instead of today’s “stakeholder capitalism.” These are terms that I don’t find particularly useful because they don’t explain anything.

Milton Friedman’s neoliberalism of half a century ago was hostile to government and uninterested in ideology. At that stage, neoliberalism needed to decouple nation-state structures from the economy. The best way to do that was to narrate business as a space of freedom. Freedom from government supervision and from ideology. This strategy made sense while the nation-state was strong.

Once the nation-state was weakened, neoliberalism proceeded to replace it. With itself. The nation-state creates ideology. It can only exist because it can create and impose ideology. So if you want to replace it with yourself, you should become the source of ideology. You must create and impose ideology. You must become the Big Brother.

Anson Frericks’ lament in Last Call for Bud Light is that we have departed from the Milton Friedman-era origins of the system. He’s like a mom who sighs that her teenager is rude and doesn’t want to kiss mommy but remember how sweet he was at 15 months? That a toddler grows up into a teenager is normal. Freedom as the highest value naturally leads to the idea that there should be freedom to edit the bodies of small children, especially if that’s very profitable. That yarn has unspun, and there’s no stuffing it back into the original packaging. Frericks’ biggest example of a business that managed to stay away from manufacturing ideology is … Netflix. Which promotes ideology with the rigidity of the Soviet Pravda.

Book Notes: Last Call for Bud Light by Anson Frericks

~ Clarissa ~ 1 Comment

I wondered what made Anson Frericks so brave. A white man who is a businessman by trade is usually more terrified of criticizing DEI than an untenured lecturer of 18th-century English literature. In Last Call for Bud Light, the former CEO of Anheuser-Busch parts ways with his tribe of Harvard Business School graduates with gigantic investment portfolios and explains that race and gender quotas in hiring are not a great idea. Big business is more woke than aĀ  conference of academics in Queer Studies, so I had to wonder why Frericks decided to break the omertĆ  and speak out against performative leftism.

In Chapter 19, Frericks finally lets it slip. He’s friends with Vivek Ramaswamy, and this “my best friend is diverse” positioning fueled Frericks’ rebellion against leftism. He and Vivek started a new venture that aims to bring meritocracy to the world of business. Frericks was embraced by the Right, as anybody who is so unexpectedly rational would be, and got interviewed by Tucker Carlson where I discovered him. I like to end the year by reading a business book, so I read Frericks story of how Anheuser-Busch destroyed its market capitalization by chasing after leftist approval. It’s an excellent book that gives a lot of crucial background for the Dylan Mullvaney fiasco.

While his friend Vivek Ramaswamy has made a name for himself for failing to understand American culture to an almost comical extent, Frericks loves American history and tradition with almost painful passion. He was a perfect Anheuser-Busch sales CEO because he was extremely into the Budweiser culture and everything associated with it. He resigned from the company because his plan to grant Black Rifle Coffee access to Anheuser-Busch’s distribution network was rejected on ideological grounds. Frericks was told that Black Rifle Coffee was too controversial at the exact time when Anheuser-Busch hired Dylan Mullvaney to promote the brand.

Last Call for Bud Light is an excellent book. It explains in great detail how and why business became far more leftist than academia. I’d take that explanation a lot farther than Frericks does but that’s why I’m an academic.