Clarissa's Blog

North Korea and Russia are escalating, yet none of the people who are constantly screeching about the dangers of escalation are noticing. I wonder why they never notice any escalation done by the enemies of their own country.

Meantime in London:

In London there are large areas where it’s extremely uncomfortable to be an unshrouded and an unguarded woman. After experiencing that in different Western cities, I could only heave with laughter when #MeToo began.

Forget women, though. I’d love to hear from the Western Jews who have been the most earnest and passionate proponents of open borders. Do you still feel the same? Is it still an attractive idea?

This is exactly what pro-Russian Americans are like. Clueless, confused, and self-hating.

Another unfortunate mistake is that Ukrainians have been tricked into using Timothy Snyder’s well-meaning yet deeply counterproductive narrative of the Russia-Ukraine war being about imperialism and colonialism.

In the West, these concepts are only interesting to the far left, and the far left will never see white people as victims of colonialism. Everybody else is so tired of being harangued about their imagined imperialist sins that they shut down immediately when they hear these words.

The only way out of this self-inflicted quagmire is to ditch the imperialism narrative, stop seeing the West as Barbieland, and start living in reality.

Before I conclude this discussion, I have something to say to the commenter who suggested that I want Ukraine to pass “anti-gay laws”, whatever that is. You are obsessed with sex. It’s abnormal and unhealthy. You managed to bring your sexual hangups to a discussion of a terrible, destructive war. You need to do some thinking about what’s going on with you.

Russians have a naturally downward-trending affect, so they exaggerated the West’s imperfections, got angry over the perceived betrayal of finding out there is no paradise on Earth, and decided to be the anti-West.

Ukrainians, who have an upward-trending affect, chose their favorite coping strategy of being in denial, and spent the last 30 years pretending the perfect West they had imagined in the Soviet times is real. They are as offended when you mention any problems in the West as Russians are when you mention anything good about the West.

I watched in horror how, during the NATO summit in Vilnius last summer, pretty much everybody in Ukraine was absolutely convinced that Biden was going to extend an invitation to NATO membership to Ukraine. When it predictably didn’t happen, people were devastated. Trying to explain to them that Americans are living in a state of deep, unprocessed trauma over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that they (fairly in one case and unfairly in the other) perceive as humiliating, unnecessary catastrophes provoked the stunned shock of a toddler told that Santa isn’t real.

As a result, the very real and concerns of many Americans about the “forever wars”, border troubles, inflation, deindustrialization, etc. aren’t addressed at all. It’s so inconceivable, in this worldview, that Americans can be preoccupied with their own problems that their being distracted from Ukraine is explained as Russian propaganda. I have lost count of how many times I have had to say “this isn’t about you. There are things going on here that are not about you”.

There’s yet another factor in this that I’ll discuss in the next post.

I was asked yesterday what Ukraine has been doing wrong in its foreign policy. The question wasn’t asked in good faith but I still want to write about it because there’s a lesson here that is useful to all of us in our lives. People hate long posts, so I’ll publish this in parts.

We often engage with people as if they only exist during our interactions with them. We perceive everything they do or say as being about us when there might be a million unrelated things happening to them. It’s a good idea to remind ourselves that if somebody is being irritable, disengaged or rude, it’s probably not about us at all. That person has a million things going on that have nothing to do with us.

Ukrainians on all levels have found it hard to see their Western allies as countries with the exact same complexity, history, internal concerns and burning-hot arguments as themselves. The West, for them, is this perfect place where everything is perfect and everybody marinates in this perfection briefly coming out of this perfect stupor to condemn Russia and support Ukraine. Yes, it’s the bloody Barbieland.

This attitude is, of course, part of the Soviet legacy. We lived behind the Iron Curtain and, for lack of any actual knowledge, imagined utter bliss on the other side. When the Iron Curtain fell, one could finally see reality. The West is great but it’s complicated and contradictory, it has problems, people argue, sometimes they suffer, sometimes things are unfair. I’m in love precisely with this complexity that produces enormously better results than monolithic authoritarianisms.

The reaction to this realization was disparate in different parts of the former USSR. This disparate reaction is a lot more responsible for the current war against Ukraine than any fairy tales about “the NATO expansion”. I’ll explain how in the next post.

Good news! If you exclude everything people need to live, there is no inflation!

Economists are truly the dumbest bastards.

Remember when Trump tried to institute a travel ban for travelers from some Muslim countries? All of my Jewish colleagues went to protest at the airport. (Please don’t ask why the airport, especially since we are not exactly a hub for international travel). Curiously, none of them went to the airport to protest when the travel ban was extended to all of us but that’s another matter.

I wonder if all those Muslim travelers who came over after the Trump travel ban was removed are walking out in support of the Jews today.

No, I kind of really don’t.

My point, once again, is that it might be a good idea to check if the group you try to mooch pity points off really wants you. Because it probably doesn’t.

Somebody said today that I’m Ukrainian first and Jewish* a very distant second. This is strange, he said, given how close I was with my Jewish father and how distant with my Ukrainian mother.

Thing is, though, my Jewish father was also always much more Ukrainian than Jewish. He was definitely tons more Ukrainian than my mother. So this argument doesn’t work.

The actual reason is that you can’t unilaterally appoint yourself a member of a group. Yes, some men declare themselves women and tower over female competitors on a podium where they get their fake awards. But normal people don’t do that. They don’t go where they aren’t wanted. And I’m mostly normal.

As a kid, I never had a Ukrainian friend stop asking me over because she discovered I was half-Jewish. I never had Ukrainian relatives use anti-semitic slurs around me. I never had to justify my appearance to Ukrainian acquaintances. Nobody ever said I’m not a real Ukrainian because of my Dad. But I did have all these experiences over being half-Ukrainian with Jewish friends, relatives, colleagues. I get it, it’s fine. I look Jewish like Megan Markle looks black. If you stare really hard and also squint a little, you can definitely see something.

The point I’m making is that it’s stupid to inflict yourself on a group that doesn’t want you even if you have legitimate claims to belonging. It’s gigantically more stupid to do it when you’ve got none.

* I’m talking about being Jewish purely in terms of ethnicity. And yes, that’s a real thing that shows up on DNA tests.

The shock many Jews feel today when much of the Left pissed in their faces after the horrific terror attack on Israel is exactly what we Ukrainians felt when much of the Right abandoned us and became Putin’s little bitches.