Clarissa's Blog

Some British lawyer in Cyprus published an article praising Putin. Within hours, every major Russian newspaper and website published an article praising the Cypriot for praising Putin.

It’s hard to believe that Russian journalists all collectively spent their Sunday morning browsing through the obscure Cyprus website where the original article appeared and then all just happened to write a nearly identical piece about it.

It’s a lot more likely that the article was written in the Kremlin and then given to some Cypriot stooge to publish under his name for a fee. The state-controlled media in Russia were tasked with publicizing the Cypriot’s article once it appeared. It’s very basic, very primitive propaganda. What’s sad is that there is bound to be a group of “it’s because of the NATO expansion” diehards who will take the Cypriot’s piece as proof that they’ve been right to worship Putin this whole time.

https://twitter.com/VladDavidzon/status/1588823642388893696?t=IYzMYLLSuVa9mmvuIQZ1dA&s=19

Poor kid. The world has moved on both from her and environmentalism. The aggressive embrace of single-use COVID masks by the fashionable people made their climate concerns sound like a joke. The climate crowd has dwindled and is trying to attract attention by posing for Tik Tok videos while pouring soup on artwork. Greta is now reduced to trying to milk the topic of ray-ceesm. As usual, she’s autistically oblivious to the fact that this field is staked out by people a lot less milky than her, and there’s no fruit to pick from it for the whitest person on the planet.

The diffuse, vapor-like goals of environmentalism only become attractive when life is completely calm and very boring. Climate anxieties distract kids in opulent societies from the monotonous perfection of their lives. But the second real problems appear, everybody forgets all about climate doom while the people who turned climate into their brand start hustling to attach themselves to a more profitable brand.

There’s a lesson in this, which is to be careful when you pick your brand. Trump, for instance, came up with the brilliant brand of “make America great again,” but it was a brand that couldn’t survive winning. It carried an implicit promise that was going to make the brand short-lived whether the promise was successful or not.

And look – the Brits are really on our side, feeling deeply the pain of the war in Ukraine. That’s because it speaks to their most important national trauma: World War II. They were wounded but fought gloriously and stood up to the enemy. Like Ukrainians. So it’s easy for the Brits to get on the same wavelength. They have nothing to be ashamed of in their memory of WWII, so they react to the war in Ukraine with sincere, open support.

Germans, on the other hand, are much more ambivalent. Since they became a nation, they’ve never been invaded without provocation. They never stood up to invaders because they didn’t have to. Instead, they have invaded, and they don’t like to be reminded of that.

The French have been invaded but in the most recent invasion they rolled over fast and agreed to peace on humiliating terms. Have you noticed how Macron keeps trying to persuade Ukrainians to agree to their own Vichy? Subconsciously, the idea that everybody ultimately rolls over for General Guderian is pleasing because it speaks to the biggest national trauma. If Ukraine agrees to a humiliating “peace,” it means there wasn’t anything that shameful in the Vichy regime.

Spaniards are supportive of Ukraine but not passionately so. They understand that Ukraine’s cause is rightful but the whole thing bores them. The Spanish nation-state was, indeed, created in response to an invasion from the closest neighbor. It was a moment of high national glory. Spaniards fought ferociously and beat back the much stronger enemy by the sheer force of patriotism and willpower. The only problem is that this all happened in 1808. Today, only faint echoes of all this remain in the national psyche. Spain has had bigger traumas since then, and, like always happens in Hispanic countries, those problems were entirely home-made.

Of course, this all works only for the countries with a fully realized, mature nation-state whose most recent major wound to the body of the nation comes from an invasion or something like it. Mexico, for example, was invaded in the 19th century but it’s biggest national trauma is the more recent Mexican revolution and the ensuing civil war. So Mexicans have no interest in what’s happening in Ukraine. It doesn’t speak to them because it’s unfamiliar.

I just came up with this theory today, and I think there’s something to it.

Happy Daylight Savings Time, everybody! It’s my second favorite night of the year after New Year’s Eve.

I spent Saturday morning in my office, listening to the Ukrainian anthem and weeping.

I think that Americans are supporting us so much because what we are experiencing speaks to their most recent national trauma. What Ukraine is going through is 9/11. Remember how you felt when you saw the towers falling and people jumping to their death? If you are an American, you know exactly how I feel. There’s been a new 9/11 for me every day for 255 days. Nobody who hasn’t personally lived it can fully understand, and Americans have lived it.

This is why Colombians, for instance, are completely indifferent to the war in Ukraine at best and cheering on Russia at worst. They haven’t been invaded. Their national consciousness hasn’t been wounded in that way. Colombia’s most painful national trauma is a civil war. A hundred – or actually more like 150 at this point – years of Colombian solitude are those of a bloody, devastating civil strife. I’m not devaluing the painful nature of the Colombian experience. Colombia has experienced terrible suffering but it’s completely different from ours, so they sincerely don’t feel our pain.

In America, the people who are hostile to Ukraine are like those liberal US Jews who can’t look into the face of their Holocaust trauma. Identifying with the Holocaust will shatter their psyche, so they hide behind an exaggerated concern over racism.

Jeez what a weasel. “They.” Of course, he can’t name these mysterious “they” who crushed his country because Putin will pout.

What a pathetic betrayal, and all for what? To avoid saying the word “USSR” that doesn’t even exist anymore?

Just a cute video of men doing goofy men things:

This reminded me how my 6-year-old nephew, who was exhausted by having to exist among a large group of women with nobody to engage him in manly pursuits, came home from summer camp and discovered his sister and cousin sitting on the floor, making dolly clothes and singing with sweet, tender voices, “Sally was a child, a child, a child. . .”

“Oh no,” the poor guy said, turning around and walking right back out of the house. “No, not this. I can’t stand any more of this.”

The look of sheer horror on his face was priceless. But I get it. That’s how I would feel if I had to coexist with what’s in the video posted above.

Klara has a cold, is running a fever and staying at home, so I spend hours every day reading to her. In one story I read, a little bear’s mother punished her for misbehavior, so we started talking about what we see as serious punishment.

“If I couldn’t read for a week, that would be terrible punishment,” I said.

“I know what would be a worse punishment for you, Mommy,” Klara said very seriously. “It’s if you couldn’t play with me for a whole week.”

On a completely different note, I wanted to share this tweet:

https://twitter.com/BRyvkin/status/1588725077184745473?t=wHmWnctnggt5rVCFWOpfPg&s=19

Liberal American Jews are the perfect example of people who experienced a terrible trauma but refused to look it in the face. They are so desperately and noisily creating the myth of the abject blacks whom they need to save because the fantasy about the victimized black helps them look away from the time in history when they were the abject and the victimized.

Of course, thinking about the Holocaust makes me want to drop everything and reread Clive James’s magnum opus Cultural Amnesia which is a devastating funeral dirge for the civilization that was incinerated in Auschwitz. It took me forever to read that book because the writer’s grief was so enormous that reading felt like watching him weep at a funeral.

In short, I’m hoping that the weekend will break my streak of bad luck. I have an Arestovich class, plus I want to try some painting, which I haven’t done since elementary school. Let’s hope it works.

My unlucky streak continues, and here I am with another post to distract myself from it.

It’s not all bad, to be honest. I’ve gone viral on Ukrainian Twitter with a joke about penis sizes. Well, not VIRAL viral but more popular than I ever expected to be. The joke came about as follows. Somebody on Twitter asked, “Is it true that wearing a large shoe size means you have a large penis?” I said, “No, it’s not true. I have a large shoe size and no penis at all.” For some reason, people really warmed up to this response.

I don’t have a large shoe size, by the way. Or a penis.

Today is Thursday, so it’s the quesadilla eaters’ day at work. It’s a group of women under the leadership of my secretary who every Thursday fry quesadillas in the lab and then, for some reason I will never understand or care about seethe with hatred of me. They sit there, eat quesadillas, seethe, roll their eyes and hiss when I pass by, which I do a lot because that’s the only way to get to the toilets, the lab, and the classrooms. These are women who have been unsuccessful as women, so I don’t begrudge them this little bit of joy. But it is kind of funny that they have such intense feelings about me, and I have no emotional response to them at all.

The new top administrator has revealed new depths to his multilayered personality. We now admit all students who apply. Nobody gets turned away. We admit even functionally illiterate people. What do you think this does to our graduation rates?

Yeah, exactly.

Well, the new administrator doesn’t agree with you. Beaming joyously, he regaled us today with the following bit of wisdom, “If we accept everybody. . . we should graduate everybody!” Meaning that admitting illiterate people to college should improve graduation rates.

On another subject, our Student Housing services have a habit of placing students from different cultures together as roommates. The idea is that experiencing another culture is enriching because “diversity is our strength.” It’s not true, of course. Diversity is anything but a strength, so the international students suffer greatly. They spend so much time and effort trying to reunite with their own people that they forget to study. I had to have a conversation with two of them today because they are failing their courses. Both are engaged in intense feuds with their “diverse” roommates because their habits, customs, smells and routines are incompatible. I wonder if the people who invented this “culturally enriching” form of torture ever tried to share the bathroom and the kitchen with a diverse stranger from a different culture.

OK, I don’t really wonder. Nobody would choose to do this of their own free will.