Clarissa's Blog

It’s a terrible tragedy. And it isn’t lessened by the fact that Russian media have slobbered triumphantly over every school shooting in the US. I experienced intense vicarious shame after the joyous, celebratory coverage of the Uvalde shooting on Russian news and social media. It was beyond gloating. Absolutely despicable. Of course, normal people don’t behave that way, and all one can feel in the face of this tragedy is great sadness.

Apparently, Turkey, India and China expressed displeasure with Russia’s incapacity to conclude the war in Ukraine and told Putin to make it end before winter comes.

In the Kremlin, there were 2 opposing ideas on how to handle things. One, championed by the radicals and voiced by the leader of the Communist Party Zyuganov, was to declare a mobilization and go all out in a full-scale war. The other, proposed by more moderate people, was in favor of Putin going to China on a long health-related trip while the rest of the leadership looked for a way to persuade the West that everything was fine now and Russia was “committed to peace.”

As usual, the radical option won.

She talks of free kindergartens that are open for longer, of maternity leave paid for by the state rather than the employer, and of reducing the tax burden on people with children… She promises to cut, not raise taxes. On foreign affairs, she is fervently on the side of Ukraine (there is a striking ambivalence in Italy about sending arms), declaring herself ‘on the side of a proud nation that is teaching the world what it is to fight for freedom’. 

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/is-giorgia-meloni-the-most-dangerous-woman-in-europe

This surely sounds terrifying. How can the people of Italy support such scary, unhinged beliefs? What is the world coming to if people who are for kindergartens and child tax credits can just go and get themselves elected?

But hey, we can’t complain. For years, our side has called the ultra-neoliberal Obama a socialist and even a communist. Now we are at the receiving end of this rhetorical flamboyancy, and every mildly conservative politician becomes a new Hitler.

The adult thing to do is to start by assessing your own contribution to any problem, and ours is quite large. And it’s not in the past. We continue engaging in rhetorical flourishes about groomers, pedophiles, and “cultural Marxists.” There was, for instance, a recent and very pathetic eruption of silliness over the statements of a Spanish minister who supposedly “justifies sex with children.” The minister in question is a complete idiot. But she never justified sex with children and, in fact, said the exact opposite.

These exaggerations are fun in the process but there is always a price to pay for them, and it’s pretty high.

A small update for those who are following my adventures with True Detective. We watched the third season, and it was OK. Not amazing but not bad either. The father of the missing children was great. I liked all the scenes where he appeared. The white detective was the most superfluous character in history. And his oddly fitted wig was distracting.

Now we are watching the second season, and I absolutely love it. I might end up loving it more than the first. The actors, of course, are five megawatts weaker than Harrelson and McConaughey but the aesthetic is hitting me hard. I don’t even care what the story is. I’m mesmerized by the post industrial landscape and by the author’s capacity to avoid the cliches associated with California that invariably appear in every show or movie set there.

We are only two episodes in, so I beg, no spoilers.

In a broken society, the most basic human instincts are broken. The most important human connections mean nothing. As a result, there is no conscience, no individual responsibility, and no human dignity. There are only patient, compliant sheep.

These people are certifiably nuts.

https://twitter.com/TpyxaNews/status/1574011550679040000?t=2AM5sDKlv7jSYb7yk6ObWw&s=19

The most important thing, though, is that grandpa didn’t have to go. He could have easily avoided the draft by going to stay with friends for a couple of days. Nobody would have found him, and soon he’d be forgotten in the mess that’s the Russian bureaucracy.

The overwhelming majority of the newly drafted are happy to go. There are thousands of videos of Russians dancing, singing and cheering at the drafting stations. These are people who never fought and are pretty much guaranteed to come home in body bags, if at all.

This is not a minor point. This is the most crucial moment of all in this. Why are these Russians so happy to go to war? Untrained, often armed with ancient, rusty weaponry and very likely doomed – why are they so eager? I know people who are more nervous to come back teaching in person than this.

The pregnant POWs were starved and tortured in captivity by the Russians. Maryana was lucky in that, understanding her high value in a prisoner exchange, Russians moved her to a hospital in the occupied Donetsk in the last month of her pregnancy. The Ukrainian doctors and nurses in Donetsk saved her baby’s life.

When I write the word “cheap” in Russian, the first choice that the spell-check offers to compliment it is “prostitutes.”

In Ukrainian, it gives me “airplane tickets” and “hotels.”

In English, “cheap” is followed by “manipulators” but that because I use the expression a lot.

It’s kind of really weird to think that if N were in Russia right now, he could have been drafted.