Clarissa's Blog

Trump made “the darkest, most divisive speech in US history” at his inauguration. Biden made “the darkest, most divisive, etc” yesterday. I obviously never watched either, so maybe it’s the same speech. Whatever any president says, the speech is going to be “the darkest, most divisive,” so why waste time on writing any speeches? Make an avatar of a generic president repeating on a loop “I’m dark and divisive,” and everybody will be happy.

What’s funny is that both Trump and Biden are simultaneously extremely strong and extremely weak to their detractors. Biden is a senile old fool who can barely walk but he’s also a terrifying dictator. Trump was a terrifying dictator, too, but at the same time a puppet of the Russians. How you can be simultaneously a puppet and a dictator, senile and authoritarian is never explained.

But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is how unimaginative and repetitive this all is. Nazi, fascist, dictator, democracy in danger, genocide, Nazi, fascist. . . No, you are the real racist! No, you are!

One of the main criticisms of Gorbachev I’ve been hearing is that he didn’t really want to end the USSR. His original intention was to preserve it and he didn’t realize that the removal of censorship would immediately doom the USSR to a collapse.

I’m sure this is true. But I also don’t understand this fixation on motives and intentions. Nobody can know anybody’s real motives. People themselves are often unaware of what really moves them. We could psychoanalyze Gorbachev forever but who cares? What matters to me is the result. And the result of what Gorbachev did was amazing for me. I’m grateful for the result.

Here’s an example from my personal life to explain why motives mean nothing. Nine years ago today, I was in the concluding days of my first pregnancy. I was going to give birth and go on maternity leave. Two colleagues were going to take over my classes and finish out the semester. Tragically, my son didn’t survive. So I didn’t get a maternity leave. I had to resume teaching. The administration and the HR were very understanding and said, “hey, we are still paying the substitutes their full salary. They can keep teaching and you can do the grading or whatever else so you don’t have to be in the classroom.”

But guess what? The two colleagues – one the most liberal person we’ve ever had and the other the most conservative – adamantly refused to spare me even a day of being in the classroom. Both of them took the position that they should not do any work at all in these courses but continue to get paid. They sicced a union rep and a grievance officer at me, a grieving mother who had just lost her only child. I had no energy to fight them or even look at their stupid little faces. I went back to the classroom. It was very hard to be back with the students who had seen me only recently with a huge belly. The students are young, they don’t understand these things, so they weren’t hugely tactful. But I dealt with it and I found a sense of honor in not being beaten down by the tragedy.

I’m sure that these two colleagues weren’t trying to hurt me. I’m sure they didn’t have any conscious motive to be cruel. People can’t live with themselves knowing they are total pieces of shit, so they invent complicated stories to look good in their own eyes. “I didn’t mean to be naughty, Mommy” is an infantile excuse. Who cares what they meant? The result was still what it was.

And by the way, when I had an opportunity to tank their chances to get hired again – or at least not to fight for their jobs – I went to bat for these two individuals. I never told them about it because my judge is not in any place they can reach.

Motives, shmotives. The only thing that matters is whether you leave a bunch of wounded people in you wake as you move through life. If you did an enormous amount of good without planning for it, it is worth a lot more than wonderful intentions that bring suffering.

Biden is not a dictator, and neither was Trump.

Biden is not preparing a genocide, and neither was Trump.

Biden is not “a threat to our democracy,” and neither was Trump.

Biden isn’t “just like” Hitler or Stalin, and neither was Trump.

Drama queens on both sides need to breathe deep, pipe down, and get ahold of themselves.

I went on social media for an update on current events after a busy day and found people freaking out to the extent you’d think Biden and Trump personally dismembered, cooked and ate their mother. Turns out one gave a speech and another posted something online. Get your bug-out bags, everybody! Two old, doddering fellows said something. Scary!

Our new top administrator is so neoliberal, it’s really funny. First, he centralized the power in his own person, fired everybody he could “to save money,” and then proceeded to spend several times what was “saved” by firing people on getting a new fancy car for himself and changing the university signage and letterhead to more aesthetically pleasing to him.

I find this so entertaining that I can’t even be upset. It’s like he stumbled upon a textbook titled How to Be a Mini Putin and is now putting its lessons into action.

I was on the side of the Finnish prime minister until she started weeping like a pathetic little bunny and using Ukraine to make those who criticize her feel bad. This is childish behavior that I can’t stand. She says she’s being held to a different standard than male leaders. Which male leaders cry and pout publicly because they’ve been criticized? Which male leaders so not get criticized?

She wants to talk about Ukraine, OK. Who in Ukraine’s leadership is weeping and doing the wounded little deer routine because of a few online memes? Or for any reason?

“It’s because she’s a woman.” No, it’s because she’s acting like she’s three. I’m teaching my 6-year-old that she’s too big for this behavior, and it’s working. We came up with a little rhyme she uses when people say mean things and she needs to remind herself that it’s not a reason to cry. The rhyme goes, “I don’t care what you say. You are not my friend anyway.” Instead of “my friend”, it can be “the teacher, my Mommy, Santa Claus, Christmas elf,” etc. Somebody needs to teach this basic emotional self-regulation trick to Ms Marin.

I also want to mention that it’s kind of funny that the NATO wants this and not Ukraine. I mean, the NATO doesn’t really exist anyway, so who cares, but it’s still funny.

Going back into translation swiftly brought back all the translator vices. The biggest downfall for a translator that I suffered twenty years ago and still can’t avoid today is called “just one hundred $ more.” These days it’s usually € and not $ but the incapacity to stop because there’s always another hundred beckoning is still there.

I finished translating the Russian novel and haven’t been able to scare up another literary translation project. There’s a lot of work but it’s all in Russia, and you can’t get any money out of there. It would have been great to get paid by Russians and send the money to Ukraine’s Armed Forces. So now I’m stuck in drug discovery texts.

The belief that the USSR fell apart because its economic system was unsustainable is deeply Marxist. Marxism’s central idea is that economic relations are the defining factor in everything.

However, as we can see in North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela, the complete and utter dysfunctionality of their economy only adds to the longevity of these regimes.

“People are going to get fed up with living in poverty and will overthrow the regime that tyrannizes them and doesn’t let them live better.” Oh, you, funny bunny. It’s the exact opposite. The hungrier and the more beaten down they are, the more they are prone to pout if anybody tries to liberate them.

What’s amazing and absolutely unique about Gorbachev is that he relinquished totalitarian power. Have you met many people who give power away to do the right thing? Instead of moving us all towards liberty, he could have done what Andropov did almost right before and gone in the direction of more totalitarianism. It worked in Cuba, worked in North Korea, worked in Venezuela. These systems don’t fall apart until the leadership actually chooses to stop tyrannizing the poor bastard population. And even then it sometimes takes decades to make the bastard population leave their beloved jail.

Gorbachev could have been in power until today. Can you imagine it? Fabulous luxury, endless adulation, the delicious subservience of millions. And he let it all go to become a regular citizen.

Reagan, shmeigan. Other than grandiose, slightly embarrassing pronouncements, Reagan had absolutely nothing to do with it.

Gorbachev was a truly great man of history. The greatest statesman of the twentieth century. And a deeply decent person. May he rest in peace.

I’m having a great day in what concerns students. A new student came in who is studying to become a Catholic priest. His seminary requires that he take 30 credit hours in philosophy and he also wants to take my Cervantes class. It’s an absolute dream come true to have a Catholic theologian in the Cervantes class. I do what I can but someone who really knows the doctrine would be perfect.

The funny thing is that the student at first was wary of telling me he’s studying to be a priest. Only after I exhibited signs of extreme joyfulness did he relax. He did look puzzled, though.

Then I heard from my favorite student who was in my Cervantes class the last time I taught it. He’s been accepted into a Spanish PhD program at an Ivy. The guy is… how do I put it?… not diverse. And his research interests are… also not diverse. I mean, they are diverse but in the old sense. Not the prestigious kind of diverse. But he’s kicking ass nonetheless.

Cervantes is truly performing miracles for me. Even the enrollment numbers are fantastic, and that’s in spite of the fact that I teach on Friday mornings when students are notoriously reluctant to be in class.