Clarissa's Blog

I must never get a Tesla. Because I’ll get distracted and try to fill the tank with gas. And knowing me, I’ll succeed.

Russia didn’t manage to put into place a successful nation-building project and decided to skip the nation stage and go straight to whatever is next.

The reason for Russia’s failure to engage in successful nation-building is that its entire narrative of the nation revolves around the pride in the country’s large size. “My country is big,” goes a famous Russian song. “It has many forests, fields, and rivers.” The only response that comes to mind is, “So what?” You can’t integrate a multitude of racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic and religious groups into a coherent whole by repeating that “we are big!” Diversity isn’t really a strength. It’s a weakness unless you put in a lot of work to create a set of ideas that all these different people can perceive as important to them.

The US is also big. Not as big as Russia but pretty gigantic, too. But have you ever seen references to size in the American nation-building narrative? It’s “America, the beautiful” not “America, the large.” It’s “land of the free and home of the brave.” These are internal values that are the result of human striving to become better. We are proud of our freedoms, our constitution, our standard of living. But not of our size because the size alone does nothing for you. Switzerland is tiny but what a standard of living! Who doesn’t want to be Switzerland?

In Russia, they never went beyond size. And if size is all that matters, it stands to reason that you should be always increasing that size. These efforts bring no joy. Nobody improves their standard of living. There’s no internal coherence, no clear goals. People hate you because you have to keep invading. But instead of changing tack and working on a more productive narrative of the nation. . . Well, we’ve all seen it.

I was at a kid’s birthday party recently. There were many kids, ranging in age from 4 to 16. Girls, boys, different races, cultures, interests. It never occurred to any adult to create a set of activities to bring the kids together. You know what happened? The kids didn’t play. Each parent ended up entertaining their own kid. It was exhausting and very boring. Imagine all the same but multiplied by 10 million. It doesn’t work without a lot of effort.

I feel stupid about complaining over our 10-week COVID lockdown. Compared to today, that was a carefree, sweet, fun interlude.

After protracted efforts, Russians managed to breach an ammonia factory in Sumy. An ammonia spill began about 30 minutes ago.

This novel isn’t getting great reviews because people who read Laura Lippman aren’t looking for real literature and people who are looking for literature don’t seek out books by Lippman.

Lippman is the author of solid, if somewhat pedestrian, murder mysteries. I read all of them and remember not a word. She also wrote a bunch of stand-alone mysteries. Those I do remember but only because they were quite outstandingly bad. Dream Girl is by far the best Lippman has ever written. It’s real literature.

Curiously, the whole novel is Lippman’s unending, #MeTootery pout about not being considered a serious author. Of course, she attributes that to her sex. The real reason, though, is that she’s a shallow, unserious reader, which makes her a worse author than she could be. Her whole career, Lippman hid behind the conventions of a mystery genre. Now she’s hiding behind the conventions of “in the era of #MeToo” genre.

In spite of the awkward, tedious #MeTooting, it’s a good novel. I won’t forget it like I forgot Lippman’s mysteries.

https://twitter.com/antoniogm/status/1505542292832088067?t=_aRa4bBu3zyl8W5l9tRpBg&s=19

Completely true. If you don’t remember, Antonio was recently hounded out of a job by leftist bullies.

It’s become impossible to talk to the MAGA friends because it’s like being at a faculty meeting with the most out there leftist activists. “Yes, but it’s the fault of the US. The US caused it. The US invaded XYZ, so how can we blame anybody else for anything? But the NATO, but the ‘color revolutions,’ but slavery.” I moved to the Right to avoid all this, and now it has caught up with me.

Now for some good news:

Plus, that airport near Kherson (or the little that’s left of it) remains. Russian equipment and personnel must be on their way to it for the seventh time as we speak.

A terrible night. Here is one of the many atrocities committed by the Russians against civilians:

In their intercepted phone calls home, Russian soldiers say openly that they are unsuccessful at capturing Ukrainian cities and the commandment gave them orders to kill and torture civilians. They giggle when they talk about it. “Try to steal some really nice stuff to send home,” their relatives say excitedly.

This is a country of 144 million people where crushing sick elderly people with tanks is considered a respectable, healthy pastime.

So remember that airport near Kherson?

Yesterday Russians brought troops there for the sixth time in a row. As in number 6.

What happened then?

Ukrainians bombed them. Russians died. Including a Russian lieutenant general.

Yep.

I’m getting some popcorn as I await efforts number 7 and 8.

If you think you can’t concentrate or focus, you are fooling yourself. You are very focused. The problem is, you aren’t focusing on what you think you should. You aren’t managing to force yourself into a persona you have chosen rationally but are resisting with everything you’ve got. Find out what you are really concentrating on. In all likelihood, it will be some crude form of self-numbing. You are concentrating on it not because you are lazy, unfocused, or defective but because without it your psyche is going to blow. Berating yourself for poor focus is like telling a drowning man that he’s concentrating too hard on staying above water and not focusing as well as he should on learning Japanese.

One exercise is to spend 2 hours a day doing nothing. Really nothing. Not looking at a screen, not working out, not talking, not reading. Stare at the sky (or at a wall), and let your thoughts roam. Eventually, after doing this daily, you’ll re-learn to notice the world around you and will start figuring out what hurts, what soothes, and why.