Democrats spent years being trounced in elections at every level. When they lost the election to Trump, they could have started looking at reasons why voters don’t want them. They could have started finally to elaborate answers to the pressing issues of the day. They could have started addressing voters’ concerns over globalization and fluidity.

But they chose not to. Instead, they gave voters a raging Trump hysteria. The non-stop shrieking and screeching about Trump masks how little of value they are offering to us. We are supposed to vote for them not because they are good but because Trump is so horrid that we should disregard the emptiness at the heart of their program.

I don’t think this will backfire in the electoral sense. I think they will win in 2018 and 2020. What is it that they will win, though? Other than the right to continue not doing anything of value, that is.

As 19th-century theorist of nationalism Ernest Renan said, when politicians try to appeal to your emotions, that’s because they are hoping you will switch off your reason.

The talk of “treason” leaves me cold. Trump is showing less concrete deference and servility toward Russia than every president in my lifetime has shown toward Israel and Saudi Arabia, for example.

And towards Russia.

I can’t wait to see how this will be spun into the narrative of “Trump gave Putin everything he wanted.”

I also can’t wait to see who’ll at least have the courage to mention in passing that the US not giving an inch on the Crimea is an important positive development.

I’ll even watch the news shows tonight to find out. Anybody willing to take bets?

“The posture of President Trump on Crimea is well known and he stands firmly by it,” Mr. Putin said. “He continues to maintain that it was illegal to annex it, our viewpoint is different.”

This is unbelievably great. Trump didn’t hand over the Crimea! He could have done it so easily but he didn’t! Thanks to Mueller who reoriented his attention towards the stupid indictments and occupied his mind with them to the exclusion of everything else.

We are still not out of the woods because, as I said this morning, we don’t know what was really said in the meeting until we see what happens with Mariupol. But no public statement to the effect that the Crimea is legitimately Russian is a huge freaking deal.

I guess Mueller did serve a good purpose after all. Putin didn’t get the victory that he so covets.

Somebody pinch me because I’m afraid I’m dreaming. This is surely too good to be true.

A Johns Hopkins professor was beaten up in Germany:

He was in Germany on Wednesday to give a lecture at Bonn University. He was touring the city with a colleague when a man approached him and asked him if he was Jewish. “I started saying that I have sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians and deeply regret the current depressing state of Islamic-Jewish relations,” when the man starting cursing and following him.

After the stranger hit the professor, police arrived and gave the poor scholar a major beating.

The professor’s ancestors were killed in the Holocaust, so the altercation brought back some really bad memories.

There is a reliable way to find out what happens between Putin and Trump at their one-on-one meeting.

When the meeting was announced, Russia started preparing yet another major offensive against the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. It’s crucial for Russia to take Mariupol because the annexed Crimea is literally dying unless it’s connected to Russia by land. Russians have been trying to create a land way to the Crimea by conquering the Ukrainian territories that stand in the way since the beginning of the war. They eventually ran out of resources and had to stop.

Right now, major military formations are being brought to the border and prepared to strike. If Trump tells Putin what he needs to hear, Putin will strike. Meaning, if the strike happens, we’ll know with great certainty what happened at the meeting.

I know we can’t possibly care because the war in Iraq somehow gave us a convenient excuse not to but if there is anybody who prefers knowledge to empty speculation, here is a good way towards that knowledge.

In 1979 the USSR invaded a neighboring country and all normal countries boycotted the Moscow Olympics.

Since 2014 Russia not only invaded a neighboring country and a faraway country but also downed a civilian airplane from Netherlands and meddled in a host of Western elections. And it didn’t occur to anybody to boycott the World Cup in Russia.

What changed? Why doesn’t anybody care any more and what needs to happen for them to care again?

It’s not like taking a stand would entail a big sacrifice. But Macron knows how much Putin invested into getting Marine LePen, an actual fascist, elected instead of him. And yet he can’t avoid jumping up and down like a banshee in a pathetic effort to strengthen the very regime that will probably take the presidency away from him in the next electoral cycle.

Not only doesn’t anybody care, it doesn’t even occur to people that they could care. Say what you will about the Cold War but at least it gave people some organizing principles. Most folks don’t seem to be able to come up with any on their own.

El Salvador is on the news a lot, and I wanted to introduce this great Salvadoran writer to remind people that the country isn’t all about violence, gangs, the legacy of the civil war, and other horrors. There are also literature, art, and incredible talent.

Moya’s Revulsion has been translated into English, although I obviously read it in Spanish, so I can’t comment on the quality of the translation. If you teach Central American literature, I definitely recommend this book because it’s one of those easy to read yet a lot to discuss novels.

Moya had to flee from his country because he received death threats for writing this novel. Just think of the stupidity. Finally, there’s somebody who is attracting tons of positive attention to El Salvador, who publishes talented novels, who is demonstrating that El Salvador is a place of intellectual and artistic achievement. And these fuckers run him out of the country for patriotic reasons. Because they don’t think he represents El Salvador well enough.

The writer now teaches at the Spanish department of the University of Iowa. He’s crazy talented and the novel is among the best I read in a while. The narrator is an immigrant who feels about his country of origin exactly what I feel from mine.

I think that maybe I should read more Central American writers and post reviews because we never hear anything but stories that portray them as shithole countries. And they aren’t. They really aren’t. They are often tragic countries. But there is also a lot of wonderful stuff there.

A colleague’s daughter said that academics work 24-7. Twenty-four hours a week, seven months a year.

I don’t work like this but if I wanted to, I could. Many people do. We like to deny it but it’s a fact. Many people do and many more could if they chose to.

How shocking is it, then, that this model proved unsustainable and is dying?

During a campaign-style tour of the West late last month, Senator Elizabeth Warren did not announce she was running for president. But in private events and public speeches, her message about 2020 was as clear as it was rousing.

God, I hope not. She’s even less charismatic than Hillary. Plus, the Native American heritage story firmly places her in the cuckoo wing of the party.

I’d vote for Bernie unless he demonstrates that he’s in thrall to the party’s excitable Twittering wing. Meaning, unless there is a replay of the humiliating scene where he was pushed around on stage during his own campaign appearance. And given his age, I’d care a lot about the VP pick. If that pick is a nod to the excitable crowd, then I’m obviously not interested. In any case, Bernie will be a lot worse than Trump on Russia.