The pond sat transfixed as Sky News dropped regular reports on the quest for a record.
Things haven't been going well for plucky England of late, what with a dud liar as a PM, a gaggle of replacement coves of the low rent kind in contention, Brexit a flop, the economy in dire straits, and so on and troubled Crace forth ...
The least they could do was score a record, and lo and behold ...
As the pond's correspondents have noted, it goes without saying that it is a precedented unprecedented record. At last plucky England has set a record! Well played lads and lasses ...
... though it goes without saying, we must remember the precedents.
It might not be the record you think it is.
Go back a bit further than the 350 years of climate record keeping, and you'll surely find a warmer planet.
Heck, as Ussher firmly established, when the long absent lord established the place in 4004BC, he was surely working with a lot of hot rock, and the pond expects this evidence to turn up in the dog botherer's next treatise on unprecedented precedents for the unprecedented ...
Forget a minor current record, think of the temperature inside a volcano. Now there's some genuine heat.
As this is the pond's penultimate post for a short while - there will be a celebratory post let loose to explain why - the pond is inclined to indulge in a deviation from the norm.
Yes, in due course, there will be the usual Dame Slap, and a relatively brief nattering "Ned" of Kelly fame, but first please allow the pond to take a trip back in time, back to the days when Dame Slap was infatuated with that Peterson chappie ...
If you can break the lizard Oz paywall - the pond encourages everyone to get the goodies for free - you will find columns of this kind ...
The pond didn't bother with the six reasons at the time. The pond thought he was an attention-seeking, deeply narcissist flake and a fake, and his subsequent personal life cavortings and carry-ons confirmed it, but that's exactly the sort of personality Dame Slap loves ...
Why delve into this ancient history?
Well of late the rogue caught the eye of Cathy Young in The Bulwark under the header Jordan Peterson's Pro-Putin punditry, and that caught the pond's eye, and the pond immediately thought of Dame Slap and her infatuation.
The whole piece is worth a read, but please allow the pond to come in late ...
Where to begin?
The notion that the West’s moral standing vis-à-vis Russia in 2022 is undercut by some uniquely terrible moral “degeneracy” and irrationality does not pass the laugh test. For instance, as David French points out, for a good part of the Cold War the United States tolerated not only racial segregation but the often-violent oppression and disenfranchisement of black Americans in the Southern states. I daresay this was in drastic contradiction with the principles of freedom and democracy we were upholding in opposition to Soviet Communism. Does Peterson really think that putting Justice Jackson on the Supreme Court after a selection process limited to black women is more reprehensible than excluding blacks (and, in many cases, women) from a wide range of high-level public positions?
(Incidentally, Putin has also invoked the history of racial injustice in the United States as proof of American hypocrisy on human rights, continuing the Soviet-era tradition of such whataboutism. Authoritarians will weaponize whatever they can!)
One could also point out that Putin’s obsession with keeping Ukraine out the West’s clutches goes back to circa 2004—which is to say, it started about a decade before what liberal pundit Matt Yglesias dubbed “the Great Awokening”: the shift to the new progressive focus and framework on race, gender, and other identities.
What’s more, if we want to talk about contradiction and non-contradiction, Peterson’s own plea for Western civilizational renewal—and his claim that such a renewal will ensure a more friendly disposition from the Russian political establishment—is profoundly incoherent. He asserts, for instance, that the “radical ideas” he finds so corrosive must be defeated not only by adherents of traditional religious values but by “classic liberals [and] small-c conservatives” defending the heritage of the Enlightenment. But he also argues that Russia sees itself as championing a religiously ordered society built on Russian Orthodox values; he even cites Dostoyevsky’s A Writer’s Diary, a collection of political newsletters, as an expression of this philosophy. Leaving aside the repellent passages on “the Jewish Question” in that work, there is no doubt whatsoever that Dostoyevsky loathed and feared “degenerate” Western influence at a time when Western liberalism was about 150 years away from going “woke.”
As the cherry on top, Peterson mentions the neofascist crank Aleksandr Dugin as a “genuine philosopher” whose influence on Putin supposedly shows the Russian leader’s authentic interest in “philosophical and theological” matters. (Peterson had previously discussed Dugin’s alleged status as Putin’s adviser, and his hostility to Western liberalism as a driver of “materialistic hyper-individuality,” in a 2015 lecture.) I’m not even sure what’s more important to point out here: that Dugin’s “philosophy” is virulently hostile to even to the least “woke” varieties of Western liberalism, or that Dugin is either a kooky, occultism-obsessed prophet of Russian imperialism or a mega-troll whose public persona is a kind of performance art. (Of course, in truly postmodern fashion, it is possible that he is some combination of both.) The bottom line is that if you take Dugin seriously as a “philosopher,” you’ve well and truly jumped the shark.
And after jumping the shark, and possibly nuking the fridge, or better still, the planet, there was this ...
The reality is that, for all the West’s culture-war problems, the defense of Ukraine is both the most genuinely liberal cause (in the classic sense of the word) and the most genuinely moral cause that exists in our public and political space right now. And, be it reflexive contrarianism, pandering to his fan base, or genuine conviction, Peterson now finds himself on the wrong side of that cause—which arguably reduces all his talk of defending of Western civilization and upholding strict moral standards of good and evil to, yes, “shallow posturing.” The worrying question, given his large fan base and his status as a conservative celebrity, is how many people will follow him there.
Indeed, indeed, and yet the federal integrity commission delivered by Dame Slap's mob is an astonishing sight to behold ... the pond imagines it every day, and imagines it's a bit like beholding Jordan Peterson putting in for Putin.
The pond really must cut back on its irony intake, and so on to nattering "Ned", and the pond can hear a few feeble dissenters squeaking "must we go there?"
But what choice did the pond have?
Look, there's Oliver beating up on the Kiwis, as the reptiles are wont to do. Isn't it enough that Ireland recently beat up the Kiwis? If NZ is a disaster, remind the pond to go live in Sri Lanka ...
And there's the lizard Oz editorialist doing a Covid Bogart impression - you're on your own kid, and don't come whining to the reptiles if you cop a dose ...
No, for the pond's penultimate outing (albeit for a short time), it had to finish off with nattering "Ned", because that would surely finish the pond off ...
Yes, speak only of national advancement, and remember the reptile way.
Do not mention climate science, do not speak of records, heck, do not speak of Jordan Peterson, and certainly do not mention that report that was hidden from the world ... and now only turns up in the pond when there's a cartoonist to hand to capture the ferals in the wild, ruining the habitat..
As always, that left the pond in a quandary ... so many favourites to pick from ...
That bit of beefy pure Angus boofhead tempted the pond mightily.
But being a Tamworth person with a fine eye for bulls and a keen ear for bullshit, the pond liked the sullen expression in this one, and even better the wild eye in this steer.
Now there's a nasty sort, watch out, never turn your back while up in the back paddock, or you might be a goner ...
"We never hear Dame Slap on Peterson these days..." If I don't ever mention it again, then it never really happened. "but as when she donned the MAGA cap and strode out into the night..." If I don't ever mention it again, then it never really happened.
ReplyDeleteAnd Monckton ? If I don't ever mention it again, then it never really happened.
I was never much interested in Jordan B Peterson until the benzo addiction and Russian detox cock-up came to light. I admit to a certain fascination with the way these people choose to demonstrate their failings rather than simply admit them which would be a whole lot easier. A bit like a politician who campaigns on a family values platform and turns out to be an alcohol fuelled sex pest.
Deletehttps://skepchick.org/2020/02/jordan-peterson-addiction-and-the-cult-of-personal-responsibility/
I kinda wonder, from time to time, not what makes Peterson addicted to benzos, but what makes people addicted to Peterson. The nearest I can get is to ask why people are addicted to Yahweh: if you read what people have said and written about Yahweh/Iesus Christos you just wouldn't want to ever have anything to do with such a malfeasant mass murder. Feeling a bit uptight about those Adam/Eve things you once created ? No problem, just send a great flood that will kill almost all of them - and every other land-based and many of the sea-based creatures as well.
DeleteYet millions of people are apparently addicted to whatever it is that they think that Yahweh (or Peterson) has said - God (and Peterson) is love. And it's been going on for millennia now. And we have a world in which people can look at and admire the James Webb pictures without ever connecting them with the fact that their Holy Bible is just a collection of primitive bullshit.
This bunch of braincells here believes in Yahweh. And this totally unconnected set of braincells looks at the James Webb pictures and admires how we can finally get close to seeing the beginning of our "universe" more than 13 billion years ago.
No sense, and all feeing, I guess.
Well, the little I've seen of the Peterson roadshow certainly had the vibe of a religious revival. Lots of mainly young men wanting to told what to do and lots of jargon that didn't make sense unless you really, really wanted to believe (what is postmodern Marxism? Seems like two totally different and contradictory things that Jordan didn't like and decided to shove together).
DeleteIs the good lord in hibernation? I remember when he was a right wing go to guru on climate
ReplyDeleteHe's probably off playing a very long game of Eternity, FF. But he was Slappy's go to guru on black helicopter takeover of The World by the UN disguised as climate activism.
DeleteI mean, it's obvious that neither China nor America could resist the might of the UN, isn't it ?
Nodding Neddy has picked a spectacularly good day to call for centre-left, or anyone for that matter, needing to be "called to realism".
ReplyDelete1. Europe is setting temperature records all over.
2. The report on Australia's climate future that was hidden by ssssilly Susssannn has determined that the care of the country is in a parlous state already - and heading down the same road will make things eminently worse.
One wonders how much "realism" the Nodding Nabob needs to see where the correction is required.
But all those records are fully precedented vc, just ask the Doggy Boverer.
DeleteAs for the care of Australia, well, all those marsupials are completely extinct everywhere except Australia, so we were just trying to join in with the modern world, yes ?
Well GB, a certain former Prime Minister revealed that he doesn’t trust the UN, so there’s your proof….
Delete