So many wars, so little time ...

(Above: eek, watch out Miranda, he's a devilish satanic hypnotist intent on denying you your essential bodily fluids, and your denialism).

Meanwhile, on another planet far away - anywhere in Murdoch world tends to be very far away - there's Miranda the Devine furiously scribbling about the satanic anti-Christ Al Gore, in The alarmist clock is still ringing ...

Along the way, as is her wont, the Devine delivers a few zingers:

The most insidious aspect of Gore’s presentation was the way it targeted those who don’t buy his superstitious nonsense, blaming them for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people in what used to be called natural disasters.

Superstitious nonsense? This from a Catholic who presumably thinks that on attending a Sunday mass, she's wolfing down the actual body of Christ?

Well I guess you have to know about superstitious nonsense to write about superstitious nonsense.

It was hate speech posing as reasonableness and sound thinking. Gore essentially incites hatred against those who dissent from his evangelical thesis, which once looked so plausible.

Hate speech? Well after I'd mopped up the scattered cornflakes - a laugh early on a Sunday is always good for the system but sometimes hard on the cornflakes - it occurred to me that indeed you have to know about hate speech - like demanding greenies be hung from the nearest lamp post - to be truly poised and in a position of readiness to identify hate speech.

The rest of the Devine piece is a predictable rant, trotting out the usual denialist names, and providing the usual sort of denialist rhetorc. Put it another way:

A farrago of spurious connections, misrepresented facts and conspiracy theories as outlandish as any doomsday cult’s ...

... involving Al Gore as some kind of hate speech master and delusional conspirator.

As for an actual consideration in a calm way of the issues involved? You have to be dreaming ...

Well I guess it might pass peer review in the world of Murdoch, but really it's about time that Deltoid took on the burdensome task of tracking not just The Australian's war on climate science, but Murdoch land's total war on all fronts.

Last time we looked Deltoid had moved past The Australian's War on Science 69: Michael Asten to The Australian's War on Science 70: We know where you live, wherein The Australian decided to publish details of where Tim Flannery on the Hawkesbury by the waterfront ... on the basis that the lapping waters would soon devour his residence, or else he was a hypocrite ...

Yep, there's the answer. There's such rich pickings at The Australian, why would anyone waste their time on the rhetorical squibs of Miranda the Devine?

Assuming you have any time this Sunday, give the Devine a miss, and instead contemplate Deltoid's summary of Robert Manne vs The Australian, as it pertains to their misleading, wretched war on science ... so many wars, so little time ...

Meanwhile, poor old Robert Manne continues his attempt at a rational discussion with The Australian, begun by him in Deconstructing Paul Kelly, but just as he's done with that, he now realises he's got another six long articles, a crapulous Bill Leak cartoon, an anonymous editorial and a lengthy blog entry to deal with ...

Talk about the task of Sisyphus, though really a better metaphor might be the fifth labour of Heracles, which was to clean out the Augean stables.

This assignment was intended to be both humiliating (rather than impressive, as had the previous labours) and impossible, since the commentators and journalists were divinely healthy (immortal) and therefore produced an enormous quantity of literary dung. These stables had not been cleaned in over 30 years, and over 1,000 journalists and commentators lived and worked within the fetid paranoid walled castle world ...

Or some such distortion of the wiki but in keeping with Bill Leak's crapulous cartoon, as featured yesterday here on the pond.

Manne most likely will need the help of a couple of rivers to wash away some of the more obvious nonsense.

There is a lesson to be learned. Just as sitting around the nuclear family dinner table swiftly teaches the young that there's no way to argue sensibly, rationally, politely or quietly with true believers (their parents and their siblings), so there's no way to have a sensible discussion with the commentariat lurking within the walled city known as The Australian.

Group think and a group response and a herd mentality are now all the go, and the group assault/retaliation on Manne brings to mind the word 'sheeple', and lordy wouldn't you know it, but that intertubes meme has its own wiki here.

So what's a cardigan wearer to do? Head off to the ABC and The Drum for more polite and rational discussion?

Oh dear, let's just press the hot topic button shall we ...

Dearie me, on the opinion pages of the supposedly leftist, socialist ne'er do well aunt, under the header hot topics - presumably sizzling chili hot with bonus insight - you'll find Paul Fletcher explaining The carbon tax: not a good bargaining chip, followed hot on his heels by Alexander Downer, known to some as Lord Downer of Baghdad (Lord Downer still looking), scribbling When a leader should call it quits, the only point of which seems to be that it gives readers a chance to muse on the things that batter ...

And then comes Brendan O'Neill chattering away in Public interest police: let the people decide a standard rant against the chattering classes, as if his chattering drivel somehow isn't chattering.

It's an amazing sight to see Fletcher invoke game theory to defend the federal coalition's direct action plan - otherwise known as the first grand four year plan, perhaps because the coalition didn't know how to produce the usual soviet five year plan, but apart from that, there's absolutely no reason to read it.

As for O'Neill, he produces a doozy as usual:

The chattering class's entire case against the phone-hacking hacks at the News of the World, and against the Murdoch Empire more broadly, rested on the idea that the stories they had accrued through dodgy methods did not serve the public interest.

Did someone mention breaking the law, actual criminal charges and corrupting the police, not to mention the political establishment? Seems not ...

And yet the public seemed to enjoy reading these stories. They found them sufficiently interesting to go out and buy the News of the World on a Sunday morning and to tuck into its titillating tales as they tucked into their fry-up breakfast.

You could of course use this kind of logic to justify Kristallnacht as a kind of popular night out on the town, with a few windows broken and where's the harm done?

It's a kind of Machiavellian consquentialism, not so much where the ends justify the means, as the means need no bloody justification at all, provided they sell plenty of fish and chip wrappings, and the seagulls are kept happy ...

I must remember the excuse the next time I embark on a little white collar crime. It was the readers wot made me dun it and it's all good with me kippers guvnor ...

The funniest thing of course in another context is to hear conservative commentariat commentators rail about the breakdown in civil society and in social norms and the tendency of punters to law-breaking and disorder and mayhem ... as we copped ad nauseam about the London riots.

Naughty anarchist hoodlum layabout fatherless ruffians ... unless you're Rupert Murdoch and James and their senior minions, and then you'll always find Brendan O'Neill standing outside the clink with a 'get out of jail, no questions asked, no answers needed' card ...

Really as a scribbler O'Neill is utterly tiresome, repetitious and predictable, as only someone who thinks they're a middle aged maverick can be, and now he's found some kind of perverse home within the ABC. Think about it! Chattering away like a chatterbox to the cardigan wearers at the ABC. Now there's a maverick ...

Okay, so what's the sad state of the nation this Sunday.

Well we've moved far away from Miranda the Devine, but she ticks an important box. The minions continue their war on science.

Meanwhile, The Australian conducts its war on Robert Manne with vindictive childish relentlessness ...

And the ABC's The Drum trolls and conducts a war on its cardigan-wearing readers by publishing lavish doll0ps of conservative commentariat tripe ...

Conclusion? Is there a secular nunnery somewhere, anywhere that can offer refuge? At least until the wars are over ...

(Below: surely Dante can find a special ring for Brendan O'Neill? Or is the ABC's The Drum part of god's vicious plan? Found here).