The pond is mortified ...
News sometimes travels slowly from the west, and it was only thanks to the Bolter that the pond came across an incisive philosophical text, published some days ago, which is of tremendous import, and worthy of a Sunday meditation.
That the pond should have overlooked a work of such overwhelming insight is a matter of deep and bitter regret ....
Hey nonny no, on we go ...
Now this is an exemplary beginning. No doubt the author will quickly move on to some simple illustrations of bullying at work in the public discourse.
Is there a better example than this?
Naturally the pond scoured the vast, full to overflowing intertubes, attempting to discover images of the author disavowing and fiercely attacking this schoolyard bully wall puncher for his ditch the bitch ways ...
But could only come up with this ...
Now it's true it's bullying of a kind - look at the way that wall-punching paw obscures the innocent face of the author - but other snaps seemed to suggest that the author and the wall-punching bully, who did more to lower the tone of public discourse in the pond's living memory, and paid the ultimate price for it, were actually on quite friendly terms ...
Enough of these saucy doubts and fears.
No doubt as the son of a fierce creationist, the author has some tremendous insights into the way that science and bullying are deeply connected ...
Rigorously footnoted! The sure sign of a sharp academic mind. How deplorable are those wretches who constructed a site full of footnotes describing imaginary errors, of the kind you might read here ... or here ...
But the point about freedom of speech being non-negotiable is well-taken.
Why the devastation of the possibility of intelligent, rational discussion of creationism and a young earth is one of the thought crimes of the twentieth century. Let us not replicate it in this one ...
How else would we be able to read What's happened to the horse? and The greatest hoax, Jonathan Sarfati talks to Peter Hastie, full of tremendous insights and enthusiastically recommended by the pond ...
But enough of agile, innovative scientists and their insightful work, because if Abe Lincoln and Ben Franklin are in the air, can an agile, innovative George Orwell be far behind?
Let us build to the moment slowly, but with vigour, and a cry of 'won't someone think of the children and the parents' ...
Ah yes, big government.
Damn its interfering ways, and its preposterous attempts to deny creationism to the masses. And now, maestro, if you will, a drum roll so that damned socialist George Orwell might be given his place in the discussion ...
Orwell, it should be remembered, was a keen exponent of creationism and reason ...
Indeed, indeed. The pond is always open to sensitive argument ... there being so many pillow biters and mattress munchers around making life so hard for the sensitive, caring, deeply persecuted minority of Christians still struggling to have faith in the thoughts of camel and goat herders from a couple of thousand years ago ...
Yes, the pond picked up those terms in the Tamworth school yard, where bullying was a vicious, deeply entrenched way of life.
Oh okay it wasn't quite like that, but you get the drift. And when you look at the way the wall puncher conducted his government, it's safe to say it never went away ...
No wonder shock jocks like the parrot have celebrated the plebiscite as a great way to bring together the community to rigorously debate these issues with civility, tender hearts and respect ...
Oh dear, the pond got that one wrong too ... with a little more here at the Graudian ...
Never mind, the piece by the author contained a fine example of the Orwellian, deeply entrenched intolerance of the new movement that threatens to undermine western civilisation as we know it ... or at least the Daesh Christian homophobic creationist elements within it ...
Deplorable stuff. It should have read:
"This is a discrimination enabled zone. Homophobia and Transphobia and persecuted Christians and Andrew Hastie and creationism must be tolerated. Thanks, and have a nice day and come on back, ya hear?"
The pond feels a prize coming on ...
I occasionally wonder how people like Hastie and Moorice (or the anonymous staffers who actually write their stuff for them) source the quotations with which they pepper their screeds. Do they have access to some in-house News Corp or Liberal Party booklet with a title like "1,001 Impressive Quotes You Can Use Instead of Evidence", or do they just have a shoe-box full of old desk calendar sheets that they can shuffle through randomly?
ReplyDeleteOr all of the above ...
DeleteBut I just don't get why Eric Blair is flavor of the day all of a sudden: first we have the Noxious Niall plagiarizing him, and now the Hamfisted Hastie quoting him. Now I do understand that Eric, despite his strong interest in language, never understood how everything he said could be turned into propaganda for the other side, but ...
Ok, so who's next ? T'bull apparently has a thing for Thucydides, so it probably won't be him, and I'm not sure how many others in the LNP have actually ever heard of him, even under his nom de plume. Ms Bishop maybe has, but she isn't given to retailing predigested "wisdom" like people such as Hastie and Ferguson are.
Reminds me of another Eric, GB.
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlrsqGal64w
And Eric the Idle and Erik the Red too.
DeleteApplied Christian "reason" 101:
ReplyDeletewww.logosjournal.com/hammer_kellner
Brought to one and all by Niall Ferguson's neo-psychotic friends at The "Heritage" (lies lies and more lies) Foundation, where the mad-Abbott and George Pell are sometimes featured ranters.
Is there any evidence that Cory Bernardi and Andrew Hastie are in fact two different people? They look suspiciously alike to me.
ReplyDelete"Let people be aware of the facts and the country will be calm."
ReplyDeleteSo the best evidence Hastie could adduce to show how his right to be a bigot is bein' oppressed was his fact-free digression on Lomborg, calling him a climate scientist (vzzt - political scientist). Even Lomborg has been persuaded that the global environment is getting progressively worse, but that doesn't stop Hastie referencing a 15 year old book for his argument. I guess he knows a thing or two about getting his information from old books, whose factual content was questionable from the start but now definitely superseded.
I think they call this "lying for Jesus"...
I'd have thought, if Hastie was to reference Lomborg in connection to a discussion of tolerance of people whose orientations frighten him, it might be more relevant to note that as a gay Dane, Bjorn has had the legal right to marry his same-sex partner - in a church no less - for the last four years, a marriage that would be not be recognised at all in Hastie'e electorate. Indeed, in Canning they don't even recognise registered partnerships, a legal status available to Bjorn and his partner of choice 27 years ago.
Poor Andrew, just look at them oppressing him...
Ouch, FrankD ...
Delete