With all the clapping of hands, laughing and dancing with glee about Malware, some might have thought that the pond had forgotten dear old prattling Polonius, but no, it was important to be reminded yet again how it's all the fault of immigrants, and simply nothing to do with westerners who for centuries thought it was their right to traverse the world, looting it, setting up empires, dishing it out to the colonials, and otherwise behaving with flagrant disregard, culminating with a first world war over fair shares of the pie, and then a second world war because of further unhappiness about the pie sharing ...
So it goes, and it takes a singular effort by an adept historian to ignore history, and in such cases the pond always relies on prattling Polonius ...
Now this is surely a most admirable Polonius outing, working at at his finest levels of historical insight.
Who could better leading off with Hilaire Belloc, a splendid choice, perhaps only matched if he'd chosen G. K. Chesterton or C. S. Lewis, or perhaps Giovannino Guareschi - oh wait, wasn't Don Camillo Italian? perhaps best not to go there, you know, the European disease, Mediterraneans, wot wot and all that - and then that excellent attempt to pretend that Polonius himself was some kind of wise agnostic, acknowledging that he really doesn't understand the human condition ...
Who could better leading off with Hilaire Belloc, a splendid choice, perhaps only matched if he'd chosen G. K. Chesterton or C. S. Lewis, or perhaps Giovannino Guareschi - oh wait, wasn't Don Camillo Italian? perhaps best not to go there, you know, the European disease, Mediterraneans, wot wot and all that - and then that excellent attempt to pretend that Polonius himself was some kind of wise agnostic, acknowledging that he really doesn't understand the human condition ...
So all that love of Rome and worship of the Pellists is just so much camouflage?
It reminded the pond of arm-breaking Mark Latham in one of his sane moments ...
Only a rusted-on apologist for the Church could doubt the evidence pointing to p-edophilia among Catholic priests. But that’s Henderson for you. His first and most enduring loyalty is to Rome. His main role in public life is to defend his hero, George Pell — even though, as Henderson acknowledges, Pell “accompanied Gerald Ridsdale, a priest who was convicted of p-edophilia, to court in Victoria in 1993”. Can you bear it? (Crikey in 2013 here).
Yes, Polonius was at it again in his Media Watch Dog, the cheerful agnostic at work ...
Yes, Polonius was at it again in his Media Watch Dog, the cheerful agnostic at work ...
As for that matter was Brennan ...
But the pond was determined to press on, pausing only for a meme ...
Indeed, indeed, and if you think it was right to embark on a war in Iraq and call it a crusade because you happen to be completely tone deaf and unaware of the consequences of your actions, feel free to call yourself George W. Bush ... and say another prayer to your deity ...
But let us not talk of launching wars in the middle east - it is after all, the singular right of western powers to launch wars willy nilly where they will and to hell with the natives - and let us return to Polonius, even if the pond, bored as usual by prattling Polonius into fitful tedium, had once again allowed itself to be distracted ...
There's more hard yards to be done ... more equivocations so that the bigotry and prejudices might attempt to be concealed, in the way that camouflage used to be dragged over unsightly military objects ...
But let us not talk of launching wars in the middle east - it is after all, the singular right of western powers to launch wars willy nilly where they will and to hell with the natives - and let us return to Polonius, even if the pond, bored as usual by prattling Polonius into fitful tedium, had once again allowed itself to be distracted ...
There's more hard yards to be done ... more equivocations so that the bigotry and prejudices might attempt to be concealed, in the way that camouflage used to be dragged over unsightly military objects ...
What the pond most loves here, is a conservative berating Islamics for their deeply ingrained sexism, and their hostility to homosexuality and adultery, while he himself, the questioning agnostic, apparently yearns for a secular, libertarian society ... where the Pellists rule in Rome free of the ABC.
And if you believe that one, write to the pond about its offer of a harbour bridge at a bargain price.
And if you believe that one, write to the pond about its offer of a harbour bridge at a bargain price.
As if somehow conservatives, fundamentalist Catholics campaigning against SSM, angry Sydney Anglicans and their complimentary women, don't show the same inclinations as the jihadists ... though they've had to stop burning women as witches and jailing gays, though that was a proud tradition not so long ago ...
Well it's not a matter of Christophobia to discuss such matters, in much the same way as it's not a thought crime to air claims being made by people who apparently stepped forward of their own free will to say what they claimed the Pellists had done long ago ...
Yet that is acclaimed a trial by media, whereas a discussion of everything that is wrong with Islam, by routinely linking it with Radical Islam, is merely a discussion of such matters, and not a trial by prattling Polonius at all ...
Well thankfully the pond has a foot in all camps, which is to say a pox on fundamentalist Islamics and a pox on fundamentalist anti-SSM Catholics and a pox on angry Sydney Anglicans and their 'complimentary women' (this week with a box of Jaffas and a bowl of popcorn), and a pox on the dissembling, half-baked prattling Polonius, always quivering and waving his jittery fingers about, as if that would distract from his innate tendency to pedantry and prejudice ...
(Below: and speaking of pedantry, it never gets old, this one by First Dog, and the pond thought it was time for a re-run, and it can still be found here).
According to Wiki Belloc and Henderson are truly a case of peas in a pod. A heavy bit of bromance seems to be going on there. It must be that Catholic thing.
ReplyDeleteI quite liked this piece from In Controversy and Debate.
He was at his most effective in the 1920s, on the attack against H. G. Wells's The Outline of History, in which he criticised Wells' secular bias and his belief in evolution by means of natural selection, a theory that Belloc asserted had been completely discredited. Wells remarked that "Debating Mr. Belloc is like arguing with a hailstorm". Belloc's review of Outline of History famously observed that Wells' book was a powerful and well-written volume, "up until the appearance of Man, that is, somewhere around page seven." Wells responded with a small book, Mr. Belloc Objects.[12] Not to be outdone, Belloc followed with, "Mr. Belloc Still Objects."
G. G. Coulton, a keen and persistent opponent, wrote on Mr. Belloc on Medieval History in a 1920 article. After a long simmering feud, Belloc replied with a booklet, The Case of Dr. Coulton, in 1938.
His style during later life fulfilled the nickname he received in childhood, Old Thunder. Belloc's friend, Lord Sheffield, described his provocative personality in a preface to The Cruise of the Nona.
Polonius,always the crusader,always fighting from the rear.
Love that Wells quote about a hailstorm Anon. The pond is sorely tempted to purloin it, because debating anyone at News Corp is very much like swallowing a hailstone ...
DeleteThese days DP, we evolution believing agnostic proto-atheists would probably reference "arguing against a Gish gallop" as our chosen description.
DeleteBut Dorothy,we are blessed with a Judeo-Christian heritage and have the right to invade the middle East whenever we like.
ReplyDeleteSame prattling, same Polonius: everything old is old again.
ReplyDelete(this week with a box of Jaffas and a bowl of popcorn)...
No popcorn on offer, but there's 75,000 Jaffas repeatedly hurled from the world's steepest street here.
At least with a different year they do a different colour: Jaffa Race in Dunedin - vids
Speaking further of pedantry, the senile old pedant has the quote wrong. It should be "The faith is Europe and Europe is the faith."
ReplyDeleteBut far more importantly, Belloc was not talking about Christianity, as Polonius claims. He was talking about history, and more particularly our ability to understand it. It is, perhaps, worth considering what brackets that quote (sorry its a bit long). After talking about the difference between others' view of one and ones view of oneself, he says:
"Now then, so it is with us who are of the Faith and the great story of Europe. A Catholic as he reads that story does not grope at it from without, he understands it from within. He cannot understand it altogether because he is a finite being, but he is also that which he has to understand. The Faith is Europe and Europe is the Faith.
"The Catholic brings to history (and when I say "history" in these pages, I mean the history of Christendom) self-knowledge. As a man in the confessional accuses himself of what he knows to be true and what other people cannot judge, so a Catholic, talking of the united European civilization, when he blames it, blames it for motives and for acts which are his own. He himself could have done those things in person. He is not relatively right in his blame, he is absolutely right. As a man can testify to his own motive so can the Catholic testify to unjust, irrelevant, or ignorant conceptions of the European story; for he knows why and how it proceeded. Others, not Catholic, look upon the story of Europe externally as strangers. They have to deal with something which presents itself to them partially and disconnectedly, by its phenomena alone; he sees it all from its centre in its essence, and together."
Now one may disagree with the specifics here (I doubt a Catholic has a privileged view of the Norse diaspora, or Lutheran Sweden's wars with Orthodox Russia, or anything much Balkan), but I don't think he's completely off. I would never devalue the view of the insightful "outsider", but it seems reasonable that the "insider" would grok the history of his/her own culture more easily. It's not so different from L.P. Hartley's "The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there."
But what is splendidly, hilariously, daft about Polonius's dribble is that, having used a quote that expressly says actions can only truly be understood by insiders, he goes on to tell us what Muslims do and don't think. Sorry, Gerard, but if I want to know what a Muslim thinks, I'll ask a Muslim, not you, you tiresome old windbag.
He should have stuck to more useful Belloc quotes, such as The Modern Traveller: "Whatever happens we have got the Maxim Gun, and they do not." Seems like that would be much more appealing to his readership.
Thanks FrankD, for doing the research the pond couldn't be bothered doing. As always, the pond turns to the pond's comments section for enlightenment ... especially that lovely Belloc quote, though as always, the pond prefers its NRA approved Glock ...
Delete"catholics" a soft target!
ReplyDeleteNever mind that there are now more "catholics" in the world than ever before, both in total numbers and as a percentage of the human population.
Never mind that collectively the "catholic" church is the worlds third largest property owner, and has a huge and growing presence in world banking, especially in the 21st century due to the behind the scenes influence of opus dei.
Never mind too that it runs the worlds largest "privately" owned propaganda apparatus, the tentacles of which reach into almost every village on the planet.
Never mind too that the "catholic" church is also a very strong player in world politics altogether, especially via various Concordats www.concordatwatch.eu which grant it the "right" to trump any local laws that it deems to be unfavorable to its interests.
Never mind too, that all of the "princes" (ponces) of the church have diplomatic unity in every country.
Never mind that the vati-can has the status of a national state, with all the consequent privileges and immunities.
And why do many countries, including Australia have full time ambassadors in the said shit-hole.
Shit-hole because the vati-can is arguably THE single most corrupt place on the planet - even more so because it is mistakenly called the "holy" see.
And of course Belloc was deeply anti-Semitic, as was Chesterton too, though probably to a lesser degree.
Reading Fr Brown, it seems Chesterton was prejudiced against anyone outside the Home Counties. His negative generalisations about Scots (particularly Protestant) & Irish, let alone Jews, Indians & Negroes (all brown people are "niggers", by the way), are jaw dropping
DeleteIt's not exactly "Catholic" TR, but I have always enjoyed this little bit from Tom Jones, of which I expect the Vati-can has its own version:
DeleteMr Thwackum:
When I mention religion, I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England.