In which the pond does a pivot to politics and religion in The Spectator, thanks unto the Jensenists ...

The pond woke up bleary-eyed this Sunday and was immediately assaulted by a report on France 24's news service about fundamentalist madness, home schooling, the world being created in seven days, the assaulting of women in urgent need of help in relation to an unwanted pregnancies ,and all the other signs of fundamentalist jihadism.

You can endure the same amount of suffering by heading off to France 24 here - relax the French long ago embraced the need for English to encourage Francophilia - but the pond knew that this was a sign from the heavens that it was time to do a Sunday pivot and brood about the madness of things ...

Oh sure there were powerful temptations to stay on message. What an exemplary thought from
Malcolm Martin, The Entrance, as featured in the lizard Oz ...

Internment! Gulags! If you google the name, you can discover it was the reptiles way of showing the sort of readership they worshipped.

But it got the pond thinking. All at once the pond began to think how the reptiles might be locked up in their Surry Hills bunker and never be allowed to see daylight again. You have to be cruel to be kind. See if you can come up with an alternative! Fascism rulez ...

And this being Sunday, naturally the Devine was on the prowl, baseball bat in hand, ready to lay into any gays and TGs unsuspectingly approaching the Sunday Terrorists ... and naturally, as we talk of gender roles, the Terrorists laid on a piquant visual juxtaposition ...

Phwoar! Gender roles!

And you thought a gulag wasn't the answer. Sunday Terrorist yobs prove Aussie peanuts still exist.

But no,this was a pivot Sunday and the pond hungered for some of the old jousting of yore, when angry Sydney Anglicans trained in the rigorous Jensenist school of fundamentalism tore up the pages with their deep thinking.

But look at the tragedy of the Sydney Anglicans now ...

Planters? How to defrost the saints? They're embracing saints now? The pond's aged Methodist aunt almost fainted right away ... next there'd be holy water, plaster icons, genuflecting and a handsome array of frocks.

The pond went into a deep funk, thinking of the hapless persecuted Jensenists, driven from the Anglican digital page and then seeking refuge over at the ABC at The Drum. But The Drum was closed, and that refuge was gone, and where oh where could they have landed.

Oh no, don't say it, not the home for the barking mad, not the place where British colonials howl at the moon, not The Spectator ...

Yes, The Spectator, last refuge for the desperate, and so the pond was able to pivot mightily ...

Oh dear, the pond can see where this is heading ...

It's the simplistic, simple-minded dialectic of the fundamentalist.

There is no such thing as a non-political human being. There is no such thing as a non-something or other human being. Everyone is political, religious, vegan, meat-eating or whatever you like ...

The pond has been through this sort of mindless, you're one thing or another, nonsense many times before ...

Okay, let's get on with it then ...

Of course this definition of religion is so wide, so all embracing and comprehensive, that it becomes completely meaningless.

It's exactly the same sort of routine used to explain how everything is political, with a Maoist hue, as set out endlessly in Godard's La Chinoise ...

But it's intrinsic meaninglessness is entirely the point.

Once you accept everything is a matter of politics or religion, then the Jesuitical quibbles can be indulged ... what sort of politics do you like, what sort of religion, and hey presto, soon enough you're dancing along to the sounds of angry Anglicans' notions of complimentary women ... or, since today has a French hue, worshipping Mao with the energy of the young French intellectuals of 1968.

Nature loves a mindless vacuum of philosophical emptiness.

Actually, that vision of the Australian way of life is purely simplistic and simple-minded, with an abjectly old fashioned and myopic communion of saints. No Ned Kelly? No Chopper?

If the pond might paraphrase that last par, Rev Dr Michael P Jensen, Rector of St Mark's Anglican Church Darling Point, the author of My God, My God is simply kidding himself when he asked us to imagine that it's 'no politics', 'no science', no 'art,' no alternative school lunch of you're own choosing, and instead everything and anything is all religion. 

The question, he contends, is not all politics, yes or no, and not all religion, yes or no, but which politics and which religion.

And sadly, instead of silly old angry Sydney Anglicanism, the answer now seems to be preaching amongst the politics of The Spectator, where angry old white men get together and shout at clouds ... 

Is this how it must end? In a religion of obscurantist relativist fundamentalism whereby everything can be dressed up as a religious activity, be it the eating of food, having sex, thinking, doing science, doing art, heck, even going to the toilet ... (well if you've ever been constipated, you might embrace bowel motion as a new religion, pure and simple, and rub a coin for religious luck to ensure you continue to be moved).

Is this where it must all end?

Well no, there's more to life than politics, and there's more to life than religion, and there's no need to get caught in a binary trap, because there's more to life than is dreamt of by angry Sydney Anglicans and scribblers for The Spectator, and thank the long absent lord for that ...

There's this ...

Or there's this ...

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes) ... (and the rest of that very long poem here for those in need of a religious and political and scientific and artistic experience).