The Russians are coming, but thanks to Gary Johns, only Christian husbands and wives are allowed to come ...

(Above: and more excellent Rowe here).

There's no doubt that the US election exceeds any of the loonery to be found locally, and by a good Tamworthian rural mile ...

And so on, that full story at the NY Times here.

But the pond's beat involves the local reptiles, and it just so happens that yesterday the pond was out and about on the road yesterday, and heard Phillip Adams interviewing Julian Assange.

Well "interviewing" is a trifle grand, it was more like an Australian cricketer throwing pitiful underarm pitty pats down the wicket, mollygrubbing and fawning and scraping in the usual way, and avoiding all the hard questions and hoping New Zealanders wouldn't mind ...

No mention of Assange's avowed hatred for Clinton and his determination to stop her winning the presidency, a common enough story, as can be found at the NY Times here, and at Daily Kos here.

Now the pond can understand a deep fear and loathing of the Clintons, having done a bit of it, but then there's the alternative ...

It would have been interesting to hear Adams ask a penetrating question, say whether Assange preferred Trump winning to Clinton. The pond knows the theory, make it worse, let it all fall down, and after the cleansing revolution, all will be well again. It's the favourite notion of all the barking mad fundamentalists doing the rounds, millenarian and Islamic ...

That's the theory, and then there's the alternative ...

None of this troubled Adams, and he accepted Assange's fudge that the Russians had nothing to do with the hack, nor did he ponder on Trump's bromance love of Vlad the impaler, fellow prospective future dictator. If the pond happened to be in the Baltic countries right at the moment, or, while speaking of other dictators, South Korea and Japan, it would be shivering in its boots ...

Adams burbled, meandered and murmured away from it all, though he did follow it with an interview, where it became clear that perhaps the Russkis might have had something to do with the hack ...

In short, as an interview, it was an epic pandering fail, a reminder of why the pond never bothers with Adams. Instead, please allow the pond to commend a lengthy piece by George Saunders, entitled Trump Days in the tree killer edition of The New Yorker, but for the moment available outside the paywall online as Who Are All These Trump Supporters?

Saunders concluded on a gloomy note, though he provided plenty of evidence for his gloom:

“Donald J Trump a guardian angel from heaven,” reads a poster I retrieved from the floor of the Rothschild rally. “his spirit and hard work as president will make the people and America great again!!!” 
Although, to me, Trump seems the very opposite of a guardian angel, I thank him for this: I’ve never before imagined America as fragile, as an experiment that could, within my very lifetime, fail. 
But I imagine it that way now.

Listening to Adams interview Assange reminded the pond just how easily fragile experiments in probing radio could fail thanks to quavering, quivering, jelly-wobbling liberalism ...

But as always, to counterbalance the gloom, there needs to be a reptile feast, a fattened up goanna heaped on the barbecue of life, so that we might all enjoy the meal ... and what better meal than a Gary Johns?

Of course it wouldn't be a Johns piece if he didn't proceed immediately to make some typically wild Johnsian assumptions and assertions ...

But first please allow the pond to recall some recent fall-out arising from a Daily Terror front page, as recorded by Media Watch and already mentioned on these pages ...

And that's before anything has happened in relation to a plebiscite. That's just the noble, valiant work of the Devine and the Terrorists ...

Well suitably primed, it's time to read on ... and would you believe that Johns wants to get out the old quill pen and the inkwell and exchange correspondence in a gentlemanly way ...

Yes, it's all there, accusing others of wanting a digression, and then embarking on a hate-laden distraction, not least the notion that everyone must question their sexuality, and similar barking mad culture war notions, while at the same time deploring culture wars ...

As for posting letters ... there must be some fundamental anal retentive ye oldie worldly up his arse aspect to Johns that a Freudian would dearly love to explore. Or perhaps he's angling for a gig to make Australia Post relevant in this crazy modern world ... or perhaps his natural home is with pedantic prattling Polonius conducting courtly correspondence.

Never mind, it's about time for Johns to raise his own wild assertions, and add to the fear-mongering, with a plea: "won't someone think of the fundamentalist, bigoted, homophobic, anti-fornicating kind of Christian" ...

Forget the same sex aspect. The covenant forbids all sexual activity unless it's between a husband and a wife? You have to get hitched to have a fuck?

Where on earth would that leave Donald Trump? Stuck with his first wife?

Just think about this for a moment. Imagine Gary Johns in a state of utter despair because staff and congregation freely entered into a covenant which provided them with a one way ticket to Jonestown, and damned pesky liberals interfere with their right to drink the koolaid ...

Well it's perhaps an extreme example, but isn't that an interesting last par, because in his own indirect way, Johns suggests that the horrors of a plebiscite are heading our way ... no doubt blended with plenty of stories about long suffering Christian fundamentalists who just have some mighty peculiar ideas about sex, love and the whole damn thing. 

What's the bet that things might get a little tricky when a Muslim school insists that as a condition of attending it, the school demands that staff and students freely enter into a convenant to conduct jihad so that eventually they might have sex with an indeterminate number of virgins in paradise ...

Oh it's a funny old world, sure enough, and thank the long absent lord Pope can discover humour in anything, even the ACCC ... and more excellent Pope here ...