In which the pond uploads a dose of compassionate, caring, humanitarian Devine for a Sunday meditation ...

Now there, in the age of Trump, was an interesting graph ...

There's a lot more at the Washington Post here, and the ABC ran a report on it here ... but in the way of the 24/7/12/365 news cycle, it'll disappear from view until the next bit of the crack opens up or until Delaware floats into the sea ...

Speaking of climate denialists, as the pond routinely likes to do, today is Devine day at the 'leet inner city Surry Hills bunker of the Daily Terrorists ...

And as always the ineffable one came out with a new corker ...

Say what? We should help Xian refugees because they will protect us against creeping Islamic fundamentalism, because they have suffered its effects and know its warning signs?

Gays tossed off buildings, and secular blogging atheists beheaded in the street couldn't possibly tell us the warning signs?

Well maybe if beheaded, it might be a tad hard to deliver a personal warning, more rather by personal example ...

And as for the fundamental selfishness of the proposition ... is this what Xianity is supposed to be about? Bring them in so that they can serve the Devines of the world? Shove the hapless canaries in the coalmine, and if they fall over or cark it, we should all pay heed?

When looking up this piece of bilious, vile nonsense, the pond came across a mortifying insight ...

What to say to hapless, suffering sandgropers?

Because of the way Murdochian syndication now works - effectively all the tabloids carry much the same content, with a little local variation to placate parochialists - sandgropers now have to suffer the effects of a Devine visitation.

The pond apologises profusely. It's bad enough that Sydney suffer from the Devine, but now she spreads across the country like a plague of cockroaches ...

Meanwhile, back to that peculiarly selfish reason for letting in refugees, because it seems accepting refugees has nothing to do with compassion, or an humanitarian impulse ...

Well indeed good archbishop, and the pond has heard a whisper that not all Catholics are planning that the whole world should be Catholic, but there is a small group of the Opus Dei, Devine kind that are planning that the whole world should be Catholic and all the people in the world Catholics ... or if you prefer, you can just substitute the generic notion of Xianity, and substitute any of the missionary zealots who turn up on the pond's doorstep convinced that Satan is at work in the pond...

Of course these Catholics and/or generic Xians make life an ongoing insufferable burden for gay people wanting to get married - or complimentary women who prefer not to be subordinate, and so on and so forth ...

The pond happens to know a smattering of Latin from high school - why you can even find a little Latin on YouTube - and so is aware of the sinister plotting ...

There's a lot more here,  and for anyone wanting conspiracy theories on a meditative Sunday, why not try that wretched G. K. Chesteron blathering on about conversion here, naturally with a nihil obstat and an imprimatur ...

Now where we with that tale of the good Samaritan and perhaps some talk of angels?

Oops, pity about sisterly love seemingly non-existent, and as for whoremongers and adulterers and those who work for the Chairman ...

Indeed, indeed, and let's face it, discriminating on the basis of religion in the face of suffering and persecution came in mighty handy when it came to certain governments refusing to take in Jews threatened by the Nazis back in the 1930s ...

From 1933 to 1939, Australia absorbed between 7,000-8,000 Jewish refugees from Nazism, many from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia. Over 5,000 arrived in 1939. They became known as ‘the thirty-niners’. However, many more could have benefited from a new life in a new country. At the Evian Conference held in France in June 1938 to deal with the refugee problem, the Australian government announced that it would not liberalise its alien immigration policy from an annual quota of 5,000, or 15,000 over three years. Australia’s delegate, Thomas W. White, declared that 'as we have no real racial problem, we are not desirous of importing one by encouraging any scheme of large-scale foreign migration'. As Australian historian, Paul Bartrop, stated: ‘Australia typified the world’s approach as it stood in mid-1938’. (more here).

Well it's time to wrap up the modern version of the generous, compassionate humanitarian impulse, as exemplified by the Devine and Peter Dutton ...

Actually the pond might just wander down the road, and find the folk at Faheem Fast Food beavering away doing tandoors without worrying overmuch about a vast fundamentalist Islamic conspiracy ...

It's possible that the pond's money somehow ends up in the hands of Daesh, equally it's possible that people of goodwill can rub along together in ways that exemplify the virtues of tolerance and compassion and shared humanity ...

There was one comment on the Devine's page that seemed to catch that spirit ...

Oh dear, that sounds much too Xian ...

And now because the pond always likes a little light visual relief, a few memes and cartoons found on the full to overflowing intertubes ...

Oh dear, that joke is so yesterday ... so let's end with an idiot ...

Relax, in the age of Trump, that's just a fanciful way of talking about unreadable idiots who twitter before they think ...