In which the pond completes its Monday feast by sharing some parrot food with the Major Mitchell ...

The pond has a settled path on a Monday these days ... a dose of Oreo to get a morning sugar hit, never mind the risk of diabetes, and then it's off the Major Mitchell, this day to learn how to tolerate the intolerant.

This is an important lesson to learn, because tolerating the intolerant Oreo is a difficult business at the best of times. And it's just as hard tolerating the intolerant Major Mitchell, ranting away about the digital world and Islamics and Fairfax and the ABC and the Graudian, as only an intolerant bird can manage ...

There's another advantage ... there's no need to learn how to tolerate the intolerant, correction prolifically intolerant, Bolter ...

Oh they'll do Malware down, no doubt about it, but how curious that the Bolter should seek to exempt Trad and blame the book ...

If it's the book that's the problem, then the bible is equally full of instructions on what might happen to disobedient wives ... from turning them into pillars of salt to putting them to death for committing abominations to sending them off to lakes of fire...

And what about this weird giving over?

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient.

Things which are not convenient? A little tickling of the toes?

But the pond has strayed away from the Major Mitchell, a fickle, intolerant god, though a very nice bird ...

Thank you Mr Gould, and so to the Major Mitchell ...

M'lud, point of order.

The pond is routinely irritated/outraged/sent into a frenzy by assorted people flaunting religious dress. Whether it's the kippah, especially when ostentatiously exhibited by the likes of Malware without genuine entitlement, or Xians flashing fish symbols on their cars, or Scientologists showing off their arcane silly symbols, or nuns in full drag - oh the nuns, especially the nuns, even if they're a vanishing dream - or priests reduced to wearing a decorous little cross because the full gear is too silly, or Islamics demonstrating their attachment to an imaginary friend, the pond is ready to be riled ...

But in the end, outside secularist France and accepting a libertarian approach to free speech, what to do?

Should the wearing of Nazi symbols be banned, as in Germany? Where would that leave Prince Harry? With a jail record?

If one religious symbol is banned, then all should be banished from the public arena. But that idea isn't going to fly, nor should it.

There's a lot to be said for facial recognition in certain locations. If you expect to cross a border, expect to show your face; if you can't enter a bank wearing a motorcycle helmet, don't expect to go in wearing concealing religious garb; if you're giving evidence in court, it's reasonable to see your face.

Beyond that, what to do? Should Orthodox Jews who refuse to keep the company of women be demonised the way that fundamentalist Islamics are being demonised? 

As for that talk of Anglo-Celtic Australians, it's funny, because the pond can remember the days when anyone with an Irish or Catholic strain in the heritage was routinely mocked and bog Irish jokes were dragged out ...

Ah Paddy, if you be going there, I wouldn't be expecting to start from here.

When did the Celt in Anglo-Celtic male become fashionable, as opposed to potato-laden and inherently dumb?

Naturally it was the colonial militarist in the Major that set him off this time doing one of his ineffable, nonsensical personal surveys ...

Right at this moment, the pond felt a Margaret Thatcher "there is no such thing as society" moment coming on. 

There is no such thing as Twitter's desperate desire to identify with victims. 

Donald Trump is a rampant Twitter user ... there is no evidence in his twittering of a desperate desire to identify with victims. There is no evidence of Milo's desperate desire, or the desperate desire of many other alt right users of the thing ...

It's of a piece with Major Mitchell's thesis that Israel equals bad and Islam equals good. This is the paranoid psychotic simpleton simplistic world of the reptile crusader, which will allow no other category than black and white. There is no room for equivocation, or ambivalence or shades of grey ... there is not even a willingness to acknowledge Netanyahu's status as a wretched right wing leader who has done harm to middle east peace, and in the process to his country, while allowing settlements to sprout like mushrooms ...

Of course up against the inexorable, fanatical obsessed logic of the Major Mitchell - sssh, don't mention the Order of Lenin, it'll set him off again - the balanced hand-wringing of the average cardigan wearer anxious to live and let live simply doesn't stand a chance.

It is the Major's way or the highway, but it does allow the pond some juicy ironies.

We ended the gobbet above with the Major Mitchell reporting an alleged Twitter trend ... "It is all about Twitter's desperate desire to identify with victims."

We can now proceed to the Major Mitchell scribbling "In a stressed and understaffed media world it is easier for Fairfax Media and The Guardian to report Twitter trends than real facts."

Now we must overlook the tautology of "real facts". The last time the pond checked, the status of "unreal facts" was in doubt.

He must be forgiven, because in the Major's world, alternative facts are a real thing, and so real facts must be deemed to be real, in the way that unique must be totally, completely unique ...

And we must also hope that by this time the Major's readers have nodded off, and none can recall the Major's opening gambit ...

"Our schools and universities appear to be turning out some very confused young people, judging by the outrage on Twitter ..."

Say again say what?

"In a stressed and understaffed media world it is easier for Fairfax Media and The Guardian to report Twitter trends than real facts."

Don't believe the hair-brained parrot can't hold two conflicting thoughts in a single piece? Can't believe the Major wrote these lines? 

Don't trust the pond's word on all this... read the Major Mitchell gobbet ...

First please allow the pond to do a little copy fix:

"In the stressed and understaffed media world of the lizard Oz it is easier for the reptile Major Mitchell to parrot Twitter trends than unreal facts."

And then do a few more notations.

Actually there was a huge act of terrorism perpetrated, though they called it a war.

The invasion of Iraq precipitated an astonishing, continuing, still not over period of uncertainty and slaughter. It was conducted by mainly Christian Americans, supported by the reptiles and by Christian Liberals (though not so many other Australian Christians) and for the most cynical reasons, as recently exposed by Fairfax ...

We might also well ask the Major Mitchell to expound on the alternative to a two state solution.

What will the single state look like under Netanyahu? Will the institutionalised apartheid be toughened even further? Will the second class citizens be deprived more and more of their basic rights, land and property?

So what of even-handed fair play in all this, as opposed to the depredation and victimisation of the weak?

Sadly, the reptiles of Oz need a reformation to drag the more conservative adherents of fanatical alt right thinking out of the middle ages, but it's probably a lost cause for the Major Mitchell, who never ever had the grace to apologise for his behaviour in relation to that Order of Lenin ...

The biggest irony in all this?

Week after week, the Major Mitchell keeps railing in intolerant Trumpian way about the enemies of the people, be they the ABC, the Graudian or Fairfax, which really these days is just a real estate operation, with a bit of editorial top dressing to help keep the brand alive ...

Yet somewhere in the bowels of the 'leet Surry Hills bunker some reptile must have realised that if they came for the moderates, some day they might come for the fundamentalists too...

And so came a strident call from the reptile editorialist ...

No doubt the Donald's team immediately stood up and listened and possibly even grew up ... but somehow the pond doubts it.

That would be a bit like asking the Major Mitchell to grow up and show a little tolerance ...

Will anyone talk to the Major Mitchell about his routine lashing out at the enemies of his people? At his refusal to allow that some might have a different view of the world?

Not likely. Deep down, the Major Mitchell is at one with the Donald in blaming Islam, blaming refugees, blaming climate science, blaming the enemies of the people ...

It's blame, blame, blame, and it worked a treat in the 1930s ...

Meanwhile, as the Major Mitchell drifts off into his world of twittering about Twitter, the real business proceeds apace ...