In which the pond understands how the show trial mentality works, thanks to Simon Benson and John Anderson ...

There's much reading in the lizard Oz this day, much of it baying for dinkum Aussie coal, coal, coal ...

The pond had to resist crying out so that's what corporate fascism looks and sounds like ...

Well  if you sip on the reptile kool aid, it's very easy to turn reptile and retreat into simple-minded abuse ...

You see, this day it was Simon Benson that drew the short straw and had to froth and foam in a rabid way about inner-city leftist fanaticism, from his fanatical fascist authoritarian deeply inner city Surry Hills bunker ...

It's a reminder of how the reptiles have reduced discussions of legitimate policy concerns - such as actual climate science - to rabid gobbets of irrational bile ... with demonisation part of the process ... just look at the shifty figure in this illustration ...

Benson passes himself off as the lizard Oz's National Political Editor, but he could just as easily dub himself the Reichsministerium für Volksaufklärung und Propaganda, RMVP .

Of course the pond understands why the reptiles are so desperate and look yearningly to the north for new jobs and opportunities ...

Here for that,  and is was probably only by chance that the Graudian also had this story here ...

When it came to the actual story, Simon kept his rabidity simple and brief ... just throw away money on a company registered in a tax haven, load it up with free water until the twelfth of never, and all will be well in the garden ...

There was something about Benson's malign effort which strangely reminded the pond of the way Stalinist show trials were conducted...

In this case, there's no room for consideration of climate science or issues related to the reef. That's just the inner-city streets of left fanaticism, as opposed to inner-city Surry Hills coal fanaticism ...

In a show trial, it was important to stand up and confess. In the Surry Hills bunker, the show trial format demands that ritually, one by one, the commentariat must stand up and confess that they follow the corporate line ... it's dinkum coal all the way, oi, oi, oi ...

But it's not just coal.

Sometimes it's handy to have an import come in and testify to the truth of the corporate line on other matters that get four people in Barners' office deeply agitated.

What's the point of a murmuration of just starlings, when a cauldron of raptors or an exaltation of larks could add to the clamour?

Week after week, the reptiles drag in yet another bystander to testify ... this day it's the entirely useless and largely forgotten John Anderson ...

The ritual is akin to the parade to be seen in a show trial, even if this is apparently a shot of Lysenko with Stalin ...

But that snap evokes the spirit of testimony, the manner of paying tribute to the corporate line ...

The form of the humbug is very specific.

It should involve a mention of McCarthyism - Orwell or Orweillian is almost de rigueur - and the strict etiquette demands a juxtaposition of free speech, up against identity politics and other dangers to the soul.

Now never mind that McCarthyism was dedicated to the eradication of Communism, and in his day Anderson was himself a keen McCarthyist and dedicated spotter of reds under the bed, and even in watermelons...

 

Ah, the old watermelon gag, it never gets old ...

Okay, let's face it, Anderson was never the sharpest disc on the plough, and was frequently short of a sheep to shear in the top paddock, but he surely knows how to stand witness in a lizard Oz show ritual ...

That mindless incantatory listing of all the grieves the reptiles is unnerving, a bit like the catechism that the pond had to recite to the nuns, or the need to devise a host of sins to reveal in confession ... well, there was hardly any point heading into the box to confirm an innately dull life of study ...

The point is a kind of reverse show trial ...

Anderson commits what many would consider a mortal sin while reciting his litany.

Sure he mentions Gra Gra (sssh, don't mention the Gold Coast), and there's Coopers Brewery, and there's a persecuted fundamentalist Xian, and there's more talk of McCarthyism - eek, watch out for watermelons - and there's ritual incantations around Marx and identity politics and the right to repeat like a blithering idiot everything that preoccupies the reptiles on a daily basis ...

But there was no mention of Orwell, or even the Orwellian predicament of what to write for the lizard Oz!!

For that, Anderson must be deemed an epic fail ...

Really, if you're going to recite crap like a well-trained parrot, or a prime rustic wanker, how could you forget Orwell? Remember, Big Brother is watching ...daily!

And so to a real tragedy, which is the way that the pond routinely gets a better depiction of matters arising in relation to policies and government from the sage papal advice of the Pope, rather than from anything to be found in the reptile church service, and luckily there's more Popery here ...

Would Simon Benson ever look at this cartoon and wonder? The pond wonders ... probably not, it's probably part of the new McCarthyism and might well involve identity politics ...

Such is the mindless moronism to be found repeating daily in the lizard Oz ...