In which the pond looks under the rock at the lizard herpetarium and discovers a hot bed of Trumpists and rabidly authentic idealists ...

(more Wilcox here).

It's impossible to keep up with the Washington circus, and there's no point trying, with the memes now fully out of control ...

...but the pond did by chance happen to look at the digital letters page for the lizard Oz this day ...

One certain guide to the health of the reptiles is the crazed level of the readership, and all those letter headers - nicely grouped by like-minded fanaticism on various subjects - promised a fever pitch level of crazy.

Now the pond fancies it has an erudite set of readers who produce witty insightful comments with interesting links (and if that crawling isn't creepy enough, the pond will try again later), but the reptile readership has been pickled in reptile kool aid brine for so long, they're certain to be barking mad north by north west ...

Given all the current hoo-hah and fuss, the pond decided to test out its thesis with the reptile readership's thoughts on the Donald, a follow up to gloomy nattering "Ned's" survey of the tattered kingdom  ...

The Donald went to catch up with Malware? The fish head delusion is strong in that one ...

Treating the rest of the moral narcissists with measured contempt? The Donald's not a narcissist?

It was clear that the reptile readership was Trumpist to the core.

Coming up at the end of this bedraggled Trumpists were a few other contenders jostling for attention to be paid ... 

One dared to hint that perhaps all was not entirely well with the Donald ...

... but the last clearly and properly sheeted home blame to that diabolic Kenyan socialist Islamic ...

And so to the second part of the pond's forensic observation of its scaly friends, which involved the reptile editorials ... and again there were any number of choices to be made ...

The reptiles have been running hot on Israel this day - there's nothing like walls, ghettoes and apartheid to excite a reptile to fever pitch - but if the pickled snakehead rots from the top, then the Oz editorialist is at the heart of the stink, and so, of all these, the pond was naturally drawn to the talk of any move to the left being wrong ...

It was time to catch up with the official reptile line on recent Malware transgressions ... because in the world of Mao and the reptiles, if a thousand flowers bloom, it's only so that they can be brutally lopped ...

And so it came to pass ...

So the onion muncher is the local solution, just as the Donald is the solution for the US ...

At any other time, Malware's observations would have been deemed innocuous and full of historically accurate truisms ...

A nanosecond's worth of research at that essential institution Trove, would produce any number of stories about the formation of the Liberal party, this one from the mighty Grafton Daily Examiner on 16th October 1944 ...

Eek!? A revival of liberal thought and a forward, progressive policy were both essential to the future development of Australia?!

Now the pond understands that both "liberal" and "progressive" had different meanings in the old days - these 'libruls' could after all encompass banning a political party in good old Joe McCarthy style - but Ming the Merciless made a political career out of shamelessly filching many Labor party policies and initiatives (education scholarships, the Snowy River scheme, etc) and the country was none the worse for it ...

Such is the shameless extremist divide now fomented (or is that fermented?) by the Murdochians, any innocuous observation of these past realities is considered beyond the pale ...

And that last line says it all. Whenever a fanatic gets going, the first thing they'll trot out is purity of authentic ideals (unless it's an angry Sydney Anglican and then they might get agitated about the pure virginal qualities of authentic complimentary women).

The reptiles somehow imagine that they - rather than either the onion muncher or Malware - are the keepers of authentic conservative conservative instincts and pious upholders of the ideals of political conservatism, as opposed to pragmatic policies that might get things done ... which helps explain why the rag has become a refuge for Trumpists, why the carefully cultivated Cory and Hansonists are on the march, and why the reptile commentariat routinely heads out to the most hysterical paranoid edges of politics in a quest for purity of authentic ideals (watch out for that poisonous fluoride in the water Mandrake).

And this brings the pond to another thought ... the reason why fanatics often tend to dominate and win out ...

While many want the quiet life, the extremist insists that all around is jelly and blubber. The google juxtaposition of the Oz editorial and Tim Wilson provided a flash-back insight into this ...

Who couldn't read this ancient blubbering by Tim Wilson without wanting to reach for a Maoist club to put the seal out of its blubbering misery?

Oh okay, this entire post has been a gigantic exercise which allows the pond to re-print that immortal Wilsonian freedom boy line:

Liberalism is the force of water through a loose garden hose that flaps around indiscriminately after the tap has been turned on. Conservatism is the calming hand that directs the hose towards the plants needing hydration.

Hydration? No thought or heed to Ming the Merciless speaking ancient English and urging a good old fashioned watering?

It's perhaps the least of the metaphorical, verbal and thought crimes contained in just two sentences ... and to think that this jelly-fish at one time routinely infested the lizard Oz ...

Where was the indignation and agitation when this jelly-fish had his thoughts published in the lizard Oz back in May? On and on he went, but then he was a chosen reptile pet, while Malware is mortal enemy of the onion muncher ...

The only upside, the only consolation to the whole sorry conservative right wing mess, both in the United States and Australia, is the fertile soil it provides for the flowering of Rowe, with a thousand more Rowe blooms available here ...