In which the pond wilts with our Kenny Wiltshire ...

Only the reptiles pay attention to the onion muncher these days, and only the pond is devoted to its reptile herpetarium with the massive level of stupidity, patience and crazed obsessiveness that's required of the genuine reptile lover ...

Another truth in these post-factual times is that whenever the onion muncher issues a keening, harping, wailing cry - "won't someone think of the Poms and of knighthoods and of other imperial colonial glories?" - other loons will also gather to shout at clouds, and so, after yesterday's appearance of the onion muncher, Kenneth Wiltshire bestrode the reptile opinion pages today ...

Where do they dig up these old emeritus white fellas to scribble the usual nonsense?

Besides, what's wrong with being a little confused about the past? 

Is there some sort of contradiction of a confusing kind involved in the way that the finest flowering of Anglo-Saxon, Judeo-Christian western civilisation managed to plunge the world into two vast world wars, involving not just the west, but the east, thanks to the Japanese imbibing western ideas of ruling the world ...and also bunged on a Holocaust up there with the Her cleansing of the earth by flood and fire way back when ...

And that's just the beginning of the confusions for the pond. Mug punters of an indigenous kind are supposed to be happy about being brutalised and colonised by European imperialists, with all the death, destruction and exploitation that followed, because that brought to them the wisdom and the finest flowering of western civilisation? Such as a couple of world wars and a Holocaust?

Well if you're dead, you're probably decently civilised and incapable of causing trouble.

Now the pond realises that this is all the fault of the Commie swine, and so we shouldn't talk of the British empire's glorious success stories ... such as the middle east and the partition of India and Pakistan ...

Fortunately in our Kenny's world, such conflicting and confusing talk of the past would be eradicated and all would be made sweet and harmonious ...

Right away the pond knew why our Kenny scored top of the opinion page.

As soon as he mentioned it was all the fault of superficial social media, he had to be in like Flynn in the Surry Hills bunker. 

It's not as if the reptiles have anything to do with sowing the seeds of inflamed angst, rage and misunderstanding on contemporary issues. Why the Bolter is a tremendous example of reasoned, moderate, rational debate, and as for the Devine, who can't help wondering at her tremendous sense of balance, poise and generosity of spirit? You won't find those sorts on social media, now will you ...

It turns  out that our Kenny isn't that much into history himself in his own career ...

More here ... though if you do try to view that full publications list, you might score this message ...

Damn you social media, damn you to hell ...

Whenever the reptiles wanted someone to smote mightily dangerous lefties and weirdos speaking of gender fluidity, our Kenny was a 'go to' man ...

In our Ken's world, you see, there should be no talk of gender fluidity. After all, there are no bisexuals or TG folk in Australia, or if there are they should be mocked as hot potatoes, as difficult and as disagreeable to a binary world - our Kennys and not our Kennys - as a bunch of homosexuals with their dangerous ideological obsessions ... like being treated equally and having equal rights ... the filthy, depraved Commie swine ...

Oh yes, it was all the work of Marxists ... and it goes without saying that the Catholic church and suchlike are certainly not ideological activist interest groups with their own agenda ...

Well Donners is always good for a laugh, and the notion that the tykes would construct an objective, impartial and balanced curriculum - one that failed to celebrate the glories of Rome - is good for a hoot, but for a minute there, the pond almost forgot the more recent piece by our Kenny ... so it's on with the next gobbet ...

And there we go again, with blather about our British and Judeo-Christian heritage ...oh, the onion muncher would be ever so pleased. Give the man a knighthood ...

Yes, there's an urgent need to put a decent positive spin on the battle of the Somme ...

Now at this point, the pond would like to note yet again the heroic work of the illustrator ...

That artful invocation of the hammer and the sickle threatening the crouching indigenous figure is as good a summary of Australian history as the pond could possibly imagine ...

So many shameful acts and incidents perpetrated by the Commie swine, including, it should go without saying, the doctrine of terra nullius, it being well known that Governor Macquarie was inclined towards socialism and was anti-business (and let us not even think of that dreadful Bligh).

But there the pond goes again, thinking of that fiend quivering under his bed, when we should be celebrating all that's good and wonderful about Australia, including mateship, as elegantly evoked by Russell Ward in his defining study of mateship, The Australian Legend ...

Oh wait, wasn't he Commie swine exiled to the UNE too?

Begone wretched confusion, all is simplicity and harmony and goodness in our Kenny's world, and if you don't think that way too, just remember the cornfield is waiting for you ...

So that's where they dug Kenny up from ... he was once a consort of dashing Donners on that epic onion muncher inspired failure, a review of the national curriculum that clunked to earth like a lead balloon.

But the pond takes seriously the notion that what we need is a narrative taking in the broad sweep of history that reflects pride in the nation ... 

Toss in a few token blacks and all's well with the world ...

After all, what's the point of history, if it isn't useful as mindless propaganda? 

Perhaps we should look back to the curriculum employed in German schools in the 1930s for a methodology showing how a national pride-based curriculum might be developed (though some might argue for the Russian curriculum of the 1950s or the curriculum in Texas when it comes to a young earth, creationism and climate science).

And with that tribute to the Godwin's Law swear jar, it's time to take in a Pope, who has, in his usual papal wisdom, discovered another way to make historical revisionism and a decent history curriculum work, looking at the past and the future with a positive spin ... (and with more papal revisionism here).