In which the pond goes bromancing for an entrancing view of the Donald ...

The pond has had to mark down prattling Polonius this day - for starters, he's not talking about the ABC, he did that yesterday - and so today he was off to Tasmania for comfort and relaxed gun laws …

Besides, the reptiles are in a state of agitation about the dictators getting together for a chin-wag…

Leaders wary? Not everyone is enthusiastic? But the Terror is wildly excited, heiling peace in our time …

… Cold War crisis? Say what?

Only in the Terror, but clearly cool heads and wise minds were needed to sort it all out, and in such situations, the pond always turns to the bromancer, keen on bullying and bluster (well he was good buddies with the onion muncher) …

By now the pond could channel the bromancer on the Donald in its sleep. 

It always runs thusly: he's a terrible man but never mind that, look at what a genius he is. Forget the knockers and the naysayers, see how he's put runs on the board …

Don't worry about conservative things like debt and deficit and all those quaint, ancient ideas like free trade, or bleat about Americans slaughtering each other, or carry on about the chaos, feel the actions …though when the bromancer's moon is in the nattering "Ned" phase, the bromancer will take forever saying it ...

It's at precisely that moment, when the bromancer offered himself as the one to do a sane analysis, that the pond had its first genuine laugh for the weekend.

But he'd made a fine start earlier in the piece, by doing the thing the reptiles love to do … not blame the Donald, but claim instead that everyone was suffering from a global Trump derangement syndrome and had gone barking mad… as if the Donald had nothing to do with the howling at the moon …

The pond shouldn't need a cartoon to hand to get through a reptile or a bromancer piece, but that's the way it seems to be going these days ...

It takes a particular skill to become a devoted Donald apologist, but the bromancer turned last year, and has stayed in a sharp turning curve ever since.

His skills encompass a number of art forms. See, Australia's gonna be okay, and who gives a stuff about the ROW, especially the Europeans, so tariffs are fine, and anyway a tariff war will be easy to win, and anyway, it's not much of a tariff, and who cares if there's retaliation, it won't amount to much, and so on and so forth ...

Never mind the philosophy or the mind set behind it all …

And that line about the US not trying to contain China, how cheeky and clever it is … and how right to point out how terribly unfair and unbalanced it all is, just like the Donald … so that the sense of grievance and entitlement might continue to be nurtured and to grow …

The art also relies on diminishing the object of admiration's actions … piddling … while dragging the Clintons once more back from the grave ...

Actually if we might go back to that Bill Clinton matter, there being a pdf of a paper here worth quoting …

Please allow the pond just to jump in as Bill gets going with the negotiations ...

The second repercussion - spoiler alert - was that the US finally started making cars with right hand drive, but there's more on that in the paper. 

The main point is that Clinton tried to use a tariff war to help an incompetent industry, failed, and soon enough the industry was completely down the toilet and in urgent need of a government bail-out.

That paper ended with this astute observation: "Trade wars, if the issues are economic, hurt everyone and can be devastating - as the experience of the 1930s suggests. It was George Santayana, the Spanish-born philosopher, who, in The Life of Reason (volume 1, p. 284) wrote, "Those who read too much of Greg Sheridan will be condemned to repeat the past."

Or some such thing. Maybe the pond didn't get the quote exactly right.

Put it another way …

Not that getting things wrong would trouble the bromancer…

Here, have another cartoon … how about a Rowe? You might head off to see more Rowe here and never come back ...

And while the pond is at it, have this one too …

But tougher souls, not so easily distracted by the sight of happy children at play, will be ready for another sojourn with the bromancer …

It will be recalled that the Americans aren't targeting China … except, of course, they're targeting China, albeit in the most inept and incompetent and irrelevant way imaginable … and being a classic bromancer apologist piece, soon enough the "If's" will start flying ...

You see the cleverness of the apologist? Tariffs are a bad idea, and the Donald's tariffs can be judged only by a finessed use of the negative: "I don't think Trump's latest tariffs are good policy."

The plain speaker with a dose of Gowers would say, "I think Trump's latest tariffs are bad policy."

But that's far too explicit and upsetting, and besides, the apologist has other fish to fry, which is to accuse everybody of Trump derangement syndrome, as if everything that's gone done in the Donald's regime is perfectly normal, and unexceptional, and quite modest and reasonable, and what's all the fuss …

The way to the big lie is best done through a series of distortions, dissemblings, dissimulations and deceits …

And that's the most provocative and preposterous lie of all.

Thanks to David Rowe, the pond has documentary evidence of the Donald's real nature …