The pond almost felt a twinge of sympathy for Malware, who created a rod for his own back with blather about religious freedom, picked up and expanded upon by the mutton Dutton, who seems to care more about dog whistling for the votes of social conservatives than he does for sharing an afterlife with sundry imagined and conflicting deities …
The reptiles, of course, are on a winner however it plays out … the base can be enraged, the controversy sustained. Face it, the only time the leftist twitterati has come alive in recent times for the reptiles has been in response to the story ...
This surely suits a Sunday meditation, as our Rache has been covering the Dutton beat for the daily …
And there you go, poor old Malware …and here comes the mutton Dutton ...
What an extraordinarily dumb man he is. There is currently no threat to anyone sending their children to any form of school run by a religious authority …nor to the generous subsidies for same …
If they want to send their kids to the scientology based school down the road to get the blessings of L. Ron Hubbard and a money-rorting cult, they'll find the taxpayers have assisted them with cash in the paw ...
But that mutton Dutton line "there is the ability for that curriculum to be taught in accord with that religious belief" is exceptionally stupid …
Naturally the reptiles immediately asked a gotcha "when did you stop beating your wife" question, and the mutton Dutton had to say that he wouldn't allow preaching outside the Australian law on obvious matters such as beating your wife, and selling your first born into slavery …
But he might just as well have been asked whether schools might be allowed to interpret science according to their religious beliefs.
Would evolution and such like be taught in accord with religious beliefs? And so suddenly creationism and a young earth and all the other nonsense that passes for science in the world of the reptiles, including but not limited to climate science denialism and octopi from space, would sit alongside real science, on the usual excuse …
The reptiles had another go at re-packaging the contents, which indicates to the pond that a crusade is on the way.
This time it was Malware who was the illustration …
And the content was summarised so it might go around for another day …
And so Malware's goose is cooked yet again, and he must pander to bigots and conservatives or cop a pounding from them and the reptiles ...
This time the mutton Dutton's desire for active discrimination hovered more sharply into view, such that if you thought that the idea of being a complimentary woman was a little problematic, then angry Sydney Anglicans had the right to pass you over for a teaching position …
Or Catholics might refuse a gay teacher, or who knows, an Islamic school might be able to take a view on women and gays ...
Institutionalised discrimination requires sensible bipartisan support?
Well it sent the leftist twitterati off again …
The problem religious fundamentalists of the mutton Dutton kind face is that when looked at, there's not that much difference between your evangelical, Catholic and Islamic fundamentalist …they take a view on women that's roughly equivalent to a lizard editorial on women scoring a job as a company director.
And they take the same sort of attitude on gays, but we've been down that road, and the vote is in, and the fundamentalists lost, and the inquiry was their last hope to retain the right to as much bigotry as could be arranged ...
On and on the leftist twitterati went ...
That's as much of a sampling as the pond could stand, even for a Sunday meditation.
In short, Malware's got a live one on his hands here, because as one of the twitterati noted, the situation of fundamentalist religions in this country is roughly equivalent to the situation of The Australian's circulation …and he will pander to them at his peril.
The last thing that Malware needs is a new culture war, but the reptiles and the fundamentalists and mutton Dutton and the onion muncher are determined to give it to him ...
It's truly a joy, innit. Of course Dutton et al still haven't grasped two key points:
ReplyDelete1. the religion that they themselves profess has been tamed and altered by civil action over millenia (adultresses haven't been legally stoned to death for a few years now).
2. when there's more than one religion that needs to be 'protected' at the same time, then the differences and divergences in religious belief become inescapable and intractable.
Anyway, just for a wee bit of comparison here's some wise words from Bertrand Russell. He actually refers to governments enforcing beliefs, but we all know who he really means. Enjoy:
Bertrand Russell: Passages from An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish (1943)
https://www.panarchy.org/russell/rubbish.1943.html
I am persuaded that there is absolutely no limit to the absurdities that can, by government(religious) action, come to be generally believed. Give me an adequate army(militant priesthood), with power to provide it with more pay and better food than falls to the lot of the average man, and I will undertake, within thirty years, to make the majority of the population believe that two and two are three, that water freezes when it gets hot and boils when it gets cold, or any other nonsense that might seem to serve the interest of the State(Church). Of course, even when these beliefs had been generated, people would not put the kettle in the ice-box when they wanted it to boil. That cold makes water boil would be a Sunday truth, sacred and mystical, to be professed in awed tones, but not to be acted on in daily life. What would happen would be that any verbal denial of the mystic doctrine would be made illegal, and obstinate heretics would be "frozen" at the stake. No person who did not enthusiastically accept the official doctrine would be allowed to teach or to have any position of power. Only the very highest officials, in their cups, would whisper to each other what rubbish it all is; then they would laugh and drink again. This is hardly a caricature of what happens under some modern governments.
And there we have it: that's how "religious freedom" works and is protected.
Re one of the cartoons that you have featured. The kind of dingbat religionists that the duh!ton is pandering to would of course be quite hostile to alchemy, phrenology, magic and astrology too, all of which would be classified as the work of the devil of satanic powers.
ReplyDelete"The pond almost felt a twinge of sympathy for Malware, who created a rod for his own back".
ReplyDeleteActually, he must have the finest collection of rods in politics (although, Abbott is doubtless storing a few for use later on). It's classic Malware, a short term contingent decision to get him through a crisis that will, invariably, land him in a bigger crisis later on. He ALWAYS does this. I think it's purely arrogance - he thinks he will use his giant brain to sort things out at a later date. It never works, but he persists anyway.
All in all, a fine slapstick comedy where the audience can see where something is going but the main character plods on towards the inevitable pratfall.
" I think it's purely arrogance"
DeleteHave you ruled out stupidity ? With a huge dose of accompanying arrogance too, I guess.
Undoubtedly stupid, just not the Tony Abbott/Craig Kelly "I'm-as-dumb-as-dogs-meat" stupid, more like the Malware "I-should-no-better-but-I'm-doing-it-anyway"stupid.
ReplyDeleteerr "should KNOW better". Dyslexia lures KO!
DeleteOh I dunno, Bef, maybe a Malware "I should no" is kinda relevant - it would allow a competitive comparison with Tony "Dr No" Abbott perhaps.
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