In which the pond settles for a serve of the Major, followed by re-heated bromancer ...

Before getting on with the Major, the pond would just like to thank correspondents for their kind words, and to note that the pond is currently down to two posts a day - please, practice reptile hygiene or risk the consequences -  and lastly to provide a quick click-through link to a great meditation on Jordan Peterson in the Star, here, which was offered up by reader JC, and which is well worth the read …so many alternatives to the reptiles, and so worth the share ...

And so to the Major … doing what all the Murdochians have done, urging everyone to give the snake oil salesman a chance to do a proper con job ...

It's a classic ploy from a man still hunting for that Order of Lenin medal, to deploy inverted commas as if that excuses talk of the apparatus of the "deep state." And it gets profoundly stupid talking of wildcats of the Greenland and Dershowitz kind as not being "conservative", when anybody and her cat would get into trouble trying to explain how the Donald was a conservative, as opposed to a populist demagogue with totalitarian inclinations and a fondness for strong men and dictators …

That's why there's a bunch of genuine American conservatives who have spent the last few years wandering around in a daze, wondering what Fox and Friends truck driven by Hannity ran over them.

And that reminds the pond that a week ago The New Yorker published Evan Osnos's story Trump vs. The "Deep State", (the print version carried the ironic header Only the Best People), currently outside the paywall and a much better way to waste time than to keep on reading the Major ...

...Typically, an incoming President seeks to charm, co-opt, and, when necessary, coerce the federal workforce into executing his vision. But Trump got to Washington by promising to unmake the political ecosystem, eradicating the existing species and populating it anew. This project has gone by various names: Stephen Bannon, the campaign chief, called it the “deconstruction of the administrative state”—the undoing of regulations, pacts, and taxes that he believed constrain American power. 

In Presidential tweets and on Fox News, the mission is described as a war on the “deep state,” the permanent power élite. Nancy McEldowney, who retired last July after thirty years in the Foreign Service, told me, “In the anatomy of a hostile takeover and occupation, there are textbook elements—you decapitate the leadership, you compartmentalize the power centers, you engender fear and suspicion. They did all those things.”

But enough of serious journalism involving actual research, it's on with the Major ...

In all this there's a constant refrain and a resentment, deep and pathetic - the way that non-Murdochians are enjoying boom times in the media. And it's not just the tree killers, though naturally that's what gets the antiquated Major's knickers in a knot, because the likes of MSNBC have enjoyed a killer year, and Fox is now starting to look nervously over its shoulder because it can't enjoy the scandal bump …

The Major does his best to crank up and confect outrage as a way of ignoring what the Donald and his gang are actually up to ...

What a total doofus he is, with his deploying of the Reagan card, as if the Donald was the Reagan come again, and as if the Major could or should write a whole piece about the media running with political agendas, while not mentioning once Fox or his chairman and their shameless kowtowing and forelock tugging …

 

Will the Major ever change? Might as well ask if he'll find that long-lost Order of Lenin medal … perhaps by the twelfth of never, though that's a long, long time …

And now since the matter of the Donald has been raised, and because the pond is only doing short orders, how about a serve of reheated bromancer?

This turned up on the weekend, and the pond knew it was meaningful because it had been blessed with a Lobbecke, as cultists know a sure sign of rolled gold quality (yes, the pond Greg Hunted that wretched term over the weekend on The Insiders).

It's a long, and dithering to the point of being meaningless read, which is why it's only offered to specialist reptile handlers ...

There you go, the bromancer in Kenny Rogers and/or depressive mood …

Well it's a long trek and it will all have changed again by tomorrow, so the pond thought it should get in a few cartoons ...

Actually if the pond might be so bold, Vlad the impaler is also lending a helping hand to the North Koreans, especially in the matter of sanctions busting, so it's a tad optimistic to say that they've only got China as an ally ...

Perhaps another cartoon or two …after all, it's pretty easy to see what's going on …

  

But masochists and gluttons must drink deep, so it's on to the next gobbet, with the bromancer doing his best to explain the Donald ...

And so it becomes clear. This has been a 'clutching at the straws of hope' exercise,  though it was strange that the bromancer didn't mention the many occasions on which the Donald has stood up to Vlad … perhaps he couldn't find any … though he's managed to be quite vocal on other matters …

Never mind, back to the bromancer poking his broomstick in the hope of some kind of win ...

Phew, at last the end, and the pond simply cannot tell you if the bromancer is correct in anything that he's written … though one thing's certain, anyone who reached the end of this maze of uncertainty deserves a few more cartoons as we look forward to the future, and perhaps a second term, thanks to the Murdochians…