In which the pond wilts along with dashing Donners ...

Browsing the toilet Partridge last night, the pond was disappointed to be reminded that the relevant group word was "a column of journalists", which was both dull and banal.

What's wrong with "a rage of reptiles"? Would it be too parochial and limited to celebrate "a wilt (or a ken) of Donners?"

Yep, good old dashing Donners is at it again, the rage keeps bubbling to the surface, and the reptiles guaranteed the lad cult status by offering him a Krygsman …

With the greatest respect, what an hysterical, paranoid old nanny tosser.

The pond appreciates that Catholic and Islamic fundamentalists need each other, and the greater the level of fear they can generate, the more time they can spare to pick on minorities of the gay kind.

Poor old Donners doesn't seem to have caught up with the news that cultural relativism is now the given truth, and not because of the perfidious French, but thanks to the work of the Donald.

Truth isn't truth, says Rudy, echoing Flaubert's 'there is no truth, there is only perception.'

'What you're seeing and what you're reading is not what's happening,' cries the Donald, which means that as the pond happens to be reading dunderhead dashing Donners at the moment, nothing's happening …

Not that the pond thinks that the Donald is the greatest threat to life on earth - in much the same way that talk of Western Civilisation - if taken on the level of a hobby - is a fine way to pass the time for anyone who, having tired of train sets, wants to wallow in a tiresome, silly academic Crusader conceit. 

As usual, Donners doesn't mention climate science, which is about a real threat to the entire planet.

But that's about what you might expect of fundamentalist bigots when they get to arguing about books and religion, as if reading T. S. Eliot is going to help sort out the melting of the ice …

Don't get the pond wrong, it likes its books and movies well enough, but if literature and Western Civilisation is supposed to elevate the mind and improve understanding, how is there a Kevin Donnelly? Why a Kev?

When anyone can sort out that conundrum, the pond might take the debate seriously …but meanwhile on to more blather, with the pond fervently hoping that there'll be talk of long marches and Marxism, because surely Kev made a mistake by forgetting the dire threat that Marxism poses … not to mention the wretched threat emanating from all those bloody noble savages ...

Dear sweet long absent lord, how turgid, how tedious, how repetitive, what a strange bee to have in the bonnet, buzzing around endlessly …

And how it irritates the pond to see that mindless chant about Judeo-Christianity resolutely linked with the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason - as if cannibalistic Catholic nonsense about devouring human flesh and drinking human blood had something to do with reason, as if mystical gibberish about miracles formed some kind of rational approach to the world …

But if we must speak of motes in eye, how rich is it for Donners to berate pesky difficult blacks about drug and alcohol abuse, and the sexual exploitation of women. Is there an an angry Sydney Anglican in the house to explain the role of complimentary women to him?

If he wants to go black bashing, he should feel free to do so, but the last time the pond checked, the pesky difficult blacks didn't have two world wars, a Holocaust and enough nukes to destroy the planet on hand as signs they were truly civilised ...

What a silly old shouter at clouds.

The least the pond could do was take time out to draw attention to a book being promoted by the immortal Rowe …

He also offered a link to a Graudian gallery here, which contained a goodly sampling of the cartoons … amongst them was a howl of pain from First Dog about the suffering of Western Civilisation, which ended with these panels …

Oh dear, distraction, distraction, but nothing can hide the reality that there's another gobbet of dashing Donners to go, another wail from the wilting Kev …

He cited David Cameron? The man most responsible for fucking Britain, an achievement more singular and astonishing than anything Tony Blair might manage? The man who cynically contrived the current Brexit farce?

And to make matters worse, Kev claims the foolish fop blathered about "muscular liberalism"? The pond wouldn't take Cameron's advice on which brand of soap to purchase, let alone how to indulge in muscular anything …

What a prat.

And then our Kev moves on to the onion muncher, the barbecue-stopping knighthood man, the dullard who is into climate science denialism and a deeply uxorial relationship with coal (talk about a lack of interest in women).

Reading one of dashing Donners' pieces, the pond always comes away thinking how repetitive and simple-minded it is …how adolescent, on a level with the sort of Thomas Carlyle celebration of heroes and heroism that was the fashion long ago, with talk of grand narratives and epic sweeps, as if the cogs of time somehow managed to get stuck in Victorian England, and never mind the attitude of the Poms at that time to the whore of Babylon that lurked in Rome …

The pond urgently felt the need of an empathetic cartoon before it could carry on …

And so to the second treat of the day …

Oh dear, it's Kenneth 'round the horn' Wiltshire, and so the pond must revert to the glory days when Kev and Ken worked together to fix the education system …

Kev had the grand idea that a strapping was a jolly good idea, and a teacher embarking on a boxing match with a student would soon sort the student out …

'I grew up in Broadmeadows, a housing commission estate in Melbourne, and we had a Scottish phys-ed teacher," he said. ''Whenever there were any discipline problems he would actually take the boy behind the shed and say, 'We can either talk about this or you can throw the first punch'.

Ah, Western Civilisation at its finest, but it went a bit too far beyond the ken of our Ken ...

"In response to reports in The Sydney Morning Herald and a number of enquires, I wish to make it clear that I dissociate myself from comments attributed to Dr Kevin Donnelly regarding corporal punishment in schools," Mr Wiltshire wrote. "I can also confirm that neither the Australian curriculum itself, nor the current review of the curriculum, is linked in any way to the topic of corporate punishment or any other school based practices of this nature. "They are a matter for school management and state and territory jurisdictions." Mr Wiltshire declined to comment further. (Greg Hunt the glory days at Fairfax here).

Back in the glory days, there was much consternation, of the kind that can be found here …

My Facebook and Twitter feeds have been awash with irate teachers for a number of months now, as a constant trickle of announcements, leaks and policy statements from our federal and state governments and political parties have grown into what can be viewed as an attack on Australian teachers, curriculum, and public schools. The most recent trigger for the ire of my teaching friends was an article Australian schools are becoming too ‘kumbaya’ with progressive, new-age fads published on Saturday 20 June in the Daily Telegraph. The authors include statements from Professor Ken Wiltshire and Doctor Kevin Donnelly, who recently undertook a review of the Australian Curriculum at the request of federal Education Minister Christopher Pyne. We are asked to accept their claims, as they are “experts in education.” But are they?

That mention of Facebook triggered the pond, as it often does …

Phew, trigger avoided, and now the pond should at least mention the piece ended up this way ...

...I believe that views attributed to Donnelly and Wiltshire in the Daily Telegraph article promote false narratives of failure: failures of teachers and their decisions regarding pedagogies, failures of schools, and failures of the curriculum they’ve recently reviewed. The real challenge in Australian education is not ‘progressive new-age fads’ but the growing inequity between rich and poor. I’d like to see the Daily Telegraph publish some expert views about that.

Care for the poor?  The Terror?

That sounds dangerously Marxist, like that unreconstructed socialist Christ, with all his blather about the rich finding it tricky to get into heaven …

But enough of a preamble, because the pond is beginning to wilt, or perhaps to yearn for more talk about Western Civilisation in a civics way …

Now around here, the pond began to spot something of a contradiction in the wilting argument.

Would it be right to go into a civics class and explain to innocent students how they're completely fucked?

Sure they've got the right to vote, but for what? For a bunch of bloody useless chooks, infesting fowl houses with their lice and their putrid clucking.

What a bunch of no-hopers and ne'er do wells they are, why would anyone bother to vote or want to participate in parliamentary democracy … better to support a strong man who can sort things out than vote for some loon flying around on a bus …

More Pope here, and ah the glories of Western Civilisation, the pond's favourite musical, South Pacific … some enchanted western civilisation lemmings ...

And so back to the teaching of civics, but sorry, anyone under 21 has been banned from the conversation. You see kiddies, parliamentary democracy deserves an X-rating, it's way worse than Debbie Does Dallas, so you're banned …

It's all useless, it's wretched, the pollies are incompetent and hopeless and a complete waste of time …and that's why you must study hard …while remembering to forget the teachers, who are just as incompetent and useless and flimsy as your average chook pollie ...

Indeed, silly school student, what a ridiculous question.

Didn't our Wilt just patiently explain that the prime minister is the head chook, the primo rooster amongst a bunch of chooks in a fowl yard where the main feature is X-rated pecking order behaviour, a kind of cesspit of outrageous behaviour …

The pecking order is, literally, determined by pecking. Bigger, stronger, and more aggressive chickens bully their way to the top of the flock by pecking the others into submission with their pointy beaks. First they strut about, fluff their feathers, and squawk, but if that doesn’t get the point across, they peck. It can get violent. Sometimes blood is drawn; occasionally, the opponent is killed. (here).

As Humpty Dumpty might say, there's your civics class right there … all thanks to Wilt, a man who might be said to have something of a waspish outlook on life …

But please, do remember, it's got nothing to do with a rage of reptiles, it's all the fault of social media ...

What's amusing in that last gobbet? Well it's the sublime contempt that our Ken has for just about everybody and everything … and it's not just limited to the chooks in the fowl yard, or the teachers or the way the world is fucked… 

And so he finishes up with "finding an upright Australian on New Year's Day may be a challenge."

Yep, do your civics class, but remember you're likely to end up a typical Australian, pissed as a parrot, or even worse, a pissed pollie, or a punch-drunk teacher ...

Given this conclusion, the pond can't understand why our Ken flinched from corporal punishment … clearly he loves to flay anyone and anything in sight at the drop of a fowl hat …

Well that's enough civics for the day - though it leaves the pond with an urgent question - who will tell the children that civics class means you can joke about drunkards, blotto beasts and legless chooks, while exuding a withering contempt for fellow dinky dis?

Never mind, class dismissed, giving students a chance to go out and shout at clouds in an angry way, and celebrate Western Civilisation, while deploring the chooks it produces … 

Or perhaps it might be easier and simpler to enjoy a final cartoon or three …