Every so often the reptiles try to lull the pond into a false sense of security by running stories by or about heretics …
Re-write the anthem? Re-run a story from The Times outing nonsense emanating from the land of the Golden plates just to please the pond on a meditative Sunday?
But speaking of therapy, the lizard Oz is usually a primal scream of rage and attention-seeking, and the pond shouldn't be distracted from its mission to observe men living in congruence with their delusions, and is there any better primal screaming delusional than the dog botherer?
Who doesn't like to shout against the rich? And celebrities?
Why, whenever the pond thinks of Bono, which is rarely, it takes a view on his music and his self-indulgent musings …not to mention Christianity …
But is the dog botherer any better? Given that the reptile choir of right wing ragbags sing as one, and use blather words of the "zeitgeist" Surry Hills 'leet kind …
Now this is all very well - Bono being an easy figure to mock - but what about climate science itself?
The pond sometimes indulges in a fantasy that in about twenty years time there will be courts ready to try people for crimes against the planet.
Not for thought crimes, but for actual crimes …it'll be too late for the likes of Chairman Rupert, but not for some of his fellow travellers, the ones who thought using Bono and Davos was some kind of excuse for their own brand of denialism … a denialism that manages to let them overlook the sort of reality unfolding around them …
Ah, but that was in The Atlantic, and you won't find that sort of stuff in the lizard Oz, and certainly not in the dog botherer as he goes about his primal screaming ...
Never mind that the dog botherer himself has for years been a compleat climate science denialist.
The notion that he gives a toss about it is beyond the valley of post-modernist, truth isn't truth, irony … as noted by others more qualified than the pond … (paywall protected) …
And so on … and on … and on … and then it's back to the rich comedy of the dog botherer moving on from climate to Brexit and all the usual other causes of the barking mad ...
Actually the critical question is whether the dog botherer has the first clue …
Instead, there on the front page of the lizard Oz is the dog botherer pretending he gives a toss, and using the straw dog of Davos as a way out of his own scribbling …
It should come as no surprise that Warren Mundine is the dog botherer's sort of man, ostensibly someone who is all about working class progress, as opposed to say, screwing over Redfern while setting up shop on the north shore ...
Well to borrow from Crikey again … (much more here, but paywall protected)
Ah yes, the north shore … and Luna Park ...somewhere north of Davos perhaps … and so to a more pleasant job, and that's the latest instalment of the bromancer trying to cope with the Donald …
It shows the dangers of scribbling about the Donald.
In the short time since the bromancer sat down and tried to cope, Roger Stone has been arrested, the Donald lost his power play, and folded …
...and the United States is busy handing Afghanistan back to the Taliban …
How could the bromancer possibly keep up?
All that the bromancer has got left as a coping mechanism is what is quaintly known as "two siderism". Both sides are shameful, both sides are to blame …
It's the only way the bromancer can help the chairman in his ongoing devotion to the Donald, and to the notion that a big concrete wall paid for by Mexico remains some kind of useful dreaming ...
Actually polls don't go back and forth over whether Americans want the wall or not. Anybody with half a brain knows that walls only offer a kind of Maginot Line kind of defence, and something a bit cleverer than a slogan designed to keep the Donald's brain on track might be required ...
That's the problem with 'two siderism' … it leads to the same sort of exaggeration, lying, misrepresentation and mis-speaking which the Donald has turned into an art form …
And yet if the obvious is noted, suddenly this becomes part of the "ferocity and relentlessness of the attacks on Trump."
Why, in this sort of world, running a harmless cartoon becomes a kind of yellow vest enterprise … given the way that the Donald claims to be a billionaire, and he has a government full of tone-deal billionaires …
Of course the pond had to break ... the only way to cope with the bromancer trying to cope is to turn to a few cartoons …before turning back to the bromancer wrestling with the Donald and trying to make some sense of it all ...
Suing for peace?
For those who refuse to read the reptiles, even when recycling Reuters, there's always the BBC here …
17 years, just so the Donald can hand it all back to the Taliban, while toeing Vlad's line and offering Trump's bizarre history lesson on the Soviet Union, Russia and Afghanistan ...
Truly the bromancer's got a live one here …and the bromancer is going to have to show his finest writing to spin the latest deals as they go down …
The pond just had to slip in another cartoon …
And now it's about time for the bromancer to nail his colours to the mast …
You see, the Donald isn't the fault of Fox and Friends, Chairman Rupert, Hannity, Tucker, Coulter and even more rabid ragbags fellow travelling with that mob, it's all the fault of the Left ...
Uh huh, but that's when it starts to get really weird …
You see, Obama and the Donald are very alike, and the Donald is now virtually in his second term, which is to say two years, and two years to go, because two years with the Donald feels like four, or perhaps even eight ...
Bad for everyone?
Tell that to the GOP, tell that to Fox and Friends, still loyal, tell that to all the forelock tuggers in Murdoch la la land in the United States, still refusing to allow that they've got a live one here …
As for the pond, it's at one with Wilbur and the Donald. Let the deplorables eat cake, as so memorably proposed by Rowe, with more memorable Rowe here ...
As for the wall? A pond friend reminded it of an old R.E.M. song, a band as likely as U2 to get up the nose of the dog botherer, and on that basis alone, worthy of a play, though because of rights restrictions it might need to be viewed on YouTube here …
Oh what a relief. After having had to agree, even just a modicum, with Jeff Kennett we're back to the singular joys of Doggy Bovs and Bromancers.
ReplyDeleteNow I confess that I have a tiny sliver of agreement with Greggy-boi - there is always just a tiny bit of both-siderism - and also with Doggy Bov - Davos is indeed a strange and frightening place (or do you think he might really have meant to call it an eyrie ?) - but essentially they're both way off any planet I've ever heard of.
Such a relief to be back with the usual sad-sack reptiles to basically totally disagree with.
Who or what invented and cultivated the cesspool of toxic populism?
ReplyDeleteIt was The Republican Noise Machine Right-Wing Media & How It Corrupts Democracy which is the title of a book by David Brock
Interesting question, that, but then I thought that the originator of toxic populism was actually Gaius Julius Caesar, especially given his propaganda efforts The Gallic Wars and The Civil War. Though maybe The Epic of Gilgamesh was really the first.
DeleteBut the whole thing of the so-called 'New Testament' has to figure as probably the most successful - we're still suffering from that one.
Gilgamesh seems a bit of a stretch, GB, but you are right that it is nothing new. I prefer to peg it to Ancient Greece - they invented the term "demagogue", after all.
DeleteCleon is one of the better examples - he came from outside the establishment, using his father's money to further his career; champion of the deplorables (he consciously played the lower classes against the 'leets), braggart, bully, anti-intellectual, generator of fake news - he was quite the Donald, even claiming to the hoi polloi that the metaphorical Mexico would pay for their walls. He was also a serial suer of political opponents (the original meaning of "sycophant") to get them out of the way.
However, unlike the Donald, when he became commander in chief, he couldn't use bone-spurs to avoid going into battle, and he was eventually killed in action. But not before squandering the best chance Athens got for taking a modest victory from the Peloponnesian War - when a favourable negotiated peace was on the table, his rabble-rousing call for total victory ensured Athens eventually lost everything.
Aristotle said, "...the man who, with his attacks, corrupted the Athenians more than anyone else. Although other speakers behaved decently, Cleon was the first to shout during a speech in the Assembly, use abusive language while addressing the people...". While neither here nor there, his voice was apparently like a scalded pig...
Re Gilgamesh: well yes, FD, probably, but it's always struck me (the little of it I've read) as a self-praising propaganda puff-piece. Kinda about on the same level as 'The Art of the Deal' or maybe even 'The Legend of Beowulf'.
DeleteBut thanks for that concise summary of Cleon - he's just one more of the millions of past humans that I wot very little of. But a voice like a "scalded pig" must have been a considerable debating asset back in those long ago days.
The Bromancer is bloviating about sundry aspects of Trump: "All of this called forth Trump. Nothing was better for Trump than Hillary Clinton calling his voters "deplorables". Tens of millions of Americans self-identified as deplorables in Clinton's terms, and, while they didn't like everything about Trump, they thought at least he was a fighter.
ReplyDelete[who has done] several specific good things - building up the military, cutting taxes, calling out Beijing for its trade and other destructive policies."
"Tens of millions of Americans self-identified..." eh ? Yeah, right, Bro.
But anyway, the reason for repeating the Bromancer's rabid delusions is basically so I can quote an American blogger: "...the mainstream press is never going to stop pretending that Trump isn't what Trump obviously is..."
https://www.eschatonblog.com/2019/01/supporting-our-defective-president-to.html
Yep, and the echoing chorus of the reptiles proves that point. The Bromancer just can't get within parsecs of grasping that Pelosi did Trump like the cowardly, ignorant little spiv that he obviously is. So it goes.
Perhaps I missed it, Dorothy, but I'm surprised I've seen no reference to this year's Australia Day honours - the Major got an AO (Officer of the Order of Australia), presumably for his services to Order of Lenin hunting.
ReplyDeleteApparently for "Mitchell became editor of the paper in 1992, and was also its editor-in-chief between 2002 and 2015. Today, he made the Australia Day Honours List for “distinguished service to the print media through senior editorial roles, as a journalist, and to Indigenous education programs."
DeleteYep, there's the bit that's a complete giveaway: Maj. Mitch's only contribution as a journalist was his unending quest for a Lenin Order.