Say what?
The busy Bella is bursting out with an plethora, a profusion of D'Abrera abundance, and both the Speccie mob and the reptiles of Oz devour her copy?
The busy Bella is bursting out with an plethora, a profusion of D'Abrera abundance, and both the Speccie mob and the reptiles of Oz devour her copy?
Well surely they won't share Trumpian views of the world …
Say what?
Flinty and the Cameron are as one about the suffering of the Donald?
So many choices, and so little time …
Flinty and the Cameron are as one about the suffering of the Donald?
So many choices, and so little time …
The pond had to set aside old favourites, even as Henry "hole in the bucket" scored the Lobbecke of the day and shed tears for the brokers …
Enough Henry, we get it, the pond is weeping for the brokers and financial advisers.
But must the pond also set aside poor old Giles, out and about at the Speccie mob, but clearly off in his dotage? Well yes, he's been walking his dog, and brooding about the past, and talking of Lew Hoad, and shouting at modern sporting clouds …
But must the pond also set aside poor old Giles, out and about at the Speccie mob, but clearly off in his dotage? Well yes, he's been walking his dog, and brooding about the past, and talking of Lew Hoad, and shouting at modern sporting clouds …
Ah yes, and what a shame they got rid of the curved bat and made bowling underarm a crime, and why is royal tennis so unfairly ignored for that lawn nonsense? Why if it was good enough for Henry VIII, it should be good enough for these modern times …
Even for the Speccie mob and pond's demographic, it skewed antique … though the pond, and perhaps Giles, and certainly Hicksie knew the real reason it had all gone wrong ... post-modernism!
Even for the Speccie mob and pond's demographic, it skewed antique … though the pond, and perhaps Giles, and certainly Hicksie knew the real reason it had all gone wrong ... post-modernism!
But enough of the feather display.
The pond has shown that there's more Friday reading than it can cope with, and confronted by such abundance, it must revert to old, tried and true favourites.
The pond has shown that there's more Friday reading than it can cope with, and confronted by such abundance, it must revert to old, tried and true favourites.
Come on down, monarchist globalist imperial colonial lover Flinty for a bit of Trumpian pleasure …
The likes of the lesser Cameron Stewart is simply not up to the job.
Only undiluted essence of Flint me lad will do …and how else than to start with a snap of Prince Chuck showing deviant comrade Bill what for …though the wayward eyelines are a bit of a worry ...
The likes of the lesser Cameron Stewart is simply not up to the job.
Only undiluted essence of Flint me lad will do …and how else than to start with a snap of Prince Chuck showing deviant comrade Bill what for …though the wayward eyelines are a bit of a worry ...
Ah the onion muncher, gone but not forgotten, residing deep in Flinty's noble heart …
Indeed, indeed, what these globalists fail to understand is that a global solution is at hand … Prince Chuck, to whom Flinty humbly cedes his sovereignty. Could there be a nobler sight than Flinty abasing himself at the feet of greenie Prince Chuck, going all faint and a quiver at the prospect of the royal princess consort turning Queen Camilla?
But comrade Bill's republican nonsense is a fleabite for Flinty … he's really wanting a Trumpian moment of triumph ...
Indeed, indeed, the trouble with democracy is all this nonsense about checks and balances, and it takes considerable skill to explain how for two years Republicans controlled both houses and yet nobody thought it essential to spend hard cash on a wall to deal with an emergency that wasn't, even as the GOP forgot about its favourite boogeyperson …
Meanwhile, back with Flinty on another planet ...
Betrayal, treachery, a noble, wise leader done down …though frugal and modest and caring in his ways he is …
But is Flinty deterred? No way, the Donald will triumph ...
And Mexico will pay for it. Build the wall, and Mexico will pay for it …
Odd, that feels strangely dated, though no doubt with his proven tenacity, the Donald will get Mexico to pay for it…
Never mind, it's now time for a bout of 'won't someone think of the children' with Bella …
You see, the Speccie mob and the lizards of Oz are deeply worried about the children …
And so is the pond …
It's disturbing to see such a silly cartoon … even back in the 1950s, children knew wasting energy was an issue that would turn up in a bill and see mince substituted for a lamb chop … though perhaps it's not as bad as wasting energy by keeping children up beyond their bed time …
It's disturbing to see such a silly cartoon … even back in the 1950s, children knew wasting energy was an issue that would turn up in a bill and see mince substituted for a lamb chop … though perhaps it's not as bad as wasting energy by keeping children up beyond their bed time …
Come on Bella, share the fear …
"They speak to us about being rich, being poor, being happy and being sad."
What, but they didn't speak to us about being stupid, or blindly, irrationally compulsive obsessive, or being dedicated to ideological blather dressed up as a concern for "greatness," Henry VIII and Royal tennis?
Actually much as the pond loved Enid Blyton and her Faraway trilogy in its day, it actually does help to understand exactly what's going down in those texts …much the same as it turns out that Wind in the Willows reeks of a certain kind of classic British class warfare …
And who remembers that the supposedly larrikin William had a kitchen maid and a housemaid for help?
And who remembers that the supposedly larrikin William had a kitchen maid and a housemaid for help?
Hey, you might still think Toad's rightful place is in his hall, and all those dreadful lumpenproletariat weasels and stoats should be kept under the thumb, but at least you won't be arguing for frog ignorance of the Bella kind ...
Emerson's a problem because he's racist? Might it not have something to do with Emerson being a total bore, foisted on students by gits of the Bauerlein kind?
We keed, we keed, but who knew a Friday reading could turn into such heavy going?
The pond needed a break, a bit of refreshment, some Papal wisdom and insight, before doubling down with Bella, Speccie mob style …
The pond needed a break, a bit of refreshment, some Papal wisdom and insight, before doubling down with Bella, Speccie mob style …
Ah, that's better, and for those who need a refreshing burst of oxygen, they can refill their papal balloons here …
And so to Bella, Speccie style, and here's hoping no none nods off ...
Is it just the pond who thinks that deeming Australian universities 're-education camps' an offensive exaggeration?
It's true we have our island gulags, but does an Australian university really compare to genuine Chinese re-education camps of the kind discussed at some length at the ABC here?
It's true we have our island gulags, but does an Australian university really compare to genuine Chinese re-education camps of the kind discussed at some length at the ABC here?
Perhaps in Bella's fevered, excitable world … but the pond felt the need for a joke, and lo, the Rowe landed with one at the lizard Oz's expense …
Well it's supposed to be a joke, but the pond thinks it's an actual surveillance photo, with more surveillance snaps available from the immortal Rowe here …
But enough of reality, because the prolific Bella hasn't done with her paranoia ...
Monomania and the apparent addiction to identifying identity politics in an obsessive compulsive way?
Look, get Bella blathering about identity politics and she never shuts up. She's in the lizard Oz, she's off with the Speccie mob, shouting how she wants to return to the good old days of 1788, or perhaps Royal Tennis …
Meanwhile, on another planet …
Okay, it's clear that the pond has lost interest in Bella, and here comes the line that explains why … "A degree in Australian history looks like three years in a re-education camp…"
Anyone stupid enough to peddle that line should be sent to a genuine re-education camp … perhaps one where homosexuals are consigned to hell, TG folk are beyond the pale, women are merely designed to be a complimentary offering, and Bella would be sent to the back of the class until she learns that there's more to life than blathering about identity politics as if it's going to be the end of the world, as opposed to say, nukes or climate change ...
And so, having endured Bella for long enough, a little balance and sanity, courtesy of their ABC here …
That piece by Christopher Hilliard had a nice punchline ...
...those rights and freedoms aren't straightforward and unambiguous. The freedoms and entitlements of some were premised on others not being free. When radical working men agitated for the vote in Britain in the 1860s, they demonstrated their fitness as citizens by comparing themselves with women and Jamaicans. French republicanism is famously secular and struggles with expressions of religious difference (such as the hijab) in a way that more pluralist democracies do not.
If you think that pointing this out is to dismiss or betray the legacy of European history, you're opting out of some serious and challenging debates. Students are up for those challenges. They're not passive recipients of their teachers' wisdom or indoctrination. It is revealing that d'Abrera writes of "concepts that should be transmitted to university students." Ideas about power and freedom can't simply be transmitted. They need to be engaged with, wrestled with. When students in the humanities get the chance to do this, they often surprise their teachers. That was certainly my experience teaching a course on the history of free speech at the University of Sydney.
Indeed, indeed, but 'teaching down', 'transmitting' is the classic sign and symptom of a deep anxiety and paranoia.
The pond has every confidence that students as simple-minded as Bella will continue to graduate from Australian universities, and the bulk will come in every shade of politics and personal identity, and if they're lucky, they might attend Trump University with Flinty to learn the art of grifting and snake oil selling …an art that's been around since Hermes the hustler acted as the patron god of thieves and trickery …
So here's to Flinty, and the art of the deal, and the Mexicans paying for that wall ...
The pond has every confidence that students as simple-minded as Bella will continue to graduate from Australian universities, and the bulk will come in every shade of politics and personal identity, and if they're lucky, they might attend Trump University with Flinty to learn the art of grifting and snake oil selling …an art that's been around since Hermes the hustler acted as the patron god of thieves and trickery …
So here's to Flinty, and the art of the deal, and the Mexicans paying for that wall ...
I wonder what the d'Abrera would make of 'The Well of Loneliness' or the poetry of Sappho. I wonder if she's ever heard of either of them.
ReplyDeleteHi Dorothy,
ReplyDelete“...that leader of world-wide renown, Tony Abbott..”
Like Flinty I too pine for the days when the onion muncher bestrode the world stage and addressed the most pressing issues of the day;
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-15/shorten-slams-abbott-remarks-at-g20-leaders-retreat/5894142
DiddyWrote
Oh c'mon now DW, after twenty-five years of agonised silence, The Muncher has at last come out of the shadows to address the single most important issue in his electorate: portaloos in Manly instead of good ol' Aussie real loos.
DeleteNow if that isn't a major G20 issue, it should be.
Some comments on the "authorities" promoted by the reptiles.
ReplyDeleteStephen Hicks is a disciple of the rabid atheist Ayn Rand and of course you cant get much lower on the morality scale than Humpty Trumpty.
It is also somewhat ironic that the outfit and people promoting his lecture on postmodernism are all advocates of "traditional" back-to-the-past father knows best christianity, and mostly enthusiastic supporters of Humpty Trumpty.
Mark Bauerlein is regularly featured on the right-wing "catholic" website First Things which was instrumental in creating the Manhattan Declaration which again called for the return of father-knows-best old time religion.
The "return of father-knows-best" old time religion ? When did it ever leave ?
DeleteAngry Anglicans and Cross Catholics may come and go, but a father's immaculateness is forever.
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteIn 1931 a little known Cambridge don, Herbert Butterfield published a short critique, ‘The Whig Interpretation of History’.
The term Whig here is not directly referencing the British Whigs who advocated the power of Parliament and so opposed the Tories who advocated the power of the king but more a type of “Whig historian” like David Hume or Thomas Babington Macaulay.
Butterfield’s criticism of these type of historians was that they interpreted European, British and in particular English history as a march of progress to an inevitable outcome where the British parliamentary, constitutional monarchy was the apex of human political development.
Anglo-Saxon folk-rights and privileges, the Magna Carta, the English Reformation and the English Civil War were all stepping stones towards this present ideal British constitutional settlement. As Butterfield himself wrote;
“It is part and parcel of the whig interpretation of history that it studies the past with reference to the present.”
Butterfield argued that this approach to history compromised the work of the historian in several ways. The emphasis on the inevitability of progress leads to the mistaken belief that the progressive sequence of events becomes "a line of causation", tempting the historian to go no further to investigate the causes of historical change.
The Reptiles, the IPA and the advocates of The Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation have all fallen foul to this ‘whiggish’ view of history in which something becomes better over time and so is judged A Good Thing.
It’s all a bit too smug and self satisfied and of course leads to all sorts of anachronistic misinterpretations of the motivations and actions of historical characters.
DiddyWrote
Oh wau, DW, it's years (maybe 50 or so) since my last encounter with Butterfield and "Whig history" and the wondrousness of the present and the inevitability of our progress to reach it. I do believe I still have a dead-tree edition of 'Origins of Modern Science'.
DeleteMuchas muchas gracias.
Of course the entertaining thing is how both the Whig and the Tory history have become intertwined, and so now our wondrousness also includes a Tory king (or queen if unavoidable).
Hi GB,
DeleteYou make a good point of how confusing and non-linear history can be by highlighting the weird way the notion of who was a Whig (Scots: Whiggamore - Mare Drivers) and who identified as a Tory (Scottish Gaelic: Tòraidh - Outlaw) changed over time. These were both terms of defamation by their opponents originally.
Contrary to modern expectation there were probably more landed gentry on the side of the Roundheads during the English Civil War than on the Royalist Cavalier side. In part due to religion with Charles I being suspected of Catholicism (a religion more in tune with absolutist monarchs) and in part due to their wish to keep their own privileges safe from the Crown.
So under Cromwell the Whigs were anti-royalist and the Tories Royalist. Fast forward through the Glorious Revolution and the House of Hanover to early Victorian times and what are now called Whigs are dissenters calling for an increase in those who can participate in the Franchise and the end to political corruption, especially the Rotten Boroughs.
For the Squireocracy this was not in their best interests so where once were Whigs now were Tories.
Even now it’s confusing. Michael Gove (the British Tory Minister for Murdoch) describes himself as a Whig or at least believing in ‘Whig History”. Go Figure!
https://highprofiles.info/interview/michael-gove/
DiddyWrote
See, now, one of the problems of thinking history is regurgitating dates and reigns and quotes when don't actually know anything about the context is that you learn the wrong lessons. Bella's Cicero quote betrays the shallowness of her understanding. She only gives half the quote, and in so doing betrays her preference a sort of inversion of Whig history (and here I disagree with DW, I think a lot of reptiles don't see history as a march of progress, but a narrative refuge from the present). Perhaps this is Tory history...?
DeleteThe full quote from Cicero: Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the lifetime of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a superior age?
And there's the context - in Cicero's world view, the then-current society was debased from the Golden Age of the past. The only way one could improve oneself was to study the past and understand why people then were superior. Failing to do so meant learning no aspirational models, and wallowing in the mud. Newly generated knowledge could not improve you, because history was a linear slide from greatness downwards. For Cicero, the past was where all the good things were. Aside from being a fundamentally depressing idea, it is just plain wrong.
The idea of a steady march of progress might be well flawed, but at least it recognises that we can (in theory) make the future better than the past, by learning from and rectifying past errors. It means using the past as a lesson in what goes wrong rather than an ideal state to be aspired to.
I'm pretty certain that Bella, and other reptiles, think exactly the same as Cicero did. White Australia, Terra Nullius, binary genders, church on Sunday, complimentary women, six o'clock swill, jokes that got a laugh however offensive and privilege for those who'd earned it by being born to the right parents - it's the "good old days" writ large; if only we could revert to some earlier societal construct we would all* be better and happier people.
Which, lets face it, is completely effing barking.
*except for the wogs, of course. And poofters. And sheilas. But really, who cares about them?
Perversely, Bella seems insensitive to the fact that such a golden age would see her as a greasy latin, and a woman to boot, and deny her any path to self-actualisation apart from her predestined role of abuelita...
Well I think it's clear, FD, that you and DW (and maybe even DP) didn't learn history in an Australian Uni. You actually seem to know some history, and Bella passionately assures us that you couldn't have possibly got that from an Aussie Uni. Except maybe Campion ?
DeleteOk, so the 'Golden Age' was yesterday, or even the day before, when all was fine and dandy. But now we also have the march of (inevitable) progress because of the wondrous fineness of our beliefs, our principles, our family life and our institutions (including, of course, monarchy). However 'the Left' is seriously subverting our glorious future with its cultural marxism, its identity politics and its long march through the institutions.
Have I got it now ? But given the state of Rome around and after Cicero's time, maybe he did have just a tiny point ? He was a contemporary of Gaius Julius Caesar after all.
But as for "using the past as a lesson", I'm reminded that while there are very many ways of being wrong, there are very few ways of being right. So to work towards 'rightness' by trying out and eventually discarding every way of being wrong, could take a very long time - and I'm not sure our species has that much time remaining. Maybe we should try to think things through just a tad more earnestly in future ?
Bella as an "abuelita" ? Does that mean we could call Polonius an "abuelito" ?
I think you have it GB - the long march through the institutions is so abhorrent to the reptiles because for them it looks through the telescope at the wrong end. Where we might talk about reforming and improving our institutions, reptiles regard this as dragging them ever further from their fictional golden age. When all change is bad, any agent of change is bad - non-Gramsci is the wax on the skis, carrying them even faster down the slippery slope.
DeleteNow, Rome in Cicero's time had become a fair old shithole; 150 years that had seen only about 30 years of peace had broken down many old institutions without replacing them with anything better. Cicero might have had some justification for looking back with fondness (of course, the fondness of a privileged rich white guy). But his generalisation that that the good old days was the natural order of things was dead wrong.
Cicero was himself a proto-retile, belonging to the Optimates, the reactionary Establishment party of the day. When they decided to top the leading figure of the Populares, Big Juli himself, they laughably rebadged themselves as the "Liberatores" - sure, guys, "liberators", just like our "Liberal" party is liberal...Cicero himself wasn't one of the assassins, but he publicly stated he wished he had been, and that they should have taken out Mark Antony as well.
But I say he was wrong because - in general and on average, not for all people in all cases - things got better after the Populares had got their revenge on the Liberatores. Rome's dysfunctional democracy became even more of a charade, sure, but for the next 200+ years, Rome and its empire became steadily more stable and prosperous(remember - general, average). While it suffers from its own problems, there is some measure of truth in Gibbon's famous lines from The Decline and Fall: "If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world, during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus." That's 250 years after Cicero's backwards looking quote, just as, for whatever troubles we have now, things are better for most people 250 years after Gibbon's backwards looking quote.
Whether they will remain so is a different question (and I share your pessimism, to some extent) And I take your point about trial and error, if you have to make every error to get to a "right" answer. It's not really what I was suggesting, but its a fair point.
BTW - Monash in the 1980's, incomplete. Ditched my degree when I realised my most of my history lecturers had very little idea of what they were talking about, exactly because they were the sort of people Bella would approve of.
Yes, I guess "wax on the skis" does kind of cover it from a reptile viewpoint. Not that I'd expect the average Murdochrat reptile (if any of them can actually rate as highly as "average") would be able to see that.
DeleteThanks for the summary of the life and times of Cicero - basically, he's just one more of many thousands whose name I've heard, but whose deeds are really unknown to me. Now the only question I have is: as a "proto-reptile" was Cicero more like Moorice, the Doggy Boverer or the Bromancer ?
Gaius Julius, however, I tend to condemn because of his totally murderous behaviour to the Celts. Maybe, in some respects, Rome dodged a wayward battleaxe there.
Over its entire history, 'Rome', as best as I can grasp it, was kinda up and down, down and up all the way. But nonetheless, it was an attempted 'democracy' after a fashion, and it did accept people from just about anywhere as full-rights citizens and so on. It even wasn't the most misogynist place on Earth, either, so I believe.
Though I have to say that one of my favourites, Temujin, is credited with having established a land in which "a naked women carrying a basket of gold could walk unmolested from the east to the west of Mongolia". I'd like to think that that was at least just a little bit true.
No, I wasn't attributing the "make every error" to you, just commenting on how suboptimal the "learn from the past" strategy is. Not least because it's never exactly easy to determine or agree on just exactly what were the errors of the past that we should not imitate or emulate.
Ah well, in my case Melbourne in the 1960s, Science with a Physics major, dropped out in second year because I just plain lost interest. Many years later (1970s) took up computer programming doing a Maths Diploma at RMIT (programming initially in Algol would you believe) and spent 32 years in ADP/EDP/IT/ICT (whatever people like to call it nowadays).