Look, it's Friday, and things are sure to get heavy, so where's the harm in starting off with the onion muncher doing his usual most excellent stand up comedy …
Everybody's talking about it, everybody's having gigantic fun. For those who missed out - which planet did you head off to with Elon Musk? - the original onion muncher tweet is here …hours of fun guaranteed.
Everybody joined in … the Graudian had much fun at 'Ive never seen anything like this': street library sparks joy for Tony Abbott …
Oh they all piled on …
Defaming geese again Stilgherrian? Have you no regard for geese feelings, by and large good birds, always ready to be cooked ...
Even the reptiles, notoriously lacking in a sensa huma, thought there was comedy potential …
Even the reptiles, notoriously lacking in a sensa huma, thought there was comedy potential …
Best comment? But there were so many to choose from …
But then comes the tricky bit for the pond - how to move from the onion muncher's tremendous comedy stylings to more serious matters … and once again the onion muncher proves his worth, because he doesn't just do comedy …
At that point, the reptiles had a little typo glitch of the kind they seem to love online, but please allow the pond to continue the cheerful acceptance of Islamophobia ...
And where does that lead the pond? Well everyone in reptile la la land is terribly excited about that interview …
Anyone wanting to read SloMo's attempt at revisionism can ignore the reptiles and revert to the Graudian's Scott Morrison tells Waleed Aly he sought to lower fears on Islam, not exploit them.
Shameless really, such a natural born liar, as once more the pond has to trudge back to this news report, Morrison sees votes in anti-Muslim strategy…
Some heard the call …
Here at the Graudian … Peter Dutton points finger at Muslims of Lebanese background in immigration row …
And then there was good old Jimbo, as in the Graudian's Liberal senator Jim Molan shared anti-Muslim videos from far-right group …
And so on and on, because for a time Islamophobia was good business, but the pond really should finish off that Fairfax report, verified by a variety of sources …
And why does it all matter? Why does the pond keep company with comedians, charlatans, rogues and liars? And why has the tone changed so suddenly?
Well the infallible Pope provides the answer, as he always does, with more infallible answers here …
Well the infallible Pope provides the answer, as he always does, with more infallible answers here …
But as always the pond hungers for something more substantial, and as always the reptiles, and our Henry "hole in the bucket" Ergas were on high alert to deliver the goods …
Yes, our Henry scored the Lobbecke of the day, and so was granted reptile cult status, and he was indulging in a goodly bit of both siderism … after all, we should never forget that there are good people on both sides ...
And sometimes, it seems, a wild card turned up and apparently favoured the Donald … who would probably have enjoyed our Henry's simplistic understanding of the Left and the Right (apparently the right have no confidence in government, which perhaps explains why they send out the likes of SloMo and the onion muncher to prove their point).
But we digress, because the important task that Henry has assigned himself is to diminish white nationalism and white supremacists and the threat they pose ...
You see? Islamists and neo-Nazis are involved in a joint world-wide conspiracy, though the far right lacks any leaders and infrastructure …and state sponsors …
Hmm, and there was the pond thinking that the NRA was doing a spiffing job keeping everyone properly armed, so that miscreants could be sent off to an early rapture …
And now our Henry really rolls up the shirt sleeves and gets down to the business of downplaying all those pesky white supremacists ...
A small group of leaderless people? But don't they have a leader? Doesn't he stick up for them, no matter what others say?
The President's Pursuit of White Power …
That last one started with this little historical anecdote:
Armed white terrorists, many of them Confederate veterans, stormed the July 1866 constitutional convention in New Orleans and slaughtered nearly 50 people, many of them black Union veterans. The attendees at the convention had committed a crime of dire proportions: They had sought to enfranchise the black population of Louisiana following the imposition of the Black Codes, laws that had reduced the black population of the state to a position of near-slavery. The white men of the South had no choice but to engage in mass murder. Or at least that’s how the president of the United States saw it. “When they had established their government and extended universal or impartial franchise, as they called it, to this colored population, then this radical Congress was to determine that a government established on Negro votes was to be the government of Louisiana,” President Andrew Johnson told a supportive crowd in St. Louis in September 1866. “So much for the New Orleans riot—and there was the cause of the origin of the blood that was shed. And every drop of blood that was shed is upon their skirts, and they are responsible for it.”
Yes, such a small group of people, and so rare to see them about, either now or then …
As for that talk of mental illness, the pond, with a sense of dread, knew where our Henry would end up …
Yes, whenever anyone wants a simplistic, meaningless explanation, they revert to the language of fundamentalist Xians and Islamics … pure, undiluted evil ...
Remarkable really, for evil to be trotted out and in such a simplistic fashion, and yet our Henry started off by quoting Hannah Arendt, before ending up without a nanosecond's thought as to the fuss that Arendt once started …
There's more of that here, and gluttons for punishment might head off to Totalitarianism in the age of Trump: lessons from Hannah Arendt …
But it's Friday, and there's always the onion muncher and David Rowe is sure to provide a laugh, with more Rowe here …
Silly pond … there's not much of a laugh there. It seems pure evil has won once again, at least in the United States … but don't expect our Henry to start rabbiting on about any of that ...
Now talking about "historical anecdotes", consider this:
ReplyDelete"the long march through the institutions" is a saying attributed to Rudi Dutschke in the late 1960s.
But, to quote the ABC quoting The Conversation:
"Members of the Australian League of Rights adopted various strategies to subvert democracy. The most significant was "elite penetration", where members would join mainstream political parties, attempt to subvert their core values and ideas and attain leadership positions."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-21/right-wing-extremism-has-a-long-history-in-australia/10923168
Hmmm. Eric Butler was on about this in the late 1940s. So who really thought of the idea first ?
But then we move right along to Hannah Arendt:
"[Eichmann] performed evil deeds without evil intentions, a fact connected to his "thoughtlessness", a disengagement from the reality of his evil acts. Eichmann 'never realised what he was doing' due to an 'inability... to think from the standpoint of somebody else'."
I'd say that applies fully to quite a few of the reptiles - the Bromancer in particular - but that equally more than a few reptiles are fully cognisant of what they are doing.