In which the savvy Savva rescues the pond from adoring reptiles ...

The pond has decided the only way to escape the black hole of the reptile gravitational pull is to start off by discussing other matters, seeing as how the reptiles have trodden very softly regarding the Donald's current predicament.

The pond hadn't thought that much about William Barr in this or other matters, except that he was kind of creepy and weird, until the hard copy of the recent New Yorker profile dropped into the letter box the other day.

It's currently outside the paywall for the moment, so the pond doesn't need to regurgitate it, except to note just a few pars, which helped the scales fall from the pond's eyes …

Three blocks from the White House, on K Street, is a storefront with signs in its windows advertising “solidarity” and “mercy and justice.” The building houses the Catholic Information Center, a bookstore and a chapel where federal workers and tourists can attend morning and evening services. On a recent weekday afternoon, a sign announced an upcoming debate between conservative writers, called “Nationalism: Vice or Virtue?” A skateboard with an image of the Virgin Mary hung not far away, in the hope of attracting a younger crowd.
Led by a member of the archconservative group Opus Dei, the center is a hub for Washington’s influential conservatives. Its rise began in 1998, with the arrival of a charismatic new director, the Reverend C. John McCloskey, a forty-four-year-old banker turned priest. Hard-charging and unabashedly political, McCloskey liked to say, “A liberal Catholic is oxymoronic.” During the nineties, he helped convert a series of prominent conservatives to Catholicism, including the former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who is a vocal Trump backer. In 2003, McCloskey quietly left his post, and Opus Dei later paid a settlement of nearly a million dollars to a woman who said that he had sexually harassed her. But the center’s board of directors remains a nexus of politically connected Catholics. Pat Cipollone and Barr have both served on the board, as has Leonard Leo, the executive vice-president of the Federalist Society. Asked about Barr’s role, the center’s chief operating officer, Mitch Boersma, confirmed that he had served as a board member from 2014 to 2017 but said, “We don’t have anything to add.”

So he's one of the Opus "clicice and tawse" Dei mob, though some prefer to flagellate others than indulge in self-flagellation.

Of course your fundamentalist Catholic has long been comfortable with fascism, as in the Franco days or in the concordat with Mussolini, and it explained just why Barr would do his best for an American despot, provided the despot did the right thing for fundamentalist crusading Catholics. Throw in the fundamentalist evangelical Mike Pompeo conducting a culture war of immense ignorance and stupidity (poor NPR), and that's how a craven wife-swapping pussy groper with as much knowledge of the bible as your average Cats storyline still sits crowned on the new throne of the revived American monarchy.

But once again, the pond can't escape the gravitational pull of the local scene for long, because the reptiles remain obsessed with coal, sweet dinkum coal, and so they tilted the coverage of SloMo to reflect these important issues:

Oh wondrous reptile EXCLUSIVE - these days the worst thing to be said about Marxists is that they're selling anti-Morrison T-shirts??!!

And even more amazing, the foul-mouthed emblazoning that agitated the reptiles was actually said to be "F.K. SCOMO"?!

These daring radical deviant Marxists didn't even manage a decent emblazoning, such as "FUCK SCOMO, FUCK HIM LONG AND HARD, FUCK THE USELES MOTHERFUCKER"??!!

Clearly Opus Dei has won and we now live in quieter times, where the use of caps as a form of shouting is the really big crime …so much for foul-mouthed Marxists and so much for the reptiles, who once upon a time would have ignored the genteel provocation of a T-shirt to scribble about the thoughts of those still peddling Marxism after all it accomplished in the twentieth century, including a slaughter or three ...

And so on to the good news …good for coal-loving reptiles at least …

In reptile la la land, this is known as hagiographic love dressed up as reporting, and the lizard editorialist was on the same SloMo love fest page …

The pond merely intertwines the two responses - news and editorial - to note how closely the weft and the weave and the warp matched up, and so back to the news section, still sharing the SloMo love ...

Indeed, indeed, and how the lizard Oz editorialist concurred on climate matters…

Note the desperate "this is not climate denialism", as if the reptiles could do a 'men in black' and wipe from the pond all those images of SloMo adoring his beloved …

And then there were a few more lizard editorialist lines about how everything was under control with Dear Leader ...

Well just for completeness, the pond will do the last gobbet of the "news", still worshipping at the feet of SloMo, with a token attempt at glance in a few last lines tucked away, almost out of sight, at the bottom ...

But what's this? It seems at last the holyday season is over for the reptiles, and things are returning to normal, and so once again the pond can look forward to the savvy Savva doing a Malware and ravaging SloMo on a Thursday …

The pond loves it when the savvy Savva talks dirty, and gives SloMo a hard time … gets out the tawse and straps a cilice to his thigh ...

Sheesh, this isn't quite how the pond remembered the worshipful lizard Oz reporting and slavish editorialist only a few gobbets ago …please, play on McSavva ...

Sweet sainted Adelaide aunt on the verandah with the wisteria, could Malware himself lay it on SloMo more thickly with an oversize trowel?

Sheesh, what was the lizard Oz editorialist saying about not panicking? 

With wretched Marxists promoting T-shirts that dare to spell out "F.K" and the savvy Savva on the prowl, what's not to panic about?

And now even the most devoted reader of the reptiles will have had more than enough, which is why the pond insists on inserting this last clunker, as a kind of balance, as it involves Tanya, and helps explain why she was never going to be right for the leadership …

You see, the pond had a couple of reasons. Some migrants think that the migrant experience gives them a license to speak of their deep devotion to Australia, but in the end, we are all migrants, and if you go far enough back, even indigenous Australians migrated, though they do have good arguments arising from being first by some 40-60k years …

But here's the thing. Way back in the pond's day, everyone was for Australia in their own way, but a lot of people thought patriotism didn't involve slavish imitation of Americans, but involved instead the unique culture down under, a culture that didn't need flag waving or pious pledges of patriotism,, a culture inclined to understatement and restraint, a culture that didn't indulge in showboating and false displays of group piety

Sheesh, don't take the pond's words. Even other newcomers of the Tim Soutphommasane kind have noticed, here, back in 2019 before the current fuss …

...Patriotism and politics don’t often make a good mix. When national pride is made compulsory, or when officials dictate what form it must take, it can become too stiff and formal.

An obvious example is America. I’m one of many who finds the American style of patriotism a bit heavy, at least for our sensibilities. Think of flags mounted on front porches, school children pledging their allegiance every morning, and politicians sporting a national flag pin on their lapel.

The other danger with patriotism is it can mutate into aggressive national pride. When it’s not restrained, a love of country can turn jealous and violent. Jingoism is patriotism’s ugly sibling.

As Australians, we haven’t tended to conduct overt displays of patriotism. Our style is more typically laconic and understated. Only during the past two decades have we seen people embrace the national flag in public displays. The cry of “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie” – particularly since the Cronulla riot of 2005 – can now assume a menacing edge.

Well yes, say no more,  but the piece attracted the unique styles of Lobbecke, ensuring it had cult status, and so attention had to be paid ...

Yes, yes, the house moves so indulged, and the pond will not indulge in the gentle waters of nostalgia for its own Irish and German blut, but here's the thing …

Why would an Australian want a US-style pledge of allegiance? What's so great about the United States, especially at the moment, as David Rowe notes here?

Devising even better gulags?

But still there doesn't seem any clear cut answer as to why we must go all-out all-American ...

But why an American style patriotic pledge, instead of the laconic form of Australian celebration, which dislikes over the top nonsense, a flag on every porch or lawn, a flag on every vehicule, a flag on every business, a flag on every nicknack, until a visitor to the United States soon becomes nauseated by the sight of the American flag, as omnipresent as flags on official buildings in China or Russia …

And to what avail in the current climate?

The pond kept reading in hope of finding an explanation why anyone should bother to go with the tone-deaf Tanya … as if an endorsement by the dog botherer should somehow reassure the pond … how lucky it is that the pond only does screen caps and so the dog botherer can't be heard, and all we're left with is a Cheshire cat smirk ...

Well might we find common ground, but does the common ground have to be in the United States, and the way they do things … especially seeing as how they do things at the moment.

And that definition of patriotism being about solidarity is just plain wrong.

Unfortunately patriotism tends to blur into chauvinist exceptionalism, jingoism, nationalism, nativism, and wrapping yourself in flamboyant flag and righteous patriotic verbiage …

Patriotism in Australia luckily devolved into a few laughs about being girt by sea, and with the most popular song one about a little sheep stealing and suicide … instead of the rambling heroics of the holy Roman American empire, and its fundamentalist Catholic and evangelical crusaders …

In this context, please don't mention Vietnam, where we followed the American line, and sent over conscripts to get shot up, and return dead or traumatised, for no particular reason than we'd pledged to follow America ...

Oh for fucks sake, she just made a silly comment about going American, blathered a little more about pledges and patriotism, revealed she's not the sharpest sheep in the top paddock, and got a few negative comments back. 

To quote Mick Dundee, that's not confrontation and fragmentation embittering so many aspects of the national life, this is …