The pond thought it might start off by offering all those demented fundamentalist evangelical Xians intent on killing themselves and anyone who comes into contact with them, a simple and poetic answer to the question WWJD… why, he'd teleconference the last supper, and it'd be a bloody ripper, though it might ramble on at interminable length, as Zoomers seem to do these days …
Even the Catholics know better than those dumb US evangelicals. Imagine that. Fancy the pond scribbling that.
Even the Catholics know better than those dumb US evangelicals. Imagine that. Fancy the pond scribbling that.
And now to the reptiles, and if only they could be persuaded to turn to teleconferencing, and spare us all this tree killing.
But first a warning. The pond has deliberately quarantined prattling Polonius and Dame Slap. They will be on hand for a Sunday meditation, but the pond has decided that in the circumstances, social distancing is required, and a strong warning, especially as self-isolation can lead to brooding …
So who's killing trees this Saturday? And is there a Lobbecke to be found?
Come on down, bromancer, always willing to produce some brand of weird, warped reptile thinking …
So who's killing trees this Saturday? And is there a Lobbecke to be found?
Come on down, bromancer, always willing to produce some brand of weird, warped reptile thinking …
Yes, the bromancer is in bridge-building mode, and even worse he's decided to match nattering "Ned" for prolix scribbling, so it will take a long time to get to the quirkiness … but then it's better on a Saturday just to wind down, and be bored to death by a bout of copious hagiography …
Now let us begin with a Catholic papal blessing ...
Hmm, the pond has its own papal blessing, and it better slip it in quickly, because the infallible Pope as usual offers his own insight …
Yes, the pond's son is down to his last four rolls, but instead let us move away from all that, and head back up the faraway tree to the land of the bromancer, which seems determined to stay in place forever, for another goodly dose of hagiography...
Strange, no talk of Orwellian police state here. No blather about repressive, draconian measures, hole in bucket Henry style.
Didn't the bromancer get the office memo? Has the reptile kool aid machine been put out of bounds?Are bottles of undiluted hagiographic spirits now being handed out, to drown out the noises of sullen resentment, and perhaps used as a hand wash, and as a way of scrubbing from memory decades of scribbling the other way?
At last, the bromancer is beginning to hint at what might come as a dramatic climax to the piece, even as he meanders on like a Mahler or a Wagner. Could we be coming to a caucasian, or white nationalist libertarian prepper understanding of the world, an isolationist retreat that will see dinkum clean coal no longer delivered to China?
The pond thought it would throw that it in as a teaser, because it's a long, winding road ...
Oh dear, no wonder that Bob Carr was out and about gloating this day …
But now the slow build is over, and soon the bromancer will reach a peak ...
Oh dear. This is what happens when you spend too much time alone, reading, and you turn to the United States, as if the US provides any sort of model for the present or the future …
Unfortunately the pond has already wasted far too much time with the bromancer to head down the path of State Capacity Libertarianism.
The original post is here, and anybody wanting further reading just needs to google the author and the phrase …
It's just another post from a mad prof, designed to get the libertarians hopping, and all the richer for the bromancer having announced earlier in the piece that all dogma is bunk, and all theory is useless, when really the ultimate folly, the point of complete alienation, the experience of a total waste, best comes from reading the reptiles, a sense of futility erupting into pointless, meaningless despair ...
Strange, isn't it, how the bromancer, having raised the spectre of Tyler Cowen, did a quick retreat from the USA … the pond can't imagine why …
And so to nattering "Ned", and another warning.
"Ned" isn't about to let the bromancer's challenge as to who's the most prolix, verbose and tedious go by without an heroic fight … and yes, there's going to be a lot more hagiography, but please trust the pond, it's better than Dame Slap and prattling Polonius for a relaxing, mind-numbed Saturday, and besides, the hunt for the elusively snark-like cult master must go on ...
Ah the new normal, but isn't that an Orwellian police state, with repressive, draconian practices, and a hideous ABC and Norman Swan, and the reptiles in need of urgent government relief?
Sorry about that illustration. Here no master, no master here. It was just a trick, a feint, to get the reader in the mood for "Ned's" self-confessed useless polemic ...
Say what? Et tu, Maggie Thatcher? No wonder Bob Carr was out and about this day, in the middle of the reptiles …
And even worse, revisionist "Ned" then slams into his very own company, and its filthy tabloids, full of the likes of the vile Bolter, and not to forget the lizard Oz, home of the dog botherer, and dozens of other reprehensible ratbags, foaming at the mouth, and trying to whip up frenzies ...
Why "Ned", did you not see this cartoon?
But enough of News Corp's many crimes, that's just to help stray readers carry on, and there's always a tease about a possible sighting of cult master Lobbecke ...
Now if you can't get a hollow laugh out of all that, you've never seen Treasure of Sierra Madre, or read previous entries in the pond, or encountered the notion of turning on a dime, or seen anything these last ten years about the holy grail of a surplus and the wickedness of bludgers on New Start …
And that's why the pond enjoys reading the reptiles … for the complete lack of self-awareness, for the regular bouts of hypocrisy, for the willingness of the cock on the roof to turn whichever way the wind insists it swivel … and be still beating heart, because soon will come a surprise ...
Indeed, another big call, but the question must be asked of this turnabout revisionist hagiography: is it as exciting as stumbling across an offering from cult master Lobbecke, which swept all "Ned's" hagiographic diarrhoea from mind in one fell swoop?
What a beauty, what a ripper, and for once the pond got it at once. Only a master could make the comparison ...
It quite swept from the pond's mind all the reptile moaning about the need for government relief and a happy ending; all that talk of complacency, when really we all know that's only an excuse for an Orwellian police state, and draconian repressive measures … where's Henry to fix the bucket when he's needed?
Instead we must endure more "Ned", and without the solace of another Lobbecke in sight ...
What a ripper read, if you want to nod off while having a hot chocolate on a Saturday morning, and enjoying the odd cartoon …
Well that's odd enough, and perhaps a little sick and tragic, and perhaps Luckovich could have housed News Corp in the same building, but never mind, News Corp has completely reformed and rethunk and now there's a new funk in town …
And so to the oscillating fan ...
Normally the pond wouldn't bother with the oscillating fan …and wouldn't go beyond two reptiles on a Saturday for fear of it turning into that fatal after dinner mint.
But the pond, in its quest for the cult master, stumbled across another one … and it happened to accompany the fan, and there you have it, you can't make an omelette without a Lobbecke ...
Now the pond realises that better interpreters are likely to dismiss the effort as a lesser one, something of a train or car wreck illustration if you will, but worse, having started the oscillating fan so it could be seen, the pond felt the need to become a completist … and complete the endurance course with the fan ...
Phew, it's like doing a dance with prattling Polonious in one of his history flashbacks, and sure enough, the fan managed to provoke.
Why World War II?
Surely everything flowed from World War I? The Great Depression, Communist Russia, and all the communisms that were to follow, and all the totalitarian regimes, and so the second world war itself, and also the mis-named Spanish flu, which was spread abroad by US soldiers, and should properly be dated as beginning in 1918, as any mug with a google machine might know …or as Molesworth might put it, as any fule wud now ...
Sorry, the pond automatically fell back into 'argue with Polonius' mode, as the fan compounded his thought crimes by talking of 1919 ...
Well, there's no point brooding. The Lobbecke was spotted, the argument was had, and the hot chocolate calls in a rainy Sydney, and there's the master Rowe standing by to remind the reptiles of the virus they sent out into the world, with more masterly Rowe here …and remember, please social distance from the pond on Sunday, because who knows what thought bubble or virus you might catch ...
"Yes, the pond's son is down to his last four rolls"
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear that, DP. Down in my part of Melbourne the rolls, towels and tissues are back on the shelves in reassuring quantities (especially at Chadstone which is virtually deserted). Now the only problem is to get the supermarkets to double the allowed purchasing levels so that we only have to go to shop once a week instead of four times.
He'll live GB, a rescue package is on the way, but yes, for all the talk of an orderly retreat, there still seems to be some disorder … stay safe
DeleteAnd you and yours too, DP.
Delete"Ideology is out. Results are in."
ReplyDeleteWell, there's an admission as to what's been going on for the last few years.
:) Θ(n2)
DeleteJeez Anony - got it all in one short sentence.
DeleteNo honourable defeat for the Murdoch army, just drop the shield and flee the field of battle.
It will be interesting to see what alternative history they will concoct to cover their deceit. Probably waiting on word from headquarters right now.
Well spotted Anonymous Colleague. Perhaps those succinct sentences should be added to the masthead.
DeleteDP - 'cult master' Lobbecke? appropriate title when one encounters the - does it qualify as a mandala? - symbol attached to the van Onselen.
Otherwise, what Befuddled said.
Other Anonymous
The Bro: "The Australian government's performance in this crisis has already been staggering, proactive, of an almost unbelievable scale and, despite some inevitable mistakes, strikingly effective so far."
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG6SCDUiFZs
"inevitable mistakes" ? Oh yeah, I suppose so.
And further: "The course of this disease is unclear and optimistic signs must be tempered by terrible unpredictability."
Reckon you could persuade Andrew Blot of that, Bro ?
But here's his real killer: "Free markets exist to serve an economy and a society, not the other way around."
Wau. A blinding Bromancer revelation about Life, the Universe and Everything.
But DP: "Didn't the bromancer get the office memo? Has the reptile kool aid machine been put out of bounds?" But, butt, when the blinding light of revelation strikes, then one just can't see the past any longer. The Bromancer has clearly been over-dazzled by his very own burning bush.
DP: "even as he meanders on like a Mahler or a Wagner"
:-) :-)
Bro again: "They [centre-wrong governments] could do a lot worse than read American economist Tyler Cohen. He advocates "State Capacity Libertarianism."
So, DP in reply: "It's just another post from a mad prof, designed to get the libertarians hopping, and all the richer for the bromancer having announced earlier in the piece that all dogma is bunk, and all theory is useless..."
Spot on DP, you're on a wave-crest today. And notice how the Bromancer is acting like he has no past; that time began yesterday when the enlightenment struck and blew a lifetime of reptile wingnut crap away without trace and without memory. Hallelujah, Bro, you never said or wrote anything else in your entire career, did you !
And that's enough for a morning. I'll need to do some recreation before tackling the Nullius Neddy.
One of the memorable lines from 'The Hunting of the Snark" is "What I tell you three times is true." I reckon that every one of the reptiles has this inscribed on a sign on their desks.
ReplyDelete(from https://snrk.de/what-i-tell-you-three-times-is-true:
Kelly Ramsdell Fineman told us …
… that President Theodore Roosevelt and Edith Wharton were huge fans of the Snark. On one visit to the White House, Wharton learned of the following exchange that occurred between the President and the Secretary of the Navy (undoubtedly unaware of Carroll’s poem, or at least unaware that Roosevelt was quoting):
During discussion, Roosevelt said to the secretary of the Navy,
“Mr. Secretary, what I tell you three times is true!”
The Secretary replied stiffly,
“Mr. President, it would never for a moment have occurred to me to impugn your veracity.”)
It is unfortunate that Lobbecke isn't aware of the history of Iwo Jima: "After the heavy losses incurred in the battle, the strategic value of the island became controversial. It was useless to the U.S. Army as a staging base and useless to the U.S. Navy as a fleet base" (Wikipedia)
I would recommend to PVO that he read Zinsser's "Rats, Lice and History" : "a 1935 book written by biologist Hans Zinsser on the subject of typhus... Zinsser frames the book as a biography of the infectious disease, tracing its path through history. An important theme of the book is the (according to Zinsser, underappreciated) effect infectious diseases such as typhus had on the course of history".
Similar works are 'Plagues and Peoples' and 'Guns, Germs and Steel'.
The plague had a significant effect on European labour relations as I understand it Joe. Because of the sudden lack of workers, pay rates had to rise to compete for them. And lots of serfs finally got more or less freed too.
DeleteOh yes, never waste a disaster.
Ned the Null: "We realise, as never before, how much society and economy need each other, rather than being enemies."
ReplyDeleteOh hello, first the Bro, now the Null: clearly, this is the new trope du jour. And of course we realise "as never before" - how could it be otherwise ? Oh the fog has left our minds and we have seen the light !
But anyway, some might enjoy this:
There is No Economics Without Politics
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/12/there-is-no-economics-without-politics.html
So as you say, DP: "And that's why the pond enjoys reading the reptiles … for the complete lack of self-awareness, for the regular bouts of hypocrisy, for the willingness of the cock on the roof to turn whichever way the wind insists it swivel …"
Yes, quite an addictive spectacle in its own pissant little way, isn't it.
Back to Ned: "Morrison needs to beware talking about a return to the pre-2020 status quo. That is most unlikely to happen -- in terms of the economic, social and psychological mood of the nation."
So, there was some kind of "pre-2020 status quo" ? I dunno, in amongst all of the pain of being a "victim of the destructive, selfish and ideological politics dominating for more than a decade" I must have completely missed that "status quo".
But I do love how the "selfish and ideological politcs" has been so depersonalised. After all, if it's only been for just a bit more than a decade that rules out Menzies and his successors, Fraser and Howard. Now tell me again there was nothing "selfish and ideological" about that lot.
And I do so love people who so demonstrably know and understand "the economic, social and psychological mood of the nation
It does leave in Tony "Onion Muncher" Abbott though and his misogyny and doctrinaire combativeness. So is that who Nullus Ned was talking about ?
Then, at long last we get to PVO and he finally gets to his one, small point: "Because it [the COVID-19 pandemic] may bring about the downfall of political ideologies, economic orthodoxies, even cultural certainties within some political systems."
"may bring about", "within some political systems" ?
Anyway, bring it on, bring it on. I haven't got all that much time left and I'm getting impatient waiting for "the way it will change how we live".
Thumbs up for the naked capitalism link,GB.
DeleteGB - I am with John C in acknowledging the link to 'naked capitalism'; thank you, it's just that it took me a while to get to it today.
DeleteI warmed to the item when I read "mentions Adam Smith in passing and suggests, but doesn’t say frontally, something that needs to be said often: his views have been badly distorted." It is always worth reading again what he actually says about that 'invisible hand'- but don't try to fit that to the alkahest it has become in the word-processors of too many economic opinion writers.
In fact, I find 'The Wealth of Nations' very engaging reading at any time, and am grateful that I now have such time to revisit those several books. I note that the comments following Yves Smith included a plea for some single work that might cover the history of economic thought. It is a bit late to add to those comments now, but I would be tempted to write 'Get yourself the full set of 'Wealth of Nations' and just read them. Adam Smith cites so many fascinating little examples (rent on kelp beds!) that you will have a better intuitive perspective of what an 'economy' actually might involve than any 'history of economic thought' I have tried to read. And a better understanding than our present administration, with its moralistic judgments on what businesses might be worthy of support through the corona blight.
Other Anonymous
Glad you and JC (heh) got some value from it, OA. I particularly liked her list of "Numerous research topics are ripe for more study by theorists and empiricists." Enough for a PhD or three in there, I thought.
DeleteBut as to reading the entire 'Wealth of Nations' it's on my bucket list, at least to the extent that I have one. But I think I may have missed my real opportunity back some few decades ago when I was more passionate and 'involved'.
As to his views being "badly distorted", well that's inevitable, of course. Everything the human race has ever written (or painted, or sculpted or ...) has been "badly distorted": consider the various holy books as prime examples. Which is why, I agree, that we really should seek to take in the original, and especially one as full of clear and rational thoughts as Smith's classic.
Oh, maybe now that I am home-bound ...
But, but but . . . . "there's no such thing as society". Until you need one, of course.
ReplyDeleteIt's a bit like Ayn Rand accepting social security payments at the end of her life - “Reality had intruded upon her ideological pipedreams.”
http://www.openculture.com/2016/12/when-ayn-rand-collected-social-security-medicare.html
When wingnuts feel safe and secure they adopt the "I'm alright Jack" approach but when they feel threatened they immediately see the light. The hypocrisy is absolutely breathtaking.
No society ? Just a bit like Feiffer's "George's Moon", I think. If there is "no society" then how do the "creators" make their fortunes and what do they spend them on ?
ReplyDeleteBut the thing I don't get about Ayn Rand (apart from everything) is the bit where her admiring flunky, Evva Pryor, says "Since she had worked her entire life and had paid into Social Security, she had a right to it."
In short, it was a form of insurance, and even Ayn Rand could surely accept the concept of insurance that she had clearly, if reluctantly, paid for.
As for wingnut 'hypocrisy', Bef, all the best gods are two-faced.
Oh what joy DP, two scrambled Lobbecke’s in one sitting! But due to my current malaise I could only manage to appraise the first serving, (undoubtedly his finest effort thus far in these pathogenic times). Some points to note in the decoding process are -
ReplyDeleteThe canny appropriation of an American WW2 victory photo – (as noted by yourself DP, a slavish copying of a faked-up propagandist trope).
The dramatic visual impact of our own virus infected flag, a nationalistic signifier designed to stiffen the sinews and summon the blood of every beleaguered Antipodean - (but how is it the Union Jack remains unaffected?) Who knows?
The solitary heroic figure – (albeit a pudgy, grimacing, faintly Churchillian ScoMo, who could either be raising the flag or pulling it down). Who knows? (See below).
After pondering these observations further questions flood the fuddled mind -
Is that a post-bushfire landscape he’s standing in or does coronavirus also cause ecological devastation? Who knows?
Does this illustration depict a ScoMo victory over the deadly virus, or is it the other way around? Who knows? (See below).
Notwithstanding all of the above, one could view this image from a less obtuse angle. Though deceptively simple in its elemental presentation, it does fulfil the Lobbeckian maxim that -
“In creating a graphic the illustrator must, above all, pay no heed to the substance of its accompanying article. The illustration should then be rendered in accordance with this perfunctory interpretation using whatever memes, tropes, signifiers, oversimplifications, juxtapositions, inappropriations and obfuscations the illustrator can screenshot and paste into his iPad drawing app.”
All this considered, I would like to play devil’s advocate and entertain the radical theory that Lobbecke is an anti-reptile subversive – an undercover revolutionary disguised as a confused cartoonist who has infiltrated the herpetarium’s inner sanctum. His message to keen-eyed decrypters is this - because of ScoMo’s adulation of Trump, and his initial adoption of the Orange One’s we’ll-see-what-happens policy, the virus has overtaken the nation and is now threatening us all with Coronageddon. In other words Agent Lobbecke has cunningly exposed the PM as the nation’s prime super-spreader. See what lockdown has done to me!
:)³ This is turning into a ripper segment, and a jolly good wheeze. At last something more fun than the reptiles ...
DeleteHmm, this 'anti-reptile subversive' makes more sense every time you push it. Or is that just the effect of "what I say three times ...".
DeleteNot that, as we might all have noticed, Trump has to actually say anything three times - he gets believed after a single tweet. But then he does have the reptile home planet - Fox News - to do endless repeats for him.
Hope your fuddledness is fading away.
Cheers DP and GB! All is well.
DeleteNot strictly relevant to the discussion at hand, but every time I see that photo of the US Marines with the flag on Iwo Jima I think of the fate of one of the subjects:
ReplyDeletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Hayes
https://youtu.be/oEwSwQtSmDQ
Strictly relevant, TT, especially, after following your link, you read that they even lied about his death.
Deletehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ira_Hayes#Death
And the taking of Iwo Jima was just a terrible pointless expenditure of young lives. It was basically of almost no use to the US once they'd taken it.
DeleteBob Dylan also did a rendition of LaFarge's song which is where I first heard it back in the 1970s.
"An ineffectual drone fest of the same old, same old." - indeed, not someone describing every op-ed in The Australian since Adam stepped out.
ReplyDeleteSorry to thread divert, but aside from a ceremonial undressing of the IPA here from 19 years ago, and a reminder that Stuart Littlemore could be a very quietly spoken Paul Keating when the mood took him. It's 10 minutes or so, but each of those minutes will bring a smile to your dial:
https://twitter.com/FlemishDog/status/1246309633829924867
That's not a diversion, VC, that's a bloody relief.
DeleteOh yes, a true delight. I'd forgotten just how much we miss Littlemore.
DeleteInteresting that comments now spill over to the next day - such is the quantity of amusing (and instructive items) circulating. Thank you VC for that item from the archives. Such a delight to hear someone use 'popinjay' as a regular epithet, and so appropriately.
DeleteAs we lose formerly valuable words - reporting on c.....virus has removed any value from 'epicentre' - it is good to know that earlier treasures might be resuscitated. My (large, print) 'Webster' reminds me that 'popinjay' is derived from Middle French for 'parrot', and who is known to unbelievers as 'The Parrot' of Sydney broadcasting?
Other Anonymous