In which the hole in the bucket man is on hand, and the Tuesday Caterist turns up on a Friday ...

Many pond readers will have come across the Yeats' poem with that line "The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity". Some will have come across the Bertrand Russell variant: "The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

But how many have come across Charles Bukowski?

"... the problem is that bad reptile columnists tend to have the self-confidence, while the good ones tend to have self-doubt. So the overwhelming majority, the bad reptile scribblers, tend to go on and on writing crap and giving as many readings as possible to sparse audiences. These sparse audiences consist mostly of other bad reptile scribblers waiting their turn to go on, to get up there and let it out in the next hour, the next week, the next month, the next sometime."

Fair cop, the pond admits guilt and confesses, it's possibly because the pond tweaked the quote a little from the original to be found here …

The pond began to brood about this when it feared it might have to use day-old, reheated Mocker material for its Friday reptile study …

Cowardly hypocrisy? What was that about the worst being full of passionate intensity?

But the pond was saved this fate because good old Henry turned up as usual to fix the hole in the bucket of Western White Civilisation … and he too sent the tone with his talk of "thugs" and "kultur" ...

What's interesting here is the rampant paranoia in the splash… entirely fitting the reptile mindset, yet when the reader comes to the actual header, our Henry's paranoia seems to have settled down a little ...

The pens of reason? No room for the pens of delusion?

Of course it's not an entirely benign phrase when our Henry scribbles about the "pens of reason", thereby allowing a dreadful illustration which the reptile cult master would surely have disdained. 

You see, our Henry's business this day is to defend the lickspittle fellow-travellers with the CIA, interfering with domestic politics … and anyone who wants some accompanying reading might waste one of their free Atlantic articles reading Tom McTague's droll, completely beside the point, howl of pain The Decline of the American World …

Poor old Henry's solution to that howl? The usual, which is to drift back on a wave of nostalgia, to the good old days, though how many young 'uns who want to voyage back there with him is a moot point ...

Breathtaking? By chance the pond picked up some ancient copies of Encounter in a street library, and whatever they might be called, "breathtaking" wasn't one of them. Bedraggled and quaint and irrelevant would be more to the point.

And who remembers Coleman and the old Quadrant culture wars these days? Time and gay marriage has marched on, and now few remember Vietnam, and silly McTague thinks talking to Tony Bleagh might produce understanding, rather than being part of the problem …

“Thought's a luxury. Do you think the peasant sits and thinks of God and Democracy when he gets inside his mud hut at night?” 

“They don't believe in anything either. You and your like are trying to make a war with the help of people who just aren't interested."
"They don't want communism."
"They want enough rice," I said. "They don't want to be shot at. They want one day to be much the same as another. They don't want our white skins around telling them what they want."
"If Indochina goes--"
"I know that record. Siam goes. Malaya goes. Indonesia goes. What does 'go' mean? If I believed in your God and another life, I'd bet my future harp against your golden crown that in five hundred years there may be no New York or London, but they'll be growing paddy in these fields, they'll be carrying their produce to market on long poles, wearing their pointed hats. The small boys will be sitting on the buffaloes. I like the buffaloes, they don't like our smell, the smell of Europeans.” 

Ah yes, the smelly CIA ...

Nothing arose to fill the vacuum? But surely the GOP and the Donald have risen to fill the vacuum … speaking, as our Henry does of "neo-stupidity". Whatever happened to that good old word, deplorable?

Of course Henry doesn't realise he might be sounding a little condescending, but it's the pond's experience that those who condescend rarely do appreciate their tone, because when speaking from the Olympian heights of lofty disdain, it's easy to call people feeble-minded and sinister ...

There's something profoundly ironic at our Henry scribbling all this just as Russians head off to vote Vlad the impaler the status of life dictator, while the Donald enthusiastically supports him, and supports concentration camps in China … and truth to tell, looking around the world, it's hard to find a dictator he doesn't like, not least that Turkish one with a handy line of credit …

And that's what standing up to the thugs means? Surely when Henry proposed that when the thugs reach for the guns, he really meant that we should reach for Donald kultur of the American kind … and vote for the return of Tsars to Russia ...

Pardon the pond if it goes elsewhere if that's the culture on offer …

And so to the filler, and again the pond felt nervous. Surely not Gra Gra …

Has there ever been a more enthusiastic endorsement? "May", "with perhaps" ….

Possibly, implausibly, dubiously, though who can say and who can be sure, and does this splendid, enthusiastically supported "better economic plan" allow for Swiss bank accounts?

What about the groper?

No, that's a job for the meretricious Merritt … though it looks like he's got some hard yards to do …

How about straying into foreign turf?

No, that's a job for Lloydie once he's finished saving the Amazon ...

Luckily, the Caterist came along on a Friday, though the notion of a Caterist on a Friday completely confused the pond. Why had he strayed from  his usual Monday or Tuesday place? Did he have to spend the early part of the week completing the MRC's application for ongoing government funding?

Never mind … the pond is always grateful to discover a Caterist. How else did the pond learn all about the movement of flood waters in quarries?

The pond found that juxtaposition irresistible … and then it was on with the history wars, because the reptiles never get tired of white washing the past … (though in the old days a little bit of Reckitt's blue was indispensable for a genuine white wash) ...

Right from that headline, it became obvious that reptile readers were in for a mega dose of Caterist nonsense, the only pity being that he couldn't be taken to court for sundry lies ...

Note the feeble attempt to limit the definition of slavery, and the blatant naked lies that came with it …

Oh wait, the pond got it all wrong, and must confess that there were tremendous opportunities for indigenous folk in the free market of work and ideas …

  

By golly, no tea, flour, sugar and tobacco for that model. He must have been rolling in it ...

So many lies, so much stupidity. "The unlawful killing of Aborigines occurred at the frontiers of settlement and was never sanctioned by the state."

Colonel George Arthur took up office as Lieutenant Governor of Tasmania in 1824, just as hostilities with Tasmanian Aborigines began to have a significant impact on the British population of the island.
Initially, Arthur dealt with Tasmanian Aborigine resistance-fighters by treating them as criminals and bringing them before the courts for punishment when they were caught.
By 1826 this approach was proving fruitless, and Arthur declared all Aboriginal resistance-fighters to be insurgents, meaning that soldiers and police could raid Aboriginal camps without provocation to arrest and detain any Tasmanian Aborigines they found.
Many Tasmanian Aborigines were shot on sight, including women and children, leading to further escalations in retaliatory violence.
In 1828 the fighting had become so vicious that Arthur declared martial law in the settled districts, labelling Tasmanian Aborigines as ‘open enemies’ of the state and giving them no protection under the law. (here)

Cue the Black Line and attempted genocide, supported by the state, and so on, and there are many other examples for those who've read history outside the follies of David Kemp …

Oh okay, there were the exceptions who made out like a bandit and made a motza …

  

The pond could go on and on with examples, but it's tiresome and tiring. As for Queensland and blackbirding?

Ah The Bulletin, what a good old bastion of Western White Civilisation it was ...

But at last we've reached the end of the Caterist heart of darkness ...

Actually, it's possible to look at Churchill, and without ignorance, because it's a bloody obvious fact, note that Churchill was a racist, a typical product of Empire, while at the same time, he did the world a service in helping defeat Hitler (strangely, nobody of the Caterist kind forgets to remind us that Stalin was a bloody sadistic mass murderer while he too did the world a service and played a key role in defeating Hitler, once his initial plans for doing a deal fell apart. Sociopaths always find it hard to do a deal).

Why is it that reptiles of the Caterist kind are incapable of chewing gum and patting their government subsidised complacent tum at the same time?

Not to worry, the pond senses that the Caterist might send stray readers into a frenzy with assorted rebuttals, so it's time for a little distraction by introducing another matter, thanks to the infallible Pope and the immortal Rowe, with Rowe at least to be found here …