In which the pond studies the way reptiles develop an immune response to current pathologies ...

With the news out of the riven United States increasingly desperate and alarming on a daily basis, the pond thought it might be interesting to see how local reptiles are attempting to boost their immune systems and deal with imported pathologies …

The pond doesn't pretend this is a scientific study, but it does suggest a way forward for students of the reptile way …

First up is nattering "Ned", and he offers a classic example for those in their dotage …

"Ned" has unfortunately been given an illustration, raising yet again the question of what's happened to the cult master, still out and about on Twitter …

But more important is the way that "Ned" responds to the world as it currently it is. Avert the eyes, wander back down nostalgia lane, tell young 'uns about the way things were … ah, in my day, young 'uns …

Forget Brexit, forget the desire to live in Boris's shadow, forget the spiffing new trade deal, waggle the cane in the air to corral the pups, point the gnarly ancient mariner finger and stoppeth at least one of three hundred ...

The excuse is that it's the 70th anniversary of the Korean war, and never no mind that it actually started on 25th June 1950 when the Korean People's Army poured across the 38th parallel …or so the wiki says here …

So Ned's out by a few days, but that's not important. What is important is to avert the eyes from current horrors, neuroses and pathologies …

… and retreat into the past, and perhaps go all the way with LBJ, because didn't that work out well ...

It's best when retreating into the past not to reflect on ironies embedded in the text … like that talk of being repaid a hundred fold in the time of the Donald …

In fact it's best not to dwell at all on thoughts about the worms at hand …

… spineless creatures in thrall to Moscow and Xi as bounties are placed and Hong Kong goes down and the United States collapses in on itself in chaotic fashion ...

Ah yes, the ANZUS treaty, now in the hands of the Donald … but when wandering in the past, it's possible to get confused by dates and the significance of events for future times ...

And so to the bromancer's response to the pathologies of current times, and his immune system is completely different to what's on view in "Ned's" natter …

The bromancer's first instinct is to go on a war footing. The pond's understanding of the bromancer was changed forever when a reader advised that he was a long haired hippie Arts degree drop out, but that seminal interview in a pdf Honi Soit also showed how the lad was always up for a fight of the most vicious and physical kind …

“I greatly enjoyed Sydney University, had enormous fun…The fizz and buzz of the university was great,” he says with balanced nostalgia. It was not in the sandstone halls that Sheridan received his most profound lessons however. He speaks disparagingly about the quality of the university itself and says the intellectual environment in the classroom was “very poor” and dominated by “mediocre teachers”. He never completed his actual degree. 
The battlefield of student politics was where the young journalist found his niche. Sheridan was part of a small but committed band that resisted the dominant left-wing politics of the decade, the politics we now almost exclusively associate with the time and place. “We were definitely a small minority within that little subculture” he tells me, “but that little subculture itself was so isolated from mainstream Australia”.
He maintains that the “florid, bizarre, baroque” environment of student politics did not even represent most students. Through this group Sheridan first met Tony Abbott, who fast became his “best friend”. His praise for the young Abbott is overwhelming and he lauds him as “generous, spontaneous, full of laughter”, and a “big thinker”. Sheridan is obviously proud of his association with the current Leader of the Opposition. “It’s a great tribute [to Abbott that] he would become fast friends with an irredeemable dork like me,” he says in a jumble of humility and pride.
It is clear that, like Abbott, Sheridan revelled in his role as a political outsider. He was once banned from addressing a student protest when it became clear he wanted to denounce the strike it aimed to promote. Pretending to renege and promising to speak in solidarity with the strikers, he was eventually given the stand. In front of an audience of a few thousand he then performed an imitation of Gough Whitlam - slow, booming voice and all - and mocked the strikers by sarcastically declaring that their study hiatus would “bring Australia to its knees”. As the crowd started to chant “off, off, off”, his small band of supporters coalesced their cry, distorting it into one of “Gough, Gough, Gough”, cheering on his ironic performance. Conservative university students chanting the name of a deposed, lefty legend, Labor Prime Minister, surrounded by an angry mob of striking students. It makes contemporary campus politics seem almost sensible.

You see? The battlefield … so let us begin the battle ...

It's important in developing this immune response to current pathologies to feel in control, with a sufficient number of antibodies in tactical train, and a set of strategic objectives, none of which happen to involve the elephant in the room, or the whale in the ocean …

See how satisfying it is to draw up plans and spend money on it, though to misquote Lenin, against whom is what to be done? Seeing as how Hong Kong just got handed over to Xi with nary a bleat from the US apart from a few minor window-dressing trade adjustments ...

Ah, there it is again, that similarity to "Ned's" blather about ANZUS … how vital the US alliance is and the benefits it can deliver, because who wouldn't want to be associated with a country in such fine form?

As a result, we will have a strong strike capability, which means we will no longer have to spy on the East Timorese. We can simply send a gun boat to make them hand over their precious … and why not a strike on New Zealand … and if ever Tasmania gets too uppity, why the dog botherer will have ample strike power… (well, would we want to take it up to China and start world war III? Maybe, because really the world is just a large version of a Sydney Unit quad).

Mention of those submarines sent the pond into high alert and its own bit of nostalgia and a trip down memory lane with the bromancer …and what do you know, at last there's a chance for the cult master to return …

Ah yes, those submarines … and a bit of "Ned"-style history ...

And so on, and it was left to the immortal Rowe to summarise the result of the bromancer's strategic thinking, with more tactical Rowe here ...

And so to the third reptile response to current pathologies, and here the pond faced a difficult choice ...

You see, the reptiles had dug up a hardened climate activist turned hardened climate denialist to explain how he'd changed his mind about everything. It's a bit like those stories that pop up from time to time, featuring hardened Jesuits who turn hardened atheist, or vice versa, steely atheists who turn into incense-flavoured theological devotees of wafer-munching …

But it turned out he was just flogging a book, and would turn up on telly with the dog botherer on Sky to do a little more book flogging (natch, who else but the dog botherer?), and the pond wondered why it should help a self-promotional narcissist bore promote his latest bloviations?

Not least because Dame Slap was to hand, and what joy, she started off with talk of "executive virtue signallers".

The pond has been made extremely anxious in recent times at the thought that idle talk of the "cancel culture" might eradicate use of that reptile perennial favourite, "virtue signalling."

Luckily the Dame came along to remind us that traditional reptile values need never go out of fashion, with the best immune system of all an ability to forget everything except good old-fashioned greed ...

However it should be noted that of late reptiles have become truly desperate when it comes to illustrations.

The most obvious movie to reference was to hand …

… and yet the reptiles didn't do it. Is this because talk of greed being the most excellent adventure of all would have too nakedly revealed the point of Dame Slap's bitching and gloating?

Dame Slap's way to develop immunity to the current gloom - and her donning of the MAGA cap - is to forget all that, and adopt the guise of an old testament prophet who hurls talk of an financial apocalypse at her enemies …

Immediately when Dame Slap gets in this sort of mood, the pond is reminded of the Ramsay Centre and the foundational aspects of Judeo-Christian white Western Civilisation (with a touch of Celt as well as Nordic and Anglo-Saxon), and the impudent cheek of that swarthy, interloping, middle eastern, socialistic do-gooder, blathering about questions of wealth …

Say what, give up all his great possessions and follow a socialist virtue signalling tree hugger, when we all know that coal and the dog botherer are the way to a better planet?

That's Matthew 19,  KJV, and we'll have none of that nonsense here, thank you very much … because Dame Slap doesn't give a fig or a toss for salvation, she likes her cash in the paw, or even better, in a Swiss bank account ...

Dear sweet long absent Jesus, what a wretched virtue signaller he was. Give away everything and follow him? What an idle tosser, what rank hypocrisy, what humbug, when all we need to do is remember it's a jungle out there, and sharpen the claws … 

Let just not conjure up dreams, let us talk of greed being good, and bonuses the best reward of all for having screwed everybody the best … and remember anyone who carries on like a Xian can be shamed …

Of the three approaches, the pond thinks Dame Slap's is the best way to deal with the current situation. If some virtue signaller starts talking about masks, tear them off and breathe deeply into their face. Or perhaps throw all your goods out of the trolley onto the supermarket floor.

Forget a nostalgic roam through history, forget delusions of grandeur and the desire to keep fighting campus battles with a better class of submarine toy, encourage real selfishness and a total lack of responsibility and soon enough you'll be ready to don the MAGA cap and join the Donald in his narcissist snake-oil selling ways ...

Yes, a tidy scribble from Dame Slap's tidily paid life above the faraway tree on Planet Janet, and all she missed out on was a little finger-pointing of a different kind, but luckily the pond has an infallible Pope on hand to help with that …

And so endeth this study of reptile immune systems and their ability to cope with assorted pathologies and the world around them … and now for the next treatment, years in development, much like the biggest and hugest vaccines …