In which the pond grates along with our Henry, before nuking the planet with Strangelove ...

The pond was reminded the other day that cosmopolitanism was perhaps the greatest crime the Nazis could imagine, and to be a member of the cosmopolitan elite an even bigger thought crime. 

These days the reptiles, perhaps with some dim awareness of that connection to a difficult period, have modified the crime to being a member of the inner city elite …though the thought's pretty much the same fascist line ...

Why did the pond start this way? Well how else to introduce our Henry on the subject of masks ...

… because wouldn't you know it, our Henry starts off his scientific treatise on the impact and benefits of wearing masks by quoting that legendary scientist, Al Camus …

Even better, he casually tosses in the line "Of course, Camus could have been wrong."

Of course, our Henry might be a fatuous loon. Who can say?

Only one thing's certain: reading our hole in the bucket man might be a folly for cosmopolitan elites with better things to do, but these days time weighs heavy on the pond's hands, and this particular treatise by the hole in the bucket man is positively weird ...

Ah, those fiendish orientals, always doing things differently.

But why did our Henry embark on this particular treatise this day? Could it have anything to do with the comic absurdity that has been assaulting the sensibility of deviant cosmopolitan preverts these past few days?

But back to Henry, who glancingly celebrates Andrew Jackson, as his treatise gets weirder and weirder … and the pond knew deep in its heart that at some point our Henry would not only be celebrating a ratbag like Jackson, but also the clutching of paws in a manly way …

The pond knew this because yesterday while in an Annandale nursery, the pond saw one man shake another man's hand - complete strangers, it seems, doing business - and it was somehow unnerving, shocking, astonishingly intimate - as if the pond had caught them going at it in a toilet on the beat …

Of course there was the usual sanitiser at the door and all the usual warnings about social distancing, but there they were, pumping paws like there was no tomorrow ...

Inevitably the loss of the handshake would be a biggie for our Henry, who has set off on a journey of rhetorical flights of fantasy, with very little by way of substantiating facts ...

Before we get too excited about Jacksonians, given that Jackson was just an early example of the Donald, it would be remiss of the pond not to revert to the handshake wiki …

One of the earliest known depictions of a handshake is an ancient Assyrian relief of the 9th century BC depicting the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III shaking the hand of the Babylonian king Marduk-zakir-shumi I to seal an alliance.
Archaeological ruins and ancient texts show that handshaking – also known as dexiosis – was practiced in ancient Greece as far back as the 5th century BC; a depiction of two soldiers shaking hands can be found on part of a 5th-century BC funerary stele on display in the Pergamon Museum, Berlin (stele SK1708) and other funerary steles like the one of the 4th century BC which depicts Thraseas and his wife Euandria handshaking. Muslim scholars write that the custom of handshaking was introduced by the people of Yemen.

A man and his wife were shaking hands in the 4th century BC? Say no more, oh the beasts, the pond knows all about that sort of filthy cosmopolitan behaviour, so it's on with pour Henry …

Back in the say, excited by sandal and sword pictures, it was the fashion amongst vulgar Tamworth youffs in the playground to affect the Roman handshake. Yes, they were doing it long before Jackson, but the pond has always thought that the handshake was a form of male dominant bullshit, with men trying to out squeeze each other, and even worse, trying to squeeze a woman into submission by going the sweaty firm shake … but do go on with the moaning and the sighing and the grating ...

Oh for fucks sake, just harden the fuck up, you meandering wimp with your philosophical nonsense. 

Would you rather die in agony, or would you rather don a mask? The pond doesn't much mind, it's your choice, but demonising masks and mourning handshakes and carrying on like a philosophising pork chop while things are grim? Why the pond could produce a treatise on the impact of living in darkness during the blackouts of the Blitz, but between that and a bomb landing in the back yard, the pond knows what it would prefer ...

Speaking of Robert Frost, as we do when our Henry's around, and how we cannot and should not mask the cost ...

When you came on death,
     Did you not come flower-guided
Like the elves in the wood?
     I remember that I did.

But I recognised death
     With sorrow and dread,
And I hated and hate
     The spoils of the dead.

Yes, we're all in this together, as the immortal Rowe so ably showed today …

And so, speaking of death, on to the next sampling of reptile thought, and what a dissembling header this one has … though it has been graced, if not redeemed, by the return of the cult master showing off his mushroom skills ...

Actually, as the pond remembers the history, no one gave much of a thought about the saving of Japanese lives.

The fire-bombing of Tokyo shows how much the Allies cared about Japanese civilian lives. The fear and the hate ran deep, and Australia ran its own share of home-made propaganda …

 

The pond can remember the state of agitation when a young pup turned up in Tamworth driving a Japanese car, and his uncle refused to speak to him for years …

Much, much later, the pond abandoned a Holden for a Nissan, and the shiver of loathing was still palpable.

As for the use of the bomb, the pond will leave others to decide, but please spare the sanctimonious hypocrisy about the cost in Japanese lives …you don't napalm a densely packed city and then get to rabbit on about how you were worried about civilian casualties, but do go on ...

Yes, that's more like it, that's what people cared about, Allied casualties, and doing whatever it took …

Speaking of bombs and recent events, would it be wrong to take a detour to another event?

What an uncanny ability he has to turn almost any event into something about him …

But back to the final short gobbet, and the pond should have realised a lot earlier from the tone of the writing that the author had skin in the Los Alamos nuking game, and was not above devising fantastical 'what ifs' to justify doing a Strangelove and letting the bombs drop ...

Oh please, spare the pond all the talk about the noble way that the Allies spared the Japanese people untold suffering.

You might find that spiel a little short on the ground if you happened upon someone in Hiroshima at the time of the blast. You know, "sorry, but we did it for you and your country's good, and it had absolutely nothing to do with our self-interest and knocking off your fanatical military-industrial combine pretty quick because we were over it …"

Meanwhile, the world has since lived under MAD philosophies ever since, with the only relief the odd plague or perhaps an an ANFO explosion …

The pond recalls being in a quarry once, and watching the holes being stuffed with a diesel-mix slurry, and then being set off with dets and dynamite, and what a blast that was, and anyone who talks about bombs being the best solution can still get the pond going.

And now we learn that the loons of Newcastle have an AFNO facility in the heart of the town which could do an even better job than the one they managed in Beirut …

And yet as the infallible Pope notes, the world manages to do much, much better in the stockpiling game, what with the talk of the Saudis getting on to the nuke bandwagon, and assorted barns around the world being stuffed to the gills, always ready for the next big bang, while somewhere a nuclear physicist is already scribbling a piece for the lizard Oz as to how setting it off was for the very best, and there was really no alternative, and a few squillion had to pay the price for the greater good ...