But what of the dog whistling to white supremacists? What of the Proud Boys standing by? This sort of dissembling is precisely the kind of white-washing of US history that sees Henry Ford's anti-semitism, Charles Lindbergh's America First and George Wallace's racism written out of the picture ...
Under the Donald, American weirdness has reached a fine flowering, not so much with his and Rudy's hair dye, as with the likes of QAnon and the Boogaloo boys, and of all things, fucking Hawaiian shirts, as a kind of perverse bounce-back from the Obama days when he made everyone wear Islamic Kenyan clobber ...
How many lies will the Donald have accumulated by 20th January next year? It's a bit like guessing the number of marbles in a bloody big barrel, as they used to do in Tamworth ... but it'll be huge ...
Oh here, have some leftover turkey ...
And then comes the weirdest line that Polonius has scribbled in some time, and the pond liked it so well it had to repeat it even before it landed ...
"Look at it this way. No US president has made himself as available to the media as Trump..."
And he calls the Baldwin a maniac? That's the best he can say about the snake oil narcissist and showman, that he makes himself available to the media?
That's what he does, that's his whole gig, that's his shtick, that's the gag ... that's what attention-seeking narcissist with daddy problems do ... just watch Donald Junior in action ... and yet Polonius is so blithely unaware, such a fluff gatherer and navel gazer, that he really does start off his final gobbet with that immortal line ...
And so, without a hint of irony, Polonius himself circled the wagons and joined the fake news media ... because if "at times" covers the thousands of times that the Donald lied, well then the pond has a Rowe cartoon ready for another distraction ...
And so to an observation, and bewilderment ... and the pond blames it all on the Angelic one ...
Sure the pond has saved some mouth-watering stuffing for Sunday, and sure the Angelic one doesn't really warrant the attention, but something really weird is going on ...
The pond expects it of that mob. Guy Rundle's latest outing was so offensive, so off the planet, so life on Mars, that they had to turn off the comments section in anticipation that he might cop a bit of abuse ...
This is what the pond expects at the lizard Oz ... sweet adoration, prayers and pieties humbly offered up ...
Ah Ned, not today, but soon ... meanwhile, what is happening in the Shanners' household? Are they trying to do a new sitcom, the Conways down under?
Dear sweet long absent lord, what is this talk of right-wing commentators? Has the Angelic one gone entirely delusional? Is she unaware that she has the likes of Dame Slap and the dog botherer as a companions in arms? Is she unaware that Shanners, always bouffant, is standing by each day to add a lick of polish to SloMo's image?
What is it with this whining and moaning, this litany? Not a respectable litany, of the reptile kind, listing the many sins of that toad from the north, or that wretched comrade Dan from the south, but an 'our Gladys' litany ...
Phew, what a relief. Who knew that Gladys was part of the feminist-green push in NSW, keen to keep feminists happy?
It had entirely escaped the pond, and naturally her worst crime was to think that women might control their bodies, and Shanners is just being your usual fundamentalist Catholic bigot, and suddenly everything was alright in the pond's universe, the natural order of things had been restored, and the pond could end with an infallible Pope, as it often likes to do ... and what do you know, it's entirely on song, with that pork barrel, and those Icarus wings almost angelic looking ...
Chris Kenny describing - Chris Kenny ‘He takes an unashamedly rationalist approach to national affairs’.
ReplyDeleteWhich, presumably, is why he has the title ‘Associate Editor (National Affairs)’
My Source has sent me the heading for today -
‘Wake up and smell the sickly stench of government control.’
- because it includes this gem -
‘Have we become so mollycoddled that we look to governments to prevent us from getting sick?
Well, there was that happy time, up to the 1830s in England, when governments did not see the health of the population as any part of their functions.
Unfortunately, inconvenient consequences of cramming more and more people into town accommodation to work in the factories included such a background of deaths by typhus and cholera that the new industrialists complained about the difficulty in retaining workers, and complained even more about the ‘tithes’ sought from them make provisions under the Poor Laws.
But, otherwise, it was a golden time for freedom, and enterprise, until those d….ned do-gooders started to inveigle silly, virtue-signalling MPs into, eventually, passing an act to do with the - gasp - Public Health. Even calling the 1848 version the Public Health Act.
It all went downhill from there, as power-crazed MPs searched out more areas to apply government control. A sickly stench - nah, just a little bit of muriatic acid in the air from those all-important soda-ash factories. No harm in that - clears the sinuses. What’s this Alkali Act? - Government impeding the march of industry for what? - I tell you, English air is the best in the world.
The garishly coloured ‘sweeties’ you give to your kiddies as a treat are toxic? Well - we have to support the plantations - Lord Cholmondolley has several in the Indies, y’know - and, anyway, the place is swarming with kiddies since that Public Health Act was foist upon us, and most of them survived past their fifth birthday. You’re NOT going to interfere with the good English shopkeeper, and set up yet another needless arm of government to regulate what sweeties he can sell. Will there be no end to it?
Oh, he would have proclaimed himself in the vanguard of opposition to all those measures during the 19th century, (and there was plenty of opposition) and, no doubt would have been hailed as one who took an unashamedly rationalist approach to national affairs. Up to the point where the more intelligent of the new industrialists saw the benefits to their bottom lines of having healthy workers. Why, the really smart ones actually built model towns, on the new sanitary principles, to ensure the health of their workers.
Deary me, Chad, are you trying to outdo Polonius in posting gems of historical information ?
DeleteOk, so maybe you do have a better mastery of the 'unknown knowns' than he has, but that isn't really so hard, yes ?
And surely one of those things we once knew but have repeatedly 'forgotten' is that their Holy Book regales us with the tale of the 'good Samaritan'. Just fancy that: showing compassion for, and possibly even saving the life of, someone who isn't a member of one's family or even one's tribe, but someone who is recognisably 'alien'. And having your God praise you for it.
So, just to help some of those 'unknown knowns' actually become lnown again, may I introduce John Graunt in around 1660:
"Graunt brought to light a diversity of facts about human life and disease that had not previously been appreciated. He was the first to notice that the number of births and deaths of males exceeded those of females (by the ratio of 14 to 13); he noticed, too, that despite their greater mortality, men had less morbidity than women. Graunt quantified for the first time the high mortality in children, noting that one-third died by the age of five. He documented that plague actually claimed many more deaths than had been ascribed to it, and he demonstrated that the frequency of rickets increased over the span of a few years from zero fatal cases to a level that indicated a serious epidemic."
https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/36/4/708/671552
My recall of Graunt's number was not '33% by 5' but 40% by 7. Probably much of a muchness though. However, that great and wondrous superpower, 'Great Britain' had so drastically improved things that by the 1830s - you know, when Adelaide and Melbourne were founded - things had so radcally improved that by then it was '33% of quick births dead by age 18'. And note the reference to 'quick births' which was a smaller percentage of all births then than it is now.
Oh, and just for a happy little sideswipe:
Deletehttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-11-28/sweden-paid-too-high-a-price-with-its-rogue-coronavirus-policy/12922932
And about that "sickly stench of government control":
DeleteAustralia may well be the world’s most secretive democracy
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2019/06/06/australia-afp-raid-democracy/
Hi Dorothy,
ReplyDeleteIn honour of Our Patron Saint of Pedants, Gerard of Sydney, I humbly offer this piece from The Atlantic.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/one-word-bars-trump-pardoning-himself/617170/
Dull and abstruse it might be but it has led to the discovery of a new toy.
https://books.google.com/ngrams
This could be a lot of fun with the reptiles.
DiddyWrote
Hmmm, apparently there was a huge peak for Greg Sheridan back in 1998 all the way up to 0.0000006603 %. Wau.
DeleteAnd apart from all that, it was a fine Saturday which included this joyful news:
ReplyDeleteNews Corp Australia cuts more jobs at end of brutal year for media
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/nov/27/news-corp-australia-cuts-more-jobs-at-end-of-brutal-year-for-media
Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch, but are our favourite reptiles immune, or will they start 'taking redundancy' too fairly soon. After all, how many are really contributing ?
For instance, Polonius opines that "...no US president has experienced such a hostile media as Trump." without ever giving the faintest hint that he has even fleetingly entertained the thought that a "hostile media" might just be a fully merited response to a continually lying and very hostile President.
Then we have Angela's catalogue of non-accomplishments and failures accumulated by Gladys. Fully deserved, all of it, but Angy truly gives the game away with this: "Berejiklian deliberately has aligned herself with the feminist green push in NSW." Apart from the ambiguity of "push" (Sydney Push anybody ? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Push ) it's really all about good Catholic mum Angela's objection to the "decriminalisation" of abortion and her "attempt to water down Zoe's law". Oh well, can't please everyone, I guess.