In which it's a long haul through the dog botherer, the Angelic one and nattering "Ned" to get to a cosmopolitan world ...

 

The pond woke to news of the terrorist state Russia under the yoke of a dictator committing yet more war crimes, Hong Kong ruined under the diktat of a wannabe dictator for life, and the Taliban gathering en masse without a single woman present ... and then the pond looked at the US Supreme Court ...

Worse, the pond had gone to bed with the words of the keen Keane in its ear like a sour musical worm ... (paywalled)

…For many Trump supporters, government in the US is no longer anything to be viewed positively. Government, in their eyes, is obsessed with being “woke”, pursuing a liberal agenda, helping women, immigrants, atheists, people of colour, and a long list of hated minorities. Government no longer serves them — mainly white, working-class and middle-class men. They feel they have no stake in government, which should exist only to reinforce their economic and social supremacy, but which only seems now to exist to help the people who they feel have been undermining their economic and social supremacy for far too long.

That’s why the profound contradiction between the libertarian rhetoric of many right-wingers in the US and their hostility to abortion rights doesn’t trouble them. They oppose government because government no longer serves them but when it does serve them by curbing the rights of those they regard as their inferiors, they welcome it as preserving the natural — even divine — order of things, and laud those who help achieve that.

This nihilistic hostility predated Trump, who merely exploited it. It was there in the Tea Party movement: they hated government but they also had strong connections with the Birther movement, which saw a Black president as fundamentally illegitimate.

And it goes beyond economic anxiety to resentment about the undermining of white heterosexual male supremacy in a myriad of ways. The entire agenda of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News from its establishment in the 1990s has been to stoke that anxiety and resentment and channel it into political action — including ever more aggressive, anti-democratic and violent rhetoric. Should Trump vanish tomorrow, Fox News would continue to stoke and exploit that resentment, and simply transfer its favour to someone else who could effectively exploit it — someone perhaps more presentable, and smarter, than Donald Trump.

The nihilistic sense of white economic and social grievance, fueled by the most powerful media company in the world, won’t be going away any quicker than the far-right judges on the Supreme Court. This crisis has a long way to run.

And yet in its own way, the pond has been facilitating News Corp, pretending that its possible to take a herpetological interest in the local variant reptiles, but really, is there much difference between the yowling of a Trumpist and the blathering of a dog botherer?

Even worse, the portentous, pompous "Ned" had returned to ruin the pond's weekend, a bit like the promised weekend downpour ...

But to get there, the pond has to start from here ...

Meanwhile, in another part of the world, News Corp and the Supreme Court work together ...

Is it any wonder that vulgar youff and Bill McKibben are consternated ...

Credit where due: the Supreme Court’s 6–3 ruling in West Virginia v. E.P.A. is the culmination of a five-decade effort to make sure that the federal government won’t threaten the business status quo. Lewis Powell’s famous memo, written in 1971, before he joined the Supreme Court—between the enactment of a strong Clean Air Act and a strong Clean Water Act, each with huge popular support—called on “businessmen” to stand up to the tide of voices “from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians” calling for progressive change. He outlined a plan for slowly rebuilding the power of industrial élites, almost all the elements of which were taken up by conservative movements over subsequent years: monitoring textbooks and TV stations, attacking left-wing faculty at universities, even building a publishing industry. (“The news stands—at airports, drugstores, and elsewhere—are filled with paperback and pamphlets advocating everything from revolution to erotic free love. One finds almost no attractive, well-written paperbacks or pamphlets on ‘our side,’ ” Powell wrote, but he was able to imagine a day when the likes of Ann Coulter or Sean Hannity would reliably top the best-seller lists.)

Fatefully, he also wrote: “American business and the enterprise system have been affected as much by the courts as by the executive and legislative branches of government. Under our constitutional system, especially with an activist-minded Supreme Court, the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change.” At the time he was writing, the “activist” court was standing up for things that most Americans wanted, such as clean air and water—and the right of women to control their own bodies. But the Supreme Court, and hence the judiciary, has come under the control of the kind of men that Powell envisioned—he may not have envisioned women on the bench, but Amy Coney Barrett is otherwise his type of judge. And, with this ruling, they have taken more or less total control of Washington’s ability to generate policy that might disrupt the status quo. (outside the paywall for the moment, the pond thinks, but can never be sure)

Meanwhile, it's back to the usual serve of denialism by the dog botherer ...

Note the cavalier way that the dog botherer shows regard for Pacific nations. You've got bloody mountains, go live on a peak somewhere ... but then ...

The pond will be long gone, and so will the dog botherer for that matter, before the worst of it is felt, but it's easy to understand why vulgar youff might get a tad agitated ... while the dog botherer oozes complacency ...

Or did they simply look at the US Supreme Court and see the dismal future, with that country's Taliban in league with terror state Russia and dictatorial China?

It's easy to see why vulgar youff is agitated, and yet the pond continues to gratify the reptiles by attending to their narcissist needs ...

At least the pond can defang the click bait videos and therefore never learn why a member of the Lismore community might be a tad agitated ... they've got hills nearby, why don't they just head for the hills?

Never mind the ambitions of communist China? Never mind the ambitions of News Corp and the Supreme Court ...

Yes, it's a depressing way to start a weekend promising yet another downpour ... and not just rain, but endless News Corp bullshit ...

Oh fuck it, he's a terrible human being as well as being full of bullshit blather about sense and proportion, and all the rest of it, as if he hasn't been a climate science denier and dissembler ever since the pond started reading his blather ...

It was way back in September 2013 that his son belled this particular News Corp cat's form of cant and bullshit ...

Kenny is a staunchly neo-conservative, anti-progress, anti-worker defender of the status quo. He is an unrelenting apologist for the Liberal Party. He was one of Alexander Downer’s senior advisers at the time of the Iraq War. He’s been known to argue for stubborn, sightless inaction on climate change. He spits at anyone concerned with such trivialities as gender equality, environmental issues or labour rights from his Twitter account on a daily basis. Recently, he characterised criticism of the lack of women in Tony Abbott’s Cabinet as a continuation of the Left’s “gender wars”. He is a regular and fervent participant in The Australian’s numerous ongoing bully campaigns against those who question its editorial practices and ideological biases. The profoundly irresponsible, dishonest, hate-filled anti-multiculturalist Andrew Bolt has recently referred to Kenny on his blog as “a friend”.

And it’s a jokey picture of a bestial embrace that I should be afraid of discovering online? (here)

And yet here we are, years later, nothing changed, and the planet ever more fucked ...

Is there no relief? 

Well as it so happens, as a warm up to "Ned", there is a chance to sup on the tears of the Angelic one ...

Ah, militant secularism, the fix was in, yadda yadda ...

Being a fundamentalist tyke, the Angelica one would carry on like that, but the pond's main interest has been the angry Sydney Anglicans and their search for complimentary women and there was news on that front too ... (Costello's rag, here)

...The Sydney Anglican church is at odds with other Australian dioceses due to its social conservatism. It does not ordain women beyond the rank of deacon, which is due to the view that men and women are equal in worth but have different roles in life.

St James is one of the few remaining high-church parishes in Sydney, which means it is among those aligned with Britain’s more liberal Diocese of Canterbury. Most Sydney parishes are now low church, which means they have a purist interpretation of the bible.

Sempell worries that Sydney’s conservative, evangelical Anglican Diocese has begun operating like a political party, in which members are expected to adhere to the party line and told that if they don’t like it, they can leave.

An example of that, he says, is the requirement for new principals and school council members to attest their belief, in a clause added to the church’s statement of personal faith, that marriage is between a man and a woman.

“This is a really quite a dramatic move because sexuality has never featured really at all in any of the creeds or statements of faith of the church in the past,” he says. “People are having to say they believe things they don’t believe to be part of the church.

“Leadership in many quarters is saying the way we address [people leaving the church] is to get more control over what’s happening and everything will be fine. The process of trying to get more control is having the opposite effect.”

Oh it's all good, and back to the sobbing of the Angelic one ...

Yes, the pond had to repress a snort at that line: "the quality of Catholicism". The pond recollects that when it comes to the treatment of women, the Catholic church isn't that far removed from the Taliban ... or the US Supreme Court ...

And so to a final gobbet, and a dining out on tears before the pond begins to cry ...

How desperate is that? Tykes turning to Penecostals and Islamics for redemption?

Still, the low comedy did prepare the pond for the usual Herculean task come back for a pond haunting ... the climbing of the pompous, portentous Everest of blowhard blather known as "Ned's natter" ...

More shaped by millennials? You mean old farts pass on?

Never mind, a few house keeping items. There will be no cartoon relief, all the pond has to offer is that dreadful graphic by Tom, with the reptiles clearly having lost the plot since the glorious days of the cult masters ...

And yes, once again the reptiles slipped in a note about content being only available in the web version, while actually on the web version, and once again the pond shrieked for a shorter version ... though the mention of it did remind the pond of the news in the Weekly Beast ... Sky News dropped by Qantas - the complaints by the pond and many others finally did have an effect, and this ...

The days of spotting piles of free copies of the Australian in airport lounges are over. The deal between Qantas and News Corp ended in 2020 when the pandemic hit and won’t be renewed now we are all travelling more. But the Oz has signed a contract with Qantas to provide free digital copies of the national daily instead, available while passengers are in airport lounges and on domestic flights.

They're still giving it away for free, as if dropping satchels of digital junk will get innocents hooked? 

How much longer will the tree killer edition go on? How soon will the reptiles be telling their addicts that the best fix can only be found online?

At this point, the pond could only roll eyes. There was the Angelic one clutching at the straw of other fundamentalist religions, only for "Ned" to remind her that there can only be one sort of Xianity, and fundamentalist Hinuds and Islamics won't cut it. What we need is some more Southern Baptists in thrall to Fox News and the mango Mussolini ....

As if to reinforce Xian hopes and dreamings, the reptiles felt at this point in "Ned's" bloviating the need to show Albo at an Ēostre service ...

... which is sublimely funny, because the pond can remember the days when the reptiles were outraged at the way former Chairman Rudd used to seize on snaps posing outside churches ...

Balmain, 2012, and is that a vulgar youff in the background with a basket weaver?

Back to "Ned" and didn't the Angelic one do a great job as a warm-up act ...

Forgive "Ned". He's never really understood that it was News Corp that tried to usurp the democratic process and urge on an authoritarian loon in his bid to stage a coup ... and they're still at it ...

The entire agenda of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News from its establishment in the 1990s has been to stoke that anxiety and resentment and channel it into political action — including ever more aggressive, anti-democratic and violent rhetoric. Should Trump vanish tomorrow, Fox News would continue to stoke and exploit that resentment, and simply transfer its favour to someone else who could effectively exploit it — someone perhaps more presentable, and smarter, than Donald Trump.

And now back to more blather from "Ned" ... always happy to ignore the elephant in the room ... always ready to borrow blather from others so he can rabbit on at tedious length ...

Why is this so richly funny? Well the pond can recall the days when the mention of multiculturalism would send the reptiles into a frothing and foaming hissy fit ... a bit like using the word "cosmopolitan" ...

Cosmopolitanism" became a rhetorical weapon used by nationalists against "alien" ideas that went counter to orthodoxy. European Jews were frequently accused of being "rootless cosmopolitans."[39] Joseph Stalin in a 1946 Moscow speech attacked writings in which "the positive Soviet hero is derided and inferior before all things foreign and cosmopolitanism that we all fought against from the time of Lenin, characteristic of the political leftovers, is many times applauded."

In the German Democratic Republic, cosmopolitanism was characterized as a bourgeois-imperialist ideology that rejects the nations' right to independence and national sovereignty. Cosmopolitanism was said to promote the dismantling of national and patriotic traditions and national culture. It was said to be advocated by the Anglo-American imperialism with an aim to establish world hegemony (World Government) operating in the interests of monopoly capitalism. Its opposite was not chauvinist bourgeois nationalism, but patriotism; love of one's native place, one's country. Love of the homeland was said to be one of the deepest feelings of the working people, expressed in the struggle against conquerors and oppressors. In the 21st century, the epithet became a weapon used by Vladimir Putin in Russia, and by nationalists in Hungary and Poland. In modern times, Stephen Miller, a Trump administration senior policy advisor, publicly criticized CNN reporter Jim Acosta as exhibiting "cosmopolitan bias" during a discussion on the government's new immigration plan. (wiki with footnotes)

It would make the pond's day, if, after wading through all this "Ned" guff, "cosmopolitan" should happen to drop from his keyboards. It would even be better than reading about "Ned" going against everything the reptiles have scribbled about inner city 'leets ...

Nope, nothing there, just blather about the US dilemma and the current hearings about the invasion, with "Ned" sublimely unaware of News Corp's role in the proceedings ...

The pond couldn't resist a cartoon because there's just one gobbet to go, and sure enough "Ned" is blathering about Xian heritage and a virtuous society, and the pond is still holding out hope for "cosmopolitan" ...

Thar she blows, and entirely without irony or any awareness whatsoever, as befits a scribbler who hasn't caught up with the news that he's a kissing cousin to his relatives on Fox News: apparently the lizard Oz is now in "a country with a cosmopolitan outlook...",  and bizarrely "Ned" deems that vital to the future ...

Tell that to Stephen Miller, or maybe the dog botherer, or perhaps Sky after dark, or perhaps the good people on both sides white nationalists beavering away in Fox News ...

But as we've been talking about what constitutes a virtuous society, why not end with a celebration of politics ...