Square this if you will ...
The fascists are at the gates! They’re in the city! Are they? Well, yes… but also no. The desire to simply label Meloni and the FDI’s complex mix of politics as fascist is a desire to have a clear-cut enemy, and revive scattered and defeated liberal and progressive confidence. ..
Well the pond wouldn't want to simply label fascists as fascists. But now to the squaring ... because this followed ..
...look also at something like the Western Australian McGowan government. While the Andrews government can be described as merely “corporate authoritarian”, the McGowan government — with its Black kids in adult prisons, its new and distinctive indefinite detention laws aimed at defendants with a series of minor convictions in crimes that have a high Black perpetrator rate — is genuinely on the outer edge of fascistic ...
Ah, so the pond can talk of being genuinely on the edge of the fascistic and that's fine. Mustn't offend Meloni, but have a go at McGowan ...
It's a fine line, but how pleasing a complex mix of politics could never be called fascist ...
Talk about complexity ... especially if you throw in some refugee and gay bashing ...
The pond has always admired how populist fascists have managed to introduce a nuance, subtlety and complexity into their slogans ...
The rest of the grundling was half baked blather featuring third rate Gramsci and fourth rate history, and once again the pond had been grundled ...
And then down in the comments section came this pair of clowns...
All the “-phobes” of the ever fearful pearl clutchers – daren’t name them for fear of the madbot.
And then the pond realised that there wasn't that much difference between Crikey and the lizard Oz, between a good grundling and the bromancer stepping out to defend Meloni, between the sort of nonsense spewed out by Glenn Greenwald and the statistics once offered up by Bob Ellis.
The pond did the right thing, left Crikey to feud with Lachy, clutched its pearls and headed over to the lizard Oz, where at least the hole in the bucket man could rail and rant without trying to confuse and conflate issues ...
By golly, he'll transport the pond back to the good old days of Arthur Miller and The Crucible, which the pond always understood to be a none too subtle parable about the Hollywood Ten, McCarthyism, and the sort of anti-Commie hysteria that littered the 1950s ...(the pond's current toilet reading is Diane Johnson's life of Dashiell Hammett, who copped six months in the clink, not to mention life as a raging alcoholic and a decline into abject poverty thanks to a remarkable case of writer's block).
But the pond digresses, on with the hole in the bucket man ...
The fire next time! The flames of vengeance ...
God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water but fire next time ...
It reminded the pond that when it comes to a cussin' and a cursin' and a carry on, they knew how to do it in the old days, without benefit of Twitter ...
because he was angered by his sons and daughters.
“I will hide my face from them,” he said,
“and see what their end will be;
for they are a perverse generation,
children who are unfaithful.
They made me jealous by what is no god
and angered me with their worthless idols.
I will make them envious by those who are not a people;
I will make them angry by a nation that has no understanding.
For a fire will be kindled by my wrath,
one that burns down to the realm of the dead below.
It will devour the earth and its harvests
and set afire the foundations of the mountains.
“I will heap calamities on them
and spend my arrows against them.
I will send wasting famine against them,
consuming pestilence and deadly plague;
I will send against them the fangs of wild beasts,
the venom of vipers that glide in the dust.
In the street the sword will make them childless;
in their homes terror will reign.
The young men and young women will perish,
the infants and those with grey hair...
Yes, stick that in your Twitter feed and smoke it - that smokin' Jesus, he knew about the hole in the bucket man's righteous search for vengeance, for the dispensation of those righteous flames ...
and sealed it in my vaults?
In due time their foot will slip;
their day of disaster is near
and their doom rushes upon them.”
And that final bit of prevarication is because the pond isn't going to tackle the bubble-headed booby this day, because she unleashed a cunning ploy whereby the pond, always the contrarian when there's a reptile in the vicinity, would have had to defend the mad mullahs ...
Sorry, the pond can't play that game. It can chortle at the idle fantasies of a vengeful Henry, it can laugh at talk of shame sanctions, when the reptiles are on a daily basis, completely and utterly shameless, and routinely dispense shame sanctions, but all the pond can do for the bubble-headed booby is add a coda and remind her that it's not just in the Islamic world ... it's also in the world of Faux Noise and the GOP and News Corp ...
Why, they're down there with angry Sydney Anglicans in search of complimentary women...
... or perhaps they're with the US Supreme Court ...
And so to the infallible Pope, reminding the world what the hole in the bucket man might more fruitfully have raged about ...
"Mustn't offend Meloni, but have a go at McGowan ..." Like I said, it's ok that's she's a fascist but just don't call her one.
ReplyDeleteWhat a truly weird old guy we have in the Henry. The problems aren’t corruption, nepotism, sexual abuse or scapegoating, no, the only problem is reputational damage to privileged individuals. Jeez, what’s the world coming to when a politician cannot engage in a bit of corruption without having to answer to the public?
ReplyDeleteThe odd thing is that most of the issues are in plain view, it’s just that we lack a mechanism to address those issues. Seems like the main issue is reputational damage to Oz politics.
Might as well add this while I am here. Requires some sort of reference to leopards and spots
https://insidestory.org.au/trouble-at-the-oecd/
But what happens when you can't see the leopard for the spots ? No sympathy whatsoever, the useless dickheads didn't have to elect so obviously unsuitable a secretary-general as Mathias Cormann. But having done so, let them enjoy him now and forever.
DeleteReminded me of Bridget McKenzie on Q&A last night: all matter-of-fact and wide-eyed innocence about how we can tackle corruption. Seems she's absolved herself of any wrongdoing in Sports Rorts - she used Ministerial Discretion, don't you know.
DeleteDoes Our Henry get paid by the word? If not, he could have saved himself a lot of typing - and spared us a few thousand words of his usual pomposity - by simply repeating one of another seriously weird old guy’s favourite phrases - “Witch hunt!”
ReplyDeleteTrouble with Henry’s clever analogy is that historically, genuine witch hunts primarily targeted marginalised, largely powerless groups and individuals
(Sorry - fat/ fingered interruption). Whereas the sort of folk who might face anti-corruption hearings, either publicly or in private, are likely to be the powerful, well-heeled and well connected - the sort of people who made accusations or presided over historical witch trials.
DeleteI still find it difficult to see Henry as a defender of witches - though you could make a decent argument that Economics is a branch of the Dark Arts. However if there’s ever a remake of one of my favourite Vincent Price films, “Witchfinder General” he’d be perfect casting for the title role.
And on that note Anony...
DeleteIf the Greens and the Teals were at Salem
I doubt they’d be lighting the fire
To the stake vengeful Henry would nail ‘em
And he’d be igniting THEIR pyre!
"public humiliations... more permanent" (Henry). Help me out here, with a list of those innocents permanently ruined - there must be dozens, but I can't recall any. (Gladys, Barry O'Farrell and Nick Greiner certainly aren't on the list).
ReplyDeleteAs the week wears on, I do find myself reflecting upon Jane Hume's fear as enunciated on Insiders last week that a NACC could "will actually deter good people from entering public life."
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure about good people, but if loopholes on rorting are closed, we may never see another Barnaby, another Angus et al - the list is long. And we do risk actually setting bars to prevent carpet baggers and rent seekers from strolling in with hands out. I think we all need to reflect on what we stand to lose.
And Henry on twitter bullying is rich - rich and ribald is Henry - I think Roz Ward, and Yasmin Abdel Mageid might have a little to say on mass bullying from major platforms. And those platforms are not twitter Not even close. They are Murdochian outrage farms. And they pay a chunk of Holy Henry's rent.
There’s something about reading the self-important lectures of Reptile columnists that brings out my inner Gerard Henderson - I get an irresistible urge to indulge in pedantry. May I therefore point out that self-igniting matches as we know them were not invented until the early 19th century. Therefore, despite Our Henry’s assertion, any Teals, Greens or others who had been present at the Salem Witch Trials would have been unable to “rush forward with the matches” (unless Henry is claiming that actual 21st Century Teals and Greens were somehow present via time travel). Further, all those executed as a result of the Salem Trials were hung, not burned to death.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt the real Polonius will be noting these errors of his fellow oracle.
What, none of them even dunked to death in a witch's chair ?
DeleteThat’s the Puritans for you, GB - they probably figured that more novel forms of execution were far too entertaining.
Delete:-)³ Bemused and delighted the pond toddled off and sure enough ...
DeleteThe first successful friction match was invented in 1826 by John Walker, an English chemist and druggist from Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham. He developed a keen interest in trying to find a means of obtaining fire easily. Several chemical mixtures were already known which would ignite by a sudden explosion, but it had not been found possible to transmit the flame to a slow-burning substance like wood. While Walker was preparing a lighting mixture on one occasion, a match which had been dipped in it took fire by an accidental friction upon the hearth. He at once appreciated the practical value of the discovery, and started making friction matches.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match#Friction_matches
Ok, so Holesome Henry lectures us about "secularists": "...so our secularists, in their opposition to a legislated right of religious freedom, agitate slippery slopes that seem utterly fantastic." Well personally speaking as a "secularist" I would like to note that so-called 'freedom of religion' is actually a composite of two very separate 'freedoms': freedom of belief and freedom of action.
ReplyDeleteNow I readily grant 'freedom of belief' - in part because it's hard, 1984 excepted, to do otherwise - but as to 'freedom of action', then I am totally against it. So it's fine for the nutters to believe in witches so long as they do not take any action against them. Or against secularists for that matter.
Therefore, I believe that religious "believers" do not have any right whatsoever to form and conduct "religious" schools - because that is a 'freedom' that they should not possess. Schools should all and always be 'secular' with no connection whatsoever to any non-scientific belief set.
Henry seems, like the rest of the herpetarium, to fundamentally misunderstand the term ‘secular’. He seems to conflate it with atheism and therefore regards it as an attack on religion.
ReplyDeleteSecularism is actually a very effective way of defusing the differences caused by a multitude of contradictory and irrational beliefs.
You know for years I used to complain about the total misunderstanding of anticipate which basically means: ‘acted in advance’. The meaning most seem to attribute to it is basically just 'to foresee' not 'to foresee and act accordingly'.
DeleteIt's sad how the meanings of words get distorted and changed over the decades and centuries, isn't it. Because now we don't have a single word that means 'to foresee and act accordingly'.
Just asking, but does 'freedom of religion' mean that people could start a QAnon based school ? Right beside the Catholic, Protestant, Islamic and Hinduist schools ? Not forgetting the Scientologists too.
ReplyDeleteAnd all of these:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_UFO_religions#List
Well, to me it seems quite silly enough to become a mainstream religion in time but I suspect I cannot read the subtext the way RWNJs do. The jibber-jabber only applies to the type of religion (and society) which these people are familiar with and they are likely to turn on the Islamist or Hindus at any moment.
DeleteHmmm - I would want to discuss that with my fellow Pastafarians; not that we are given to regular meetings, or ceremonies (or, if we are, I am not in the invite list!)
Delete"silly enough to become a mainstream religion in time" Oh yeah, spot on Bef. And it's a real problem when reality (QAnon) totally outrates satire (eg Pastafarians - sorry Chad).
Delete