In which the pond keeps the company of contending Arsehats ...

 

As this is the last weekend of the year the pond will be posting, might the pond begin by noting that talking about flowers is a wonderful on-topic way to deal with the reptiles, and is to be encouraged ...though providing links to tweets also helps, albeit that forces the pond to note that noticing a tweet only encourages the world to let loose their inner Elon ...

How large the dill? 

As usual there's a wiki available, featuring Barbra Streisand in Concert ... send in the clowns, there ought to be clowns, don't worry, sorry m'dear the dills are already here ...

And that brings the pond to the way it had intended to start this final weekend of reptile meditations, before that correspondent so rudely and cleverly interrupted ...

The pond has had a real problem with Crikey's Arsehat awards this year.

Clearly there should have been categories, so that everyone deserving could score an Arsehat. 

Perhaps not the winner take all 'best picture' Arsehat, but a gong to put on the mantelpiece, some small recognition of outstanding achievements.

For example, Scott Morrison was clearly the Arsehat of the year when it came to Australian politics. No one else came close. And the pond could see Linda Reynolds scoring an Arsehat in the Higgins matter, despite stiff competition from arses like Dame Slap.

Elon Musk was a lay down misère for tech arsehat of the year, and Boris Johnson deserves a prize for his contribution to British politics, though it should really have been a joint award with Liz Truss, for while she was brief, she was spectacular, shading BoJo with burning magnesium brilliance.

When it comes to parish pump politics, who could argue with John Barilaro, at least if you're from NSW, though echoes of Gladys came only a couple of weeks ago with news of dazzling Dazza being charged ... but still ...

The pond realises that's 2021, but how great it is to travel down memory lane.

Back to the pond's awards grief ...

How could any these Arsehats compete with the colossus of Arsehats, Vlad the impaler, fucking over Ukraine, his own country, and the world's economy? That's such a gigantic form of arsehattery that surely no-one else could get the nod, or if he doesn't Crikey readers are simply showing their propensity for perversity. 

Yes, there were the usual bunch of RT viewers on hand in the  Crikey comments section to do a "what about the US?", as if that took away from Vlad's own special, spectacular Arsehat achievement. (One arselicker even managed to say that there had been no targeting of civilians by Russia, and of course how could there be, having sent a bunch of them fleeing for their lives?)

And that's why it's so unfair. All these nominees were winners in their own way, and all deserved a gong, and as one contender noted, some great names were omitted, as with MTG, but how great was it that the superhero Donald wasn't even a viable contender (no, the trading cards was a feeble last minute gambit, but that belonged in the comedy awards).

The pond wasn't the only one to think that Crikey needed to lift its game and introduce categories - what about a category for Arsehat corporation of the year? Some might double count Elon, and the pond would always vote for News Corp, but some might like the chance to recognise the likes of Qantas or Arsehat fossil fuel companies.

Why there wasn't even a category for journalist Arsehat of the year, though perhaps as that would have been chock a block with News Corp contenders, perhaps it was too close to the Crikey defamation action bone.

Speaking of journalistic Arsehats, things seem to be winding down at the lizard Oz, and we're into retrospectives, and that allows the pond to nominate its lizard Oz Arsehat of the year.

Come on down, dog fucker, endlessly fucking away in barking mad inimitable style ...

Ah the old Orwellian ploy, followed by a bit of trans bashing. All that you might expect from the compleat Areshat ... and having cranked into gear, the Arsehattery really began to flow ... because see how quickly trans bashing can flow into climate science denialism ...

Here the pond must apologise for running a truncated infallible Pope yesterday ... this was the full joke, with inscription ...

Meanwhile, the reptile pictorial editor realised that interest might be flagging in this end of year roll down the Arsehat aisle, so they broke out the hi vis gear ...

A snap of the beaming liar from the Shire's election posters, without a hint of irony? A celebration of an incompetent, bungling, narcissist fraud, without a hint of irony?

Indeed, indeed, because there's nothing so ironical as a climate science denialist who thinks the solution to a non-existent problem is to nuke the country in search of a solution to the non-existent problem ...

Meanwhile, having regaled mug punters with a reminder of that Arsehat from the Shire, the pictorial editor decided to roll out a snap of a wannabe Arsehat, doing his best for climate science denialism...

Already with the Twitter and Elon and accountability? That copy must have been filed early, before the really high comedy began ...

Enough of that, though Vox had a final word ...

...I wish I could tell you a different story. That, say, Musk is in turmoil mode now, rolling up his sleeves and getting hardcore with his new purchase. And that once he’s out of this phase Twitter will settle down, just in time for the 2024 election cycle. Or that we could all solve this by moving to a Twitter alternative or creating our own Twitter on the blockchain, so that no billionaire will ever have single-handed control of our messaging platform.

But I think we’re better off if we face reality on reality’s terms: One of the richest men in history bought something many of us use and like. Because he could. And now he’s going to run it based on his whims. Because he can.

At least until he can't, and debt catches up with him ...

Back to the dog botherer, and inevitably he went there, which is to say into Dame Slap territory ... yes, she's still rabbiting on and so is being ignored by the pond ...

The only upside? At least it gives pesky, difficult, uppity blacks a break from her relentless black bashing ... and so to a couple of hideous women committing the hideous crime of wearing masks ... along with a broad nod to the anti-vax brigade. 

Bear this in mind when the bromancer takes his turn to strut the stage below and blather about conspiracy theories ...

And so to what is likely the final gobbet of the dog botherer to feature on the pond this year, and it's a reminder of mask-fearing Killer on the loose - that tweet did come in handy as a reminder of his work - and a final Orwellian flourish ...

And there you go. Can anybody match up to this Areshat for journalist Arsehat of the year?

Meanwhile, the bromancer turned up struggling to understand the organisation that he belonged to, and its assorted conspiracies, and its winks and nods to the crazies, with this kind of talk all the go in the lizard Oz ..."try to discuss the known facts about the origin of Covid-19 or the effectiveness of vaccines in preventing transmission", and you'll get a guernsey in the lizard Oz or you'll end up on a grand jury in Florida helping Ron DeSanctimonious construct a campaign out of Covid vaccine scepticism ...

The pond can't count the number of times vaccine experts noted that the aim of the vaccines was to keep people out of hospitals, away from carking it, and reducing the seriousness of the virus ... but how does that help if you want to do a nod and a wink to anti-vaxxers and other conspiracy theorists?

And that way you can end up barking mad, and holed up in Queensland, and mystifying the bromancer ...

Village bobbies? Miss Marple? Trust the bromancer to use an entirely inappropriate metaphor, but it does distract from the reality ...

People who knew Ronald Train during his days living in Toowoomba joked that “no church would accept him, so he had to make his own”.

Train believed – and would later write in a book – that Freemasons “give their allegiance to Lucifer” and were “a cancer”. The constitution of his Christian Independent Fellowship (started after his physical church in Toowoomba closed and he moved interstate) says appointing women to leadership positions “will never be entertained”.

Marriage, Train has said, is “crucial to God and is crucial to society”. (Graudian)

Nutty Xians, and yet not so far from the reptile Arsehat of the year carrying on about TG folk ... or others blathering endlessly about the virtues of white Xian western civilisation.

That's a cue to head back to the the bromancer, completely unaware - despite the pond's constant warnings through the year - that the calls have been coming from inside the house ... and from him ...

And that's what's called a convenient editing of the facts ... because the bromancer doesn't want to go there. Easy to talk about sov cit nonsense, and the sort of rantings that the Killer indulged in during the fiercest Covid days, but the barking mad fundamentalist Xian stuff?

My brother and I have been out-numbered by the wicked and ask our Father to set fire to the cities and towns and call out to our Brother Yeshua to return,” Gareth Train writes in one post, referring to “Don” and his wife, “Annie”.

The cross-border relationship also offered an eerie insight into the paranoia that both couples appear to have been gripped by in the lead-up to the shooting. In a video posted less than a week before, “Don” lays out a conspiracy-laden narrative borrowing from the far-right “great reset” theory which predicts a coming end-days scenario with “enforced” vaccinations, and bans on Christianity, “freedom” and “private property”.

He states people like himself and the Trains would resist “no matter [the] cost” including “running and gunning with bounties on our heads … whether we survive this or not”.

In a comment on a video of “Don’s” on 7 December, Stacey Train remarks: “Our Heavenly Father chose us for this time – what a privilege. Daniel and I are looking forward to going Home. We’ll see you when we get there, our dear brother and sister.”

Gareth and Nathaniel Train had been raised in a fundamentalist Christian household and the former regularly posted on conspiracist websites during the pandemic.  (Graudian)

How could the bromancer, with his devotion to his imaginary friends, go there?

Or perhaps the Opus Dei mindset? A little mindless mortification?

Nope, easier to blather on about QAnon, but before we get there, please a moment, a flashback ... courtesy the Graudian ...

Nope, let's not go there, it turns out you should don the blinkers and pretend that sort of thing never happened on the Chairman's beat ...

Of course it wasn't just Tuckyo and Faux Noise's favourite politician doing a nod and a wink to barking mad conspiracy theorists ...

Of late Elon has been going down that rabbit hole, understanding that peddling far right madness can be a business model, as noted by WaPo (paywall)

Speaking of repugnant extremism as a business model, it turns out that the bromancer has yet to accept any responsibility for the way that News Corp for years promoted the malignant Donald ...

"Now it's true that Trump's enemies tell almost as many lies as he does"?

That's worse than a bout of NY Times both siderism ...

Yes, the pond noted the canny "almost" inserted by the bromancer as his get out of jail card, but then he goes back to Hunter and the laptop, favourite turf for conspiracy theorists, though it turned out to be a nothingburger, unless you happen to be compelled by snaps of cocks... as cocks often are ...

Still, blaming others for the Donald is a handy way to avoid responsibility ... why if you head further down the rabbit hole, it's all the fault of the Biden camp, diminishing trust in institutions and democracy, and never mind the role that Faux Noise played in pushing the mango Mussolini to the centre of the stage ...

Hollywood, foreign governments, the digital universe, academic fashion?

Still he can't manage to go there ... though there are plenty of chances to do so ... though admittedly WaPo has a paywall ...

The pond isn't going to waste time on the elaboration of the assorted conspiracies, instead it will just cut to the climax and a few quotes to tease out the methodology ...

These are the conspiracy theories within Carlson’s meta-conspiracy theory about the intelligence community’s omnipresence. They are there because the answers to these questions might be there! It all falls into place!...

...The point is not coherence. It never is. This is why Carlson thrives on cable news: If you pause for even a moment to consider how nonsensical his claims are, they collapse.

The point, instead, is suspicion and distrust. To inculcate a sense that maybe those things are open questions. That maybe Twitter was a secret intelligence-gathering operation. That perhaps the tendrils of governmental nefariousness do extend deep into places you’d never expect.

Tucker Carlson’s primary product is fear and distrust. Keep that in mind, and his weird, unsupportable leaps of logic become much easier to understand. You can much more easily track how Twitter hiring a guy with expertise in combating election misinformation suddenly becomes evidence that maybe all of these things Russia and its allies stand accused of doing weren’t their fault at all.

And so on, and there's Hollywood for you, news as a form of showbiz conspiracy theories ...

Thankfully the pond had spent enough time down the rabbit hole, so many red pills to swallow, and this was the last of the bromancer's effort this day ... ironically talking of gullible right wingers, apparently unaware of Tuckyo's deep and abiding love for Vlad the Terrible ...

That was a handy jump in time, so old and extensive, quick, let's jump to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion ...

That way you can entirely skip the history of the blood libel, a general Xian theory, but one in which the Catholic church also played a part ...

In 1911, the Dictionnaire apologétique de la foi catholique, an important French Catholic encyclopedia, published an analysis of the blood libel accusations. This may be taken as being broadly representative of educated Catholic opinion in continental Europe at that time. The article noted that the popes had generally refrained from endorsing the blood libel, and it concluded that the accusations were unproven in a general sense, but it left open the possibility that some Jews had committed ritual murders of Christians. 

Other contemporary Catholic sources (notably the Jesuit periodical La Civiltà Cattolica) promoted the blood libel as truth.

And speaking of the Jesuits ... and the truth ...

Nor for that matter the bromancer ... nor any of the rabid reptiles rabbiting on endlessly about the benefits of white Christian western empires and white Christian civilisation, as rabid white supremacists and white nationalists are wont to do ...

And so the conspiracy theories run on, in News Corp, Faux Noise and of late the Elon lovers, and to celebrate, the pond will end with an immortal Rowe ...