In which the bromancer does a dance with law-breaking authoritarianism, while the Caterist and the Major carry on with their decades long denialist planning ...

 

The pond recently noted a deepening slide towards authoritarianism and an inclination to lawlessness in the reptiles, with the bromancer leading the charge, and then came this ...

Put it another way ...

It was briefly centre stage on the rotating carousel reptile fickle finger of fame, but had entirely disappeared from the digital front page by today. 

But that's no reason to let it hide in the back pages darkness ... it's something to celebrate ...

Luckily at the very same time, the pond happened to come across a columnist deeply sympathetic to the bromancer's position ...

Now that my favorite president, Donald Trump, is facing a 37-count indictment from the feds, I join with my brothers and sisters in MAGA, and with all sensible Republicans, in saying this: I’m not sure I want to live in a country where a former president can wave around classified documents he's not supposed to have and say, “This is secret information. Look at this,” and then be held accountable for his actions.

I mean, what kind of country have we become? One in which federal prosecutors can take “evidence” before a “grand jury,” and that grand jury can “vote to indict” a former president for 37 alleged “crimes”?  Look at all the other people out there in America, including Democrats like Hillary Clinton and President Joe Biden, who HAVEN’T been indicted for crimes on the flimsy excuse that there is no “evidence” they did crimes. THAT’S TOTALLY UNFAIR!

It’s like Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin wrote in a tweet Friday: “These charges are unprecedented and it’s a sad day for our country, especially in light of what clearly appears to be a two-tiered justice system where some are selectively prosecuted, and others are not.”

Sadly the columnist didn't pay as much attention to Boris's predicament, though some could compensate by reading the Graudian's Senior Tories tell Boris Johnson and allies to ‘shut up and go away’.

Back to the bromancer, still infatuated by coups and criminality and wild-eyed ranting rogues ...

That other columnist was on song with the bromancer ...

What kind of country holds a president accountable for alleged crimes a grand jury charges him with?

Or as Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn tweeted: “Where are the investigations against the Clintons and the Bidens? What about fairness? Two tiers of justice at work.” 

TWO TIERS! One tier in which President Trump keeps getting indicted via both state and federal justice systems and another in which the people I don’t like keep getting not indicted via all the things Fox News tells me they did wrong.

It’s like America has become a banana republic, as long as you do as I’ve done and refuse to look up the definition of “banana republic.”

And of course, you know who’s behind this travesty of justice, right? It’s so-called President Biden, who is both frail and senile and also a laser-sharp master at conducting witch hunts.

Sure, they’ll tell you the indictment came via a special counsel investigation, and that the federal special counsel statute keeps such investigations walled off from political influence. But that’s complete nonsense, unless we’re talking about special counsel John Durham, who was appointed by Attorney General Bill Barr while Trump was president and tasked with investigating the NEFARIOUS LEFT-WING CRIMES committed in the Trump-Russia probe. Durham was above reproach, and the fact that the New York Times reported he “charged no high-level F.B.I. or intelligence official with a crime and acknowledged in a footnote that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign did nothing prosecutable, either” is something I will ignore.

This is a WITCH HUNT, and I believe that because Trump said so!

Current special counsel Jack Smith, on the other hand — he’s bad news. I know this because Trump has said repeatedly that Smith’s investigation is a witch hunt, and I’ve never known Trump to lie about anything.

Keep in mind, in 2016, Trump said: “I’m going to enforce all laws concerning the protection of classified information. No one will be above the law.”

So after he said that, you expect me to believe he didn’t protect classified information? Just because, according to the indictment, there’s a recording of him holding a classified document in his office at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and saying to two staff members and an interviewer: “See, as president I could have declassified it. … Now I can’t, you know, but this is still a secret.”

Back to the bromancer and those bloody boxes ...

Indeed, indeed, and that other columnist was deeply sympathetic ...

You call that “damning evidence,” I call it, “What about Hunter Biden’s laptop?”

Putting Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Hunter Biden in prison? Now THAT makes sense!

Now I can already hear all the libs out there whining and saying that if it was Biden or Hillary or Hunter getting indicted, I wouldn’t be saying a word about two-tiers of justice or the weaponization of the department of justice or anything like that.

Well, those whiners would be right, but the difference is I believe Biden and Hillary and Hunter are all guilty and should be locked up for life, whereas with Trump, I believe he is great and innocent and the best president America has ever known.

It’s like this: If Hillary got indicted for murder, I would say, “Yes, she is absolutely a murderer. Lock her up.”

But if in some outrageous scenario President Trump was indicted for murder just because he told a bunch of people that he did a murder, I would say: “HOW DARE YOU CHARGE THIS MAN WITH MURDER WHEN OTHERS IN THE U.S. HAVE NOT BEEN CHARGED WITH MURDER! THERE ARE CLEARLY TWO TIERS OF JUSTICE, ONE IN WHICH MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT, WHO SAID HE MURDERED SOMEONE, IS CHARGED WITH MURDER AND ONE IN WHICH PEOPLE WHO HAVEN'T MURDERED ARE NOT CHARGED WITH MURDER!”

And that, my liberal friends, makes perfect sense to me and my MAGA companions. So watch out. The Trump Train’s a comin’.

Back to the bromancer, still riding his own train ...

At this point the pond should confess that the other columnist was Rex Huppke writing what was supposed to be a satirical piece for USA Today, the paper they always used to throw away in motel rooms across the States, and might still do for all the pond knows, under the header I don't want to live in a country where Trump could be held accountable.

As for Boris, there's always Simon Jenkins, joining the bromancer's twin loves together in Farewell, Boris Johnson: Britain will not miss your attempts to play Trump.

Meanwhile, with a final bleat, the coup-loving, law-breaker loving bromancer was gone ...

There was only one final touch necessary to celebrate the bromancer's slide into full-blown authoritarianism and criminality, and that as an immortal Rowe co-joining his two heroes ...

And so finally to today's business, and the pond can report that former climate science denialist Caterism has hared off into new demented forms, as the changing situation requires ...

Having spend so much time on the bromancer, the pond isn't going to comment on this latest Caterist flourish - it's more for the record for those who collect and keep lizard oz records - though it is a genuine marvel to see a lizard Oz columnist revert to talk of Mao and five year plans ...

The absurdity is so rich that the pond wishes it had more time to dwell on the Caterist's devotion to living in the 1950s, but sadly must move on ...

The pond should also pause to commend the Caterist for managing to work in a fine example of trans bigotry and transphobia, even as the subject is ostensibly the matter of energy ... because as well as Mao, there's always the possibility of energy turning into a threatening, alarming drag queen story time ... (and there'll be more on fear-mongering below)

Never give up the chance to show off your bigotry ... and never give up the chance to shift from climate science denialism to other ways of muddying the waters with confusion and chaos ...

What to say, except to marvel at the Caterist, and the pond would have loved to have repeated yet again the days of his climate science denialism, if only to celebrate the pragmatism by which he's managed to shift from outright denialism of the science to outright denialism of renewables, but it's with great joy that the pond can report that the Major has returned to active duty, and so the pond has to make room for a bonus ...

In a sense it's just more Caterism, and if the Caterist can revisit Mao and five year plans, the pond would like to revisit ancient Major history.

Those reading the Weekly Beast last week might recall a throwaway note about Wayne Smith's passing and a vale by Gideon Haigh in the lizard Oz ...

The pond hurried off to check the venerable Meade's source, but this was all there was ...

One of the quirkier tasks in which Smithy was conscripted, in fact, was that antediluvian culture war crusade about Manning Clark’s Order of Lenin. One night on tour in Hobart, Peter Lalor, Andrew Faulkner and I cajoled Smithy into narrating it, and the tale could not have been outdone by Robert Harris; we laughed until we were sore.

What was the source of the hilarity? Why it was the attempt to defame Manning Clark, though truly his major six volume history of Australia should have been berated by the way his father's Anglicanism constantly made its way into the gloomy text ... (never mind, the pond suffering through Australian history is long gone).

Dissatisfied, the pond went searching for other mentions of "Smith and the Major" (movie title naming rights patented) ... and came across this by Brian Toohey, way back on 27th August 1996 in the AFR ...

...If Clark was wearing any sort of medal, the most plausible explanation is the dreary one given by his family; namely, that he had attended a conference in 1970 in Moscow where he had been given a commonplace medallion celebrating the centenary of Lenin's birth. As an ANU historian, Harry Rigby, has noted, "They had lots of memorial medals struck which anyone could be given".

The Courier-Mail defends its failure to show that Clark actually received an Order of Lenin as proof that this must have been kept secret, which, in turn, only makes the whole business even more sinister. Accordingly, Clark can then be branded as "an agent of influence" who was "indeed a communist". As Wayne Smith, one of the co-authors of the report, told ABC radio yesterday, the fact that Clark's family did not know he was an agent of influence with an Order of Lenin could be easily explained - he was "leading a double life"....

That was very on brand for the Major, never give up, never surrender, and never admit error, except perhaps when telling a yarn to the boys on tour, and then the pond came across this in a blog item by Derek Barry back in 2016:

..Journalist Wayne Smith wrote the stories which relied on the recollections of retired journalist Peter Kelly who knew Mitchell’s father. Kelly told Mitchell that Geoffrey Fairbairn, who worked with Clark at the Australian National University, had seen Clark at the Soviet embassy wearing the Order of Lenin medal. But Fairbairn had died in 1980 without writing about the incident. In 1991 Kelly spoke to poet Les Murray who also claimed to see Clark wearing the medals at the home of David Campbell (also deceased).

The paper misrepresented Fairnbairn’s wife Anne and never interviewed Campbell’s wife Judy. The story “By Order of Lenin” conjured up artwork of Clark in a Russified blouse next to a photo of the medal with a snippet from his ASIO file about his “communist beliefs”. Using smear and innuendo, the paper worked on the belief that whatever they said three times must be true, McQueen wrote. At the end Smith admitted there was no smoking gun.

Yet Smith and Mitchell were convinced their story was “as big as world war three”. The editor probably believed he had a Walkley award sown up but the story was greeted with widespread derision, and his own News Ltd stable treated it with caution. The Australian gave more weight to the denials than the story forcing a defensive Mitchell to publish a list of “Questions the Courier Mail would ask its critics”.

There was further embarrassment when a Russian-speaking academic checked the archives and found no Order of Lenin given to CMH Clark during the years 1969 to 1971 when it supposedly happened. A Polish activist also dismissed the likelihood of communist beliefs saying Clark addressed several Solidarity meetings in the early 1980s.

Faced with mounting evidence, the Courier Mail changed tack saying the medal was irrelevant and claimed incorrectly the Soviet archives had mentioned his award. The Press Council eventually found the Courier Mail published the story with “too little evidence” and called for a retraction. The paper buried its retraction on page 15 while devoting its first two pages to a rebuttal.

McQueen said the paper’s case rested on a circularity. Clark got the Order of Lenin, therefore he must be an agent: he was an agent therefore he deserved the medal. McQueen went on to systematically destroy the Courier Mail’s evidence brick by painful brick including answering every question Mitchell “would ask his critics”.

This included the unreliability of Murray’s memory, the paranoia of ASIO’s activities and the McCarthyite ravings of one of the paper’s chief witnesses, the post war right wing Victorian MLA Frederick Lewis Edmunds. The paper made much of Clark’s frequent visits to the Soviet Union but didn’t mention the historian travelled everywhere frequently. His book Meeting Soviet Man was reviled by the right but was equally loathed by the left for his refusal to see the USSR as a workers’ paradise.

The true purpose of Clark being “innocent as charged” by the Courier Mail was that some of the mud would stick. There were three reasons for enmity against him: resentment by academics, unease with his personality, and antagonism towards his politics. Clark was a voracious writer who looked under the bonnet of human behaviour. He didn’t give enough credit to the indigenous experience but otherwise he was an excellent historian who took Australia seriously and dared to think beyond traditional boundaries. But it was too easy for the Courier Mail to dismiss his writings as an endless how to vote card for the Labor party.

The paper was fitting in with the tenor of the times which as new prime minister John Howard said, would suit him. Fed up with Paul Keating’s “hectoring on history” Howard wanted to “set the record straight” and make people feel “relaxed and comfortable” again about their history. What Howard’s chirpier view of the past was really about was leverage over the future. This is why it was so important to downplay Clark’s achievements. As McQueen concluded, the courage and courtesy to admit wrongdoing provide reason for optimism about how the majority will handle the future. It is an aspect of the culture wars that has not gone away 20 years later.

Indeed, indeed, and to prove Barry's point, it's back to the Major, still fighting the climate science denialist wars in the lizard Oz ...

The pond's not going to worry about arguing with the Major, but it did want to note that dark, glowering snap of petulant Peta, which is almost Goth like, and if the pond was inclined to be scared by Goths, very sinister and scary ...

It will come in handy as a pointer to the Major's main game at the very end of his piece ...

That reference to energy zealots is of course projection and a slip of the keyboard. In olden reptile days, it would have been "climate change zealots",  and instead of a deep love of gas, the Major would still have been blathering on about his enduring love of coal ...

And that brings the pond to the Major's main game ...

And there you have it, and that's why petulant Peta was presented in gloomy Goth drag, just as Manning Clark was once held up as a truly terrifying and scary Commie. 

The entire point of the reptile game is angertainment, but there's also the fun of a haunted house and a life of fear to keep punters on edge. 

"It's scary" is as simple and succinct a summary of the art of the reptile fear monger as any the pond has seen. Every day is scary day at the lizard Oz, and truly, reading the relentless inclination to authoritarianism and to warped climate science denialism does give the pond a fright, but not enough to fling shekels into chairman Rupert's coffers. If that's the business plan, count the pond out ...

And so as the pond walks down memory lane with the Major, here's another bonus from way back when...

The pond did have a few cartoons lined up to celebrate the bromancer's slide into authoritarianism ...

And that gives the pond a chance to note that you can find Mike Luckovich at source at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ...

But the pond should also finish that Major yarn in the AFR ...

And with that picture of the wily bird, time to wrap things up with a few more cartoons ...