In which the pond marks down the hole in the bucket man, and then for the last voiceless time gets a dose of humbug from the lizard Oz editorialist ...

 

The pond has always been interested in the way that the delusional 'sov cit' movement managed to attract black people in the United States.

It's impossible to underestimate the attractions, appeals and charms of crackpot conspiracy theories, as shown off by the story in The Graudian Voice no campaigner claims Uluru statement supporters want ‘their own military’

Back in the day, there was Dame Slap claiming that climate science would be used by the UN to introduce world government ...

Step forward a certain Kerry White ...

...Kerry White, a Narungga elder, one-time One Nation candidate, and committee member of the Recognise a Better Way group, went on to allege the stolen generation “wasn’t stolen” and that there was “nothing wrong” with assimilation policies. The comments were made last week to an online talkshow hosted by fellow former One Nation candidates, where White is credited as a Narungga elder and Recognise A Better Way committee member.
“What they’re going to do, if they bring this voice in, they’re going to push for treaty … Once they do that, then the United Nations comes in, all the land that’s under native title now, that goes to the United Nations, it belongs all to the United Nations,” White told the ExCandidates podcast.
“And everybody, that’s white people, black people, doesn’t matter who they are, if you’re on that native title land, you don’t own nothing, not your house, not nothing.”

Never underestimate the appeal of crackpot conspiracy theories. The lizard Oz has shown the way for years ...

Meanwhile, over at the lizard Oz, the hole in the bucket man was carrying on in his usual way ...

It was entirely appropriate that shyte-stirring Henry should feature alongside a shyte-stirrer featuring in a lizard Oz shyte-stirring story ... but the pond decided to avoid that huge pile of shyte.

As for the hole in the bucket man, the pond knows perfectly well what the old bigot thinks of the Voice, and felt no need to offer a platform for more repetition of the bleeding obvious ... he's agin it.

So the pond decided to strip him of his gobbet status, and take out his putrescent ranting about the Voice and instead focus on the usual parade of portentous, pompous period references ...

Here the pond should note that the remnants of the lizard Oz graphics department helped our Henry by supporting a favourite tactic of racist deep south US politicians ... inviting Martin Luther King to join their cause, as well as John Locke ...

Now on with the portentous, pompous humbugging ...

...To say that is not to deny that when John Locke asserted, late in the 17th century, that God created human beings in a strict “state of equality”, so that “all power and jurisdiction (must be) reciprocal, no one having more than another”, the moral principle he set out was just an aspiration. But that aspiration has served as the lodestar of Western political development, allowing those who were once excluded to be encompassed within democracy’s ever-broader embrace. 
Democracy has, in other words, always had a compelling response to past political inequality: political equality. It does not make the last first; it makes them every bit as good as their fellow citizens.
That is because democracy is an exercise in shaping a shared present and a better future, not in relitigating an unchangeable past. It heeds Thomas Hobbes’ observation, based on the successive invasions that had crashed on England’s shores, that “there is scarcely a commonwealth in the world whose beginnings can in conscience be justified”.
And instead of imprisoning itself in the shadowy world of perpetual victims and perpetual perpetrators, it accepts Martin Luther King’s reminder that “we may all have come in different ships, but we’re in the same boat now”– with our duty being to decide together on its next destination.
There can consequently be no “dictatorship of the proletariat” in democracies: unlike Marxism, we do not pretend to cure past suffering by vesting those whose distant ancestors were wronged with political rights over others. Nor are there, in a liberal democracy, any special citizens who are constitutionally entitled to bellow, any more than there are half or quarter citizens whose voices the Constitution reduces to a whisper.
Indeed, the very idea of differential citizenship is a contradiction in terms, as democratic citizenship has, at least since Aristotle, always meant “the right to the full privileges and burdens of governing the city”, with “every secondary distinction – such as wealth or poverty, beauty or ugliness, wisdom or folly – erased”.
That is not only the essence of equal rights; it is also integral to liberal democracy’s capacity to absorb its inherent tensions. 
No system of government creates greater room for diversity; yet it requires enough unity to keep differences within bounds. It wants us to be strongly committed to our goals and values; yet also to accept those the democratic process determines, even when they conflict with our own. And it relies on what the ancients called “civic friendship” – the fellow feeling that makes us willing to help each other out – despite giving rise to enduring, passionately felt conflicts.
Political equality is a crucial part of the glue that makes those contradictions tolerable, assuring this round’s losers they will have a fair chance next time around. In contrast, if there are super-citizens on one side, who are guaranteed a privileged voice in the competition for costly benefits, and mere denizens – who believe they are always footing the bill – on the other, “civic friendship” metastasises into Trump-like fury.
That is why it is impossible to assess the voice without asking what sort of society it entails. The answer is straightforward: it entails a return to ascriptive rights; that is, to political distinctions based on descent.
Ascriptive rights were at the heart of pre-modern societies. In ancient Siam, every person received “dignity marks” – ranging from five for a slave to 100,000 for the heir apparent – by virtue of birth; to know a person’s marks was to know precisely how loud their voice would sound in public affairs. 

Ancient Siam? Phew, he really is pissing into the wind these days...

Back to conspiracy theories. Just why did the pond mention Kerry White?

Well here's our sanctimonious, preening, insufferably righteous Henry taking a pot shot at Indigenous 'leets ...

...The fact is that the Indigenous elite is neither separate nor different: it has all the accoutrements of its non-Indigenous counterparts, with the self-righteousness of victimhood to boot. But those whose lives have been blighted by the policies that elite has promoted are both different and separate: separated from the rest of us by poverty, ill-health, violence and early death.
We, as a nation, are responsible for that tragedy – it occurred under our watch, it is a sin of this generation, not of those who came before. And correcting it by ending the separatist policies that have caused it is our foremost moral responsibility.
That is the sole benefit this ill-conceived referendum has wrought. It has forced into the open the question that should have been asked long ago: Are we one country or two? With that question now starkly posed, it won’t be buried again. 

That line's worth repeating for emphahsis ...

...The fact is that the Indigenous elite is neither separate nor different: it has all the accoutrements of its non-Indigenous counterparts, with the self-righteousness of victimhood to boot.

And here's White doing the same ...

...Recognise A Better Way, formerly led by Mundine, has since merged with Fair Australia, the no campaign from conservative lobby group Advance. The merger formed Australians For Unity, the main no campaign vehicle granted tax-deductible status to receive donations.
White is listed as a committee member of Recognise A Better Way on its website alongside Gary Johns, the former deputy prime minister John Anderson, and Indigenous woman Janetia Knapp, who appears in Fair Australia advertisements.
In the podcast interview, White accused leading yes campaigners Thomas Mayo, Marcia Langton and their “cronies” of “feathering their own nest” and concocting a hidden plan to create a second parliament and their own military.
She alleged the Uluru dialogues were “hate-filled meetings against the white people in the government”; pointing to the Uluru statement, she alleged “25 of those pages were for dictating what they want”.
“They want a new building in Canberra, they want as many people in their little group as what sits in the whole federal parliament now, they want it matched even, right, and then they go on to say that they want their own frickin military,” White incorrectly claimed.
“Why the hell would they want their own military? Because they’re the Communist party of Australia. There’s a war coming and you need to choose a side and it’s not a yes or no, it’s about do we stand up for Australia and kick them lot out? Or do we let them tell us what to do?”

Of course not everybody can have a successful career managing to adopt the policies of both major parties and then marrying into the Sydney Institute, but isn't it wondrous what keeping the right sort of company will do for you ...

Meanwhile, if you want a genuine conspiracy, try reading the Graudian yarn Revealed: the secretive rightwing firm providing 'clout' for voice no campaign ...

What else? Again the lizard Oz was shooting blanks ...

The sight of the lickspittle, fellow travelling Adams, who's hung around the Chairman Emeritus for years for his own benefit while purporting to be vaguely leftie,  was almost down there with Claire's cackle, but luckily the pond had a cartoon to hand from the infallible Pope for both her and Ben ...

And after all that, there was nothing for it but for the pond to get a serve from a wondrously self-serving lizard Oz editorialist ...

Yep, in the manner of the mango Mussolini, it's all about them. As for poor old Noel Pearson, has he at last learned that if you lie down with dogs you get fleas, and if you swim with reptiles, you can end up in a death roll? Not to mention poor old Pat Dodson, with a neighsayer at the door ...

Meanwhile, the insufferable lizard Oz editorialist kept on and on ...

Ah yes, there's a certain way forward ...

At this point the lizard Oz editorialist was interrupted by the remnants of the graphics department, sticking in two huge snaps as if that would somehow balance things, and make things right ...

Not on the pond's watch. Back to the lizard Oz editorialist, successfully imitating a puffer fish and making it all about them ...

Nattering "Ned"?! We all know his interminable, turgid capacity for tedious humbugging and the inevitable result ...

The length of this lizard Oz editorial suggested a defensiveness, and an awareness of a deep guilt ... and so on and on it went, the calling for a bowl of water, and the obsessive compulsive washing of the hands, down there with Pontius Pilate and Lady Macbeth...

Roll that last insult around on the tongue and see how it tastes ...

Whatever the result, as a nation we must continue to strive for proper recognition of Indigenous Australians in a form that will help deliver the fruits of reconciliation for everybody ...

Pardon the pond while it takes time out to joke on its vomit ...

It's not just on Albo, it's on all the wretched reptiles, and the Chairman Emeritus ... and no amount of humbug can wipe away the guilt or the responsibility... while the pond is left to mourn the way that it had already run that relevant cartoon ...

As for that other matter the pond refuses to touch, Wilcox managed to work up a cartoon that evoked a general response to any issue that might arise ...