In which whataboutism, the war with China and a bonus oscillating fan make their Sunday meditative appearance ...

 

There's a clear distinction to be made between whataboutism and bothsiderism. A bothsiderist would look at the appalling treatment of children in various institutions and deplore the behaviour of both sides, or all sides, be they Catholic, Anglican, Jewish, Islamic, secular, atheist, Thetan Scientoglogical, whatever ...

A whataboutist of the Polonial school has only one agenda. His whataboutism is designed solely for the purpose of mitigating the guilt of the Catholic church and other religious institutions (though guilt is the main brand of the Catholic church) ...

It will take until the last few lines of the last gobbet, but eventually Polonius will offer a classic quod erat demonstrandum ...

As usual, the remnants of the lizard Oz graphics department came up with a classic stock footage image, which has been used, inter alia, to illustrate stories about domestic violence, youth mental health services, indigenous child removals, sexual assault, sex education for kids, people born intersex, single mother responsibilities, the origins of anorexia, children in gangs, and truckies demanding transport reform.

No need to worry about mindless AI, it's here ... but as it's illustrating Polonius's prattle, toujours gai, Archy, wotthehell, wotthehell ...

Sorry, the pond can take only so much from the lizard Oz Scrooge McDuck graphics department ... on with Polonial prattle and once again he proves to be a keen viewer of the ABC ...

Here the pond should note that it's aware of sexual abuse in state schools. Back in the day, a certain Mr Norris - he's dead now, so mentioning his name doesn't matter - had a rarefied form of sexual abuse, from which girls were exempt.

He would wander around the playground, selecting random boys, and thrusting their heads between his legs so that he could give them a sound paddywhacking on the backside, often on the flimsiest of excuses. 

It wasn't recognised as sexual abuse at the time, and still isn't by some - it certainly wasn't as transparently vicious as the way one teacher with a deformed finger wielded the cane - but the pond suspects that it was a weird way to get certain jollies, what with the boys' necks in touch with certain parts of the teacher's anatomy...

But the pond digresses ... the point here is all this whataboutism is leading to that final redemptive Polonial line ...

And there you have it. All that is designed to produce the payoff "whatabout" line, which is to say whatabout "Victoria premiere Daniel Andrews led the criticism of pedophilia within Catholic and other religious educational institutions" ...

But the physical and sexual abuse rife in state schools doesn't excuse in any way, shape or form, the horrific abuse of children by the Catholic church and its minions, in much the same way that men suffering domestic violence doesn't ameliorate women suffering from angry Sydney Anglicans insisting on their complimentary women ...

The pond's standard anecdote about classroom violence in state primary schools concerned the class clown. Called out for being a larrikin, he was given six of the best. He went back to his desk and made comic noises. Called out again, and anther six. More defiance. Another six. And so on, until his hands were wrecked and he was sobbing in pain ...

That's down there with the way lascivious Xian Brothers used to dole out the leather on tender, young, lusciously ripe bottoms, or so the pond was told when horror stories were exchanged ...

Whatever, the point being that the pond is deeply tired by Polonius's whataboutism, when he might spend at least some of his time deploring the Pellists and their ilk, and renouncing his fellow travelling with the wort of the church ...

And so to the bromancer and the ongoing war with China, a saga longer than The Iliad and The Odyssey combined ... (the pond mentions Greek literature because Dame Slap is now a keen ancient historian).

There was nothing for it but to get out the battle fatigues and get on with it ...

Ah, it's not just a war with China, it's a war with the entire Pacific, and uppity, difficult neighbours who need to be taught bromancer lessons about foolish pride, and suddenly in a flash, the pond realised the bromancer's game plan.

Back in the day when the bromancer was tagged as the lizard Oz foreign editor - he still is, but it never appears in bylines - he used to spend some time writing about other countries, including the US and the UK. 

The bromancer seems to have lost interest in the UK once Boris left the scene - you know he once met with the great man and has dined out ever since -  though really little England is currently a splendid example of things going tremendously well ...

The bromancer also seems to have lost interest in the United States, and the pond now realises this is a form of spite, because there's a lot that's interesting happening there, but you'd never know it from the bromancer's monomaniacal, obsessive-compulsive scribbling about defence forces and the need for readiness for the war with China by Xmas ...

Now the bromancer's rhetorical abuse of neighbours is extreme - let a lizard Oz climate science denialist intent on nuking the country and the planet cast the first stone - but it really is a distraction from comedy items shipped from America ...

For example, the pond loved Jose Pagliery's story Trump’s Bank Fraud Defense ‘Defies the Laws of Physics’, which began with a straightforward account of the defence, and the obvious real estate takedown, because the pond can testify that its houses in Unley are now worth much more than when the pond sold them ...

...To investigators’ surprise, Trump suddenly launched into a diatribe about how an eventual increase in prices validated his inflated past assessments.

“If you look at the values today of this property that you have down, obviously, the numbers are low. In 2014, the numbers are low because the properties are worth much more today,” Trump said.

Wallace tried to move on, but Trump wouldn’t relent—doubling down on this time-altering reasoning.

“Obviously, it turned out to be right, because the properties are worth more today, generally speaking, than they were in the statement—substantially,” the former president said. “Regardless it turned out to be true.”

“Because the properties are worth more… I think we have now the benefit of knowing that the statement when I did it was probably low because of the fact that a number of years later, not that long later, the properties are worth substantially more,” Trump added.

Now that months have passed—and Trump’s defense lawyers refuse to back away from that line of reasoning—the former president is setting himself up for rough seas ahead.

On one hand, the argument doesn’t hold up in the business world—at least not the one that operates legally.

“What he is saying is completely inconsistent with how real estate professionals talk about valuations,” said David Reiss, a Brooklyn Law School professor who specializes in real estate finance.

“When you talk about valuations at a given time, you’re talking about what its value is at that time. It becomes more valuable in the future, but that’s its value at the time,” Reiss said.

But then to the pond's delight, the story hared off into Alice land, and the concept of time ...

...Reiss likened Trump redefining time-bound questions on financial forms to the way Humpty Dumpty makes up words in Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The law professor read a passage in which Alice took issue with the Eggman’s improper use of the word “glory.”

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’”

“But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’” Alice objected.

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

And yet, another way of exploring Trump’s assertion that his 2014 estimates were true then because they became true in 2022 is through the lens of physics. For that, The Daily Beast contacted one of the world’s leading thinkers about the concept of time: cosmologist Marina Cortês at the Institute for Astrophysics and Space Sciences in Portugal.

“He's defying the very laws of physics,” Cortês said. “The past is different from the future. That is the most basic knowledge we have in cosmology. The arrow of time is the most fundamental property of reality.”

She’s referring to the scientific notion that there’s a one-way direction to the occurrences in our universe. In the world in which a real estate tycoon is slapping inflated values on his properties, now is now and later is later.

“Unless he wrote specifically that this property will be valued this much in the future, the statement he wrote carries four-dimensional coordinates in space that are attached to the time he made them. He cannot make statements that are continuous into the future. If he had, there’s a large community of theoretical physicists who’d like to speak to him,” she said.

Essentially, Trump is wrong for the same reason that his lawyers can drop ice into their glasses at their courtroom table next week and watch it melt—but won’t ever see their New York City tap water coalesce into ice cubes. Heat always moves from hotter objects to colder ones unless some outside force is involved.

“According to the second law of thermodynamics, the future does not move into the past. It’s always different from the past,” Cortês said. “It’s like Sir Arthur Eddington’s famous statement: ‘If your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope. There is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.’”

The simplest explanation suffices, Cortês said. “It’s just a tale.”

That's just one example of many ripe absurdities currently abroad in the USA, but the bromancer's game plan is to deny these simple pleasures to the pond, but the pond refuses to duck ...

Shades of the immortal Rowe, but back to the digressing bromancer finding more neighbours and more climate science to abuse ... while talking up the need for war and the need for oodles of kit, and yet somehow imagining this doesn't make him a classic militarist ...

At this point the pond decided it might as well get the illustrative snaps out of the way ...

It irks the pond that we get these sorts of snaps when we should be dealing with at least a few of the momentous events emanating from the States ...

On and on the bromancer rambled, trying to distract the pond from news that plea bargains were already going down in Georgia ...and insane pitches are being made ...while the pond is left with the bromancer mouse that roared ...

At last a mention of the States, but why on earth would they be distracted?

Meanwhile, the bromancer wass busy dragging simple Simon into his war, which is now Pacific wide ...

Strange, only a few bromancers ago as we ripen hour by hour, China was nearing penury, poverty and bankruptcy, with Xi teetering like a skittle ...

Readers of the pond back in the day might recall it ...

And so on and so forth, they'll all be rooned by Xmas, unlike the US, which is currently ship shapeand under control ...

Now it seems that the vibrant Chinese economy has bounced back and is about to take over the world...

Oh wait, rugby provides a spiritual connection, though when the pond last checked in on rugby, Australia was considered below third world status ...

Ah the good old climate science denialism never goes away, and what we need is a good burning ...

And so at last to the last gobbet, with thanks at least from the pond that nattering "Ned" disappeared from view when the pond was looking for a contender for its meditative Sunday ... even if it means war by Xmas ...

Wait, hold on a tic, hang on by a 'mo, it's now a cold war, not a hot war?! So instead of all that kit the bromancer ordered,  we need strategic diplomacy and a bloody big slush fund?

Even more alarming, after all those hints that climate science might be foolish, apparently the climate is now warm ... and might even be warming?

What a truly deeply weird loon he is, and the one relief is that he isn't in charge of the military or Australian diplomacy.

And then, still with room for a final chocolate mint of puréed reptile and out of complete perversity, the pond decided on a bonus. 

The pond never goes near the oscillating fan, but this time he was writing about America, and the pond had some cartoons left over, and if the bromancer won't write about America, then any wavering, quavering fan in the storm ...

There's a handy point for a couple of celebratory cartoons...

Meanwhile, the oscillating fan was doing his best with his "pox on both their houses" style ...

Oh come now, what's this abject talk of polarisation, surely there's an abundance of bold leadership and incisive minds ...

Sorry, the pond got carried away and there's still a gobbet of oscillating fan to go ...

"In truth, most No voters will have a heavy heart if the referendum fails..."

In truth, that's why the pond rarely bothers with the oscillating fan. He purports a level of awareness, but the level of delusion is a match for the rest of the reptile hive mind ... if he really thinks that voting no is all because of a lack of detail, then the pond has Ayers Rock to sell him ... that being the correct name apparently ...

And so to close with a few more cartoons, in the hope that eventually everything and everybody must go at the lizard Oz ...