In which the pond manages to avoid the talk of war by indulging in an epic feast on reptile mania ...

 

So the Australian Jewish lobby thinks attacking hospitals and encouraging the suffering and killing of babies (not to mention other patients or medical staff) is the way forward in the propaganda war?

Naturally the reptiles were right on board, with the lesser member of the Kelly gang leading the charge ...

Down in the comments section, cackling Claire was managing to confuse and conflate any criticism of far right Benji and his far right fundamentalist horses on a killing spree as anti-Semitism ...

Luckily the pond could avoid the current set of catastrophes for news from home, with the Caterist showing the way and leading the charge ... and the result, fair warning, is an epic flurry of reptile woes with no signs of the mania waning ...

Yes, yes, the pond can't believe it. The tired old remnants of the lizard Oz graphics department have rolled out yet again, for the umpteenth time, that all purpose illustration of a shadowy figure gazing at a shadowy screen.

The pond has cracked too many jokes too many times about it to do so again, but really? The pond's readership has assured the pond that the reptile revenue is on the rise, but that doesn't mean profits and it certainly doesn't mean an agile graphics department at the lizard Oz.

Reach for the nearest, cheapest stock image is the daily cry, and truth to tell, in noting this comedy, the pond almost clean forgot to pay attention to the Caterist carrying on, as if he was about to be struck dumb and censored and silenced ... as if ... if only ...

Marcuse? Cancel culture? The pond is increasingly drawn to counter-programming as a way of balancing a strictly reptile diet. 

The occasional bit of roughage is good, and the pond promised itself that the next time it heard "woke" or "cancel culture" or similar in a reptile context, it would refer to Fintan O'Toole's Defying Tribalism in the NYRB (paywall).

Ideally the pond would have saved this for an "our Henry" day, but whatever, in a Caterist Marcuse emergency, break glass.

It's ostensibly a review of Susan Neiman's Left Is Not Woke but in his discussion, O'Toole embarks on a satisfying trip back to what is loosely called Enlightenment days: 

It has to be acknowledged that there are good historical reasons for skepticism about the Enlightenment’s claims to have articulated values for humanity as a whole. It’s not merely that the violence of slavery and colonialism exposed the hypocrisy of many of those who claimed to hold those values. It is that the very idea that one was enlightened justified the domination of those who were not. As Caroline Elkins has shown in Legacy of Violence (2022), her rigorous autopsy of the British Empire, the spread of the rule of law (a central Enlightenment project) was the great moral claim of nineteenth-century imperialism. But since the colonized peoples were not yet sufficiently developed to understand it, they could be subjected to what Elkins calls “legalized lawlessness.” This was the catch-22 for nonwhite peoples: until the indefinite point in the future when, under our firm tutelage, you have become sufficiently enlightened to grasp the universality of our principles, those universals exclude you.

It’s also true that “woke” is an expression so thoroughly absorbed into reactionary rhetoric that it has become a signifier without a signified. When Elon Musk can blame “the woke mind virus” for the poor quality of Netflix shows, the decline of Twitter, the condition of San Francisco, the alleged plot by Yale University to “destroy civilization,” the obstacles preventing us from colonizing Mars, and “pushing humanity towards extinction,” there’s a strong case for concluding that the term can no longer function in rational discourse. Like “political correctness” before it, “woke” has ceased to be a concept and is now a klaxon. It serves both to alarm the right-wing base and to drown out the noise of unwanted voices. To say, as Neiman’s title does, that the left is not woke runs the risk of copying the right’s tribalist strategy of defining oneself not just negatively but against an increasingly empty insult.

Neiman is well aware of both caveats. Her claim is not that the thinkers of the Enlightenment were individually or collectively free of racist, sexist, homophobic, and Eurocentric prejudices, but rather that “through the restless self-critique it invented” the Enlightenment “had the power to right most of its own wrongs.” Though Neiman makes much of Immanuel Kant’s attacks on colonialism, she might also have pointed to his ability to change his mind on the subject. In the 1780s he suggested that “our part of the world”—Europe—“will probably someday give laws to all the others,” that the people of India were so docile that “if they were to be ruled by a European sovereign, the nation would become happier,” and that “[Native] Americans and Negroes cannot govern themselves. Thus, [they] serve only as slaves.”

But in the 1790s Kant was forced by his own principles into a radical revision of these ideas. He saw through the colonizers’ pretense of giving “laws to all the others” as a mere justification for rapacity. He accorded full and equal status in law to all people on all continents and asserted their right to defend their ways of life against foreign encroachment. He rejected the claim that there is a hierarchy of civilizations. He strongly opposed slavery and dropped the prejudice that some peoples are incapable of self-government. In a passage from Toward Perpetual Peace that Neiman quotes, Kant writes of the colonizing powers that they

"oppress the natives, excite widespread wars among the various states, spread famine, rebellion, perfidy, and the whole litany of evils which afflict mankind. China and Japan, who have had experience with such guests, have wisely refused them entry."

Kant’s search for universal values led him not toward notions of European superiority but away from them.

Far from using the idea of the universal to bolster colonialism, eighteenth-century thinkers consistently turned the tables by imagining how non-Europeans would look with fresh eyes at imperialist assumptions and find them both idiotic and barbaric. Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver explains to his Houyhnhnm master, as though it were common sense, that “if a Prince send Forces into a Nation where the People are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put half of them to Death, and make Slaves of the rest, in order to civilize and reduce them from their barbarous Way of Living.” His Houyhnhnm listener can scarcely believe that “a Creature pretending to Reason could be capable of such Enormities.”

This trick of imagining how Europe must look to non-Western outsiders was used to similarly devastating effect in, among other works, Lahontan’s Dialogue with a Huron, Montesquieu’s The Persian Letters, Diderot’s Supplement to Bougainville’s Voyage, and Goldsmith’s Chinese Letters. Neiman is quite right to insist that universalism was not “a sham that was invented to disguise Eurocentric views that supported colonialism.” Rather, “Enlightenment thinkers invented the critique of Eurocentrism and were the first to attack colonialism, on the basis of universalist ideas.”

And so on, and the pond is sorry Fintan missed out on Marcuse, but never mind, refreshed, the pond could brush past the reptile offering of a snap of Albo ...

... to continue with the Caterist ...

For reasons the pond simply can't explain, the reptiles at this point inserted a huge snap of AOC, presumably on the basis that she would terrify the lizard oz's aging readership ...

She doesn't look that bad, but once again the lizard Oz graphics department had managed to distract the pond from the Caterist hysteria, luckily coming to a close in a final gobbet ...

Vulgar youff prefers Instagram and TikTok to reading the Caterist in the lizard Oz? 

Why, the pond wonders? What's that? The pond should have read that Caterist caterwauling and the pond would have instantly understood and achieved enlightenment and headed off to start up a TikTok account? And so the watching of cavorting pretty young things could begin, and this is somehow worse than indulging a Caterist?

Meanwhile, there was a letter from America from Killer, but the pond decided this could be a Killer day, and picked up an earlier Killer letter from America that the pond had missed ...

The pond knew in a flash that there would be a meeting of Covid anti-vax minds... and there would be some Killer fun. 

Yes, the pond caught the news, now a few days old, NSW Health encourages mask-wearing as Covid-19 cases rise, but that's a red rag mask to a Killer mask-fearing bull ...

There's a job to be done, and talking up made RFK Jr. is the sort of work that Killer relishes ...

Of course Killer was going to be beguiled by a Larry star, defending her anti-vax hubbie ... talk about Killer glamour and glitter ... and talk about a candidate dear to Killer's Covid heart ...

Um, actually, he's a repository of about every barking mad conspiracy theory doing the rounds under the American sun, and that's saying something ... but the pond has already referred to Here Are All The Conspiracies RFJ Jr. Promotes, so instead settled for the dose of Hollywood glamour offered by the reptiles, albeit a fading TV star ...

And then it was on to a final gobbet of the conspiracist, celebrated by Killer, and with Killer conspicuously omitting all the best conspiracy theories...

Aw, that's a bummer note for Killer to end on, and so it was on to Killer's current Letter from America ...

The IRS? Hasn't Killer heard the news? There's absolutely no need for the IRS. Senator Ted has told the pond so ...

Who knew that Killer would inspire the pond to note a Senator Ted press release, but there's certainly no need to press on with Senator Ted's astonishing IRS insights when there's more Killer to hand ...

At this point the reptiles tried to sway the pond with a snap of domestic frolics ...

... but dammit, the pond was on an IRS roll, this time with Ron, member of the order of cowboy high heels ...

Enough already cowboy Ron, anyone wanting more Ron can follow the link, or perhaps write, requesting advice on how best to elevate height using insoles ... 

The pond has more of Killer's letter from America ...

As for income tax v. the punitive effect of a sales tax on poorer members of the community, the pond will leave the argument to others, and instead the pond will keep wondering why Killer keeps citing the US, when really Speaker Johnson shows the way forward... onward Xian soldiers, marching off to IRS war, and never mind the fiscal stupidity ...

And so on, and it's with deep regret that the pond must end with Killer insisting that the IRS and the infernal US tax system somehow manages to get things right ...

The pond realises that some might suffer from link anxiety, so the pond clicked, just to check and reassure stray readers that the pond's use of screen caps hadn't prevented following up anything meaningful ..

That final link was just another link to the innards of the reptile hive mind, on the basis that you must never leave the reptile house when reading ...

At this point the pond had hear some frail readers loudly shouting enough already, two Killer serves and a Caterist as a cherry topping is more than enough already. 

Who cares about the bombing of hospitals, just put an end to the suffering. Perhaps a cartoon, there hasn't been a cartoon ...perhaps some talk of rooting out leftist vermin ... and then end it all ...

End it all?

Sorry, there's a Major on the loose, and attention must be paid as the Major heads out to the garden to cultivate his carrots ...

Yes, the pond is already well over length, yes it's worse than Ridley doing Napoleon in the tradition of Gance (which the pond once saw with a big live band at the Palais in Melbourne), and  yes there's been more than enough already, but the Major thinks he's found a Killer new line of attack ...

The Major quoting the Major? Well there's no need for the pond to follow that link ... talk about the past, sing about lost memories Babs ...

Enough with the memories Babs, let's do it live, let's do it now with the Major ...

At this point the reptiles snuck in a snap of Warwick, so it was time for a downsize ...

Back to the Major's alarums and then a truly terrifying sight ...

The pond did appreciate all the Major insights, especially that link to Dame Groan, what with the pond being something of an expert at serving up Groanings to Groan cultists.

But the Swiss bank account man from 2018, and the Major again navel gazing as he fluff gathered and cited himself citing the man with a Gold Coast hooker past?

It was too much, especially as the reptiles followed up with what was supposed to be a terrifying snap ...

The pond can't begin to count the number of vulgar youff who wouldn't have the first clue about Gough. Too much TikTok and not enough time with the Major brooding about past glories ...

Yes, it would likely terrify the Major's aging readership - no one under 70 admitted - and perhaps that explains why the Major is now content to recycle MCA press releases ...

At this point, given the Major's deep devotion to watching the planet burn, the pond should reference the need to save the whales ... it's a ripper story in the Graudian, How a false claim about wind turbines killing whales is spinning out of control in coastal Australia ...

The pond will simply note that the Major talking about inflation as being a world-wide phenomenon rather undercuts the Major's assault on all the local whining and whingers, but the Major has enough rat cunning to turn to the domestic scene and cite the CSIRO, which is strange, given the way that body is infested with Marcusian leftists, and the reptiles' talking up of SMRs now seems to be blowing in the wind ...

And so after all that the pond is made ready for tomorrow's Groaning. 

What was that old saying about getting stronger? That which doesn't kill you today will surely kill you sometime in the future... and this epic serving of reptile fodder will surely hasten the pond to an early grave ...

And perhaps that's just as well, because the pond likely wouldn't be able to find the dosh for the right-sized bunker that the Major currently has on order...