School's back forever ... or maybe it's just that a bromancer read feels like forever ...

 

The pond regrets having to hive off the bromancer to a late arvo slot, but the return to herpetology studies with Major Mitchell and the Caterist induced a kind of catatonia ... followed by a slump and a lengthy pause, in search of a revival...

Once upon a time the pond could have tackled such an unholy trio with nary a blink, and with a dash of Flashman bravado, but these days the edge has done.

Besides, as noted, the bromancer piece. was a reheated serving from a couple of days ago ...

What was this doing on the Monday, apart from taunting and tormenting the pond?

It was just the usual bromancer rant, with the bro as usual ignoring any inconvenient distractions ...

But surely when News Corp's famous favourite, the man backed by Faux Noise, returns, everything will be sorted? 

Taiwan will be handed to Xi, Ukraine will be surrendered to Vlad the Sociopath, NATO will see a significant member exit, and Palestinians will be confined to a gulag in the Sinai desert? 

The mango Mussolini, at one with his authoritarian brethren, can exchange love letters with his one true love, WPK supreme leader Kim ...

Why doesn't the bromancer hold out hope? Why doesn't he mention his orange Jesus and the return of the messiah? Is he doing a George?

At this point the pond should note, as it often does, that the bromancer piece was stuffed full of video and photo distractions which the pond feels obliged to note ... it's a reptile way to purport a kind of gravitas and to make the paranoid rant go on endlessly, like a serve of seafood extender ...

Even with all the clutter out of the way, the bromancer's paranoid rant went on and on ...

The only relief was the way that the bromancer managed to work in a mention of nuking the country to save the planet ...

It seems it's now de rigueur for every reptile column to mention Punxsutawney Pete's bold scheme, though the pond must have been living on another planet when the bromancer noted "there was overwhelming support for nuclear energy across the two governing parties."

More to the point was the bromancer's hint that nuking the country might come in handy in the new cold war. So this ...

... might yet lead to this ...

(The pond watched the show again last night as a reminder of the pleasures to be found in nuking the planet).

The pond would love to be drinking whatever the bromancer drinks when he sits down to the keyboard for one of his rants ...

On second thoughts, along with the mania comes a gloomy form of depressive white flag waving, a glum despair, so maybe not ... how he yearns for an authoritarian leader, a man (it must be a man) who can apply a firm hand and do away with all this messy democracy business ...

The US and its allies aren't ancient Rome?

But surely we know how to do panem et circenses? Is the bromancer not entertained?

Put it another way ...

Why is the bromancer ignoring his saviour and Faux Noise's salvation?

Ready to be rolled?

Surely not, surely now the country is full Taliban already and ready for alliances with other fundamentalist theocracies? Catholics and barking mad fundamentalists rulez, and there are ten commandments in every school (though the pond is relieved at not having to explain adultery to a third grader, and how porking a porn star isn't adultery) ...

What is all this defeatism when Catholic fundamentalism is on a roll?

Steady on ... the very best Brexit minds - and it will be remembered how much the bromancer loved BoJo and Brexit - have authoritarians in hand, and know their Vlad the Sociopath lines by rote ...

Why there it was in the lizard Oz, albeit from an actual news service ...

Put it another way ...

Yes, the very best snake oil salesmen are out and about, and all the bromancer can do is carry on like an hysterical pork chop, apparently unaware that salvation is at hand ...

Strange how the bromancer failed to mention one of the glories of US military expenditure ...

It's going tremendously well, as explained by Alon Pinkas in Haaretz in How Much More Proof Does Biden Need That Netanyahu Is Not a U.S. Ally?

Who knew? We did. Who didn't? The Biden administration and some congressional Democrats.

On Tuesday, after everything U.S. President Joe Biden has done for Israel since October 7, here was the Israeli prime minister standing all made-up and festive in front of a camera, pretending to be distraught, faking a worried, grimacing expression and sanctimoniously accusing the United States of not standing with Israel.

After Biden provided over $14 billion in emergency military aid, after authorizing the sale of dozens of F-35 and F-15 jets, after dispatching two aircraft carrier strike groups to the Mediterranean, Benjamin Netanyahu just stood there and accused the Americans of holding up arms shipments.

Typically, he evoked Winston Churchill asking Franklin D. Roosevelt to send arms to a besieged Britain in 1941. Because, of course, Hamas is the German Wehrmacht and this is World War II.

His behavior warrants whole new definitions of the words "ingratitude," "cynicism," "mendacity" and "manipulation." Here he was, in all his ingrate splendor, rolling his eyes in a video clip, putting on an agonized face. Here was the prime minister of Israel whining and callously distorting and fabricating a narrative that the United States was halting arms shipments to Israel, implying that Biden is preventing Israel from "total victory" – a guarantee he smugly and weirdly utters every day.

But this should not have come as a surprise. Tuesday's statement was months in the planning, and it was transparently clear that this is his con job to those who chose not to live in denial about it. The United States' decision to suspend a "strategic dialogue" session and consultation meeting on Iran this Thursday is hardly proportionate to Netanyahu's ludicrous and premeditated attack.

Early on, after blaming Military Intelligence, the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security service for failing him on October 7, he resorted to implicitly blaming the United States. The man who shirked all responsibility for the tragically flawed policy of intentionally strengthening Hamas, and who rejects any accountability for the October 7 debacle, has been in the business since November of manufacturing a parallel narrative.

For the prime minister, this wasn't about the Hamas attack but about the world, particularly the United States, trying to foist a Palestinian state on Israel. That is why the United States is preventing a decisive Israeli victory the IDF admits is unattainable but Netanyahu keeps rambling on about. The Americans want to force Israel into negotiations with the Palestinians.

This is the man who in 1991 arrogantly accused the Americans of getting it all wrong in the Middle East and was designated persona non grata by then-Secretary of State James Baker III. The man who, in a House of Representatives hearing in 2002, advised the Americans to invade Iraq because it would stabilize and democratize the Middle East. The man who influenced then-President Donald Trump to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal in 2018 because "there's a better deal." Now he is again blaming the United States and dares compare it to Britain in 1941, before the German invasion of the Soviet Union and Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Seemingly detached and untethered from reality, Netanyahu knew exactly what he was doing on Tuesday. In fact, Biden was warned that this was coming as early as November – and again in December, January and every month since. The prime minister was deliberately planning a confrontation with the Americans so he could blame Biden for his failures.

His evocation of Churchill is especially ridiculous. This is Churchill's full quote from a radio broadcast on February 9, 1941: "The other day, President Roosevelt gave his opponent in the late presidential election [Wendell Willkie] a letter of introduction to me, and in it he wrote out a verse, in his own handwriting, from Longfellow, which he said, 'applies to you people as it does to us.'

"Here is the verse: 'Sail on, O ship of state! Sail on, O union, strong and great! Humanity with all its fears, with all the hopes of future years, is hanging breathless on thy fate!'

"What is the answer that I shall give, in your name, to this great man, the thrice-chosen head of a nation of a hundred and thirty millions? Here is the answer which I will give to President Roosevelt: 'Put your confidence in us. Give us your faith and your blessing, and, under providence, all will be well. We shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion, will wear us down. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.'"

So according to Mr. Netanyahu, who with no merit or justification habitually likens himself to Churchill, Britain in February 1941 – standing all alone against Nazi Germany, which had already occupied most of Europe – is analogous to Israel in 2024, fighting a barbaric terror organization in Gaza.

But that's Netanyahu's manipulation: this war is actually against Iran, so how could Biden halt arms? The fact that the United States put on hold just one shipment of 3,500 bombs while armaments keep flowing is, of course, irrelevant to Netanyahu. In fact, the United States has given Israel, proportionately, much more than it gave Britain after World War II broke out when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939.

Netanyahu is playing politics. That's the only thing he knows how to do. The video is just a prequel to his visit to Washington, where he invited himself in cahoots with the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives to address a joint session of Congress on July 24. He is doing so to hurt Biden and turn Israel into a larger partisan wedge issue ahead of the U.S. presidential election on November 5.

He will pay lip service and thank the United States and Biden, only to then attack the president for pressuring him during "an existential war." The only existential threat Israel may be facing is from Mr. Netanyahu himself, given the ineptness of his management of the war over the past eight months.

"No friend of Israel should participate in this circus," Thomas Friedman wrote in The New York Times on Tuesday. This is Netanyahu colluding with Republicans to weaken Biden. Need proof? Hours after the video was released, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made the same accusation on the Senate floor. What a coincidence.

President Biden, this is the man you see as an American ally. He isn't. The man you were suspicious of, yes, but believed you could reason with. You cannot. The man you genuinely believed you could influence and rein in with logic. You can't. The man you thought you could trust at a time of crisis. Nah.

The man you thought you could cooperate with and provide invaluable military aid to has taken you for a ride. He is mendacious, manipulative, cynical and desperate. And in July, he plans to come to Washington to address a joint session of Congress, nefariously "invited" by sinister Republicans and gullible, enabling Democrats – both placing petty politics above reason and common sense.

He is coming to weaken, hurt and damage you, Mr. President. Your bona fides on Israel are unassailable, but you've been taken for a ride that may prove to be very costly. Benjamin Netanyahu is not your ally.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, your bona fides on Israel are unassailable, but you've been conned as well by someone you know very well. It is not too late to retract the invitation and postpone his address until after the U.S. election in November.

It is, of course, too late, but it does bring the pond to the last bromancer gobbet ... and naturally he wants more kit, as Generalfeldmarschalls are wont to do ...

Reverse the deadly dynamic? Didn't they just do that?

On the train back from the Athens of the South, the pond had plenty of time to read Mark Lilla's piece for the NYRB, The Tower and. the Sewer (sorry, paywall).

The pitch explained what was to be discussed ...

Catholic postliberal thinkers opposed to modern liberal individualism are less interested in transforming people’s unhappy lives through the power of the gospel than in jockeying for political power as the vanguard of a conservative revolution.

The bromancer came to mind. Catholic, definitely postliberal, possibly preliberal too ...

In the motley collection that followed, the bromancer made an appearance as a type or perhaps a meme ...

...It has always been more difficult to make sense of the radical right than the radical left. Back when there were serious left-wing bookstores catering to active socialists rather than leisured graduate students, those, too, were a little helter-skelter. Utopian authors rubbed shoulders with Stalinists, anarchists with Trotskyists, interpreters of the wisdom of Chairman Mao with interpreters of the wisdom of the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha (a Seventies thing). Shelves were devoted to each and every postcolonial liberation movement then active, with many manifestos written by obscure revolutionaries destined to become infamous tyrants. Yet despite the intellectual and geographical variety, one always had the sense that the authors imagined they were aiming at the same abstract goal: a future of human emancipation into a state of freedom and equality.

But what ultimate goal do those on the radical right share? That’s harder to discern, since when addressing the present they almost always speak in the past tense. Contemporary life is compared to a half-imagined lost world that inspires and limits reflection about possible futures. Since there are many pasts that could conceivably provoke a militant nostalgia, one might think that the political right would therefore be hopelessly fractious. This turns out not to be true. It is possible to attend right-wing conferences whose speakers include national conservatives enamored of the Peace of Westphalia, secular populists enamored of Andrew Jackson, Protestant evangelicals enamored of the Wailing Wall, paleo-Catholics enamored of the fifth-century Church, gun lovers enamored of the nineteenth-century Wild West, hawks enamored of the twentieth-century cold war, isolationists enamored of the 1940s America First Committee, and acned young men waving around thick manifestos by a preposterous figure known as the Bronze Age Pervert. And they all get along.

The reason, I think, is that these usable pasts serve more as symbolic hieroglyphs for the right than as actual models for orienting action. That is why they go in and out of fashion unpredictably, depending on changes in the political and intellectual climate. The most that can be said is that the further to the right one goes, the greater the conviction that a decisive historical break is to blame for the loathsome present, and that accelerating decline must be met with…well, something. That’s when things get vague...

Paleo-Catholic, enamoured of the fifth century church. 

Of course ... how silly for the pond to have made a category error (elsewhere in the piece Lilla has fun with the Latin mass and papal authority).

And again, with "self-induced ideological hysteria" striking a nerve ...

...seen from another perspective, the postliberals offer just one more example of the psychology of self-induced ideological hysteria, which begins with the identification of a genuine problem and quickly mutates into a sense of world-historical crisis and the appointment of oneself and one’s comrades as the select called to strike down the Adversary—quite literally in this case. As Vermeule puts it, 

Liberalism’s deepest enmity, it seems, is ultimately reserved for the Blessed Virgin—and thus Genesis 3:15 and Revelation 12:1–9, which describe the Virgin’s implacable enemy, give us the best clue as to liberalism’s true identity.

He means Satan.

The postliberals are stuck in a repetition of mistakes made by many right-wing movements that get so tangled up in their own hyperbolic rhetoric and fanciful historical dramaturgy that they eventually become irrelevant. As long as their focus is on culture wars rather than spreading the Good News, these Catholics will inevitably meet with disappointment in post-Protestant secular America, where even the red-state demos demands access to pornography, abortion, and weed. The postliberals will perhaps get their own bookcase in the library of American reaction. But the rest of the American right will eventually be off in search of new symbols and hieroglyphs to dream its dreams...

The bromancer can keep dreaming his dreams ... his rough beast is slouching towards Washington, and should he succeed, all will be well in the world of the Murdochian hive mind. The authoritarian can join the axis of weevils and then the bromancer can celebrate Vlad the Impaler, Brexit, Kim and Xi, knowing that the Murdochians have led the world to the promised land ...