As the pond sometimes does, it did too much yesterday - "Ned", the bromancer and the Ughmann in one hit is an overdose with potentially fatal consequences - and an esteemed correspondent reminded the pond that it was sometimes important to take it easy and enjoy the sights ...
So the pond trimmed down for this day's outing ...
It's hard for a glutton. The reptiles like to stack the weekend edition with a plethora of goodies, very different from the starvation diet on hand during the week ...
First to go in the pond's slimmed down look was Dame Slap ... for starters, the pond doesn't want to be caught agreeing with Dame on the matter of thinking Joe should go.
There's no way of putting that aged cat back in the bag, and such is the existential anxiety abroad, it's easy to ignore the longer view.
If the pond was going to keep reading, it wouldn't be Dame Slap it would be Fintan O'Toole in the NYRB under the header Savior complex (paywall):
Those who define themselves by the thing they are not eventually find themselves more and more like their imagined opposite. To be someone’s antithesis is also to be their alter ego. Watching the disintegration of Joe Biden in his CNN debate with Donald Trump, I was reminded of Hans Christian Andersen’s chilling story “The Shadow,” in which a man’s shade comes to life, gradually infiltrates his existence, takes over his entire persona, and kills him off. Biden’s shadow is Trump and we got to watch in real time as it inhabited and displaced him.
This happened at a point in the debate when Biden had already alarmed viewers with his weak, raspy voice, his looks of stricken confusion, his fragmentary or unintelligible answers, his claim that “we created 15,000 new jobs” (he meant 15 million), and his boast, which Trump pounced on with relish, that “we finally beat Medicare.” The horrifying feeling of watching a president in freefall had been firmly established when the cohost Dana Bash raised the obvious concern that both men would be well into their eighties at the end of a putative second term. Biden, a man capable of dignity and even of grace, morphed, before our eyes, into a bargain-basement Trump. The contest for the future of the American republic became two crabby old men in the clubhouse shouting “My swing is bigger than yours.”
Trump boasted that he had won two club championships. He could “hit the ball a long way” whereas Biden “can’t hit a ball fifty yards.” To any opponent who was fully present, this pitiful bragging would have been manna from heaven. Trump was inviting the one thing he cannot withstand: mockery. He had left himself wide open to a quip of the kind that would have shown Biden to be quick-witted and endeared him to viewers: “Did you win those championships at your own clubs? How do we know they weren’t rigged?”
Instead, Biden shanked his response out of bounds, way beyond the outer limits of intelligent political debate into the mire of idiocy: “I’d be happy to have a driving contest with him. I got my handicap, which, when I was vice president, down to a six. And by the way, I told you before I’m happy to play golf if you carry your own bag. Think you can do it?” That’s a ball that will never be found again. It will always be out there, lodged in some dark hollow of American history—the final proof that Biden really has lost it.
Not only did the debate come down to this level of mutual fatuity; Trump, rather than Biden, was the first to realize that it was all too embarrassing to be endured. It was the man whose shamelessness knows no limits who grasped how mortifying it was that the past and future leaders of the free world were uttering lines like “I’ve seen your swing, I know your swing.” Trump moved to end it: “Let’s not act like children.” Even then Biden was too slow to grasp what was happening, to understand that Trump had just established himself as the adult in the room. Biden continued in playground mode: “You are a child.” It seems that he thought he was winning, that this puerile comeback was somehow a point being scored for democracy.
As in some gothic movie, the two men were switching identities. Trump had enough self-awareness to put on a little show of restraint, to demonstrate to viewers that he understood how pathetic this episode of reality TV was becoming. He may have sensed, too, that he had already delivered a knockout blow by luring Biden into his own swamp of malicious triviality and spiteful juvenility. For that crucial minute, Trump seemed vaguely presidential—and Biden, as he blundered on with the insults, seemed more than vaguely Trumpian. He needed to remember the old adage: “Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.” Biden surely knew that debating with Trump is pig-wrestling. The job is to make sure that the pig is not allowed to enjoy it and that you don’t get too soiled. Trump clearly liked it and Biden got the mud of a debased and infantile politics all over him.
This happened at a point in the debate when Biden had already alarmed viewers with his weak, raspy voice, his looks of stricken confusion, his fragmentary or unintelligible answers, his claim that “we created 15,000 new jobs” (he meant 15 million), and his boast, which Trump pounced on with relish, that “we finally beat Medicare.” The horrifying feeling of watching a president in freefall had been firmly established when the cohost Dana Bash raised the obvious concern that both men would be well into their eighties at the end of a putative second term. Biden, a man capable of dignity and even of grace, morphed, before our eyes, into a bargain-basement Trump. The contest for the future of the American republic became two crabby old men in the clubhouse shouting “My swing is bigger than yours.”
Trump boasted that he had won two club championships. He could “hit the ball a long way” whereas Biden “can’t hit a ball fifty yards.” To any opponent who was fully present, this pitiful bragging would have been manna from heaven. Trump was inviting the one thing he cannot withstand: mockery. He had left himself wide open to a quip of the kind that would have shown Biden to be quick-witted and endeared him to viewers: “Did you win those championships at your own clubs? How do we know they weren’t rigged?”
Instead, Biden shanked his response out of bounds, way beyond the outer limits of intelligent political debate into the mire of idiocy: “I’d be happy to have a driving contest with him. I got my handicap, which, when I was vice president, down to a six. And by the way, I told you before I’m happy to play golf if you carry your own bag. Think you can do it?” That’s a ball that will never be found again. It will always be out there, lodged in some dark hollow of American history—the final proof that Biden really has lost it.
Not only did the debate come down to this level of mutual fatuity; Trump, rather than Biden, was the first to realize that it was all too embarrassing to be endured. It was the man whose shamelessness knows no limits who grasped how mortifying it was that the past and future leaders of the free world were uttering lines like “I’ve seen your swing, I know your swing.” Trump moved to end it: “Let’s not act like children.” Even then Biden was too slow to grasp what was happening, to understand that Trump had just established himself as the adult in the room. Biden continued in playground mode: “You are a child.” It seems that he thought he was winning, that this puerile comeback was somehow a point being scored for democracy.
As in some gothic movie, the two men were switching identities. Trump had enough self-awareness to put on a little show of restraint, to demonstrate to viewers that he understood how pathetic this episode of reality TV was becoming. He may have sensed, too, that he had already delivered a knockout blow by luring Biden into his own swamp of malicious triviality and spiteful juvenility. For that crucial minute, Trump seemed vaguely presidential—and Biden, as he blundered on with the insults, seemed more than vaguely Trumpian. He needed to remember the old adage: “Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.” Biden surely knew that debating with Trump is pig-wrestling. The job is to make sure that the pig is not allowed to enjoy it and that you don’t get too soiled. Trump clearly liked it and Biden got the mud of a debased and infantile politics all over him.
The bottom Fintan line?
...Biden’s tragedy is that he has come to take on this same conviction, to feel that he alone can save America. In mirroring his archenemy, he has created an equal and opposite belief in his own indispensability. On a rational level, he knows that this does not make sense. In December he responded off the cuff to a reporter’s question about whether he thought another Democrat could defeat Trump: “Probably fifty of them.” Yet he has also boasted in a social media video that “I’m still the only person that ever beat Donald Trump.” Even after the debacle of the debate, Senator Chris Coons, the Biden campaign’s co-chair, insisted that “the only Democrat who can beat Donald Trump” is Biden. This has always been a circular argument: no one but Biden can beat Trump because no one but Biden can be allowed to stand against him because no one but Biden can beat Trump…
Biden’s motivations are infinitely more benign than Trump’s, but he has ended up in the same place: with the great delusion of “I alone.” This is a face-off that Trump will always win. His supporters really do believe in his exceptionality—as the miserable performance of Ron DeSantis in the Republican primaries showed, they do not care for Trumpism without Trump. Few of Biden’s supporters think likewise about their candidate. The valorization of the lone savior suits reactionary politics—it is not a good fit for democracy. It is the ultimate case of the anti-Trump forces operating on Trump’s terms.
The Democrats cannot defeat Trump by trying to play on a course he already owns. Those who want to stick with Biden whatever happens are engaged not in rational politics but in magical thinking, the belief that Biden’s victory in 2020 has imbued him with powers that only he can wield. But this fantasy is becoming a horror story in which the dark shadow of America’s democracy threatens to usurp its life.
Biden’s motivations are infinitely more benign than Trump’s, but he has ended up in the same place: with the great delusion of “I alone.” This is a face-off that Trump will always win. His supporters really do believe in his exceptionality—as the miserable performance of Ron DeSantis in the Republican primaries showed, they do not care for Trumpism without Trump. Few of Biden’s supporters think likewise about their candidate. The valorization of the lone savior suits reactionary politics—it is not a good fit for democracy. It is the ultimate case of the anti-Trump forces operating on Trump’s terms.
The Democrats cannot defeat Trump by trying to play on a course he already owns. Those who want to stick with Biden whatever happens are engaged not in rational politics but in magical thinking, the belief that Biden’s victory in 2020 has imbued him with powers that only he can wield. But this fantasy is becoming a horror story in which the dark shadow of America’s democracy threatens to usurp its life.
ignoring the short term consequences of him being around in November, what's Joe going to be like when he's 84 or 85? From bitter experience, the pond knows that senior moments don't go away, they just keep turning up. That's okay if you're a blogger, not so much if you happen to be President...
The thing with Dame Slap is that she never knows how to do both siderism ...
This is how she ended her piece, this was her attempt at a bit of both siderism ...
...The son of a used-car salesman, Joseph Robinette Biden Junior’s long and successful public service can’t be taken from him. It can’t be easy for the former senator from Delaware, former vice-president and President of the United States to say goodbye. But it’s better than being remembered as the man who put the welcome mat out for Trump. Worse, being remembered as the decrepit symbol – along with Trump – of a once great nation in decline. Almost 300 million adult Americans, and the best they can do is another Trump v Biden contest? Trump’s not going anywhere, but it would be terrific for America – and the rest of the world – if he too retired from public life. The best chance of a forced exit for Trump is for senior Democrats to act like responsible adults.
The rise of Trump in 2016 had much to do with the failures of the Democrat establishment. A second coming of Trump will be their legacy, too.
The rise of Trump in 2016 had much to do with the failures of the Democrat establishment. A second coming of Trump will be their legacy, too.
That's in the spirit of Trumpism ... that talk about putting out the mat for the orange Jesus, that talk about it being terrific if he too retired. It's also a disingenuous lie ...
It's the usual Dame Slap act of disremembering. We all remember who put out the mat for the mango Mussolini, we all remember who welcomed the orange Jesus ... (the reminder now in the lizard Oz's new format) ...
There's your MAGA cap wearing mat, slipping out in the New York night to celebrate.
So it was on with the pond's usual Sunday tradition ... a serve of prattling Polonius, dealing with the reptiles' brand new form of persecution ... a new Yassmin Abdel-Magied, this time with the able help of the ALP ...
Polonius kept talking down the threat ... after all, the Islamics don't have the numbers to do what the DLP did to the Labor party way back when ...
It was a strange Polonial outing, because when he emerged from behind the arras, it wasn't just PK on ABC, the Bolter also got a nod, with Polonius rarely bothering to mention Sky News, not when he can spend his time whining about the lack of a conservative voice on the cardigan wearers' channels...
It wouldn't be a Polonial outing without setting absurd expectations and offering meaningless measurements ... and the last gobbet managed this feat in spades ...
So deep, but after recovering from the shock of Polonius paying attention to Morning Joe, the pond thought of offering a re-write:
Fatima, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the thoughts of a few little people don't amount of a hill of beans in this crazy world. Someday you'll understand that, someday you'll take pleasure railing at the ABC, an exercise in abject futility, knowing that it will never get you a gig on either radio or the telly. Someday you'll realise there's no point in doing anything, or holding any opinions, or expressing any views, or joining others in attempting to solve problems. Just be a blob, a yellow jello, and soon you'll reach a Polonial nirvana of inertia ... oh and meanwhile, back to the genocide and the rampant abuse of innocent civilians, all in the cause of far right loons ...
For the next piece, the pond faced a difficult challenge. The pond has resolutely refused to deal with matters before the court, and Bruce is currently in a spot of bother.
But this is fundamentalist tyke day, so the pond decided it could make an exception for the Angelic one.
After all, if she can blather about the suffering of Catholic hospitals, surely she can blather about the suffering of men ...and on the upside, she's usually short, because too much thinking can strain the old noggin ...
Perhaps it was too much cocaine ... with resulting consequences ...
Our selection of the top stoic humorous quotes from Justice Lee
Paragraph 2 – “Indeed, given its unexpected detours and the collateral damage it has occasioned, it might be more fitting to describe it as an omnishambles”.
Paragraph 8 – “… this is a credit case involving two people who are both, in different ways, unreliable historians”.
Paragraph 10 – “To remark that Mr Lehrmann was a poor witness is an exercise in understatement”. – referring to Lehrmann’s credibility.
Paragraph 152 – “But irrespective of legal obligation, there are gradations of the seriousness of untruths: an untruthful person may just be all mouth and trousers; or be recklessly indifferent to the truth or, by way of compulsion, finds it difficult to discern between what is true and untrue…” – when commenting on the Hyperbolic submissions made about the credit of Mr Lehrmann.
Paragraph 155 – “When confronted by this inconsistency, his attempt to explain it away by suggesting the attraction he felt for Ms Higgins was ‘just like [the attraction] I can find [in] anybody else in this [court]room, irrespective of gender’ was as disconcerting as it was unconvincing”. – referring to Lehrmann denying his attraction to Higgins. (A lot more of that selection here, including Higgins' contributions)
It goes without saying that rapes are under-reported, that women are wary of going through the police and legal grinders, that they don't believe in the possibility of justice, and that the court system is set up in a way that still manages to rape them all over again (even with reforms) ...
Naturally the Angelic one doesn't worry about any of that, naturally the Angelic one is a firm believer in the suffering of the patriarchy, naturally as a good Catholic fundamentalist, the Angelic one has a thing about feminists (invariably left wing, invariably thinking that rapists should be put away. What right thinking woman would think that?) ...
If you bother to make the trawl, and follow up on a few of the names, you might come across this sort of stuff ... allegedly a new vision for liberalism, but in reality, just deeply weird ...
There's so much weirdness, festering paranoia, and yearning for a middle ages (not middle aged, but maybe that too) lifestyle, or perhaps life in Midsomer, that it's impossible to know where to start ...
Instead the pond will merely note the list of speakers in that "public conference", featuring the likes bilious Bettina and the meretricious Merritt ...
What a most peculiar bunch, but on the upside, the pond has more than fulfilled its loon quota for the day ...
And so to a closing item. Back in the day, the pond used to run the thoughts of the Pellists and the angry Sydney Anglicans on a Sunday, and sometimes has a yearning for ancient times, just like loons yearning for a village life style.
The great Pellist conspiracy theory was a frustration for the pond because it turned up as a reptile podcast. Then this weekend it became a story and it showed the pond didn't miss anything ...
And so on, and that's more like it ...
Or the pond might have been better off fulfilling its cartoon back order, with high priests performing rituals of power ...
Turns out there was no there there in the Pellist conspiracy, it was just a beat up and a pile of funereal trivia...
As for the Pellist conspiracy, it's been an admirable interstitial, and with nothing to challenge the mind ... the "new development" being just part of more tales of grift and corruption, the Catholic way (when not taking time to support the right of men to do violence to women in all kinds of ways) ...
What a dud, but at least there's a chance to wrap up the day's business with a couple of Toms, with everything fine:
Yair, I think we'd all like to vibrate into a higher state of existence.
ReplyDeleteBut it does go to show just how quickly a powerful state can collapse; just like the Romans after a lost battle or two and a major plague or three.
So, a pandemic that caused at least 1,168,021 deaths (and probably more) and a whole set of losses to SCOTUS and the USA is on its way.
Fintan O'Toole: "...the dark shadow of America’s democracy threatens to usurp its life." Wau, 'all fall down' (but not like a Midnight Cowboy).
ReplyDeleteThough I rather hope Joe stands; I'd like to see just how much a sufficient number of American citizens will put up with in order to not have to put up with Trump. After all, they'd still be better off with Biden (and his team and his VP).
"He [Pena Parra] signed the contracts approving Mincione's investment in 2013and has since been promoted. The Vatican has not allowed him to appear for cross-examination."
ReplyDeleteWell, the Vatican still thinks it's living in Medieval times, except that it just can't crucify anybody - well not legally anyway - nowadays. So Catholics can sin away to their heart's content and just show a little apparent repentance now and then and all is well.
Ah - as you say, Dorothy, coming across this sort of stuff - in fact took me back to first stirrings of the ‘Brownstone Institute’, in 2021, when My Source sent me details of review in the Flagship of ‘The Great Covid Panic: What Happened, Why, And What To Do Next’ - from authors including Paul Frijters and Gigi Foster. That was back when Gigi was more frequently greeted on ‘Sky’ for instant opinion, and published by the Brownstoners, which had then been functioning for just a couple of months.
ReplyDeleteThe Brownstoners were then extensively cited by good Aussie authors Conny Turni and Astrid Lefringhausen, in the preprint for profit ‘Journal of Experimental Immunology’, but promoted by our Killer Creighton because it sought to cast doubt on Covid vaccines. Turni and Lefringhausen enthused that ‘The Brownstone Institute has established the most updated and comprehensive library list of 150 of the highest-quality, complete, and robust scientific studies and evidence reports/position statements on natural immunity as compared to the COVID-19 vaccine-induced immunity. The consensus of these studies is that immunity induced by COVID infection is robust and long lasting.’
It then went on to compare that immunity with the protection that resulted from vaccination - unfavourably to vaccination, of course.
From my own time assessing research, I admit that I twitch when an author introduces their sources as ‘most updated’, ‘the highest-quality’, let alone ‘complete’ or ‘robust’. This too often indicates a fresh graduate trying to speak with borrowed authority. That was not the case of the apparent tenure of Conny Turni, so I was left mystified about Brownstone.
Dorothy’s observations of this day would confirm that it sinks further into mystification - or other-worldly weirdness.
My uncertain recall is that the Covid vaccines didn't so much confer 'immunity' as much as weakening the effect of the virus - which might be reflected in the number of apparently symptom free infections. Personally, I did keep up my vaccination and I also didn't appear to catch Covid at any stage, but that just might have been 'diminished symptoms' that didn't trigger me to go for formal testing.
DeleteAnyway, it really does illustrate that homo saps saps incorporates many different worlds, and their world is vastly different from mine (and thine and DP's and sundry others). But that has always been the case hasn't it.
The thing is that homo saps saps can be very intelligent and clever about some aspects of 'reality' and totally nonsensical about many others. I instance Kary Banks Mullis of the wonderful polymerase chain reaction technique (it won him a Nobel) who was otherwise a bit of a nonsense believer. A lot of a nonsense believer, actually.
Yes, GB, the point of the vaccines was to diminish the impact of the virus, prevent over-crowding of hospitals and in the case of aged victims, avoid death ...but this was frequently lost in the miasma of anti-vax propaganda.
DeleteThat Mullis reference is worth a link ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis#Views_on_HIV/AIDS_and_climate_change
And a quote ...
Mullis expressed interest in the paranormal. For example, he said that he had witnessed the "non-substantial form" of his deceased grandfather, even offering it a beer. In his autobiography, Mullis professed a belief in astrology and wrote about an encounter with a fluorescent, talking raccoon that he suggested might have been an extraterrestrial alien...
Always good to add another loon to the cavalcade of loons ...
Thank you for that confirmation, DP, and also for the Mullis link and quote - a genuine loon that one.
DeleteLooking to others, one historical example I reckon would be Isaac Newton: clever about calculus (though Leibniz was, I think, a little cleverer - it's still his notation we use rather than Newton's) and also about gravity, but just a little loony in some other ways.
You've hit and scored again GB, with Newton another classic:
Delete"...He believed in a rationally immanent world, but he rejected the hylozoism implicit in Leibniz and Baruch Spinoza. The ordered and dynamically informed Universe could be understood, and must be understood, by an active reason. In his correspondence, Newton claimed that in writing the Principia "I had an eye upon such Principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity". He saw evidence of design in the system of the world: "Such a wonderful uniformity in the planetary system must be allowed the effect of choice". But Newton insisted that divine intervention would eventually be required to reform the system, due to the slow growth of instabilities. For this, Leibniz lampooned him: "God Almighty wants to wind up his watch from time to time: otherwise it would cease to move. He had not, it seems, sufficient foresight to make it a perpetual motion."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Alchemy
Of an estimated ten million words of writing in Newton's papers, about one million deal with alchemy. Many of Newton's writings on alchemy are copies of other manuscripts, with his own annotations. Alchemical texts mix artisanal knowledge with philosophical speculation, often hidden behind layers of wordplay, allegory, and imagery to protect craft secrets. Some of the content contained in Newton's papers could have been considered heretical by the church...
...
All of Newton's known writings on alchemy are currently being put online in a project undertaken by Indiana University: "The Chymistry of Isaac Newton" and summarised in a book.
Newton's fundamental contributions to science include the quantification of gravitational attraction, the discovery that white light is actually a mixture of immutable spectral colors, and the formulation of the calculus. Yet there is another, more mysterious side to Newton that is imperfectly known, a realm of activity that spanned some thirty years of his life, although he kept it largely hidden from his contemporaries and colleagues. We refer to Newton's involvement in the discipline of alchemy, or as it was often called in seventeenth-century England, "chymistry."
In June 2020, two unpublished pages of Newton's notes on Jan Baptist van Helmont's book on plague, De Peste, were being auctioned online by Bonhams. Newton's analysis of this book, which he made in Cambridge while protecting himself from London's 1665–1666 infection, is the most substantial written statement he is known to have made about the plague, according to Bonhams. As far as the therapy is concerned, Newton writes that "the best is a toad suspended by the legs in a chimney for three days, which at last vomited up earth with various insects in it, on to a dish of yellow wax, and shortly after died. Combining powdered toad with the excretions and serum made into lozenges and worn about the affected area drove away the contagion and drew out the poison".
It's a tad unfair, in that he was a child of his times, but that powdered toad remedy could only catch on in Queensland. To be fair Jung was just as weird when it came to alchemy ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Jung#Alchemy
Given the state of general knowledge, philosophy, science and religion, back then, we should be just a little bit forgiving of Isaac. And we should remember that Leibniz is the person clearly satirised by Voltaire in Candide ("All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds").
DeleteBut the Mullis link reminded me of something that had sort of slipped my mind in these, my degenerate days: Nobel disease:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease
Yes, there really is such a thing:
"It has been argued that the effect results, in part, from a tendency for Nobel winners to feel empowered by the award to speak on topics outside their specific area of expertise"
Rather like the reptiles ... but then everything is outside their 'expertise'.