In which Polonius quadrants with Frank, while "Ned" helps lather up an invading storm...

 

The pond red carded a number of reptiles this weekend, as they slipped out of the top twenty and slid down into a mire of terminal irrelevancy.

The temptation is to just drop the whole bunch of cliquey fringe dwellers, an acquired taste for discerning palates (do some training on Muenster cheese, prepared in damp cellars).

The Bulwark always provides some reptile aligned interests, such as an addiction to conspiracy theories. 

While Gabriel Schoenfeld didn't mention climate science denialism in The Swirling Miasma of Trump’s Conspiracy Theories, He wheezes them out himself, and surrounds himself with people who fill the air with vast, noxious clouds of paranoia and lies, he did mention Alex Jones and then assembled some beauties, with links in the original:

...Trump admirer Elon Musk has over the last two years remade his social media site into a haven for numerous conspiracy theorists who had previously been banned from it, and he uses X as his own huge megaphone with which to promote outlandish ideas. Thus, he has put up posts promoting the Pizzagate hoax, the long-debunked sicko lie that the Democratic party is connected to a pedophilia ring that uses restaurants—including a pizza joint in Washington, D.C.—as its cover. Musk has also peddled the myth, verging into antisemitism—the most enduring of all conspiracy theories—that the Jewish financier George Soros is at the root of evil in the modern world: “He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity,” Musk tweeted last year.
Trump has now drawn close to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., for whom conspiracy theories are his stock in trade. He is most famous for spreading the falsehood that vaccines cause autism in children. But that is just the beginning of an impressive list. NPR summed it up last year:
Wi-Fi causes cancer and “leaky brain,” Kennedy told podcaster Joe Rogan [in June 2023]. Antidepressants are to blame for school shootings, he mused during an appearance with Twitter CEO Elon Musk. Chemicals in the water supply could turn children transgender, he told right-wing Canadian psychologist and podcaster Jordan Peterson, echoing a false assertion made by serial fabulist Alex Jones. AIDS may not be caused by HIV, he has suggested multiple times.
But NPR was by no means comprehensive. There was also RFK Jr.’s 2023 claim that the COVID-19 virus was bioengineered to spare “Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people”—a touch of antisemitism once again. And just this Monday—which is to say, days after Trump invited RFK to serve on his presidential transition team—he tweeted out his support for the conspiracy theory that airplane condensation trails in the sky are really “chemtrails” poisoning the population. “We are going to stop this crime,” Kennedy said.
If Trump wins a second term in the White House, in exchange for his endorsement this crank may be awarded a high-ranking government position, possibly cabinet level, in the management of American healthcare.

While JD jokes about suicidal beauty queens, Jonathan V. Last contemplated that thumbs up over a gravestone, and wondered who did that sort of thing in a cemetery (even the impious pond tends to offer the dead the benefits of gravity and silence). Thumbs Up: The Story of No-Context Trump, Is he a ghoul or a sociopath? After wandering through assorted thumbs up snaps (Marina Hyde made a startling appearance), Last offered this insight:

In Donald Trump’s mind, he is the frame of reference that everything else enters.
Trump isn’t meeting a kid who killed people, that kid is meeting him.
Trump isn’t with an orphan. That baby is part of his photo op.
Trump isn’t standing over a grave. The tombstone is a piece of his campaign for president.
And that’s why, in every one of these pictures, Trump is wearing the exact same smile and giving the exact same thumbs-up. Because to Trump, there is no context but Trump.

That concludes the sane portion of this Sunday meditation. 

Keen eyed students of the reptiles at the lizard Oz have been going full IPA Gina of late, with this on both the tree killer and digital editions...

The pond paid no attention to the copy, it was the snap that caught the eye ...

It seemed entirely appropriate to link to the latest twist for students of the Streisand effect ...

Never gets old and at last the pond understood where the artist got his use of pink from ...

While finishing up house business, the pond should also note it red carded the dog botherer ...

The moment that the Hindmarsh Bridge hovered into view, the pond realised the whole sorry piece was best left to crow eaters ...

This winnowing left the pond seriously short of contenders, what with Dame Slap ruled out and Steve Waterson not even considered, what with him attempting to outdo Captain Spud as a bigot and a racist. 

As for Jacinta Nampijinpa Price bleating "Indigenous voices are crying out", apparently she's forgotten that her and Dame Slap ruled out any need to pay attention to Indigenous voices ... the less of a Voice, the better.

Not everything was lost however. There's always a goodly supply of pompous pedantry to hand from Polonius's prattles, and he emerged from behind the arras to provide some light Sunday relief ...

Actually some students, western or eastern or whatever, aren't voting en masse to wipe Israel off the map, they're just wanting the genocide to end ... which puts them in the same company as some Israelis of the Haaretz kind ...

Sorry, you can always sign up and get a few free stories a month ... back to Polonius ...

The pond is pleased Polonius mentioned Frank, but sorry, did the pond read that right? 

"He was best known an an informed and intellectually courageous anti-communist", who proved to be correct ...

The pond realises that Polonius is traumatised by the ADB, but even Frank's biographer, the sinister Robert Manne, had trouble squaring that circle and gilding that lily. 

Back in the day, this was what Frank was famous for ...

In the late 1950s a bitter conflict broke out inside the small social studies department at the University of Melbourne, between its head, Ruth Hoban, and Geoff Sharp, a member of the Communist Party of Australia. Knopfelmacher interpreted the conflict as part of a larger communist conspiracy. A dossier was compiled, most likely with the assistance of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, and entrusted to Knopfelmacher. He sent it to Richard Krygier, the chairman of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, and James McAuley, the editor of its magazine, Quadrant, who in turn presented it to the Bulletin editor, Donald Horne. On 12 April 1961 the Bulletin published a letter written by Hoban’s husband, the influential professor of history, Max Crawford, who argued that he was now ‘unable to reject’ (Crawford 1961, 44) Knopfelmacher’s case about the communist threat at the university. A week later the Bulletin published a detailed article outlining the supposed conspiracy. The university conducted a quasi-judicial investigation and found the accusation baseless. Years later, in 1969, the Bulletin apologised to Sharp.

It cost Frank a gig at Sydney uni and so it should, because even if you happen to be opposed to the Stasi, there's no reason to go around acting like a loyal Stasi member ...

Not that any of that troubles Polonius who likes to conduct his own brand of pogrom ...

What the students, in their innocence, voted for was a secular state, likely to go down like a lead balloon with all the religious fundamentalists feuding with each other ...

1. This SGM recognises that demanding Sydney University cut ties with companies and institutions complicit in Israel's genocide is part a wider struggle for Palestinian liberation. 
2. As part of this we call for a single, secular democratic state across all of historic Palestine, from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. This would be a single state where Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, and people of all faiths and backgrounds live in freedom and equality.
3. We recognise the right to armed resistance Palestinians have under international law as an occupied people. All the violence in Palestine and Israel is a result of the Israeli state, its occupation of Palestine, and the apartheid system inflicted on Palestinians. The violence of the oppressed is never equivalent to the violence of the oppressor.    
4. Resistance to the apartheid state of Israel and opposition to Zionism as an ideology is not antisemitism.

As a dedicated atheist, the pond has no trouble with this. The pond dislikes and distrusts all forms of theocratic government, whether Benji's barking mad fundamentalist mob, the barking mad fundamentalist Hamas mob, the barking mad Iranian mob, the beyond barking mad Taliban mob, and the barking mad evangelical mob trying to Talibanise the United States ... not to mention the barking mad Catholics, though at least their actual government has been reduced to a very small state, which is why they keep trying to nobble secular ones.

Fat chance, but a nice dream that any of this should end in secular states wherein people can worship their preferred delusion and let others worship theirs.

Meanwhile, the reptiles slipped in a trolling click bait video featuring Rita meter maid ...

Apparently if you happen not to be pink or white, or even beige, you can't be a racist. The colour of your skin gives you a free "get out of racism" card ... but it's not one way traffic ...

And so on, and more here outside the paywall ...

The pond was peeved because it wanted to share a few more Quadranter Frank moments ...

Remaining at the University of Melbourne, Knopfelmacher worked closely with B. A. Santamaria’s National Civic Council during the 1960s and beyond. In 1966 he became deeply involved in a group called ‘Peace with Freedom,’ an organisation of Australia’s most significant anti-communists, chaired by McAuley and largely organised by the NCC, whose purpose was to defend Australian involvement in the Vietnam War and to contest the anti-war movement on university campuses. Knopfelmacher engaged left-wing speakers in debates about the Vietnam War at many university ‘teach-ins.’ His reputation as an expert on the threat of communism was enhanced in 1968, when he predicted the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1970 he visited the United States of America and was appalled by what he considered to be the capitulation of the anti-communist intelligentsia to student revolutionaries. The scathing articles he wrote on America for the Australian delighted his enemies and angered his friends...

...In the early 1970s he discovered another talent, as the free-wheeling, unpredictable, right-wing columnist for the left-liberal weekly Nation Review. With Orwell in mind, he wrote a column for Quadrant in the mid-1980s called ‘As I Please.’ He believed that student revolutionaries and their cowardly teachers were primarily responsible for America’s Vietnam defeat in what had been a just and winnable war. He became an uncompromising enemy of the diplomacy of détente, in particular the Nixon-Kissinger version. Although his conceptual framework might have allowed him to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union and its East European ‘satellites’—time and again he argued, presciently, that the Soviet system was unreformable and entirely lacked legitimacy—almost until the end he clung to the conviction that the Soviet Union would win the Cold War and that Australia was doomed. When the Soviet empire collapsed between 1989 and 1991, it afforded him little joy. Loneliness enveloped him, amplified by his retirement from the university in 1988.

Perhaps Polonius didn't want to brood on that, what might be called, after Alan Sillitoe, the loneliness of the long distance hater and ranter ...

Say it again, there's not much reward for a hatred of weakness, an imagining that strength is its own virtue and reward ...

When the Soviet empire collapsed between 1989 and 1991, it afforded him little joy. Loneliness enveloped him, amplified by his retirement from the university in 1988.

Poor Polonius, he's of an age now ... and so for that matter is nattering "Ned", and given the reptiles have slipped out of the top twenty, how long can they go on featuring these old farts pandering to a tired, aged demographic?

Not that the pond is against old age per se, what with silver hairs removing the need for hair jobs, but it takes a real act of strength to make it through a "Ned" piece these days. 

This is not a place for weakness, this is not a country for old men or old women, and the long absent lord help the mugs that pay for this sort of test of endurance ...

The pond doesn't have the strength to muster many comments, but that reference to SloMo did produce some mirth and a reminder of this story in The Conversation...

While many people should hang their heads in shame, the principal architect of this monumental folly is Scott Morrison, whose reputation will be deservedly further diminished by the revelations contained in Fowler’s carefully researched volume. One question the book does not address in detail is the abysmal quality of political leadership in this country, especially, though not exclusively, on the conservative side of politics.

Whatever the reasons for this, the end result was that

"the huge shift in Australia’s foreign policy alignment was hatched by a Christian fundamentalist former tourism marketing manager with no training in strategic or foreign affairs but a great gift for secrecy and deception."

Point of order Adjunct Prof Mark Beeson, your notion that his reputation will be "deservedly further diminished" suggests some reservoir of gravitas, but mathematically you can't further diminish zero. The absolute value of 0 is 0. The absolute value of SloMo is zero. No way you can further diminish that, even by cheating and slipping into negativity.

The AUKUS submarine deal has been exposed as a monumental folly – is it time to abandon ship?

At the time the reptiles were all in on SloMo and AUKUS, and now with that sub having sailed, they're all in on bigotry and racism. Let's see how "Ned" manages his hatchet, Jimmie Blacksmith style ...

Yes, yes, forget the head of ASIO, the reptiles are much better at national security. What would he know up against "Ned"?

At that point the reptiles slipped in a click bait troll featuring SloMo ...

Whenever the pond is reminded of his existence, the only question arises is one of those pub quizzes as to who was the worst PM in living memory?

At least little England has an obvious answer in that lettuce Liz Truss, though some still hold a candle for Boris. The pond also wavers, having a soft spot for the quavering Billy McMahon and his companion of the slit-dress ... but never mind, on with "Ned" doing his bigot's duty ...

An invitation to political trouble? More an invitation to journalistic malpractice and malice, with the reptiles accustomed to kicking the refugee can way back before the days of lying Little Johnny ...

"Ned's" saucy doubts and fears (fear mongering with a word salad nuance) were followed by a snap of actual refugees, clearly a bunch of fanatics ...

Just look at those malevolent children, ready to strike fear into Captain Spud and destroy the Australian way of life ... why if we let them in there'd be a new Caliphate in Caulfield before you know it.

And so on and on he went in his usual Chicken Little, the clouds are falling, style ... with Jimbo of the IPA to hand to help with the fear mongering ...

Truth to tell, there's no way to promote community cohesion so long as there's a dominant media outfit run by an American company, a bunch of furriners who treat the colony as their own fiefdom ... but sadly the chances of doing what Brazil is currently doing to Uncle Elon remains as remote as ever ...

At this point the pond remembered its promise not to comment ...  especially as we've just left base camp, with endless gobbets to go ...

In what follows remember that Islamophobia is fine, and actively encouraged ...

And yet the current Israeli government is full of terrorists, and when do we hear anything of that? You have to turn to The New Yorker for a profile ....

A lot more at the New Yorker, (paywall), worthy of "Ned" in length, better than "Ned" in that it's actually researched on the spot ...

"Ned's" idea of research is to wheel in the onion muncher to say the right, which is to say always wrong, things...

Funny really, considering the onion muncher's worship of authoritarian Viktor Orbán, who does his best to facilitate the work of the sociopathic Vlad the impaler.

But best keep moving ...

... because "Ned" still has three interminable gobbets to go

There you go, the old poll trick. No doubt some polls show that the mango Mussolini demonising refugees and foreigners hits the mark. That's why populists, authoritarians, divisive haters and ratbag politicians like to use bigotry to stir the juices, and foment a steaming pile of unhappiness, ably helped along by assistant reptile chefs ...

Nah, not really, it's not fine, it's what you expect of a boofhead Queensland plod always keen to lock 'em up or go the biff ... and speaking of that, there was a snap of "Ned"s hero ...

And that finally brought the pond to the last gobbet. 

It's still a long haul to the summit, and apologies to the Lebanese people who set up haberdashery stores in northern NSW in the 1950s ...

The pond should have realised you were dangerous radicals ... and set about demonising your presence as opposed to doing a bit of of shopping ...

Forget it Jake, it's fear monger town, and here's a wedge issue lacking any sense of humanity or empathy or compassion or caring, so wedge away ...

"Ned" might pretend to await, but the pond isn't awaiting, the pond knows what to expect, a ceaseless, endless campaign of remorseless vilification and fear ... but what a relief to have finished this episode in the reptile wars ...

Meanwhile, speaking of authoritarian dog whistles and the coming great storm, what a great week it's been, with the mango Mussolini "truthing" (the pond uses the word absent-mindedly) away in a frenzy...

The pond mentions these because Tom the Dancing Bug's creator Ruben Bolling, aka Ken Fisher was given a brief profile in The New Yorker (paywall). 

He explained the naming of the strip ...

One day in class at law school, he said, “my friend had gotten a bug on his pen, and he was swivelling the pen. The bug was moving its legs to stay on top, back and forth. And I said, ‘That’s Tom the Dancing Bug.’ ” That night, he submitted his first strip to the paper. A purist, he didn’t want it to have a title—it would be wholly different each week—but the paper insisted. “So I thought of the stupidest name I could think of, and I named it ‘Tom the Dancing Bug,’ in retaliation,” he said. “But I remember riding my bike home afterward thinking, I actually like that.”

And to prove nothing had changed, his 2021 great storm cartoon was as relevant as ever to the orange Jesus's current "truthing" ...