Well, that was a long silence, and it's going to continue for a little longer, at least until the US elections are sorted, done and well dusted.
A near-death experience is always clarifying. The first one the pond had was at the age of eleven, helped along by incompetent doctors and a rustic hospital. The pond was pronounced as dying in the operating theatre, sending the pond's mother into a frenzied fit of praying.
When the pond revived against the odds, she attributed it all to the long absent lord. Even at that tender age, the pond realised the logic was a bit suss. So She, in her ethereal malignity, should strike the pond down with peritonitis and all the rest, and offer six months in and out of intensive care, so She could impress the pond's mother with Her remarkable ability to stick Her nose into every bit of business going down in the universe? It was probably at that point that the pond began a slow, genteel slide into amiable atheism (you stick to your delusions and the pond will stick to its).
This time the pond had the good fortune to live right next to the RPA, a remarkable institution dressed out in Victorian architecture garb, which kindly arranged a set of top gun surgeons at a moment's notice on a Sunday. Five hours under, five keyholes, five days in hospital, and then a slow recovery, with the pond seriously enfeebled and memory completely shot. (The pond isn't sure of the mystical element in the number five). The pond won't hear a word said against the RPA, blessed with the power of the gods to restore life.
One side note. The pond's first brush with morphine came at stricken 11, with the ceiling opening up to reveal the animated abstract patterns and gigantic apocalyptic clouds swirling above.
This time it took a couple of hits to quell the pain, so the pond was well out of it when it saw all of the illustrations ever used in this blog neatly arranged as tiles covering the ED's floor (though on reflection these reflexive images were too Simpsons laden, without the banality of chunks of reptile gobbets). Perhaps it would have been better to be a Bill Burroughs junkie.
While the pond slowly recovered, the world carried on its own path to hell. In the middle east, a rogue fundamentalist theocracy carried on its program of mass starvation, destruction, mass displacement, ethnic cleansing and genocide (but what a real estate opportunity, just like the West Bank, for the Chosen People and the Mango Mussolini, with bonus sea views).
The pond thought one set of figures said it all. Casualties from Iran's first missile attack ... one Palestinian. Israel's attack on Lebanon ... thousands dead, wounded and maimed.
Israelis displaced from northern Israel ... c. 60-70k. Lebanese displaced in Lebanon ... 1.2 million or thereabouts.
This conformed to the pond's understanding of the required ratio ... one Israeli life equal to maybe a thousand or perhaps ten thousand or so Palestinians or Lebanese people.
It was a cunning ploy ... with assorted attacks on all and sundry, the cleansing of Gaza could proceed while the world was distracted by new war mongering without hint of let or ceasefire or the slightest interest in doing a deal for the remaining hostages.
That a nation born of a Holocaust should emulate it with an attempt at a cleansing genocide is one of the crueller of recent ironies, while the wretched Biden administration stood by, impotent, hand wringing to no effect, Blinken always blinking while Benji (the PM, not the movie star) carried on regardless, a sure fire way to stay out of the clink.
Perhaps a cease fire? How about another 2,000 lb. bomb, troops and missiles to help bring it about? That's led some in the US to back the mango Mussolini over Harris, apparently forgetting his attempts to ban Muslims and his support of Israel. If Harris loses, here's hoping they'll hold the MM's diet coke while Benji carries on with the MM's backing...
That's up there with Jill Stein, allegedly a greenie, doing her bit to give the MM an election break, thereby ensuring that 'drill baby, drill' mantra would return to favour ... if that's being a greenie, the long absent lord help the planet, because greenies won't be doing it.
Over in Ukraine, things aren't going well, with the sociopathic Vlad the impaler now turning to North Korean troops, while a few European leaders tut-tut, mutter and do sweet bugger all, as does the Biden administration, offering just enough by way of life support, but little by way of a path to a positive result.
During convalescence, the pond has shamefully neglected its herpetology studies, and hasn't once opened a single page or opinion piece at the lizard Oz.
Such activities require a strength the pond has yet to recover, but all the same, the pond has spent an unseemly amount of time observing the madness that is the current USA.
It's an overflowing garbage can of suckers and losers, with half the country deep in the grip of a personality cult led by an inveterate liar, a charlatan, a huckster, a con artist and a snake oil salesman (so many trinkets to buy this election, not least a sixty buck bible printed in China and worth three bucks wholesale, not to mention free on the full to overflowing intertubes. Is there a Ryan Walters in the house to order up a fraudulent batch for Oklahoma?).
The penchant for authoritarianism, dictatorship and Adolf isn't a bug, it's a feature, and it's nothing new - long ago star aviator Lindbergh was at the forefront.
They were into it in a big way, and soon enough there'll be a Madison Garden repeat for the obsessed MM.
The US has always had a thing for monarchs, and having kicked out their original tribe (so that King Chuck must visit other colonies), they set about making the Presidency their own version.
There have been good kings (FDR), bad kings (too many to mention) and middling kings, and there has been a relentless focus on the extended families of the kings that put the house of Windsor to shame. This elevation to kingly status has been blessed by the Supreme Court with the invented concept of presidential immunity, up there with the divine right of kings.
In recent times, the country has lost its way, mired in misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories, exemplified by that UFC commentator, thug lover and professional anti-vax moron Joe Rogan discussing UFOs and aliens with the MM.
The empire is in decline and decay and the temptation is to turn to historical references, like the Roman empire, as John Naughton did on the matter of the Zuck ...
Consider Mark Zuckerberg, supreme leader of Meta (née Facebook), who looks like an aggressive megalomaniac from central casting. Even the Economist, that bastion of neoliberal baloney, saw through him early, with a famous cover in April 2016 portraying Zuck as the Emperor Augustus on a weathered throne. But the guy’s Augustan complex goes back further than the Economist realised. On his honeymoon in Rome in 2012, for example, he took so many photographs of Augustus that his wife joked it was as if there were three people on the trip.
Indeed.
Then there's the obvious one of Adolf and 1933 with industrialists crowding around and thinking he'd be easily managed and they could improve their obscene wealth by making it positively pornographic... with the MM himself leading the way and making the comparison almost too obvious.
It's now beyond a platitude to that the MM loves dictators and would like to be one, and loves to have a chat with the likes of Vlad the sociopathic impaler fawning over him and playing on his vanity.
The MM has never disguised his authoritarian impulses and a 2.0 version would see him unrestrained and unfettered. Likely he'd act in Roman emperor mode, feasting on junk food and diet coke while watching the telly, and only drifting down after eleven to see what his minions had done.
If it stopped at that, it possibly wouldn't be much of a problem and his reign might pass like the first one, with only a pandemic and assorted policy follies to write home about (did Mexico ever pay for the wall that was never built?)
But there's a fly in the new MM ointment, and that's his minions and their mad schemes, not least the delusion that tariffs aren't a tax on domestic consumers. And with a climate science denialist in charge, the MM and his minions will drag the whole planet closer to catastrophe. (And what is it with the obsession with migrants, given that Uncle Leon was apparently an illegal alien when bringing his special brand of South African bred white nationalism to American shores, while both the MM and JD Vance married migrants, perhaps because no native would touch them with a barge pole).
There's a book to be written about Uncle Leon and his role as the newest oligarch, but the pond is too nauseated by thinking of the way his jumping exposed his tummy and his navel to the air.
It doesn't even matter whether Harris or the MM wins. If Harris manages to squeak out a win, she'll spend years combatting the legal warfare, the undermining, the endless conspiracy theories, the madness of a country that has lost its moorings ... where deplorables and the ignorati now make up half the country, while if the MM wins, hang on to your hat.
America has once again returned to being the land of the oligarchs. Again there are precedents - the 1890s, a period the MM loves, saw the rise of the robber barons.
Watch obsessive Jonathan V. Last, who wrote a funny piece about the MM's 100k watches (being hawked in a land whining about poverty), said as much about the role of oligarchs (and German industrialists in the 1930s) as needs to be said ... following on from the recent examples of US oligarchs bending the knee and preemptively kissing the MM's arse in WaPo and the LA Times ...
...that’s what this story is about: It’s about the most consequential American entrepreneur of his generation signaling his submission to Trump—and the message that sends to every other corporation and business leader in the country. In the world.
Killing this editorial says, If Jeff Bezos has to be nice to Trump, then so do you. Keep your nose clean, bub.
We have seen this movie before.
The year was 2003, and the scene was Russia, where Vladimir Putin, still in his first term as president, had not yet let the mask slip.
Putin was carefully consolidating power and he realized that the same oligarchs who had supported him initially were also a source of danger. Their money and control of important industries—especially the media—gave them independent bases of power. And every autocrat knows that dictatorship only works when his subjects understand that the only power they may have is the power he grants them.
At the time, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was the wealthiest man in Russia. He controlled Yukos, a massive oil company he cobbled together from formerly state-owned assets. He had the kind of wealth and power that made him untouchable, and he started making noises about getting more involved in politics—maybe even running for office.
So Putin had him arrested.
You may not remember this, but the Khodorkovsky case was a major piece of international news at the time. In the West, people weren’t quite sure what to make of it. Khodorkovsky’s people waged an aggressive PR campaign on his behalf claiming that his arrest was politically motivated and that Putin was becoming a thug.
Putin’s side portrayed it as an anti-corruption move, since Khodorkovsky was no angel.
Here in the West, we were all still giddy over glasnost and the end of the Cold War. We didn’t want to believe that Russia might be plunging back into authoritarianism. So people mostly took a wait-and-see approach.
But the Russians understood.
Khodorkovsky was convicted and sent to a labor camp in the Russian Far East while the government confiscated Yukos and redistributed it to Putin’s cronies. Khodorkovsky’s money, his power, his connections—none of it could protect him from Vladimir Putin.
The rest of the oligarchs got the message. If Putin could get to Khodorkovsky, he could get to anybody.
And so the oligarchs fell in line and ceased to be a source of concern to Putin. Instead of alternative power centers, they became vassals.
Which is exactly what Jeff Bezos has just taught Jamie Dimon and every other important American businessman.
These guys can hear the music. They’ve seen the sides being chosen: Elon Musk and Peter Theil assembling with Trump’s gangster government in waiting. They see Mark Zuckerberg praising Trump as a “badass.” And now they see Bezos getting in line, too.
What’s remarkable is that Trump didn’t have to arrest Bezos to secure his compliance. Trump didn’t even have to win the election. Just the fact that he has an even-money chance to become president was threat enough...
Germany in the 1930s ... Vlad's Russia ... the US in the 1890s ... the Roman empire in decay and decline. Take your pick. Whatever, it's going to be a bumpy ride these next few years... and not just for the US, but for the planet.
Even if the MM gets taken out by burgers (huzzah), he'll be replaced by a barking mad fundamentalist Catholic of the Opus Dei kind, deeply broken by his upbringing and with a weird Project 2025 gleam in his eye when he thinks about childless cat ladies (not the nuns, spare the nuns).
On the domestic front, the pond was pleased to note that Albo has solved the housing crisis, and that there will be no more Grundling (or is that verbal groping of the Bob Ellis kind?) in Crikey.
Compared to the US, it feels relatively normal.
After all, the lizard Oz's emeritus chairman is an oligarch who didn't need any Vlad the impaler style threats to help give the MM a stay out of jail card.
He's the canker at the core, a migrant poisoning the blood of the country, a profound nihilistic cynic who'd sell his original citizenship for the chance to make a buck.
It's his business model, fear and disinformation producing a cornucopia of wealth and power. Faux Noise still leads the way, the New York Post forgets what it said after the coup, and turns back to the MM, and there are a host of imitators yearning to ride on the coat tails of the emeritus chairman's business model.
The 1930s and the yellow press never really went away ... and so for the moment, the pond hopes to build up the strength needed for reptile wrangling and a return to inspecting the down under belly of this truly frightening beast. One that the emeritus chairman hopes to continue by court case and a reaching out from the grave.
The pond will do its best to return when what's left of the US, the full scale of the hurricane of election wreckage, can be studied, without another bloody useless poll as a completely irrelevant guide ...
Posts might arrive a little later in the day, or be otherwise dilatory, but hopefully a little of the pond's memory bank will be restored from the back-up.
Finally, as Dean Martin used to say, a big thank you to all those who sent postcards, notes, and comments the pond's way ...
The pond appreciated them all, and missed the daily correspondence.
Lurking in the pond's mind all the time were other tragedies. A month without 'toons? Intolerable, and so in closing some of the infallible Pope's offerings, some ancient, but still timely ...
