In which the pond eventually settles for Dame Groan and flag-waving Zoe ...

 

Surely this effort by Barry Blitt for The New Yorker is the perfect troll ...

Not only is it the perfect troll of King Donald I on his ascension to the throne, but in a reverse troll, it stokes rage and resentment against President in waiting Uncle Leon. It seems designed to send Steve Bannon into an even bigger fury, if that's imaginable.

The civil war reached some kind of peak absurdity in the news Trump attacks Seth Meyers After TV Segment on Bannon-Musk MAGA Civil War.

There's going to be four more years of unhinged ranting at late night TV comics. (Warning, link to Lies Central).

Naturally Marina Hyde was attracted to the war in Move fast, break things - sprint to kiss Trump's ring. It's the tech bros inauguration derby.

Inter alia:

...Even before it makes landfall, the incoming regime is host to weirder bedfellows than a Mos Eisley brothel. The likes of would-be health secretary Robert Kennedy Jr was an environmental lawyer for decades, but his oil-based anger is currently only permitted to be misdirected at seed oils, while Trump prepares to drill, baby, drill. Arguably the most eye-catching face-off, however, is the feud between Trump’s new best friend, Elon Musk, and his old best friend, Steve Bannon, who days before last November’s election emerged from a federal jail as one of the few inmates in history to have got less ripped during incarceration. Last week Bannon declared that Musk was “a truly evil guy … I’m not prepared to tolerate it any more”. Strong words, if not attached to any discernible levers of control. Bannon also inquired of Musk, Trump’s crypto and AI tsar, David Sacks, and the Palantir chair, Peter Thiel: “Why do we have white South Africans, the most racist people in the world, commenting on everything that happens in the United States?”
Regrettably this was not a question answered the next day in a truly spellbinding Financial Times column by Thiel. To read it was to feel like you were stuck at 2am in the tightest corner of the house party kitchen with a guy who had done enough cocaine to float the acronym DISC – the “Distributed Idea Suppression Complex”, apparently – but sadly not quite enough to immediately fatally overdose.

Well yes ...

The future demands fresh and strange ideas. New ideas might have saved the old regime, which barely acknowledged, let alone answered, our deepest questions — the causes of the 50-year slowdown in scientific and technological progress in the US, the racket of crescendoing real estate prices, and the explosion of public debt. 

Perhaps an exceptional country could have continued to ignore such questions, but as Trump understood in 2016, America is not an exceptional country. It is no longer even a great one.

Identity politics endlessly relitigates ancient history. The study of recent history, to which the Trump administration is now called, is more treacherous — and more important. The apokálypsis cannot resolve our fights over 1619, but it can resolve our fights over Covid-19; it will not adjudicate the sins of our first rulers, but the sins of those who govern us today. The internet will not allow us to forget those sins — but with the truth, it will not prevent us from forgiving.

Truly, deeply weird, and then came news that Bannon might have won round 1 with Uncle Leon relegated to to the Einsenhower building rather than the White House, though the NY Times still blew alarums in Elon Musk Is Expected to Use Office Space in the White House Complex, The location suggests that Mr. Musk, who owns companies with billions of dollars in contracts with the federal government, will continue to have remarkable access to President-elect Donald J. Trump

Battles with late night TV comics, battles between tech bros and Bannon ...pass the popcorn (no butter or salt please).

Then came another distraction, the start of the Hegseth hearings, with hopes high that a Foxy clown will be put in charge of the military.

The pond offers all this as an explanation of why it's hard to pay attention to the local reptiles. They have no sense of entertainment, they're ducking and weaving at what their tribe has wrought in the USA ...

Just look at the digital edition this morning... it's like the USA and Faux Noise didn't exist ...

Instead there was still more ignoring of the Gaza genocide, and plucky Princess Catherine occupying the pic spread in the middle ...

It didn't get any better on the extreme far right of the rag ...

The pond really did try reading the bromancer - he has no more loyal and devoted reader - but broke into hysterical laughter after just the first few lines ...

Donald Trump’s decisiveness created the momentum for a hostage deal and ceasefire in Gaza, just as the Albanese government’s equivocations, hand-wringing and moral confusion left the space open for the worst outbreak of anti-Semitism in Australian history.

That Trump might give lessons to the Albanese government in how to run an effective administration – even before he’s inaugurated – is perhaps not so surprising. That he should so clearly demonstrate superior moral reasoning to the Australian government is not something we would have anticipated so clearly.

Say what?

Now there's superior moral reasoning at its finest, and with that the last actual mention of Gaza by the bromancer - never mind the ongoing ethnic cleansing - the pond turned to a bonus, Dame Groan on a Wednesday, in classic form in The predictions for a strong Europe have been proved wrong, The US is racing ahead of Europe with very strong gains in productivity and employment. It’s shown that affordable and reliable energy is the bedrock of economic prosperity.

The reptiles advised it was a five minute read, and the pond searched for signs that Dame Groan was at least dimly aware that she was praising Biden's America ... but no, it was just a chance to dump on the Europeans, especially the Germans, Leading German Greens Party member Robert Habeck, who is also Germany's Economic Affairs Minister. Germany will hold elections on February 23 following the collapse of the three-party federal coalition. Picture: Getty Images

It seems the old groaner has been making end times preparations...

I have been sorting through my books with the aim of giving away as many as I can. Nobody wants books these days.

It’s a slow process as I end up flipping through the pages of the more interesting books or wondering why I purchased some of them in the first place.

I came across a copy of Lester Thurow’s 1992 book, Head to Head: The Coming Battle Among Japan, Europe and America.

It went straight to the discard box. Thurow was a left-leaning economist working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – he was an old-fashioned social democrat. He wrote a number of books and was a prolific columnist.

As a fervent believer in government intervention and a strong social welfare system, he had his money on Europe to draw away from the US. According to Thurow, “major investment decisions have become too important to be left to the private sector”.

He was also attracted to the Japanese economy in which the ministry of international trade and industry played a dominant role. Thurow is no longer with us but the fact remains that he couldn’t have been more wrong. At the time, the economies of the US and the EU were about the same size. Today, the EU economy is less than three-quarters the size of the US economy.

The median disposable income in the US is 25 per cent higher than in Germany and 60 per cent higher than in Italy. The US continues to power ahead in terms of productivity growth while the largest economies in the EU – Germany and France – are both in the doldrums. The German economy is barely bigger than it was pre-Covid; it is currently in recession.

Hang on, hang on, is that Biden's America she's groaning about? Didn't the tangerine tyrant establish that it was a nightmare, in complete collapse, ripe for Thiel's apokálypsis?

Never mind, on with the ravaging ...

Even at the time Thurow was being extremely optimistic in his predictions. The EU was in the process of adopting a common currency even though the underlying economic and fiscal situations of the member countries were extremely disparate.

The value of the euro was too high for the low-productivity countries, particularly Greece, Italy and Spain, but too low for Germany, in particular.

For some time, this suited Germany, which was able to develop strong export markets in automotive and engineering-related products, in particular. China became an important trading partner with high-end German cars making their way to China.

Germany was able to access cheap piped gas from Russia that was used by the large manufacturing sector. But what suited Germany didn’t suit the poorer EU countries, including Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy, as they struggled to deal with the common currency. As a result, there was a need for fiscal compensation to these lower-income countries that was largely met by Germany and, to a lesser extent, France.

Thurow was, of course, not the only true believer in the European model and in Germany, in particular. In 2015, well-known international commen­tator Thomas Friedman wrote that Germany was about to become Europe’s first green solar-based superpower.

“There is an impressive weight to Germany today – derived from the quality of its governing institutions, its rule of law and the sheer power of its economy,” he wrote. He even favourably quoted the president of the Green Party’s political foundation, who claimed “the greatest success of the German energy transition was giving a boost to the Chinese solar panel industry”. He was referring to Energie­wende, the German government’s decarbonisation strategy initiated in 2010.

The pond knew it, not only do those bloody wind farms kill all the whales around Tamworth, they've ruined Germany, and here's the proof,  Wind turbines at a wind farm in northern Germany. Picture: AFP

How Dame Groan loves fossil fuels, how she hates renewables, the ruination of everything and the eternal damnation of the world.

Sure, mug punters might read Isaac Chotiner in The New Yorker, How did the Los Angeles Fires Get So Out of Control? (paywall).

...you can isolate the effect of changes in weather and climate conditions over decades. And when we did that, we found that extreme wildfire weather conditions had doubled in California between 1980 and 2020. That’s not a small increase. And that’s the way we try to ask these questions.

Or Daniel Immerwahr, also in the New Yorker, observing The New Combustible Age (paywall):

...After the eighteen-seventies, Chicagoans rebuilt their city in safer materials. Los Angeles won’t be able to protect itself so easily. When fires grow large enough, as California’s drought-powered megafires have, everything becomes fuel. Better housing stock can mitigate dangers, but the underlying problem, global warming, is systemic. Fireproofing California will take more than brick.

None of that will shake Dame Groan, intent on doing down the Germans, as if China hadn't already done that ...

The aim was to shift electricity generation away from coal, gas and nuclear to renewables.

In 2019, Germany’s Federal Court of Auditors estimated that the program had cost €160bn over the previous five years, claiming the costs were “in extreme disproportion to the results”.

That said, the energy system in Germany continued to be underpinned by affordable gas from Russia, an arrangement that effectively ceased in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Today, the German economy is on its knees, with the rate of unemployment above 6 per cent. It is much higher for recently arrived migrants. There is a massive rationalisation of heavy industry going on as industrial companies reduce the size of factories or close them altogether. There are some big names here, including Volkswagen, ThyssenKrupp and BASF. BASF is investing billions of euros in a new plant in China.

This is not entirely surprising given that the price of electricity in Germany is twice as high as in the US and three times higher than in China. To be sure, Germany has so many wind and solar installations, including offshore wind, that there are times when renewable energy generates around 70 per cent of all the electricity demanded. The trouble is that there are times when that percentage falls dramatically – to below 5 per cent.

At that point, Germany is reliant on the electricity produced in other nearby countries and transported using the interconnectors. Ironically, much of this electricity is generated by nuclear plants. The effect of this arrangement is to drive up electricity prices in those other countries.

In November last year, Germany recorded the highest electricity prices since the Ukraine War began. There are now palpable tensions between Germany and a number of countries that supply Germany with electricity when needed. Note here that installed battery capacity in Germany can currently generate less than an hour of the country’s daily demand for electricity.

In the meantime, the German government is restricted in its spending by the constitutionally enshrined debt ceiling. The attempt by the left-leaning Olaf Scholz coalition government to use Covid moneys to pay for energy and climate measures, thereby circumventing the fiscal rules, was disallowed by the Constitutional Court.

There is a widespread acknowledgment that more government spending is required for both defence and infrastructure.

Hang on, hang on, more government spending? That sounds bloody socialist, almost pinko Commie prevert ...

If we're going to MGGA, surely there should be much less government spending? Perhaps call in Uncle Leon to cut two trillion from the budget?

Never mind, a last gasp of groaning, with the cheese eating surrender monkeys next in line for a blast ...

In the meantime, the second largest economy in the EU, France, is in a world of pain with an inoperative government in charge. Unemployment is approaching 8 per cent and the budget position is dire, with the deficit now above 6 per cent of GDP, in clear breach of the EU’s fiscal rules. The attempts by the Macron government to trim the generous entitlements that drive a great deal of government spending have largely failed. The European Commission continues to impose costly and productivity-sapping regulations that must be met by the member countries. These include a number of climate-related measures, including the mandating of the purchase of electric vehicles.

The US is now powering ahead, with very strong gains in productivity and employment. The most recent data on employment saw the numbers in new jobs greatly exceed expectations. The rate of unemployment in the US is now a fraction over 4 per cent. Business investment is strong and the application of new technologies, particularly AI, has huge potential.

So, Lester and Tom, you were wrong about Europe and Germany, in particular. Affordable and reliable energy is the bedrock of economic prosperity as well as government arrangements that allow some companies to thrive and others to fail. Governments simply don’t pick winners well. There are lessons here for ­Australia.

The lesson of course is to ignore minor fripperies like the occasional city-wide bonfire, scrap those bloody solar panels and whale killing machines, and return to the awesome days of dinkum clean, innocent, virginal dinkum Oz coal ...

Speaking of dinkum, a certain Zoe Booth was also to hand, and never mind that it's still 11 days away, it's already front and centre at the lizard Oz ...Look out, there’s a new vibe about our national day, This Australia Day, for the first time in years, I’ll be celebrating – and I’m not ashamed.

Sorry Australia, as the pond has established already, Oz day is firmly Sydney centric ... Crowds gather at Bondi Beach on Australia Day in 2024. Picture: Tom Parrish

But where's all the vacuous trinkets and mindless flag waving?

Leave all that to Zoe, determined to MOzGA ...what you might call Mogadon for the pond's mind.

Let’s face it – over the past few years, celebrating Australia Day has become a bit on the nose, especially among university-educated types.

Head to more working-class areas, like my home town of Newcastle, and you’ll still see plenty of people celebrating. But in the city, it’s almost taboo.

Oh those bloody stuck up university-educated types. But hang on, hang on, haven't those Novocastrians decided that being trendy and cultural coffee drinkers is the new future, what with expensive expansion of the local art gallery, and with the news even reaching Western Australia ...How the arts helped turn a tired city into a hot spot.

Fancy a guess as to which Australian city made Lonely Planet's list of the top 10 hottest cities in the world to visit in 2011?

Melbourne? Sydney? Perth? Cairns? Hobart? Nope, nope, nope and nope. Ranked up there with New York, Valencia, Chiang Mai and Delhi by the travel guide specialists is Newcastle, the NSW rust-belt city whose best-known exports are rugby league players, coal and Silverchair.

That Newcastle is Australia's most underrated city would come as no surprise to Marcus Westbury, the Novocastrian-born cultural leader. Westbury has helped redefine urban renewal with an innovative DIY scheme to broker access rights for artists and fledgling creative enterprises to the city's abandoned shops, offices and other commercial buildings.

Initially using little more than his credit card and an immense investment of energy, passion and imagination, Westbury's Renew Newcastle project has woken up dozens of dormant buildings and helped revitalise the CBD.

Over the past two years, about 60 creative enterprises - artists, music labels, fashion designers, web developers and others - have used and maintained these buildings until they become commercially viable or are redeveloped.

Oh okay, that was back in 2011, and Zoe isn't into any of that lardy-dardy, dandyish artie wanker crap ...

She's more a flag-waving woman ...

This is a far cry from what I – and probably many of you – experienced growing up. Clearly, something has changed.

For me, the biggest milestone was in 2017, when my (then) beloved Triple J stopped hosting the Hottest 100 on January 26. That was the nail in the coffin. From then on, celebrating Australia Day became entirely outside the Overton window.

Last Australia Day, down at Bondi Beach, I noticed something weird: not a single Australian flag in sight. Sure, a helicopter flew one over the beach a few times (God knows who paid for that), but no flags on towels, bikinis, or even the backs of sunburnt blokes.

Australia Day isn’t seen as a day of celebration anymore. For many, it’s morphed into a public exercise in self-flagellation.

Even my father, proudly displaying an Australian flag in our front yard, was asked by a friend’s wife: “Why do you have that swastika in your yard?”

After October 7, I attended a rally for Israel where I saw a man wearing an iconic red cap. I initially assumed it was a MAGA hat, but it actually said “Make Australia Great Again”.

I complimented him on it, but moments later he was questioned by police. I can only assume it was because he was a white male, alone, in a Trump-style hat.

Or maybe because it signalled you were a prize maroon ...

Never mind, Zoe is handling the matter with extreme sensitivity ...

A few years back, Cricket Australia announced it would avoid referencing Australia Day during its matches, only to backtrack after a public outcry. Meanwhile, in 2017, councils in Fremantle, Yarra and Darebin stopped holding citizenship ceremonies on January 26, prompting backlash from then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Retailers have also waded in – last year Woolworths said it would no longer stock Australia Day merchandise, only to reverse that decision recently, announcing Australia Day products will return in 2025.

How many times must the pond remind punters that we're mainly talking about Sydney here, Australia Day celebrations.

You know, the home of fireworks ... not mindless froth and bubble and big bangs, but genuinely moving cultural experiences ... with the British flag draped all over the Opera House to produce a warm, fuzzy glow...

Feel the vibe shift ... (that's vulgar youff speak) ...

Woolworths clearly feels the vibe shift of 2025. And it’s not just Woolworths. I’ve spoken to people around the world who sense it too. Commentator and historian Niall Ferguson senses it. Without us even realising it, it feels like celebrating Australia Day is becoming acceptable again. It’s not just the holiday itself – it’s what it represents.

Oh dear, how did a bloody Pom get into it? Are we still into A. A. Phillips' cultural cringe, where only a Pom can explain Australia to Australians? Only a Pom can sense it?

The Australian writer, critic and teacher A.A. Phillips coined the term 'the cultural cringe' in 1950 to describe an Australian tendency to identify our literature and art as inferior to work produced overseas, particularly in Britain and the United States, and for writers at the lizard Oz to reference superior British historians to make them feel comfortable. The term has resonated in debates about Australian culture, society and identity ever since, except for Zoe, somewhat clueless in her quest to seek reassurance. (A less mangled, Zoe-absent version here).

Never mind, ,at some point, Zoe is sure to get around to  espousing a Judeo-Christian moral framework, and deal with those difficult, pesky, uppity blacks ...

Increasingly, not only Australians but many in the West are refusing to feign guilt for who we are. The years of shaming “white colonists” have lost their grip. I’m not saying the shaming will stop, but it no longer wields the power it once did.

Ferguson argues that this shift is thanks to Donald Trump’s re-election, and I agree. His victory signalled that ordinary Americans want to prioritise their country and are tired of woke ideology and its shame-driven identity politics.

No doubt, Australia Day will still see protests.

Your social media will be full of keffiyeh-clad arts students calling it Invasion Day. But I’d bet good money that Bondi Beach will have more people decked out in Aussie gear than last year.

As Pascal Bruckner wrote in perhaps my favourite Quillette essay, Europe (and I’d argue Australia too) is consumed by guilt. Unlike the US, which severed its ties with Europe, Australia remains tethered to the monarchy and its perceived ills.

Good on ya, Zoe, there's always a time and a place for a little cross promotion, even if the reptiles aren't keen on links that take you out of the hive mind. Now do carry on, guilt-free of course ...

Some Australian republicans think cutting ties with the monarchy will cure us of this guilt, but anyone familiar with the far left (I was once part of it) knows that nothing will ever be enough.

Even if we became a republic, created Sorry Day, changed the date of Australia Day, voted yes to an Indigenous voice, and renamed every town and river with Aboriginal names, it still wouldn’t satisfy the insatiable demands of woke ideologues.

Like dealing with an abusive partner, the only solution is to refuse to be denigrated.

There are malevolent actors out there who would like to see the West and its values destroyed. We know that you can’t placate them or politely request respect. The only option is to stop playing their game.

It’s the same for those who want us to feel ashamed for celebrating the national day on January 26: stop trying to placate them by removing Australia Day products from shelves or changing the date.

As Bruckner said of Europe: “Either it becomes a convincing world player … or it will be dismembered by hungry predators waiting to devour it piece by piece … It is therefore imperative that we retain our self-confidence as combative occidentals, convinced of the uniqueness of our contributions to civilisation, and who make no excuses for our existence.”

The same applies to Australia. We’re still a young country and, while our national identity may not be as firmly established as America’s or Europe’s, we share a clear foundation in a Judeo-Christian moral framework that emphasises the value of human life, freedom, and individuality. There’s much to be proud of.

Ah yes, the pond could feel the pride swelling ... talk about the value of human life, freedom and individuality ...what a clear foundation ...

Of course we have a few minor first world problems, the sort worldly travellers are adept at identifying ...

Having travelled extensively, I can confidently say there’s nowhere else I’d rather call home.

Of course, we’re not without our challenges – tall poppy syndrome, an underwhelming culinary scene, and ongoing struggles in education, labour productivity, and housing affordability.

And yes, Indigenous Australians face serious and complex issues, but these cannot be reduced to a simple narrative of blame on white colonisation.

An underwhelming culinary scene. Consider the pond underwhelmed. And as for that simple narrative of blame on white colonisation, where on earth do people get those ideas from?

And so to wrap up Zoe, with the realisation that there's going to be a lot more of this in the lizard Oz, the new version of the war on a woke Xmas ...

Changing the date of our national holiday won’t magically improve life expectancy, health outcomes or educational attainment for Indigenous communities.

This Australia Day, for the first time in years, I’ll be celebrating – and I’m not ashamed.

Zoe Booth is a content director at Quillette

Off to the beach with her, to gaze mindlessly and vacuously out at the sea ... while the pond will turn to the 'toons, wondering if there might be a cure ...

And so to conclude by reverting back to where the pond failed to start with the bromancer ...