A late arvo Ēostre retrospective, featuring the Ughmann ...

 

At time of writing the pond's contest remained open, with this classic image, redolent of Alice/Humpty/Dumpty/Ēostre, a further clue ...

The pond does regret taking time off at Ēostre, but in retrospect there were only a few pieces worthy of a late arvo retrospective, the most notable being the Ughmann, because as expected he went there ...

For those having difficulty with the size of the print, the header: Christianity’s hidden gift – our belief in equality, dignity and compassion, We live in a time when faith is ridiculed, history is rewritten and the foundations of democracy are dismissed. But some truths cannot be killed. They can be crucified. But they always rise.

The caption for that thoroughly ridiculous image, which looked vaguely like Monty Burns: In the Christian tradition, Easter is the incarnation of that hope, in the witness of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Although it’s now largely invisible to most, that old faith touches everyone who lives in a Western democracy.

You know:

At the very bottom came the standard mystical incantation, crooned whenever the article is deemed to be of particular significance: This article contains features which are only available in the web version, Take me there

The temptation of course is to ridicule the Ughmann, but truly satire is difficult when the Ughmann spends six minutes - so the reptiles say - in lugubrious solemnity ...

We were somewhere in Ukraine’s Donetsk region but not quite sure where. Nor did we know if the path our navigator had led us down was a road to nowhere. What was clear was the regular beat of artillery fire nearby and the rising fury of our security adviser.
It was October 2023 and our film crew had come close to the frontline of a war in search of the Bushmasters the Australian government had donated to the cause of defending Ukraine. We had arranged to meet combat medic Hannah Hurava, who daily drove into harm’s way to tend to the wounded and dying. Her husband was a driver.
By the time we found the village, and Hurava, it was dark and everyone was keen to tape the interview and go. Setting up lights in the open was out of the question, so we all piled into the back of a blood-stained, Bendigo-made troop transport that doubled as a field ambulance. But no amount of armour could shield Hurava from the rote horror of her job.
“You must see some terrible things,” I said. “Tak,” she said, nodding. Yes. Hurava had the distant gaze of trauma in her eyes as she spoke through a translator. At the end I asked what she hoped for.
“My husband and I have been married for a long time and we never thought about having children,” Hurava said. “Now, after what I’ve seen in the war, I’ve been thinking about making sure the family survives. About the value of life. And the need to ensure there is another life after me.”

Apparently the Ughmann hasn't caught up on the news that his kissing cousins at Faux Noise love Vlad the Sociopath, and are eager for a deal, so the indignant reptiles slipped in a snap of his work, as if the Sociopath had done something wrong, when in reality he rests in the bosom of the Russian Orthodox Church ... Most Holy Theotokos "Joy of All Sorrowful" monastery in the Donetsk region in 2023. Picture: Supplied

The Ughmann seized the chance to preach hope ...

Here, perched on the edge of hell, was a fragile light. In the killing fields at least one person’s thoughts turned to bearing life. To defying death. Here was evidence of the truth Viktor Frankl discovered in a German concentration camp. “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way,” he wrote in Man’s Search for Meaning.
Hope is the stubborn genius of humanity. It’s what remains when all else is stripped away. As Frankl knew, it can be surrendered but never taken. In the Christian tradition, Easter is the incarnation of that hope, in the witness of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Although it’s now largely invisible to most, that old faith touches everyone who lives in a Western democracy.
Our ideals – the belief in equality, dignity and compassion – are the fruit of a tree whose roots lie deep in Christianity. As Tom Holland explores in his book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, humanism derives ultimately from claims made in the Bible – that humans are fashioned in God’s image; that his son died equally for everyone; that there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for all are one in Christ.

Of course the Ughmann is right - DEI is another acronym for it - but he got the Messiah wrong. 

There's a new Messiah, a new hope for the world, and he's bringing religion back to the White House in a very big way ...

 

This Jesus is very keen on golf, and the pond was impressed with this graph at Daily Kos ...

For some deeply weird and pathetic reason, the reptiles interrupted the Ughmann with a snap, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Pope Francis meet in June on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Savelletri, Italy. Picture: Vatican Media/AFP

Wrong! This is now the offical snap for anyone wanting to remember Frank, greeting his killer (see the cracking Crace) ...

That provides a natural segue to the immortal Rowe celebrating the new Messiah ...

The Ughmann struggled to understand the changes ...

From the beginning, the Christian God is a God of justice and a God of reason. 

Indeed, indeed, for as Genesis 7:4 explains, there's nary a hint of petulance or savagery in the old bastard ...

For yet seven days, and I will cause it to rain upon the earth forty days and forty nights; and every living substance that I have made will I destroy from off the face of the earth

A genocide of justice and reason, but do go on ...

This rings loudly from the pages of the New Testament. It is explicit in the opening of John’s Gospel, itself an echo of the first sentence of Genesis. “In the beginning was the word,” John says. The New Testament was written in Greek and the Greek for word is logos, which also means reason. So, in the Christian tradition, God is reason itself.
Christianity unites Greek philosophy with Jewish mysticism. It is the marriage of reason and faith. What’s born is a radically new theology that would redefine human behaviour. Not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to the nature of God – but it is reason tempered by faith. It demands we “love one another” and “do unto others that which you would have them do unto you”.
This is not the narrow modern definition of reason that reduces everything to that which can be measured. It is Augustine’s famous motto: faith seeks understanding. Faith is not opposed to reason, it longs for deeper knowledge. Let’s call it wisdom.
Although Christianity is born in the East, it’s informed by the West and takes on its historically decisive character in Europe. Europe is defined by its faith and its faith is defined by reason.
Reason drives Europe on the road to liberal democracy. Through all its failures and its many crimes, reason pushes this society forward and demands that it learn, evolve and progress in tandem with the light of its faith.
That light burned bright when the torch passed from England to the US. Thomas Jefferson married faith and reason when he wrote: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Slavery cast a great shadow over these words. Jefferson was a slave owner, but the truth in what he wrote could not be denied. Before the ink was dry on the Declaration of Independence some attacked what they called its “glittering generalities” and predicted that one day Jefferson’s words would tear the union apart. Because the only rational conclusion from reading the unassailable Christian truth at the heart of Jefferson’s words was that it demanded the slave be set free.
Less than a century later that reckoning would come with the civil war.

The reptiles inserted a snap of honest Abe, obtained cheaply, Abraham Lincoln in 1873. Picture: iStock

But what of the new Messiah, the bringer of religion to the White House? Clearly he surpasses the Ughmann's understanding ...

The Ughmann for some perverted reason wanted to stay mired in the past ...

No one better articulated the stain of slavery or the price that would be exacted to scrub it from the nation than Abraham Lincoln in his second inaugural address: “Fondly do we hope – fervently do we pray – that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether’.”
Jefferson and Lincoln appeal to their faith and to reason when they define the values of their nation.
And 100 years after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation a Christian preacher would lead a quarter of a million people on a march on Washington to, in his words, “cash the cheque” that the architects of the republic wrote into the Declaration of Independence.
Martin Luther King said it was a promissory note that had not been honoured. But he had a dream “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed”.
What King wanted was what the arc of the Western liberal tradition demanded: equality. Not a special place in a democracy but the rightful place promised to every citizen.
King knew the logic of his words could not be denied, and his faith demanded justice. He was not seeking to demolish the Western liberal tradition – he just wanted his society to be as good as its word. To not default on its heritage. To be reborn and redeemed.

Not to diminish MLK, but clearly the nation has risen up and lived out the true meaning of its creed, and it's not in idle blather about equality and all that woke crap, Dr Martin Luther King in March 1967 called for equality at the Chicago peace march. Picture: AP

It's about worshipping at the feet of the new Messiah ...

The pond understands there are a few doubters, a few more hesitant than those vaccine hesitant fools who follow RFK Jr ...

There was Antonia Hitchens sobbing in The New Yorker about Follow the Leader, How Trump Worship Took Hold in Washington (archive link):

...The gestures of servility come from all over. At a Cabinet meeting not long ago, Trump’s secretaries took turns: “Your vision is a turning point and inflection point in American history” (Brooke Rollins, Agriculture); “You were overwhelmingly elected by the biggest majority—Americans want you to be President” (Pam Bondi, Attorney General); “What you’re doing now is a great service to our country, but ultimately to the world” (Marco Rubio, State). Jeff Bezos, whose business empire can easily be affected by the favor or disdain of the White House, announced that the newspaper he owns, the Washington Post, would no longer welcome opinion columns outside certain boundaries. He redoubled his bow by licensing Trump’s reality-TV show, “The Apprentice,” in order to make reruns of it available to stream on Amazon. (Amazon also paid forty million dollars for the rights to two forthcoming documentary projects on Trump’s wife, Melania.) Senator Ted Cruz, who had once called Trump a “snivelling coward,” “utterly immoral,” “nuts,” and “a pathological liar,” now rushes to compliment the President, along with his main campaign funder and close adviser, Elon Musk; Cruz recently tweeted a photograph of himself with a red Tesla parked on the grounds of the White House. “This may be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen,” he wrote.
The list goes on. When Trump complained about an unflattering portrait that hung in the Colorado state capitol—“Truly the worst,” he said—the state’s Republican-led legislature swiftly removed it. In Minnesota, Republicans in the state senate introduced a bill to codify “Trump Derangement Syndrome”—defined as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal persons that is in reaction to the policies and presidencies of President Donald J. Trump”—as a mental illness. Law firms are offering pro-bono services to Trump so that he will reverse executive orders that target them; in a memo, the U.S. Attorney in D.C. referred to his staff as “President Trumps’ lawyers.” Brendan Carr, the head of the Federal Communications Commission, wears a gold lapel pin in the shape of Trump’s head.
At the beginning of April, Trump instituted a tariff regime that sent markets plunging across the world. As losses in the S. & P. 500 neared six trillion dollars, he gloated about the many nations that wanted to negotiate with him. “These countries are calling us up and kissing my ass,” he told the National Republican Congressional Committee. “ ‘Please, please, sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything, sir.’ ” He was also eager to remind any members of Congress who were opposed to his “big beautiful bill,” which called for tax breaks, spending cuts, and stepped-up immigration enforcement, to “stop grandstanding” and just vote for it. “Close your eyes and get there,” he said.
These days, they almost always do. “There’s never been anybody who has controlled that much of the base of any party,” Steve Cohen, a longtime Democratic congressman from Memphis, told me. “I don’t even think Franklin Roosevelt had that much power.” A person close to the Administration said, “Trump’s dealmaking often comes through a public assault.” Ralph Norman, a Freedom Caucus member from South Carolina, told me, “This is a blood sport now, more so than I’ve ever seen it.” Or, as a person close to Trump put it, “Republicans have an authority problem. Donald Trump is teaching them how to respect order.”

And so he should, and so they should, and I am right, and you are right, and all is right as right can be!

He's a just, compassionate and reasonable Messiah, a most virtuous man, who must put up with Judas's, heretics and knaves popping up in strange places like the WSJ editorial board ...The Fire Jerome Powell Market Rout, Investors render a verdict on tariffs and politicizing the Fed. (archive link)

If the White House wanted a test of how firing Jerome Powell would go over in the markets, it succeeded on Monday. U.S. stocks and the dollar plunged while yields on long-term Treasurys climbed after President Trump renewed his attacks on the Federal Reserve Chairman.
Monday was the first full trading day for markets to absorb National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett’s comments Friday that the White House is studying if Mr. Powell can legally be fired. On Monday Mr. Trump demanded again that Mr. Powell make “pre-emptive” interest rate cuts to avoid a slowdown. Cue the meltdown in stocks, bonds and the dollar, a trifecta of declining confidence.
Mr. Trump is furious that Mr. Powell has said publicly that tariffs will likely lead to higher inflation and slower growth. Mr. Trump conceded the growth point on Monday, lambasting Mr. Powell: “There can be a SLOWING of the economy unless Mr. Too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates, NOW.”
Markets fear Mr. Trump really might fire Mr. Powell, not that it would do the President any good. He’d have to remove more than the Chairman to change the Federal Open Market Committee, which sets interest rates and tries to satisfy the central bank’s dual mandate of maximum employment and stable prices.
Mr. Trump can’t fire the regional Fed bank presidents on the committee, and all 12 voting members of the FOMC seem to agree with the Fed’s recent policy moves. A Powell replacement would also have a harder time establishing credibility with markets.
The same goes if Mr. Trump were to name a “shadow” Fed Chairman who would be expected to comment on the central bank’s every move between now and May 2026 when Mr. Powell’s term expires. This is a recipe for more market uncertainty. Whose forward guidance should investors follow, Mr. Powell’s or his replacement’s?
The Powell Fed’s policy is hardly tight in any case. He’s in the process of ending quantitative tightening by no longer shrinking the Fed balance sheet, which amounts to easing. His public message is that the tariffs make fulfilling the Fed’s twin mandates more difficult. That’s undeniably true.
The tariffs will cause at least a one-time increase in the price of tariffed goods, which may become more entrenched if the Fed accommodates them by cutting rates. Meanwhile, they are increasing uncertainty for businesses and consumers, which will slow the economy and hiring.
Mr. Powell stands ready to cut rates if the economy shows more weakness, even though inflation is still above its 2% target. The Fed’s preferred inflation index of personal consumption expenditures rose 2.5% on an annual basis in February, and 2.8% excluding food and energy. That’s not “virtually No Inflation,” as Mr. Trump said Monday on social media.
Mr. Trump thinks he can bully everyone into submission, but he can’t bully Adam Smith, who deals in reality. Markets know tariffs are taxes, and taxes are anti-growth. The Trump tariffs are the biggest economic policy mistake in decades, and extending the 2017 tax reform and deregulation may not compensate for all the damage.
There are also fears that if tariffs fail to reorder the global trading system, Mr. Trump might impose a fee on Treasury debt as chief White House economist Stephen Miran has proposed. This would amount to a partial U.S. default since it would cut the rate of return. Think Treasury yields are rising now? Watch what happens if a Miran fee is imposed.
All of this is tempting economic fate and contributing to a global “sell America” narrative in financial markets. That’s why the dollar is under pressure. Smart Presidents pay attention to market signals and adapt. The adaptation now would be to negotiate a quick end to the tariff barrage. Claim some trade-deal victories, and call it a day.
But markets are spooked because they don’t know if Mr. Trump listens to anyone but his own impulses.

Judas's, freaks, deniers, heretics ... trust the new Messiah, it's a time of hope and redemption ...

It is Easter, a time of hope and redemption. And hope is not optimism. It is not naive. It does not deny suffering or sidestep injustice. It endures despite them. It survives the cross. It survives the camps. It survives the battlefield.
That night in Donetsk, Hurava told us she had begun to think about children. About planting life in the middle of death. That, in its essence, is Easter.
Because at the heart of Christianity – the wellspring of our democratic tradition – is a radical, unbelievable hope. That life has a meaning that defies even death.
We live in a time when faith is ridiculed, history is rewritten and the foundations of democracy are dismissed – sometimes by those charged with leading us. But as Frankl saw, and as the gospels insist, some truths cannot be killed.
They can be crucified. But they will rise.

But they will rise?

But he has already risen ...

... and how lucky we are to be able to follow him, and feel his warm embrace ...