Thursday, June 15, 2017

In which the pond moves from dashing Donners to the onion muncher ...because it can ...


For some strange reason, and remembering that there's already some mighty strange and good Rowe here, today's Rowe reminded the pond of the hell figures that used to litter the magazines that the pond's father desperately tried to hide around the house ...


But enough of such sauciness and Jack Gibson,  and memories of Pix, People and Post magazines too, on which the lumpenproletariat wasted money, because it's just a hop and a step over to dashing Donners' piece this day, which reminded the pond that the 1950s never really went away, at least for some silly old dodderers ...


While looking up Donners, the pond was confronted with a couple of theological imponderables:


Indeed, indeed. What if She, after a couple of thousand years of disrespectful patriarchy, spewing Man magazine nonsense about the dangers of hell, what if She had finally decided She'd  had enough of the Xians?

It's a keen point. What if She created atheists to muddy the waters and make things tricky? What if She created Satan? What if She was the snake in the garden?

And then there was the question of Kev heading his piece "Let's not deny our Christian roots"?

He couldn't really have headed his piece that way, could he?

He would have been torn to shreds in Tamworth playgrounds with jokes about Christian roots ...

There was one boy in the pond's class that, on hearing the word "roots", would chew on a potato or some other root vegetable, and then leave, as if he'd done a witticism worthy of Alexander Pope (others preferred to eat and shoot a gun and leave) ...


This muchly bigly talk of roots in Tamworth possibly explains why She has visited Barners on the town ...

But enough fun, it's time to get solemn and po-faced with Donners ...


Now Augusto has already featured in these pages and in the pond's comments section, and there's more about him at the Murdochian university here, where readers will discover that he's almost as unique as the Oreo, one of the ten brightest minds in Australian universities ...

Dr Zimmermann has been included, together with only twelve other Australian academics and policy experts, in the prestigious ‘Policy Experts’ – the Heritage Foundation’s directory for locating knowledgeable authorities and leading policy institutes actively involved in a broad range of public policy issues, both in the United States and worldwide.

The Heritage Foundation?! That's how shameless it's getting in these godless, shameful days, where conservatives have abandoned Her to worship at the feet of Koch ...

Oh please, don't go even more Tamworth with Koch jokes ... just be reassured that it's possible to find the Zimmermann on the pages of Australia's leading creationist site here ... scribbling on such important matters as The Darwinian roots of the Nazi legal system ... and making vital points in an interview here ...

‘Evolutionary influences are especially visible in Marxist legal theory. Because Marx rejected the God of Creation, he was deeply scornful of the doctrine of human sinfulness and convinced that the “evolution” of human nature would lead to its absolute perfectibility.’...

Dr Zimmermann points out: ‘Believers of Christ are told to “demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). They must be careful not to be taken “captive through hollow and deceptive philosophies, which depend on human tradition and the basic principles of the world” (Colossians 2:10). ‘This and other publications such as CMI’s Journal of Creation are fundamental for these purposes because they expose the allegedly “scientific truths” of arguments that are based on hollow and deceptive philosophies.’

This is who dashing Donners has taken to quoting?

The barking mad in search of the wildly delusional?

Put it another way ...is it any wonder that the pond prefers its Xianity as rich comic comedy?


More of that cartoon here ... and truly the pond and the real Dorothy Parker have been occasionally taken down by a bottle of gin, and truly Donners is killing the pond ...but now it's back to creationist-quoting Donners ...



Well the pond will say one thing for dashing Donners, he's kept the sermon short this morning ... and actually, if the pond might be so bold, indigenous creation myths are as silly as any of the myths the Christian devised - beg, borrowing and stealing in the most shameless way from many a pagan and barbarian myth as they did - and it's helpful to separate out notions of belief, history, respect and recognise ... at least if you purport to be an academic like Donners and don't want to end up sounding as barking mad or as specious and disingenuous as a Zimmermann ...

As a result, the pond was left feeling a little peckish, and thought it should go political.

You see, the one thing the pond remembers from its Catholic childhood is the way Catholics made such good haters.

Once upon a time the pond might have offered up members of the family as examples, or even the pond itself, but has there ever been a better example of a bitter, spiteful hater keeping the hate alive than the onion muncher? 



It's not as if the reptiles don't encourage him, and keep him on his "clean" coal path ... the bouffant one was the reptile given the chore today ...



But there's a reason why the onion  muncher stays at the top of the pond's page, and that's because he's a good hater. He dresses it up in the finery of principle and policy and concern for the nation, but in the end, the spite is all about him and his accumulated losses. The resentment and the bile is a marvel to see, and it won't end even when he's made to leave politics, a day which will surely come.

He'll nurse and cherish the hate into old age, but meanwhile, he'll do as much damage as he possible he can.

So, as a rare break from the commentariat, the pond decided to relish some reptile "news" stories, in honour of the latest examples of the onion muncher imitating a Tasmanian devil in a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

Here's a collage, with cartoons for a page break (source indicated in the cartoon):












Around this point the pond remembered that it had run this Pope way back when ...



And yet nothing had changed, nada, zip, zilch, the same hate, the same hostility, the same bitterness, the same sniping, undermining and white-anting ... 

It is in the end, all about the onion muncher, and the result, even according to the reptiles themselves?



It's funny of course. The Murdochians hand-wringing and moaning about the way the climate wars will continue ... when the Murdochians are at the heart of their beginning and their continuation ...being as they are at the heart of climate denialism and coal love in Australia ...

That deep, rich seam of coal love is on view a daily basis in the Catholic Boys' Daily ... as a goodly, muchly lot of them yearn for the folly of a return to the onion muncher ...

To borrow a phrase from dashing Donners, Let's not deny the Catholics have rooted us ... and so to another Pope, this one as fresh as a hot cross Abbott ... with more splendid papal insights available here ...




5 comments:

  1. ...if you purport to be an academic like Donners

    Well then, in that case you'd be donnering on about those who "seek to deny the nation's Christian heritage". But then, what heritage is that, exactly. Now about this:

    ...let us acknowledge the seminal work of Weston LaBarre, who introduced the term "group archosis" (LaBarre, 1984) to refer to "nonsense and misinformation so ancient and pervasive as to be seemingly inextricable from our thinking. ...A frightening proportion of all culture is arguably archosis, more especially sacred culture." Dan Sperber, taking a similar position (1985), went on to suggest that genetic evolution produces mental dispositions with "side effects" that have marginal adaptive value, with religion being one example (as recounted by Edgerton, in Sick Societies, 1992, pg. 53).
    http://brucegary.net/book_GE/Chapter_21.html

    And there's just nothing quite so precious to reptiles, and Broady Boys, as their "sacred culture".

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  2. Jeez DP,your link to Gibson and the hell cartoons resurrected the childhood catholic guilts of scouring my uncles room for the stashed Man mags when he was off to the pub. His relationship to Man etc. also reminded me of the publisher, Ken Murray ...and Miles Franklin. Both were natives of Talbingo,a most beautiful part of Oz.....Go figure.
    http://www.blowering.com/talbingo.html
    http://www.traveller.com.au/talbingo-5ynp

    The only thing I wish to hear from the creationists is this.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAtYyZ2HNUk

    With respect to the Onion Muncher, Heartland and all the rabid science denying, bible loving members of the LNP and the Murdoch 'Bible mogul' press enablers, I can only link to a Prof.Philip Mirowski lecture posted by a Pond correspondent some time back.I consider it, when listened to carefully,truly relevant regards understanding the mindset and MO of the denialist/coal lobby.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7ewn29w-9I

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  3. Senior research chappie Kev mentioned Botticelli's Virgin And Child w/ 2 Angels. Botticelli also painted The Birth Of Venus. She isn't a Christian deity AFAIK.

    The latter painting has had a much greater impact on our culture. Try finding a Virgin And Child jigsaw puzzle or drink coaster set, for example.
    https://www.edresources.com.au/piatnik-botticelli-the-birth-of-venus-puzzle-1000p?gclid=CNSPq_qTv9QCFYYEKgodJBkJMw
    https://www.zazzle.com.au/botticelli_the_birth_of_venus_coasters-163540568176280684

    Hopefully the IT people at the Australian Catholic University will block Kev's access to the ABS website on Tuesday week. If they don't, he'll be in danger of self-harm.

    That's because Tuesday, 27th June 2017 is when the next batch of data from the 2016 Census is going to be released. Including, but not limited to, the data on religious affiliation (or lack thereof).

    I'm tipping that 'Christian' will fall below 60% for the first time, and that 'No Religion' will overtake 'Catholic' as the leading denomination (or lack thereof).

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  4. So Kev the Rev is trying to put a big Christian stamp on everything secular now. I would hardly say that “free will, the sanctity of life and a commitment to the common good” are unique to any church, or religion for that matter.

    And as far as “thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself” - there wasn’t a lot of that going on during the Crusades or the Inquisition, or much neighbourly love shown to the victims of heavily Christian inspired imperialism in Africa, the Americas or Asia. And there sure as hell isn’t much of it going on nowadays either.

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    Replies
    1. It's just a massive 'program' of rewriting history that Righy Wingnuts are engaging in more and more: they've always been 'civilised', they have never restricted freedom - and especially not freedom of speech - they've always conducted wise and effective government and so on and on. They've all been doing it.

      And there is a real state of 'collective public amnesia' about how things are and have been throughout human history.

      Eric Blair described it well in 1984 with the "memory hole": if history doesn't conform to their belief as to how it should have been, then history must be 'corrected' for the public good. One could add the old saw about how "history is always (re)written by the victors" because they really do see themselves as the victors.

      Delete

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