The Curmudgeon

YOU'LL COME FOR THE CURSES. YOU'LL STAY FOR THE MUDGEONRY.

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

Bah Reign Humbug

Patriots will rejoice at the persistence of British values in Bahrain, which gained independence half a century ago and yet has somehow managed to hold onto the bedrock decency that goes with a royal family, a no-nonsense attitude to human rights and a willingness to abet the master race's wog-bombing. King Charles has paid tribute to his royal counterpart's pluck and gumption by bestowing upon him the snappy title Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order: an appointment which combines mediaeval grandiosity with imperial pomposity in a fashion wholly befitting the highest-ranking gong in the Windsor firm's gift. News of the honour made headlines in Bahrain, but tidings on the mainland have been inexplicably muted; indeed, the award might never have gained any media attention at all in Britain if not for some malcontents agitating for its immediate removal. Clearly the master race still has much to learn from Bahrain about the suppression of dissent; in exchange for which the rulers of Bahrain might do worse than to emulate the Windsors in their modesty before the Press.

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

One of Those Paradoxical Little Things

Like many another fortunate lexical item, the preposition despite tends to loosen up a little when translated from English into Modern Standard Journalese. Demotically a rather surly and contradictory sort of word, connoting events that occur in defiance of other events, in the paws of the press despite is transformed into a far more accommodating character. In many Modern Standard Journalese contexts its literal meaning can signify an entirely predictable and widely anticipated result, as when the Righteous State continues its ethnic cleansing despite the pious noises emitted by those selling the Righteous State the wherewithal to do exactly that. Similarly, His Majesty's Government has been granting licenses to care profiteers despite their no-nonsense attitude to workers' rights; the British Home Office has been condoning exploitation and maltreatment of immigrant workers despite being the British Home Office; and Team Starmer has shown no particular concern over the situation despite having been elected on a manifesto of change. Despite their professional fluency as thinkers in Modern Standard Journalese, there are some at Britain's leading liberal newspaper who seem to view this as some sort of failure.

Monday, November 11, 2024

Tough Love

If anything can rival the intellectual dynamism of the Anglican Church, that thing must surely be its moral authority, whose latest manifestation is an outcry over the Archbishop of Canterbury's excessively Christian behaviour towards a now deceased barrister with some convenient ready cash and a penchant for turned cheeks. By allowing the abuser to continue his little hobby, and by subsequently refusing to resign, the Archbishop has of course shown strict adherence to the teachings of Christ, which specify that within the Church the onus is upon victims to forgive their persecutors even unto the seventy-times-seventh dereliction, and that a single grovelling apology is worth more than a lifetime of righteousness. As a result, one bishop has expressed the fear that the Church may lose that staunch moral voice which has done so much for the life of the nation with its eternal displays of spiritual strength over the status of women and non-heterosexuals, and suchlike second-order human beings.

Sunday, November 10, 2024

Our Sacrifice

Once more we stand in stillness and in silence,
All sober in our smartest mourning togs,
In tribute to those dead of foreign violence
And those who gave their lives to kill some wogs.

It's really just two minutes, but seems longer
To hang about in chilly autumn damps;
But pluck and valour made our nation stronger,
And so we soldier on despite the cramps.

We pray ongoing wars to happy ending
And, though it's always tedious to wait,
Let profits from wars current, new and pending
Console and comfort while we contemplate.

Hardy Faceman

Saturday, November 09, 2024

You Have the Right to Remain Violent

From the Land of Lincoln comes an encouraging sign that at least part of the United States Constitution is still as robust as ever. An Illinois federal judge who was installed by the Trumpster and his head-tribble during their primary sequence has ruled that a state ban on assault weapons is so egregious a danger to property as to warrant invoking the anti-Christian nuclear option of equal protection under the law. Since there is no evidence that property crimes are linked to gun control measures, the judge was careful to suggest such a link and thereby give it legal validity, while asserting the constitutional right not only to bear arms but to bear the arms of one's own personal choice, presumably in a well-regulated militia of one. Americans may have voted away their rights to medical care, bodily autonomy, freedom of religion and protection from the climate catastrophe; but their rights of school massacre, assassination and civil war look set to stay gloriously uninfringed.

Friday, November 08, 2024

It's an Easy Mistake to Make

Although numerous members of our Mother of Parliaments have been at a loose end since July, there is apparently no truth to the plausible rumours that they had all toddled off to Newfoundland. Contrary to first impressions and despite their rubbery consistency, their lack of sense organs and their obvious intellectual advantages, the white doughy blobs and pale gooey masses crowding the Canadian province's beaches are not ejectees from Westminster's House of Expenses Claimants. Regrettably, this also applies to the majority of doughy blobs and gooey masses which are presumably at rest on the ocean floor; which may lead to some unfortunate nutritional consequences for the higher life forms. Hard as it is to distinguish well-fattened British public servants from globs of industrial waste, it is arguably even harder to distinguish them from fish food.

Thursday, November 07, 2024

They Go Tiddly Up Up

As one would naturally expect from the global élite given the current vigorous progress of the Anthropocene extinction event, the use of private jets is on the increase. Since private jets are the most pollutive form of transport on the planet, they are used almost half the time for journeys of less than three hundred miles; and almost a million journeys in the last four years have been no more than thirty miles, presumably because a trip in the limousine would have meant sharing road-space with the rabble. The total emissions from the Unwashed Republic of Tanzania very nearly equalled that of private jet flights in 2023, so one can quite easily see why our lords and masters would wish to rise above such inefficiency. In our own virtuous realm a private jet takes off every six minutes, and there remains some doubt as to whether the plebs are prepared to clean up their filthy habits to the extent necessary for balancing out the environmental consequences. Doubtless pluck, gumption and competitive landing fees will continue to muddle us through.

Wednesday, November 06, 2024

Vice Precedents

The last US president to hold office (the verb serve seems hardly apt in the present context) for two non-consecutive terms was Grover Cleveland in the late nineteenth century. A biographer said that Cleveland "had no endowments that thousands of men do not have. He possessed honesty, courage, firmness, independence, and common sense. But he possessed them to a degree other men do not." It is fitting that the first president to duplicate Cleveland's electoral achievement should not only possess none of those qualities, but should lack them to a degree other men do not. Cleveland's personal reputation remained high despite an unsuccessful second term; the Trumpster has gained a second term with a personal reputation that is high in a more fly-blown and olfactory fashion. Cleveland was a conservative in the antiquated sense of one who aspires to conserve; the Trumpster is a conservative in the modern sense of one who aspires to fascism. After his second presidency, Cleveland joined a law firm; after the Trumpster's second presidency, the law is likely to be more infirm than for quite some time.

The last US president to be black turned out to be a bland technocrat whose tenure precipitated a Trumpster term of office. The last US vice-president to be black has contrived to duplicate that achievement.

Tuesday, November 05, 2024

Unworthy Foes

One of the major difficulties with being the master race, especially when uttering oracular threats to stir up a bit of rah-rah for World War III, is that official enemies are necessarily contradictory. They are existential threats, like the Palestinian civilians confronting the Middle East's sole nuclear power; but they are also bungling clowns, like the mad mullahs whose measured and proportionate responses to the Netanyahoo's efforts at starting a regional conflagration have recently made Iran such an international laughing-stock. Similarly, the deployment of North Korean troops in the Ukraine war has been characterised as both a sign of desperate weakness and a grave escalation; the latter primarily because the World Cop reserves the right to inflict apocalyptic punishment upon the Heathen Chinee should their ally misbehave unduly. Mere days later, Britain's leading liberal newspaper has felt obliged to balance out the stern pronouncements of the Secretary of State by rounding up a defector or two and producing an analysis which proclaims the North Korean contingent to be inexperienced, parasite-ridden, trained for the wrong terrain, farcically killable and, in stark contrast to the average NATO squaddie, quite possibly somewhat deceived as to the nature of the cause for which they fight. Clearly, a master race that feels threatened by so pitiful a rabble must be very masterful indeed.

Monday, November 04, 2024

Yet More Conspirators Unmasked

Not even the most raunchily radioactive head-tribble can hope to control every movement of its minions every moment of the day, and it appears that the board of directors at Trumpster Media has committed a slight indiscretion. The company, which owns the amusingly double-misnomered Truth Social globberware platform, has provoked squeals of rage from its more patriotic staff by outsourcing jobs to the drug-dealing, cheerleader-ravishing Latino Untermenschen. Given the Trumpster's famously rigid consistency in principle, word and action, this can only mean that the saviour of the nation and protector of womenfolk whether they like it or not may soon be forced into slapping punitive tariffs on his own produce. Were it not for the Trumpsterite base voter's virtuous aversion to hormonal re-orientation in the face of mere reality, there might even be reason to anticipate the exquisitely poetic outcome of an election loss through insufficient racism.