Nothing much to report this week.
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President Trump seems reconciled to becoming ex-president Trump, though he's not actually said so. Just intimated to his operatives that maybe, just maybe, they should not keep blanking future-president Biden.
Oh, and aliens may have landed on Earth.
Artistic ones, so that's not too bad. We wouldn't want Philistines blasting away with their ray guns.
In a very remote part of the desert in Utah a shiny obelisk has appeared, just like the one in the great science fiction epic, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Officers from the state's Department of Public Safety found the shiny object while counting sheep from a helicopter. Yes, indeed.
They have kept remarkably calm, and that is to be praised: "On November 18, 2020, the Utah Department of Public Safety Aero Bureau was working with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources to conduct a count of big horn sheep in a portion of south-eastern Utah.
"While on this mission, they spotted an unusual object and landed nearby to investigate further. The crew members found a metal monolith installed in the ground in a remote area of red rock.
"The crew said there was no obvious indication of who might have put the monolith there."
But it does seem pretty clear that it was aliens, so the bureau has warned them that they may have broken the law: "Although we can't comment on active investigations, the Bureau of Land Management would like to remind public land visitors that using, occupying, or developing the public lands or their resources without a required authorisation is illegal, no matter what planet you are from."
Planet Earth has had a few odd bits of news this past week. "Pet parrot saves man from house fire in Australia", for example, and "Monkeys in Finland zoo prefer traffic noises over nature sounds".
There was a time when the whackier events had their special place on the news. They were known in TV as the "and finally" stories (a skateboarding duck comes to mind).
But in the last few years (let's be honest, four years), the weird and wonderful have come to lead the bulletins.
With the rise of populism, quiet policymakers wither in the background. Clickbaiters get falsehoods running around the world before truth has got its shoes on.
What would once have been jokes in satirical magazines have been elevated to unfunny real stories.
The President of the United States of America wonders if injecting bleach might cure COVID-19. The President's lawyer Rudy Giuliani rants about a stolen election in a literal meltdown, courtesy of bad hair dye. An adviser to Boris Johnson says he went for a drive during lockdown to test his eyesight. Pauline Hanson wears a burqa in the Senate.
Who know how Joe Biden is going to turn out when the complexities of a difficult world hit him? As sure as eggs is eggs, the honeymoon won't last. The Trumpists won't go away. The woke left in his own party will want their reward for their support.
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But at least he's decent and maybe just a bit dull.
We could do with a bit of decency and dullness on this planet.
To be fair to Australia, it's what Scott Morrison offers (I mean it as a compliment). The left sneer that he's "Scotty from Marketing", but out there in non-media land, the image seems to work.
The Guardian reported last week: "Scott Morrison's approval rating in the latest Guardian Essential poll is back to 66 per cent, and he remains ahead of Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister 53 per cent to 24 per cent."
The joy of the Biden victory is that he may offer pragmatic, nuanced policy. The joy of the Trump defeat is that politics beyond satire has been trounced.
Maybe the most relevant film reference to the desert monument is not 2001 but Men in Black. In that film, the aliens are identical to humans. They are all around, waiting to reveal their alien form and take over.
At the moment, decency and dullness are back. The huckster-in-chief will go. Populism has been defeated.
But the cultists and falsifiers are still out there, working away to take over again.
- Steve Evans is a Canberra Times reporter.