The New York Times Keeps on Slippin', Slippin', Slippin'

Into the future:

Having built an entire career tilling the soil and toting the water and harvesting an amazing crop of awful, ruinous Republicans ideas (and enthusiastically slapping down any criticism of those awful, ruinous Republicans ideas even as we stood their smoking rubble), David Brooks today describes himself as follows (during an interview at the "Q Conference"):

Jamie Smith: You spend a lot of time here in Washington. You report on politics. You see behind the curtain a lot. But it seems to me that, personally, you don't quite fit neatly and tidily into any ideology or current camp. And yet you don't seem cynical. I think a lot of folks who are gathered here, who are part of this conversation, also find themselves kind of falling between the cracks or at least not comfortable in any sort of camp or party. How do you foster hope when you're not part of a big choir?

David Brooks: First of all, you do have those traditions. I'm not a dominant Republican or Democrat right now, but I do feel I'm part of tradition. I'm part of that Edmund Burke tradition; I'm part of an Alexander Hamilton tradition. I feel I'm part of something historical that has a long historical flow that even if my style is a little out of phase right now, I feel comfortable that it will come back someday.

Having watched the nihilistic, bigoted soul of the Conservative movement he spent decades pretending did not exist finally spill out into the plain sight in all its raving, obstructionist glory, David Brooks today describes our political status quo as follows (during the same interview):

Then the second thing to be said is I do cover politics very closely. I interview politicians every single day. I would say they're better than our system. If you spend a lot of time with them, then you get uplifted because they're actually decent people. They are usually in it for the right reason. They're caught in a pretty miserable system right now but that doesn't mean they themselves are miserable. They're trying their best within the system that exists around them. Actually, I find the people who are away from politics, who just sort of look at it on cable TV, are more cynical than the people who are actually in the middle of it. Many of them are doing remarkable work for the right reasons.

David Brooks has a positive genius for never putting himself into any venues where anyone will ever ask him any hard questions about David Brooks.

And while Mr/ Brooks may have missed every single major story of his day, I'm absolutely certain he will never miss a meal 

Feed the banksters
Who don't have enough to eat
Screw the children
(But lovin' the gamete)
Sleazy moguls
Back runnin' Wall Street
Oh, oh, that's their solution...