The Great Project Continues, Continued

(Michael Gerson, pictured here helping George Bush fuck everything up)

Regular readers know of my by-now indisputably well-documented theory that Mr. David Brooks -- pillar of the modern American Conservative movement for decades and Jewish thought-leader --

Does he consider himself a Jewish thought leader?

“I guess so,” he replied, but then stated, “I keep my own faith private.”

-- is engaged in a epic and highly successful quest to pretend that 99.9999% of the actual history of modern American Conservatism never happened.

Mr. Brooks' tireless efforts are the centerpiece of a strikingly vast and lucrative conspiracy among our Elite Media -- a conspiracy that is all the more amazing because it takes place in broad daylight right in front of hundreds of millions of people.

One of Mr. Brooks' many, many co-conspirators is former Bush Administration stooge, Michael Gerson.  Like Mr. Brooks, Mr. Gerson's professional life depends entirely on helping Mr. Brooks carry out his Great Project,  And, like Mr. Brooks, Mr. Gerson's labors have been lavishly rewarded with various jobs at the front of the line of the Wingnut Welfare feeding trough (from Paul Krugman):

Wingnut welfare is an important, underrated feature of the modern U.S. political scene. I don’t know who came up with the term, but anyone who follows right-wing careers knows whereof I speak: the lavishly-funded ecosystem of billionaire-financed think tanks, media outlets, and so on provides a comfortable cushion for politicians and pundits who tell such people what they want to hear. Lose an election, make economic forecasts that turn out laughably wrong, whatever — no matter, there’s always a fallback job available.

And from his permanent position at Fred Hiatt's Neocon cesspit, Mr. Gerson delivers what might be the ultimate wingnut Tur-Duck-En:  a column by one top-tier Conservative con man (Michael Gerson) declaring that one of his top-tier Conservative con men peers (David Brooks) is a "countercultural leader"...

...for writing a best-selling book on the importance of character...

...which omits both 99.9999% of the actual history modern American Conservatism and 99.9999% of Mr. Brooks' very active role in shaping the history that he so desperately wants to pretend never happened (with emphasis added for your spiritual betterment):

Most of us have an image of the counterculture, shaped by memory or mythmaking, that involves Haight-Ashbury, flea-market clothing, free love and a haze of pot smoke. But as the counterculture has consumed the culture — with hipsterism marketed at Urban Outfitters, pre-, non- and extramarital sex a firmly established social expectation and a haze of pot smoke covering entire states — countering the culture takes on a different meaning.

With his new book, “The Road to Character,” David Brooks — New York Times columnist, PBS “NewsHour” commentator and serial mensch — emerges as a countercultural leader. His goal is the recovery of “a vast moral vocabulary and set of moral tools, developed over centuries and handed down from generation to generation.”...

The literary achievement of “The Road to Character” is inseparable from the virtues of its author. As the reader, you not only want to know about Frances Perkins or Saint Augustine. You also want to know what Brooks makes of Frances Perkins or Saint Augustine. The voice of the book is calm, fair and humane. The highlight of the material is the quality of the author’s moral and spiritual judgments. ...

Brooks is an effective modern translator of these ideas because he is constitutionally incapable of finger-wagging...

Mr. Gerson writes that Mr. Brooks' radical counterculturism stems from his attempt to reintroduce the vocabulary of "sin" and "salvation" into the the moral wasteland which the Dirty Hippies have created.

Like the writer and theologian Frederick Buechner, he finds the greatest drama in our sacred journeys — the saving and losing of souls. This requires the moral vocabulary of a previous era. A consciousness of sin. A real determination to reach holiness. 

You know, I'm just a simple soul from the American Midwest, and I do not pretend to understand Mr. Brooks' Big City ways.  But in the humble faith in which I was raised, smearing and slandering people in print in order to build your career, and then lying about it when asked simple, direct questions would definitely be considered a sin.

Not so, apparently, in the First Church of David Brooks , where ouchless absolution for Bush Regime dead-enders and their Elite Media enablers comes free with every copy of “The Road to Character”.