Sunday, May 10, 2015

I Am Vinz Bobo, Keymaster Of Conservatism


Gozer the True Conservative, he will come in one of the pre-chosen forms. During the supply-siding of the economy, the True Conservative came as a large and moving Reagan!

Then, during the third reconciliation of the last of the Iraqi Supplicants they chose a new form for him... that of a Giant Bush!

Many hippies and moderates knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of Fox News that day I can tell you!

A Moral Conversation For Our Times

We all know by now that David Brooks feels most comfortable atop his perch where he can pontificate about what is wrong with the rest of us. But his column titled What Is Your Purpose? really is peak Brooks. In it, he laments the “good old days” when our elders would lead us to discussions about the important questions in life...
A sallow-eyed look at the slow descent of David Brooks

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But at the same time that Brooks is turning out this string of angsty columns about Meaning and Purpose and the evasive pursuit of “fulfillment and deep joy,” he continues to write with arrogant certainty about the supposed immorality and prodigality of the poor. He doesn’t think they should be allowed to indulge in the kind of navel-gazing that he now increasingly prescribes for himself and his (presumably non-poor) readers. For himself and for people like him (wealthy, white, privileged) Brooks writes columns that read like a knock-off of Ecclesiastes. For other people (poor, not white, not privileged) he offers only a glib, ignorant knock-off of Proverbs — or of Aesop.

Brooks expects poor people to learn moral lessons from people like him. It has never occurred to him that people like him might need to learn moral lessons from the poor and the disenfranchised.
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Vapid transit
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None of [David Brooks'] answers have any relation to this problem, which has clearly nothing to do with the Brontes or Alf Landon or his other examples of the way "powerhouse families nurture achievement in many ways." If it did it would have happened often in many democracies throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. It's not "pseudo-monarchical" but aristocratic or oligarchic, including not just families but also extraordinarily wealthy individuals like Rick Scott, Bruce Rauner, and (not all reactionaries!) Mark Dayton, and it is about the increasing concentration of wealth. It takes an extraordinary willed blindness to not see this.

5 comments:

bowtiejack said...

The simple truth is that Brooksie and the MSM are just the descendents of the medieval courtiers. Courtiers do not make policy or speak truth. They attend to the vanities and whims of their lords.

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

Speaking as a member of the disenfranchised, I need moral lessons from David Brooks like I need diction lessons from Elmer Fudd.

That scripture about the blind leading the blind comes to mind, and also the one about how one cannot serve both God and Mammon, the latter being the actual god of USAmerican conservatism (maybe the local forms of conservatism are different in some other countries).

Anonymous said...

@bowtiejack - that is a good comparison. When the lords were drumming up support for the Iraq war Bobo shamelessly pushed the war agenda and mercilessly mocked and insulted anyone who though otherwise. Now that the lords want to believe that income inequality is the fault of the lazy, shiftless, unmarried poors Bobo scolds them relentlessly. Not only does he not make policy or speak truth he has never had an original thought in his life.

Chan Kobun said...

I'd ask who's the Zuul to Bobo's Vinz Clortho, but maybe I don't wanna know!

Neo Tuxedo said...

That scripture about the blind leading the blind comes to mind,

When analyzing the cruel and magnificent Unistat Empire in these, its final decadent days, I tend to emend that to "the blind leading the fucked".