Today In "Both Sides Do It": David Brooks -- The Farce Awakens

For all of those who have written (or just driven by shouting incoherently) expressing your concern about David Brooks' mental health following his unseemly public truthblurt a week ago, it appears the worst is over.

First (and as predicted), thanks to a near-complete embargo on talking about that unseemly public truthblurt, the Village has bulldozed the entire incident down the media memory hole.  So way to go team!

Second, it appears that Mr. Brooks' therapy is going so well that the nice people at the Villager Nervous Hospital for the Temporarily Forthright nor feel confident enough to give him a day-pass so that he can go down to the corner store for corn nuts and energy drink, and get back to the business of blaming 1) Bad Morals --

Since 2000, this vision of the post-Cold War world has received blow after blow. Some of these blows were self-inflicted. Democracy, especially in the United States, has grown dysfunctional. Mass stupidity and greed led to a financial collapse and deprived capitalism of its moral swagger.

But the deeper problem was spiritual...

-- and 2) Both Sides --

...

The establishments of the West have not responded to these challenges by doubling down on their vision, by countering fanaticism with gusto. On the contrary, they’ve lost faith in their own capacities of understanding and action. Sensing a loss of confidence in the center, strong-willed people on the edges step forward to take control.

This happens in loud ways in the domestic sphere. The uncertain Republican establishment cannot govern its own marginal members, while those on the edge burn with conviction. Jeb Bush looks wan but Donald Trump radiates confidence.

The Democratic establishment no longer determines party positions; it is pulled along by formerly marginal players like Bernie Sanders.

But the big loss of central confidence is in global governance. The United States is no longer willing to occupy the commanding heights and oversee global order. In region after region, those who are weak in strength but strong in conviction are able to have their way...

-- for why everything is so terrible and stuff.

Yep.  Bernie Sanders: Leader of the barbarian horde.

Sadly, the scant 800 words which the New York Times allots him is scarcely enough to explain how screwed we are because of how badly everyone has failed David Brooks and how horribly Both Sides are doing:

I only have space to add here that the primary problem is mental and spiritual.

Mr. Brooks can only hope that someday some charismatic leader will come along to help the United States out of the crapper:

Some leader has to be able to digest the lessons of the last 15 years and offer a revised charismatic and persuasive sense of America’s historic mission. This mission, both nationalist and universal, would be less individualistic than the gospel of the 1990s, and more realistic about depravity and the way barbarism can spread. It would offer a goal more profound than material comfort.

Actually, Mr. Brooks, we might have had just such a leader. 

Too bad that he had to be black. 

And have a (D) after his name. 

And that, instead of helping him govern, your party of hysterical bigots, imbeciles, lunatics and demagogues has spent the last seven years working tirelessly to destroy him and burn the very concept of competent self-governance to the ground.

Still, staff at the Villager Nervous Hospital for the Temporarily Forthright have decided that Mr. Brooks is steady enough to start getting back to his regular routine as long as he has Very Serious sponsor on the outside who will vouch for him.

Like, say, Ron Fournier:

This sharp @nytdavidbrooks column reminds of @nicco book "End of Big." Both must-reads for understanding times https://t.co/AeUn1ip0oe

— Ron Fournier (@ron_fournier) October 20, 2015

Also apropos of nothing but also of interest to me is how this site managed to copy and post Mr. Brooks' entire column hours before it was up at the New York Times?

Curious.

Also it's kinda hilarious that, as he reverts to his old, despicable Weekly Standard roots to argue for a Strong Man to lead a Global American Empire, America's Most Ubiquitous Conservative Thought Leader shows that his grasp of politics and culture is every bit as feeble as his grasp of high school astronomy.  Because you see, space, like politics, it is very big and full of gravities...

As every schoolchild knows, the gravitational pull of the sun helps hold the planets in their orbits. Gravity from the center lends coherence to the whole solar system.

I mention this because that’s how our political and social systems used to work, but no longer do. In each sphere of life there used to be a few big suns radiating conviction and meaning. The other bodies in orbit were defined by their resistance or attraction to that pull.

Tom Friedman called.  He wants his Shitty Analogy Generator back.