Friday, June 03, 2016

David Brooks and The Misremembrance of Things Past: A Never-Ending Series



No one who reads this blog needs to be reminded (he said, remindingly) that Mr. David Brooks of the New York Times is not really in the business of telling anyone anything about Murrica as it actual exists, but is instead engaged in a Great Project to
...radically redact the entire history of Modern Conservatism.  And while at times my language has been sharp and pungent, I am quite serious about the core premise. This is quite clearly what he is doing, and spinning this ridiculous fairy tale over and over again for the benefit of his Beltway co-conspirators and America's richest and most luxuriously cocooned white people is quite clearly an immensely profitable enterprise.
And so no one who reads this blog can be surprised that the hinge on which Mr. David Brooks' column turns today is this (emphasis added):
...
In this election we’ve been ignoring the parts of America that are working well and wallowing in the parts that are fading. This has led to a campaign season driven by fear, resentment and pessimism. And it will lead to worse policy-making down the road, since prosperity means building on things we do well, not obsessing over the things that we’ve lost.

The person chiefly responsible for this all-warts view of America is, of course, Donald Trump.

Trump has focused his campaign on the struggling white neighborhoods in the industrial Midwest. The prototypical Trump voter is an upscale man from a downscale place....
In order to make his Great Project make sense, David Brooks spends an enormous amount of time pretending that Rush Limbaugh and his hundreds of imitators have not been on the air, coast-to-coast for the last quarter of a century selling exactly this view of Murrica to the millions of imbeciles and bigots who are flocking to Trump's banner.

Fox News does not exist either.  Neither does Regnery Press, Town Hall, The Weekly Standard (his former employer).  National Review.  The Wall Street Journal (another former employer).  The Moonie Times (another former employer).  Neither does the entire Conservative Christian movement.
In Mr. Brooks' history of these United States, Nixon's Southern Strategy never paved a big wide highway to Donald Trump, and Lee Atwater never painted big, white lines right down the middle of it.
Karl Rove never existed.

The Tea Party never happened.

And so forth.

Of course, if instead of constantly leaning on the cherry-picked work of others and delivering it ex cathedra from the safety of his Beltway Basilica atop Mount Acela, high above and far away the from the teeming masses -- 
As Nate Silver has demonstrated, Trump voters are not poor. Their median household income is...

As Ronald Brownstein of The Atlantic has shown, Republicans tend to do well in industrial places...

Michael Lind of New America argues in an essay in Politico that Republicans are becoming...
-- Mr. David Brooks of the New York Times ever got off ass, went out into the real world and actually talked to some of those upscale men from downscale places he would get a fucking earful about all of the above and then some.

Which would drive an Ann Coulter-sized stake straight though the heart of Mr. Brooks' Great Project.

Which is why, unless someone drag him bodily down Mount Acela and forces him to listen to the hoi polloi, there is no way Mr. Brooks is ever going to risk soiling his expense shoes and shattering his precious opinions in actual, face-to-face interactions with actual upscale men from those downscale places.

5 comments:

Kevin Holsinger said...

Good afternoon, Mr. Glass.

As far as his "time amongst the mortals" goes, Mr. Brooks' "There and Back Again: A Hobbit's Tale" needs more "there" and less "back again."

Yeah, I'm just trying to sound clever. :(

Be seeing you.

Habitat Vic said...

Uh, excuse me Driftglass, but DFB most certainly has left his East Coast bubble. He went to - and wrote about - his friends Lynda and Stewart Resnick on the West Coast. To get a taste of what "real Americans" are facing in their day to day struggles.

If a 79 year old multi-billionaire living in Beverly Hills doesn't exemplify the typical left-behind American, then who does? Who indeed.

Ebon Krieg said...

Who is the true audience? It's not the multi fuckillionaires. It's the ones who are climbing and his vision is clear. "You can make it here, just like anywhere." This is not about catering to the snobs, it is about catering to the snob-to-happens.

RUKidding said...

"In this election we’ve been ignoring the parts of America that are working well and wallowing in the parts that are fading. This has led to a campaign season driven by fear, resentment and pessimism."

Leaving aside for the moment all of the havoc wreaked by Nixon/Lee Atwater's Southern Strategy, Fox, Rush, the Tea Party, etc....

THIS is what all those upscale WHITE MEN from all of those downscale places are voicing. They're mad as hell because the parts of America that work so veddy veddy well for the likes of suck ups like FuckCakes simply ain't working so well for the hoi polloi. Why would they focus on what's working well? It ain't working well for them.

But of course, FuckCakes really and truly not only doesn't give a tinker's damn about anyone else but himself, but he also isn't interested and/or curious enough to learn how the rabble lives. Period. The end.

So DFB's back to fantasies and fairy tales about how things really are super-duper for all concerned. I guess in this edition of DFB's radially wrong about everything scrawlings, he is foisting the blame onto the Donald, rather than onto Obama. So refreshing.

Much as I find Trump ever more disgustingly horrid, Trump simply embodies what the deadenders in the GOP are feeling. They've been royally screwed over for decades, and now they seek vengeance. No surprises there except for Fuckcakes. Sad to say, though, that Trump is really only a ruder, cruder, stupider version of Lord Muckity Mittens of the RMoney.

Should Trump win, I'm not sure how his fandom will respond when Trump begins to cut and gut "their" Social Security and Medicare. And should Trump actually try to build that idiotic wall? Well his fans might be surprised at the taxes THEY have to pay to get 'er done.

Of course, pointing out such salient facts is beyond the pale for such hoity toity ones as Fuckcakes.

dinthebeast said...

WAAAH! It's Trump's fault! He wrecked everything! I was just minding my own business... And your business is what, exactly, Mr. Brooks? Let's have a look at your resume...

-Doug in Oakland