Tuesday, August 30, 2016

David Brooks: Scammers Live In Vain


Being cranched did strange things to Martel. Most meetings that he attended seemed formal, hearteningly ceremonial, lighting up the dark inward eternities of habermanhood. When he was not cranched, he noticed his body no more than a marble bust notices its marble pedestal. He had stood with them before. He had stood with them effortless hours, while the long-winded ritual broke through the terrible loneliness behind his eyes, and made him feel that the Scanners, though a confraternity of the damned, were none the less forever honored by the professional requirements of their mutilation.

This time, it was different. Coming cranched, and in full possession of smell-sound-taste-feeling, he reacted more or less as a normal man would. He saw his friends and colleagues as a lot of cruelly driven ghosts, posturing out the meaningless ritual of their indefeasible damnation. What difference did anything make, once you were a haberman? Why all this talk about habermans and Scanners? Habermans were criminals or heretics, and Scanners were gentlemen-volunteers, but they were all in the same fix except that Scanners were deemed worthy of the short-time return of the Cranching Wire, while habermans were simply disconnected while the ships lay in port and were left suspended until they should be awakened, in some hour of emergency or trouble, to work out another spell of their damnation...

-- Cordwainer Smith, Scanners Live in Vain
For the last 20 years David Brooks has prospered  as America's Most Ubiquitous Conservative Public Intellectual by completely ignoring the Conservative movement, the Republican Party and the American people as they actual exist and instead, writing fairy tales for people in his social class who desperately wanted to believe in the Republican party as Mr. Brooks described it.  And the sheer monetary and media power of their collective desire to believe in Mr. Brooks' fairy tales was mighty enough to keep the ugly reality of the Republican party at arms-length  long, long after it was obvious to anyone who wasn't an idiot or a collaborator could see what was really going on.

Long enough for Donald Trump to walk in the front door which David Brooks' fairy tales had propped open and take the place over.  

Donald Trump, who finally stomped David Brooks' Burkean Dream House so hard that no amount of duct tape and Both Siderism would put it back together again.  That's when Mr. Brooks locked himself in the basement with a case of tequila and told his intern to "Fucking deal with, Emilio!  What am I paying you for?!"

Here is a sample of what Emilio came up with today:
...
There was a greater tendency in years gone by to wall off emotions, to put on a thick skin — for some men to be stone-like and uncommunicative and for some women to be brittle, brassy and untouchable.

And then many people turned to alcohol to help them feel anything at all.
Reading you (wink wink) loud and clear, Emilio. Please continue.
We are all fragile when we don’t know what our purpose is, when we haven’t thrown ourselves with abandon into a social role, when we haven’t committed ourselves to certain people, when we feel like a swimmer in an ocean with no edge.
Really?
We live in an age when it’s considered sophisticated to be disenchanted. But people who are enchanted are the real tough cookies.
OK, I lied.  There is no Emilio.  

The is only Mr. Brooks, entombed beneath a mountain of his own very public failure, fraud and hypocrisy, being zapped over and over again with a cranching wire that he cannot turn off. 

14 comments:

Mr.Shemp said...

Holy SHIT. Is there anybody over at the NYT editorial staff even READING this crap before publishing it? Are all of those people drunk or just sleeping? If I would've turned this garbage in to my high school composition teacher, he would've lit my desk on fire and slapped my mother.

Jim Butts said...

A savage dance, driftglass. And no one deserves it more than DFB.

dinthebeast said...

Earth to David, come in David: There are poor people.

-Doug in Oakland

bowtiejack said...

Excellent. Just excellent. Very nicely done.

In other news, a couple of things came together for me today about Trump.
1. Whatever anyone else thinks, Trump has excellent performance skills for exciting the audiences he draws.
2. He won the GOP primary with those skills as the primary debates allowed audience clapping, yahooing, etc., in response to his insults, taunts and put-downs.
3. The ad libs he now gets most heavily criticized for are those where he correctly reads what his audience responds to and gives them more of it.
4. If we are to believe the newspaper reports, he thinks those performance skills will carry him through the debates with Clinton. [I would not be surprised to learn that he thinks he's going to "destroy" her.]
5. However, unlike the primary debates, the general election debate rules do not allow for any audience demonstrations - it will in fact get an audience member ejected for violating the rule.
6. So what happens when Trump thinks he's delivered a hydrogen bomb of a zinger, and the response is ? When it happens repeatedly? "Liberal conspiracy packed the audience?" "Rigged debate rules?"
7. There is an expression in standup comedy about "dying on stage" when the audience doesn't respond to a joke. How does a rich kid who's been indulged and gotten away with stuff his whole life suddenly respond to rejection like that?

On the other hand, Trump hasn't yet agreed to the debates.


Robt said...

Perhaps the photo depicting Brooks behind the scene operating the robot. Should have a robot behind the scene controlling Brooks.

There is NO doubt in sherlock land he is owned and operated to provide the noise a dentist's drill makes.

It is obvious Brooks (with numbing agents) drills hollow the tooth for the Hannity's to fill the void.
You do not require a cavity for this procedure. Brooks can provide the illusion for action with false X-Rays.

Neo Tuxedo said...

Ladies and gentlemen, due to illness, the role of Adam Stone will be played by driftglass.

RUKidding said...

I now have several friends who are working one full time, and 2 part time jobs to make ends meet. These aren't college grads, but they've got community college degrees and other accreditations. None of us are spring chickens anymore, but these people often work 7 days per week.

My point? I find it outrageous that DFBs is paid big bucks to scrawl out crap like this. WTF does it even MEAN anymore? The idiot is an embarressment to himself and his owners.

Where's a handy cane when you need it to yank him off the stage?

bluicebank said...

Shorter David Brooks' imaginary issue: "There's a middle ground here, between the 'Lord of the Flies' and 'Little Lord Fauntleroy'."

Shorter David Brooks' solution: "Have faith and be enchanted."

Spaceboy said...

Great quote!

Blue Hill Smells Like Cow Poo said...

David Brooks is the Stuart Smalley of Conservative columnists.

Blue Hill Smells Like Cow Poo said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
dahlgren said...

I can't adjust my blood away from anger when I read Brooks.

Dark Avenger said...

Three works inspired by Jenghazi Rubin:

1. I have no Jews, and I must scream.

2. The Whimper of Whipped Candidates

3. The Beast that Shouted Derp at the Heart of the World.

jim said...

"Please continue."

........ is when I laughed like a motherfucker.