From Mr. David Brooks in The New York Times today (with a little emphasis added):
When the World Is Led by a Child...By Trump’s own account, he knows more about aircraft carrier technology than the Navy. According to his interview with The Economist, he invented the phrase “priming the pump” (even though it was famous by 1933). Trump is not only trying to deceive others. His falsehoods are attempts to build a world in which he can feel good for an instant and comfortably deceive himself.He is thus the all-time record-holder of the Dunning-Kruger effect, the phenomenon in which the incompetent person is too incompetent to understand his own incompetence. Trump thought he’d be celebrated for firing James Comey. He thought his press coverage would grow wildly positive once he won the nomination. He is perpetually surprised because reality does not comport with his fantasies....
From driftglass, Tuesday, July 26, 2011 (one of literally thousands of posts on this very subject):
Not With a Bang. Or a Whimper.
But with the petulant Dunning-Kruger whiiiine of Koch-bred, Rush-fed homunculi running finally and fatally amok.
In case future historians are confused, we weren't laughing because they were funny: we were laughing because of something we called the "gallows humor" of it all.
We were laughing because the technology necessary to shoot these fuckers and their Centrist enablers into the Sun was not yet widely available.
What Mr. Brooks is describing -- a toxic fantasy world built on "falsehoods" which permit the inhabitants to "comfortably deceive" themselves, but which is also perpetually under threat of collapse "because reality does not comport with [their] fantasies" -- not only perfectly describes Mr. Brooks' Republican Party as it has existed for most of my adult life, but also perfectly describes the reams of Whig Fan Fiction bullshit that The New York Times has paid Mr. Brooks a princely sum to extrude over the past 13 years.
Whig Fan Fiction in which the Republican Party as it has existed for most of my adult life -- the Party of Trump and Palin and Bannon and Rove and Lee Atwater and Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh and Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter and Ralph Reed and Roger Ailes and Newt Gingrich ... and ... and ... -- simply does not exist at all.
And so we have once again arrived at exactly the same place we were back in 2006-07. Back when the comfortable, toxic deceit of BushWorld -- in which these very same pundits and this very same Republican base lived together under one roof, happily chugging Cheney-brand Kool Aid and slandering people like you and me -- began to collapse under the weight of relentless Reality. And just as happened back then, we now see exactly the same, frantic ideological plea bargaining from the same paid professional Conservative/Both Siderist Beltway creatures. That the problem is somehow just Trump (David Brooks.) Or it's because Trump is not really a Republican (Joe Scarborough, on MSNBC every fucking day.) Or it's The Extremes on Both Sides (all the usual suspects):
@matthewjdowd Please don't try to make this about the Dems. This is all about the GOP selling its soul to a man who they knew was unfit to be President.— KC Murphy (@klcmurphy) May 16, 2017
And all of these clowns have come once again to this same tragic place having learned absolutely nothing because, as I have noted on this blog more times than I can count, it is psychologically and financially impossible for Mr. David Brooks -- or any other Conservative/Both Siderist Beltway creature -- to make the simple and glaringly obvious observation that President Stupid is nothing more or less than a perfect manifestation of the ignorant, paranoid, racist, Fox News-drunk base of Mr. Brooks' Republican party.
Because that simple and glaringly obvious observation would destroy the entire professional political pundit ecosystem which makes it possible for Mr. David Brooks and every other Conservative/Both Siderist Beltway creature to make a handsome living by lying to the American people.
And that cannot be allowed to happen.
7 comments:
One begins to suspect that most pundits, if not already laboring under a spiritual/intellectual version of Dunning-Kruger, have reached their positions via the Peter Principle.
That was mean. I know. But all those people have had any sense of shame surgically removed early in their careers.
Jackal metaphors are lurking in the wings. Maybe I should finish this coffee...
No, David. It is not the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Trump is not only a modern mainstream conservative; he is also exactly what you get when a member of America's Executive Class gets into the White House and tries to run government "like a business." Trump has done exactly what any other member of the media vaunted executive uber-class does every god damn day in the world's boardrooms, corner office suites, private jets, Davos, Aspen, and so on. This IS corporate America trying to govern. period. full stop.
I would also like to remind Mr. Brooks that most of the policy we've seen so far isn't coming from the White House, but has been on the congressional Republican docket to become law since at least 2000.
This is not a failure of Conservatism. It's a FEATURE!
Somebody shared that Brooks thing on FB this morning. I didn't click on it and all it showed was the headline and NYTIMES as the source. Should have guessed it was Brooks, which would have made not click on it even more (I know, that doesn't make sense). The headline was actually the reason I didn't click on it. POTUS is not the "leader" of "the world." No POTUS is or ever should be, and we really, really need to stop thinking that way.
But good post, thanks as always for having read that so I wouldn't have to.
DFB continues his life of loyal denial of an ideology that extracts all reason, elements of faith and self dignity. He deals in Kellyannes "alternative facts" way before they were titled as such.
His parents have some blame in this. At some point they needed to expose to him the idea, that Santa never really existed. No matter how many sacks of coal that was left for him each Christmas morning under the tree. His self guilt grew stronger and his submission to do good through bad concept remains a t his core to this day.
As for the Dowd fog.
He somewhat grasps their is a problem in congress (and afoot in the GOP voters). It just can't be the GOP who say such crafted words from well paid wordsmiths.
You know, Trump was very tough on classified materials and how others should be executed for their use of it. Now Trump can declassify the nuclear football codes and hand them to Putin if he pleases because as president, he can do that.
Trump said he is not going to show his tax returns so get over it. Although Obama need only drop everything and present his birth certificate. No, not that one. The long form. No not the fake one. The real one from Kenya.
Yet you liberals panic over such little stuff with conservatives placing themselves above the law. Think how Obama abused his executive orders or used his presidential authority to intimidate friends in a game of hoop.
Folks like Down Et Al are basically interviewing for a Trump White House spokesperson paid position that they can "up" their resume" To get a big lifetime gig at a media outlet.
It won't be long before they rationalize into both sides the sameness of when Trump is caught on camera picking his nose and eating it. They will point back to Obama and how he used his left hand (hand of the devil), (and he is left handed), to scratch an itch on his ear lobe. Damn if they are both on video.
So it is the same. We just need all of the media to continue telling this to you until you numbly convert to understand a Tuna sandwich and a Turd sandwich are both sandwiches.
I learned this rule during the GW Bush years: It's them. It's always projection with Conservatives.
If there were a Vegas betting line on shit Conservatives say, and it turns out it's them, you wouldn't need any simpler system than always betting that it's them.
Cheney calling into question our patriotism? Yeah, he and Libby blew the cover of a CIA agent. Cheney telling California the electricity crisis was our fault? Turns out it was him and his energy cronies. Conservatives saying we steal elections? It's them. Saying we don't respect the sanctity of life? It's them. Saying Hillary can't be trusted with classified secrets? It's them.
So the next time a Conservatives says, oh, that you're a murderer, call the cops and have them check under the asshole's house for bodies.
"Its them"
The irony of the 5 deferment recipeient of the Vietnam war was attempting to question the patriotism of others. Not that one has to serve in the military to be patriotic.
But it should have humble the Vader before responding to the question put to him that no WMD was found. "What do you say to the survivors of those that gave their lives? (answer, So what".
Now the orangy-grumbling-McBumbles who stated, "I like soldiers that do not get captured" referring to McCain.
Another 4 deferment Vietnam war hero. Who to this day cannot recall which foot he had a bone spur. Although he admitted, he never had it medically taken care of.
When they point and blame like you say, it is them.
It does go beyond that now.
When they demanded Obama's birth certificate. They weren't pointing away from someone else.
They were politely expressing the closely held Ku Klux Klan beliefs.
But there again, they might have thought they were disguising their racist tendencies.
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