Friday, June 21, 2019

When David Brooks Runs Out of Things to Write About...



...he writes Burma-Shave signs about The Future that don't rhyme.
Things were bad.

But now they're better.

Might still blow up.

But maybe not!

Burma-Shave.
Congratulations.  You have now read today's New York Times column by Mr. David Brooks in its entirety.

Of course, when you think about it, what else does he have left?

After all, anyone who writes anything -- even the gloppy, ridiculous tripe The New York Times pays its senior Conservative op-ed columnist to crank out -- is stuck with the three basic tenses:  Past, Present and Future.

And unless he wants to write nothing but book reports on other people's biographies of Edmund Burke, what else is there for a professional Beltway Conservative Haver of Opinions to write about?  Especially someone whose primary concern is showcasing his own piety while at the same time evading any responsibility for his part in creating the political calamity we are living through and any mention of how we got to where we are?

Sure, he can carp about it is Harvard's sacred duty to baptize young Conservative bigots into the American elite, and then get dragged across the internet for it. Or could can continue to sink into irrelevance by extruding the same, old steaming logs of Both Sides Do It drivel that by now pretty much everyone openly mocks.

Or I suppose he could go out in a blaze of glory and pen an 800 word essay how the Left was right about the Right all along. this is what we in the business call doing a Joe Paine:
Senator Joseph Paine : Let me go! I'm not fit to be a senator! I'm not fit to live! Expel me, not him! Willet Dam is a fraud! It's a crime against the people who sent me here - and I committed it! Every word that boy said is the truth! Every word about Taylor and me and graft and the rotten political corruption of my state! Every word of it is true! I'm not fit for office! I'm not fit for any place of honor or trust! Expel me, not that boy!
But since the creator of our broken universe isn't Frank Capra, I wouldn't count on that either.

Still, no matter how desperately he quibbles and deflects, Mr. David Brooks is stuck with the same, two imperishable truths that faces every other professional mainstream Conservative Haver of Opinions.

Conservatism's Past is a fraud, perpetrated on the American people by men like David Brooks who --surprise! -- never had the slightest fucking idea what they were talking about:


DAVID BROOKS: They can’t nominate this guy [Donald Trump]. Major parties do not nominate people like Carson and Trump. These guys are so incompetent. Whenever the actual subject is running the country, they just disappear from the debates.

And I just have to feel — I have had no evidence for this. And I have said this for six months now, that they’re about to collapse...
Conservatism's Present is an ash heap of horrible. Its soil is poison.  Its ideas are monstrous.  Its Big Thinkers are either con men or timorous Centrists hiding out behind a pile of wingnut welfare money or octogenarian True Scotsmen who still argue over how many Buckleys can dance on the apex of a Laffer curve.

So what is there left for a professional mainstream Conservative Haver of Opinions to speculate mawkishly about the Bright Future that maybe be just around corner.
Your Daily Dose of Optimism!
The America that lies beyond our current despair.

...
In a world of radical pluralism, we are all Jews. We have no choice but to build a mass multicultural democracy, a society that has no dominant center but is a collection of creative minorities.
...
A Bright Sensible Centrist Whig Reformicon Future which Mr. Brooks has been predicting was juuuuust around the for the last couple of decades,

By the Spring of 2016, Mr. Brooks was so far up his own giddy ass on this subject --
The Post-Trump Era

This is a wonderful moment to be a conservative. For decades now the Republican Party has been groaning under the Reagan orthodoxy, which was right for the 1980s but has become increasingly obsolete. The Reagan worldview was based on the idea that a rising economic tide would lift all boats. But that’s clearly no longer true.

...
We’re going to have two parties in this country. One will be a Democratic Party that is moving left. The other will be a Republican Party. Nobody knows what it will be, but it’s exciting to be present at the re-creation.
-- that Brother Charlie Pierce had to take his Mighty Spork of Justice to Mr. Brooks for casting yet another set of runes about the Glorious Conservative Future that would spring into being once Donald Trump and his kind were shown the door, which was definitely gonna happen.

Because, as I may have already mentioned, David Brooks has never had the slightest fucking idea what he was talking about.



Behold, a Tip Jar!

2 comments:

Robt said...

Odd, After reading your piece here on DFB.
For some reason an article in my paper today on, "Asbestos as an ingredient in make up products".

It is made in a place where anything goes. It has all the funding to make it. It has purchased FDA laws so the industry (you know how tough competition is) that these industry products have an exemption from disclosing any of its ingredients to consumers or to the FDA.

It would not sell if consumers knew it. But they don't and because it isn't a listing for ingredients. Concerns are not an issue.
(until someone gets cancer and tries to sue one of these cosmetic corporations. Given limited liability by the same Government that allows and looks the other way for that juicy lobby cash and undisclosed campaign donating.

It is about funding a political party using human resources as they learned and expanded from their experiments with mice.

There is no reason for Brooks and his place in public status.

It is paid for. Even if the Brooks takes up space fom something more worth while in the limited valuable space he is graced with in his NYT column.

And, all the space in interviews in the media.

It is like Trump's Draft dodging. Where Dad purchased his lame deferment.
Who had to take his place when he didn't go?

As, who and what do we not hear from when Brooks gets his paid for deferment from not serving in his role as public speaker for the masses? A mass that has to pay for DFB when they buy the NYT no matter if they want him.

It is like my TV cable provider. I do not want FOX or Sinclair nor will ever indulge watching it anymore.
But I have to pay for it and they get my money in the bundled package.

As consumer, I do not want it. Do not want to pay for it. So they bundle it in with everything else and tell me it is an extra channel I get. For the same price.
I notice I have a lot of other channels they market as more and choice.

The "My Pillow" 247 channel.
The "hot air toaster" for sale Channel.
Russian TV channel.
This is more and more choice?
So I pay in my cable bill for 24/7 sales and marketing channels dedicated to selling products.

So just for a marketing channel to sell product. I pay for their advertising as an extra cable channel bundled.

DFB is bundled into the NYT and into the rest of televised media and he promotes with Book signings as a cover.

crweaver said...

According to Mr. Brooks, the GOP will, at long last - finally! - enter the long awaited Tom Cotton phase!
This time for sure!
Albeit without, it would seem, Sen. Cotton himself, supine Trump enabler he has proven to be!