From The New York Times today, the headline...
Producing Something This Stupid Is the Achievement of a Lifetime
by David Brooks
Then 16 paragraphs of yadda yadda filler.
Then, finally, in the 17th paragraph, arrives at his point.
What happens when people lose the ability to reason or render good judgments? Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you...
Over the decades I have written predictive polemics about the media and the Republican party that have been depressingly accurate, fictions and other flights of fancy that featured real people and were, let's say, directionally correct, and stuff that's somewhere in-between as seen through a glass, darkly.
To-date, 12,000 of them, all told. +11,300 published, and +600 abandoned in draft for one reason or another.
So, from time to time, for the next little while, in addition to new stuff written for our dark age, I'm going avail myself of my own archives, and revisit the days when I was was sporting a pony-tail, wearing a suit and tie to my job every day, getting back to my Chicago condo from that job late at night and cranking out blog posts at 1:00 in the morning. Back when there was an army of Liberal bloggers like me, all in conversation with each other.
The pony-tale is long-gone, as is the Chicago condo, and the job, and that army of Liberal bloggers has been whittled down and down and down, but the writing remains. So, the plan is to repost on-this-date-20-years-ago material intermittently, and see how things go.
So, typos and all, from April 11, 2005...
This is not a large number
In the comment section, SWR poses the question: “The real issue is how we win the knuckledraggers in the south without becoming like the knuckledraggers in the south.”
Good question from a very long-range strategic perspective, but I think it’s the wrong one for the here-and-now.
Right now, this dogfight is about 100,000 votes.
This is not D-Day. This is not the Apollo program. Hell, this is not even the Pope’s funeral. This is about 100,000 votes.
Yes, the South is the problem. No, the South is THE problem. If I had a “Wayback Machine” and could take one trip back, I’d haul ass to 1865 loaded for bear (sort of the opposite of the plot of the very good “Guns of the South”) and demand that the de-Nazification of the Confederacy be thorough and final. Southern racism and the perverse White Privilege Ideology and theology they invented to rationalize their racism is (and always has been) the biggest single source of misery for this country.
It is the headwaters of a hundred other sins. Every time some Right Wing Mole Rat pops out of the ground to denounce, well, Reality, he always wraps his bile up in the yummy yummy bacon of Almighty God. Consider what a typical Son of the South -- the trial judge said in the case of Loving v. Virgina (1958) – write when he ruled against the right of consenting adults of different races to marry:
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."
Subtitute the “gay” for “race” and I dare you to tell me that these squamous tubs of righteous stupidity have changed one iota in the last 50 years. Or in the last 100. Or 200. Their spoor is always the same and always easy to smell:
1. Some group to hate and blame for their fucked up lives.
2. Scripture that lets the believe that they have a Divine Right to be ignorant fucktards.
3. Some means of enforcing their will (Nooses, guns, burning crosses, fellow travelers in the courts and government.)
4. A propaganda machine to Say It Loud (pulpit, floor of the House, Fox News, Hate Radio.)
But we have three major political parties in this country: Democratic, Republican and Dixiecrat...and the NeoConfederates only survive by hopping from party to party like the opportunistic disease that they are. If we were having this discussion a century ago, I would have been a staunch Republican – a Lincoln Man and proud of it (and burned as a witch for blogging during the administration of Teddy Roosevelt.) But the perverse truth is that the Party of Lincoln is now the Party of Jeff Davis, and the Stars-and-Bars now fly over the grave of the Great Emancipator.
There are a lot of reasons why my politics are the way they are, and case-by-case I may side with a variety of surprisingly different groups, but in this case it’s easy. I look to see where the cross-burners, Fundies, militia goons, clinic bombers and racists have made their nests. Then I run like Hell in the opposite direction...and these days that’s more than enough for me to vote (D) almost every time.
But for now, fuck the South. Thinking about how to deal with them -- writ large -- is too vast. First, we have to win, and winning means 100,000 votes, and they key to that is around the edges.
The “moderate” Republicans I know are horrified by DeLay and Santorum and Terry and the rest. They thought they were voting for tax cuts. And Law and Order. And getting to keep the Glock they like fondling. Even though they had been warned (pedantically, by me among others) they really, truly never believed that the Right Wing was dangerous, and never noticed that the Fundies are about as fundamentally opposed to the original principles of the GOP as you can get.
So what’s the plan?
These people need to stay home in disgust next time around, or be so terrified of the fact that Randall Terry is now the Madam of the GOP Whorehouse that they’ll vote Democrat or Independent even though they believe that they might go to hell for it. And our job is to keep pounding away at them, personally, face-to-face. They voted for this shit and we need to hang it in all its stinking glory around their necks at every opportunity. And thanks to the towering arrogancy and rabidity of the Ultras, making this case gets easier and easier every day.
Never again let them get away with saying, “But I didn’t KNOW?”
Of course you knew. How could you possibly not know? And if you are that fucking ignorant of the A-B-C’s of your own party, what in the Hell are you doing within a country mile of a voting booth?
And more importantly, now that you DO know about it, what are you going to do about the mess you made? Or don’t you believe in “Personal Responsibility?” Man, they hate that :-)
100,000 votes is nothing. It’s a margin or error. It’s two Chicago wards.
So let’s go get ‘em!
Next up: Can this blogger stitch together dildos, killdeers and recess nominations? Stay tuned...
Well that was fairly unnerving and infuriating to revisit after all this time.
And a reminder that while writing that stuff as warning in 2005 made Liberal bloggers into media pariahs, writing exactly this same sort of stuff in the Age of Trump once it became far too late to stop the worst from happening has made the same recently-former Republican who slandered us as alarmist, America-hating cranks back then, into wealthy Liberal media darlings, sought-after speakers, and best-selling authors.
In this week's episode, we dive into why Republicans keep winning the messaging war despite their policies hurting average Americans. We explore how stories consistently triumph over facts in political discourse and why Democrats' reliance on statistics isn't working. From "The Inspector General" to parables in the Bible, we examine how powerful narratives shape public perception more effectively than cold, hard facts. We also break down the absurdity of Trump's tariffs, the mainstream media's underwhelming coverage of protests, and why Medicaid is secretly a middle-class benefit that affects more Americans than you might think. Join us for an episode that might just change how you think about political communication in these chaotic times.
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...Republican elites will retreat to their safe places and let the MAGA meatheads be sacrificed.
And as they take shelter from that storm, rich beyond the dreams of Avarice and secure far away from the catastrophe they have created, those Republican elites will be laughing all the way.
Because no one has greater contempt for the expendable MAGA meatheads than their own fascist leaders.
And, having fucked everything up again, when the meatheads show up at our door looking for relief again, confused and in denial again, still seething with contempt for us and their need for us to fix what they have broken again, and still infected the Hate Radio talking points like zombies carrying the plague, my advice is this...
How It Started... a post from me from 15 years ago -- three days after the odious "No Labels" scam was conjured into existence.
Note the title.
Dead Center: Political Cowardice Now Has Its Own "Movement"!
Yay!
In case you ever idled away an afternoon screwing around with your old political chemistry set/fantasy football league lineups and wondering what would happen if you took a bunch of Republican primary losers (Charlie Christ)...added in a goonbag of out-of-work and out-of-favor former Republican speechwriters and campaign button-men (David Frum/John Avlon/Mark McKinnon)...the last of the politically arteriosclerotic insider DLC goofs who aren't already drawing paychecks under the Obama Administration's "Former Clinton White House Full Employment Project" (Nancy Jacobson aka. Mrs. Mark Penn)...Republican minor teevee celebrities (Joey Joe Joe Junior Scarborough)...
...and David Fucking Brooks?
And then sprinkled the resulting crime against nature with an assload of money (because there are always, always endless assloads of money available for any horrible idea that reinforces Villager sensibilities)?
What you get crawling out of the Petri dish are things like the autotuned, content-free, sugar-coma-inducing horror that is --
... the "No Labels Anthem"
But nothing we did not expect, right?
I mean, ever since the Republican Base ducked out on paying the tab for a generation of being loudly and catastrophically wrong about everything by putting on funny hats, screaming about liberty and calling themselves "The Tea Party", their sleazy Centrist enablers have been seething with jealously. Quite suddenly the monster they built didn't need them anymore and the skeevy hustlers who had helped create the Racist/ Corporatist/ Dominionist Confederacy on the bones of the New Deal and the grave of the American Dream found themselves cast out and looking for their next meal ticket.
Preferably a meal ticket under a banner that -- like "Tea Party -- wouldn't keep bringing up their horribly inconvenient past as the sleazy, enabling hustlers.
Hey, kids! I have an idea! Lets peel those the icky, damning labels off of everything and -- presto! -- there is magically no longer any difference between rat poison and apple sauce!
Can I haz my million dollars now?...
How it's going...15 years later,
From the AP. Note the title:
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Former Sen. Joe Manchin is working on a memoir. ‘Dead Center’ is scheduled for September
Former Sen. Joe Manchin has a memoir coming out in September, what the self-styled maverick from West Virginia calls his “declaration of independence from the extremes on both sides.”
St. Martin’s Press announced Tuesday that Manchin’s “Dead Center: In Defense of Common Sense” will be released Sept. 16.
Manchin, 77, announced last year he wouldn’t seek re-election after serving in the Senate since 2010 and becoming the rare Democrat to win in a state which otherwise votes for Republicans by wide margins. Manchin had long branded himself as a moderate beholden to no ideology and would often chastise Democrats or upend legislation when Senate Democrats held a tiny majority during the presidency of fellow party member Joe Biden.
Last summer, Manchin left the Democrats altogether and identified as an independent, although he continued to caucus with his former party. In a statement issued through St. Martin’s, he said that “Dead Center” was a “declaration of independence” and a handbook for governing...
Because, as I wrote 15 years ago, there are always, always endless assloads of money available for any horrible idea that reinforces Villager sensibilities.
And what is dead may never die.
Time to dive into Donald Trump's tantrum-driven manufacturing policy and catastrophic tariff regime. We follow the destructive path of his administration as it systematically dismantles Biden's successful manufacturing initiatives - from shutting down EV charging stations to threatening billions in loans for electric vehicle factories. We explain how manufacturing jobs create a powerful multiplier effect (each job creates nine other jobs), and how Trump's policies are now subtracting jobs from the economy.
Then it’s time to give Driftglass space to deliver a scathing analysis of David Brooks' latest Atlantic article, "I Should Have Seen This Coming" - exposing how Brooks has been writing essentially the same column about the GOP "stumbling but recovering" for over 20 years while ignoring the cancer growing within the party.
Plus, we share stories from our recent weekend trip to Chicago, discuss the ongoing manufacturing labor shortage, and highlight the absurdity of Trump administration officials like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant, and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins as they attempt to defend these disastrous economic policies.
Join us for another no-holds-barred examination of how conservatives are deliberately destroying economic progress simply to erase Democratic accomplishments.
Mentioned on this episode, "The Find Out Podcast": https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-find-out-podcast/id1802722241
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As you might have noticed, recently I've been talking up the fact that I've been at this keyboard now for 20 years, and thank you all for indulging me and the kind words and the Tip Jar contributions that some of you sent which is deeply appreciated, and for which I have not yet made the time to write individual "Thank-Yous".
Bad blogger! Bad!
So I figured it was time to close that little bit of endzone gavotting and move on with current events, and maybe bring it up again at 25 year mark, at which time I assume all contributions will be in the form of either DOGE bitcoin (should Musk's vaporware currency become the mandatory Mark of the Beast), rubles (should Trump finally just sign the country over to his paymaster in the Kremlin), or promises of real eggs and Victory gin (should Trump's curb-stomping of the economy continue apace.)
But come-what-may, it would be a matter to be taken up in 2030. But here-and-now it's time to get back to the goings in the here-and-now.
Then I picked up my crisp, new copy of The Atlantic...
OK, that's not even remotely true. Instead, my inbox was flooded with screenshots and quotes from the headline story in The Atlantic, urging my attention.
Until January 20, 2025, I didn’t realize how much of my very identity was built on this faith in my country’s goodness—on the idea that we Americans are partners in a grand and heroic enterprise, that our daily lives are ennobled by service to that cause. Since January 20, as I have watched America behave vilely—toward our friends in Canada and Mexico, toward our friends in Europe, toward the heroes in Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office—I’ve had trouble describing the anguish I’ve experienced. Grief? Shock? Like I’m living through some sort of hallucination? Maybe the best description for what I’m feeling is moral shame: To watch the loss of your nation’s honor is embarrassing and painful.
George Orwell is a useful guide to what we’re witnessing. He understood that it is possible for people to seek power without having any vision of the good. “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake,” an apparatchik says in 1984.
GEORGE ORWELL was a genuinely modest man. But he knew he had a talent for facing unpleasant facts. That doesn’t seem at first glance like much of a gift. But when one looks around the world, one quickly sees how rare it is. Most people nurture the facts that confirm their worldview and ignore or marginalize the ones that don’t, unable to achieve enough emotional detachment from their own political passions to see the world as it really is. Now that the war in Iraq is over, we’ll find out how many people around the world are capable of facing unpleasant facts.
Finally, there is the dream palace of the American Bush haters. In this dream palace, there is so much contempt for Bush that none is left over for Saddam or for tyranny. Whatever the question, the answer is that Bush and his cronies are evil. What to do about Iraq? Bush is evil. What to do about the economy? Bush is venal. What to do about North Korea? Bush is a hypocrite.
In this dream palace, Bush, Cheney, and a junta of corporate oligarchs stole the presidential election, then declared war on Iraq to seize its oil and hand out the spoils to Halliburton and Bechtel. In this dream palace, the warmongering Likudniks in the administration sit around dreaming of conquests in Syria, Iran, and beyond. In this dream palace, the boy genius Karl Rove hatches schemes to use the Confederate flag issue to win more elections, John Ashcroft wages holy war on American liberties, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, and his cabal of neoconservatives long for global empire. In this dream palace, every story of Republican villainy is believed, and all the windows are shuttered with hate.
David Brooks from the 04.09.05 NYT in which BoBo looks incrementally past his grotty navel and notices he has a couple of stinky little feet at the end of his legs. Article has been trimmed a bit, and helpful translations have been added for You The Customer.The Republican Party is running into a problem: the conservatism of the American people. Over the past decade, the Republicans have set themselves up as the transformational party...[But the American people] have a taste for order and a distrust of those who want too much change on too many fronts too quickly...
Translation: They are scared shitless that the Crazier’n a Shithouse Rat Theocrats that the Evil Liberals have always warned them about might actually exist and have the keys to the car. Oh and all the Mapquest Route Planners they left behind as clues have a place called “Armageddonville” circled in big, red Crayon.It's become increasingly clear that the Republicans are bumping into some limits...Translation: limits like...gravity, evolution, arithmetic, international law, economics. Why does reality hate Republicans?Being conservative, most Americans believe that decisions should be made at the local level, where people understand the texture of the case. Even many evangelicals, who otherwise embrace the culture of life, grow queasy when politicians in Washington start imposing solutions from afar, based on abstract principles rather than concrete particulars.Translation: Even in the middle of my faux critique of my own Overlords ...must ...regurgitate ... ”culture of life” meme...every...six...minutes. Hope no one notices what a trained seal I have become.Then there is Social Security reform. Republicans set forth with a plan to give people some control over their own retirement accounts. Here, too, Republicans have been surprised by the tepid public support. Americans understand that there is a big problem, but right now most oppose personal accounts invested in the markets. According to a Wall Street Journal poll this week, a third of Republicans currently oppose them.Translation: We were all shocked when the public didn’t think letting Thurston Howell’s idiot son bulldoze Mom’s retirement money onto the craps table was a spiffy notion. We were stunned when our Soviet Style “spontaneous” crowds of carefully screened zombies came across like a Pravda Puppet Show.
So today David Brooks wrote a very special column.It was not a column explaining that the Republican party -- his Republican party, his Conservative movement -- really is just a festering cesspit of paranoia and bigotry and fury, because he has already written himself into an inescapable corner by writing so many columns over so many years swearing that this was not so.And it certainly was not a column saying the simplest, and most obvious truth of all -- that the Left was right about the Right all along -- because on that day the small clutch of wealthy men who have subsidized his Whig Fan Fiction Factory for years would cast him down from his high place and leave him unprotected to the predations of the job market. Were that to happen, Mr. Brooks would not last a week.Instead, Mr., Brooks has written a letter of supplication to that small clutch of wealthy men, begging them to let him keep his job as the Greatest Conservative Public Intellectual in Murrica. Promising to do better next time.Moreover, many in the media, especially me, did not understand how they would express their alienation. We expected Trump to fizzle because we were not socially intermingled with his supporters and did not listen carefully enough. For me, it’s a lesson that I have to change the way I do my job if I’m going to report accurately on this country.
I messed up big time in not knowing Trump was coming. And so when something like that happens you take a look at yourself and you think "What did I miss about America?" And...I'm...too much in the Acela corridor. I've gotta get out. That's one thing.
Believe me, I travel every week, but I'm at a college here...so I'm always within the bubble. And so I've gotta get out. But then the other thing is, like, I've achieved way more career success than I ever thought I would, so it's time to take some chances on the spiritual realm, on the personal -- the emotional realm, and I've...got nothing to lose...
Since any distance can be divided in half, the arrow has to take an infinite number of steps to reach its goal. Since you are adding an infinite number of steps together, it would take an infinite amount of time to reach the goal. This means the arrow will never reach the target.
The big Republican accomplishment is that they have detoxified their brand. Four years ago they seemed scary and extreme to a lot of people. They no longer seem that way. The wins in purple states like North Carolina, Iowa and Colorado are clear indications that the party can at least gain a hearing among swing voters. And if the G.O.P. presents a reasonable candidate (and this year’s crop was very good), then Republicans can win anywhere. I think we’ve left the Sarah Palin phase and entered the Tom Cotton phase.
And when all that sweet-sweet talk of detoxing came to absolutely nothing, in April of 2016 Brooks decided to tell his readers a different fiction. From me, back then:
...And on this, the last day of 11th blogiversary fundraiser, the blogging gods have once again visited Mr. David Brooks in the night and "inspired" him to write what may be the most spectacularly ridiculous piece of Whig fan fiction in his long and profitable career of cranking out ridiculous pieces of Whig fan fiction.
The blogging gods are often cruel, but they are always entertaining.Today, Mr. Brooks imagineers out of thin air an entire army of public-spirited Reasonable Republicans who will infiltrate the Republican convention in July cleverly disguised as party hacks but then -- surprise! -- cast off their fake George Wallace noses and Pat Buchanan wigs just in time to rise as one! A veritable League of Extraordinary Whig Gentlemen! ("The Lincoln Caucus"):
Or they could choose the collective path.This is the path that recognizes that the situation we’re in now is more like a parliamentary process than a presidential process. Even very small groups can have an amazing influence over big candidates who are trying to build a majority coalition. Think of the way small Israeli religious parties extract concessions from the much larger Israeli parties.So I’m suggesting some number of delegates organize themselves into a caucus called the Lincoln Caucus. The Lincoln Caucus would not be an explicitly anti-Trump caucus or an anti-Cruz caucus. It would just be a caucus made up of delegates who are not happy with the choices currently before them...
Earth's mightiest imaginary Conservative heroes who will remake the GOP exactly as David Brooks wishes it to be:
The first thing the Lincoln Caucus would do is plant a flag for a different style of Republicanism. Members of the caucus would remind the country that there still are Republicans who believe in prudent globalism, reform conservative ideas to lift up the working class. There are still Republicans who believe in certain standards of polite behavior in public and pragmatic compromise.
And either save the party from ruin:
This process would bring the Trump and Cruz campaigns back toward the Republican mainstream. It would create a road toward party unity after one deal or another was reached. It might go some way toward heading off a general election debacle.
It would also create a democratic path toward a Republican nominee who is not Trump or Cruz...
Mostly, members of the Lincoln Caucus would stand up for the legitimate rights of the party. In our republican system, it is parties that choose nominees; not primary voters. Parties are lasting institutions that manage coalitions, preserve historical commitments, protect us from flash-in-the-pan demagogues and impose restraints on the excessively ambitious. The Lincoln Caucus would embody these legitimate institutional responsibilities.
Or, wait out the Trumpocalypse in David Brooks' Justice League World Headquarters and emerge from the rubble to lead the survivors towards a brighter, Whiggier tomorrow:
If the Republican ticket gets devastated in November, members of the Lincoln Caucus could say, “We stood for something different,” and they’d be in a good position to lead the rebuilding process.
Or, failing that, make their escape via Mr. Brooks' hot air balloon and settle on the Moon, which will be be very hospitable to their Whiggish ways once the King of the Moon is sufficiently placated:
So that is what Mr. Brooks was paid actual money to write today in America's newspaper of record.
End April, 2016 redux.
I will note once again that, for all the blather he has been selling suckers for $24.99 about his tortured midlife-crisis wanderings between the Torah and the Beatitudes in search of God and Meaning, anyone who isn't one of Mr. Brooks' acolytes or fellow-travelers and has actually read what Mr. Brooks has actually written over these past 15 years with an unjaundiced eye can easily identify his true faith.
Both Sides Do It
Both Sides Do It is his most fervent catechism.
Both Sides Do It is the mistress he will always return to no matter what lies he tells himself or his wife.
Both Sides Do It is his Song of Songs.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.And whatever upscale architectural tours he may take of other houses of worship, Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times -- Pope Bias the First, Bishop of the Acela Corridor, aka, Vicar of Both Sides, Successor of the Prince of the Kristols, Supreme Pontiff of the Washington Beltway, Primate of Fake Centrism, Archbishop and Metropolitan of Humility, Sovereign of True Conservatism's City State and Servant of the servants of the Church of Lyin'tology -- Both Sides Do It will always be his true tabernacle.
Because of the savour of thy good ointments thy name is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee.
Draw me, we will run after thee: the king hath brought me into his chambers: we will be glad and rejoice in thee, we will remember thy love more than wine: the upright love thee..
The cathedral where he will always go to preach his sermons and collect his pay.
And I will note once again that the descent of Mr. Brooks' Republican party into fascism and madness and the concomitant rise of Republican monsters like Donald Trump would never have been possible without the relentless barrage of false equivalence punditry which has been the stock-in-trade of media quacks and parasites like Mr. David Brooks for decades.
I've had the honor of knowing David Brooks for years. I admire him and have been deeply moved, informed, inspired, and bettered by his books and talks.
He was a Republican when I met him. I don't know his party affiliation now. What I do know is he has always been a man of virtue, objective reasoning, pragmatism, wisdom, and invaluable insights.
From the great David Brooks of The New York Times, in the May volume of The Atlantic. Everyone should read every word of this historic piece. It's worth the price of a subscription to The Atlantic, without question the most courageous magazine in America today.
"The pathetic thing is that I didn’t see this coming even though I’ve been living around these people my whole adult life."
“I should have understood this much sooner, because the reactionaries had revealed their true character as far back as January 1986.”
“Owning the libs became a lucrative strategy.”Could it be that the scales have fallen from his eyes?!?
Of course not, the razor in the apple . . . .“Of course, the left made it easy for them. The left really did purge conservatives from universities and other cultural power centers. The left really did valorize a “meritocratic” caste system that privileged the children of the affluent and screwed the working class. The left really did pontificate to their unenlightened moral inferiors on everything from gender to the environment. The left really did create a stifling orthodoxy that stamped out dissent. If you tell half the country that their voices don’t matter, then the voiceless are going to flip over the table.”
Donald Trump is more unhinged, openly fascist and dangerous than ever, and is once again cruising to an easy nomination by the GOP. The Republican party and Conservative movement which Mr. David Brooks devoted his entire adult life to building has centrifuged out the last few stray non-lunatics and is nothing but a pure, deranged shitpile of bigots, imbeciles and grifters from top to bottom. The Republican Supreme Court which Mr. Brooks has always aggressively defended, has dropped any pretense of legitimacy and now acts as the GOP's own private revolutionary tribunal
And all of these horribles, acting in concern, are straining every political, judicial and financial sinew to shove this country into a totalitarian abyss from which it, and the world, may never recover.
So, in the face of all that, what has captured the interest of the Most Ubiquitous Elite Media Conservative Pundit in Murrica on this 80th anniversary of the Allies storming the beaches at Normandy to put an end to the evil that the Republican party now embraces?
From Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times, June 6, 2024:
The Sins of the Educated Class
Yes, in the face of the immediate and existential threat posed by his recently-former party and his recently-former movement, Mr. Brooks has scampered back to his Safe Space to carp about the behavior of a tiny number of students on a few elite campuses.
For Conservatives during these turbulent times, this ritual has been as basic as praying at the Stations of the Cross is for old-school Catholics, or performers rubbing the Tree of Hope stump at the Apollo. This is just a small sampling...
...it is now painfully clear that Mr. Brooks is engaged in a long-term project to completely rewrite the history of American Conservatism: to flense it of all of the Conservative social, political economic and foreign policy debacles that make Mr. Brooks wince and repackage the whole era as a fairy tale of noble Whigs being led through treacherous hippie country by the humble David Brooks.
