Are You There Odin?

It's me, Bobo.

Today's airy, 800-word, anti-journalism ball of foam-peanut-punctuated cotton-candy ("The Limits of Policy") begins thusly:

"Roughly a century ago, many Swedes immigrated to America..."

Then I think a Knight plays Chess with Death

for awhile.

Then Bobo randomly hangs the terms "gigantic", "ethnic", "region" and "capital" here and there like pudding skin on a wire frame to illustrate the existential futility of all action.

Or something.

Because as we established long ago:

Whenever a David Brooks column commences way back in the worm-nibbled pages of some History 201 or Philosophy 310 textbook with something that sounds a lot like the lyrics of "Stonehenge"...you can absolutely bet your lunch money that what Bobo is giving himself is a good, long running start at trying to make some sad, sad point about These Gut-Stabbed Modern Times while jumping cleeeeeean over the fact that his Movement and his Party have put this country into emergency room, bleeding from thirty years of Conservative bayonet thrusts into its belly.

And this is because, as one of the Last Non-Shoutycracker Defenders of Conservatism's criminal ideology, Bobo is a bit like a Capulet stuck at a Montague funeral.

With Montague blood still wet on his hands.

And a dozen trophy Montague ears dangling from his bandoleer.

Wearing a "F*ck The Montagues!" tee-shirt.

In other words, in each column he must move Vewy Vewy Slowly towards the exit, making polite, meaningless journalism-like noises en route. Eventually, after bibbling enough unsourced studies and mawkish platitudes, he is near enough to his contractually-obligated word-count to toss a weak little Conservative establishmentarian stink bomb or two --

Bad policy can decimate the social fabric, but good policy can only modestly improve it.
...

Finally, we should all probably calm down about politics. Most of the proposals we argue about so ferociously will have only marginal effects on how we live, especially compared with the ethnic, regional and social differences that we so studiously ignore.

-- and scuttle away.

One could, of course, point out that Bobo is simply fucking lying and that there have been just scads of programs and policies -- big and small -- that have had enormously positive effects on life in America. But given that they all tend to have begun life or have evolved into Big Gummint Liberal Programs and screw up his ridiculous thesis (like the WPA, the Civilian Conversation Corps, the GI Bill, rural electrification, school lunches, Head Start, workplace safety and labor laws, environmental regulations, food inspections, Social Security, drug testing, Medicare, a progressive tax structure and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on)...I can see why Bobo chose to simply assert that they do not exist or that their effects have been trivial.

Also, as one who would be wearing a hair net and handing out sausage samples at Costco were it not for the privileges his class, money, political connections and year of birth have afforded him, I can understand why Bobo would be anxious to divert any conversation about what is broken in America the Hell away from those topics.

On the other hand, I agree that our politics could use a bit of calming down.

In fact, just as soon as Bobo turns his fire-hoses on the bigots and demagogues who have completely captured his Party and have spent the last 30 years accumulating power and wrecking the country with hideously toxic policies by deliberately whipping imbeciles and wingnuts into a perpetually low-boiling blood-frenzy about Liberals, impeaching Democratic Presidents, and generally screaming at a million decibels that anyone Left of Joe McCarthy is an America-hating Commie rat...

...I will happily stop pointing out that David Brooks is a towering mediocrity who makes his daily bread wiping the asses of oligarchs with comforting lies wrapped in $100-bills.