A certain member of the GOP's chickenshit Brain Caste has the fucking nerve to feign surprise.
Here is the key paragraph from David Brooks' latest 800-word embarrassment:
"But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party. Over the past few years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative."Here is how it would have read if David Brooks had a shred of honesty:
But we can have no confidence that the Republicans will seize this opportunity. That’s because the Republican Party may no longer be a normal party.The first version -- favored by every professional Beltway ball-washer in the media -- permits the David Brookses of the world to continue to play the role of the reasonable, detached witness, merely Observing-With-Alarm the final stages of the complete and completely unforeseeable (No one could have predicted...!) psychotic implosion of his Republican Party.Over the past few years,Over the past 40 years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative.
The second version -- the honest version -- puts Our Mr. Brooks (and the rest of his ilk) at the scene of the crime, squarely behind the wheel and driving the getaway car for the Party of God for virtually his entire adult life.
So while much of the rest of what Our Mr. Brooks has written is perfectly true
"The members of this movement do not accept the logic of compromise, no matter how sweet the terms. If you ask them to raise taxes by an inch in order to cut government by a foot, they will say no.The question remains, where were you, Mr. Brooks, when Reagan was instructing them that the government is always wrong, always evil? Where were you when the leaders of your Movement were teaching them that everyone not in the Movement was a Commie? That compromise was treason?
..."
"The members of this movement do not accept the legitimacy of scholars and intellectual authorities."Yes, but where were you, Mr. Brooks, when the yahoo, bigot, militia-nuts and Fundy votes were being aggressively courted by your Party? When Young Republican gatherings became occasions for the endless burning of East Coast elites in verbal effigy? When anyone in the press not mindlessly spewing paranoid wingnut bile was denounced by your Party and Movement leaders as part of the Liberal Media Conspiracy?
"The members of this movement have no sense of moral decency."But where were you, Mr. Brooks, when Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush openly and vigorously played the race card to win the White House? When the Right was rising to power on the backs of the poor, the weak and the powerless? When Newt Gingrich and GOPAC taught Republicans to call Democrats "traitors" and "liars" and "unAmerican" in every speech? Where were you when your Dear Leader lied us into a catastrophic war and then lied to us to keep us there? Where were you when Terri Schiavo's mortal remains were being tossed around like a puppy's chew toy for pure, partisan political advantage? Where were you when New Orleans drowned? When Reagan killed the Fairness Doctrine and gave birth to Rush Limbaugh?
"The members of this movement have no economic theory worthy of the name."But where were you, Mr. Brooks, when voodoo economics was hollowing out the middle class and destroying our industrial base? Where were you when radical banking regulation was setting us up for the kill? When Republicans were running up crippling deficits and then demanding that Democrats pick up the tab?
You see Mr. Brooks, as hard as you try to pretend otherwise, you are not an alarm bell in the night warning a sleeping nation of impending disaster.
You are just another symptom of that disaster.
Because, Mr. Brooks, the answer to the question "where were you?" is a simple one : you have been busy being fatally, loudly and very, very profitably wrong about your Party and your Movement your entire fucking life.
And worse -- oh so much worse -- it turns out that, one again, the decadent, America-hating Left has been right all along.
(NOTE: Sorry for the higher-than-avg number of typos in version 1.0. The need for speed dictates that I'm almost always in first draft mode when I blog, so I never mind a few transposed letter [it always takes several hrs before I can turn writer-brain off and editor-brain on, by which time I have usually moved on to 3 other things] but this one I banged out tired and extra-fastfastfast before catching two hrs of kip and driving through the night back to Chicago in time for work. And it really bugged me. Best, dg)
(NOTE 2: Of course it would be the post that is all Christmas-ornamented with typos that John Cole decides to link to :-] Thanks, John.)
22 comments:
Drifty and "David kurwa potoki" at it once again.
You rock, just don't let that be your last battlefield ever.
Daddio478
bravo bravo bravo.
He is just like Rush, " I dont always support Bush, for one thing he is not nearly bloodthirsty enough and I still have to pay taxes"
One touchstone that is not being rubbed raw is the end of the War in Afghanistan. Sure you have your John McCains, but for the mostpart it is surprising the restraint of the Repugs. A sure sign the clusterfuck is so big even a republican can not suck it.
Sheer perfection.
Steve, the restraint is fake until they take back the White House--day one of the new Reich will include nuclear strikes on Afghanistan, Cuba, New York, Hollywood, housing projects, public school buildings, Planned Parenthood, and Bernie Sanders' house.
Bobo is shocked, shocked! to find batshit in his Establishment! Great post.
You wrote "rbjective witness" but I think you meant "objective witness" You can delete my comment after any necessary corrections. Thanks
to RockDots:
"You got batshit in my establishment!"
"You got establishment in my batshit!"
"... We could make a party out of this. Would you like to come over for tea?"
Mike.K.
Mr. Brooks, welcome to pwndville.
Damn skippy!! Well said!!
Our Mr. Brooks is now, shocked, shocked I tell you, to discover that the Republican party has been taken over by a gang of sociopaths and anarchists. Really!
Brooks is only falling in line with his establishment Republican masters who are doing everything in their power to distance themselves from the Teabaggers, now that they find that the crazies are on their own doorstep. After all, they were to be used and discarded, the same way the Republicans used rural white Southerners, going back to Nixon and the Southern Strategy, which was eagerly embraced by Reagan and who also used the evangelical right as a tool. It seems that they can't control this bunch, though.
What goes around, comes around. And it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of folks.
When B-B-Bobo crows in the first half about how awesome our Repooblista overlords are, it seems kind of impolite for him to criticize the knuckle-dragging morlocks who put them in charge in the second half. He and his peeps have been praising know-nothing "grass-roots conservatism" since Koch-Fox cranked it up; it was as mindless then as it is now, but suddenly Bobe smells burning tar and sees pitchforks, and these particular Villagers don't seem to realize how important he is.
I used to like reading David Brooks because I could watch him thinking and changing his mind as I read. He would come so close to realizing what a pile of flim-flam the GOP was selling and then pirouette back to the land on dogma firma. But then we got a Democrat in the White House and suddenly Brooks stopped thinking at all. The dance...I miss the dance...
Every good Republican looooooooved George W. Bush Jr. until Katrina, the successful Iraqi Shi'a / Sunni ethnic cleansing of Baghdad (please forgive O Surge), and his tanking approval ratings.
And when suddenly the Republican all-power triumvirate of 2003-2006 looked like it was really hated, my gosh, George W. Bush Jr. is just awful!
I mean, if you're going to be governed by right wing assholes, they're at least supposed to be competent.
It's a myth that Mussolini 'got the trains to run on time,' fascists were notoriously incompetent (as so many totalitarians, pace 'Great Leap Forward'). But at least Mussolini could pull it off.
And David Brooks so hoped that Obama would be a New Kind of Democrat, a black Republican who could get Democrats to vote for Republican things but not be so batshit incompetent.
Yet here David Brooks had just barely gotten finished jacking off about Mitch Daniels when once again he detects the sour stench of uncleaned anchors about to be dropped from the GOP to the muck below.
Jump! Jump! David Brooks had nothing to do with it, he's just an amateur sociologist and anthropologist and also Applebees supporter.
"Over the past 40 years, it has been infected by a faction that is more of a psychological protest than a practical, governing alternative."
With respect, your correction is inadequate -
Republicans are infected with a Grover Norquist led corporate FASCISM that smacks of treason. Signing the Corporate Fuhrer's pledge is tantamount to breaking the oath of office - to uphold the Constitution!!!!
@alise: Do you still think you can control them?
I always appreciated the old man who wouldn't stand up and sing along. You can almost hear him thinking, "Holy crap, this is not going to end well!"
@loveandlight: Loved that link! How apropos... And isn't it funny and sad that the present day fools and tools don't even realize that they're being used. More folks should have that old man's wisdom. At least he could see the shitstorm that was approaching...
Home run, DG, thanks.
What's sad, scary and frustrating is that, in a sense, you've written many versions of this over the years, to Brooks, to Sullivan, to Frum. The GOP is the party of selective and instant amnesia, straight of Orwell and the Commissar's office. Brooks and the other "reasonable" conservatives are perennially shocked, shocked that gambling is going on with America's future.
Don't leave out the booboisie who elected these jerks. No one seems to be able to think beyond their jerky knees anymo'
As usual driftglass, you gather all the trash and garbage from all over the US, historical and otherwise, and turn it into a beautiful, if infuriating, work of perfect art. Keep up the excellent commentary!!!
I re-read this every few weeks just to contact the perfect words for Brook's culpability.
Brooks strikes me as a good example, of what I call, the white man's abyss. Abyss, as in an empty, bottomless pit. Brooks cannot comprehend the emptiness in and around him. Outside white culture, he sees passion, ambition, action, drive and dreamers. Why, he wonders, can he not feel any of those things. He attempts to explain the mystery, by examining others from afar. He projects, he supposes, he assumes, he explains, he fantasizes, and finds a vicarious form of relief - from his boredom.
Brooks is the product of white culture, a culture that has been reduced to a boring, empty abyss ruled by stodgy, old men without a creative bone in their bodies, or the slightest streak of adventure. In this rigid culture, people are dying of boredom - literally dying. Today's drug epidemic is the self-prescribed remedy for ceaseless boredom suffered by those trapped in white culture.
White culture is riddled with jealousy, plain old fashioned envy. Conformity, sameness, endless sameness is driving people mad. Like Brooks, other people see other parts of American culture and hunger for the vitality, the energy, the ambition their culture cannot inspire. But being white keeps these people, in their place, their dull, boring, endless abyss. How, oh how, they wonder can they escape the abyss? To dulled to create anything of their own, they can only repeat and copy others. We will protest, they cry in unison, we will march, we will parade just like those people who are so alive. What will we protest, they ask. We will protest those cultures that are so alive, so vibrant, so exciting. After all, it is their vitality, that makes us feel so dead.
Country music, a once lively facet of white culture, has become repetitive, predictable and boring. Sports, another once lively facet of white culture, has been reduced to a rich man's game - a game of cheats and liars fueled by drugs.
White people despise anyone with the energy to pursue a dream, even other white people. Brooks displays this contempt in his condemnation of tech, space, auto and alternative energy pioneers. He displays this in his defense of the value of the conformity, repetition, predictability, stability, sameness and dullness in the great white abyss. He preaches education as though schools and universities nurture creativity, instead of rigid, conformity and endless repetition.
Face it folks, white culture is an abyss.
I guess I need to leave a comment to say thank you for this post (None of those thumbs or up arrows around so here's the good old fashion, "Well said!" used by old timey bloggers like me.
David "f'in" Brooks is bad enough, but it's also NPR and PBS and the New York Times that crave him. They are the people who want to believe in Republicanism as it was 50 years ago. It isn't. But if the MY Times, NPR and PBS actually acknowledges what the part is, then they would have to acknowledge that their friends and donors are morally repugnant people. But nobody wants to say that, because it's just not polite. So they get someone on to keep spinning the lies.
Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and every damn republican who allows Trump and his corruption to go on is part of the same Party that Brooks thinks is a "faction." They are loud and proud.
Brooks needs to go pound sand.
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