out of cliches left over from 100 other identically mediocre columns, Our Mr. Brooks has struck again:
This historical pattern
has been universally acknowledged
and universally ignored.Instead, leaders
in both parties
have clung to the analogy...
The Democrats, besotted by the myth
that the New Deal ended the Great Depression,
have consistently overestimated...Republicans,
who should know better,
also have an inflated sense of...
Democrats
should be learning
about the limits
of social policy.
...Republicans
should be reflecting
on the fact that if a Republican president
were in office right now,
and even if he or she did sensible things
...Many voters
seem to think that government
has the power to protect them
from the consequences of their sins.
...
You know, I write about Mr. Brooks frequently because he is without question the single most powerful and shadow-casting practitioner of the dark art of lazy, incestuous, cheapjack Centrist punditry that is suffocating our culture under mile after smothering mile of tepid, Villager establishmentarian treacle.
And yet as I move from reading his empty, bloodless, word-tapioca blattings to writing about them for this blog, the realization that, in a country where 1 in 6 of my fellow citizens live below the poverty line, Our Mr. Brooks is actually paid -- actually, richly rewarded with money, privilege and social cache -- for the act of cranking out 1,600 words worth of this forgettable, poisonous tripe every week still just knocks me out.
Every single time.
7 comments:
[ FOR EDUTAINMENT ONLY: just going to cuntpaste here some of my contemporary spoor from over there ........... ]
Why nihilism is the new dubstep, Bobo-style:
"Democrats should be learning about the limits of social policy. As in the war on poverty, as in the effort to transform American schools, as in the effort to create prosperity in the developing world, it is really hard to turn around complex systems.
Republicans should be reflecting on the fact that if a Republican president were in office right now, and even if he or she did sensible things, the economy would still be in the dumps. It would be Republicans losing “safe” Congressional seats in special elections."
Difficult things should be avoided. Unpopular things should be feared like death itself. Giving any reasons for these deeper truths would only weaken & sully their inherent magic. We are but the helpless fate-tossed automata of a merciless universe, which is why thought itself always causes only problems, & not solutions.This moderate path to safety is the eminently pragmatic reason why we as a society chose to remain living in trees & caves while eating mud, inbreeding, & worshipping volcanoes, bears & lightning.
If FDR hadn't pulled back on social legislation in 1937, his policies would have done the job of getting us completely out of the depression by ourselves. But he listened to his advisers and abandoned his first term's successes. Brooks should know all this, but he chooses to ignore it. As do most of the chattering class.
I'm blown away by the elite sense of being he possesses. He is convinced that he knows something that we do not, and all we have to do is listen and learn and everything will be all right. I know all pundits think this, it is what they do, but he takes it to a place that I've not seen before. I do know this, he does NOT speak for me.
I'd like to read B's explanation of why repugs such as Cantor voted approx $125 BILLION TO build & fix schools in Afghanistan but refuse to vote $60 Billion for American schools.
The New Deal *did* end the Great Depression.
"World War II" was, in effect, a MUCH BIGGER New Deal.
It wasn't "the war" which ended the Depression, i.e., the act of shooting or bombing people itself.
It was the same sort of public employment, investment, federal contracting, infrastructure development, training, and so forth which had been pursued in the New Deal.
It was the war which *politically justified* such massively increased levels of such.
"The War" didn't end the Depression; it was the very same Big Gubmit New Deal Type Soshullizm what did it, just now in the guise of the War.
I like tapioca pudding. Leave it alone.
and we wonder why newspapers are becoming irrelevant......
there are a lot of shitty wirter-pundits - Noonan, Kristol, Krauthammer - but no one holds a candle to Brooks for sheer idiocy wrapped in stupidity with a splash of arrogance. Not even Peggington - for her even a broken clock is right twice a day. Brooks is a clock that never catches is up to anything.
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