"...since the shootings in Newtown, Conn., the debate has gone off on two tracks, the gun control track favored mostly by liberals and the mental health track favored mostly by conservatives. If you don’t buy my distinction, just compare the editorials and op-eds that have appeared respectively on our own fine pages and the comparable pages of The Wall Street Journal."I have to say that being a healer of the breach I think we need to go down both tracks — let’s tighten gun control rules and address some of the ways people with mental health issue can slip through the cracks."
-- Yale Professor of Humility, David Brooks, December 19, 2012
Name for me please the Liberals who oppose increased funding for mental health.
I'll wait.
I'll wait.
Name for me please the Liberals who have been ferociously fighting -- decade after decade -- against any effort to improve the American mental health system.
Name for me please the well-funded Liberal anti-mental health lobbying organizations which have dominated American politics to the point where they can hold Democratic candidates hostage to their lunatic agenda.
Name for me please the Liberals who have been following leaders who swear they will give up on gutting the American mental health system only after you pry their antipathy out of their cold, dead hands.
Name for me please the 31 Liberals senators who are so embarrassed to be in the thrall of the anti-mental health care lobby that they refuse open invitations to go on the Sunday Gasbag Parade to defend their idiocy.
Name for me please the Liberals who festoon their pickup trucks with bumper stickers repeating some variation on the theme that the only thing standing between them and tyranny is the fact that the American mental health system is grossly underfunded.
Name for me please the Liberals who waddle around in t-shirts saying "My Wife? Yes. My Dog? Maybe. My Underfunded Mental Health System? Never!"
Name for me please the Liberals who empower organizations with their votes and their dollars that are run by paranoid, blood-soaked anti-mental health thugs who swear that any effort to increase mental health funding by one fucking dime is part a massive secret plot
to do a jackbooted tarantella all over the America's freedom.
Name for me please the Liberals who show up in mobs in public parks to scream their support for eliminating funding for the mental health system while waving signs saying that the Tree of Liberty Needs to be Refreshed with the Blood of Tyrants.
Sigh.
For the record, let me repeat the same critique I have made over 600 times since I began this blog in 2005: David Brooks is a Conservative who is pathologically unable to admit the simple fact that, very often, on very important issues, Liberals are simply right and Conservatives are simply, lethally wrong.
And because Mr. Brooks is pathologically unable to face the simple facts of his ideology's repeated and catastrophic failure, he lies a lot. Mostly his lies take the form of making up wholly fake Liberal positions on issues which he then counterpoises against very real and usually very dangerous, stupid, bigoted or crazy Conservative positions so that he can continue hawking the Beltway's most profitable snake oil:
"Both Sides Do It"
Making a career out of repeating this Big Lie with absolutely single-minded persistence has made Mr, Brooks an incredibly wealthy and influential man.
Name for me please the Liberal who have achieved a fraction of Mr. Brooks' power and influence by speaking simple truths about the real world.
12 comments:
Well said.
I'm still stunned that parents across America with kids at Yale are willing to pay for their children to take a no-final-exam class taught by this fraud. I would demand my money back.
But perhaps the lack of exam is the way of the Bobo: no fail. No chance of fail. It's all arranged.
Regards,
Tengrain
Yet another liberal coming to the exact same conclusion, sans the farce of pretending that the two ideas are mutually exclusive. disclaimer: friend of mine
sad but true.
nailed him
Can we put this doofus to work on the deficit next? "I think to heal the divide we need to both raise the top tax rate to 70% and implement single payer health care."
Brooks shouldn't give up hope - as Mann and Ornstein show, even complete idiots can eventually be right about stuff. It really is that obvious nowadays.
Preach OOOOOn, Brother Driftglass!
Though I'd personally replace "unable" with "unwilling", as in "David Brooks is a Conservative who is pathologically unwilling to admit the simple fact that"...
..unless you're arguing that Mr. Brooks is legally insane (I think "inability to stop yourself from controlling your behavior" is part of the legal definition of insanity).
If you want to start fixing what ails this country you have to start by kicking this POS (DFB) to the gutter where he belongs. Of course, "no chance of fail, it's all arranged" is the root of the problem. If you are a member of "the club" you are not accountable and "above the law." Therefore, you have David F. Brooks teaching at Yale and John Yoo teaching at Berkley. If that is the kind of education our academic institutions insist on giving, I'll pass.
"mental health track favored mostly by conservatives" = another Brooks lie.
Many of the conservative commentators explicitly reject mental health propositions, instead insisting that the shooters are "evil" which will always be with us and all we can do is shoot evil in the face - arm the teachers, etc.
The sad fact, Ten, is that the neoCon contingent that brought us the War on Iraq took the same type courses from the same pretenders.
And called it the finest education.
And landed the top jobs.
Bringing us the world we live in today.
Good one.
Paid the effing writer. Thanks for your service.
At least one Republican leader promised that he'd work to pass the Wellstone and Domenici Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act at the Wellstones' funeral in 2002. It took 'til 2008 to pass it. Meanwhile, conservatives courageously ignored John McCain and Bob Dole to spurn the disabled, because freedom, UN black helicopters, etc. Brooks really does have to increasingly contort himself to create false equivalencies these days.
The only reason movement conservatives would support mental health treatment is so that they could bilk their audience out of their money twice. But universal health care is bad…
The whole basis of this column misunderstands conservatism. Conservatives favor the mental health explanation. Which is to say; knowing who and what to blame (i.e., not guns). That's different from favoring any increase in mental health funding.
Post a Comment