Mr. Brooks was forced discover previously unrecognized lessons about National Greatness buried on "Gilligan's Island", which he then transmogrified into a paean to George W. Bush:
Farewell to Greatness
America from Gilligan's Island to The X-Files
I'D NEVER REALLY CONSIDERED the way George W. Bush resembles Gilligan of Gilligan’s Island until I read Paul A. Cantor’s brilliant book, Gilligan Unbound: Pop Culture in the Age of Globalization. As Cantor points out, Gilligan is not the smartest one on the island. He doesn’t have the obvious leadership résumé. Yet the audience instinctively sympathizes with him, and the show’s creators were right to put him in the center. In episode after episode, the fate of the islanders usually rests in his hands and he usually serves them well.
That’s because Gilligan possesses a subtle but important set of virtues: the democratic virtues. He is agreeable. He is decent. He never looks down on people; instead he gives others the benefit of the doubt. As Bush would say, he has a good heart.
He is also public spirited. Though humble, he is forever filled with good-natured plans to make other people happy. He doesn’t have a narrow perspective, like the other characters—the Professor, or the Millionaire, or the Movie Star. He doesn’t want to mold other peoples’ lives for them. But because of him the island is a happy community—happier, the show continually implies, than the world the castaways are stranded from.
Though Cantor doesn’t make the connection, Bush is a lot like that.
...
And most frequently of all, Mr. Brooks lumbered over and over again to the ippy-tippy top of the mountain of his own self-righteousness to sneer at those Stupid Liberals!
Stupid Liberals, who cooked up some crazy "brainless, self-destructive" fantasy that Bush Administration policies were about to wipe out the Clinton surplus, run up a gargantuan deficit and put Social Security under the gun:
The New Stupid Party
LONG AGO, the Republican party was nicknamed the Stupid Party, and at times Republicans have done their best to live up to the label. But after the past week, it is perhaps time to acknowledge that when it comes to brainless, self-destructive behavior, the Democratic party has achieved a level of excellence that will be unsurpassed in our lifetime.
Last week the Congressional Budget Office came out with a budget forecast. The report immediately got submerged in a chatterstorm about whether Congress or the White House would dip into something called the Social Security trust fund, but the essential facts are these: The CBO economists estimated that the federal government will run a surplus of about $150 billion in 2001. That’s a lower surplus than the CBO estimated a few months ago, before the economic slowdown, the Bush tax cut, and the recent congressional spending splurge. But even in these adverse circumstances, the surplus is still projected to grow to about $200 billion a year in 2004 and close to $300 billion a year by 2006.
The Democratic party proceeded to work itself up into a collective aneurysm. Dick Gephardt—who, when given the chance to play the demagogue, never goes halfway—said that the United States now faces "an alarming fiscal crisis." Democratic national chairman Terry McAuliffe said on Face the Nation that it had taken Bill Clinton eight years to build up the surplus, but Bush was able to "blow it in eight months." Other Democrats rose up en masse to declare that the Bush administration was going to bankrupt Social Security/the federal government/western civilization because the administration was going to have to "raid the Social Security trust fund."
The Pelosi Democrats
Are they going to become the stupid party?
ARE THE DEMOCRATS about to go insane? Are they about to decide that the reason they lost the 2002 election is that they didn't say what they really believe? Are they about to go into Paul Krugman-land, lambasting tax cuts, savaging Bush as a tool of the corporate bosses? Are they about to go off on a jag that will ensure them permanent minority status in every state from North Carolina to Arizona?
...
And then back we go again to the fucking Bush tax cuts and Mr. Brooks' brilliant command of post-causality economics (March 2001):
Yes, There Is a New Economy
Thanks to once-in-a lifetime productivity gains, Bush's plans are easily affordable
MAR 19, 2001
...
This year's tax and budget debate really comes down to one essential question: Is the money going to be there? The Congressional Budget Office projects surpluses of about $ 5.6 trillion over the next 10 years. The Republicans insist that those projections are conservative, so the government can afford to return $ 1.6 trillion to the taxpayers and still have money left over for Social Security, Medicare, and an $ 800 billion contingency fund. The Democrats cry that projections are notoriously inaccurate, that the tax cuts will blow a hole in the budget, and that the Bush administration's risky scheme (which sailed through the House last week) would cast us back into the days of piling debt.
....even if today's productivity improvements are only on the scale of, say, the improvements our economy saw after World War II, we may be in for a long and sunny ride. There is a rough historical pattern here. A new technology is invented. It takes a long time before people figure out how to use it. The electric motor was invented in the 1880s, but it didn't transform factories until the 1920s, economist Paul David has noted. Once the technology is fully deployed, however, there are decades of positive results. Daniel Sichel of the Federal Reserve points to previous technology-driven surges that lasted 10 and 25 years. That suggests we may still be near the beginning of this particular period of bounty.
If we are, an occasional period of slower growth or even a recession may occur, but the U.S. economy is fundamentally strong, and both laymen and legislators have good reasons to believe it will remain strong for many years. Industrial productivity is surging. Americans are not only the hardest working people on earth (the average American works about 10 weeks a year more than the average European) but also the most productive workers -- by far. If you measure value added per hour worked, Americans do about 20 percent better than Germans and the French, and 40 percent better than the Japanese.
In other words, if you wade through the economic literature, it's hard not to agree with the Cleveland Fed's Jerry Jordan: We are living at a once-in-a-generation moment of economic opportunity. As productivity grows, the economy will grow. As the economy grows, revenues will grow, maybe beyond what the CBO projects. The real question about the Bush tax cuts, then, is not, Can we afford them? The real question is, Why are they so small?
In Mr. Kristol's service, Mr. Brooks dutifully pined for the loss of Great Men and their Great Ideas. Like...Reaganomics!
Stimulation Infatuation
Congress is going to pass a bad stimulus package--and there's nothing anyone can do to stop them.
11:01 PM, NOV 29, 2001
...
The second depressing feature of the debate is the death of the supply-side ethos. The supply-siders' greatest achievement was not to win arguments against liberals. It was to win arguments against corporatists. They insisted that Republican economic policy should serve some higher purpose than simply pouring money into corporate bank accounts. They put forward plausible and idealistic notions of how tax policy could be changed to stimulate industriousness, productivity, and other virtues.
Bush, as Advertised
FEB 5, 2001
What on earth has gotten into the liberals and the media? Perhaps affected by some sort of post-Palm Beach stress disorder, reporters and activists on the left have depicted George W. Bush as the leader of some sort of arch-conservative jihad. They've portrayed his tax plan as dangerously radical, some of his nominees as Confederacy-loving loons, and his voucher plan as a menace to the future of public education. To put it bluntly, this is all deranged. You get the impression that the left has actually started believing its own direct-mail fund-raising letters....
Pabulum with a Purpose
Beneath the much-mocked superficiality of the Philadelphia convention is a serious effort to transform the GOP
AUG 14, 2000
The GOP is not intolerant...
ONE NATION CONSERVATISM
How George W. Bush and John McCain -- without quite realizing it -- are creating a new Republican philosophy
SEP 13, 1999
...together, Bush's Compassionate Conservatism and McCain's New Patriotic Challenge are steps toward a fresh vision for the Republican party. Indeed, if you meld the core messages of the two campaigns, you get a coherent governing philosophy for the post-Clinton age.
Competent Conservatives, Reactionary Liberals
JAN 15, 2001
We seem to be entering a period of competent conservatism and reactionary liberalism. George W. Bush has put together a cabinet long on management experience and practical skills. But liberal commentators and activists, their imaginations aflame, seem to be caught in a time warp, back in the days when Norman Lear still had hair.
...
While always remembering to leaven his sloppy, lap-dog praise of Great Conservative Men with non-sequitur potshots at the silly habits of those Stupid Liberals.
Birkenstock Man vs. The Sprawl People
12:00 AM, OCT 18, 2002
...
Your perfect Bay Area denizen dresses in open-toed sandals with advanced polymer soles for extra traction during Sierra Club-sponsored day hikes amidst endangered coastal wetlands. He wakes up in the morning in his $4 million Victorian home with the renovated minimalist interior that cleverly recycles reclaimed poplar wood from a 16th-century monastery in the exposed ceiling beams. The Thai religious figures on his raw cedar mantelpiece make a statement about the need for inner peace in a world of commercial excess, and are widely admired when he holds mushroom tasting fund-raisers for Native American/Chicana Lesbian Dance troupes.
THE LIBERAL GENTRY
Being an Article Which Describes the Habits and Mores of a Newly Landed Aristocracy
11:00 PM, DEC 29, 1996
The Liberal Gentleman stands atop his private mountain, fuming because the planes far overhead are disturbing his tranquility. He ponders the irony that the Unabomber, who had so many good ideas, nonetheless went astray. The wind comes up, and so, snapping up his all-cotton Labrador Field coat, he bids a silent farewell to the family of moose he has brought in to graze on his northern slope. As he sidles down toward the house, his bandanna-wrapped dog, Rugby, cavorting at his side, he reflects as usual on the links between himself and Tolstoy, who also bonded with nature and was so nice to his serfs.
The sun gleams off the kayak rack on his Land Rover as he walks gingerly around his trees, careful not to compact the soil over their roots. His garden has been subtly terraced, using recycled concrete risers taken from an old slaughterhouse. Rows of wildflowers are meticulously maintained alongside.
A sense of peace and beauty sweeps over him as he sees his wife practicing her flute on an old bench in the wood-sculpture garden. Since she became corresponding secretary of the Montana branch of the Urban League, she's had little time for self-expansion, and the winter will be busy when the bidding starts for her screenplay on the life of Bill McKibben, the Thoreau de notre temps who somehow manages to collect a living wage from the New Yorker (perhaps his paychecks arrive by oxcart). The Liberal Gentleman thinks it's good to see his wife getting in some artistic time, and she looks lovely in the oak-framed sunglasses she bought for only $ 135 from the Herrington catalogue.
The Liberal Gentleman ponders what to do with his afternoon. Paint? Prune? Go down to the Inipi? But soon a vague longing overcomes him. For to be an artist of the spirit, as all members of the Liberal Gentry are, is to be perpetually on the watch for ever deeper communion with the essence of Being. Somewhere out there in the infinity of Patagonia, there is a purer piece of wool outerwear, a more organic coffee bean, a more rustic pine table to be had, a more interesting way to recycle 19th-century fish netting into a shower curtain...
THE NAKED PUBLIC CAVE
APR 22, 1996
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES PRIDES ITSELF on being Sensitivity Central in American journalism. Its editor, Shelby Coffey III, created a media frenzy when he championed a new stylebook for the paper that epitomizes political correctness. What, then, explains the paper's decision to pull three "B. C." comic strips around Eastertime because of their religious content?
...
As usual, the effort to enhance diversity merely creates uniformity. Instead of living in a world of complicated and diverse religious sentiments, in the name of diversity the Times helps construct a public square that is monolithically secular.
HAVING MORAL SEX?
12:00 AM, SEP 18, 1995
You buy a brand of ice cream that sends proceeds to benefit the rain forest. You channel your savings into socially responsible investment funds. Your bath products do not rely on animal testing and you rarely go to a " rock concert that isn't sponsored by Amnesty International. Yet every other day, after the credits roll on Charlie Rose, you and your partner engage in an activity that has no social implications. For nearly an hour every week, you are expending energy in a way that will aid neither the endangered rain forests nor the oppressed women on the Indian subcontinent. Of course this puts a strain on a consciousness so finely tuned as your own.
Thank Gaia, the forces of social concern have enabled us to mobilize our commitment to larger 'moral questions every second of every day, including in our sex lives. In the back of magazines such as Mother Jones, Harper's and the New Republic, there are advertisements from organizations that can help us put our phallus in touch with our consciousness. Some of these organizations, such as Good Vibrations, sell the tools that allow "thinking persons" to experience sexual energies in enlightened ways. Journals such as Blue Moon and Libido merge sex and sensibility, and offer turn-ons that fuse with larger concerns, such as environmental degradation and income inequality. Finally, there are many how-to guides that offer exhaustive advice on performing sex acts in high-minded ways...
Religious Impulses, Good and Bad
The atheists attack the cross, the CFR folks attack soft money, and Jesse Ventura folds like a cheap tent.
12:00 AM, JUN 21, 2002
...It's true that environmentalism is pretty poor as religions go, since it produces little more than a series of "spiritual" moments before nature's beauty that don't accumulate to anything.
And just to insure that no "The Weekly Standard" reader could ever accuse him of being a little wobblie or light-in-the-wingnut-loafers, Mr. Brooks would sometimes take a day off from shitting on Liberals to fire a little shart in the direction of those mushy, Centrist, non-partisan , "no labels" types too:
THE LAND BEYOND LEFT AND RIGHT
OCT 2, 1995
People with definite creeds don't have to reinvent the wheel. Conservatives and liberals inherit intellectual traditions; they can learn from lines of thinkers who shared their basic precepts." Conservatives go around wearing Adam Smith neckties. They cite Burke or Jefferson or Aquinas. More recently, Milton Friedman, Lionel Trilling, James Burnham, and others did some heavy lifting; it's not necessary for today's conservatives to do it all over again. Beyondists have to start from scratch.
The labeled have an even greater advantage over the labelless. Liberals and conservatives join movements. A free marketeer can go anywhere in the world and have dinner with somebody from the local free market think tank -- in London, Jerusalem, Capetown. Domestically, conservative and liberal magazines form their own communities. Conferences and bulletin boards, parties and dinners reinforce the bonds. "
It is this web of friendships that gives a creed its dynamism. People gossip, people talk. Look at the newsletters put out by the CATO Institute or the American Enterprise Institute; there will be photos of politicians and think tankers and academics standing in happy conversational klatches, clutching cocktail glasses against their stomachs. That's a political movement in action.
One of the virtues of being a member of a movement is that it takes you outside your own narrow concerns and forces you to consider others unlike yourself. An evangelical Christian finds himself linked with, and learning from, Orange County libertarians and New York Jewish neoconservatives. This breeds a sense of tolerance for those whose brand of conservatism may differ. It also explains why members of the Christian Coalition are more tolerant of outsiders than outsiders are of them.
Beyondists point to contradictions between those who call themselves conservatives, and so declare that the labels have no meaning. Asking that categories be as rigorously enforceable as scientific taxonomy is asking too much. They are loose groupings -- conservatism emphasized Kempism in the 1980s and emphasizes Kasichery in the 1990s. They contain diversity (from Ralph Reed to P. J. O'Rourke) while maintaining solidarity.
Movements nurture the young. They offer mundane things like job opportunities, but they also impart education and give their members a sense of higher purpose. In the war of ideas, battalions do well. Each foot soldier makes an unconscious deal: He dispossesses himself of the privilege of being uncategorizable and completely autonomous, and in exchange he gets a place in the larger movement.
The Beyondists are above the compromise that membership in a movement entails, as they are beyond partisan politics. In short they are above the fray. At their worst, they seem like Kevin Phillips -- solitary complainers who inveigh against a world that will not live up to their standards. At their best they are acute observers, but observers only.
...
Then perhaps a refreshing pivot back to another example of our ongoing loss of National Greatness because of...uh...the Olympics!
Yeah!
Olympic Farce
Once upon a time, the Olympics were about patriotism and the celebration of virtue. Now they're a multi-culti festival.
11:01 PM, FEB 7, 2002
...there is a certain sort of person who chokes on the stark inequality that is inherent in competition--the fact that some are better than others. That sort of person only knows how to celebrate cooperation.
So now we have a whole propaganda machine built up to spread the distortion that the Olympics exist to bring people from all over the world together to enjoy togetherness--when the reality is that the Olympics are there to bring people from all over the world together so we can see who is best.
The propaganda machine reaches its climax during the only two ludicrous moments of the Olympic games, the opening and closing ceremonies. These ceremonies were fine when their major feature was the parade of nations. You could see the teams, the diversity of nations and cultures, the spirit of friendly but determined competition that is supposed to dominate the games. But over the years this parade has taken a back seat to the great propaganda show, often featuring cute children, multicultural cliches, and Up With People-style dance routines. The whole thing is designed to spread the message that we are all just one great big loving human family.
This is true on an abstract level--we do all share a common humanity--but in practice it's just sentimental goo. And we know it is sentimental goo because it is the kind of effortless emotion that is completely detached from real life situations and difficulties. What is happening to the Olympics globally is a large scale version of what happened to the Olympics in the Communist world during the Cold War.
Communism is predicated on this phony ethos built around equality, worker solidarity, and cooperation. Communists were not allowed to acknowledge any ethos that celebrated and thus regulated individual striving and accomplishment. So when Communist officials found themselves competing with the rest of the world, they cheated on a massive scale, pumping their athletes full of steroids, lying to their own athletes.
And then a short Public Service Message reminding all "Weekly Standard" readers that our Elite Beltway Overlords (into whose ranks Mr. Brooks has spent his entire adult life clawing himself) can never really be trusted because they are shallow, money-grubbing, status-obsessed twats::
THE TRAGEDY OF SID
MAY 6, 1996
Our editor, a composite, was suffering from Status-Income Disequilibrium (SID). The sufferers of this malady have jobs that give them high status but low income. They lunch on an expense account at The Palm, but dine at home on macaroni. All day long the phone-message slips pile up on their desks -- calls from famous people seeking favors -- but at night they realize the tub needs scrubbing, so it's down on the hands and knees with the Ajax. At work they are aristocrats, Kings of the Meritocracy, schmoozing with Felix Rohatyn. At home they are peasants, wondering if they can really afford to have orange juice every morning.
Status-Income-Disequilibrium sufferers include journalists at important media outlets, editors at publishing houses, TV news producers, foundation officers, museum curators, moderately successful classical-music performers, White House aides, military brass, politicians who aren't independently wealthy, and many others. Consider the plight of the army general, who can command the movements of 100,000 men during the week but stretches to afford a Honda Accord for weekend outings. Or of poor John Sununu, who ruled the world when he was White House chief of staff but had to feed, educate, and house eight children on $ 125,000 a year. The disparity is not to be borne.
There are two sides to the status/income equation. On one end is the Monied Class, those with plenty of dough who can use it to acquire status. But I am concerned with the Titled Class. Historically, when we think of the Grand Titles, we think of Prince, Duke, Earl, and Baron. But in the age of meritocracy, the Grand Titles are Senior Fellow, Editor in Chief, Assistant to the Secretary. Or titles that include an employer's name -- the New York Times, the White House, Knopf -- in which case it scarcely matters which position the individual holds.
The Titled Class has always resented and secretly envied the Monied Class. But for journalists, writers, and politicos, the pain now is acute. Until recently, a person who went into, say, the media understood that he or she would forever live a middle-class life. But now one need only look at Cokie Roberts or David Gergen to see that vast wealth is possible. Once it becomes plausible to imagine yourself pulling in $ 800,000 a year, the lack of that money begins to hurt.
...
For journalists, media types, and other SID sufferers, there is no easy solution at hand. One can envision the rare high-income/high-status people -- William F Buckley, Martin Peretz, Lewis Lapham -- getting together to form charitable organizations to benefit their deprived brethren. These organizations could give out prestigious awards to low-status billionaires. Or they could give six-bedroom homes to high-status/low-income types.
...
This Is Serious
Dominance for Republicans. Vindication for the president. And a good showing from the American people.
12:15 AM, NOV 6, 2002
Finally, never, ever, ever underestimate George W. Bush. It took me two years of being wrong about Bush before I finally got sick of it. The rest of the pundit class had better catch on. He is a leader of the first order...
... but a Great Man who is on his way to almost single-handedly purifying an Elite Institution so that it can get on with the business of restoring our National Greatness.
The Reemerging Republican Majority
Will Bush's popularity transform his party?
FEB 11, 2002
...
President Bush has broken the libertarian grip on the GOP.
Why Republicans Should Be Afraid
A lot can go wrong for them this fall.
JUL 29, 2002
...the Democrats seem to think that there is this organized entity called Corporate America, made up of senior executives, Republicans, white country clubbers, and people who were cheerleaders and prom kings in high school. If they can get the rest of the country to hate these people as much as they do, then they will win elections. Because they have this category in their heads, Democrats see the corporate scandals as tainting the whole Republican party.
But Americans who have not been suckled on the "Marx-Engels Reader" do not carry these categories around in their heads. They perceive no one organized entity, Corporate America, that ruthlessly exploits another, Ordinary Americans. Most people believe, rather, that there are some dishonest people who have done horrible things in corporate America. But also that George W. Bush is an admirable man who is doing his best for the country, even though he once worked for a corporation, and has friends who are in business. In other words, they see the scandals as a crisis of character, not a crisis of capitalism
And so, returning to the thesis of this essay, what we have just riffled through is a fair sampling of the public record of Mr. David Brooks, established during his career a Senior Editor for "The Weekly Standard".
This was Mr. Brooks' public resume, as it stood on the eve of the Invasion of Iraq.
Part II: The Man in the High Castle
With a Great Man in the White House, the Elite Institutions of the United States Congress and the Supreme Court safely in the hands of a Responsible Conservative Majority, and the invasion of Iraq smoothly underway, the harmonics among Mr. Brooks' three, perennial subjects finally fell into perfect synchronization. No longer would he need to scamper all over the map to glean stories that sorta fit his rigid, ideological template, or just make stuff up about smelly, wanton Hippies to keep his employer and his readers happy.
With the invasion of Iraq, Mr. Brooks was handed an unprecedented opportunity to moon over Great Men, rhapsodize about a Great Cause and slam the shit out of Dirty Hippies to his heart's content, all under one roof and all from the comfort of his own navel.
And he ran with it.
Cynics and the USS Abraham Lincoln
The pundits are so sophisticated that they see the Abraham Lincoln speech as nothing more than a campaign stump.
5:00 AM, MAY 2, 2003
BY DAVID BROOKS
BOY AM I in a terrible mood. I watched and listened to the punditry on President Bush's speech on the USS Lincoln. The people he was standing before have been away from their families for ten months. That's mothers away from their kids, fathers away from their kids, men an women away from their spouses, their mothers, fathers, and siblings. One hundred and fifty fathers on the Abraham Lincoln missed the birth of their child.
That's called sacrifice. Most of us are basket cases if we're on a business trip away from our families for four days. These people were gone nearly a year. And they did it to defend the country. They did it to liberate the people of Iraq, so that 25 million Iraqis would be emancipated from a sadistic regime, the greatest victory for human rights since the defeat of the Soviet Union.
And what do my fellow pundits say? They sit in the studios and point out sagely that the speech was a tremendous photo-op, and then they go home to the safety of their beds and the comfort of their families.
Somehow the sacrifice of those men and women never registers. It's not worth commenting on. The only thing that matters is that this was a campaign event and it's to be judged as just another rally on the way to the convention. The ship, the soldiers, the ocean--all of it is treated as mere bunting, as a Deaveresque device to provide pretty pictures. This is what passes for wisdom.
Now I'm not denying that this was in part a political event or that President Bush is a politician. But this was first an American event, a recognition of the noble deed this country is accomplishing. And it was an act of recognition for those soldiers, and through them all the soldiers who fought, including those who were injured and died.
And much of punditry treated those soldiers as mere props, as not even human. I understand that most pundits don't know too many of the people on that ship, but it doesn't take a huge act of imagination to feel what they have been through and to at least register their idealism and what they have suffered for it.
Somehow the cynicism and the churlishness of the savvy campaign commentator makes that impossible.
...
It's Back
The socialism of fools has returned to vogue not just in the Middle East and France, but in the American left and Washington.
11:00 PM, FEB 20, 2003
...
I mentioned that I barely know Paul Wolfowitz, which is true. But I do admire him enormously, not only because he is both a genuine scholar and an effective policy practitioner, not only because he has been right on most of the major issues during his career, but because he is now the focus of world anti-Semitism. He carries the burden of their hatred, which emanates not only from the Arab world and France, but from some people in our own country, which I had so long underestimated.
Optimism Rediscovered
From the April 4, 2003 London Times:
Suddenly, things don't look so grim.
10:25 AM, APR 6, 2003
...
Second, one hears of a growing distaste for the peace marchers, again from people who don't necessarily support the President. Their objections are not so much substantive as tonal. These peace marchers seem driven by bile and self-righteousness, and are fundamentally out of step with a country that wants, now that the war is on, to back the troops.
In short, the mood feels a bit as it it did after September 11. Americans are pulling together. There is a yearning to perform some act of public service. There is greater revulsion at those who are trying to divide the country. There is no tolerance for alienated poses.
But like so many Conservatives, Mr. Brooks' most giddy obsession during these critical years was speculating on the exact size and velocity of the Hell the Dirty Hippies were going to catch -- and how warped and pathetic their vicious, mindless denial would be -- now that they had been proven wrong!-wrong!-wrong! Because (in case you weren't there or don't remember), during this period Conservatives like Mr. Brooks genuinely believed that the
Conservative Millennium was at hand -- that in the Bush Presidency and the Iraq War they had at last found their Movement's Holy Grail: a final, irrefutable, public, slam-dunk vindication of their Grand Unifying Theory that Dirty Hippies really are awful people who really do hate America, are responsible for every bad thing that has every happened and deserving of every horrible thing that
Conservatives like Mr. Brooks had ever said about them.
And once again, the nakedly opportunistic David Brooks grabbed that grail with both hands and gleefully beat the shit out of the Dirty Hippies with it.
Today's Progressive Spirit
The scenes in Baghdad flow from understandings realized at the American founding.
1:00 PM, APR 9, 2003
...
I'm curious about how all the war opponents are going to react if things continue to go well. Sure, they opposed Saddam, they will say. They just didn't want to do anything about him. They had no practical suggestion for how to end his murderous reign and spread freedom. They were tolerant. Tolerant of tyranny. They doubted, and continue to doubt America's willingness and ability to serve as a force for good in the world. That was their crucial mistake.
I suspect they will not even now admit their errors. I doubt the people of Europe will say: We were wrong. You really are the liberators of the Iraqi people. I doubt the Arab propagandists will say: We will never spread such distortions again. We will never again be so driven by resentment and dishonesty.
Sad to say, human nature doesn't work that way. The rump 15 percent of Americans who still oppose this war may perhaps grow more bitter, lost in the cul-de-sac of their own alienation.
The Phony Debate
The pundits are arguing about everything except what's interesting.
MAR 31, 2003
AS I WRITE, a couple of days into the war, the hawks are optimistic and the liberals are bracing to get beaten about with sticks. The hawks are optimistic because the Iraqi regime seems to be crumbling. None of the terrible things the doves predicted has yet come to pass: no mass riots on the Arab street, no coup in Pakistan or Jordan, no Scuds landing on Tel Aviv, no surge in oil prices, no fierce resistance from the Iraqis, either from the soldiers or the men in the streets. "Surging hope" is how Andrew Sullivan describes his mood.
Meanwhile on the left, it's like settling in for a long, cold winter. "Brace yourself for a round of I-told-you-sos from Iraq hawks," Robert Wright writes in Slate. "In the foreseeable future," Al Hunt concedes in the Wall Street Journal, "the Bush critics will be very much on the defensive."
War opponents emphasize that while things might go well in the short term, in the long term, Iraq is likely to be a mess.
Honorable liberals also find themselves twisted into an emotional pretzel, hoping that their forebodings about the war are proven wrong, but not quite looking forward to a moment when Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz might be proven right.
...
The Fog of Peace
The evasions, distractions, and miasma of the anti-war left...
And, holy fuck, yet again.
The Collapse of the Dream Palaces
Mass destruction of mistaken ideas.
APR 28, 2003
...
Now that the war in Iraq is over, we'll find out how many people around the world are capable of facing unpleasant facts. For the events of recent months confirm that millions of human beings are living in dream palaces, to use Fouad Ajami's phrase. They are living with versions of reality that simply do not comport with the way things are. They circulate and recirculate conspiracy theories, myths, and allegations with little regard for whether or not these fantasies are true. And the events of the past month have exposed them as the falsehoods they are.
...
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.
My third guess is that the Bush haters will grow more vociferous as their numbers shrink. Even progress in Iraq will not dampen their anger, because as many people have noted, hatred of Bush and his corporate cronies is all that is left of their leftism. And this hatred is tribal, not ideological. And so they will still have their rallies, their alternative weeklies, and their Gore Vidal polemics. They will still have a huge influence over the Democratic party, perhaps even determining its next presidential nominee. But they will seem increasingly unattractive to most moderate and even many normally Democratic voters who never really adopted outrage as their dominant public emotion.
In other words, there will be no magic "Aha!" moment that brings the dream palaces down. Even if Saddam's remains are found, even if weapons of mass destruction are displayed, even if Iraq starts to move along a winding, muddled path toward normalcy, no day will come when the enemies of this endeavor turn around and say, "We were wrong. Bush was right." They will just extend their forebodings into a more distant future. Nevertheless, the frame of the debate will shift. The war's opponents will lose self-confidence and vitality. And they will backtrack. They will claim that they always accepted certain realities, which, in fact, they rejected only months ago.
And so, returning once again to our thesis, what you have slogged through (bless your heart!) is
Mr. Brooks' public resume as it stood at the apotheosis of Bush Era Conservative Triumphalism.
As it stood at the very moment that the "The New York Times" offered him the job of a lifetime atop one of the most prominent and influential media platforms on Earth.
And then history happened, and all of it fell apart.
Part III: Total Recall
No. Not "fell apart".
So, so much worse than "fell apart".
You Bought it. Now Live In It.
...in five short years, the Moderates have lived to become everything they detest. Every word of clucking reproach they yelped in snickering glee during the Clinton Age has gotten caught up in the Bush Treason Cyclotron, sped up to light-speed, and is now coming screaming back at them like a sack of radioactive axe-heads.
Their worst nightmare is in the process of coming true, big as a mountain in stilettos, carrying a sledgehammer in one hand and a 40-foot-long straight razor in the other, and there is not shit all they can do about it. Because everything they believed or touted or crowed about or tried to rub in our faces is in the process of coming down around their ears.
Every. Single. Thing.
Every justification that they were fed about their Great Ay-rab Safari is now spilling out into the sunlight and can clearly be seen -- even from High Earth Orbit -- to have been a willful lie.
The leaders who swore to them it was holy and justified to scream their lungs bloody in ecstasy at the thought of their two dearest fantasies -- piles of dead brown people and Low! Low! Gas prices -- coming to pass in One Glorious War are outed as a Confederacy of traitors and liars and fools.
Their pet media, nothing but perambulating pustules, refilled with hate and mendacity every night by White House messengers.
That they have never been anything to the GOP but chumps: little sacs of cash and votes and “mandate” to be squeezed dry with impunity, because Moderates are basically beat-down whores who will always go wriggling back to their abusers.
But now it’s not one thing that’s melting down; it’s everything. The serial cons that have kept the grubby Mods goggle-eyed and heroin-loyal are all falling apart simultaneously and there’s nothing but decibels left in the Shiny Object Bag to keep them from noticing the awful truth.
That their Leaders are traitors.
Their heroes are liars.
Their dogma is a joke.
Their President is a feeble-minded creep who has fucked up everything he has ever touched.
It’s as if their mothers suddenly ripped of rubber masks and have shown themselves to be the spree killers they’ve always been.
How terrifying that must be. I mean, I’m wrong about a lot of stuff...but everything?
Every God Damned Thing?
And worse – so very much worse – not only were they utterly wrong about everyfuckingthing, but the Evil Liberals were right all along.
The big picture. The fussy details. The arithmetic. The real, racist heart of the GOP. The various myriad, casual betrayals by the Bush White House.
All of it.
The Liberals were right, and the Moderates had been given no fewer than 30 years of warning that this is precisely where their idiocy would land us.
I can’t even imagine how it must feel to know at some level that your whole world is a farce, and your whole belief system is a Ponzi Scheme run on you by thugs who never gave a shit about you, or your family or your dearest peon dreams.
...
