10 Years After: 2011 -- David Brooks: A Bagman For All Seasons

The 10th blogiversary fundraiser continues with 2011:  Trench Warfare.

By 2011, the shadow of David Brooksism filled all things.

Which meant that he could get away with murder.

And since I still walked the Brooks Beat pretty much alone, I kept busy.

But soon, there would be another... :-)

Meanwhile...

After President Obama mildly rebuked the GOP for being, y'know, insane and wantonly destructive David Brooks pitched a public and hilarious hissy ("The Man Who Mistook His President for a Hat".)  

Somewhat later, he learned to love again.

In 2011, Mr. Brooks continued to lament the White Man's Burden.  Continued to fail to realize he was dead.   And he showed America on the Anatomically Correct Doll exactly where Noam Chomsky touched him.

But mostly it was the year when all of Mr. Brooks' batshit chickens came home to roost.

As His Batshit Chickens Come Home To Roost


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. 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 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.

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.)