Friday, October 16, 2015

The Moral Schizophrenia of David Brooks



Four days ago, Mr. David Brooks had a very public meltdown in the pages of the New York Times, lamenting that his Republicans party had become a shithole of incompetent, bombastic monsters and "masters at destruction" who "can’t even acknowledge democracy’s legitimacy" and for whom:
Compromise is corruption. Inconvenient facts are ignored. Countrymen with different views are regarded as aliens. Political identity became a sort of ethnic identity, and any compromise was regarded as a blood betrayal.
And now, four days later, Mr. Brooks has the fucking nerve to declare that Bernie Sanders is not a serious candidate for president because he refuses to embrace the Republican's latest Rovian ratfuckery: whanging away at Hillary Clinton over the damn emails.

Using Fox News' own perennially favorite phrase for cowardly Liberals -- "raising the white flag of surrender" -- Mr. Brooks bashes Senator Sanders for not morphing into Trey Gowdy in order to Atwater his way to victory.

The fun begins at around the 3:20 mark:


Brooks: The one advantage the Republicans have is that a bunch of them want to be president. On the Democratic side it appears only one person wants to president, and that's Hillary Clinton.

Crosstalk

Moderator: There's going to be a lot of Bernie Sanders who are going to disagree.

Brooks: Then why doesn't he challenge her? His one... just as a matter of political tactics, uh, he really has only one avenue, uh, to beat her and I don't think it's going to be ideological. People are going to have to decide she's not trustworthy enough, she's not viable enough, on character and personal grounds to be elected. And when he takes the email off the table, uh, he's really taking away that lever. And, so, I think he basically raised the white flag of surrender and really strongly and very powerfully diminished any chance he might have had of getting the nomination.


Later that same day on PBS we find Mr. Brooks doing what he does best: redacting inconvenient parts of his own immediate past in order to further advance a fundamentally terrible idea:



Brooks still stuck with the Rove/Limbaugh-trademarked line about the Senator Sanders running up the "white flag of surrender" for not going after Secretary Clinton over her character and trustworthiness --
DAVID BROOKS: ...But the other factor is, the Republicans are actually arguing and fighting with each other. And what I saw up there was Hillary Clinton performing extremely well, and four other guys lying down and let her, letting her have the nomination. It’s like Bernie Sanders held up the white flag of surrender when he refused to really go after her on the character and moral issue, which is his only way in.
-- but he was now denying that he was in any way suggesting that Senator Sanders should have fallen in with Trey Gowdy's despicable email witch-hunt...
DAVID BROOKS: He doesn’t have to go after her on e-mails. Democrats don’t want to talk about e-mails. But he has to go after her on the only piece of leverage he has. I don’t think he is going to win because he’s further to her left. He has to win because somehow she’s seen not quite — we’re not quite sure if she’s trustworthy, electable...
...even though, just hours earlier, that was, word for word --
And when he takes the email off the table, uh, he's really taking away that lever. And, so, I think he basically raised the white flag of surrender
-- exactly what he was saying.

One of the great liberties of being David Brooks must undoubtedly come from the sure and certain knowledge that your colleagues are such useless, timorous blobs of pusillanimity that you are absolutely guaranteed to never be held accountable by any of them for anything you ever say or do.

Speaking of which...

As I mentioned up top. it's now been four days since America's Most Ubiquitous Conservative Public Intellectual took his Mighty and Unequivocal Dump on the Republican Party in the pages of the New York Times, thus upending the entire Both Siderist scam which has been the bread and butter and mortgage payments of the Beltway media since the Clinton years.   

And thus far, none of the Village media elite has dared to touch a word of it with a barge pole. 

And I doubt they will.  

Because the privileged, inbred, dysfunctional Village deals with periodic, embarrassing truthblurts from members of their clan in the same way the privileged, inbred, dysfunctional Cleary family dealt with granny's periodic, wildly inappropriate outbursts in front of company in the Wedding Crashers: by bundling the offender off to bed and pretending it neeeeever happened:



11 comments:

waldo said...

Bernie's integrity and truthfulness are as clear as crystal, and shine like a diamond against Brooks' cowardice, selfishness and moral vacuity

I'm really happy to see your support for Bernie. I'm hoping you'll get aboard the "Honesty in Politics train' and join the Bloggers for Bernie coalition. Would you like our newsletter? : )

Mark W. Schumann said...

Brooks: "People are going to have to decide she's not trustworthy enough, she's not viable enough, on character and personal grounds to be elected."

Otherwise known as negative campaigning.

Unknown said...

Bernie refuses to get into the gutter with the rest of the rabble. My view of him improved immensely.

Unknown said...

Bobo is having his Sully outburst. Bernie doesn't have to touch a hair on Hillary's head to get his message across, and he has a ton of money to hammer away at the Right 24/7. He did bring up Wall Street with her, but that is not something that the GOP or the wants to talk about. But bashing Bernie is completely loopy way at trying to get at Hillary. The Bobos of the world don't know how to put the shattered GOP back together again, and Democrats are largely strife-free. The media has their knickers in a twist: they need to stitch the Frankenparty together and jolt it back to life (talk about the electric bill!) so they can sell the fiction of Hegelian symmetry... or something, something, "both sides." Then Trump comes out with, "Dubya is responsible for 9/11" == the fusebox blows and more fires for Beltway pundits to put out. There lies the GOP in five dismembered parts, twitching, smoking, steaming, but with no central nervous system.

dinthebeast said...

Yet another germane Zappa-ism:

So what? What can you say?
So long as the trash gets picked up
So long as the trash gets locked up
Just so the trash don't stack up
Some day you won't be on page three
Or page four anymore


-Doug in Oakland

SamB said...

It doesn't occur to Brooks that Bernie cares more about the future of this country than about his own ambitions. For Bernie to pile on Hillary would only help Republicans steal the 2016 election. Bernie is running for the purpose of building a movement that can take power from the plutocrats. We know because he says that a lot. Brooks can't fathom that because he doesn't want to.

bluicebank said...

Well, in all fairness to DF Brooks, these ARE the MSN marching orders: Bash Bernie as often as possible. True, they have a raging hate-on for Hillary, but Bernie scares the bejesus out of them entitled douche nozzles.

They hate Bern because his success made their tea leaves reading look bad. That, and he looks like a commie and might just be a member. (nod to Bob Seger, "Get out of Denver."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2KMl_vFAuU

Ivory Bill Woodpecker said...

William Greider goes full Driftglass, though he was more or less there already.

Robt said...

I am not concerned that Sanders or any other Democratic candidate would impale themselves with the advice of David Brooks.
Brooks is feeling the Bern in my estimation.
Brooks will never achieve the "majority maker" as the well financed American version of the corporate version of a NAZI propagandist. Worshiping his political ideology when his God of faith commands , do not pray to false idols".
Brooks finds himself unable to identify with most of his political religious congregation.

He is now an establishment elite writing with a pen of a "Squish" to a RHINO audience.

Davis said...

Is Hillary really less "trustworthy" than JEB!, or any other Republican running?

Robt said...

On the Question --Davis Statton
(if I may)

*Both siderism eval;
Both have are politicians, have ties to Wall Street, Are in established political parties, have big donor money, have been in the public eye in one way or another for some time.

A couple of obvious differences;

* Who would you prefer to nominate a justice to the SCOTUS?
Want a Scalia, Thomas or Alito, Or do you prefer a Ginsberg, Kagan or Sotomayor template?

*Which one would privatize Social Security?
*Which economic policies would require the middle class and poor to pay off the debt and excuse the wealthy.

-- On the Middle East sand trap

Jeb!
Does he have something to prove like his brother and dad when it comes to the Middle east and we know the influence Saudi Arabia has on the Bush family. Everything JEB! implies ends with military force and unlimited endless defense spending. While cutting taxes for a certain economic class of people. It won't be for ALL Americans in my perspective.

Hillary
Will her gender as female cause her as 1st female Commander in Chief to be overly aggressive to prove a female can handle the task to contemplate force.
Stand up to the propaganda of weak when military force is not the viable lst resort? (It may not be a fair question in many regards, it is a matter of fact for a first female President of the U.S.A.) Her term at the State Dept. does provide positive insight.

Note; Whoever is elected will be involved in the middle east.
To what extent? To escalate? Use specialized forces and targeting? Considering the cost in Treasured lives and financial security of the U.S. ?