David Brooks: The Great Project Continues, Continued

I am the Rug Man.

They are the Rug Men.

I am the Wingnut.

Coo coo cachoo

Longtime readers know that I harbor this nutty and ridiculously well-documented theory that Mr, David Brooks of the New York Times has been engaged in a vast conspiracy to radically redact the entire history of Modern Conservatism.  And while at times my language has been sharp and pungent, I am quite serious about the core premise. This is quite clearly what he is doing, and spinning this ridiculous fairy tale over and over again for the benefit of his Beltway co-conspirators and America's richest and most luxuriously cocooned white people is quite clearly an immensely profitable enterprise.

Which brings us to today, and the roughly 10,000 email I have received since last night saying, in summary, "Holy shit, DG.  Brooks has finally killed the last of the Centrist mezcal and is eating the fucking worm.  When you are going to post about this?" followed by a buncha swears and a sweet job offer from the New York Times an offer for 10% off pants from Jack Threads (you click on one goddamn Twitter link and you pay for it for the rest of your life.)

Anyway, yeah, David Brooks is back to writing the same drecky Whig fan fiction about the Inevitable Rise Of An Unstoppable Army Of Imaginary Reasonable Republicans Who Will Bring Order To The Galaxy that he has been predicting virtually every week at least since the late 1990s.

And so, according to America's most ubiquitous Conservative public intellectual, the aforementioned Unstoppable Army Of Imaginary Reasonable Republicans will eliminate the threat of Donald Trump forever because...

A little while ago I went rug shopping. Four rugs were laid out on the floor and among them was one with a pink motif that was dazzlingly beautiful. It was complex and sophisticated. If you had asked me at that moment which rug I wanted, I would have said the pink one.

This conviction lasted about five minutes. But then my mentality flipped and I started asking some questions. Would the furniture go with this rug? Would this rug clash with the wall hangings? Would I get tired of its electric vibrancy?

Suddenly a subtler and more prosaic blue rug grabbed center stage...

Rug advice.

From the guy whose signature style used to be an unending parade of the ugliest fluorescent pink ties in the Western hemisphere.



Alrighty then!

Anyway, Trump cannot possible win because...

Human beings have multiple selves. The mind dances from this module to that module. When Montaigne tried to describe his mind, he wrote...

I get the feeling that Mr. Brooks hopes this kinda smoove talkin' this will ease some gullible co-ed somewhere out of her pants.

Help him forget his ruined marriage.

You know, I'd rather not think about it.

So let's get back to Trump!

For example, there are two contrasting types of decision-making mentalities, maximizing and satisficing. If you’re choosing a marriage partner...

Oh Jebus, Brooks.  You know, if you were going to spend the morning crying and tugging it to "Separate Lives" again, you should have locked the goddamn bathroom door!

Everyone just back quietly out of the room and let Mr. Brooks have his privacy.

So, having rambled through his sublimated sartorial choices and favorite sad bastard music, America's most ubiquitous Conservative public intellectual eventually emerges from the bathroom, flings the following gob of words onto the the page, and runs away:

The voting booth focuses the mind. The experience is no longer about self-expression and feeling good in the moment. It’s about the finger on the nuclear trigger for the next four years. In an era of high anxiety, I doubt Republican voters will take a flyer on their party’s future — or their country’s future.

It is late in the day, and I have been running around most of the morning, so I have not kept up with what the Usual Suspects have had to say about any of this.  

All I know for sure is that I would pay real American money if, just once, on some program somewhere, after the lavishly remunerated Mr. Brooks once again piously unspooled another several dozen board feet of his utterly played-out, horseshit, someone would look him right in the eye and...