Tuesday, February 16, 2016

David Brooks On How To Fail To Recognize Different Types Of Presidential Candidates From Quite A Long Way Away



If this seems like a rerun, it's because it is.   Recycling his own, shitty column from just three weeks ago, David Brooks once again brings the full weight of his status as Beltway Very Serious Pundit Number One to bear on the task of making sure that everyone one Earth believes that Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are basically the same person.

Because for the political establishment's most reliable hand-towel, unprincipled political myopia is not just a river in Egypt!

Hillary, for you the whirlwind is Bernie Sanders. For the rest of you it’s Donald Trump...

Trump has no actual policies and Sanders has little chance of getting his passed.

And yet the supporters don’t care. Sanders and Trump...

...the Trump and Sanders phenomena.

In debates Sanders is uninhibited by the constraints of reality, so his answers are always bolder. Trump speaks from the id, not from any policy paper, so his answers are always more vivid.

Many Americans feel like they are the victims of a slow-moving natural disaster. Sanders and Trump...

I’d love to see one of you counter the Trump and Sanders emotional tones with a bold shift in psychology...

Let Trump and Sanders shout, harangue and lecture...

Let them [Trump and Sanders] deliver long, repetitive and uninterrupted lectures...

Let them [Trump and Sanders] stand angry and solitary. You run as part of a team, a band of brothers...

Let them [Trump and Sanders] assert that all our problems can be solved if other people sacrifice...

Let them [Trump and Sanders] emphasize the cold relations of business (Trump) or of the state (Sanders)...

Let them [Trump and Sanders] preach pessimism...

Sanders and Trump have adopted emotional tones that are going to offend and exhaust people over time.
And Mr. Brooks' solution to this rampant Trump-'n-Sanderism?

Everybody else should be more like Ike and FDR.  You know, sunny and inclusive and not proposing any crazy shit that might make the plutocrats who Mr. Brooks so obsequiously serve nervous.
A great nation doesn’t divide in times of natural disaster. It doesn’t choose leaders who angrily tear it apart. Instead, it chooses leaders like Franklin Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, leaders who radiate sunny confidence, joy and neighborliness.
First, we are not experiencing a natural disaster.  We are experiencing a wholly man-made, catastrophic and comprehensive failure of Mr. Brooks' Conservatism at every level.

Second, if Mr. Brooks is going to commit such naked journalistic malpractice as citing sunny old FDR's as an example of the Anti-Sanders while deliberately omitting the fact that not only did FDR propose things like a Bill of Economic Rights which would have made Mr. Brooks head explode. but who openly who declared war on plutocrats and "organized money" and stated unambiguously that he welcomed their hatred...

...then someone really needs to take a closer look at the bachelor's degree in history Mr. Brooks was awarded by the University of Chicago 



From FDR announcing the Second New Deal, October 31, 1936:
...
We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace--business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering.

They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.

Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me--and I welcome their hatred...
And Eisenhower?  

Eisenhower earned the trust of the America people by killing fascists, you weaselly little twat, not by stooging for them in the pages of the New York Times,

10 comments:

Neo Tuxedo said...

Number one: The larch.

Dave McCarthy said...

Lighten up, Francis!

trgahan said...


Eisenhower also told us to beware of the U.S. Military Industrial Complex during a time in the Cold War the U.S. and USSR were most equal militarily.

Imagine what Mr. Brooks would have said to that today since the Beltway punditry lambasted Obama for "destroying our military" by canceling (temporality thanks to 2010 midterms) ONE failed fighter development program.

dinthebeast said...

Sounds like DFB has gotten into the Jake again, hope it's not the contaminated kind for his sake, but damned if it doesn't sound like it was the bad stuff...

-Doug in Oakland

bowtiejack said...

FDR , , , "Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob."

Right you are FDR! Nevertheless what we now have is a gang-ruled economy.
The Wall Street gangsters get to exact their tribute out of the hides of the little people. And get reimbursed and made whole if they somehow fuck up. The little people get to lose their houses, go bankrupt and die. O yeah, Wall Street can borrow Fed funds at 1% and rent them to you for 27%. Now that's sweet , right?
The Pharma gangsters get to extort whatever price they want, although "Crazy Marty" Shkreli is bringing down a little heat on that. It'll pass.
The NRA gangsters get to sell whatever heaters, roscoes and choppers they want to whoever they want, no questions asked. You questioning Grandma's right to have an AK-47 with a banana clip, commie?
The Media gangsters got to get a cut in the middle if you want like Internet or a cell phone or cable or something, you know? Only communists want stuff like free Internet or equal access or high-speed like commie countries for everybody. The mob's got a lot of wire and cable in the ground; it's shit, but it's their shit so you have to pay.
The Insurance gangsters got to get a piece if you want health coverage. Fair's fair, amirite? Those mooks at Medicare got like 4% overhead? Everybody knows the right number should be about 25-30%. This is America, not Russia.
The Prison gangsters got a sweet deal where they get paid premium to lock up other criminals.
The Education gangsters got the sweetest of all. A bunch of 20-year olds with a hook in them they'll never get out and very nice vigorish. The late Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky could tell you how good the numbers on that are.
If the knife goes in on the Post Office as planned with this pension thing, the Delivery gangsters stand to clean up. $0.49 for a letter? Are you fucking kidding me? That should be $7.00 at least.
Forget that entrepreneur horse shit. What you want is get yourself a spot in the middle - couple of dollars comes by, you grab one for yourself. It’s called “financialization”.
And there’s a line in at city hall. It’s easy to do business with any of these up and coming GOP gofers. Just remember, the secret password is "freedom".
It's a wonderful country for a couple hundred made guys. Everybody else, maybe not so much.

bluicebank said...

I read Drift because he does the heavy lifting, i.e., actually reading what David Brooks types. And distilling that into something that won't burn through my intestines.

So I'll steal a little from what I would give to Bernie this month, and send ya a bit again. Thanks for doing a yeoman's job.

Robt said...

Can you believe I find myself in disagreement with Brooks.
There is Trump.
and there is Sanders.

Sanders is coming from the same place he was but only wiser.

Trump, I am not really sure from here. He seems to be a shapeshifter orbiting the conservative Id.. Then as Cheney said, "Trump is a liberal".

Brooks' illegitimate cry for reality is actually that of a rodent eating its way through the wall board to get at the moldy cheese on the Rat Trap.




fish said...

Also too, Eisenhower warning against the Military/Industrial Complex:

https://youtu.be/8y06NSBBRtY

Davis said...

Then FDR said:

I should like to have it said of my first Administration that in it the forces of selfishness and of lust for power met their match. I should like to have it said of my second Administration that in it these forces met their master.

Sounds like Bernie all right.

Batocchio said...

His buddy Douthat was pulling a similar shtick not long ago -- pondering what motivated Trump and Sanders supporters, let never mentioning their actual, clearly stated positions -- bigotry for Trump, and fighting inequality for Sanders. But for Douthat, for professional reasons, it's all a big fucking mystery.