Why is this election so close?
I'm glad you asked!
Because it turns out that America's most recent, self-anointed Hero of the Work Man -- Mr. David Brooks, Sage of the Acela Corridor -- also just happens to be America's most recent, self-anointed Speaker For Millennials.
So how lucky are we!
I mean, imagine the astronomical odds against the New York Times managing to find someone who has worked his entire adult life to claw his way into a tiny, privileged, white, Republican bubble of senators and presidents and CEOs ... and then discovering at this late date that he is also somehow America's Greatest Expert on the innermost dreads of America's working class and the secret hopes and fears of America's youth.
And yet in the person of Mr. David Brooks -- who trails behind him a long and disastrous record of being spectacularly wrong about nearly everything about -- the New York Times would have us believe that Mr. David Brooks contains such legions and is willing to share the pungent, distilled wisdom of his many years
And if you can't trust the New York Time when then, by-god, what have we become as a nation, especially when it comes so highly recommended!
David Brooks writes today about Clinton's outdated "calendar."— Adam White (@adamjwhitedc) September 23, 2016
The metaphor's a good one, as I noted last year: https://t.co/TQ4ZaAaY3M
Yes, by once again carefully averting his eyes from the true nature of his Republican Party as it actually exists in the real world, Mr. David Brooks of the New York Times has found yet another way to recycle the same comforting, watery poo he has been selling to New York plutocrats for years:
Tyler Cowen recently gathered some of the more interesting theories on his blog Marginal Revolution: America is not ready for a woman president. The Democrats have a lot of policy proposals, but the Republicans are running on big ideas. A more diverse country is a more fractious and polarized country, and over the past few weeks white Republicans have been coming home to their candidate.Yes, it's definitely not because the Republican Party is full of bigots, but rather...
I see some truth in those theories, especially the last one. But my single explanation would be this: Clintonworld is a semi-closed system that operates according to its own calendar. Donald Trump is egregious, but at least he’s living in the 21st century, as was Bernie Sanders. Clintonworld operates according to its own time-space continuum that is slightly akilter from our own...
In the 21st century, politics operates around a different axis. It’s not left/right, big government/small government. It’s openness and dynamism versus closedness and security...Yes, because we would absolutely not want to look too closely at that whole "left/right" thingie and figure out if maybe one side of that political couplet might be horribly fucked up and full of awful people who believe crazy things. So instead...
In the 21st century, the parties are amassing different coalitions. People are dividing along human capital lines...And sadly, "Clintonworld" is outta touch and outta time...
Clintonworld is a decades-old interlocking network of donors and friends that hasn’t quite caught up to these fundamental shifts. That’s because Clintonworld, in the Hillary iteration, is often defensive, distrusting and oriented around avoiding errors...Even her money people and supporters reek of mothballs and knee-braces and Carter's Little Liver Pills!
Her donor base and fund-raising style is out of another era. Obama and Sanders tapped into the energized populist base, but Clinton has Barbra Streisand, Cher and a cast of Wall Street plutocrats.Except, of course, none of that is exactly true.
Yes, Clinton does have a lot of the traditional party power-brokers behind her, because that's what political parties are for you idiot! But apparently Mr. Brooks has not noticed that trend-setting populist heroes of his New Populist America -- President Obama and Senator Sanders -- are both energetically campaigning for Hillary Clinton. Apparently Mr. Brooks has also not noticed how smartly and aggressively Secretary Clinton's team has been reaching out to young people -- to young women especially. Apparently the imaginary hipster bar where Mr. Brooks has been rapping with Today's Youth about Hillary lacks both teevee and wifi so he could not see ads like which show the doddering Clintonworld geezers who are lining up to support Hillary Clinton:
Apparently Mr. David Brooks has also failed to notice that Donald Trump's "energizes" his bigot base by heaving great big slabs of rancid hate-meat to them -- telling them monstrous lies and making ludicrous promises about which they are too stupid or berserk to care either way.
And this is the most deeply troubling part of all, because Mr David Brooks -- who studied history as a young man -- must recognize the ancient and terrible forces which his Republican Party has been cultivating for decades. But apparently the everyday, horrid realities of his Republican Party are not in his department -- as they rumble past his Quiet Car on the Acela Corridor packed tight with the groaning remains of our democracy, they're just another long string of cattle cars off to somewhere unspeakable, and Mr. Brooks is simply not at all interested in questions about who laid those tracks, who is driving that train and what awaits its passengers at the end of the line,
Mr. David Brooks works very, very hard every day not to think about such things, preferring instead to bring his beautiful mind to bear on thoughts like these:
Her campaign proposals sidestep the cutting issues that have driven Trump, Sanders, Brexit and the other key movements of modern politics. Her ideas for reducing poverty are fine, but they are circa Ed Muskie: more public works jobs, housing tax credits, more money for Head Start...And best of all. this:
Don’t get me wrong. I still think she’ll eke out a win. I just hope her administration is less fogyish than her campaign.Yes citizens, this was the day when Mr. David Brooks -- America's Most Respected Concatenation of Ear Wax, Cobwebs and Moldering Clippings of David Broder Columns from the Bloomington, Illinois Pantagraph -- called someone else "fogyish". Mark this day down; you'll want to tell your grand-kids where you were when it happened.
Meanwhile, the usually reticent Sam Stein had finally had enough and busted out on Morning Joe with the Big, Scary Truth that Mr. David Brooks of the New York Times has devoted his life to not mentioning (from Blue Gal at Crooks & Liars):
...Someone should warn Sam Stein that he is never gonna score that Big Job at the New York Times
And Sam Stein makes a distinction then between a real estate agent from Ohio and a US Congressman. But then he says this:
"This all goes into a bigger conversation about ...you know, we were talking about deplorables a couple of weeks ago, right? And clearly Clinton erred in saying the fifty percent and the irredeemable part. But there is racism in this country, that people are not exactly confronting, that has been brought up a bit more to the surface by this campaign, and the candidacy in specific. And you know, we're not really talking about it in a confrontational way, in a direct way, that we should, because we're too nervous to tip-toe around the term 'deplorable,' but that's there."And then Elise Jordan flips it to a completely unrelated, though important, issue.
"Well, just the empowerment of the alt-right in the Republican Party this election season. The lunatics are running the asylum. This is unacceptable, everyone in the Republican Party needs to say this is unacceptable, This is not my party, I cannot be a part of this party, if this is the party we have become. It is absolutely reprehensible and against everything the Republican Party can and should stand for."
11 comments:
Good morning, Mr. Glass.
While I'm perfectly willing to admit that Mrs. Clinton might fall into the Gore/Kerry trap of trying to sell broccoli to people who want cocaine, Mr. Brooks makes Mr. Trump sound like the Harlequin from "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman."
Sometimes the rebel isn't the good guy. You'd figure conservatives, who by definition are supposed to be driven to preserve the status quo, would get that.
Be seeing you.
" oriented around avoiding errors..."
Because the last thing we want in a President is someone who is " oriented around avoiding errors..."
David Brooks is wrong about the Republican party. They're not the party of big ideas. Their nominee would crash the economy, explode the deficit and alienate our allies. They have hate and fear and not much else.
I'm not sure what the estimable Mr. Brooks believes the US government actually does, or what the running of it entails, or what would or would not constitute valuable characteristics in the person elected to do said running, but I'm just really not seeing anything in his writing that indicates he has even the merest of clues about the above subjects.
There, I did it. I didn't use the word "bugger" or "moron" or even "fuck"...
-Doug in Oakland
"Her donor base and fund-raising style is out of another era. Obama and Sanders tapped into the energized populist base, but Clinton has Barbra Streisand, Cher and a cast of Wall Street plutocrats." Says Brooksie, without noting that her donor base and cast of plutocrats also includes half of the Republican establishment.
How does DFB reconcile his sneeringly condescending distaste for old fogey geezer detail oriented Granma Clinton's worthlessly outdated & pathetically boring & stupid campaign with the unreservedly ringing glowing endorsement of Clinton in today's NYT??
Cognitive dissonance much Grey Lady?
Well it appears that the same money boys who put Cruz's weenie balls in a vise to endorse KKK Grand Master Trump are the same money boys who did the same vise treatment to DFB's even weenier balls.
Has DFB not noticed that a large portion of the GOP establishment has endorsed Clinton? Does DFB really want to cast his lot with likes of Tundra Trash & Dead Breitbart.
Hoo boy. Thanks for the warning you unethical bigoted unpatriotic know nothing dullard asshole.
Brooks is double wrong, clearly. He decries the old ways, and embraces the sparkly new thing, by comparing the relatively new positions of Hillary Clinton to, say, those of Bernie Sanders, who obviously embraces the social liberalism of FDR and LBJ. Not that old ideas are good or bad due to when they popped up in US politics. But even more ancient than Sanders' 1930s and 1960s positions is Trump's 19th Century demagoguery, racism, and his 18th Century notions of buckle swashing warfare.
All this coming from an old fogey like DFB, a known chin-stroker nostalgic for the days of Leave It To Beaver.
DFB is going through a tedious, tendentious process of reconciling reality with his shadows on the wall version of reality. He still doesn't understand that the Republican Base is different from the national GOP Establishment (but mostly similar to the GOP state, local and Congressional reps.). The national GOP does not anymore exist, the Obvious Anagram notwithstanding and it will probably cease to exist in the future. We will just have an array of billionaire fiefdoms and red state crazy wannabees; nothing more. Because the GOP opposes the very concept of the legitimacy of a Federal Government for anything other than waging war.
Meanwhile, a bare majority of the American people believes that the USG should exist and that it should do boring but very useful things like protecting the people from fraud, corruption, dangerous drugs and diseases and disasters and provide a basic safety net for the old, the desperately poor, the disabled, etc. The state and local GOP, which is now the only real GOP doesn't believe in the legitimacy of any of this.
So Hillary is "boring" (she's actually not, in real life) so we should elect an authentic psychopath? DFB has totally lost it.
Well.
Whaddy'a know.
As HST would have said (again)...'The hogs are now in the tunnel.'
Why?
Because DFB has just been paid by yet another higher brow publication to anoint that other guy from New Jersey (i.e. the one who has never kept ambulances from crossing bridges for no good reason at all) as one of those 'new' Republicans he's been going on so much about lately.
Or some such thing.
.
And this is the most deeply troubling part of all, because Mr David Brooks -- who studied history as a young man -- must recognize the ancient and terrible forces which his Republican Party has been cultivating for decades. But apparently the everyday, horrid realities of his Republican Party are not in his department -- as they rumble past his Quiet Car on the Acela Corridor packed tight with the groaning remains of our democracy, they're just another long string of cattle cars off to somewhere unspeakable, and Mr. Brooks is simply not at all interested in questions about who laid those tracks, who is driving that train and what awaits its passengers at the end of the line,
It's been a good while since I've posted here since I'm lazy about switching identities, but the above is too fking brilliant to go unheralded.
DFB's party is running a full on fascist psychopath for Prez, and this piece of shit who passes for a political columnist in our debased age is kvetching about Hillary's style of all things.
Honestly, the effing NYT deserves to go out of business solely on the strength of its continued employment of this weasel.
Mr. David Brooks -- America's Most Respected Concatenation of Ear Wax, Cobwebs and Moldering Clippings of David Broder Columns from the Bloomington, Illinois Pantagraph
So, in Changeling: The Lost terms, he's actually David Brooks' fetch. I wonder what Seeming, Kith and Court the real DFB is, then?
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