Tuesday, October 11, 2016

The Sad Bastard Divorce Chronicles of David Brooks


Chapter 41: In Which Mr. David Brooks Tries To Defeat His Sad Bastard Blues And His Complicity In Building The Shitpile That Is The Republican Party By Something Something Donald Trump Is Just A Sad Lonely Bastard Too!
Donald Trump’s Sad, Lonely Life

David Brooks
OCT. 11, 2016
See? And you thought I was kidding.
Hillary Clinton, not exactly a paragon of intimacy, behaved in the normal manner on Sunday night. But Donald Trump did not. Trump treated his questioners as unrelatable automatons and delivered his answers to the void, even when he had the chance to seem sympathetic to an appealing young Islamic woman.

That underlines the essential loneliness of Donald Trump.
...
This particular critique coming from an op-ed writer which one unemployable wag once described thus --
Mr. Brooks' makes his obsessive devotion to constantly, drearily repeating the same soggy lies for large piles of money ever so much easier on himself by subtracting history, economics and human nature from his ruminations. Thus liberated from the need to write about actual people and stuff, Mr. Brooks instead bumbles around through an airless, abstract null-zone full of geometric shapes and big, stupid ideas. And from this chill, dead, interstellar void, Mr. Brooks moans out his melancholy bi-weekly dirges about Centrism and/or the decline of Western Civilization at the hands of the Dirty Hippies, singularly unaware of and unconcerned with the real plight of we tiny, weak humans out here beyond the narrow, well-manicured ideological easement between the Washington Beltway and his mansion in a place known as the Real World.
-- is a little more that too rich for my digestion.

The very lonely Mr. Brooks continues:
Trump breaks his own world record for being appalling on a weekly basis, but as the campaign sinks to new low after new low, I find myself experiencing feelings of deep sadness and pity.
I myself ran out of pity for the Right about 20 years ago, but I promise that empty place in my moral pantry will fill right back up the minute they stop working so damn hard to destroy my country. And make no mistake, Donald J. Trump is the physical manifestation of the wide, lurid streak of racism, misogyny, rage and paranoia that runs straight down the middle of Mr. Brooks' Republican Party.

And speaking of Mr. Brooks...
Imagine if you had to endure a single week in a hate-filled world, crowded with enemies of your own making, the object of disgust and derision.
You mean imagine like, say, being a Liberal in the America that made David Brooks a wealthy and influential man for writing shitty hit pieces, calling people like me deluded idiots and lying about his Republican Party?

 So you mean like this?


 Yeah, I have no problem imagining that.

No problem whatsoever.

Of course, as an unemployable wag, I don't have the institutional machinery at my disposal that someone as insulated and privileged as David Brooks' has to handle being with being hated (from Crooks & Liars) --
David Brooks Calls Internet Comments 'Too Psychologically Damaging' - Pays The Help To Read Them
-- but somehow I cope.

Mr. Brooks continues:
Most of us derive a warm satisfaction when we feel our lives are aligned with ultimate values. But Trump lives in an alternative, amoral Howard Stern universe where he cannot enjoy the sweetness that altruism and community service can occasionally bring.
"Most of us"?   Oh how I would enjoy discoursing on what "ultimate values" Mr. Brooks' body of work have aligned with, but I have already spent more than a decade doing that.  Also this is a family blog, damn it.  Also I am running low on swears.

Mr. Brooks concludes -- 
On Nov. 9, the day after Trump loses, there won’t be solidarity and howls of outrage. Everyone will just walk away.
-- proving that while Mr. Brooks while still does not have a single fucking clue about the real Republican party as it exists here in the real world, he does know precisely what brand of fairy tale his wealthy benefactors and fellow Acela Corridor denizens wish to hear.

Next up on The News Hour, David Brooks and E.J. Dionne discuss hair loss, Trump, bums and existential injustice...

8 comments:

dinthebeast said...

With the resources Trump inherited, he could have done and been almost anything. This is what he chose. Those of us with fewer choices, who still chose better, kindly suggest that Mr. David Brooks stop trying to prop up western civilization's version of Al-Ghazali as it tries to tear down everything we have achieved as a country.
Also, if he wants, he can go fuck himself.

-Doug in Oakland

Jimbo said...

Love the Steve Martin skit. Brooks is in a post-GOP whitewashing situation. He's politically paralyzed, which is one reason he's on this long, extended pseudo moralizing rant in his NYT columns.

John said...

I read that Brooks column with jaw-dropping astonishment...

He's clearly projecting onto Trump his own pathologies. It's crazy.

John said...

Oh, and to elevate Erik Erikson into a martyr of human empathy...please. I with Erik Erikson and his wife well, but, really, they've made a living out of vilifying poor people.

jim said...

Saturday morning cartoons called: they want their Poor Rich Boy All Alone trope back.

No Made-in-USA Torture 2.0?
No drones & death squads mass-murdering relatives of suspected terrorists?
No taking a chainsaw to the First Amendment?
No ... no nukes for Saudi Arabia?

Yeah, we're getting misty down here in the trenches too, Bobo.

Is poor widdle Trump feeling all sad & wonewy?
Tell the gimlet-eyed chucklefuck to buy a hugbox.

June Butler said...

Put a tear in me eye. Brooks sounds lonelier and more forlorn than Trump could ever feel. He can save his pity for himself as he watches the destruction of his fantasy world, which he should have seen coming a long time ago. That the Newspaper of Record pays Brooks big money for this tripe is shameful.

Robt said...

Can't imagine what Brooks thinks about when it comes to Trump dismissing any of his crudeness or fowl episodes as "not having time to be politically correct".

There is a chance (a large chance) that Trump is actually using Political Correctness in his attempts to dismiss his words and action on video by calling it,
"Locker room talk".

More like sewage line gutter talk.

Batocchio said...

Poor Trump. A sexual assault or two will cheer him up. Or maybe another bigoted statement. If only he had control over his actions.