Today In Both Sides Do It: David Fucking Brooks and Bret Stephens

From today's New York Times with emphasis added.

Wait for it...

The radicals split between pragmatists willing to work within the system and visionaries who raised larger possibilities from outside. Spreading their ideals, they pushed America forward. Living out their ideals, most were disillusioned. Reed lost faith in the Soviet Union. Lippmann lost faith in Wilson after Versailles. Bourne died marginalized and bitter during the flu epidemic of 1918.

Wait for it...

Bourne was the least important radical a century ago, but with his fervent embrace of a decentralized, globalist, cosmopolitan world, he is the most relevant today. He is the best rebuttal to both Trumpian populism and the multicultural separatist movements on the left, who believe in separate graduation ceremonies by race, or that the normal exchange of ideas among people represents cultural appropriation.

Bingo!

And you know what? Over and over again, the lazy and lucrative work of Both Sidering every single fucking Republican atrocity really does paid off. Because, for example. "Yeah but what about those Radical Campus Lefties?" has is not only become the Both Siderist Phrase that Pays for every single wildly overpaid intellectualfeatherbedder like Mr, David Brooks, but also last redoubt of every wingnut trying to slink away from yet another catastrophe of their own making:

Before you claim some sort of moral high ground, I'd urge you to look at what's happening on college campuses. Airtight cognitive terrarium.

— "Great Intel" (@GreatIntel) June 13, 2017

You see, several years ago, respected political scientists Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein pointed out in measured, scholarly language what us Libtards have been saying for decades: that one of our two major political parties has gone mad and the other has not...

The Republican Party has become an insurgent outlier -- ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

Of course, once they stated this patently obvious fact in measured, scholarly language they instantly stopped being respected political scientists and became just two more media pariahs who were suddenly cast into Liberal Snowflake Coventry and banished to from virtually every political teevee platform in America.

This object lesson has not been lost on wildly overpaid intellectual featherbedders like Mr, David Brooks.

And so, the Republican Party will go right on being nothing more more than a mob of angry and often bigoted idiots whose Very Loud Opinions can are be flipped off and on by Fox and Friends in the service of con men and oligarchs who do not give the tiniest shit about this country. 

And goofs like Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times will go right on driving their getaway car.

Update:

Rather than actually cross swords with anyone who might fundamentally disagree with him, one of carefully protected venues in which Mr. Brooks would permit himself to be booked was The New York Time's "Conversation", in which David Brooks and Gail Collins wold make awkward badinage about the Depravity of the GOP (Collins) and how Both Sides Are To Blame (Brooks).  Longtime readers might remember Mr. Brooks' very last attempt at this fake-cheerful-co-worker-interplay included this nugget of Elite Conservative Prognostication by Mr. Brooks

The big Republican accomplishment is that they have detoxified their brand. Four years ago they seemed scary and extreme to a lot of people. They no longer seem that way. The wins in purple states like North Carolina, Iowa and Colorado are clear indications that the party can at least gain a hearing among swing voters. And if the G.O.P. presents a reasonable candidate (and this year’s crop was very good), then Republicans can win anywhere. I think we’ve left the Sarah Palin phase and entered the Tom Cotton phase. 

--  David Brooks, November 5, 2014.

Of course, even after shitting the bed hard enough to launch the state of Delaware into orbit, Mr. Brooks remained Impossible to Fire for reasons that no one privy to them dares to speak aloud. However one thing that the Times and/or Mr Brooks seemed to learn is that, even in an environment as artificial and cngenial as "The Conversation", given half a chance, Mr. Brooks was going to humiliate himself in some brand-tarnishing way.  And so Mr. Brooks took french leave from "The Conversation", leaving Ms. Gail Collins to take up with a series of disreputable Serious Conservative suitors including but not limited to...

...Arthur Brooks...

How Dangerous Is This Moment?
Historical parallels can take us only so far, but the echoes of everything from the populism of 1896 to the violence of 1968 are audible in 2016.

...Matt Labash of The Weekly Standard...

Have These Been the Best Two Weeks of Trump’s First 100 Days?
Conservatives are practically fainting with relief. Gail Collins and Matt Labash ask whether they are justified in doing so.

...and, inevitably, "Box Turtle" Ben Domenech

When You’re Famous for 24 Hours a Day
The unusual problems presented by the first two-and-a-half weeks of the Trump administration.

...before settling in with David Brooks' Replacement-In-Waiting, Bret Stephens.

And boy howdy, how effortlessly Stephens has settled in to that big, cozy, New York Times serious Conservative Both Siderist Barcalounger:

Gail: One of my annual rituals used to be calling Bill Bradley at tax time and asking him how they did it. Basically, he’d say that people trusted one another enough to work together. Which sounds so remote it could be a scenario from Congress on the planet Krypton.

This is mostly the Republicans’ fault. Every recent attempt at bipartisan cooperation — remember immigration reform? — was shot down by the far right. And if Obamacare is a mess it’s in large part because the Republicans pulled out of the administration’s efforts to get a bipartisan bill out of the Senate.

Bret: On the breakdown in bipartisan civility, there’s more than enough blame to go around. Harry Reid smearing Mitt Romney as a tax cheat based on no evidence, anyone? But let’s not get into a fight about who started it or who was more uncivil and when: It reminds me of trying to adjudicate arguments between young kids...

And the beat goes on...