As this little blog has been pointing out for longer than I care to think about sober, Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times has been dining out on the mind-croggling concept that the Republican Party -- his Republican Party -- does not, in fact, exist at all.
Now you would think that making an entire political party simply disappear, bag and baggage, would require years of arduous practice, enormous numbers of pulleys and mirrors and trap doors and suchlike, a small army of highly trained assistants and split-second timing, but you would be wrong.
Instead, as Mr. Brooks has demonstrated over and over and over again, all that is required is the simple incantation of the magic words, "Shoo! Shoo! I don't know you!" --
David Brooks And The Amazing Disappearing Republican Party: Part 1,000-- a wave of the mighty Elderp Wand which comes with gift-wrapped in every Beltway pundit's goodie bag --
-- and just like *that* the entire Republican Party vanishes --
The Amazing Disappearing Republican Party-- in a puff of Both Siderist stink.
So (you may fairly ask) if Mr. Brooks can make one major American political party evaporate from the face of the Earth for the low, low price of no effort whatsoever, how much additional work do you suppose it would take to make both of America's major political parties evanesce into the pellucid ether?
Well, since twice zero is still zero, so if you guessed "no additional effort whatsoever", you would win the prize.
If we awarded prizes.
Which no one has done since the 2008 Weblog Awards.
Which is a damn shame.
Anyway...yes, it is true that today, with the flick of his wrist, Mr. David Brooks exiled both the Republican and Democratic parties from existence.
Oh sure, they show up in surveys like ghost images in double-exposure --
In an ABC News/Ipsos poll last week, 98 percent of Democrats and 82 percent of Republicans supported social-distancing rules.-- but according to Mr, Brooks, the real division in America is between
Even in a pandemic there are weavers and rippers. The weavers try to spiritually hold each other so we can get through this together.Somehow, in Mr. Brooks' fractured fairy tale, it is a mere coincidence that the deranged, racist leader of the Rippers also just happens to be the deranged, racist leader of the Republican Party --
The rippers, from Donald Trump on down, see everything through the prism of politics and still emphasize division.-- a party which enthusiastically nominated him, elected him and has given him its loud, snarling, overwhelming and unstinting support ever since. But you can ignore all those inconvenient "facts" because the Pope of the High and Holy Church of Both Sides Do It is on-hand to tell you ex cathedra who the real culprits are (emphasis added):
...the rippers on left and right, [for whom] politics is a war that gives life meaning.Which may sound eerily familiar to you since it was less than one day ago that I referenced this David Brooks hot-take on America's two major parties from 14 years ago:
The flamers in the established parties tell themselves that their enemies are so vicious they have to be vicious too. They rationalize their behavior by insisting that circumstances have forced them to shelve their integrity for the good of the country. They imagine that once they have achieved victory through pulverizing rhetoric they will return to the moderate and nuanced sensibilities they think they still possess.I'd like you to indulge me by taking a moment and call to mind of all the madness, sedition, ruin, misery and death the Republican Party has inflicted on this country over the past 14 years, either deliberately or through corruption and criminal incompetence.
But the experience of DeLay and the net-root DeLays in the Democratic Party amply demonstrates that means determine ends. Hyper-partisans may have started with subtle beliefs, but their beliefs led them to partisanship and their partisanship led to malice and malice made them extremist, and pretty soon they were no longer the same people.
The McCain-Lieberman Party counters with constant reminders that country comes before party, that in politics a little passion energizes but unmarshaled passion corrupts, and that more people want to vote for civility than for venom...
Just for a moment hold as much of that horror as you can in your head -- the Iraq War, Climate Denialism, Katrina, the Great Recession, Limbaugh, Fox News, Birtherism, The Fake Tea Party, Death Panels, "But Her Emails", Merrick Garland, the suffocation of American democracy under Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell. All of it. All of it.
Now, with all of that clearly in mind, mentally swap out the word "flamers" for the word "rippers" and "the McCain-Lieberman Party" for "weavers" and you will not fail to notice that there is not one fucking iota of difference between David Brooks' Both Siderist Blame Allocation Algorithm from 2006, and David Brooks' Both Blame Allocation Algorithm in 2020.
Sure there's Trump, but remember Trump isn't a Republican because there are no Republicans. Trump is merely a "circus", and yeah, it's a circus which you aren't allowed to leave and where the rides may kill you, but once you will yourself, as Mr. Brooks has done, to simply filter out Donald Trump and the "polarization industry" you'll see that we're actually doing great!
The polarization industry is loath to admit this, but, once you set aside the Trump circus, we are now more united than at any time since 9/11.And as a final note, I'm not surprised that David Brooks has fond memories of 9/11. After all it was the cynical hijacking of our nation's pain and patriotism by George W. Bush and the Republican Party to serve their partisan interests -- to lie us into the wrong war -- that injected the plodding careers of Neocon parasites like David Brooks with rocket fuel.
And Brooks took full advantage of it, first by helping to turn The Weekly Standard into a non-stop, partisan, Iraq War cheer-leading squad where George Bush was always a military leader of unsurpassed boldness and genius and Liberals were a ragged mob of traitors and idiots.
Yes, Our Mr. Brooks was quite the "ripper" back in the day when ripping Liberals for the greater glory of George Bush and the GOP meant an express elevator ride straight up the career ladder.
Of course now that his past has become a terrible inconvenience, when asked directly if any of this ever happened, Mr. Brooks simply lies about it --
--but the fact is that shitting on Liberals like you and me is what snagged him his sweet, featherbedding gig at The New York Times all those years ago.
And then came the inevitable collapse of the Bush Administration and the mad beltway media scramble to rewrite history and get behind the New Big Lie that blame for our nation's problems is always equally allocated between "the rippers on left and right".
And relentlessly peddling this Big Lie at all times and under all circumstance is how Mr. Brooks has hung into his sweet, featherbedding gig at The New York Times ever since.
No Half Measures
4 comments:
I have this idea,
Get Chris Todd to book David Brooks on with a few of those pandemic freedom gun toting patriots and have a one week series of them discussing this very issue.
And to allow freedom, the freedom protesters may bring along all their weapons and cammo wear. Todd and Brooks may chose to wear flak vests or bring their own weapons to the table.
In the Koch funded creation of the TEA party, I did not see the tri corner hats with the stapled tea bags hanging from it sitting at the table with Paul Ruan, McConnell Rush and hosts like Todd or hannity and Billo.
Those meetings of the minds never took place.
When TEA party mark Meadows would not vote for Speaker Boehner's keep the country functioning budge bill. Leaving the Speaker to deal with Pelosi and dems to get it passed.
We are not entertained with John and Mark with host Billo or Todd moderating the discussion to all just get along and not be partisan or even play the notorious both sides of the TEA Party vs the Republican party (as if they were two different species).
I follow Gallup, Pew and Marist polls, and the notion that the US is "unified" is a joke. There are sharp, party-defined distinctions in opinions on Trump, Congress, the media (looking at you, Brooks), the economy, and so on. And even where the difference are not so stark, they still exist - Republicans are less likely to take certain protective measures in public places, for example. Needless to say, this gets tied in a lot in with media diet - the more Fox News you watch (and in particular, the more Sean Hannity you watch), the more you twist away from medical experts and toward Trump's people.
But honestly, this almost seems besides the point when you consider that Brooks' central thesis here - revealed by that ghoulish 9/11 remark - is that it's good that people are dying because it means they argue less. Arguing is worse than people losing their lives and livelihoods because the latter happens to people outside of his social circles and thus doesn't trouble his emotions. He truly is a narcissistic monster. I only wish that I could write a villain who managed to mingle such subtle callousness with that grandiose self-righteousness.
Bobo, is quite the Bozo!
You may find the same difficulty I have with taking Brooks to task on his latest (achem) opinion column statement is,
What he states today is not where his ideology or principal stands an hour later.
As the chameleon says, I was never Green moments after stepping off the lawn onto the brown dirt.
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