...Mr. Brooks was raised in academic privilege, loitered at the University of Chicago long enough to score a BA in history (which, based on how routinely he molests and whitewashes the past in order to advance his political agenda, should have been revoked decades ago) after which he latched onto the wingnut welfare teat like a lamprey and has been nursing at its ample bosom ever since. Brooks is America's most ubiquitous cheerleader for the myopically wealthy, the cluelessly privileged and politically inbred and has made his a career out of telling the rich and powerful the silky lies they desperately wish to be true.
Yes truly it can be said (and has been said, once or twice) that in all this wide, bountiful, fatally-conflicted nation -- from the mountains to the prairies and the whole rest of that song -- there is no one who can speak with less forged-in-the-crucible-of-hardship authority about what hard times have to teach us than David Fucking Brooks.
And yet he keeps doing it.
Defeat Trump, Now More Than Ever
In the United States that, of course, is Donald Trump. This moment of heightened danger and crisis makes it even clearer that the No. 1 domestic priority for all Americans who care about democracy is to make sure Trump never sees the inside of the Oval Office ever again. As democracy is threatened from abroad it can’t also be cannibalized from within.
-- but nowhere is there to be found any mention of the underlying reasons why Donald Trump remains a threat. And I checked. Thoroughly.
For Brooks, the actual source of the problem -- the +70M reprogrammable Republican meatheads who thrill at the thought of putting Trump back in office with a mandate to stomp American democracy to death -- doesn't even rate a mention. Nor does the sprawling, multi-media Conservative propaganda industry that pumps The Crazy into the skulls of those +70M reprogrammable Republican meatheads all day, every day.
That entire slab of debased humanity and the morally bankrupt scum that belt-feed them propaganda is just written off as something inevitable and unstoppable. A force of nature, like a hurricane or an avalanche.
Personally, I find the fact that America's most ubiquitous Conservative public intellectual just offhandedly dismisses +70M adult Americans as mindless, unpersuadable zombies -- creatures without agency or conscience -- pretty amazing. I mean, as you and I know (and have been warning for decades), they are indeed mindless, unpersuadable zombies, but the fact that life-long Republican David Brooks simply breezes past that staggering rot at the heart of our democracy in his rush to nag Democrats about how they should talk to a handful of working class "independents" in five states should not go unremarked upon.
And now that we've remarked upon it we'll be moving onward.
Another piece of surpassing weirdness about Brooks' writing is that, over and over again, like every other goofball Never Trumper, this cosseted Acela corridor fop -- who had no fucking idea that his Republican party was full of Republicans until the day Donald Trump took the oath of office -- nonetheless believes he is possessed of some special insight into the hopes and dreams and grievances of the working class "independents" of Michigan and Wisconsin.
For the record, in times of epic Republican bed-shitting, Mr Brooks has always peered deeply into the murky waters of "What Independent's Really Want" and come 100% certain that they just so happen to want exactly what David Brooks wants! Quelle surprise!
For example, less than a year after the failed Bush regime limped out of office leaving behind multiple catastrophes for the Obama team to clean up, David Brooks put his Bush Administration cheerleader outfit into cold storage and began what would become a decade's long infatuation with "Independents" beginning with this column boldly asserting that he knew exactly what "independents" wanted. And if Democrats didn't want to get thrown out of office at the next opportunity they had better immediately stop trying to please the Extreme Left and start catering to the whims of the "independents".
Whims which, once again, just so happened to comport exactly with Mr. Brooks' own predilections.
And Brooks was pretty blunt about it. No shading or nuance. Just this headline --
What Independents Want
-- followed by a wish list of things that "independents" supposedly wanted which which miraculously comported exactly with Mr. Brooks' own wish list.
Here's a short snip from what I wrote about it back then because I have been doing this a long time now.
So after stitching together a couple of snippets from a couple of polls into a big, floppy sack, Bobo dumped every loose button and paper-clip of his own privileged, white, suburban, middle-aged, Boomer Burkean bourgeoisie terror into it and called it analysis...
Surprise! By making a tasty tossed salad out of a grab-bag of different polls and "trends" that are a scant seven months long, Bobo desperately wants you to infer that the country is being driven by "independents", and independents have made some massive leap to the Right. He then sucker-punches the same, wingnut strawmen -- unions, abortion, "too much Gummint"
But I'd like to think that my most enduring contribution to the literature is bringing Kurt Vonnegut's term "granfalloon" to the table.
Nobody knows what “independents” want, because “independent” as a modern political category is a textbook example of what Kurt Vonnegut defined in "Cat's Cradle" as a "granfalloon":
"...a proud and meaningless association of human beings"
Because “independent” can mean any-damn-thing, or nothing at all.
As I said, I'd like to think of this as my enduring contribution to the literature, but since no one but me has ever picked it up and run with it, it wasn't.
And so it goes.
Anyway, it's been 13 years since then, and if those intervening years of being completely wrong about everything has taught Mr. Brooks anything, it's to be a little less declarative about things that he knows absolutely nothing about. Like the secret hopes and dreams and grievances of the working class "independents" of Michigan and Wisconsin. Don't get me wrong: Brooks still believes they're out there in their millions just waiting to be harvested by Democrats if only they would run their party to suit Mr. David Brooks, but these days its easier to deduce exactly what stimuli what these "independents" respond to by eliminating the things they do not care about.
For example, from this paragraph --
The second Democratic myth is, “Economics trumps culture.” This is the idea that if Democrats can shower working- and middle-class voters with material benefits then that will overwhelm any differences they may have with them on religious, social and cultural issues — on guns, crime and immigration, etc.
-- we can deduce that "independents" would rather lose their insurance, drink polluted water and work in unsafe conditions for shit wages than give up their guns or their fear of immigrants or their hatred of gays and/or their belief that God demands that impregnated women be forced to carry that pregnancy to term regardless of circumstances.
That's some first rate intel, David Brooks! But don't these "independents" sound a lot like, say, Republicans who are momentarily too ashamed to admit they're Republicans?
Next example:
The third myth is, “A progressive ascendancy is emerging.” The fact is that only 7 percent of the electorate considers itself “very liberal.” I would have thought the Biden economic agenda, which basically consists of handing money to the people who need it most, would be astoundingly popular. It’s popular, but not that popular. I would have thought Americans would scream bloody murder when the expansion of the existing child tax credit expired. They haven’t.
Craft a cultural narrative around the theme of social order.
The Democrats have been blamed for fringe ideas like “defund the police” and a zeal for “critical race theory” because the party doesn’t have its own mainstream social and cultural narrative.
...Mr David Fucking Brooks.
4 comments:
Bobo dumped every loose button and paper-clip of his own privileged, white, suburban, middle-aged, Boomer Burkean bourgeoisie terror into it and called it analysis...
"Or the birth of the blues."
-- Harlan Ellison's Watching Installment 16, "In Which A Forest Is Analyzed Without Recourse To Any Description Of A Tree" (review of Wolfgang Peterson's Barry Longyear's Enemy Mine), The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 1986
As I said, I'd like to think of this as my enduring contribution to the literature, but since no one but me has ever picked it up and run with it, it wasn't.
"I'd just like to say to all the other nominees in the audience: I don't think that I deserve it any more than the rest of you. I'd like to say that; I don't think that it would be true, though."
-- Tom Green at the 22nd Golden Raspberry Awards (March 23, 2002), accepting the Razzies from Freddy Got Fingered's near-sweep
Republicans have spent 30 years building a GIANT SPRAWLING multi-billion dollar propaganda machine that blasts out lies about Democrats all day, every day.
Even if you only count from the Powell Memo, it's actually been 50 years. I was just working out such intricate philosophical conundra as "walking" and "bowel control" and "holding a book so it talks to me, the way mama and papa can" when a former Philip Morris lawyer and future Supreme Court Justice explained to his fellow corporate stooges the need to save their bottom line-- America, to save America and the American people from the perils of democracy. I do not expect to live to see this nation unfucked any more than I'm sure you do, but I live in hope, which my friend Alfred Spangler assures me is the greatest of all treasures.
Great words of humanity for all to heed.
There is one tiny problem. Brain worms.
Once they enter the skull and start eating away. The permanent damage results in FOX AANON viewers with selective hearing, hate and spiteful urges to punish someone and blame them for something. Leaving the ego part of the brain for dessert. Eating it last but until eaten, allows the ego to run wildly astray.
Brain worms are known to amass at republican gatherings to spread and multiply seeking new horizons of food and shelter.
Second, how do you complete this sentence: “I don’t want to vote for the racist, authoritarian, insurrectionist book-burning party, but ______”?
My corollary to this has always been: "Gee, I kind of like the idea of civil rights, voting rights, clean air and water, investing in education, and helping your fellow citizens in their times of need, but Rosie O'Donnell said something nasty about Dick Cheney that one time, so I'm going to vote against all of that."
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