The Triumphant Return of The Acela Corridor Pantograph's Faith and Humility Reporter

David Brooks of The New York Times has written a 4,500 word essay on the subject of The Travails of Evangelical Christianity in America Today, and The Glorious Future of Evangelical Christianity in America tomorrow.

Some of you may be surprised by this.

I am not.

As I wrote back in 2019:

Whenever he publicly belly-flops into the empty swimming pool of his own boundless ignorance of how America lives and works and thinks and feels in the Land Beyond The Hudson (as he did last week), Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times frequently retreats to the one safe place where he can pontificate in galactically-sweeping language and no one will dare gainsay him.

The pulpit.

In the pulpit, Mr. Brooks is free to sermonize on the State Of The Human Soul ...

For anyone new to the game, looking up at the mile-high coal face of a 4,500 word essay on Evangelical Christianity in America Today and Tomorrow by Mr. David Brooks, the idea of parsing such a huge slab of Brookspeak -- 5.6 time larger that his usual, 800-word extrusions -- may seem daunting.  Monumental.  The work of generations.

But it's really not ... if you remember the essence of the game.   

When deconstruction any piece of David Brooks work product, the most important question to ask yourself is, "What is Brooks trying hard not to talk about?"  What stretch of inconvenient history is he trying blot out or skip over?

And that is where you find the honey in the rock.

Remember, in virtually everything he writes, Mr. Brooks is working to refine his Great Project, about which yours truly has been writing for longer than I care to think about:  

...it is now painfully clear that Mr. Brooks is engaged in a long-term project to completely rewrite the history of American Conservatism: to flense it of all of the Conservative social, political  economic and foreign policy debacles that make Mr. Brooks wince and repackage the whole era as a fairy tale of noble Whigs being led through treacherous hippie country by the humble David Brooks.

Since the 2000s --- when he made a living writing liberals-are-stupid-and-crazy hit pieces as the managing editor of The Weekly Standard -- until today Mr. Brooks is almost congenitally incapable of  speaking truthfully about what has happened to his Conservative movement and his Republican Party during the several decades long period when he was one of the Right's most active and ubiquitous evangelists. 

There is barely a mention about the influence of Newt Gingrich or Rush Limbaugh to be found anywhere in his writing.  There is no Lee Atwater, no Southern Strategy, no Powell Memo.  One of the only columns where Brooks bared his fangs -- when he lost it and went on a fulminating rampage -- was occasioned by the suggestion that St. Ronald Reagan had campaigned in the South by repeatedly playing on the racism of Southern whites.  Also the Tea Party was just a bunch of heartland patriots who love Murrica and not racist in any way.  Also the GOP has purged itself of that tiny handful of crazies and is doing just great now!

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.

Also, everybody calm down because It's Gonna Be Rubio!

And then along came Donald Trump and did to the fairy tales of Brave Republicans and Noble Conservatism that Mr. Brooks has been peddling his entire adult like exactly what Donald Trump did to official documents which the Presidential Records Act requires that every president preserve: 

Under the Presidential Records Act, the White House must send all written communication related to the president's duties — memos, letters, papers, emails — over to the National Archives. During his time in office, former President Donald Trump famously ripped documents up to shreds and tossed the paper fragments to the floor.

Of course,  most honest response to the rise of Trump -- his zealous popularity among the base and the the almost overnight collapse of any opposition to him among the GOP elite and the Conservative media -- would have been to admit that, damn, I guess the Left really was right about the Right all along.  This would be then be followed by a retreat from public life for the next decade to rethink every rah-rah bullshit story you had ever written about those Brave Republicans and that Noble Conservatism.

But even now, among recently-former Republican Never Trumpers like David Brooks, there is still no graver mortal sin than admitting that the Left has ever been right about anything, much less right about the Right all along.  Because to admit that wouldn't just be owning up to one mistake, or two, or ten.  For men like Brooks, that would mean negating their entire life's work.  Nullifying their identity.  Annihilating their "self".

So that was never gonna happen.

Instead, Mr. Brooks went to work on substituting a new, True Conserative-valorizing revisionist history for the old one.  

In Mr. Brooks' new revisionist history...

...Conservatism's glorious past is still glorious, 

...but with no warning whatsoever, the Right went completely and inexplicably insane.

...This all transpired suddenly 5-6 years ago...

...and no one saw it coming.

...Many friendships were lost because, suddenly, Good Conservatives no longer recognized...

...these suddenly newly Bad Conservatives.

...Have I mentioned how sudden this all was?

...That there were no alarm bells whatsoever.  No Big Red Lights blinking.  That all of this caught all of us professional political havers-of-opinions and Good Conservatives completely by surprise.

...But take heart, because as bad as things may look now, a bright, new Future Conservatism is just around the corner!  From Brooks in 2018:

A Renaissance on the Right 

By David Brooks

What’s bad for the gavel is good for the pen. The Republican Party is in the midst of a cataclysmic transformation. But all the political turmoil is creating a burst of intellectual creativity on the right...

So what does any of this have to do with the extra large owl pellet on the subject of Evangelical Christianity in America Today and Tomorrow that Mr. Brooks harked up onto the pages of The New York Times today?

It's simple.

All Mr. Brooks'  has done with his TL:DR On The Mount this week is swap the word "Conserative" out from his new, revisionist Conservative history and swap in the word "Evangelical".

That's it.  That's all.  It's the same fucking fable, but this time damp with Brooks-brand piety.

Evangelicalism's roots are still glorious:

While differing over politics and other secondary matters, [Evangelicals] are in theory supposed to be unified by their shared first love — as brothers and sisters in Christ. Their common devotion is supposed to bring out the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

But then, with no warning whatsoever, suddenly 5-6 years ago...

This is what has happened over the past six years to millions of American Christians, especially evangelicals...

“As an evangelical, I’ve found the last five years to be shocking, disorienting and deeply disheartening,” says [Tim Dalrymple, president of the prominent evangelical magazine Christianity Today].

Many friendships were lost because, suddenly, Good Evangelicals no longer recognized these suddenly newly Bad Conservatives.

Think of your 12 closest friends. These are the people you vacation with, talk about your problems with, do life with in the most intimate and meaningful ways. Now imagine if six of those people suddenly took a political or public position you found utterly vile. Now imagine learning that those six people think that your position is utterly vile. You would suddenly realize that the people you thought you knew best and cared about most had actually been total strangers all along. You would feel disoriented, disturbed, unmoored. Your life would change.

Have I mentioned how sudden this all was? 

Over the past few years, the atmosphere within many Christian organizations has grown more tense and bitter. As an evangelical friend of mine noted...

But the culture at [Christian news organization] World deteriorated over the past few years...

Over the past several years I watched fellow journalists Peter Wehner, Michael Gerson and David French earnestly and in good faith engage with Trump-backing Christians, trying to understand what was going on...

But take heart, because as bad as things may look now, a bright, new Future Evangelicalism may be just around the corner! 

Amid the storm, new coalitions are gradually forming, across many different kinds of Christians...

Hints of Christian renewal are becoming visible...

 This experience of breaking, rethinking and reorienting a life could be the first stage in renewal...

As for this last part, I hope Brooks is right.  I really do.  Because we Liberal Christians are pretty goddamn tired of being out here, fighting this particular fight all alone.  But as for rest of Mr. Brooks' fairy tale, it's arrant bullshit.  

17 years ago I coined the word "Christopath" -- 

After five years of fake terror alerts, calling critics “traitors”, scaring the living hell out of people to win elections, ever more tax cuts for billionaires when you are already billions in debt, the memorable Swift Boat Social Security “Granny’s a Fag Loving/Troop Hating Whore” Liars ad campaign, lies-lies-and-more-lies about Iraq, Terry Schiavo and an all-out War on the Judiciary climaxing with thinly veiled threats and and calling non-Christopath Judges worse that terrorists (Insert you own list of Top 20 List of Republican Treacheries here)…then some dizzy bitch speaking for the RNC actually says that, “anger is not an agenda” and her pin-head doesn’t implode in cloud of pink cloud of meat, bone and hypocrisy…you have to fall down laughing AND you know you’re doing something right.

(Although I’m forced to agree to this extent: Anger is not the WHOLE Republican agenda. There’s also xenophobia, paranoia, whining victim mentality, criminal fiscal irresponsibility, hatred of Science, “magical thinking” and a worship of Ignorance all wired together with cancerous cult ideology founded on a debased and perverted view of Christianity. So they've got that goin' for them.)

-- to describe what had been going on inside the GOP since the time when this guy -- 

-- gave this hateful pig-fucker --

-- a seat at the GOP's High Table and anointed him as a Republican kingmaker.

17 years ago I also wrote about how the Little Red State Fundies had become the GOP's indispensable foot-soldiers.  And while the beautiful minds of the Conservative elite contented themselves with pretending that these loathsome zealots were a harmless minority, every one of them knew (but none of them dared say) that without those Little Red State Fundies licking envelopes and knocking doors, their party would never, ever win another election.

In that post from 17 years ago I also clearly laid out exactly what was happening inside the GOP now that the Little Red State Fundies had figured out that they were the real power within the party:

...

And Little Red State Fundy delivered the margin of victory and was featured in many, many magazines: without Little Red State Fundy, the Republican Party could never, ever, ever win anything.

And now everybody knew it.

Then she said, "Now who shall help me Rule the Earth."

"We will!" said Moderate Republicans, Undecideds, and Libertarians.

"I am quite sure you would," said Little Red State Fundy, "but see, now you are all my bitches."

Then she called Randall Terry and Tom DeLay and Ann Coulter and Jerry Falwell and Rush Limbaugh and James Dobson, and they and the rest of the Shining Path Republicans used what was left of the Constitution as ass-floss.
And judges were terrorized into silence.
And those deemed ungodly were beaten in the streets.
And they invaded whoever the fuck they felt like, for whatever fucking reason they chose.
And the very idea of a Free and Fair press died.

And to people who had been very clear all along that they genuinely believed in a Theocratic Nanny State and thought that precipitating Armageddon and triggering the Second Coming should be the highest calling of any worldly government, were handed over the police, courts, government, treasury and nuclear weapons stockpiles of the United States of America.

And in the end -- just as they had been warned for the past twenty years -- there was nothing whatsoever left at all for Moderate Republicans, Undecideds, and Libertarians.

That was 17 years ago and even a stupid non-coastal Libtard like me could clearly see what the GOP had become and where it was headed.

Hell, Aaron Sorkin was dunking on them over and over again, right there on his multiple-award winning network teevee show -- 

-- during in the late 1990s.

And yet, decade after decade, the Brain Caste of the Right and America's most revered havers-of-opinions like Mr. David Brooks continued to pretend it wasn't happening.

Continued lying about it.  

Lying to themselves.  Lying to each other.  And lying to the country.

Until the day their party nominated and elected Donald Trump.  And then, suddenly,  the Brain Caste of the Right and the America's most revered havers-of-opinions were shocked!shocked! to discover that their Republican party had been full of Republicans all along -- that the party's dog-loyal Evangelical Christopath base had been Evangelical Christopaths all along.

And after four years of non-stop corruption, racism, lying and madness what did the Christopaths do?  They goose-stepped to the polls en masse to re-nominate Trump, and, in the general election, they came out for him in even greater numbers than they had in 2016.  

And just as was the case back in 2018 when he went out of his way to name Iraq War pimp and fellow-traveler Jonah Fucking Goldberg as a leader of the Republican Renaissance that was definitely just around the corner -- 

...Other conservatives are rising to defend that order, including National Review’s Jonah Goldberg, who later this month comes out with his epic and debate-shifting book, “Suicide of the West.”

-- three of the men Mr. Brooks now names as leaders of this Evangelical reformation which may be right around the corner just so happen to be three more Iraq War pimps and fellow-travelers from back in the good old days of stomping hippies and lying about the GOP:

I’ve seen this same sort of journey among many of my friends who at least at one time identified as evangelicals. Over the past several years I watched fellow journalists Peter Wehner, Michael Gerson and David French earnestly and in good faith engage with Trump-backing Christians, trying to understand what was going on. Now they are courageously and passionately opposing the Trumpification of American Christianity. They’ve become leading spokesmen for reform...

This post is already too long for anyone to have made it this far without oxygen and a Sherpa guide, so let me just add that I do not share Mr. Brooks' belief in the earnestness, good faith, courage or passion of Michael Gerson for the simple reason that I remember the past which Mr. Brooks works so very hard to forget.  And if you'd like to read a long, long post on the subject, you should click on this link here. "The Bonfire of the Sanities".  Here's a short snip from the beginning:

Our story begins with our nation struggling to dig out from the wreckage that the Dubya Administration left behind.  A failed and despicable administration -- the worst in American history until the rise of Donald Trump -- in which Michael Gerson, a deeply Conservative Catholic, served with unswerving loyalty, and to which he owes his position in the Can-Never-Be-Fired-No-Matter-How-Fucking-Wrong-They-Are Pundit Guild.

And from the very beginning, Mr. Gerson clearly loathed and resented Barack Obama and did not hesitate to use his Washington Post column to say so.  Which is no surprise.  Gerson is first, last, and always a Republican -- a Republican who, in 2008, stood in front of the dumpster fire that was the Dubya Administration doing what all Republicans were doing at the time: trying frantically to change the subject by lobbing anything they could at the Democrats who were running for the honor of cleaning up their fucking mess

So Mr. Smoking Gun/Mushroom Cloud had no compunction about attacking the character of candidate Obama. According to Gerson,  Barack Obama was so "rootless, reactive and panicky" that he picked Joe Fucking Biden as his running mate.  I mean, how foolish was that, right?...

Obama was a lightweight who had destroying his sterling reputation by daring to run a campaign for political office:... 

And his "cool, aloof manner and his patronizing comments about the bitter and religious" would surely redound to the benefit of Sarah Palin, who was a lot like Jebus when you think about it!...

In case you don't speak weasel-tongue, "cool, aloof manner and his patronizing" is Conservative pundit for "uppity".

Of course this all amounted to nothing because in the long and terrible shadow cast by the complete failure and collapse of the Dubya Administration, Republicans were pretty much doomed in 2008.  And so Mr. Gerson found another gear as a member of the grim, relentless opposition.  For the next eight years, there was virtually nothing President Obama could do (or refrain from doing) that Gerson would not deem to be either calculating or naïve or feckless or hateful...

But who knows. Maybe one day, when he grows up, Mr. Gerson, can finally become a real Christian. 

However, as it says in a book I once read, "faith without works is dead."

And until I start seeing some clear, tangible signs that all of these shocked and alarmed hypocrites and Pharisees are finally willing to come to terms with how deeply they defiled the most basic tenets of the faith they claim to believe in order to advance their political agendas -- and how those decades of selling Christ out over and over again in order to obtain dishonorable secular victories led directly to the rise of Trump -- I have no reason to believe a word of it.

PS:  I'm sure there are typos to be found here, but I'm presently too tired to track them all down and comb them all out.

Burn the Lifeboats