David Brooks Doing That Mendacious Thing That All Never Trumpers Do These Days

It's in the last paragraph, which I'll get to directly after noting how, in his alter ego (or altar ego, hehehe) as the Faith and Humility Reporter for the Acela Corridor Pantograph beat reporter, Brooks reacted to Joe Biden's mention of the word "soul" as a thirsty man lost in the high desert might react to glimpsing a fully stocked La Croix wet bar next to a shiny, new Mercedes-Benz G Class on the horizon.  

Here, ankle deep the bitter dregs of his long career of being wrong about everything, nothing so reanimates Mr. Brooks of The New York Times like the opportunity to burn a whole column making ponderous, sweeping, gassy pronouncements about Life, The Universe and Everything.  

I want to dwell on the little word “soul” in that sentence because...

Nope.  Don't care.

What is a soul? Well, religious people have one answer to that question. But Biden... 

Nope.  Still don't care.

But on he goes.

Because humans have souls, each one is of...

And on...

Because humans have souls, each one is...

And on...

The soul is the name we can give to...

And on...

The soul is the place our moral...

And on...

It is the place where our moral yearnings...

And on, until we come to the turn.

Political campaigns are not usually contests over the status of the soul. But Donald Trump, and Trumpism generally...

You must be fucking kidding me.  The party of "Guns, God and Gays"?  The party of anti-choice marches for Jesus?  The "Book of Virtues" party?  The Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson party?

The "school prayer" party?  The monuments-to-the-Ten-Commandments everywhere party? The Karl Rove and Matthew Dowd slapping gay-hating constitutional amendments on the ballot in 13 states in 2004 to help Dubya sleaze his way back into the White House party? 

Does "Justice Sunday" not tickle anyone's carillon?

Justice Sunday was a series of religious conferences organized by the Family Research Council, founded by James Dobson and headed by Tony Perkins, and Dobson's Focus on the Family organizations. According to FRC, the purpose of the events was to "request an end to filibusters of judicial nominees that were based, at least in part, on the nominees' religious views or imputed inability to decide cases on the basis of the law regardless of their beliefs."[1] Three such conferences were held. Perkins and Dobson have been present as speakers at all events, and some conservative politicians, including Zell Miller, Tom DeLay and Bill Frist have also made appearances.

A sequel to the first Justice Sunday, subtitled "God Save the United States and this Honorable Court" event was held on August 14, 2005 in Nashville, Tennessee. Conspicuously absent from the event was U. S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who had recently drawn fire for departing from U. S. President George W. Bush's policy on stem cell research.

Speakers included Tony Perkins, James Dobson, Robert H. Bork, Tom DeLay, Zell Miller, Chuck Colson, Phyllis Schlafly, William A. Donohue, Harry R. Jackson, Jr., and Dr. Jerry Sutton.

A third Justice Sunday event, subtitled "Proclaim Liberty Throughout the Land" took place January 8, 2006, the day before Samuel Alito's confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court began. The event took place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at the Greater Exodus Baptist Church.

Greater Exodus is led by Pastor Herbert H. Lusk, II. Lusk explains his reasoning by saying, that he wants the government to "appoint people to the justice system that would be attentive to the needs I care about - stopping same-sex marriage, assisted suicide and abortions for minors and supporting prayer and Christmas celebrations in school."

James Dobson, Tony Perkins and Jerry Falwell took part as speakers, as well as Alveda King and Rick Santorum. Members from the local community and various organizations including Planned Parenthood and The World Can't Wait stood outside and protested the event.

Because unless I am somehow misremembering the thousands of scolding lectures delivered from a hundreds of pulpits and podia, and the dozens and dozens of the sanctimonious books by sanctimonious frauds about how the GOP was was in an apocalyptic struggle against the "Party of Death", it is fair to say that the modern Right -- of which Mr. Brooks was very much a part -- was built on the smug certainty of their moral superiority and animated by their belief that the soul of America was under imminent threat from wanton, degenerate, godless dirty hippies like me.

So no.  It's not "Donald Trump, and Trumpism".  It's David Brook's Republican party completing the long, dark journey it's been on since Brooks was in short pants.  It's David Brook's Conservative movement finishing what it started decades ago. 

Trump, and Trumpism generally, represents a kind of nihilism that you might call...

Nope.  If it represents what 99% of Republican elected officials are willing to go along with, either cynically or enthusiastically,  and it's what 99% of Republican voters either openly cheer for or will go along with...then it is, by definition, Republicanism.

Then comes a lot of pious preaching about the nihilism.

One of the hardest, soul-wearying parts of living through the Trump presidency was that we had to endure a steady downpour of lies, transgressions and demoralizing behavior..

One of the hardest, soul-wearying parts of seeing David Brooks' Republican party, over the past 50 years, making itself into a monster factory that would inevitably produce a beast like Trump while we on the Left warned over and over again that it would all end in ruin and tears, was being lectured on the moral superiority of Conservatism by pious mopes like Brooks.  Being brushed off as crackpot alarmists by pious mopes like Dav, over and over again, decade after decade, until it was far too late.

And then, the kicker -- having to hear, over and over again, from these same pious mopes, how nobody could have possibly seen any of this coming.  

These same pious mopes who still occupy the same privileged positions in the media.

And, at last, we arrive at the very end of the column where we find a slight variation of the watchword which, sooner or later, you will hear repeated by every recently-former Republican with a camera or microphone or a keyboard, from Joe Walsh to Rick Wilson to David Fucking Brooks 

The contest between Biden and Trumpism is less Democrat versus Republican or liberal versus conservative than it is between an essentially moral vision and an essentially amoral one, a contest between decency and its opposite.

Fuck you David  Brooks.  This is damn well is Democrat versus Republican and liberal versus conservative in exactly the same way that the Civil War damn well was North versus South, Union versus secession, freedom versus slavery. 

In the name of God and Saint Ronald Reagan, your recently-former party has spent a generation and billions of dollars drawing an ever-clearer, ever-brighter, every-more-openly-bigoted and ever-more-openly-fascist Us vs. Them line across this country.  

And the fact that a small handful of smarmy, pious, elite media Conservatives freaked out and ran when the Rough Beast your side has been trying to conjure since before Nixon finally slouched its way all the way to the White House up in the form of Donald Trump does not make this less so.

 

I Am The Liberal Media