“Left or Right, Apparently We’re All Victims Now.”

Congratulations!  If you read the title of this post, you've read -- in its semantic entirety -- today's column ("Hey, America, Grow Up!") by Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times.  

Yes, there were 800 more contractually-obligated words the precede and follow today's "razor in the apple", but now that Brooks is fully back in his Both Sides Do It bag, why bother?  As with Swinburne's weariest rivers, which all wind "somewhere safe to sea", every lazy Brooksian sentence winds eventually down to the Both Sides Do It lie 

OK, since you insist.  Here's another little sip.  But be careful!  It's hot!

The problem is that over the past 40 years or so we have gone from a culture that reminds people of their own limitations to a culture that encourages people to think highly of themselves. The nation’s founders had a modest but realistic opinion of themselves and of the voters. They erected all sorts of institutional and social restraints to protect Americans from themselves. They admired George Washington because of the way he kept himself in check.

But over the past few decades, people have lost a sense of their own sinfulness... 

Oops!  So sorry!  That's actually not from today's column.

That's from [checks notes] January of 2011.  Long before the Age of Trump.  Back when Brooks was still selling the proto-MAGA "Tea Party" mob as a buncha salt-of-the-earth Murrican patriots who weren't even a little bit racist.  Did I mention this was long before Trump?  Back when Barack Obama was trying to haul this country out of the pit Republican had dug us into, was trying to do it in the most civil, open-handed way possible, and was, at every turn, being gleefully sabotaged by Mr. Brooks' Republican Party?

Which is why I won't waste any more of your time on quotes from Brooks' column today.

Because today's has been. more or less, Brooks' column every day since the Bush regime collapsed and he had to scramble for an alternative to what he was writing during his glory days of penning paeans to George W. Bush and shitting on Liberal for not recognizing Dubya's obvious genius:

Competent Conservatives, Reactionary Liberals

We seem to be entering a period of competent conservatism and reactionary liberalism. George W. Bush has put together a cabinet long on management experience and practical skills. But liberal commentators and activists, their imaginations aflame, seem to be caught in a time warp, back in the days when Norman Lear still had hair...

Yep, that was Brooks back in January of 2001.  Almost exactly ten years before the dreck about "over the past few decades, people have lost a sense of their own sinfulness... " which I snuck in above.

Sorry. Again.  

You see, Brooks is a man who has led a singularly cosseted and coddled life: from privileged childhood at private school, to floating through University of Chicago to snag a bachelor's in history which he has clearly never used, to being gifted creative typing gigs carping about Stupid Liberals at the Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard (see above), to an unbroken, 19-year streak of lazy, terrible, incredibly lucrative 800-word opinion pieces (which are all actually the same terrible opinion piece slightly tweaked hundreds and hundreds of times) tossed off once or twice a week (depending on his mood) into the pages of the New York Times.

For his sins, Mr. Brooks has also been gifted a nearly ubiquitous presence on nationally syndicated teevee and radio where he basically reads his latest terrible opinion piece aloud.  All of which unlocked access to even further treasures of money and influence in the form of non-stop speaking engagements, book deals, etc.  All of which allowed the staggeringly privileged and professionally myopic Mr. Brooks to save up enough pennies to finally afford to dump the mother of his children and take up with his much younger research assistant.

And now, from the comfort of the Acela corridor Quiet Car and from behind the walls of his cloistered estate, Mr. Brooks has thundered out this message for us peons:  Toughen up and quit whining, losers!

However, as a good host, it would be wrong of me to leave you with taste of stale Brooksian tapioca in your mouth.  So, since I already introduced you to my friend Al, as a palate cleanser, here's a longer cut from his The Garden of Proserpine:

From too much love of living,

         From hope and fear set free,

We thank with brief thanksgiving

         Whatever gods may be

That no life lives for ever;

That dead men rise up never;

That even the weariest river

         Winds somewhere safe to sea.

If you liked that, you can read the whole thing here for free.

 

I Am The Liberal Media