Warning: You are about to be taken on a Cook's tour of an exotic meal which is not for the faint hearted, for it is made of such rarified ingredients that Mr. Brooks' probably imaginary high school graduate friend who was scared nearly into catatonia by Italian meats could not survive it.
It is served in four courses over a seven month period, and contains opinions and anti-opinions in such precise balance that they annihilate each other leaving the diner with nothing at all.
First course (from The New York Times, April 17, 2025): Amuse-Bouche --"The Righteous Authenticity of the Times Op-Ed Page”
A delicately puree of alarm and disappointment. Presented upon a chiffon of condescending.
The headline: "What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal".
Summary: What the hell is wrong with Americans? This is a five-alarm democracy fire! Use whatever tools come to hand! Break glass and all that, with notes of papal bull imperiousness.
The money quote: "What is happening now is not normal politics. We’re seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to — Democrat, independent or Republican.
It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.:
Second course (from the PBS News Hour, October 3, 2025): Entrée -- "The Unquestionable Superiority of Preserving Meaningless Ritual In a Time of Crisis”
A bold reversal of principle, char-broiled in hypocrisy and marinated overripe ancient Beltway wisdom, served with a generous side of "Blame the Democrats".
The money quotes:
Geoff Bennett: David, shouldn't the party that controls the House, the Senate and the White House do more to end a shutdown than just dig in?
David Brooks: No. I hate the fact that we're here. So here's what happened.
In 2020, the Democrats win an election and they have power. And so, in 2021, they passed a bill which further increased the health insurance subsidies as part of Obamacare. And when they did it, they passed it to sunset in 2025. In 2024, the Republicans win an election. And guess what? They passed legislation that go with their policy priorities and they let the subsidies sunset.
And so what do you do if you're in a democracy? You go to the voters if you're a Democrat and you say, their policy is terrible. What Senator Warnock just said, their policy is terrible. Next time, why don't you vote for us? That's how a democracy functions.
But apparently we don't live in a functioning democracy anymore. Now, if we don't like the policy that the majority party passes, we shut down the government. And I'm not blaming Democrats solely. But I just think this pattern is so terrible for our democracy, is so terrible, what we just heard from the traffic controllers, and every organization...
And that's what our politics is descending into. And it's very bad for democracy.
Pure Beltway, milk-fed arrogance. Served rare, naturally, upon a reduction of hectoring contradiction, accompanied by confit cognitive dissonance.
Third course (from The Atlantic, October 14, 2025): Plat Principal -- "Chef’s Genius Is Once Again in Evidence as He Fishes the Remains of His Very Popular Amuse-Bouche Column Out of the Dumpster and Re-Heats It Nearly Verbatim.”
Encrusted with greater alarm, drizzled with ethically sourced scolding urgency, whipped into a mousse of smug self-reference.
The headline: "America Needs a Mass Movement -- Now. Without one, America may sink into autocracy for decades."
Summary: People, we're at DefCon 2! Time for every mother's son and daughter to get off their asses and into the streets! For the love of God and George Washington, whoever you are and whatever you do for a living, find whatever sand you can and pour it into the gears of this monstrous regime! To quote Churchill, "Action this day!"
The money quotes:
If you think Trumpism will simply end in three years, you are naive. Left unopposed, global populism of the sort Trumpism represents could dominate for a generation. This could be the rest of our lives, and our children’s, too.
So why are we doing so little? Are we just going to stand in passive witness to the degradation of our democracy?
By this past spring, Trump’s actions had become so egregious that I concluded that the time for a mass civic uprising had arrived. On April 17, I published a column in The New York Times arguing that all sectors of America needed to band together to create an interconnected resistance coalition.
That column got an enormous amount of attention and support. For a moment, I thought the mass civic uprising I was hoping for was at hand. So where is it? Yes, there were the (very good) “No Kings” rallies in June. And yes, groups such as Indivisible continue to organize conventional progressives. But for the most part, a miasma of passivity seems to have swept over the anti-Trump ranks.
...The problem with this strategy is that it allows dominance to become a habit. Bullies who go unresisted keep on dominating. Submission becomes a habit too.
But a second reason people are quiescent is that they don’t understand the fight we are in. They’re still thinking in conventional political terms. This crisis is not about election cycles. It’s about historical tides. Every so often, a political-cultural-social tide sweeps the world, leaving everything rearranged in its wake. Two hundred and fifty years ago, the democratic tide swept across the West...
Trumpism, like populism, is more than a set of policies—it’s a culture. Trump offers people a sense of belonging, an identity, status, self-respect, and a comprehensive political ethic. Populists are not trying to pass this or that law; they are altering the climate of the age. And Democrats think they can fight that by offering some tax credits?
To beat a social movement, you must build a counter social movement.
A successful anti-MAGA movement must start by winning some achievable, concrete victory—halting this specific attack on democracy or that specific Trump program—and building from there. It must bring people from fear and stasis to hope and momentum...
The most effective form of communication for a social movement is action. Actions create events that tell stories. ...
Fourth course (From The New York Times, October 23, 2025): Dessert -- “The Unbearable Lightness of Beltway Conventional Wisdom Redux”.
Once again, chef’s whimsical tastes delivers a complete reversal: as the second course was a complete negation of the first, so now the fourth course shall be a complete negation of the third. And once again, to prepare his signature nullification, chef shops the kitchen dumpster and simply repeats, nearly verbatim, his PBS News Hour jeremiad against Democrats for using the one tool available to them to materially oppose the Trump regime.
Boiled in salted sanctimony, seasoned with performative bellyaching, crabbing and grousing.
The headline: "The Death of Democracy Is Happening Within You"
Summary: Fucking Democrats are ruining everything.
The money quote:
If the Democrats were a normal party that believed in democratic principles, they would have planned to go to the voters in the next elections and said: These Republican policies are terrible! You should vote for us!
But of course that’s not what the Democrats decided to do. Instead, they shut down the government. Why did they do that? Because we don’t live in a healthy democracy. We live in a country in which the norms, beliefs and practices that hold up a democracy are dying even in the minds of many of the people who profess to oppose Donald Trump.
Having choked down all four courses, we recommend our special house digestif, David Brooks' own choice of top-shelf, airport lounge liquor, “Le Bourbon de l’Absurdité” (The Bourbon of Absurdity).
A post-prandial triumph of aging Boomer bitterness, “Le Bourbon de l’Absurdité” is hand-distilled in barrels made from the timbers of Edmund Burke's coffin, with notes of pretention, privilege and performative virtue. Each sip arrives in a crystal glass chilled with a single cube of glacial remorse. Pretentious Drinker Magazine describes the experience as, "Comparable to Malort, if Malort cost $4,200 a bottle. Sits in your mouth like an angry employee who refuses to believe they've been fired. May have to call security. Memorable."
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