You can take the boy out of [checks notes] The Wall Street Journal, The Neocon
Weekly Standard, The New York Fucking Times, Meet The Press, PBS and NPR...
...but you can't take The Wall Street Journal, The Neocon Weekly Standard, The New
York Fucking Times, Meet The Press, PBS and NPR out of the boy.
David Brooks: Voters in almost every presidential race, I think, in every one of my
lifetime, have always said, who's closer to the center? And they vote for
that person. Trump seemed closer to the center than Kamala Harris. Biden
seemed closer to the center than Donald Trump.
Donald Trump over the last few years has run away from the center. He is
handing this election to the Democrats. All they have to do is sit there
and be couch potatoes. They do not have to support Medicare for all so
that Republicans can go to them and say, you like your private health
insurance? Mr. El-Sayed's going to take that away from you.
That is politically bad news, and that's only one of the issues on which
the party is moving further and further away from the center, and
therefore...
Jonathan Capehart:I mean, I disagree that the Democratic Party writ large is moving far
away from the center, and that a few races won by Democratic Socialists or
people who identify as progressive, like Dr. El-Sayed, that -- to me, I
just don't -- I do not see it that you can put this -- make this blanket
argument that the Democratic Party is running far left.
Let's hold on that a moment, because yesterday on the BlueSky Ana Marie Cox
asked:
What are David Brooks' worst columns? Everyone can cite the sandwich one,
and the Epstein one but of the top of dome--what else? He did say that
wearing a Mets hat could save democracy once? (I'm making a video.)
My Bat Signal lit up and I replied as follows:
I'd ask "alphabetically or chronologically", but it's a trick question,
since David Brooks has only ever written one column -- the same column --
over and over again. But if I had to choose...it's "Collapse of the
Dream Palaces" April, 2003,
excerpted here.
A close second is the full-blown freakout when his very good friend
& fellow Iraq war pimp, Joe Lieberman. lost to Ned Lamont in the
Democratic primary in 2006.
And then lied about it later.
Now back to his PBS performance.
It is a matter of public record that David Brooks has never had any workable
definition of "the center" beyond: "What I, David Brooks, happen to think at
this moment".
It is also irrefutably true that he has spent the past quarter-century publicly demonstrating that he knows fuck-all about what "voters" think about anything.
All of which says a whole lot more about the people who keep paying him to confidently spout his poisonous claptrap decade after decade than it does about David Fucking Brooks himself.
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."
Update: I am heartened by the fact that the first jillion (and
the most "Reader picked") comments were of this variety:
Good try, Mr. Brooks. The high minded concept of both sides are to blame
just doesn't resonate any more...
Read the first part…. The Dems did not shut down the government.
Apparently Mr. Brooks missed the “outcry” of 7M plus voices that took
place last Saturday.
Democrats did not shut down the government.
I have a been a student and then faculty at three universities since 1980
and I have worked with students and faculty at many others. Yes, many
faculty are fairly liberal, yet I have never seen evidence to back your
claim that "many professors decided their job was indoctrination, not
truth-seeking. To impose power so that students think just like they
do."
This piece makes some very good points, but it reeks of
both-sides-ism.
No Mr Brooks. Democrats did not "decide" to shut down the
government. Democrats refused to support Republican cuts to Medicare and
Medicaid. Republicans refused to negotiate in good faith.
When Trump seeks a 3rd term, will Brooks continue to bash on Democrats and
seek new ways to try to convince the world that it's all Democrats'
fault?
Brooks just can't shake his deep Republican roots. It must be extremely
difficult for him to watch Trump destroy both his party and the nation.
Brooks trots out the old indoctrination in universities trope to somehow
balance out the absolute abandonment of democracy by the GOP and
Trump.
The Democrats didn’t shut down government. The Republicans have the
House, the Senate, the White House (what’s left of it), and SCOTUS.
They could waive the filibuster in the Senate and pass their
misery-inducing budget tomorrow. They could reconvene the House and
start negotiating.
The Republicans control the house, the senate, the executive branch and a
conservative biased SCOTUS. The shutdown of government is on them
exclusively. Authoritarian regimes don’t compromise and don’t care
about persuasion.
Their refusal to swear in the Arizona democrat, who was
elected, is blocking the release of the Epstein files. If there is
nothing in them, there would be no reason to block their release. This is
all on the Republican Party.
David Brooks condescension is annoying. Just because we don't have columns
doesn't mean we're not paying attention.
I'm a prof, and as we only half jokingly say, "indoctrinate?!? I'd be
happy if they read the syllabus".
The GOP created the current impasse by refusing to negotiate, as
legislators of both parties have done in the past in order to govern.
There is only one party to blame here and it isn't the Democrats.
The Democrats didn’t shutdown the government. The Republicans refused to
negotiate and shutdown the government.
I'm not sure how many more of Mr. Brooks' hot takes about how "both sides
are bad" I can take.
Well done kids!
And my personal favorite: "The comments section is closed."
Since all of us here are snobby Liberal elites, I assume you're all familiar
with the parable of The Elephant and the Blind Men.
If you're not, here
it is, minus the happy ending where a Wise Man happens past and says, "Hey,
you're all partially right!" and then they're all filled with joy and
go off together and get drunk. and they all get jobs writing opinion pieces for The New York Times.
Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the
villagers told them, “Hey, there is an elephant in the village today.”
They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, “Even though we
would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway.” All of them
went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.
“Hey,
the elephant is a pillar,” said the first man who touched his leg.
“Oh, no! it is like a rope,” said the second man who touched the tail.
“Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree,” said the third man who
touched the trunk of the elephant.
“It is like a big hand fan” said the fourth man who touched the ear of the
elephant.
“It is like a huge wall,” said the fifth man who touched the belly of the
elephant.
“It is like a solid pipe,” Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the
elephant.
They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that
he was right....
Well this is not that story.
This is the story of four elite Conservatives who spent their entire careers
willfully blinding themselves to the burgeoning rage, racism, paranoia,
arrogant ignorance and lust for a dictator that was motivating the base of
their party.
Instead, as they patted down the fascism at the heart of the Republican party, they reported back to the world that...
“Unlike those heathen, gay-loving Liberals, the Republican party is
deeply, sincerely and faithfully Christian,” said David French.
“Virtuous Republicans who care deeply about deficits and institutional
norms are all that keep us safe from those Liberal monsters,” said Bret
"Bug" Stephens.
So today The New York Times has presented its readerswith four extremely privileged, out-of-touch Conservative white
dudes on the payroll of Times, all of whom have spent
their entire professional lives being willfully blind to the monsters they
were helping to spawn, and being utterly wrong about the one thing they were hired
to have savvy opinions about based on their alleged expertise and insider
knowledge: the state of play inside the Republican party, and what the Right
was thinking and doing behind closed doors.
Let's see how that worked out!
David Brooks: I’d add another phrase: “brokenism.” This is the
belief system popularized by Alana Newhouse in Tablet magazine in 2022.
It’s the idea that everything is broken and we just need to burn it all
down. Personally, I think some things are broken and some things are OK,
but most of my Trump-supporting friends are brokenists. They get this
from media consumption.
Translation: I personally have no idea what's going on but I gonna say that I still have Trump-supporting friends for some reason and they tell me...
David French: In addition to the brokenism that David talks
about, there’s a strong undercurrent of raw animosity in our politics.
Republicans and Democrats have very negative views of each other...
Translation: Both Sides... Both Sides... Both Sides...
Ross Douthat: I think there are all kinds of ways in which
Trump’s popularity is connected to distinctive shifts in the culture in
the last 15 years — the trends on both left and right that have boosted
populists all over the Western world. But it’s also important to stress
that part of what Republicans like about Donald Trump is just that
Donald Trump is a Republican.
Translation: Both Sides... Both Sides... Both Sides. Also I don't have that much of a problem with Trump because he's mostly doing Republican stuff that I like.
Brooks: I’d offer up one more word for consideration:
“exclusion.” Progressives really have spent the last few decades
excluding conservative and working-class voices from a lot of
institutions.
Translation: Both Sides... Both Sides... Both Sides...
Brooks: A lot of elite conservatives continue to struggle with
what I call the near-abroad problem. They may dislike MAGA, but they
(we) are mostly around progressives or moderates on a day-to-day basis,
by virtue of being elite. These progressives sometimes make our teeth
hurt. We react more strongly to minor sins of the people across campus
than the major sins of the people far away. This is something I’m
working on.
Translation: We really don't know what we're talking
about.
Stephens: The other point that can’t be emphasized enough:
Trump wouldn’t be as popular as he is with his side of the country if
Democrats and progressives weren’t as unpopular with most sides of the
country. Just the fact that he drives the Rachel Maddows of the world
into fits of rage and despair and thoughts of European exile is reason
enough for many Americans to support him. Sometimes even including me.
Translation: My bone-deep loathing of Liberals remains undimmed and I will exploit any opportunity to drag them into any subject for a little hippie
punching.
French: Those of us who follow politics closely always seem to
forget that we’re the strange ones. I really question how much the
average rank-and-file Republican even knows about most of these early
controversies. If you’re watching Fox News or other right-wing outlets,
you’re hearing a lot of stories about strange, “woke” programs funded by
U.S.A.I.D. They don’t know about the lives that are saved or the lives
that are at risk.
That means they won’t know, much less care, about any given political
controversy until it affects them personally.
Translation: We really don't know what we're talking
about.
Douthat: Second, I would emphasize that many Americans
experienced the recent period of liberal power, especially under
Covidian conditions, as much more authoritarian and lawless-feeling in
its everyday impact ... than anything they experienced under Trump.
Translation: I'm with Stephens. Liberals are the worst.
Stephens: ...some of what Trump is doing is simply a turbocharged
version of what his liberal predecessors did while the mainstream press
remained mostly mum. Remember Barack Obama’s threats of unilateral
executive action through his phone and his pen? Or Joe Biden’s almost
open flouting of the Supreme Court with his student loan forgiveness
schemes? I also think millions of Americans are tuning out some of the
claims of Trump’s unconstitutional behavior as so much partisan noise.
That’s one of the downsides of some of the more doubtful efforts by
liberal prosecutors to put Trump in jail.
Translation: Have I mentioned that I still really, really fucking
hate Liberals and will use any opportunity to drag them into any subject
for a little hippie punching? Also Liberals are really to blame for
everything.
French: ... We’ve seen this pattern throughout the Trump years.
Trump will advance an illegal or unconstitutional policy, MAGA lawyers
will spring to MAGA media to rationalize and justify it, and then, when
even conservative judges or justices block Trump’s actions, they scream
that the courts are lawless, not Trump.
Translation: Fuck you, Stephens. I'm an actual lawyer not
some DEI hire from the Wall Street Journal brought on because
Cardinal Douthat here wasn't red meat wingnut enough for the five MAGA
rubes who Sulzberger believes still read his paper.
French: It’s so important to distinguish between the core of MAGA
— which dominates discourse online — from the bulk of voters who put
Trump back in the White House.
driftglass: No it's not. If they're not out-and-proud fascists, they
extremely cool with being out-and-proud fascist-adjacent. Fuck 'em
all: the three-strikes rule applies to everyone who voted for Trump
during his third run for the White House.
Douthat: It’s not unique to MAGA, though — real partisans don’t
change their vote just because the economy goes bad, and especially not
under polarized conditions. It’s not like the inflation under Biden
suddenly made partisan Democrats...
Translation: Both Sides... Both Sides... Both Sides...
Stephens: Well, Treasury Secretary Bessent is right. Market
corrections are healthy. Recessions should sometimes happen.
Translation: Let them eat cake.
Healy: Trump calling for the impeachment of that judge — and the
notion of impeaching or disregarding judges generally whom Trump
disagrees with.
Stephens: Terrible. I only stop to observe that all the liberals
who went berserk over John Roberts’s nomination to the court 20 years
ago owe the chief justice an apology...
Translation: I am so consumed by my hatred of Liberals that there is
nothing left inside of me, and it's really, really unfair that Trump's
awfulness makes it harder to devote every word in every column I write to
the subject of just how monstrous Liberals are.
Stephens: Musk is off to a bad start in his government career,
but I sincerely wish him success. The federal government isn’t just too
big, it’s obese. Elon may yet be its Ozempic.
Translation: Burn it all down -- I'll bring the marshmallows!
-- except for the parts I like.
Douthat: We are two months into the presidency, and we just lived
through four years of dramatic global and domestic upheaval under a
Democratic president whose manifest incapacity was deliberately
concealed from the country. I have a million concerns about where this
administration is going, but it’s a bit soon to attack the president’s
supporters for being irrationally loyal.
Translation: I'm with Stephens. Democrats are the worst.
In conclusion, while the four New York Times Conservatives columnists did
collectively manage to blame both sides, express their unalloyed contempt
for people like me, and confess that they have no idea what people outside
of their tiny cossetted bubble of privilege think about a damn thing, they
very definitely did not pinpoint why the reprogrammable
meatbag base of the Republicans party love Trump more than before.
For the answer to that question they would need to stop sniffing each others Buckley farts and ask any one of us who A) live well outside their tiny
cossetted bubble of privilege and, B) have been writing about the Republican
party for 20 years now.
Which they will never do because an honest
answer would, well...
It is one of the more amusing ironies of our age that while elite New York Times Conservatives (and The Atlantic Conservatives, and The Bulwark Conservatives, and so on) may be anathema to the Republican MAGA base, both groups detest Liberals for exactly the same reason: our existence and our decades of warnings make both groups look stupid.
While fighting off this stupid cough that interrupted our podcasting schedule,
for my sins I listened to Mona Charen's "new" podcast interviewing David
French.
I listened all the way to the end, and I have some thoughts. Many
thoughts. So, before we begin --
-- I am contractually obliged to contextualize the interview for you.
Charen and French represent the moral and intellectual pillars of the
Right. The one, unique thing they supposedly brought to every table and
panel and podcast and program to which they were invited (and they were
invited to a lot of them) was their penetrating insight into politics.
It's why The Bulwark hired Charen. It's why
The New York Fucking Times whitewashed French's inconvenient past and
added him to their already top-heavy lineup of Conservative
opinion-havers.
Because these guys, above all others, knew the skinny. They knew the
deal -- the real deal. They were tight with the
shot-callers. They were in the little rooms with the Big Thinkers who
were making the Big Decisions. They could be trusted to reliably report
on what was really going on deep in the heart of Conservatism. And, even
more important than all of that, they knew all what all of us sneaky
terrorist-loving, Murrica-hating, baby-killing, commie Liberals were up
to with our schemey schemes.
Using their credentials and character-references from all the other
unimpeachable pillars of Conservative credibility, they spent decades stamping
their imprimatur all over reassurances that the Right was, in every way, oh so
much better than the petty, addled, hateful Left. More
noble. More thoughtful. More respectful of the rule of law.
More decent. More honest. More generous. More
virtuous.
In fact, the Right was so incomparably superior to the Left in every way, that
there was barely any point in comparing the two.
So, please read the following excerpts which I have faithfully transcribed in
the knowledge that this is how people like Charen and French were regarded by
the Right and the legacy media, and it was the basis of this unique expertise
that they have been paied as writers and speakers.
Ahem.
FRENCH: But here's what ... I'm more worried about, us, the American
people. Because if you ... what [Trump is] also doing is he's
fostering in his followers the same hatred that he feels. And so
what when I learned this, y'know, I, in 2016 I voted third party. And 2020
I voted third party. In 2024 I voted for the Democrat -- for Kamala
Harris. First time I ever voted for a Democrat for president in my life.
And when I wrote about that the blowback from ordinary people, like,
ordinary Republicans that I know was really surprising to me.
Especially considering that they knew I hadn't voted for Trump in 2016 and
2020.
FYI, being taken completely by surprise by things Liberals have been writing
about and warning about for decades is going to be kind of a theme here.
FRENCH: But they had been so inculcated with this hyper-partisanship, of
Democrats as "Demoncrats", and the dehumanization of their political
opponents that they really saw me as joining the enemy of the
country. Whereas if I was... if I'd voted third party again they
would view me as sitting out the fight. By voting for the Democrats
they viewed me as joining the other side, and it's that internal hatred
that is the fuel for this fire. And that's what I'm more worried
about than any specific actions. Because all of these actions are
empowered by that hatred. And then Trump milks it and fuels it and
fuels it. And so I don't know, Mona, what we do with all that hatred
after Trump leaves the scene?
Then, after some hand-waving and throat clearing about how awful the Elites
are (that's you and me) and how "they" look down on Christians...
FRENCH: ...and then, when I got on the wrong side of the Christian conservative
World by not supporting Donald Trump what I experienced was
something worse than anything I'd had experienced at the hands of the
left...
Then after still more hand-waving and throat clearing about how awful the Left
was on few college campuses...
FRENCH: ...and so then I began to hear the stories of... and when I got, y'know
uh my feet in, when I got in mainstream media [ed. he means, when the New
York Fucking Times whitewashed his record and gave him a job], um, I began
to hear stories from people who had interacted with Christian
conservatives
and the stories of hatred and vitriol and abuse were horrifying. And, so, y'know one of the things that I wish I could say is, like, go
back and go to these churches where they say "Why are they looking down on
us?" and say guys you don't know what other people in the pews around you
are saying and doing to your opponents. And if you could sit... if
you could walk a mile in their shoes you would know this. You
would know that
if I cross the Evangelical conservative movement I can expect terrible
things. Terrible treatment. Horrible treatment.
Threats. I can expect threats. I can expect
intimidation. I can expect the worst kind of name calling and
slander.
Then more throat clearing about how most Conservative evangelicals are
not this way.
Really? And how the fuck would you know that? After all, you claim
you had no fucking clue about any of this heinous shit your
chosen party, your chosen movement and your chosen faith were up to
until it bit you personally in the ass.
FRENCH:... but I've gotten to the point where I'm not... I'm ... the fact that
you are sitting in institutions in which many, many, many of the members
in good standing are abusing their fellow citizens and you don't do
anything about it...
...but when you're a part of a movement and you're part of an institution
that is supposed to be following the person of Jesus Christ and it doesn't
alarm you when you hear of all of the abuse towards critics etc. emanating
from your own institutions? And that doesn't alarm you? Uh, that is that
is very difficult to deal with, Mona.
No shit, Sherlock.
FRENCH: It's very difficult to deal with the fact that there is such indifference
to the suffering that their own institution inflicts on its critics.
Golly, if only there had been some sort of warning. A hint. Some
subtle clue that Conservative Evangelical are monstrous hypocrites.
Fun Fact: In two months it will be the 20th anniversary of
"Little Red State Fundy". I am so fucking tired of these people.
Then it was Mona Charen's turn for some throat clearing about how she used to
get some hate mail from the Left, and how "people" would compliment her on how
brave she was to be out there in the world calling Liberals naughty bad
people. And then...
CHAREN: But when I got on the wrong side of MAGA, um,
it was off the charts. I mean, on Twitter in 2015 to 2016, uh that
was when I first started getting the
unbelievable misogynistic antisemitic... y'know, uh all of that
stuff, hatred aimed at me, um, y'know, the contempt that, y'know.
And so I ...
I have a limited amount of sympathy for the people who are constantly
saying how, y'know, we really need to understand that MAGA is just a
reaction to the way they're being badly treated...
Here's more good news! After 40 years of playing dumb, these two brain
wizards seem to have finally cracked the code for how Conservative propaganda
works!
FRENCH: ...but this sort of idea that a lot of people take so personally in their
own lives -- they're so personally offended in their own lives by the
disdain, like, that the Women's Studies Department in Oberlin might have
for them.
CHAREN: I know... I know!
FRENCH: When they have nothing to do with their lives, y'know.
CHAREN: Exactly!
FRENCH: But I think what.. what also happens, you have to realize, a lot of the
business model of right-wing media is to go find the most contemptuous
leftist...
CHAREN: Yep!
FRENCH: ...and put them front and center and saying "Look and see what they think
of you!"
CHAREN: Yes!
FRENCH: ... and they're not representative. They're not the normal person
left of center. But it's all about sort of feeding the sense of
grievance.
CHAREN: Yep.
Also, did you know that Republican voters are morons? Yeah, its true!
They don't actually sit around pondering the deficit and quoting Edmund
Burke. In fact, they don't know fuck all about anything!
FRENCH: Trump couldn't return without civic ignorance at mass
scale. And so what's what you saw if you looked at the data was that
amongst the people who are well informed about the news, Kamala Harris won
those people pretty substantially.
Trump won people very substantially who got their news from nowhere at
all.
Mr. French, Ms. Charen, those are your people you're talking
about. Your people and your party.
And since you have now succeeded in making your failure my problem, this
would be an excellent time to consider spending the rest of your lives
apologizing to those of us who warned you this would happen, and who will have
to spend the rest of our lives cleaning up your catastrophe.
You're wondering, "What it the plural form of 'status quo?"
I understand because this is the sort of question that keeps me up at
night. Fortunately I have access to The Google, and now the answer be
told:
status quos or (rare) statuses quo or (rare, hypercorrect)
stati quo
And given what you know about me, you know which option speaks to me.
Ahem.
Within the legacy media there it not just one terrible status quo doctrine
which must be defended at all costs. There are multiple,
terrible stati quo doctrines which must be defended. Here
are three of them, each from a legacy media thought leader.
1. Liberals just don't understand.
It is an article of faith within the legacy political media that, whatever
some Never Trump has just now figured out, it is the first time anyone
anywhere has figured whatever-it-is out and it it now their solemn duty to use
their huge media platform to explain it to the po' dump Liberal who have no
clue.
And so...
What Liberals Miss About the MAGA Movement
David French explores what keeps Trump’s followers hooked.
Sept. 19, 2024
I first started writing about the MAGA movement in late 2015. Like a lot
of people, I didn’t initially take Trump seriously, but very quickly, I
realized this was very serious and he was absolutely resonating. And so, I
began talking to friends, to relatives. Why? What is it about Donald Trump
that appeals to you so much? And that conversation has never really
stopped for nine years.
I knew that MAGA was going to take this torch and carry it as far as it
possibly could. And they did it in that particular way that MAGA interacts
with the larger world, with this sense of gleeful transgression. They have
fun being outrageous. They have fun being provocative. They like to
“trigger the libs.” What MAGA is very good at doing is turning around back
to its own people and saying, “See, we struck a nerve.” They’ll use words
like, “If you’re taking flack, it means you’re over the target.” And so
they use the backlash almost as proof that they’ve hit a nerve and all of
this just creates an endless process of doubling down.
And one thing that I think that liberals tend to miss about the MAGA
movement is they miss its underlying sense of community and its joy. So
there is a strong sense of belonging within MAGA and they have a great
time being MAGA...
This is the Tribe That Rubs This In Their Hair, about which I have been
writing about since even before I made character actor and unhinged wingnut
lunatic Nick Searcy
cry like a little bitch and run away:
These are genuine charter members of the Tribe That Rubs Shit In Their
Hair -- my shorthand for the Conservative mutual masturbation society
whose lunacy grows exponentially more unhinged when excitedlypuppy-piling their batshit nonsense among themselves -- who happily
rub shit in their hair because everyone else in the club is doing
it...
The key takeaway from David French is not that we silly, addlepated Liberals
don't really understand what's going on inside the Republican party. The
key takeaway is that David French spent his entire adult life writing
right-wing garbage for outfits like the National Review while turning a
blind eye to what was going on inside his Republican party until
it was far, far too late.
I first started writing about the MAGA movement in late 2015. Like a lot
of people, I didn’t initially take Trump seriously, but very quickly, I
realized this was very serious
But of course it's far too psychologically painful and professionally
inconvenient for him to admit that the Left has actually be right about the
Right all along. So he just erases us and replaces us with imaginary
Liberals who need to have all this complicated, grownup political stuff
explained to them in little words.
2. Trump Hijacked The Modern Republican Party.
It is vitally important to virtually every legacy media Conserative influencer
of the first water to continue to maintain the the Republican party was just
fine until Trump showed up one day and, overnight, somehow mesmerized tens of
millions of them into voting for him over and over again.
Millions of pixels have been spilt by Liberal writers over the past decade
(including your 'umbel scrivner) definitely proving over and over again that
this is sheer bunkum. That the rot at the heart of the GOP began long
before Trump arrives. That all of those now-shocked!shocked legacy media
pundits were either blissfully oblivious to what was actually happening inside
the GOP for decades , or were perfectly sanguine about it because building a
party base of Fox-News addicted bigots and imbeciles was winning them
elections. Either way, those now-shocked!shocked legacy media pundits
spent a whole lot of time and energy dismissing anyone who was speaking the
truth about the GOP as crackpot alarmists...
...until that party base finally manifested its perfect avatar. Someone who
spoke their hateful language, fully endorsed their grievances and paranoia,
and shared their debased "values". Donald Trump. At which point
those now-shocked!shocked legacy media pundits had to scramble for an
explanation for the existence and persistence that not show them to have been
wrong all along. And they're still scrambling.
Take it away David Brooks on the PBS NewsHour (referring to Mark "I'm a Black
Nazi" Robinson)
Brooks: ...It's nastiness, and mind-boggling nastiness.
Well, what it says is the Republican Party used to be a normal party,
which had the normal vetting procedures. Like, you were a College
Republican, and then you got vetted by your local state assembly, and then
— so you had a normal — like any industry, basically, that there's a whole
series of structures that people who are just complete opportunists and
degenerates, if I can use that word, don't pass through the system.
But that whole system was wiped away. And so, ever since the Trump era
came in...
No, David. That system was a fraud, and you and your various
"respectable" employers were a deeply complicit it perpetrating that fraud on
the American public for decades.
It's not a hijacking or a theft or a hostile takeover when the base of the
party hands a madman the keys and begs him to take them wherever he
wants.
And finally...inevitably. The big one.
3. Both Sides Do It (And Democrats Are Solely Responsible For Fixing
Everything.)
Because Chuck Todd had been given the hook off the the Meet the Press set and
replaced by the equally awful Kristin Welker, you may have been under the
misapprehension that NBC had actually fired Chuck Todd fired for incompetence,
or he had been sent update to play with other disgraced former network
political anchors, or had suddenly been summoned back to his home planet for
some reason.
But no. Chuck Todd is still NBC News' Chief Political Analyst,
still cranks out a newsletter on a regular basis, and his wretched Both
Siderist stank is still very much in evidence everywhere.
For example, here, on NBC's very own website. With emphasis added to aid
you the reader.
Chuck Todd: What if we can't unite?
...Let’s be honest: The current level of political discourse is
unsustainable for this democracy. Maybe it doesn’t break us this year,
maybe not next.
But unless we choose to rise above it, either by electing
de-escalators
rather than purveyors of zero-sum political pugilism or by demanding that
the big tech companies stop creating algorithms...
De-escalators? You mean like Barack Obama? Hey Chuck, remind me
again how the Right reacted to the election of Barack Obama.
Chuckles the Clown continues:
The problem with political discourse in America right now is that we are
all stuck in a social media funhouse mirror booth. What we see isn’t what
is, and how we’re seen isn’t who we are. And yet, here we are....
"We"? Who the fuck is this "We" you're talking about.
Chuckles continues:
And that brings me back to what happened over the weekend. Be honest with
yourself — while the news was surprising Sunday, it sadly wasn’t very
shocking. Spend 10 minutes doom-scrolling on your social media app of
choice and you will be served up examples of outrage and demonization that
can do one of two things: make you shake your head about the state of the
country and leave the platform in disgust or anger you and get you to
engage even more, usually by contributing wittingly or unwittingly to
demonizing “the other side.”
And, yes, I’m being intentionally vague with these descriptions
because this type of behavior isn’t limited to one set of
partisans...
No, you're being intentionally vague because if you were clear and
specific everyone could see how completely full of shit you are.
Chuckles continues:
It’s why it’s hard to take seriously the outrage from some in Trump’s
orbit that it’s the Democrats and their media allies who have created the
more violent conditions in our political landscape. For every complaint
the right surfaces about discourse it says could have been triggering,
there is a slew of pugilistic personal attacks that Trump has made himself
and directed at Americans by name, putting them in harm’s way.
But just because Trump started it doesn’t mean his opponents have the
high moral ground when they single out him and some of his supporters
for personal derision. I still want to live in a society where “two
wrongs don’t make a right.”...
There it is. Chuckles' irredeemable corrupt statement of corporate media
morality. Of course, it's bad when terrible people do terrible things,
but it is equally bad (maybe worse!) to say true things about those
terrible people and the terrible things they are doing.
Chuckles continues with a sermonette on Both Siderism worthy of David Fucking
Brooks at his worst:
Sadly, so much of our political discourse features people rationalizing
their bad behavior by claiming the other side is worse.
Who are these "people"? Where do they live? What, specifically,
are they saying? Are the numbers of these imaginary "people" actually
equivalent on both sides? Can Chuckles cite any actual examples of any
of this at all?
Of course not. Because would smack of "journalism" which, I am sure,
doesn't appear anywhere in the job description of an NBC News' Chief Political
Analyst.
Chuckles continues:
My friends on the left love to scream about both sides-isms and love to
complain when some of us hold them to a higher standard than Trump.
First, Chuckles has no friends on the Left.
Second, way to go team! I know as a matter of fact that it has been
readers of this blog and others, and listeners to the Professional Left
Podcast, that have been the most tireless missionaries on social media
spreading the Good News that Both Sides Don't.
And you know what? It worked! The message of the Both Sides Don't
movement has penetrated so deeply into enemy territory the NBC News' Chief
Political Analyst now has to acknowledge that it exists and where it's coming
from...before dismissing it with one of the weakest, most pusillanimous
excuses I have ever heard.
But the party that promises a higher standard is asking to be judged by a
higher standard. This doesn’t mean anyone is condoning the bad behavior of
the other side, but it means that if you ask the voters to expect better,
you should always behave better, period...
This is goalpost-moving on a rocket sled. Sure, Donald Trump is a
degenerate, racist, rapist monster, and that's all really bad. But if
actually saying true things about Donald Trump and the Republican party is
objectively worse because...reasons.
I would never expect Chuckles to sit down on a panel with actual
Liberals armed to the teeth with receipts. He much too gutless for
that. But it would be hilarious to sit him down at a panel with, say,
David French and David Brooks that is moderated by, say, me and watch these
three legacy media stati quo crash with each other.
After all, because Brooks pretends that Trump broke the Republican party, he
feels free to refer to candidate vetting process as one that produces "opportunists and degenerates".
Candidates which don't just have skeletons in their closet, but whole
"morgues in their closet."
David French says MAGA is
...trashing our body politic. They’re wrecking, in many ways, the G.O.P.,
but they are having a good time and hey, the people they’re making mad,
they don’t like them anyway.
And you might think for a minute that, well, wait, this can’t go on
forever. Surely, surely the majority of Republicans, when they know
they’ve been had, when they know these are lies, will stop paying
attention to these memes. They’ll reject this method.
And the really sad answer is that the Republican response to Jan. 6 and
the Big Lie showed us the tolerance that Republicans have for dishonesty
and for lying if it is directed against their hated Democratic enemies.
A lot of people are looking at these transparent lies, obvious
falsehoods, baseless accusations, and saying, “How is this happening
again? Why are we here again?” And one of the answers, quite frankly, is
that MAGA has a lot of fun doing this.
(And not for nuthin', but my-oh-my you should hear what kind of salty
language many prominent legacy media Never Trumpers use to accurately describe
what is going on with the Republican party. They almost sound like
[checks notes] Liberal bloggers circa 2004!)
There is no way to describe the atrocities on the Right without describing
them as atrocities, and there is no way to correctly characterize the villainy
and depravity of those enacting and applauding those atrocities without
describing them as depraved villains. So how does Chuckles propose to
square this circle?
Well...he doesn't, because he doesn't give a shit about any of this. His
years laboring in the legacy media vineyards have taught him only one
skill: how to concoct what he believes to be excellent "gotcha"
questions with which to trip up Democrats.
But to these tired eyes, it appears that, very slowly, at least some prominent
Progressives/Liberals/Democrats are starting to figure out how not to get
tripped up by Todd's absurd goalpost-moving, or Brooks' ridiculous revisionist
history, or French's laughable idea that the actions and motives of
Republicans need to be explained to the very same Liberals who were warning
about the actions and motives of Republicans during all the years when David
French was lying about it.
It just goes around and around, over and over again, and always ends up in the
same place.
If you have been paying attention you may have noticed this trend over at
Conservative, Inc.
Every few months for the past eight years or so, some prominent Conservative
out there who has cadged for themselves a sweet media gig based on their
Superior Knowledge of The Subject of Politics and Conservatism stumbles over
the fact that something they believed to have been inviolable Conservative
orthodoxy was bullshit all along.
In fact, history has shown that, with the exception of Beltway pundits, no
group has been more loudly, repeatedly and disastrously wrong about the true
nature of the Republican party and the Conservative movement than [checks
notes] elite Republicans and Conservatives.
Yet somehow they all still have elite mainstream media jobs.
And you know who turns out to have been right about the Right all
along?
Yeah. That's right. Us America-hating, terrorist-loving, godless,
commie, baby-killing Liberals. Whose are all still treated like pariahs
by the mainstream media.
Over and over again. Around and around the Conservative
Epiphany Merry-Go-Round goes.
Maybe a blog post of tsk-tsking. Maybe revisiting the hurry-up-quick way
that French tidied up his extremely problematic professional history enough
for the Sulzberger family -- who are always thirsty for yet another
Conservative to bring under the Times' banner -- to put him on
payroll.
But I set all that aside over the busy travel/socializing weekend, which
was followed by time spent errand-running and podcast prepping and
doing, and when I came back to the subject of David French, I wanted to widen
the aperture a little.
After all, French is in no way unique. Not the only one who, after
decades of living La Vida Falwell, "suddenly" noticed a glitch in the
Republican Jebus Matrix at exactly the same moment that Donald Trump ripped
the mask off the Republican party and showed the world who they had really
been all along.
Before he passed, I wrote dozens of posts about the late Michael Gerson's
long, strange journey from Evangelical thug and key advisor and speechwriter
for George W.Bush...to his gig at The Washington Post where he spent
eight years relentlessly savaging President Obama in
very unChristian terms...to his very slowly dawning realization
that his Republican party really was going to nominate Donald Trump...to his
very slowly dawning realization that his Conservative Evangelical movement
was, in fact, 100% cool with Donald Trump.
It's been a well-trod path, this denial!denial!denial! decade after decade
that anything was fundamentally wrong on the Right. That to win
elections, the Republican party had been filling itself up with garbage people
for decades: bigots and imbeciles whose votes and viewer attention had been
purchased by way of promises of all sorts of nonsense by party
elites.
And, just like the collapse of the housing market, it turns out that all the
specialists and experts and journalists who were supposed to be keeping an eye
on the basic soundness of the system were profiting from looking the other
way.
But rather that going along with the increasingly absurd reportage from the
cloistered garden of the Beltway media about the state of American democracy,
there were a few of us out here in the Real World telling a
very different story about what we were seeing and
hearing.
And, just as happened with the collapse of the housing market, anyone who was
out there contradicting the received wisdom of the Beltway media was dismissed
as a crackpot and an alarmist, because all the Very Serious
People just knew that foundations of American democracy were
rock-solid. That the two-party system was functioning as it
should.
It's gonna be Rubio!
And when it all fell down, how uncanny it was -- how deeply uncomfortable it
made all those Very Serious People -- that the real Republican party turned out to be just as we America-hating, godless commie
Liberals had been describing it all along. A party of bigots and
imbecile, grifters and demagogues, cynics, fascists, homophobes, oligarchs and
collaborators which those professionals with Superior Knowledge of The
Subject of Politics and Conservatism like Michael Gerson and David French had
denied and denied and denied existed at all.
Comes now David French, who, to his credit, actually gets a little further
down the road than Gerson ever did when he acknowledges that
"many of the critics of the pro-life movement were right all along":
I still believe there are many deeply sincere pro-life Americans. I see
their anger in response to Trump’s statements, even when they’ve
previously supported him. They are people who genuinely believe that all
human life is precious and should be protected from conception until
natural death.
But I also recognize that many of the critics of the pro-life movement
were right all along. When push came to shove, the pro-life position was
either secondary to other values or it genuinely was punitively tribal —
enthusiastically aimed straight at the supposedly licentious left but
ready to be abandoned the instant the commitment to unborn children
might endanger the larger MAGA political project. Abortion is the poison
pill that Trump doesn’t want to swallow.
And at no extra charge, Mr. French also got a little taste of the brand of
Evangelical Christian love and forgiveness that his side had been handing out
to us America-hating, terrorist-loving, dirty, commie hippies for as long as I
can remember:
At its worst, the pro-life movement was also deeply cynical. Many of its
members have spent the last eight years mocking and bullying pro-life
conservatives who’ve refused to support Trump, even when we rightly said
he was a terrible ambassador for a virtuous cause. I’ve been called a
baby-killer or murderer or heretic more times than I can count.
Mr. French ends on this note:
The older I get, the more I’m convinced that we simply don’t know who we
are — or what we truly believe — until our values carry a cost. For more
than 40 years, the Republican Party has made the case that life begins at
conception. Alabama’s Supreme Court agreed. Yet the Republican Party can’t
live with its own philosophy...
But I choose to end on this one. It's from Ayn Rand's crappy science
fiction novel "Atlas Shrugged", but it seems too appropriate not to
appropriate:
You have destroyed all that which you held to be evil and achieved all
that which you held to be good. Why, then, do you shrink in horror from
the sight of the world around you? That world is not the product of your
sins, it is the product and the image of your virtues. It is your moral
ideal brought into reality in its full and final perfection. You have
fought for it, you have dreamed of it, and you have wished it, and I-I am
the man who has granted you your wish.
Bonus Content.
This is from
Time Magazine, February 07, 2005. Nearly 20 years ago. Same issue, in fact, in which Michael
Gerson was named one of Time Magazine's"25 Most Influential Evangelicals".
Give it a read and and see how the dangerous trajectory the Republican party
was already on was clearly visible to any reasonable
person who bothered to pay attention:
Does Bush Owe the Religious Right?
...
What do they think Bush owes them? His campaign barely had time to sweep
up the confetti last Nov. 3 before the victorious President got a
congratulatory bouquet of praise, threats, warnings and demands. "In your
re-election, God has graciously granted America — though she doesn't
deserve it — a reprieve from the agenda of paganism," wrote Bob Jones III,
president of the namesake South Carolina university that his grandfather
founded to foster "Christ-like" character. "Don't equivocate. Put your
agenda on the front burner and let it boil. You owe the liberals nothing."
But if Jones saw the victory as an opportunity to be seized, others were
preaching the biblical virtues of patience and caution. "Can we handle
success and increased influence with grace and prudence?" Watergate
conspirator turned prison evangelist Chuck Colson wrote in a column. "Sad
to say, the church has managed to shoot itself in the foot almost every
time it has achieved power in society. So what we need right now is a
bracing dose of humility."
Having helped wage a presidential campaign over big issues like a
constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage, conservative Christians
are not likely to be content winning skirmishes like the one that newly
installed Education Secretary Margaret Spellings fought last week against
the cartoon character Buster, famous for being Arthur's best friend. She
objected to one episode that featured Buster visiting a real-life lesbian
couple in Vermont. After her warning about the dangers of exposing young
viewers to "the lifestyles portrayed in the episode," PBS decided not to
distribute the show to its 350 publicly financed stations.
As Bush begins his last term in the White House, the voters who believe
they did more than anyone else to put him there are asking themselves and
him: What now? And when, if not now? "He's not the typical politician who
'understands' us," says Michael Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal
Defense Association. "He's one of us."
...
Evangelical activists, for their part, say that as Bush looks forward, he
should also look back. They claim that what brought churchgoing Christians
(including a record number of Hispanics) to the polls more than any other
issue last year was gay marriage. Initiatives banning it were on the
ballot in 11 states and passed in every one, overwhelmingly in almost
every case. So religious groups were startled and angry when Bush, bowing
to what he said were political realities, seemed to signal in a
pre-Inaugural interview with the Washington Post that he would not press
the Senate to pass the federal ban.
The reverberations came almost instantly. Former presidential candidate
Gary Bauer, who sends a daily e-mail to 125,000 Christian activists, says
his computer mailbox was jammed with hundreds of complaints, many
lamenting, "I worked my heart out for this guy." The Arlington Group, a
coalition of conservative religious organizations, quickly fired off to
Bush political guru Karl Rove a private letter signed by such figures as
Bauer, Don Wildmon of the American Family Association, Focus on the
Family's James Dobson, conservative standard bearer Paul Weyrich and
evangelist Jerry Falwell. They laid down a none-too-subtle threat that the
Administration's "defeatist attitude" on gay marriage might make it
"impossible for us to unite our movement on an issue such as Social
Security privatization where there are already deep misgivings."
Last post I told you the next post would be about the hiring practices
at The New York Times. So here we go.
In the course of my checked life and misspent youth, I have held many
jobs. From stock boy at a Sears store which no longer exists, to a
software developer during the pioneering days of the commercial internet for
an insurance company which no longer exists, to a senior executive at a City
of Chicago department which no longer exists.
Hey, wait a tic. Am I sensing some sort of...pattern here?
Nah. Probably nothing.
Anyway, lots of jobs doing lots of things.
Now take a deep breath because here comes a long paragraph.
But in all of my many and varied professional experiences, which included both
getting hired and hiring others, and getting sacked and sacking others, I have
never, in my life, been at a workplace, humble or grand, at which a someone
had been hired with great fanfare on the basis of their claim to have a very
specific and unique kind of expertise ... then were paid a lot of money for
that very specific and unique kind of expertise ... then they
publicly confess that they have no such expertise and, in fact, had never had
any idea what they were talking about ... and were nonetheless retained by
their employers in that very prestigious position.
Resume padding? Sure. Seen it.
Sketchy references? Yes, I have been a friend's "Vandelay Industries".
But those are, on the whole, minor infractions. Instead, imagine you're
running a high-end restaurant and you hire a woman who says she did four years
at The French Laundry as chef pâtissier. Then you put her in
the kitchen and tell her to make her magic, and an hour later you find her at
her station, starting at a block of chocolate and a blob of dough. The floor is littered with broken eggs, and she is muttering, "I... I don't know what this is."
Or imagine the contractor you hired to build you a deck has shown up with a
truck load of mulch, popcorn and a can opener, and he confides that he has,
in fact, never joined two pieces of wood together in his life.
Which brings me around to the subject of The New York Times' most
recent wingnut affirmative action hire: David French. I guess their pages weren't already larded with enough horrible Elite Conservatives
Thought Pieces from David Brooks and Bret "Bug" Stephens and Stephens' ex-wife
Pauline Paul and Ross Douthat, which is why Arthur Gregg Sulzberger drove
the NYT labor van down to the National Review parking lot and David
August French was the first one who jumped it.
Just what we didn’t need: Another asshole
@nytopinion
columnist saying conservatives *discounting the Black experience* (!!) are
no more extreme than lefty excess in trying to create inclusive
environments on college campuses. Then denying he said so.
https://t.co/XVGAz62Zxfpic.twitter.com/wip3f3fIWL
-- which he quickly "rethought" while in the NYT labor van en route to the
paper's Op-Ed page. So, one year ago, in January of 2023, there he was, up
on the Times' Opinions masthead, announced with all the attendant
fanfare.
The NYT explained they brought him on as "[an] expert on the law, faith and politics" and praised him for his "factual and intellectual clarity" and
"moral seriousness". But mysteriously, the words "Republican" or "Conservative"
are nowhere to be found in his
official Times' C.V.
So, as you read the rest of this, keep in mind that French's factual clarity and political expertise are two of the specific
skills which landed him at the Times.
From David French, 1/25/2024:
Never Trumpers Never Had a Chance
By David French
And immediately I have a problem. Literally any Liberal who writes about
politics with "factual clarity" could have (and did) tell you this back in
2016. So how is this breaking news for the Times' newest
Conservative Thought Leader?
Ah well. Moving on.
The Republican presidential primary is all but over.
We already know that. Move on.
It’s déjà vu all over again. Since the moment Trump took the G.O.P.
primary lead in 2015, he’s never relinquished his hold on the party.
We already know that. Move on.
And since Trump’s hostile takeover and unexpected 2016 victory...
Hey dummy, it's not a "hostile takeover" if the party throws him the keys
and begs him to drive. Move on.
French then notes the many Democratic victories since the GOP gave itself over, body and soul, to the Umber Grifter.
Then...
This is in part because while Democrats have been able to mobilize an
effective anti-Trump opposition, conservative Never Trumpers — Republicans
and former Republicans like me who have desperately tried to break Trump’s
grip on the party — mostly failed.
Because as we have been telling you
since two days after Trump came down the fucking escalator, Trump is the Republican party. He speaks to them in their mother tongue, because he is a
manifestation of the rage and racism and resentment that Conservative media
knocking-shops like [checks notes] Mr. French's former employers has spend
decades feeding to the GOP base.
And then comes the kicker (with emphasis added):
It’s now clear to me that we never had a chance. And the reason is
equally clear: We did not truly understand our own party.
No. You didn't. And I can only begin to imagine the enormous
psychological resources that men like David French had to employ to hold
themselves in a such a state of willful delusion about things that were
happening right in front of them all along. Such a state of willful delusion that
they made their living, decade after decade, propagandizing tirelessly on
behalf of a party and movement that existed only in their imaginations.
Lying to themselves so aggressively every day. Having to shut their eyes tighter and tighter to blot out the madness that was blossoming right there in
their own garden so they could go on writing about the awful, amoral and
dangerous Barack Obama and the Democrats.
French then stops to light a candle at the shrine of St. Reagan, and swaddle
himself in the fading, righteous warmth of the Good Old Days of the
"disgraceful and unlawful" Bill Clinton.
Then...
No one would claim that every conservative had character ... but I
refused to believe that the G.O.P. would broadly excuse, rationalize or
defend a Bill Clinton in our midst.
Yes, in French's telling, Trump is "a Bill Clinton in our midst." Fuck you.
Then...
I wasn’t just wrong; I was completely, embarrassingly wrong. The winds
were shifting. I could sense it, but I didn’t fully understand it. Not
until Trump made it all plain.
We warned you.
Reviewing old essays by conservatives opposed to Trump, the most
persistent complaint was simple: The man wasn’t a “real” conservative. At
the same time, others among us remembered the Christian conservative
outcry against Clinton’s infidelity, and believed that an argument about
character would pull believers away from Trump’s grasp.
But no.
When we told you, over and over again, that you were building an army of
reprogrammable meatbags you would never be able to control, this is what we
were talking about.
If animosity toward Democrats was the primary Republican value, even more
than ideology or character, you can see how Never Trumpers were destined
to fail.
When you were warned over and over that you were building an Doomsday Machine
with no "off" switch, and that it would destroy everything, this is what we
were talking about:
The central problem is that when animosity toward Democrats is the
primary value, any critique of Trump has to end the instant it’s perceived
to help or signal agreement with Democrats.
And finally:
I don’t regret my arguments against Trump. I’d make them again, and I
will continue making them.
I do ask myself how I missed the sheer extent of Republican anger.
And I’m deeply, deeply grieved by the thought that I did anything in my
life before Trump to contribute to that unrighteous rage.
I don't ask myself how people like French -- recently-former Republicans who
have since colonized the "Liberal" media -- missed every single thing of
importance that was happening right out in the open the whole time. They
were too busy making a living inventing scary stories about Liberals and
feminists and people of color and Hillary and campus speech codes and LGBTQ+
people and The Kenyan Usurper and feeding those stories to the meatheads to
notice or care about the long-term catastrophe they were courting.
What I do ask myself every day is why men like David French have been awarded
the lucrative and prestigious jobs they have? Because men like French
didn't just passively miss everything: they spent their adult lives
energetically working for Team Evil to build the Doomsday Machine that now
threatens to destroy everything we value.
It's great that French finally figured out what we Liberals figured out
decades ago. And that he feels really bad about not noticing it before
now.
But what I ask myself every day is how such a person, who confesses to have
been staggeringly wrong all along about the one fucking subject he was supposed to know better than almost anyone else got hired by
The New York Times to write about that subject on the basis of
his "factual and intellectual clarity" and "moral seriousness"?
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