It’s smart and wants respect!
Always thought David Brooks was the kind of pundit that only the New York Times would think conservative. The kind of squish allowed on PBS, which Trump wants to defund for its rampant partisan bias. In any event, Our Mr. Brooks is up with an essay — in Mike Waltz’s Atlantic magazine, no less — declaring that he’s now siding with Democrats. (Only now?)
By switching, he’s making both political parties a little bit smarter. Brooks acknowledges that his “new suit is ill-fitting. I’m not completely comfortable as a Democrat.” (Maybe some conversion therapy is in order.) But Brooks, if he ever was a Republican, is the most recent in an exodus of conservative intellectuals, joining the likes of George Will, Jonah Goldberg, Max Boot, Mona Charen, and John Bolton in fleeing Trump’s visceral, What-Day-Is-It? brand of populism.
Brooks proclaims himself a latter-day Whig. (William Henry Harrison, we hardly knew ye!) Claims political ancestry from David Hume and Edmund Burke. (WHO? Not Steve Bannon?) Declares himself a social conservative (as do we), “believing that the universe has a moral order to it, that absolute right and wrong exist, and that we are either degrading our souls or elevating our souls with every little thing we do.” Brooks’ apostasy is this:
Today the Republican relationship to truth and knowledge has gone to hell. MAGA is a fever swamp of lies, conspiracy theories, and scorn for expertise.
Maybe because they’ve been lied to for so long? Russian collusion, Hunter’s laptop, Covid face masks, Uncle Joe’s senescence.
That’s no excuse
Does not vitiate the dumfukkery infesting our Republican party: the chicken littles cowering under supposed chemtrails; election deniers who blame Nancy Pelosi for not ringing the Capitol on J6 with National Guardsmen, bayonets drawn, to put down their fellow election deniers; 9/11 truthers who demand their political opponents be tried for treason; QAnon sympathizers who believe any unattributed social media post if it is sufficiently absurd. The Laura Loomers, Tuckers, and various My Pillow people baying for Robin Vos’ hide because he could not overturn 2020. The purgers and purists.
→ Most egregious are the partisans who want to arrest anyone not toeing the party line. No, Governor Tony Evers is NOT going to be arrested. But Tom Homan has given Democrats ammunition.
The people who spell it “Demo-Rats” are consuming too much oxygen, if you haven’t noticed recent election results here in Wisconsin.
In any event, Brooks devotes most of his word count to flaying the Democrat(ic) party, which remains the intellectual property of A.O.C., Bernie, and Ibram X. Kendi.
A central irony of the progressive aristocracy is that the most culturally progressive institutions in society are elite universities .. they may assign Foucault and Fanon in their humanities classes, but their main function is to educate kids who grew up in the richest, most privileged households in America and launch them into rich and privileged adult lives. …
[They] might never encounter anyone who challenges [their] worldview. To assure that this insularity is complete, progressives have done a very good job of purging Republicans from the sectors they dominate, like the media and the academy. …
Identity-politics thinking rests on a few assumptions: that a person’s gender, racial, or ethnic identity is the most important thing about them; that we should emphasize not what unites all people but what divides them … that free speech, academic standards, and the justice system — are really just tools the dominant groups use to maintain their hegemony. …
The real problem is that categorical thinking makes it harder to see people as individuals. … Too often, people in a “culture of authenticity” fall into emotivism — doing whatever feels right. — David Brooks, “Confessions of a Republican Exile.”
Blaska’s Bottom Line: That’s how you get Luigi Mangione and Judge Hannah Dugan. And the Proud Boys, for that matter.
9 responses to “Conservatism ain’t dumb”
Covid face masks?? They were quite effective and useful. Read more here: https://stevensclark.typepad.com/coronavirus_news_and_view/2024/12/over-400-studies-show-face-masks-protect-against-respiratory-infection.html
Plenty more studies refute masks for covid. Common sense would ask: “how does a mask screen out tiny weenie virus particles?”. Sort of like chicken wire blocking mosquitos!
Flat wrong. And when the virus is expelled in breath it is not just as a virus particle, it is in a respiratory fog that is well blocked by the masks. You clearly did not read the article with is a summary of FOUR HUNDRED RESEARCH STUDIES. Here is a simple one. Ferrets are good model for respiratory viruses. A cage of covid infected ferrets were separated from a cage of uninfected ferrets by either the material from a cloth mask, the type you get at the hospital. Another cage was separated by chicken wire. The cage walled off with the mask material did not get covid but all the animals in the cage walled off by wire did. That is just ONE study. In another, when a school district in Mass ended mask mandates, covid exploded. School districts in Kansas that had mask mandates has a very significant reduction in covid than districts that had no mandate. Similar data were found in NC schools and in small villages in Pakistan. There is a reason that surgeons don those masks when they cut into you. Get smart….
Oh, and then there are the N95 masks which do not physically block pathogens but electrostatically collect them on a filter. Basically, you do not know what you are talking about here….
“[Progressive elites] might never encounter anyone who challenges their worldview.” Might?! Where, pray, will a tenured UW-Madison professor who lives in a mansion in University Heights and reads the Capital Times as though it were holy writ encounter anyone who challenges their worldview?
I agree. Thinking of going Gop myself. Sick of people sucking up my money with crap like FEMA, Healthcare, Meals on Wheels. Screw ’em all. Need help with your heat bill; Tough crap. You want food on wheels, order a pizza. NASA is a scam and should get zero money. Donny needs it for green fees. These damn schools shouldn’t get a dime. Medicaid should be cut zero and stop all this waste on clean air, water, food inspectors, Drug inspectors If your chicken smells bad soak it in bleach and munch on. Measels,psssft take a Flintstone and stop your bitch’n. Hit by a hurricane, your house needed a good cleaning anyway. There should only be one newspaper and one tv station and both run by the gov’t. Remember; the zillionaires need tax breaks so shut the hell up.
I like your use of irony, Richard. MAGATs may take your words literally; most of them are dumb as bricks.
Here is a good example of the intelligence of the Biden/Harris voter. How can we Trump voters ever aspire to the brilliance of the Democratic Party?
Keep up the good work Anonymous.
Squire, your whole premise is that the two parties are the Democrats and the Republicans and that the former are liberal and the latter, conservative.
Not so, anymore.