David Brooks and The Road to Fascism

This year the GOP has nominated election deniers, insurrections, force-birth fanatics, frauds, white supremacists, perverts, Putin stooges, idiots, brain-damaged lumps, sadists and really, really incompetent liars. And nationally that party is running close to dead-even with Democrats.

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

Sunday, November 06, 2022

David Brooks and The Road to Fascism

This week saw David Brooks of The New York Times once again firmly ensconced in his Orbital Pundit Platform high above the Earth, peering owlishly down at the confusing goings on way down here.

Bemused, as a passing alien might be, as to why those tiny humans far, far below him scurry around like red ants and black ants, fighting all the time.

So mysterious!

Also, as an alien might, Mr. Brooks has many theories. Many stupid theories.

But before proceeding with today's tale, I am charged by the Gods of Foreshadowing to read you a long list of terrible people and their educational credentials. This is nowhere near an exhaustive list: I just became exhausted writing it so I stopped where I stopped.

J.D. Vance graduated summa cum laude from Ohio State University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and philosophy. After graduating from Ohio State, Vance earned a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School.

Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz graduated cum laude from Princeton in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts, then earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

John "Colonel Foghorn Cornpone" Kennedy graduated magna cum laude from Vanderbilt University with an interdepartmental major in political science, philosophy and economics. Earned a a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law, and a Bachelor of Civil Law degree with first class honours from Magdalen College, Oxford.

Kevin McCarthy attended California State University, Bakersfield, where he managed to score a Bachelor of Science in marketing in 1989 and a Master of Business Administration in 1994.

Greg Abbott earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in finance from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a member of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity and the Young Republicans Club. He met his wife, Cecilia Phalen, while attending UT Austin. In 1984, he earned his Juris Doctor degree from the Vanderbilt University Law School.

Ann Coulter graduated cum laude from Cornell in 1984 with a BA in history and received her Juris Doctor from the University of Michigan Law School in 1988.

Louis Fucking Gohmert also has a J.D. Got it at Baylor Law School in 1977.

My soon-to-be-former congressperson, Rodney Davis, graduated from Millikin University in 1992 with a degree in political science.

Dinesh D'Souza graduated Dartmouth College with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1983. In 2010 he was appointed president of The King's College, a Christian liberal arts college, and was forced to resign two years later due to a "couldn't keep his dick out of the wrong person" scandal.

Kari "Hellbeast" Lake of Arizona has a Bachelor of Arts degree in communications and journalism from the University of Iowa.

Matt Gaetz has Bachelor of Science in interdisciplinary sciences from Florida State University and a J.D. from the William & Mary Law School.

Jim Jordan has a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a master's degree in education from Ohio State University and a J.D. from the Capital University Law School.

Marjorie Taylor Greene has a Bachelor of Business Administration in from the the University of Georgia.

Donald Trump has a B.S. in economics from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Laura "Eva Braun-Nose" Ingraham earned a B.A. from Dartmouth College, and a J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Greta Van Susteren, formerly of Fox News and now of Newsmax, graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1976 and later earned a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Cente where she later worked as an adjunct faculty member in addition to her full-time legal career.

Sex pervert Eric Bolling, formerly of Fox News and now of NewsMax, graduated from Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, with a BA degree in economics.

Sex pervert Bill O'Reilly, formerly of Fox News and now of "the internet", graduated from Chaminade college in 1967. Then went on to Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York. He spent his junior year of college abroad, attending Queen Mary College at the University of London, and received his BA in history in 1971. O'Reilly taught English and history at Monsignor Pace High School in Miami from 1970 to 1972, and later earned a Master of Arts degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University In 1995. After that he attended the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and received a master degree in public administration there.

Make a list of the most infamous, fascist-pandering Republican scumbags you know, and the infamous, lying, insurrection-inciting Conservative media creatures that you know, and I guarantee you that almost all of them have a college degree of some sort, and most of them have J.D.'s from law schools whose names you probably know.

And so, with that, back to Mr. David Brooks (University of Chicago degree in history) and his column:

Why Aren't the Democrats Trouncing These Guys?

First, I am obliged to mention that on next week's "No Fair Remembering Stuff" podcast we will -- spoiler! -- dare to remember that all the way back to 2008, when Mr. David Brooks was equally mystified as to why Barack Obama wasn't leading John McCain by 15 points:

I think there is no doubt that Barack Obama is much more specific than John McCain. If this were about issues, Obama would be winning by 15 points. The mystery is, why he's not.

Of course it was no mystery at all to anyone who hadn't built a career out of lying to themselves and their readers about what an absolute racist shitpile the GOP actually was. So it was no surprise that, just one year later, in the faces of the absolutely unhinged, racist backlash from the right to the election of Barack Obama, Mr. David Brooks said the following:

Well, I don't have a machine for peering into the souls of Obama's critics, so I can't measure how much racism there is in there. But my impression is that race is largely beside the point.

In a column entitled:

No, It's Not About Race

Similarly, in September of 2016, Brooks wondered why "Clinton wasn't 50 points ahead".

Once again, what Brooks presented as some deep and impenetrable puzzle was no puzzle at all. It was simply that like virtually every other Beltway pundit, after lying about the GOP for a living for so many decades Brooks had become wired to automatically avoid seeing anything about the actual state of his party that conflicted with the entirely imaginary GOP that he sold to his readers every week in the Times.

Because when the reality of the actual Republican party violently collides with Brooks' Fairy Tale Republican party, rather that looking at terrifying truth staring him straight in the eye, Brooks manufactures some other factor -- some other variable -- to explain why his political party isn't really racist and/or misogynist and/or fascism despite the fact that they sure as shit walk like a fascist duck, and talk like a fascist duck.

If you're interested, I wrote a whole long thing about it back in 2008 entitled "The Negrological Constant" and all these years later I wouldn't change a word.

Anyway, Brooks' big "takeaway" from our status quo is that:

We're about where we were. We entered this election season with a nearly evenly divided House and Senate in which the Democrats had a slight advantage. We'll probably leave it with a nearly evenly divided House and Senate in which the Republicans have a slight advantage. But we're about where we were.

So what's to account for the fact that after four years of out-an-proud, sneering racism and corruption and treason under Trump, and two years of stable leadership and steady improvement under Biden, nothing has changed? Except that the GOP has gotten exponentially more paranoid and more openly fascistic, following the same depravity curve they have been on for decades.

This year the GOP has nominated election deniers, insurrections, force-birth fanatics, frauds, white supremacists, perverts, Putin stooges, idiots, brain-damaged lumps, sadists and really, really incompetent liars. And nationally that party is running close to dead-even with Democrats.

So what explains that?

Well the most obvious reason and truest reason is the simplest.

The same reason William of Occam would use to get a nice, close shave in the morning .

The same reason these same meatheads nominated and elected Trump in 2016, and then re-nominated and came out in even greater numbers for Trump in 2020.

The same reason they ran Liz Cheney out of the party on a rail.

Because the nominees of the Republican party accurately reflect the beliefs and values of the Republican electorate. Because the party base are election deniers, insurrections, force-birth fanatics, frauds, white supremacists, perverts, Putin fanboys, brain-damaged lumps, sadists and really, really credulous idiots, and so they nominated candidates that looked and sounded like them

Duh.

But of course, Mr. Brooks has a different theory.

Would you like to hear it?

Americans are sorting themselves out by education into two roughly equal camps. As people without a college degree have flocked to the G.O.P., people with one have flocked to the Democrats.

Yeah.

Over the past few years, the Democrats have made heroic efforts to win back working-class voters and white as well as Black and Hispanic voters who have drifted rightward. Joe Biden's domestic agenda is largely about this: infrastructure jobs, expanded child tax credit, raising taxes on corporations. This year the Democrats nominated candidates designed to appeal to working-class voters, like the sweatshirt-wearing Fetterman in Pennsylvania and Tim Ryan in Ohio.
It doesn't seem to be working.

And then Mr. Brooks ascends to his orbit high above the Earth -- removed entirely from the causes and effects and his own deep complicity in the building of the GOP's propaganda and electoral doomsday machine -- and looks down at the dire threat facing our nation with same kind of reptilian detachment that an alien might have observing our species as if they were cells in a Petri dish.

America has riven itself into two different cultures. It's very hard for the party based in one culture to reach out and win voters in the other culture — or even to understand what people in the other culture are thinking.
As I've shuttled between red and blue America over decades of reporting on American politics, I've seen social, cultural, moral and ideological rifts widen from cracks to chasms.

Truly no one knows America's "social, cultural, moral and ideological rifts" better than the guy who has been [checks notes] completely wrong about all of it since forever.

Also note the passive voice: "America has riven itself" rather than "The Right have been on a mission to divide America and irreversibly poison the minds of its voters for over 40 years."

Brooks again:

But even that is not the real problem. America has always had vast cultural differences. Back in 2001, I wrote a long piece for The Atlantic...

2001? Back when you were writing one, screeching hit-piece after another in The Weekly Standard about us stupid, delusional, amoral, unAmerican Democrats? Are you 100% sure you want to relitigate 2001, Mr. Brooks? Because if you are, just name the time and place and I will be there with fucking tap shoes and tails on.

Meanwhile, back on Brooks' spacecraft:

Now people don't just see difference, they see menace. People have put up barricades and perceive the other class as a threat to what is beautiful, true and good.

"People" this and "people" that. No differentiation. No delineating why Republicans are berserk with rage, armed to the teeth and threatening democracy, and why Democrats have every good reason in the world to see that as a menace.

Just...people. Doing...things.

And then comes the sentence which should have gotten Brooks immediately and retroactively fired all the way back to 2001:

I don't completely understand why this animosity has risen over the past couple of decades...

Of course you don't understand it, Mr. Brooks. Because while it is theoretically your entire job to understand such things, we here all know perfectly well that deliberately pretending not to understand such things -- even as they are staring you right in the face and loudly announcing their presences and intentions -- has always been your real stock-in-trade.

Which brings us back around to the notion that, while Mr. Brooks finds the rivening of American society inexplicable, the only common factor he can conjure as to why is something morally and ideologically neutral: a college degree.

...people without a college degree have flocked to the G.O.P., people with one have flocked to the Democrats.

But if that were true, why is it that virtually every infamous, fascist-pandering Republican scumbag ---

Ron Johnson, University of Minnesota (BS)

Darren Bailey. Associate of Science degree in Agricultural Production from Lake Land College.

Michele Bachmann, Winona State University with a B.A. LL.M. degree in tax law from William & Mary Law School.

-- has a college degree?

And why is it that virtually every infamous, lying, insurrection-inciting Conservative media creature has a college degree.

Tucker Carlson Carlson was "briefly enrolled at College du Leman, a boarding school in Switzerland", then on to St. George's School, a boarding school in Middletown, Rhode Island and then on to Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut where he earned a BA in history.
Stephen Miller, Duke University, BA.

And why is it that so many of them don't just have a Bachelors degrees like you and I Mr. Brooks, but have advanced degrees --

Steve Bannon, Virginia Tech College of Architecture and Urban Studies, BA in urban planning. Master's degree in national security studies in 1983 from Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. Master of Business Administration degree with honors from Harvard Business School.

Newt Gingrich, Emory University (BA), Tulane University (MA, PhD)

-- and/or J.D.s from law schools --

Kash Patel, University of Richmond (BA), Pace University (JD)

-- whose names you probably know?

John Eastman, undergraduate degree from the University of Dallas. J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, and a PhD of Philosophy in Government from the Claremont Graduate School.

Why? Because the GOP's now-open embrace of fascism has nothing to do with the presence or absence of a sheepskin. It has to do with fear. It has to do with a party whose base has been groomed for decades to be easily reprogrammed over and over again by the manipulation of their deepest fears, will follow any strongman who promises to take those fear away...and a leadership who are willing and eager willing to ruthlessly sow and exploit those fears over and over again for profit and political gain.

Here is John Dean back in 2006, warning in the starkest terms about the trajectory that the Republican party -- his Republican party -- was on.

And here's a snip of what I wrote back in 2006 -- 16 years ago -- even as Mr, Brooks and his colleagues were hastily building the Both Sides Do It fortress inside of which they have been barricaded ever since:

If you have the time, watch the whole thing, and to read the book, and realize that John Dean is, at heart, a lifelong and loyal old-school Conservative.
That his idol and friend was Barry Goldwater: Father of the Conservative Movement and a man who absolutely reviled the maggoty thing is had mutated into at the hands of the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.
That what he is saying strongly parallels some of what founding Conservative Bill Buckley has already said.
And what Kevin Phillips (former Republican strategist and author of "The Emerging Republican Majority") said in his most recent treatise, "'American Theocracy".
Conservatives all, each practically screaming in their own way that Conservativism is dead, gone, hollowed out and is being worn as sheep's clothing by despicable men who hate and oppose everything the Original Conservatives ever stood for.
So not only do Modern Conservative have contempt for the Founders of our country, they have moved so far into the abyss that they actually dismiss, ignore and revile the Founders of their own ideology.
Consider the numbers Dean is citing: That 23% of the American population are "pure, rightwing Authoritarian followers". That a tiny fraction - perhaps 1% -- are Liberal, but the rest, the overwhelming majority, identify as Conservatives.
So right there you can kiss any precious pet theory of "balance" goodbye.
Then consider the shameful fact that only about half of the eligible public actually votes during Presidential elections anyway, and quite a bit less at the midterms. And given that it's a pretty good bet that the 23% who are aggressive, dogmatic followers of a Dear Leader will be much more likely to find their way to the polls, they will be far more represented in the voting half of Americans than in the non-voting half.
So, being conservative (pun intended), lets say 40% of the actually voting public are those "pure, rightwing Authoritarian followers"
And then consider that the numerical split between Dems and Republicans is about 50/50, and the "pure, rightwing Authoritarian followers" tend to overwhelmingly be Conservatives, you end up with damned near 70-80% of Republican voters fitting this profile.
Then, just for good measure, figure out from your own experience how many voters of any Party are actually agenda-driving "activists" -- the ones who pound the pavement, evangelize and make and enforce policy and discipline -- and what kind of Leaders, Policy Makers and Disciplinarians you are likely to grow in this Brownshirt Hothouse, and you begin to see what Liberals have seen and tried to warn this nation about for decades.
That the Grand Old Party has been taken over by monsters.
That based on their perverse theology and enraged-sheep psychological makeup, they have very deliberately driven the traditional democratic model of leadership out of their Party in favor of an aggressively Authoritarian paradigm that is clear in its direction, ideology and intent.
That the GOP has a fascist soul...

Mr. Brooks refuses to face the fact that his party has been racing down the road to fascism for decades, and at last arrived where it was going all along. Nor will Mr. Brooks face with the fact that the road to fascism his Republican party has been on for decades was wide and smooth and clearly marked.

And the way Mr. Brooks copes with the sheer scope of his failure, cowardice and duplicity is by floating dirigibley far above it all, pretending that there were no signs, that there was no road, but instead, something something diplomas.