When David Brooks joined the conservative movement in the 1980s, there were two types of people: those who cared earnestly about ideas, and those who wanted only to shock the left. The reactionary fringe has won, Brooks writes.
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Reagan didn’t care earnestly about anything but money. He was the beginning of the shitstorm we are currently enveloped in. There is no hell, but if there was he would be burning in it.
The GOP has sucked ass since well before the 80s. Their white supremacy/Christian nationalist fervor has endured for approximately 100, or more years. No one can say they didn't know. Please.
Thick with revisionist bullshit. Besides, if he admits being wrong since the 80s, why, on god's green earth, do you keep publishing his self-serving tripe?
The analogy to Jackson, and the remarkable recovery w the Whigs after Jackson overreached & trashed the economy then is even better.
I just hope we can last long enough. Andrew Jackson lived in an era before World Wars and before nuclear weapons. Trump’s support of Putin adds special danger.
“Progressives talk about economic redistribution; conservatives talk about cultural and civic repair.” WTF is he talking about?! As if suffrage, civil rights movement, gay marriage, all were conservative lead? Conservatives have always been dragged kicking and screaming along the arc of justice.
David, I don’t think you contributed to Trumps ascendancy. But you should have been yelling from the hilltops in 2016. And besides, Q-Anon Maggies don’t read Orwell. And if they do read 1984, they’re rooting for Big Brother.
Less than a week and the group of “I didn’t see it coming” is getting bigger by the minute.
Gee, maybe you asked and listened to the wrong people. Like only each other.
Right, like when he drunk-tweeted about the inflation cost of your airport meal, which actually included a bunch of alcohol. So David is claiming to be one that cares earnestly about ideas? His whole career speaks otherwise.
It's like he never even heard of slavery or segregation. Which is weird because I was his classmate at the University of Chicago in the early 1980s, and a short walk to Harold's Chicken Shack on 63rd Street would have shown him a whole different vision of America.
Certainly a powerful perspective, from both the historical and personal
BUT, from the actual perspective, where were you on January 6, 2021, OR what were you reading rather than Project25 to have not seen this coming?
More like fiscally, conservative, racists and bigots, who were smart enough to try and hide behind dog whistle codewords and reactionary racist, who just want to be free to say the N-word in public
Reagan and people like Brooks are to blame... they had no fucking clue what they were messing with and opened the door for Fed/Soc, Limbaugh, Gingrich, and any other radical right wing nitwit to come in and bend America to this outcome. Too little too late, "Cared earnestly about ideas" my ass.
"What that would require ... is a broad effort to include working-class and conservative voices in what have traditionally been cultural bastions of elite progressivism—universities, the nonprofit sector, the civil service, the mainstream media."
Guys like Brooks, Douthat, etc can’t admit the fault of their movement without giving that poke at the left. Fully admitting their responsibility is beyond them. “If it wasn’t for those meddling kids”
Jeez. If I only had a crystal ball. His BS falls on deaf ears. Plus, I'm fresh out of tiny violins! Do yourself a favor and find someone more relevant.
Conservatism has always been more of a social disease that only seeks to preserve the white male power structure. Brooks tries to sound earnest but is not.
David’s brand of conservatism paved the way for this. From Reagan’s tax cuts and elimination of the Fairness Doctrine on forward. Conservative “thinkers” have been happy to snuggle with the reactionaries for decades thinking it would keep them in power only to find the shoe on the other foot.
Conservative “thinkers” engaged in apologetics for the reactionaries, and in fact David still does towards the end of the piece stating liberals pushed conservatives out of certain spaces, and thereby offered a veneer of credibility to the authoritarians and fascists.
It certainly speaks poorly of Brooks that he “should have seen this coming,” when it has been obvious for decades. Maybe detached dilettantes shouldn’t be a part of the “pundit class?” I am actually embarrassed to be a subscriber today.People like Brooks are exactly why we are in the mess we are in.
Did you actually read past the title? I found it to be quite an interesting and informative article.
You know, we need conservatives on our side in order to beat back Trump's stupidity. I don't agree with everything Brooks believes, but he makes a lot of sense in this article.
David Brooks didn't know that the Conservatives were the party of Goldwater, Thurmond, Wallace, and Reagan's anti-welfare queen racism? He didn't know he was in bed with people hiding their racism and their oligarchic elitism behind the Conservative label? BS.
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I just hope we can last long enough. Andrew Jackson lived in an era before World Wars and before nuclear weapons. Trump’s support of Putin adds special danger.
Enough, Jesus. The guy’s an asshole, anyway.
Gee, maybe you asked and listened to the wrong people. Like only each other.
BUT, from the actual perspective, where were you on January 6, 2021, OR what were you reading rather than Project25 to have not seen this coming?
Undermines so much of what he wrote.
BURN. IT. DOWN.
You know, we need conservatives on our side in order to beat back Trump's stupidity. I don't agree with everything Brooks believes, but he makes a lot of sense in this article.