Sean Illing at Salon writes—Delusional David Brooks: His blind spot for Republican nihilism has become pathological
Titled “The Governing Cancer of Our Time,” David Brooks’ latest New York Times column is a conspicuously incomplete lament on the state of American politics. Among other things, Brooks complains about the rise “antipolitics,” or a politics of nihilism and obstruction.
Painful though it is, it’s necessary to quote Brooks at length:
“This antipolitics tendency has had a wretched effect on our democracy. It has led to a series of overlapping downward spirals: The antipolitics people elect legislators who have no political skills or experience. That incompetence leads to dysfunctional government…which leads to a demand for even more outsiders…The antipolitics people refuse compromise and so block the legislative process. The absence of accomplishment destroys public trust. The decline in trust makes deal-making harder. We’re now at a point where the Senate says it won’t even hold hearings on a presidential Supreme Court nominee, in clear defiance of custom and the Constitution. We’re now at a point in which politicians live in fear if they try to compromise and legislate. We’re now at a point in which normal political conversation has broken down.”
Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Brooks has a habit of appearing sensible while failing to follow his own logic. But this piece is truly exceptional. It will survive eternally as a textbook example of dissonance reduction. When Brooks worries publicly about the state of conservatism, he often thinks himself to a precipice, but stops short of articulating the truth his analysis ought to have uncovered.
In this case, his entire column is about the Republican Party, and yet, thanks to a near-heroic effort, the word “Republican” never appears. He makes the rather obvious point that our politics is broken, and he describes in great detail why that is, but he can’t say what every reader is thinking: It’s the Republican Party!
He perfunctorily notes that the problem isn’t “exclusive to the right,” but that’s flatly untrue. This is an attempt to disperse blame, to talk about the problem abstractly, as though we don’t know how it happened. As a Republican, that’s convenient, but it’s an affront to truth. We know exactly what happened. [...]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2013—The sequester is stupid and contractionary, but Republicans can't stop themselves:
I'm not sure that there's much nuance to be parsed out about the sequester and why we seem to be headed for it despite it being plainly and obviously the worst possible thing to do. The problem is that the one actually sensible solution—to just dump the whole idea, as Congress can do at any point during this entire ridiculous, posturing debacle—isn't politically palatable to any of the involved groups. Sure, the sequester will foul up the economy, hurt a hell of a lot of people and botch up important government functions all around the nation, but as of right now both parties see "screw up the entire American economy, again" as being preferable to any of the achievable political alternatives.
The Republicans know the partial shutdown of services is going to hurt—a lot. They also know they're going to be blamed for it, no matter what little Twitter hashtags they deploy to the contrary, and that once people with government jobs or government contracts actually start getting furloughed, costing them a hefty chunk of their paychecks, people are quickly going to become irate. Every small town in America is going to be awash with the news of what's been cut, and how many local residents are being furloughed, and how that's going to affect the rest of the local economy, and they'll all be duly noting that there was abso-effing-lutely no reason for it other than this stupid "cut everything because governmenting is hard and stuff" plan.
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On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: More conservative airport #GunFAIL. Cruz jumps out of the way of Flint aid. GOP and its Trump crisis. Sanders’ single-payer plan put through the wringer. Texas militia here to tell you how to use your property and what religions are OK. Fired Yelp minion fires back.
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