terribly smart people: david brooks edition

Wow. See, this is the sort of thing that’s going to make it so hard for the Obama Administration to get anything done once the Bushies actually hand over the keys to our decrepit, rusted-out Oldsmobile Cutlass of a country. It’s not going to be obstructionist Republicans, kooky, wacked-out libruls, or even the broad swath of people across this country for whom the only category that fits is The Dumb -- you know, the ones who believe in secret muslims, magical socialism, jack-booted librul thugs going door-to-door to take away yer guns, bangulate yer daughters (and sons) and force yer women to have abortions.

No, I predict the real difficulties are going to come from Terribly Smart People, like Mr. David Brooks of the New York Times. This morning, on the ever-so-weighty and portentous Op-Ed page of the NYT, where so, so many TSP ply their terribly smart trade (see William Kristol, Thomas “Six More Months Should Just About Do It” Friedman et al, ad infinitum) Mr. Brooks’ column had the sub-hed:

“Barack Obama and his team should put into action a foreign policy doctrine that builds on some of the ideas developed during George W. Bush's term.”

Um, okay, wow. Where to begin? That is, after scooping up the brains that leaked out of my ears when my head went PFOOF upon reading that line. First of all, the notion that Obama’s team could develop a foreign policy doctrine that builds on that of the Bush Administration assumes that there ever was a foreign policy ‘doctrine’ at work over the last eight years. As near as I could tell, it was an ever-shifting phantasmagoria of imaginary WMDs, bad B-movie dialogue, and pissing away trillions in taxpayer dollars on dubious contracts for Bush/Cheney cronies.

Second, the use of the word ‘ideas’ in conjunction with the words ‘George W. Bush’s term’ is a contradiction in terms so volatile I suspect Mr. Brooks may have opened up a black hole of inanity so dense we’ll read that the entire island of Manhattan got swallowed up.

Essentially what Brooks is arguing for -- aside from an independent evaluation of his meds and possibly a CAT scan to check for undetected brain tumors -- is to carry on with the policies established on the ground by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. To punch up his point, Brooks uses this quote from Gates, who was apparently trying out his best Donald Rumsfeld impression:

“In recent years, the lines separating war, peace, diplomacy and development have become more blurred and no longer fit the neat organizational charts of the 20th century.”

Well, gosh, thank you for that insight. I suppose you’re also thinking outside the box in seeking proactive solutions by addressing the new paradigms presented by the changeover to new data streams and approaches to global interconnectedness?

And not only does Mr. Brooks go all ga-ga over this limp bit of nu-business gibberish, he fails to see or at least address the searing line in that phrase: “…the lines between war, peace, diplomacy, and development have become more blurred…”

You heard it here first, folks. War is Peace. Now, I must leave you to report to the Ministry of Truth to have my head wiped and everything I've read and written over the past eight years flushed down the memory hole. Hell, I might just jump in there myself.

David Brooks of the New York Times, just one more in the parade of Terribly Smart People who will help to keep those lunatics and hippie/muslim/abortionists in the Obama Administration in line, using logic.

Terribly Smart People

Here we go again. Here’s another Terribly Smart Person lecturing about how Obama should be careful how he spends his political capital--or if he even has any. Michael Gerson in the WashPost tells us:

“Obama's election was a tremendous, historic achievement, but it was not an ideological revolution.”

Oh, how badly these guys want things to stay the same. Despite Gerson’s acknowledgment that Obama put together an impressive coalition including independents, low-income people, the affluent, Catholics, and suburbanites--and, not incidentally, in the process won 54 percent of the popular vote--Gerson still thinks there is somehow NOT a tectonic shift happening around him. He goes on to cite the same statistics Bill Kristol used in the article I cited yesterday:

“In the 2004 election, according to the Associated Press, 21 percent of Americans called themselves liberal, 45 percent moderate and 34 percent conservative. In this election, 22 percent described themselves as liberal, 44 percent as moderate and 34 percent as conservative.”

But here’s the problem with the assessment. What it doesn’t take into account is the relentless demonization of the term ‘liberal’ over the past 20 years or so.

Now, personally, I am proud to be one of the filthy librul, hedonistic, elitist, godless, baby-killing horde. I think I may even control the media. I’ll have to check my mail and see if I paid my club dues last month.

There’s more honesty in that position -- that people should be able to do basically what they want as long as they don’t harm others, that the government isn’t some mythological beast looking to eat us and our income, but rather ‘We the People’ and that it should function as such -- than there is in the phony ‘libertarian’ canard you hear tossed about by conservatives. In fact, there’s more libertarianism in my stance, and that of most unwashed libruls I know than there is among alleged libertarians I speak with. (To wit: why is it so important to go-along/get-along Fox News acolytes disguised as libertarians to keep the big bad gubbmint out of our lives when it comes to taxes and guns, but not when it comes to the bedroom? Or reproductive choices? Food for thought...)

But to a lot of people, calling themselves a ‘liberal’ would be akin to publicly saying, ‘I worship Satan.’ It’s just not gonna happen.

The way people label themselves is really immaterial. Hell, even Bill O’Reilly makes a big stink about calling himself an ‘independent.’ Anyone buying that? From either side of the aisle?

But with the results of this election, it’s not plausible to say that the country hasn’t taken a mighty swing of the pendulum away from the so-called conservatism of lowering taxes for the new Gilded Class and dumping money into abstinence programs at the expense of actual, useful sex-ed, and sending our soldiers overseas on dubious if not downright false information. Even if you don’t want to call it by name, even if people don’t want to call themselves by that name, liberalism has spoken at the polls, and the results are in. That’s what the majority of people want.

Even if they’re not Terribly Smart People like Michael Gerson.