That is asking Trump to deploy the military for immigration enforcement without actually asking him, IMO.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. And we can't all spend our lives trying to figure out WTF Trump is going to do on a given day.
Or is that the point?
The point is to get DHS to stop beating the shit out of people, breaking into their homes, and shooting them.
Clear?
Push escalation until the revolution?
First, I'm not sure holding funding for DHS until they stop acting like the Gestapo counts as "escalation".
"Escalation" is when People Like Me start shooting back. Which is not on the calendar.
And I'm really not interested in hearing anything about "escalation" from any conservative voice, at all, right now and probably for the forseeable future.
You're a conservative, get your freaking Congress people to stop giving these freaks the space to destroy this country.
So it’s a chance (whether large or tiny) of accomplishing something vs no chance at all. Easy choice.
But do it anyway. Do whatever is available.
That is asking Trump to deploy the military for immigration enforcement without actually asking him, IMO. Or is that the point? Push escalation until the revolution?
From where I stood, a few yards back from the scrum last Wednesday afternoon, it looked, at best, to be a savage caricature of our national divide: On one side, militarized men demanded respect at the butt of a gun; on the other, angry protesters screamed for justice.
But behind the violence in Minneapolis—captured in so many chilling photographs in recent weeks—is a different reality: a meticulous urban choreography of civic protest. You could see traces of it in the identical whistles the protesters used, in their chants, in their tactics, in the way they followed ICE agents but never actually blocked them from detaining people. Thousands of Minnesotans have been trained over the past year as legal observers and have taken part in lengthy role-playing exercises where they rehearse scenes exactly like the one I witnessed. They patrol neighborhoods day and night on foot and stay connected on encrypted apps such as Signal, in networks that were first formed after the 2020 killing of George Floyd.
*** Avalos told me that 65,000 people have received the training, most of them since December. “We started in a very different tone; it was preventive,” she said. Now, after Good’s death, “people are understanding the stakes in a different way.”
A fun quote from the review that gets us to questions of nobility and truthfulness
“He failed to keep them safe,” writes Wilson. “He could not save them from disaster,” is Robert Fagles’ version for Penguin. Chapman has: “But so their fates he could not overcome.” The Greek? “All’ oud’ hos hetairous erruasato” – “but even so he did not protect his companions”. Whereas male translations have a habit, perhaps quite unconsciously, of letting Odysseus off the hook (he tried his best! He just couldn’t manage it!), Wilson is more attentive to the poem’s foldedness, its complexity.
I also may have mentioned this, but if I haven't, you might be interested in the South African translation of the Iliad
My copy of The Cure at Troy has just arrived. I'm looking forward. But it's weird how the story of Troy seems to be following me around at the moment; I just read Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls, and will soon be starting the second and third volumes in her trilogy, The Women of Troy and The Voyage Home. It was fascinating to read the first, it is a story most of us know incredibly well, one of the cornerstone myths of Western culture. Yet reading it for the first time from the point of view of the women involved is a revelation.
Does anyone in Greek myths have a noble character as we would define it? Brad DeLong, long ago, noted that he'd rather have Odysseus as his buddy in a foxhole rather than Achilles, as Achilles only wants kleos, whereas Odysseus, because he has metis, would craft a plan to get everyone out of whatever jam they are in. (with Nolan's film and the Ralph Fiennes movie, the Odyssean pov seems to be ascendent, though I've also noted that people can be too clever) One thing I like about thinking about Greek myths is that what they value and deprecate are often at odds with what we do.
Philoctetes certainly doesn't have any noble traits (those are assigned to Neoptolemus, who was coming fresh to the battlefield) but is identified with a noble act, lighting Hercules funeral pyre when no one else would, which is why he got the bow and arrow. (a quick check shows that another thread has his father, Poeus, lighting the pyre, which then makes the bow and arrows is a tainted inheritance). But in his implacable hatred of those who got him in his situation, I'm really seeing where he is coming from.
"There's An Emergency!" is getting a lot of work done for TrumpCo right now. if the funding is cut, Trump will declare an emergency of some kind and pull funding from whichever program will hurt Dems the most.
To expand on what russell said: absolutely slash DHS (or, at minimum, ICE) funding. The administration may invent some way around that, and spend the money anyway. But if the funding isn't cut, they will definitely spend it.
So it's a chance (whether large or tiny) of accomplishing something vs no chance at all. Easy choice.
If the (D)'s actually manage to turn off the DHS money, Trump et al will (a) bit h and moan and write a million Truth Social posts about it and (b) try to find a way around it.
Perhaps the Federalist Society's vetting is less robust that they thought....
Also the Sinister Six's use of the shadow docket instead of actual cases. Those aren't precedent under any theory. I seem to recall reading that one of the Justices -- Alito? Thomas? -- was complaining about the lower courts not using the shadow docket rulings and said something like, "How many hints do you need about how we will eventually rule?"
I'm not sure that I'd say that Philoctetes, Hercules, or Odysseus were great and noble of character. All three were men of great ability, sure, but of very mixed character. In this they seem to support Aristotle's claim in the Poetics:
There remains, then, the character between these two extremes,—that of a man who is not eminently good and just,-yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty. He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous,—a personage like Oedipus, Thyestes, or other illustrious men of such families.
I think many of the supporting people in the first Clementine Caligula administration fit this description, and were brought low by it. Of the current batch, Rubio is probably the closest thing.
Whatever the case, it'll probably require a deus ex machina to achieve public catharsis in our current state. We are still deeply polluted, politically, by the miasma we have allowed, and the sources of our pollution have not yet suffered enough to assuage the wrath of the political gods.
...at least speaking from the classic Greek perspective.
I can't see anyone in this administration as Philoctetes, Hercules, or Odysseus. All of whom had, besides their tragic flaws, great and noble characteristics. That's what makes them "tragic heroes".
i certainly see the self-pity, and the enthusiasm to "repeat their every last mistake." But anything at all that would qualify as admirable? If someone like that snuck into this administration, she's keeping an incredibly low profile. (Probably, admittedly, as a matter of self preservation.) But it seems far more likely that anyone like that has walked away long since.
Actually it's a wonder that so many Trump-appointed judges keep stepping up and ruling against him. Perhaps the Federalist Society's vetting is less robust that they thought....
Even if the DHS budget gets slashed, what would stop His Orangeness to just transfer funds from elsewhere*? Iirc he already does so in other places** and SCOTUS has essentially said that nothing can be done about it
“Defense” will get its usual boost, so it’s not as if there is no money available.
and refuses to spend funds Congress has specified for use.
Historically the President can't repurpose funds except under very specific conditions that Congress has put into statute. So far, Trump's minions have been careful to at least make a case that such repurposings meet one of Congress' conditions. Depressing thought -- if the Dems retake Congress this year, it seems possible that sometime in the next two years the SCOTUS will actually say that Congress can't specify purposes for their appropriations.
Trump's proposed budget gives Defense a 50% boost, from a bit under a trillion dollars to a trillion-and-a-half. Battleships ain't cheap, you know. In point of fact, the Pentagon has no idea how to spend a trillion-and-a-half dollars per year; it will take them at least a few years to ramp up to that.
Impoundment was settled in the 1970s while Nixon was in office. The SCOTUS will probably revisit the subject. I expect them to rule that it's a political matter and deny that anyone has standing to bring the case.
The play dates from the Peloponnesian war (after the catastrophe of the Sicilian expedition that had decimated the Athenian stock of young men) and a period of political turmoil in Athens (violent conflicts between oligarchs and democrats).
It is almost certain that it was read politically even then. Raison d'etat against the individual liberty, the youth manipulated by a deceitful and incompetent leadership etc.
Even if the DHS budget gets slashed, what would stop His Orangeness to just transfer funds from elsewhere*? Iirc he already does so in other places** and SCOTUS has essentially said that nothing can be done about it.
* "Defense" will get its usual boost, so it's not as if there is no money available.
** and refuses to spend funds Congress has specified for use.
FWIW and for the record, my issue with Brooks is probably much simpler than y'alls.
He seems to live in, and speak from, a pretty privileged place. Which is all well and good, I live in and speak from a pretty privileged place.
But a lot of his writing seems to be along the lines of "If everyone would just calm down and stop being so extreme they would see that everything is kind of OK".
Which is not really true for all the folks who don't live in or speak from a pretty privileged place.
I think the Trump years have kind of freaked him out and made him understand that we all don't live in the kind of well-groomed world that he does.
But I generally agree that if he thinks it's all down to Trump, he is mistaken and is still wearing his blinders.
And that's everything I have to say about Brooks.
On another topic, I encourage everyone reading this who lives in the US to get on the horn to your Senators and let them know you want them to NOT PASS funding for the DHS.
I think the (R)'s in the Senate are currently trying to figure out how to separate that stuff from the overall budget so that turning off the tap to DHS doesn't shut the whole government down (again). Which tells me that they are finally beginning to understand that the current ICE/CBP thing is fucking toxic and might well lose them a (R) majority in the Senate.
But one way or another, it's time to shut these fuckers down.
I try not to use bad language but the times are what they are.
Well, you certainly get no argument from me on the role played by the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society or the SCOTUS. And the roots of this have certainly been long in the growing, long before any dream of a Trump presidency. It just seems impossible to me to contemplate the particularly poisonous confluence of current circumstances without the craven behaviour of the GOP.
Hey nous, I sent you an email a couple of days ago ... if you didn't get it, will you email me so I can try to reply to a correct address? It's just a quick question....
...so I guess this adds a second formula to the one that Snarki outlines. Sometimes it is the "zoom out until the particulars blur" tactic. This time it's the "tight focus to leave others off camera" tactic.
Either way, it saves face for the people who continue to facilitate this push to authoritarian illiberalism.
GftNC - However, on the subject that you and Snarki raise of his having an “unerring ability to land on a GOP friendly position”, it seems to me that the whole piece is a really scathing denunciation of Trump’s character, conduct, motivations etc etc. And given, as we all see, that the GOP as a whole has cravenly and pathetically bent the knee to him, enabled him, acceded to his power grab from Congress and been totally mealy-mouthed about his attacks on the constitution, I think it’s odd to say that he is supporting the GOP.
I'd say that he's lending cover to the GOP as a whole when he writes:
Of these four, the unraveling of Trump’s mind is the primary one, leading to all the others. Narcissists sometimes get worse with age, as their remaining inhibitions fall away. The effect is bound to be profound when the narcissist happens to be president of the United States.
When you look at the things currently being done in the US, the majority of them are in line with what the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation have been working to get done for a lot longer than Trump has been on the scene. This administration is not acting on the whims of a mad king, they are taking advantage of the noise and foment that Clementine Caligula provokes to advance their own agenda. Brooks' heaping of all this on He Who Slumbers head is some fine scapegoating. At the end of the day it allows him to put all the sins of the GOP on one man's head and usher him into the desert, sins forgiven after having momentarily succumbed to a fever.
But really, the institutions are okay, and the people still believe in democracy in their hearts.
But I do know that events are being propelled by one man’s damaged psyche. History does not record many cases in which a power-mad leader careening toward tyranny suddenly regained his senses and became more moderate.
See? No one else in frame. No lackeys. No institutional agendas. No long assault on the judiciary to facilitate this takeover. No discussions of illiberal democracy and wishing for a Red Caesar. It's all one madman dragging everyone else with him.
lj, I went back and read that Brooks piece more carefully. I must say, when he writes:
And no, I don’t think America is headed toward anything like a Rome-style collapse. Our institutions are too strong, and our people, deep down, still have the same democratic values.And no, I don’t think America is headed toward anything like a Rome-style collapse. Our institutions are too strong, and our people, deep down, still have the same democratic values.
I think he is deluded, although I hope not. But it seems crazily optimistic in a way that even wj isn't these days.
However, on the subject that you and Snarki raise of his having an "unerring ability to land on a GOP friendly position", it seems to me that
the whole piece is a really scathing denunciation of Trump's character, conduct, motivations etc etc. And given, as we all see, that the GOP as a whole has cravenly and pathetically bent the knee to him, enabled him, acceded to his power grab from Congress and been totally mealy-mouthed about his attacks on the constitution, I think it's odd to say that he is supporting the GOP.
I have no desire or need to defend David Brooks, but also no desire or need to automatically or instinctively condemn him. This may be because I have not been reading him all my life, and have not formed a fixed idea of him from which I find it difficult to depart. But we are in a time of flux - I'm happy to retain the ability to be open to the ways in which people's views or prejudices might change, and to the ways in which they may be able to change the attitudes of people with whom I am in general disagreement.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Moral insanity”
Everyone is entitled to their opinion. And we can't all spend our lives trying to figure out WTF Trump is going to do on a given day.
The point is to get DHS to stop beating the shit out of people, breaking into their homes, and shooting them.
Clear?
First, I'm not sure holding funding for DHS until they stop acting like the Gestapo counts as "escalation".
"Escalation" is when People Like Me start shooting back. Which is not on the calendar.
And I'm really not interested in hearing anything about "escalation" from any conservative voice, at all, right now and probably for the forseeable future.
You're a conservative, get your freaking Congress people to stop giving these freaks the space to destroy this country.
Thank you.
"
bc,
Not really cool combining two people's comments (and removing the context) to make your point.
"
So it’s a chance (whether large or tiny) of accomplishing something vs no chance at all. Easy choice.
But do it anyway. Do whatever is available.
That is asking Trump to deploy the military for immigration enforcement without actually asking him, IMO. Or is that the point? Push escalation until the revolution?
On “Feeling Philoctetes”
Fascinating, lj, thanks.
On “Moral insanity”
This (the reaction of the Minneapolis public) is rather inspiring. You could say it's an example of Moral Sanity:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/01/minneapolis-uprising/685755/?gift=cx0iluuWx4Cg7JjlT8ugCZ3XpunvY7eUEOPAgaybJ3M&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
From where I stood, a few yards back from the scrum last Wednesday afternoon, it looked, at best, to be a savage caricature of our national divide: On one side, militarized men demanded respect at the butt of a gun; on the other, angry protesters screamed for justice.
But behind the violence in Minneapolis—captured in so many chilling photographs in recent weeks—is a different reality: a meticulous urban choreography of civic protest. You could see traces of it in the identical whistles the protesters used, in their chants, in their tactics, in the way they followed ICE agents but never actually blocked them from detaining people. Thousands of Minnesotans have been trained over the past year as legal observers and have taken part in lengthy role-playing exercises where they rehearse scenes exactly like the one I witnessed. They patrol neighborhoods day and night on foot and stay connected on encrypted apps such as Signal, in networks that were first formed after the 2020 killing of George Floyd.
***
Avalos told me that 65,000 people have received the training, most of them since December. “We started in a very different tone; it was preventive,” she said. Now, after Good’s death, “people are understanding the stakes in a different way.”
On “Feeling Philoctetes”
If you haven't, check out Emily Wilson's translation of the Odyssey and the Iliad.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/dec/08/the-odyssey-translated-emily-wilson-review
A fun quote from the review that gets us to questions of nobility and truthfulness
“He failed to keep them safe,” writes Wilson. “He could not save them from disaster,” is Robert Fagles’ version for Penguin. Chapman has: “But so their fates he could not overcome.” The Greek? “All’ oud’ hos hetairous erruasato” – “but even so he did not protect his companions”. Whereas male translations have a habit, perhaps quite unconsciously, of letting Odysseus off the hook (he tried his best! He just couldn’t manage it!), Wilson is more attentive to the poem’s foldedness, its complexity.
I also may have mentioned this, but if I haven't, you might be interested in the South African translation of the Iliad
https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2013/2013.03.06/
"
My copy of The Cure at Troy has just arrived. I'm looking forward. But it's weird how the story of Troy seems to be following me around at the moment; I just read Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls, and will soon be starting the second and third volumes in her trilogy, The Women of Troy and The Voyage Home. It was fascinating to read the first, it is a story most of us know incredibly well, one of the cornerstone myths of Western culture. Yet reading it for the first time from the point of view of the women involved is a revelation.
"
Does anyone in Greek myths have a noble character as we would define it? Brad DeLong, long ago, noted that he'd rather have Odysseus as his buddy in a foxhole rather than Achilles, as Achilles only wants kleos, whereas Odysseus, because he has metis, would craft a plan to get everyone out of whatever jam they are in. (with Nolan's film and the Ralph Fiennes movie, the Odyssean pov seems to be ascendent, though I've also noted that people can be too clever) One thing I like about thinking about Greek myths is that what they value and deprecate are often at odds with what we do.
Philoctetes certainly doesn't have any noble traits (those are assigned to Neoptolemus, who was coming fresh to the battlefield) but is identified with a noble act, lighting Hercules funeral pyre when no one else would, which is why he got the bow and arrow. (a quick check shows that another thread has his father, Poeus, lighting the pyre, which then makes the bow and arrows is a tainted inheritance). But in his implacable hatred of those who got him in his situation, I'm really seeing where he is coming from.
On “Moral insanity”
do. whatever. is. available.
the (D)'s are minority but they are not utterly without any power. use what you have.
the sternly worded letters are not working.
"
"There's An Emergency!" is getting a lot of work done for TrumpCo right now. if the funding is cut, Trump will declare an emergency of some kind and pull funding from whichever program will hurt Dems the most.
"
To expand on what russell said: absolutely slash DHS (or, at minimum, ICE) funding. The administration may invent some way around that, and spend the money anyway. But if the funding isn't cut, they will definitely spend it.
So it's a chance (whether large or tiny) of accomplishing something vs no chance at all. Easy choice.
"
What hairshirt said.
If the (D)'s actually manage to turn off the DHS money, Trump et al will (a) bit h and moan and write a million Truth Social posts about it and (b) try to find a way around it.
They might be successful with (b).
But do it anyway. Do whatever is available.
On “Feeling Philoctetes”
Perhaps the Federalist Society's vetting is less robust that they thought....
Also the Sinister Six's use of the shadow docket instead of actual cases. Those aren't precedent under any theory. I seem to recall reading that one of the Justices -- Alito? Thomas? -- was complaining about the lower courts not using the shadow docket rulings and said something like, "How many hints do you need about how we will eventually rule?"
"
I'm not sure that I'd say that Philoctetes, Hercules, or Odysseus were great and noble of character. All three were men of great ability, sure, but of very mixed character. In this they seem to support Aristotle's claim in the Poetics:
There remains, then, the character between these two extremes,—that of a man who is not eminently good and just,-yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but by some error or frailty. He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous,—a personage like Oedipus, Thyestes, or other illustrious men of such families.
I think many of the supporting people in the first Clementine Caligula administration fit this description, and were brought low by it. Of the current batch, Rubio is probably the closest thing.
Whatever the case, it'll probably require a deus ex machina to achieve public catharsis in our current state. We are still deeply polluted, politically, by the miasma we have allowed, and the sources of our pollution have not yet suffered enough to assuage the wrath of the political gods.
...at least speaking from the classic Greek perspective.
"
I can't see anyone in this administration as Philoctetes, Hercules, or Odysseus. All of whom had, besides their tragic flaws, great and noble characteristics. That's what makes them "tragic heroes".
i certainly see the self-pity, and the enthusiasm to "repeat their every last mistake." But anything at all that would qualify as admirable? If someone like that snuck into this administration, she's keeping an incredibly low profile. (Probably, admittedly, as a matter of self preservation.) But it seems far more likely that anyone like that has walked away long since.
Actually it's a wonder that so many Trump-appointed judges keep stepping up and ruling against him. Perhaps the Federalist Society's vetting is less robust that they thought....
On “Moral insanity”
I think the answer to your question, Hartmut, is "nothing." Or tRump's own mind, which is more or less the same answer if you get my drift.
They should still do it, though. Let the pressure mount.
"
Even if the DHS budget gets slashed, what would stop His Orangeness to just transfer funds from elsewhere*? Iirc he already does so in other places** and SCOTUS has essentially said that nothing can be done about it
“Defense” will get its usual boost, so it’s not as if there is no money available.
and refuses to spend funds Congress has specified for use.
Historically the President can't repurpose funds except under very specific conditions that Congress has put into statute. So far, Trump's minions have been careful to at least make a case that such repurposings meet one of Congress' conditions. Depressing thought -- if the Dems retake Congress this year, it seems possible that sometime in the next two years the SCOTUS will actually say that Congress can't specify purposes for their appropriations.
Trump's proposed budget gives Defense a 50% boost, from a bit under a trillion dollars to a trillion-and-a-half. Battleships ain't cheap, you know. In point of fact, the Pentagon has no idea how to spend a trillion-and-a-half dollars per year; it will take them at least a few years to ramp up to that.
Impoundment was settled in the 1970s while Nixon was in office. The SCOTUS will probably revisit the subject. I expect them to rule that it's a political matter and deny that anyone has standing to bring the case.
On “Feeling Philoctetes”
The play dates from the Peloponnesian war (after the catastrophe of the Sicilian expedition that had decimated the Athenian stock of young men) and a period of political turmoil in Athens (violent conflicts between oligarchs and democrats).
It is almost certain that it was read politically even then. Raison d'etat against the individual liberty, the youth manipulated by a deceitful and incompetent leadership etc.
On “Moral insanity”
Even if the DHS budget gets slashed, what would stop His Orangeness to just transfer funds from elsewhere*? Iirc he already does so in other places** and SCOTUS has essentially said that nothing can be done about it.
* "Defense" will get its usual boost, so it's not as if there is no money available.
** and refuses to spend funds Congress has specified for use.
"
yikes, the Brooks debate again!
FWIW and for the record, my issue with Brooks is probably much simpler than y'alls.
He seems to live in, and speak from, a pretty privileged place. Which is all well and good, I live in and speak from a pretty privileged place.
But a lot of his writing seems to be along the lines of "If everyone would just calm down and stop being so extreme they would see that everything is kind of OK".
Which is not really true for all the folks who don't live in or speak from a pretty privileged place.
I think the Trump years have kind of freaked him out and made him understand that we all don't live in the kind of well-groomed world that he does.
But I generally agree that if he thinks it's all down to Trump, he is mistaken and is still wearing his blinders.
And that's everything I have to say about Brooks.
On another topic, I encourage everyone reading this who lives in the US to get on the horn to your Senators and let them know you want them to NOT PASS funding for the DHS.
I think the (R)'s in the Senate are currently trying to figure out how to separate that stuff from the overall budget so that turning off the tap to DHS doesn't shut the whole government down (again). Which tells me that they are finally beginning to understand that the current ICE/CBP thing is fucking toxic and might well lose them a (R) majority in the Senate.
But one way or another, it's time to shut these fuckers down.
I try not to use bad language but the times are what they are.
"
Well, you certainly get no argument from me on the role played by the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society or the SCOTUS. And the roots of this have certainly been long in the growing, long before any dream of a Trump presidency. It just seems impossible to me to contemplate the particularly poisonous confluence of current circumstances without the craven behaviour of the GOP.
"
Hey nous, I sent you an email a couple of days ago ... if you didn't get it, will you email me so I can try to reply to a correct address? It's just a quick question....
"
...so I guess this adds a second formula to the one that Snarki outlines. Sometimes it is the "zoom out until the particulars blur" tactic. This time it's the "tight focus to leave others off camera" tactic.
Either way, it saves face for the people who continue to facilitate this push to authoritarian illiberalism.
"
GftNC - However, on the subject that you and Snarki raise of his having an “unerring ability to land on a GOP friendly position”, it seems to me that the whole piece is a really scathing denunciation of Trump’s character, conduct, motivations etc etc. And given, as we all see, that the GOP as a whole has cravenly and pathetically bent the knee to him, enabled him, acceded to his power grab from Congress and been totally mealy-mouthed about his attacks on the constitution, I think it’s odd to say that he is supporting the GOP.
I'd say that he's lending cover to the GOP as a whole when he writes:
When you look at the things currently being done in the US, the majority of them are in line with what the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation have been working to get done for a lot longer than Trump has been on the scene. This administration is not acting on the whims of a mad king, they are taking advantage of the noise and foment that Clementine Caligula provokes to advance their own agenda. Brooks' heaping of all this on He Who Slumbers head is some fine scapegoating. At the end of the day it allows him to put all the sins of the GOP on one man's head and usher him into the desert, sins forgiven after having momentarily succumbed to a fever.
But really, the institutions are okay, and the people still believe in democracy in their hearts.
See? No one else in frame. No lackeys. No institutional agendas. No long assault on the judiciary to facilitate this takeover. No discussions of illiberal democracy and wishing for a Red Caesar. It's all one madman dragging everyone else with him.
"
lj, I went back and read that Brooks piece more carefully. I must say, when he writes:
And no, I don’t think America is headed toward anything like a Rome-style collapse. Our institutions are too strong, and our people, deep down, still have the same democratic values.And no, I don’t think America is headed toward anything like a Rome-style collapse. Our institutions are too strong, and our people, deep down, still have the same democratic values.
I think he is deluded, although I hope not. But it seems crazily optimistic in a way that even wj isn't these days.
However, on the subject that you and Snarki raise of his having an "unerring ability to land on a GOP friendly position", it seems to me that
the whole piece is a really scathing denunciation of Trump's character, conduct, motivations etc etc. And given, as we all see, that the GOP as a whole has cravenly and pathetically bent the knee to him, enabled him, acceded to his power grab from Congress and been totally mealy-mouthed about his attacks on the constitution, I think it's odd to say that he is supporting the GOP.
I have no desire or need to defend David Brooks, but also no desire or need to automatically or instinctively condemn him. This may be because I have not been reading him all my life, and have not formed a fixed idea of him from which I find it difficult to depart. But we are in a time of flux - I'm happy to retain the ability to be open to the ways in which people's views or prejudices might change, and to the ways in which they may be able to change the attitudes of people with whom I am in general disagreement.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.