David Brooks describes what he saw at the National Conservatism Conference:
One big thing the NatCons are right about is that in the Information Age, the cultural and corporate elites have merged. Right-wing parties around the world are gradually becoming working-class parties that stand against the economic interests and cultural preferences of the highly educated. Left-wing parties are now rooted in the rich metro areas and are more and more becoming an unsteady alliance between young AOC left-populists and Google.
[...]
Over the past few decades there have been various efforts to replace the Reagan Paradigm: the national-greatness conservatism of John McCain; the compassionate conservatism of George W. Bush; the Reformicon conservatism of the D.C. think tanks in the 21st century. But the Trumpian onslaught succeeded where these movements have so far fizzled because Trump understood better than they did the coalescence of the new American cultural/corporate elite and the potency of populist anger against it. Thus the display of Ivy League populism I witnessed in Orlando might well represent the alarming future of the American right: the fusing of the culture war and the class war into one epic Marxist Götterdämmerung.
Well, it is David Brooks, so our expectations have to be low.
“the cultural and corporate elites have merged.”
You have almost got it, David! You left out the bureaucratic/government elites, who are also part of the merged blob. And when government, business, media are all involved, what do we have, David?
Hint: Answer is ‘Fascism’.
Should supposedly smart people like David Brooks be shills for Fascism?
My initial reaction in unprintable. At the risk of being uncharitable and I may have it wrong but here’s what we’ve got:
The desire of the ignorant hill folk to not just agree to lay down and die of poverty fast enough to make way for their replacements (and even after we’ve shoveled as many opiates at them as we can) is leading to problems. They believe things that every nation that defeated Hitler believed, so they’re practically Hitler.
I didn’t mention it but the “cultural preferences” of the “educated” center mostly around sodomy, abortion, and immigration. Our greater material wealth clearly proves we know best. Don’t ask too many questions about off shoring, trusts, usury, or restrictions on competition. I mean do you assholes even live near Park Avenue? I rest my case.
If the right could just calm down long enough to become beautiful losers again everything would be fine.
Oh and another thing from the article, maybe I’m being too harsh:
“This schtick demands that you ignore the actual suffering of the world—the transgender kid alone in some suburban high school, the anxiety of a guy who can’t afford health care for his brother, the struggle of a Black man trying to be seen and recognized as a full human being.”
Or the victims of crime from the breakdown of law and order, or the man impoverished by outsourcing and lockdowns, or those ravaged by the aforementioned opioid epidemic, or those trafficked across our porous borders, or men railroaded out of their chosen professions by wokery, or the wreckage of young lives being deceived by their teachers and professors.
Nope it’s still the sixties and the chief problem is Jim Crow, plus making sure teenagers are encouraged to castrate and mutilate themselves after being groomed by teachers.
Brooks’ tone is one of a spy reporting to his bosses at HQ. He shouldn’t have been invited to the conference at all. À la guerre comme à la guerre.
‘As a true conservative, I am shocked that today’s conservatives’ is a standard schtick. Candace Something, Diamond and Silk do it from the other side. Harmless enough.
Mr. Brooks isn’t good at purity spirals.
Oh, a “conservative commenter” of a leftist journal. Basically he is only there to say bad things about conservatives or he losses his job.
Per the article (to paraphrase): Conservatives invented the scourge of wokism ex post facto to rationalize having voted for Trump. Subtext: They now have buyer’s remorse and should have voted for Hilary Clinton, obviously, because she is not Trump. But of course, they voted for Trump because he is not Hilary Clinton (and because Trump was virtually the only politician in America to even address illegal immigration).
What, no “perfectly creased trouser leg” reference? Mr. Brooks is slacking off.
David Brooks is a smart, savvy New York finance Jew who literally, not figuratively wrote Bobos in Paradise and falls asleep each night quivering in silent terror of what will happen politically if (when) the Irish-German Catholic and Anglo-Scots Protestant bloodlines align and seek redress.
His fear is justified.
*lock arms and seek redress
Never chase the guy who walks away from a fight.
If the elites stepped back and looked at their true situation instead of taking stock of fever dreams they’d realize MAGA is done, Trump is done, the people have no stomach for resistance other than fighting.
This is Iraq, Afghanistan in 2003. They reached the culminating point and should cease. But no, keep pushing people and create from the ashes of their desperation an actual opposition – something the Branding Exercise that was Trump never attempted.
Now we are not voting our way out of anything, but we haven’t had a ‘vote’ in terms of power over government since the 1930s. The elected have no power over the bureaucracy and 50 some Independent Agencies above all the Federal Reserve.
Don’t worry Elites, the people won’t vote against you, nor will there be any futile marches on DC.
You really should stop, you’ve won all you will, you have all that matters. Don’t push people who’ve quit and walked away from a fight into turning and fighting.
VXXC: “If the elites stepped back and looked at their true situation instead of taking stock of fever dreams they’d realize MAGA is done, Trump is done, the people have no stomach for resistance other than fighting.”
Trump is done, “MAGA” (ick) is done, that’s true.
But if you think you know the reality situation better than “the elites”, lol. They’re hanging by a thread and they know it and they know we know it and that’s why they’re pushing so hard. They wouldn’t back down if they could, and they can’t. They can’t afford it.
America is a land founded in rebellion and the spirit of liberty haunts her still. Do the spineless masses feel its pull? No, and they never have. And there was never a time that the meek and submissive mattered. The lukewarm are irrelevant and should be abolished. If that includes you, I mean you. For if you love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.