Driftglass has always been one of my favorite political bloggers. Is that still a word? I mean the deluge of political blogs that began flowing onto the worldwideweb almost 20 years ago has long since dried up, and every day one or more of the survivors presses the off-switch without a replacement stepping out from the wings. Which is both understandable and sad—thoughtful, persistent blogging of substantial content is hard work, and only the tiniest sliver of a sliver ever got paid even a subsistence living for their efforts.
But Driftglass miraculously abides. Which is delightful because he’s brilliant, direct, unfettered. For your pleasure, here’s a lengthy excerpt from his latest that I hope will persuade you to make him a regular on your reading list if he isn’t already:
Each week for the past 15 years, the New York Times Action Zeitgeist Van has dropped Mr. David Brooks off in the middle of literally hundreds of life-or-death national issues, all laid out and easy pickings for anyone with a national media platform who is even remotely interested in, say, establishing Justice, insuring domestic Tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general Welfare, securing the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity or any of the other cool stuff in that song.
Furthermore, we are now chest-deep-and-sinking-fast in the Age of Trump, so in addition to the usual perversions and crimes against democracy that Republicans have been carrying out for decades, we are now faced with a nakedly fascistic madman in the White House who is gleefully executing the Republican party's Final Solution to the impediment of constitutional checks and balances by destroying every norm that supports our democracy. Example: as of this writing, 375 former federal prosecutors have signed sign an open letter saying that Donald Trump has committed felony-level obstruction of justice.
And every week for the past 15 years, Mr. Brooks has ambled down the block, mentally jiggling the handles on each obscenity committed by his Republican party ... and then moving on.
Because for the past 15 years, Mr. Brooks has only had one story to tell his readers. One fairy tale he has spun over and over and over again, with grim, inhuman persistence.
The story of Both Sides Do It.
And being a lazy larcenist, Mr. Brooks will fiddle with every handle on every vital issue facing this country on the block—from Abortion to Jay-Z—until he can find one that he can open without effort. An issue from which he can thieve enough odds and ends to assemble into his umpteenth shitty column on the Extremes on Both Sides.
Which he has once again done today.
The Tawdry Trump-Nadler War
How to destroy checks and balances.
Go read it for yourself if you're of a mind to.
Or, if you happen to be teaching a class in how wildly-overpaid Beltway pundits have destroyed journalis[m] by spending the last 30 years crushing every single Republican atrocity into the same Procrustean Bed of false equivalence, you could assign your students Mr. Brooks' column for this week's reading. They can start here — [...]
TOP COMMENTS • HIGH IMPACT STORIES
QUOTATION
“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.” ~~Pericles, Book II of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War (431 BCE)
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2010—Kagan Filibuster: All Part of the GOP Plan?
TWI's Mike Lillis catches Mitch McConnel mid flip-flop. Last month, he ruled out a Republican filibuster of any Obama nominee, unless that person had "really bizarre views."
But today he's saying that "it's way to early to be making a decision about the issue of whether there should be a 60 vote threshold on the nominee." Way too early, because it's not like they've already been through a nomination process for Kagan when she received confirmation as Solicitor General, or as Lillis put it, as if she "just arrived in a coffee can from Pluto."
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: School shootings now depleting the military, but muh hobby! Subpoena saga plods along. Giuliani plans trip in Kiev (maybe out a window). Ghostwriter reveals Trump's a dipsh*t. WTF’s the Epoch Times, and why are they cheating for Trump?