We all have those moments when we lose our minds. Fortunately for most of us those moments happen in front of only one or two people, or as with this blog, before a handful. Dave Brooks is not so fortunate and Dave has written two of the dumbest columns in just the past nine weeks that you will ever read a national public intellectual write.
Dave's first bout of brain diarrhea occurred on June 8, the day preceding the first of the Jan. 6 hearings. Dave:
The Jan. 6 Committee Has Already Blown It
There were two objectives of the Committee that came within Dave's radar:
1) Democrats, they reported, are hoping to use the hearings to show midterm voters how thoroughly Republicans are to blame for what happened that day. (?) Yeah. I don't know, seemed like a thing to do when the Phascists were changing the narrative to "it was just like a tourist visit!"
Dos) Other reports have suggested other goals. The committee members are trying to show how much Donald Trump was involved with efforts to overturn the election, so he is forever discredited. They are expected to use witnesses like the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson to show exactly what went on inside the administration that day and in the lead-up to it. I give Dave major props for singling out Ms. Hutchinson when almost all of us thought Cassidy Hutchinson was maybe the sidekick to Sundance in that ancient movie filum. Anyway, I think the Committee and Ms. Hutchinson in particular did a BANG UP job on both! 45th has gotten really dinged up in the hearings. I mean, jeez. So what is wrong with that as an alternative objective? Dave:
No offense, but these goals are pathetic.
Pathetic?
Okay, well, maybe Dave wasn't paying attention to Ms. Hutchinson's testimony. There was a "magic moment," the steering wheel/throat lunge. Was it THE magic moment that once and for all discredited 45th, like Joseph Welch-Joseph McCarthy, no, but that moment may be coming! Dave doesn't think so in his second moment of brain diarrhea but 45th is far closer to criminal indictment now lol than he ever has been and the people who would bring us that moment have been thoroughly energized by the hearings.
What Dave wanted instead of all this "pathetic" small beer was, well, here he goes again:
We need a committee that will preserve democracy on Jan. 6, 2025, and
Jan. 6, 2029. We need a committee to locate the weaknesses in our
democratic system and society and find ways to address them.
It's the people, Dave.
This is a movement, not a conspiracy.
Point well taken...well, semi-well taken. It is a conspiracy, my God Dave, people have like been charged with criminal conspiracy. They are part of a movement, yes, that's the well-taken part. It's a conspiracy movement.
We don’t need a criminal-type
investigation looking for planners or masterminds [See, the mind, it just went.]
as much as we need
historians and scholars and journalists [Dave...So...since this is a Congressional committee, they blew it...by being a Congressional committee (the top of Dave's head just blew off)?]
to help us understand why the
American Republican Party, like the Polish Law and Justice party, (what?) or the
Turkish Justice and Development Party, (huh?) has become a predatory
semi-democratic faction. Dave's mind just flew the coop to Poland and Turkey.
We need a committee to explore just how close America is to rampant political violence. Dave...
...
We need a committee to look at how conditions in America compare to
conditions in countries around the world that have already seen their
democracies slide into autocracy and violence.
We need a committee to explore what political violence might look like in this country. DAVE!
...
I’m trying to understand why committee members are not gripped by these realities.
All those who have identified Dave as someone who is not gripping reality raise your hands.
Looks like you got three, maybe four, people down front Dave.
...we need a committee that will be focused not on the specific actions of
this or that individual but on the broad social conditions that threaten
to bring American democracy to its knees.
Okay, Dave's going to get those three or four historians, scholars, and journalists together and tackle this.
Number Two, which is nine-week check-up on Dave's committee work:
Did the F.B.I. Just Re-elect Donald Trump?
And here, I will adopt William Kristol's Twitter answer in full:
Take care of yourself, Dave. Really.
* "Members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers — themselves desperately afraid of being downsized — are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
"At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking for a strongman to vote for — someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodernist professors will no longer be calling the shots."-Achieving Our Country
