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Brooks: The Era of Distortion (Claims Neocons have no influence on*)

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RamboLiberal Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jan-05-04 11:37 PM
Original message
Brooks: The Era of Distortion (Claims Neocons have no influence on*)
Edited on Mon Jan-05-04 11:37 PM by rmpalmer
:puke: alert

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/06/opinion/06BROO.html

Do you ever get the sense the whole world is becoming unhinged from reality? I started feeling that way awhile ago, when I was still working for The Weekly Standard and all these articles began appearing about how Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith, Bill Kristol and a bunch of "neoconservatives" at the magazine had taken over U.S. foreign policy.

Theories about the tightly knit neocon cabal came in waves. One day you read that neocons were pushing plans to finish off Iraq and move into Syria. Web sites appeared detailing neocon conspiracies; my favorite described a neocon outing organized by Dick Cheney to hunt for humans. The Asian press had the most lurid stories; the European press the most thorough. Every day, it seemed, Le Monde or some deep-thinking German paper would have an exposé on the neocon cabal, complete with charts connecting all the conspirators.

The full-mooners fixated on a think tank called the Project for the New American Century, which has a staff of five and issues memos on foreign policy. To hear these people describe it, PNAC is sort of a Yiddish Trilateral Commission, the nexus of the sprawling neocon tentacles.

We'd sit around the magazine guffawing at the ludicrous stories that kept sprouting, but belief in shadowy neocon influence has now hardened into common knowledge. Wesley Clark, among others, cannot go a week without bringing it up.

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otohara Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jan-05-04 11:53 PM
Response to Original message
1. Poor David Brooks
I don't know how Rummy, Wolfie, Dick refer to Bush as "the president" without laughing.
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The Zanti Regent Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-06-04 12:07 AM
Response to Reply #1
2. He proves why MWO listed his candidacy for Media Whore of the Year!
Hurry up and cast your vote at http://www.mediawhoresonline.com/
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nightperson Donating Member (550 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Jan-07-04 05:52 AM
Response to Reply #1
16. Poor David Brooks indeed,
Edited on Wed Jan-07-04 06:33 AM by secondtermdenier
I wonder if he is going through some personal crisis/meltdown. He has expressed thoughts about becoming a Democrat in the past, maybe this is a sign that he is having difficulty with parroting the party line, with being the "modern conservative" these days when so many older conservatives (Kevin Phillips, John Dean, Pat Buchanan etc.) are sounding so often like the Democrats he is supposed to denounce. Who knows what this guy's deal is? He is very supportive of gay marriage, for example, yet also a fan of the Pope! Andrew Sullivan comparisons, anyone? He might be exhausted from trying to be too many things to too many people. Maybe he is trying too hard to express what he thinks are the beliefs of the "Republicans",
but in his heart may not personally believe anymore. Maybe I'm psychoanalyzing too much.
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Stephanie Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-06-04 01:31 AM
Response to Original message
3. Oh my freaking god he has lost his mind!
That is a frightening essay. The RAGE in it is Limbaughesque. So this is the official defense of the neo-cons? They have no shame.

Brooks must be reading DU.

~Hi David! Get help with your anger.~

This piece is grotesque in its twisted relationship with the truth. Below, David attempts to conflate two unlike events.

In these communities, half-truths get circulated and exaggerated. Dark accusations are believed because it is delicious to believe them. Vince Foster was murdered. The Saudis warned the Bush administration before Sept. 11.


The Foster case was thoroughly investigated. September 11th has not been, because the Bush administration refuses to cooperate and has in fact impeded the investigation every step of the way. So the comparison is nothing but a cheap lie.

Here's another sly lie:

There have been hundreds of references, for example, to Richard Perle's insidious power over administration policy, but I've been told by senior administration officials that he has had no significant meetings with Bush or Cheney since they assumed office.


Perle chaired the Defense Policy Board. Obviously there are many, many other people he could have met with who are not named Bush or Cheney. Anyway, Cheney's in his bunker and Jr. is out to lunch. I'm sure we could find on record Perle's meetings with Cabinet officials. I bet he met with Rumsfeld. Maybe Powell. Certainly Wolfowitz, Feith. Notice also that Perle's said to have had no significant meetings with Cheney/Bush. Oh, there were meetings. Just not significant ones.

~Good one, David!~

And this!

the Project for the New American Century, which has a staff of five and issues memos on foreign policy


PNAC may have a staff of five, but what about the many signatories to those "memos," starting with Dick Cheney and Jeb Bush. I doubt that Perle and Wolfowitz were actually "on staff."

And finally, here's his subconscious cry for help.

Partisanship has left many people unhinged.


~There's foam around your mouth, David. Get a tissue.~

David Brooks is a deeply unhappy man. He seems to have had a rude awakening.

You can ignore inconvenient facts so rigorously that your picture of the world is one big distortion.


~You can only ignore facts for so long, David. You're at DU now. Open your eyes. Come to the light.~
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pretzel4gore Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-06-04 01:56 AM
Response to Reply #3
5. is this the same punk involved in Houston murders?
brooks looks too young tho...the '73 serial killing of young kids by wayne henley, david brooks and some freeper creeper (dean coral?) are along the lines of what this brooks etal do to truth, journalistic ethics/honour and political freedom etc.

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pretzel4gore Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-06-04 01:45 AM
Response to Original message
4. What an Aussie MP famously calls a 'congo line of suckholes'
has a special reserved place in it for this so-called david brooks character...going 'cha-cha-cha' with a whore's abandon...
sheese!
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Manix Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-06-04 06:29 AM
Response to Original message
6. ...now if you oppose BushCo you are guilty of anti-Semitism as well...
Josh Marshall points this out in detail today at:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/
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Gman Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-06-04 06:52 AM
Response to Original message
7. This is some kind of counter offensive
I think we'll be seeing more of this type stuff in the future. Note how they always take a mocking tone.
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DarkSim Donating Member (266 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-06-04 07:26 AM
Response to Original message
8. Neocons?
I actually do believe some of the twisted stories about the neo cons "taking over foreign policy" but its all the same to me in the end. i just hope they get rooted out soon.
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HootieMcBoob Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-06-04 09:22 AM
Response to Original message
9. neo = Jewish!!?? Has Brooks flipped his freakin' lid?
This is the craziest thing I've ever read! They're trying to equate even talking about neocons with anti-semitism! I can't belive they would go this far. What a freaking stretch.

How in the name of God Almighty does this fucking crack-pot come to this conclusion?

In truth, the people labeled neocons (con is short for "conservative" and neo is short for "Jewish") travel in widely different circles and don't actually have much contact with one another.
:crazy:
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HereSince1628 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-06-04 11:17 AM
Response to Reply #9
10. well, when you are running low on defenses
you use what you have.

Neocons may sit their asses of evil in Washington but their reach extends all the way here to Milwaukee where the Bradley Foundation funded their nasty project.



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suegeo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-06-04 08:48 PM
Response to Reply #9
15. David Brooks = boob
OK, here’s an equation for Brooks:

David Brooks=boob

The history of the neo-cons goes way back, and not all neo-cons are jewish. Of course, he knows this and chooses to ignore it.

The movement, and the term “neo-con” goes back to WWII, if I correctly recall a book that I read some months ago. It is not a term recently developed and is NOT a term applied to Jewish conservatives alone.

The neo-cons (who give me the heeby-jeebies) once had the name “anti-communist liberals” (liberals! GASP!). Some of them were jewish, some of them were not. Many seem to have been belched out of Columbia (a college in New York?). They got panicky when black students starting protesting for civil rights at the school back in the 1960s.

Anyway, in the olden days when they were liberals (GASP!), the neo-cons were a part of a group of leftists/liberals called “the great center” (or something) right around World War II. In this timeframe, the left was comprised of 3 major factions: progressives, the neo-cons (then just simply “liberals”) and communists/socialists. This coalition of leftists help keep the democrats in power for so many years.

During the waning days of WWII, certain nut jobs in the US government snuck nazi bastards into our country, with the “hope” of building our country’s secret police (aka the CIA). The nazis were great at setting up secret police units, and also at terrorizing and butchering the common folk. And they were also good at assassinations (night of the long knives) Some nut jobs in the CIA wanted to put Nazi knowledge to use and who better to learn from than the experts, the Nazi bastards from Hitler’s fatherland itself.

Anyway, the Nazis were surely evil assholes, but they weren’t stupid. The Nazis bastards realized they could plant the seeds of their Fascist ideology in the United States, and keep fighting the Soviets from here. So, the nazi nut jobs worked with the US government nut jobs to set up the cold war and whip up the red scare. It was good for business (ala United Fruit Co.), you know.

Apparently, the neo-cons bought into the anti-communism hysteria coming from the nazi nut jobs and their nut job sponsors in the US government. (Could this be an example of neo-cons not being able to think for themselves? Could they have some sort of natural proclivity to be gullible? Could this tendency to be gullible be exploited by their glorious leader, Smirky? But, I digress.)

So, the anti-communist liberals (the modern day neo-cons) bought into the Dulles brother’s bullshit and throughout the cold war, the neo-cons considered themselves staunch anti-communists, but also still considered themselves liberals.

Then, for reasons that escape me, they go completely crazy and devolve into their conservative (fascist? imperialist?) views. The factions that made up the left/the democratic party (the great middle, or whatever it was called) crumbled when the anti-communist liberals fully lost their collective minds and went crazy-ass Republican on us. Also, the killings of the leaders who were really liberal "helped."

The nazi bastards that were snuck into America after the war also continued to recruit republicans, recall Poppy Bush’s ’88 campaign. (But again, I digress.)

The term “new conservative” was applied to what were once called anti-communist liberals. This label was intended as a slam--they claimed to be liberals, but were acting like conservatives, so the denigrating term “new conservative” was applied to them. At some point, the label new-conservative switches to neo-conservative. Being Jewish had nothing to do with the switch to neo, and Mr. Brooks surely knows this. Perhaps he had a case of the vapors or a fever when he wrote this?

There are plenty of non-Jewish neo-cons. The following people were/are considered to share in the collective neo-con insanity:

Jeane Kirkpatrick (a nut job who worked at the UN for Ronnie Raygun) is a neo-con. She devoured Nicaragua for lunch one day, and I don’t think she’s jewish.

If I recall correctly, Elliott Abrams is also pegged as a neo-con (He could be jewish, I dunno. But I am pretty sure he performed many ILLEGAL acts in the Iran-Contra dealings. Why that asshole isn’t in JAIL is beyond me. Instead, the Bushies put him in a position of power. God Bless America.)

Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (SP?) hung out with the neo-cons, but I read that he eventually pulled away from the group, because their anti-commie hysteria became unbearable. He (D.P.M.) wasn’t jewish, was he?

Once again, there are many neo-cons who are not jewish. Brooks is incorrect when he implies neo=jewish. And he should know better. Wait! I’ll bet he does know better, the little stinker.

As for me, I don’t really like the term neo-con. I think “crazy-ass right-wing mo-fos” is a better label.

(Forgive me if I make a few errors in my recollection of the neo-con history book (circa 1991) that I read. Unlike Mr. Brooks, I am not a fancy, high paid columnist for the NYT or anything. Nope I'm just a working girl, who reads, and who is also, according to Brooks, "unhinged.")
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ixion Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-06-04 12:48 PM
Response to Original message
11. now it's unpatriotic AND anti-semitic to question Bush?
give me a break. this is the guy who has lost touch with reality. :crazy: I have absolutely nothing against people who practice the jewish faith. I do, however, have something against people who murder for their political gain, no matter what faith they may be.

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Fovea Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-06-04 02:08 PM
Response to Original message
12. David Brooks is suffused with the Zietgiest.
if the time in question is 1953.

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AlabamaYankee Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-06-04 04:42 PM
Response to Original message
13. Josh Marshall slams Brooks today
He calls Brooks' column "... rhetorical brickbats meant to squelch argument. The whole thing is disinformation from start to finish." He spends a lot of time analyzing this developing trend to label BushCo critics as antiSemitic.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/
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captain_change Donating Member (73 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jan-06-04 05:58 PM
Response to Reply #13
14. A little balance
I think that any show that puts on Brooks should be forced to put on the "Liberal" reporter from the Wall Street Journal all NY Post. This should keep him off the airways for a while
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