Brooks

There are few people in public life who I loathe as much as David Brooks. He's a New York Times columnist, and manages to appear on every single political TV show at all times on all channels. He's like the conservative Max Headroom.

And he's so soft. He's no Rumsfeldian noecon hawk or screeching social conservative. Oh no. He's just a pudgy know-it-all who thinks he can ask his dog walker about the economy and know how the little people see things. Or just make shit up. Same difference. Because he's plugged in, see? He feels what people feel. He's not a multimillionaire TV star, he's just a lawn-mowing beer-drinking average guy.

Who only drinks really good wine and couldn't start a lawn mower without the help of a NASA technician and a signed liability waiver. Same difference.

So today Brooks is letting us lower middle class losers know that we're headed back to ultra-loserville. We're losing our ticket to ride on the American Dream train. Thanks, Dave!

See, the recession is going to push new middles back to being old poors. We're going to give up our exurb semi-detached houses and our Sharper Image toys. No more Tiffany's. Nor more Starbucks for crying out loud. Starbucks! Out of reach.

And we're going to be sad about it.

But look: I don't necessarily disagree. The coming storm will overturn all the rowboats in the harbour, and wobble a few of the yachts. Fine.

But why is that? Because soft conservatives like Brooks have been marching lockstepped with the Bush radicals for eight years pillaging the treasury and burning down the exurbs. Like economic Visigoths, they've taken from the middle class and given to the rich. The weight of the tax burden is now squarely on the working folk.

It's nice to sit around with a really good chardonnay and tisk-tisk for the unfortunates who will be out of the Starbucks club any day now. But who made it so precarious to be middle class, David?

YOU DID!

Do you think that if wages had gone up at all and that taxes were even ballpark fair and that if any help at all had gone their way instead of straight to the penthouse suite that the middle class would be able to take more of a bump in hard times? Do you think? Maybe?

Brooks and his ilk (and there's plenty of ilk) were cheerleaders for regressive taxation and overall fiscal policies that were first-foremost-and-only for the rich. And now it's too bad for the middle class.

You'll understand, Mr. Brooks, if we don't thank you for your newfound concern.

And all around the world, Brooks says, people will be mad at riot and hate America for pushing them back to poverty. Well. Imagine that. Foreigners mad at the US for harmful and selfish behaviour. What would that even look like?

Actually, it would look a lot like it looks on the evening news. Brooks' war of choice and ongoing conservative economic carpetbagging have seen to that.

I'll say to Brooks what I'll say to all his conservative fellow travellers: we tried it your way. Eight years of unilateral warmongering foreign policy. Eight years of Trickle-down and Starve the Beast. Eight years of your domestic and environmental policy. Eight years of your "ethics."

And it's all a failure. Conservatism had its day and succeeded at nothing. It couldn't even hold a good status quo - and isn't that the very definition of "conservative?"

So, David, please go to your room and shut the door, or at least shut up. Peering down at the ruin you made of our society and writing about how bad you've made it for this group or that is simply distasteful.

And Progressives have a lot of work to do.