Give Us Straight News, Not Collectively Composed False Narratives You Too Wish Were True...

Democrats had a golden summer...

The momentum didn’t survive the fall.

Over the past month or so, there’s been a rumbling across the land, and the news is not good for Team Blue.

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Nuh uh, David Brooks.  Sure sounds pretty, your writing here but...

Nobody buys that spin.  Nothing has changed during "the past month or so." 

"Team Brandon" and "Nancy and Friends" have  been disliked for much longer than the recent fall and rise of gas prices, or the great grocery-store ripoffs.  Be honest, sir.

That rumblin' you all are just hearing?  Get your ears checked. It's been audible for a long time in this country, you know that.  Culturally you distained it. Acted as though the national mood were something the great Donald Trump created... instead of the other way around.

You had people who understood how Americans were feeling, despite the numbers paid pollsters were putting up. We told you so regularly, from other parts of the country.  We know you were listening because you responded by mocking our concerns as outdated beliefs of bigotry, fear and ignorance.

Why pretend otherwise?

David Brooks has had a premium perch for years now as a New York Times columnist.  He's preached the doctrine of inclusiveness and conservatism, while practicing first traditionalism (his first wife converted to David's native religion to raise a Jewish family) then allegedly converting to Liberal Christianity, the religion of his new-ish second wife, a former work assistant of his.

(Not judging here, but I didn't make my living all these years setting myself up as a "conservative" standard-bearer and political advice-giver to the nation. When your schtick is no longer viable credible, isn't it time to stop pretending already? Brooks once was a true PhilosopherKing.  He's not wearing clothes. Why not go the philanthropic route full-steam already... get out there yourself where you want to be and let others lead, and not by moralizing either but through the doctrine of pragmatism? You could test your social policy ideas with your own money first, by investing in the ideas you verbally champion.) 

All the while during his career of personal mountain-climbing, Brooks has preached collaboration (when he wasn't championing America's wars in the early parts of this century) and cordiality -- an oldish "nice guy" stern-sort-of-look during the more freewheeling liberal days in the country and at the paper under the current publisher's dad.

Like the members of SCOTUS, it seems Brooks has lifetime tenure at the NYT. (I imagine he's sucking up a lot of the salary cap.) He doesn't cover the horse race of politics anymore -- his side-hustle speaking calendar likely keeps him busy, and he purloins those group-building philanthropic topics for his feel-good columns of late.  (Like a lot of religious converts, they really do become TrueBelievers biting hard when they join the club, nary a skeptic among them; you see this with the male Catholic converts looking for a solid intellectual foundation, with the added conservative traditions built in, especially).

Here, Brooks turns his nose to political news, a few weeks out from the midterms.  The polls are bad, and he's got something to say about that, and it goes something like this:

G.O.P. candidates are telling a very clear class/culture/status war narrative in which common-sense Americans are being assaulted by elite progressives who let the homeless take over the streets, teach sex ed to 5-year-olds, manufacture fake news, run woke corporations, open the border and refuse to do anything about fentanyl deaths and the sorts of things that affect regular people. 

Again, this is a man who has had that perch for the full Biden administration, and just now begins to notice a ... "narrative".  No, David.  Out here, we just call it news.

"Here they come, spinning out of the turn..."

You can't just pick up the race coverage in the final few furlongs and expect anything close to accuracy.  You have to get to know the horses before the race starts, in the paddocks even.  Watch them, observe them, check their times and the conditions they've competed in.  No drive-by "day-of-race" coverage.

That would be like thinking you can cover the news via algorithms, solely "by the numbers", by completely dismissing real people -- the humanities -- from your news coverage today, disdaining their stories and lived realities, and still thinking you will come through with anything close to the honest truth in the end.