Combat! - Page 392 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Forbidden political discussion #437: Intelligence

By Dan Brooks in conservatism, widespread dumbening November 2, 2009 3 Comments

Yeah, um, actually he was a Consitutional law professor at the University of Chicago for like twelve years.

I’m not saying that one political position in America is currently smarter than the other, but the Senate health care reform package involves death panels, the President of the United States is not an American citizen, and the swine flu vaccine might be a trick. Also, this lady. When high school graduate Glenn Beck claims that Nelson Rockefeller was a communist because of a mural he commissioned from Diego Rivera—a mural whose depiction of Lenin angered Rockefeller so much that it touched off the century’s greatest controversy in public art—it’s tempting to conclude that his position is influenced by, well, ignorance. As we all know, “ignorant” is a polite way of saying another word that we have been trained never, ever to use in the context of responsible political debate. You can’t get anything done by disparaging people’s intelligence. To do so is, at best, to commit the ad hominem fallacy, and at worst to provide your opponent with a weapon that they will use against you later. We don’t argue about who’s smarter in America. Anyone who does winds up looking stupid.

Friday links! Grieving chimps edition

By Dan Brooks in health care, health insurance reform, help me kill zombies, inevitability of death, new york times, representative democracy, Uncategorized, widespread dumbening October 30, 2009 1 Comment

I had a picture of Halloween sausage costumes, but you know what's really spooky? We're all going to die eventually. Now go ahead, kids—take one piece of candy each.

The photo at left was sent to me by alert reader Ben Fowlkes, whose near-constant cruising for chimpanzee snuff movies on the internet is interrupted only by his cruising for chimpanzee snuff porn movies on the internet. National Geographic published this photograph of Dorothy, a female chimpanzee in her late forties who died of congestive heart failure. According to the NGM blog, the other chimps in the Sanga-Young Chimpanzee Rescue Center gathered to watch her burial in eerie silence. “If one knows chimpanzees, then one knows that [they] are not [usually] silent creatures,” said photographer, center volunteer and typographical error Monica Szczupider. Dorothy was a maternal figure for many of the residents of Sanga-Yong, which rehabilitates chimps traumatized by habitat loss or the African bushmeat trade. It would appear that the chimps pictured above are grieving. Next time someone smugly refutes Darwin’s theory of species differentiation through natural selection by pointing out that his grandma wasn’t an orangutan, viewing this picture gives you legal grounds to slap him in the mouth.

Balwinder Singh, rookie American

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized October 29, 2009 4 Comments

Conclusive, blurry evidence that there is a man named Balwinder Singh driving a cab in New York City, and I am not a liar. In this case. Props to Mike Sebba for the photo.

A year ago at this time, I was a tutor for prep school kids in New York City. In that capacity I took a lot of cabs around the Upper East Side, and one night I found myself conducted down Fifth Avenue by a man named Balwinder Singh. In New York, unusual cab driver names are something of a collector’s item. You can tell the people who just moved to the city, because they will sit down at the bar and excitedly tell you that they were just driven there by Muhammad Ali—not realizing that Muhammad Ali is the Harry Johnson of New York cab driver names: kind of funny, yes, but also too common to remark upon. After you’ve lived there for a few years, Muhammad Ali becomes just another fixture in the background of the city, like the Empire State Building or human suffering. To impress the true connoisseur of foreign cabbie names, you need something genuinely weird—like a Sherpa Sherpa, say, or a 45 year-old man named “Ball-winder,” who has unwittingly immigrated to a country where that is completely hilarious.

Lieberman threatens to filibuster public option, alienating no one new

By Dan Brooks in corporatocracy, health care, health insurance reform, representative democracy October 28, 2009 0 Comment

Senator Lieberman and another wealthy old man with full health insurance coverage

Senator Joe Lieberman, seen here with another wealthy old man who has full insurance coverage

Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) is an independent in the truest sense of the word. He may be an elected representative of the American people, but that doesn’t mean he gives a damn what you think. You think he’s against George Bush just because he was on the opposite ticket in a Presidential election? Bam!—he votes to invade Iraq. You think you can keep him out of the Senate by voting for the other guy, who didn’t want to invade Iraq, in the Democratic primary? Bam!—he runs as an independent. You think the $1.98 million in campaign contributions he’s received from securities and investment firms since 2005 make him a darling of the financial industry? Girl, Joe Lieberman can’t be tied down to one lobby. Even though the insurance, health and pharmaceutical industries have only given him a million dollars in the last four years, he’s still declared himself willing to filibuster any health care bill that includes a public option. Joe Lieberman is the Senator from the great state of Fuck You, and when Harry Reid moves for cloture on whatever Keep America Strong and Healthy Flag-Lovers Bill he comes up with, Lieberman is going to stand up, look straight into the C-SPAN camera, and spend the next 36 hours calmly describing exactly which blindingly white and quivering part of his body the American people can bite.

David Brooks and the nihilism of contemporary conservatism

By Dan Brooks in conservatism, corporatocracy, new york times, populism, Uncategorized October 27, 2009 2 Comments

OM NOM NOM NOM NOM. OM NOM NOM. I know we've used this photo before—with basically this joke—but it pleases me so.

Seriously, does anybody want it? I'm going to eat it if nobody wants it. Michelle? You've had two already. Okay, we'll cut it in half.

Don’t get me wrong: I like David Brooks as much as the next guy. I realize I sound like I’m about to tell a David Brooks-ist joke—and if my grandpa asks you how you keep David Brooks out of your watermelon patch, just don’t respond—but I really do think that he provides sober, interesting analysis on a fairly consistent basis, provided that basis does not occur during campaign season, when he becomes insane. Generally, though, he’s a reasonable man. He employs logic and persuasive rhetoric in his columns, as if he were addressing people who did not necessarily agree with him before they started reading, which makes him something of a rarity among commentators on the right. As a result, his lucidity affords a valuable insight into the reasoning behind contemporary conservative thinking—a reasoning that is often obscured in the provocative (read: insane) rhetoric of a Beck, a Limbaugh or a Malkin.

Still, just because it’s valuable insight doesn’t mean it won’t be sad. Brooks’s column in today’s New York Times, in which he criticizes the Obama administration’s decision to limit executive compensation at banks and investment firms that received federal bailout money, exposes the nihilism at the heart of contemporary conservatism. Worse yet, it contradicts what he was saying one year ago at this time.