Ah David-when was your job ever to "report accurately on this country"? You tell lies for a living.

[kpete]

David Brooks:

Gee, I Guess Me and My Fellow Well-Heeled Establisment Swells Kind of Didn't Listen to the Voters for Years, Huh?

The question is: Should deference be paid to this victor (Trump and Trumpism)? Should we bow down to the judgment of these voters?

Well, some respect is in order. Trump voters are a coalition of the dispossessed. They have suffered lost jobs, lost wages, lost dreams. The American system is not working for them, so naturally they are looking for something else.

Moreover, many in the media, especially me, did not understand how they would express their alienation. We expected Trump to fizzle because we were not socially intermingled with his supporters and did not listen carefully enough. For me, it's a lesson that I have to change the way I do my job if I'm going to report accurately on this country.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/opinion/no-not-trump-not-ever.html?_r=0
http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=362225


Ah, but David, when was your job ever to "report accurately on this country"? You're not a journalist. You tell lies for a living. You're lies are not as hot and violent as Trump's, but you and he are basically in the same racket. You make a princely living trafficking in fairy tales about "real America" that comfort and flatter the thousands of Beltway insiders and cosseted plutocrat rubes you hustle every week, and Trump is paving a path to the White House by telling millions of low-information rubes the flattering, reassuring lies that they want to hear.

Same scam, different chumps, except Trump's chumps are exhilarated, rage-drunk and armed with mighty weapons which you helped to forge, while your chumps are freaking out and terrified because the Plutocrat Potemkin vision of America you sold them is being overrun by hordes of rage-drunk, invincibly-armored visigoths you told them did not exist.

It's not merely that you got this wrong, Mr. Brooks. It's that you have gotten everything wrong, over and over again, for decades.

And it is long past time for you to go.


http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2016/03/david-brooks-sword-and-shield.html
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a43148/david-brooks-trump-bush/

[HuckleB]

1. It seems like he's ignoring the constant attention Trump has received from his cronies.

To ignore that part of the equation means his assessment is likely, at least partly, off base.

[Trust Buster]

2. HOGWASH. Brooks would love for you to think Trump supporters are about economics.

Trump isn't making a case to improve economics. He employs foreign visa workers at Mar Lago. He employed undocumented immigrants on his construction sights. He has his line of clothing manufactured in China and Mexico. Trump is pointing to Mexicans, Central Americans, Muslims and every other minority as the reason for his followers economic woes. The Republicans and Brooks are running for cover and pushing this "Trump supporters are dispossessed economically" meme to cover their collective behinds.

[MisterP]

3. "why don't the rabble and their nouveau-riche leader like me? I have impeccable taste in caviar!"

[Marr]

4. They "didn't listen carefully enough"?

They listened to their base just fine. For 50+ years they marketed bigotry of every variety during the campaigns, and used their actual power to push a 1%er economic scam that their followers never cared about. They knew exactly how to play the rubes, and they did it very well.

Their problem is that their base has finally got it's pure product: a man who doesn't care about the trickle down scam any more than they do, and is happy to give them all the racism and xenophobia they can eat. And all he wants is power.

People have been writing about how unwise the GOP's electoral strategy is for literally decades now. *Those* are the people they didn't listen to carefully enough.