Yesterday, John wrote about David Brooks beclowning himself on PBS, but I couldn’t resist throwing in my $.02 about Brooks’ idiocy.
Brooks, as you know, is the archetypical elitist who firmly believes that you can tell whether a man would make a good president by interpreting the cut of a man’s jib. He let the world know that when he met Barack Obama, he just knew that the man would make a great president because he had such perfectly creased pants.
No word if the pants were cuffed or not, nor do I know what style of knot Obama used on his tie, but those pants were perfectly creased, proving his presidential mettle.
I happen to know that Brooks is a great political analyst because he always appears well-dressed, as he bloviates on PBS alongside noted midwit Jonathan Capehart. Brooks is, we are told, Capehart’s “conservative” counterweight as they discuss the issues of the day.
Brooks informed his viewers that Donald Trump has, once again, revealed himself to be an autocrat because he (through is evil minions) had a judge arrested absolutely unjustly simply because she had the Rosa Parks-like courage of obstructing justice by aiding and abetting a violent illegal alien while he tried to escape arrest by ICE.
Judge Dugan, one of the liberals who by now actually ARE above the law, may have done a criminal act but by doing so she exhibited heroism.
🚨NYT’s David Brooks doesn’t “know the specific details” of the Judge Dugan case — but says she was “heroic.”
“If the federal enforcement agencies come to your courtroom and you help a guy escape, that is two things…”
“One, it strikes me as maybe something illegal, but it… pic.twitter.com/1Ia7BaxW7R
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) April 27, 2025
Back in 2024, everybody on the left kept assuring us that nobody was above the law, so Donald Trump should spend the rest of his life in jail for signing a legal settlement in 34 places at the direction of his attorney. This was a lawless, dastardly act akin to bringing down the Twin Towers, and an example must be made of Trump to ensure that no American would ever sign legal documents again.
Or something like that. I am not certain anybody had a clear idea of what exactly Trump did, other than being Donald Trump, to warrant his incarceration for the rest of his life. But he is Orange and Bad, so whatever he did, he certainly shouldn’t be above the law.
The David Brooks call for “Mass Civic Uprising” in the @nytimes opened with Genesis, ended with the Communist Manifesto, and may be the funniest op-ed ever:https://t.co/q4d4pOtPdw pic.twitter.com/PWbV7OIwsY
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) April 22, 2025
Of course, no Democrat actually believes that nobody is above the law. What they mean is that no Republican, aside from David Brooks, who pretends to be one on TV, should be anywhere but in prison.
Illegal aliens who send their companions to the hospital, however, should not be. The reason that Judge Dugan “had” to escort her new illegal alien friend out of the courtroom was that he was in front of her for assaulting two people by beating them within an inch of their lives. A good (non) citizen, in other words. Great guy, except for that unfortunate tendency to beat the crap out of people.
He must be saved, and Brooks–who admits he actually doesn’t know the details of the case–thinks she is a hero. We need violent felons in this country, because there are some beatings that Americans won’t do or something.
Democrats fear that ICE is intimidating judges improperly by arresting Dugan. Not to put too fine a point on it, but judges who break the law are SUPPOSED to be arrested because, well, NOBODY IS ABOVE THE LAW. I have been reliably informed on that, and it happens to be true.
Oddly enough, some of us think that judges should even be held to a higher, not lower, standard because Americans are supposed to believe that the criminal justice system isn’t stacked in favor of the elites. And, believe it or not, judges are the elite of the elite in the criminal justice system.
Brooks is the perfect member of the late American Empire elite. Snobbish, self-absorbed, in love with himself and his class, and appalled that the hoi polloi exist. Well, not always. They are useful for cooking, cleaning, and shining shoes. And that Uber Eats guy does a nice service.
But they should be seen and not heard, and Trump is the loudest voice of the hoi polloi. He is the modern-day version of the Roman Gracchi brothers–Tribunes of the Plebeians in the late Roman Republic era. They were populists, pushing for reforms of the increasingly corrupt Roman Republic.
They were killed. As elites think all populists should be. Not long after the Roman Republic fell, the era of the Caesars began.
Matt Taibbi’s piece linked above captures Brooks’ absurdity, not over this issue, but over his pretentious writing in a column (pick any column and you will find similar pretension). In that column, Brooks calls for a mass uprising against Trump, and by that, he means judges disobeying laws, legislators holding sit-ins on the steps of the Capitol, and university presidents writing nasty letters pouting when Trump asks them to obey civil rights laws.
New York Times columnist David Brooks, calling for a “mass civic uprising” against Donald Trump:
We live in a country with catastrophically low levels of institutional trust. University presidents, big law firms, media organizations and corporate executives face a wall of skepticism and cynicism. If they are going to participate in a mass civic uprising against Trump, they have to show the rest of the country that they understand the establishment sins that gave rise to Trump in the first place… [that] this is not just defending the establishment; it’s moving somewhere new.
You don’t say!
It’s hard to convey the scale of the comedy in this article, which received a lot of attention. Brooks lifts the opening from Genesis (“In the beginning there was agony”) and the ending from the Communist Manifesto (see below). In between lay a call for “mass civic uprising” which spends much of its time trying to figure out where to find the “civic” part, after drafting corporate lawyers, university administrators, “corporate executives,” reporters, and — what other kinds of people live in America? It’s either the funniest revolutionary manifesto ever, or the most touching.
None of that Gracchi Brothers speaking for the people. Just some good ol’ Harvard presidential pouting because Trump won’t give billions of dollars a year to him unless the school begins obeying the law.
In the piece he notes sadly that the “only real hint” of organized resistance has been “the rallies led by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” but what self-respecting ex-establishment figure has faith in the earnest left? The moment requires people of quality:
It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.
It’s genuinely touching to see Brooks, the AFLAC duck of elitism, a man who wrote an actual book on being a snob, forced to consider the question of raising mass support. Adding to the pathos is the fact that it’s mere months after this same coalition of academics, lawyers, “nonprofits,” and scientists tried and failed at throwing up every legal and illegal obstacle to Trump’s election. In other words, “civic uprising” flopped when the folks in whom Brooks places faith held every lever of authority. Now they’re going to lead a grassroots revolt?
Brooks is calling for a revolt of the elites, but the problem they face is that they may have to ally with people who are “revolting” to them.
How do you lead a revolution against Trump when the people you need are “nobodies?” Judges, university presidents, and people of that ilk have to figure out how to become the vanguard of the proletariate, and unfortunately the proles aren’t excited to be led by a bunch of effete snobs who hate their guts and wanted to put down Donald Trump one way or another.
So what the Brooks’ have in this world is the heroism of brave lawbreaking judges. Judges who just 5 minutes ago were telling us that “nobody is above the law,” but that what they meant was that the “right sort of people” are not “nobodies.”
Laws are for the little people, and when a Trump or a Gracchi comes along, the solution should be to get rid of them, using judicial or, perhaps, extrajudicial means.
I keep harping on the idea that we are in the late stage of the Republic, and nothing I’ve seen of late makes me want to change my mind.
David Brooks will be a modern-day Karl Marx, chanting, “Judges of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but being chained to the law!”
