Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Never forget that he train is barreling down on Trump, even as he dances on the tracks.

There is one struggling party in US right now, and it’s not the Democrats.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

People are weird.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Everybody saw this coming.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

A consequence of cucumbers

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Second rate reporter says what?

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Answer: we’d never have to see Luke Russert Jr. on tv

Reader Interactions

164Comments

  4. 4.

    General Winfield Stuck

    What would happen if a freak solar event sterilized the people on the half of the earth that happened to be facing the sun?

    and right before this happens someone needs to yell, “Looky, up there, It’s Sarah Starbursts” Nolo more baby wingnuts.

  5. 5.

    Alan

    Off Topic: Is anyone else having problems with this site missing its CSS file?

    Edit: Heh, never mind.

  6. 6.

    Anne Laurie

    “Without posterity, there are no grand designs. There are no high ambitions. Politics becomes insignificant. Even words like justice lose meaning because everything gets reduced to the narrow qualities of the here and now.”

    If David Effin’ Brooks lives in hope of his words being remembered beyond his lifetime, he’s an even bigger idiot than his actions have already established him to be. His taint-lapping all-is-for-the-best-in-this-best-of-all-possible-worlds columns aren’t even well-written enough to serve future generations as a bad example.

    Oh, and curse you, DougJ, for causing me to accidentally click over to a David Brooks column. That crap should come with a medical warning — ‘Not to be read by those with blood pressure problems, or a functioning intellect.’

  7. 7.

    Martian Buddy

    …what is it with wingers and apocalyptic fantasies?

    I can understand completely–sometimes their antics have me wishing for a horrific plague that’s spread by tax cuts.

  8. 8.

    jl

    What would happen if David Brooks wrote a reasoned and thoughtful column that had some practical use in understanding a real world problem, with links to supporting arguments and data?

    Would all the liberals in the US become disoriented and walk into traffic, off of ledges, and into nearby bodies of water, thereby ensuring a reactionary wingnut America forever?

    Would the wingnuts chase Brooks down and trample him in a mad panic, like in one of those B&W 1950s sci-fi flicks?

    Would wingnuts go mad and immolate themselves in an imagined Obamadamarung, signaled by the treason of Brooks?

    Would I be able to score tix to the exclusive celebrity preview of the movie, and hook up with the beautiful starlet who played Sarah Palin, and her stunt double? (I can answer that one: No).

    But I treasure the narrow shafts of certainty that illuminate a small corner in this world of bottomless doubt.

  9. 9.

    Alan

    Off Topic Again: It seems that if I do not have a comment cookie from this site I don’t get a CSS file. Strange.

  10. 10.

    jack fate

    “If people knew that their nation, group and family were doomed to perish, they would build no lasting buildings. They would not strive to start new companies. They wouldn’t concern themselves with the preservation of the environment. They wouldn’t save or invest.”

    Um. . . No mass sterilization has happened. Yet we build shit buildings. Most “new” companies don’t become successful or notable until they are absorbed/taken-over/bought-out at a price high enough to earn the original entrepreneur a tug-job in Forbes (or get a Federal contract.) We take giant smelly shits on the environment, repetitiously, 24/7. Save? HAH HAH fuck you, Brooks.

    Also, regarding the first sentence, we are all doomed to perish – nations, groups and families alike. That’s why it’s called history.

    Seriously, how does one “blockquote” successfully on here. I’m really dumb and have failed every time.

  11. 11.

    arguingwithsignposts

    Wait, wouldn’t sterilization lead to massive amounts of FJFTHOI (fucking just for the hell of it)? What would the Catholics say?

    I for one welcome our new solar overlords! (snark just because I’ve listened to too much birther shite today)

  12. 12.

    jl

    Maybe they would destroy themselves in a mad grab for resources and power, growing more desperate and ruthless as they fought over the ever diminishing productive resources, that were constantly being reduced into waste because of everyone’s individual and collective greed.

    Maybe that is what he means by a radical increase in individual autonomy, or maybe that is what Brooks thinks the collective wisdom part is. I admit to being somewhat puzzled by the implications.

    A few quibbles with his logic, how could society fall apart within weeks, when it would not be clear that everyone had been sterilized for at least a few weeks? And why would the immigrants not acculturate when the impotent US-ians would still be growing old and retaining their money and power for decades.

    Oh well, I never could fathom Brooks.

  13. 13.

    Robertdsc-iphone

    Seriously, how does one “blockquote” successfully on here. I’m really dumb and have failed every time.

    Type then paste your text, then type without the stars.

    As for Brooks, Perhaps Maureen Dowd should slap him with her purse to give him a damn clue.

  14. 14.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @jack fate:

    Seriously, how does one “blockquote” successfully on here. I’m really dumb and have failed every time.

    do the following:

    (blockquote)Seriously, how does one “blockquote” successfully on here. I’m really dumb and have failed every time.(blockquote)

    Replace the ( and ) with < and > brackets, and voila

  16. 16.

    Robertdsc-iphone

    To blockquote;

    Type [blockquote] then paste your text then type [/blockquote] but use instead of [ ]

  17. 17.

    jeffreyw

    This was the actual question:

    [quote]A freak solar event “sterilizes” the half of the planet (people, animals, etc) facing the sun. What happens?[/quote]

    Brooks failed to even get that right.

    edit: BB Code quote fail.

  18. 18.

    Robertdsc-iphone

    I give up. Use greater than & less than symbols instead of brackets. My iPhone can only go so far in editing. Fucker.

  19. 19.

    Dave Weeden

    I’d find Brooks more convincing if he mentioned the idea almost certainly comes from a Larry Niven story (short version: the moon is really bright one evening; only the hero realises that this means that half the world is dead!) which was also a Twilight Zone episode IIRC. And that’s pretty much where the idea belongs.

    Actually Brooks is wrong to say “If people knew that their nation, group and family were doomed to perish, they [wouldn’t do stuff]”. There have been lots of people who believe, more or less strongly, that the world will end very soon. (The early Christians for example; actually Christians generally: they still built cathedrals.)

  20. 20.

    Splitting Image

    Freak solar events, craters where cities used to be, bellicose civilizations hurling objects at the speed of light, what is it with wingers and apocalyptic fantasies?

    Yeah, but just try to tell them that oil is a finite resource or that global warming could damage the world’s ecosystems, and they turn into the world’s biggest skeptics.

    When it comes right down to it, that’s really where environmentalists went wrong. If they had argued right from day one that global warming was evidence that aliens from the Black Nebula had colonized Neptune and were aiming a heat ray at our planet to kill us all, and the only way we could survive long enough to build a fleet of spaceships to take the battle to them was to reduce global oil consumption, the Republicans would have embraced a sustainable energy policy years ago.

  21. 21.

    MikeJ

    Do you ever get the idea that somewhere there’s a guy that works in a seven eleven who every week sees David Brooks come in at 2am with red eyes ordering three burritos and just knows that tomorrow’s Times is gonna have some incredibly stupid shit in it?

  22. 22.

    LD50

    What would happen if a freak solar event sterilized the people on the half of the earth that happened to be facing the sun?

    If timed right, it’d mean Palin would finally stop having kids.

  23. 23.

    Martian Buddy

    @jl: If I’m understanding him correctly, he’s claiming that the purpose of life is to build an enduring society for future generations, and without this purpose society would collapse into a large-scale version of “Lord of the Flies.” At least I think that’s what he’s trying to say–as jack fate said, Brooks is ignoring an awful lot of human behavior that’s inconvenient for his thesis.

  24. 24.

    LD50

    Freak solar events, craters where cities used to be, bellicose civilizations hurling objects at the speed of light, what is it with wingers and apocalyptic fantasies?

    It’s the Book of Revelations. It’s driven millions of rednecks crazy over the centuries.

  25. 25.

    KG

    @19: I picture him coming in and buying arm-fulls of twinkies, ding dongs, ho hos, and those mini-donuts, rather than three burritos. But otherwise, yes, yes, I do. It is thoughts like this, the idea that a whole lot of people are simply too high to realize how stupid they are, that allow me to continue paying attention to politics.

  27. 27.

    Dave Latchaw

    Holy fuck. That might be the stupidest thing I’ve ever read, but I can’t quite tell because the writing is so bad.

  28. 28.

    Charon

    @Dave Weeden:

    I’d find Brooks more convincing if he mentioned the idea almost certainly comes from a Larry Niven story

    I’ve never been big on Niven. When it comes to the aftermath of mass sterilization give me Children of Men any day; either the movie or the P.D. James novel, though I liked the film more.

  29. 29.

    Third Eye Open

    Ohh, fun, What-if games!

    Let me see: Gay folks would chuckle, just a skosh, I think. Lots of adoptions from the non-sterilized regions. And a precipitous rise in the sale of those creepy life-like baby-dolls.

    Great work, if you can get it, I’spose

  30. 30.

    arguingwithsignposts

    @KG:

    But it wouldn’t be the same without him warming up those freezer burritos in the microwave (“which is better, 3 or 4, man?”), or ordering the hot dogs and slathering on the scary chili.

  31. 31.

    KG

    ok, just getting to see the Daily Show here on the west coast… holy shit. That is all.

    @ 28: yeah, but I can see him dumping 4 dozen snack foods on the counter and then realizing that he left his cash and wallet in the car.

  32. 32.

    auntieeminaz

    What is a CSS file and does that have anything to do with the altered appearance of this site?

    Apparently it does but would someone explain it please?

  33. 33.

    Viva BrisVegas

    That Niven story is “Inconstant Moon”, and it’s not half of the population of the world that karks it, it’s the whole world. Those on the night side of the Earth just get a bit more time to consider the matter.

  34. 34.

    Stannate

    @29 I can also see David Brooks, in that weird state of being one gets from staying up for nearly 24 hours fueled by the Rutger Hauer Diet from Split Second, complaining to the clerk that a man of his stature should not have to wait eight seconds to heat up his after-dinner burrito when he’s hungry right now.

    (Yes, I’m full of meta-references at this late hour.)

  35. 35.

    KG

    wow, Colbert is also on fire tonight. And, I’m pretty sure that those clips of Palin just killed more of my brain cells than the last ten years of booze (and um, other stuff, allegedly).

  36. 36.

    skippy

    and the funniest thing is the punchline @ the end of brook’s bellicose “left behind” wanna-be tirade:

    bob herbert is off today.

    which explains a lot.

  38. 38.

    Martin

    Apparently it does but would someone explain it please?

    In more modern web design, you would have a HTML document (handed out by the address you see in your browser) that describes the structure of the page – here it would be the header and ad blocks, then a list of 35 or so comments, and a comment form at the bottom. That HTML document would reference another document (or a bunch of other documents) called Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) files that automatically load and tell your browser how to display all of those structural elements (the styling bit). The CSS information says to use this font here, bold that thing there, put borders on this box, and so on.

    Because the CSS is typically in separate files, it can be controlled by different access rules, which usually isn’t desirable. Today it seems that BJ is only handing out the CSS file if you have a comment cookie – so once you post something (which gives you the cookie) the CSS file will load.

    Basically, something is fucked up.

  39. 39.

    lensam

    So, if you comment everything will look ok again? Everything is all white. Edit: You’re right. Commenting makes everything go back to normal.

  45. 45.

    El Cid

    Material conditions do not drive history.

    Thank goodness the supreme erudite intellectual David Brooks has just saved us from all those ebbil unsophisticated anthropologists and historians and political economists who reckon a pretty severe role for material conditions.

  49. 49.

    Santiago

    Material conditions do not drive history.

    Marx would surely have something to say about that.

  51. 51.

    henqiguai

    @jl (#11):

    jl

    “Maybe they would destroy themselves in a mad grab for resources and power, growing more desperate and ruthless as they fought over the ever diminishing productive resources, that were constantly being reduced into waste because of everyone’s individual and collective greed.”

    Maybe ’cause I watched BBC’s Torchwood last week (yeah, and enjoyed it, so phhttt!), but this discussion brings to mind the scenario in Clark’s Childhood’s End.

    And yeah, this is also a crass attempt to get the site’s CSS functioning for me again…

    ETA – looks like I’m gonna lose my blockquotes on this one, too.

  53. 53.

    inkadu

    @Dave Latchaw: I am certain that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever read. The writing is good enough to highlight the stupid against the background of the not-even-wrong.

    And if someone can explain what he may have been thinking when he wrote about the spriritual crisis of “promised based religions” (by which he means to say Judaism and Christianity, which are, apparently, the only major religions that promise anything).

    That paragraph may itself contain Three Burritos of the Cognitive Apocalypse:
    1. Stupid.
    2. Wrong
    3. And the pale enchilida, Not-Even-Wrong.

  54. 54.

    Comrade Jake

    OT, but NBC is now covering the latest in the Gates case, replaying the entire 911 tape. The reporter just said “the rather mundane 911 call is raising new questions about why this incident has become so much more.” I swear he said this with no sense of irony.

  55. 55.

    WereBear

    Fox’s audience is overwhelmingly elderly.

    So Fox’s audience is probably already on Social Security.

    Which Fox is trying to convince them is a Terrible Thing.

    Lotsa irony there, if I could only pin it down…

  56. 56.

    inkadu

    @Comrade Jake: “Raising new questions” is part of the thought-simulating algorithm used by talking heads.

    “New controversy tonight as…” would also have been acceptable.

  57. 57.

    PeakVT

    A dozen stoned frat boys couldn’t come up with a lamer hypothetical than Brooks did.

  62. 62.

    Xenos

    The list of unexamined and unsupported assumptions built into this piece is so long that it will take a lot more work to interpret this essay than it took to write it. It would be like working as Palin’s analyst.

    But all the wingnut’s stupid assumptions about human nature are built into this thing: nations being meaningful only as a means of reproduce genetically identical children, that demographic stasis is what everybody wants, the Judeo-Christian religion is good because it is ‘successful’, people are are only good when a powerful state enforces patriarchal norms, ad nauseum.

    All to make a backhanded point about abortion and birth control. What a waste of ink.

  63. 63.

    Xenos

    @WereBear: That elderly audience on Fox is ashamed of relying on Social Security. That shame drives them to greater wingnuttery in order to compensate.

  64. 64.

    Cat Lady

    I’ll take a comment cookie for 100, Alex.

    And yes, the “Bob Herbert is off today” at the top of the column would have given me that minute of my life back.

    Edit: Thanks Alex.

  65. 65.

    linda

    if it wasn’t for willie ‘jimmy olson’ geist, wanna bet luke russert, jr would be getting much more facetime on the teevee….

    ahhhh, sweet sweet nepotism.

  67. 67.

    dr. bloor

    @MikeJ:

    Do you ever get the idea that somewhere there’s a guy that works in a seven eleven who every week sees David Brooks come in at 2am with red eyes ordering three burritos and just knows that tomorrow’s Times is gonna have some incredibly stupid shit in it?

    I wish Brooks would stop asking him for column ideas.

  71. 71.

    dmsilev

    @r€nato: Wow. I like this one:

    THIS IS A FAKE STORY. Please realize the FOLLOWING FACTS: 1. Obama BARRY SOETERO was born in A MUD HUT IN KENYA to TWO BLACK PARENTS; his mother was ADOPTIVE; he is actually 100% black AND ARAB; 2. The State of hawaii, the US Government, Department of Homeland Security are all players in a massive conspiracy to hide the fact that BARRY SOETERO WAS NOT AND HAS NEVER BEEN AN AMERICA CITIZEN! With the money he ilegitimately received from his land deals, he has paid off over 60 government officials to destroy his Kenya Birth Certificate, and some of those officials have since Dead!; 3. There are multiple lawsuits in the highest iof surpeme courts to challenge his citizneship because he was born in KENYA and later moved to IRAQ; the bird certificate is FAKE and this story has bee pushed by the lib MEDIA!!

    It’s like the Grand Unified Theory of Obama Conspiracies. Even has illegal land deals leading to a Death List, so we’ve now officially subsumed the Clinton Conspiracies into the grand overarching Obama Conspiracy. I suppose it could be a spoof, in which case I salute the nameless genius who wrote it.

    -dms

  72. 72.

    Wilson Heath

    @El Cid:

    I started gagging on that paragraph and its stupid natural-law conservatism. Pure Burkean Bells — deny reality and state some heretofore unknown universal truth as the reason why.

    If we had a “compact” with the living, we wouldn’t do s*** like bomb them and attach electrodes to their ‘nads while taking pictures with our camera phones. And that’s the compact in that graf that I feel isn’t complete BS.

  74. 74.

    Demo Woman

    [blockquote] test [/blockquote]
    whoops..
    David Brooks is a bozo and needs to be ignored.

  75. 75.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    what is it with wingers and apocalyptic fantasies?

    A not-insignificant number of wingers are also evangelical Christians who are convinced the Rapture will occur in their lifetimes. Every new apocalypse brings them one step closer to God.

    Why bother building or saving anything if they’re all going to Heaven next week? And they’ll all go to their deathbed wondering what more they could have done to trigger Armageddon.

  77. 77.

    Demo Woman

    @dmsilev: what’s a
    bird certificate?
    You are certainly braver than I am, since I shy away from sites that print the comments of whackos.
    Of course we have our own BOB but somehow that’s different

  78. 78.

    schrodinger's cat

    Is anyone else having problems with this site missing its CSS file?

    Yes, since Sunday.

  80. 80.

    Jim C

    people would themselves become children, basing their lives on pleasure and ease instead of meanings to be fulfilled.

    So … adults base their lives on pain and difficulty? If he’s trying to invoke the Protestant Work Ethic, he’s not doing a good sales job. Not that he’s even a good spokesman for struggle – he’s a pudding-faced smacked ass.

    Or does this mean that children who grow up in pain and difficulty – impoverished and abused – are already adults?

    To heck with his “grand” theorizing, I’m having trouble with the basic building blocks of his thinking. (And the whole, ‘we could lure immigrants, but they wouldn’t assimilate!!’ Why should they? It’s not like Americans felt some burning need to assimilate into Native American cultures – which I’m sure didn’t cross Brooks’ ‘mind’ at all.)

  83. 83.

    schrodinger's cat

    David Brooks is an idiot, and he writes drivel, he is as crazy as any wingnut, but with better manners.

  84. 84.

    El Cid

    @Wilson Heath: I’m not demanding that our pundits necessarily be leading academics; I do demand, however, that if they’re going to play the sorts of games that pretend that one is that insightful of the human condition and human history, that they at least be aware of what they’re arguing about.

  85. 85.

    Andre

    As a philosophy grad, I’m all for the increased use of striking, and even fantastical, hypothetical situations in an attempt to unpack difficult ethical and metaphysical questions more easily.

    That said, if Brooks wants to write about abortion, low white population growth and the threat of immigration on “American culture”, he should do so directly, instead of hiding them behind a construct. This is nothing more than an excuse for him to throw out all the standard winger lines on these topics in abstract enough a fashion that he can pretend he’s “reasoning them out”.

  86. 86.

    Andrew

    I wish Brooks would stop asking him for column ideas.

    I wish Brooks would start asking him for column ideas.

  89. 89.

    PaulW

    what is it with wingers and apocalyptic fantasies?

    The wingnuts are obsessed with things such as the Rapture because, in their minds, they will be freed from their obligations of living in this harsh and uncompromising world.

    They want the easy way out, without the spiritual muss of committing suicide. They want God to send down his angels to blow this all into the sea so they won’t have to worry about pollution, poor schools, sick families living in poverty, decaying infrastructure, massive debt, etc. In fact, that’s why they’re trying their damnedest to accelerate the process (look at their efforts to rebuild the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem), so that God can come down and clean up this mess for them. And they think that, just because Pat Robertson put his royal seal on their asses, they’ll be the ones Raptured up to avoid paying their own bills.

  90. 90.

    Cyrus

    @Robertdsc-iphone, @arguingwithsignposts: Heh, it has nothing to do with WordPress or iPhones, it’s HTML. It reads the brackets as the start of a formatting command like… blockquoting. There are ways to make the brackets appear, but you have to be tricky, and I think WordPress does interfere with that.

  91. 91.

    Hoya

    I watched in horror as my girlfriend says she believes that Obama was born in Kenya.

  92. 92.

    Sean

    I liked “Inconstant Moon”. I had remembered the flare dying down before morning so they were spared, but it’s been a very long time since I read it.

    Cookie, please.

  96. 96.

    Wilson Heath

    @El Cid:

    Agree. (If it wasn’t clear the gagging was at Brooksy, not you.)

    The problem w/ the faux erudite conservatism that keeps faux erudite conservative philosophy under the pillow instead of looking at the world without a heavy filter: It’s completely separated from reality. This is the tripe that brings us to being greeted as liberators, mission accomplished, and incoherent surrender monkey hockey moms. Children see when the emperor’s junk is swinging in the breeze, so it doesn’t take a tenured post. It just takes a willingness to be reality based rather than to deny reality for the sake of political orthodoxies.

  97. 97.

    Jay C

    What would happen if a freak solar event sterilized the people on the half of the earth that happened to be facing the sun?

    Been there, rented the movie

    And it was BAAAD – even if not quite up (down?) to the level of a David Brooks column….

  99. 99.

    linda

    @dmsilev:

    oh man, i was just gonna post that one… i was waiting for the ‘gotcha!’ and a ‘lol’ tag at the end… oooh boy, it was serious.

  100. 100.

    demimondian

    @skippy: I’ll say that Bob Herbert is off. That’s the worst I’ve ever seen him wri…

    Oh. That’s David Brooks? Wow. Herbert is *really* *really* off. Must have eaten something vile.

  101. 101.

    shelley matheis

    and some of those officials have since Dead!; 3. There are multiple lawsuits in the highest iof surpeme courts to

    Tut-tut, grammar! It should be “officials have since Deaded !”
    And who knew we had more than one Supreme Court?

    Shit-and-a-half! This genius could get a job as Sarah Palin’s speech writer.

  102. 102.

    bootsy

    Can we let the Wingnuts secede this time? I’m sure they could all fit in a small part of Texas. (Note: not a slam on Texas; I just think it’s unbelievably hot there, and I want them to suffer).

  104. 104.

    Tokyokie

    This reminds me of old SNL skits like “What If Superman Had Been a Nazi?” Except those were intentionally funny.

  105. 105.

    Jason

    If millions of immigrants were brought over, they would populate the buildings but not perpetuate the culture. They wouldn’t be like current immigrants because they wouldn’t be joining a common project, but displacing it. There would be no sense of peoplehood, none of the untaught affections of those who are part of an organic social unit that shares the same destiny.

    So, wait, is he still speaking about the hypothetical here, or did he transition into the actual, or what…

  107. 107.

    Persia

    @Martian Buddy: You’re forgetting the xenophobia and racism. If only half the world was sterile, it would obviously open the door for the Brown Hordes to take over. (Because the sun only shines on the West, apparently.)

  110. 110.

    jenniebee

    Holy Crap – the group I’d done one of my weird youtube video links to was on Colbert last night. They’re kind of a Swedish swing/rap combo. I feel so hip and ahead of the curve…

    Wait, are the kids still saying “hip” these days?

  111. 111.

    aliasofwestgate

    Eeesh. Revelations, causing human grief since it was added ‘offically’ to the bible. Meanwhile it’s all one extremely bad drug trip. Wingnuts are addicted to the idea of the apocolypse.

    (Gimme my comment cookie!)

  113. 113.

    Gary

    Brooks’s next column speculates about how the 2010 Congressional elections would be affected if we discovered that Earth is just a molecule on a giant’s fingernail in another universe.

    Dlows the mind, doesn’t it? I can’t wait to read Brooks’s insights!

  115. 115.

    Woodrowfan

    I saw a scifi novel in the 80s with a similar theme. Solar flare destroys the eastern hemisphere. Surviving Soviets in underground bunkers think it was US attack, launch every nuke they have in response. oops.

  116. 116.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    @aliasofwestgate:

    Eeesh. Revelations, causing human grief since it was added ‘offically’ to the bible. Meanwhile it’s all one extremely bad drug trip. Wingnuts are addicted to the idea of the apocolypse.

    I know at least one ordained Methodist minister who thinks that Revelation is a crock of drug-induced mumbo-jumbo that should never have been added to the Bible.

  119. 119.

    jibeaux

    Is it just me, or do you get the feeling that if you presented this hypothetical to some Ph.D. who has spent about a dozen years studying some obscure topic with no tangible, real world practical applications, that he/she would say “wait, what? And what’s the point here, again?”

    It’s not even a good premise for a sci-fi novel.

  120. 120.

    Comrade Darkness

    @inkadu: I think he’s just blathering. The People of the Book would take the cataclysm as some great sign that they were chosen, some how. They make something up to make it all about them. They always do that. Why would they stop just as the greatest opportunity to do so had arrived?

    I read the whole thing as an anti-immigrant submarine attack coupled with some kind of point about the population growth “crisis” in Japan that obsesses these guys.

    Also the secular world has art. Which he totally neglects to mention. Imagine the end of the world art projects. They would be awesome.

    The guy’s an idiot, basically. If he were a blogger, forced to compete in the real world, would anyone bother reading this shit and visiting his site a second time? I rest my case.

  121. 121.

    Brick Oven Bill

    Next thing you know, these wingers will profess that the earth is going to melt and that, by making them czars with a dictate to build windmills, they will lower the oceans.

  122. 122.

    Comrade Darkness

    @dmsilev: You know, this is highly instructional on one point… realizing how it was that Jesus’ disciples are reputed to have travelled so widely before dropping dead. Look how extra far Obama has travelled, as a fetus and infant,
    in just 2 years.

  124. 124.

    joes527

    But have you all considered what would happen if a freak solar event deleted all the comment cookies on the half of the earth that happened to be facing the sun?

    Oh the humanity.

  126. 126.

    WereBear

    The guy’s an idiot, basically. If he were a blogger, forced to compete in the real world, would anyone bother reading this shit and visiting his site a second time? I rest my case.

    This, my friends, this is what we would be losing when the Old Publishing Paradigms become obsolete and crumble into ash.

    Okay with me.

  128. 128.

    Et Tu Brutus?

    If a massive solar event sterilized the Earth: I would no longer have to weep into my beer over the total goat fuck the Obama/Dem run government is so quickly coming to resemble. Fuckin’ venal cowards they all appear to be, soon we all will sing woe is me over mandated insurance company give aways, ‘no banker left behind’ bailouts, Vietnam- the sequel shot on location in exotic afghan/Pak , cap & trade shell games, ‘turn a blind eye’ human rights abuses, etc, etc.

  132. 132.

    cmohrnc

    From the responses so far, I take it few among you are fans of the “what if” genre of science fiction. Except for the notion that there is always such a stunningly large array of immediately pressing issues that more urgently need addressing by anyone given precious regular NYT Op-Ed space that this isn’t the proper place for indulging Arthur Clarke-style “what if” sci-fi thought experiment pieces, I see worthwhile value in thought-pieces like Brooks occasionally having a place elsewhere in the paper. Except perhaps another problem is that David Brooks isn’t the best writer-candidate to undertake this sort of project; it’s an undertaking better left to someone with a more sound background in the sciences and writing about them. Those types of folks usually also have a keener sense of skepticism that informs their thought-explorations, leading to much better awareness of where the potential logical/factual problems are with their speculations. This tends to mightily help avoid the sort of sophomorism that infects Brooks’ piece. At bottom, that’s the real issue with Brooks’ column – it isn’t that the general sort of what-if thought experiment he attempts to undertake can’t be worthwhile to anyone not wearing a tinfoil hat, but rather that the NYT edititorial page is the wrong place for it, and Brooks is the wrong writer to attempt to undertake it.

  133. 133.

    JosieJ

    @Punchy:

    Ruh roh

    Birfers heads essplode.

    Oh, please, like they’re going to be any more convinced now than they were before. They’ll just find some other reason why this is not sufficient evidence (“They didn’t actually show the certificate, so this proves nothing!” springs to mind) and continue with their mindless rants and frivolous lawsuits.

  134. 134.

    Ash Can

    @dmsilev:

    THIS IS A FAKE STORY. Please realize the FOLLOWING FACTS: …

    ROFLMAO

    Oh God, I can’t believe that’s not a spoof. It’s too good. What a piece of comedy gold. I love it!

  135. 135.

    JosieJ

    Damn, no edit–sorry for the blockquote fail above. “Birfers heads essplode.” should also be included in the blockquote.

  139. 139.

    CJ

    I usually avoid commenting as the only time I get round to it is when I’m angry. I’m getting there now. ;)

  140. 140.

    worriedman

    There is something strangely comforting in imagining the catastrophic. Susan Sontag touched on this in “The Imagination of Disaster”, an essay about 50/60’s sci-fi films. There is even a sub – genre of British sci-fi – “Cozy Catastrophe ” typified by John Wyndham and John Chritopher.(“Day of the Triffids” etc.) I’m pretty sure a fundamental part of the fantasy involves not being among the solar sterilized or vaporized in the Nuclear Armageddon and leading the Last of Humankind against the Mutant Zombies and becoming King.

    Whatever – I just pulled a comment out of my butt to get a cookie.

  141. 141.

    ricky

    I will plunge ahead without my style sheet, though I miss it.

    The partial explanation for Brook’s column is at the very end. “Bob Herbert is off today.” The remaining question is if Herbert was off, what the hell was Brooks on?

  142. 142.

    Comrade Darkness

    @JosieJ: Absolutely. And the real key part of it is… sucking up the energy and money of the base and leaving their school board and water commissioner entry level nutcase candidates short on funds and volunteers.

  143. 143.

    Ed Drone

    In fact, that’s why they’re trying their damnedest to accelerate the process (look at their efforts to rebuild the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem), so that God can come down and clean up this mess for them.

    In the Bible is a very strong admonition — in several places, for emphasis — “Thou shall not put thy God to the test.” So when these numbnuts are trying to hasten God’s hand, they are putting Him to the test. When He finally gets fed up with them ignoring the commandment not to test Him, look out!

    I sincerely want to be in another county, country, or hemisphere when His retribution comes on their heads. I do not want to be anywhere near them when He tells them, as only He can, “KNOCK IT OFF!” Talk about craters where cities once stood!

    Ed

  144. 144.

    Tax Analyst

    I didn’t get a chance to read the whole thing, but I think Jonah Pantload had a somewhat similar column today. Some sort of stuperific mock-futuristic twaddle he dredged up, probably with some non-sequitir liberal bashing tied to the end of it. Oddly enough, I was reading it in the bathroom here when the power for the building went out, so I’ve yet to finish it.

  145. 145.

    Scruffy McSnufflepuss

    What would happen if scientists in Antarctica thawed out an alien from a crashed space ship, and it turned out that the alien could imitate any life form simply by injecting its DNA into it? What if that alien then made its way to America? How would that affect our civilization and our traditions? How about a column on John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” Bobo?

  147. 147.

    Scruffy McSnufflepuss

    What about a zombie uprising? Will the Bobo write a New York Times op-ed about the impact that a zombie uprising might have upon America, and upon traditional Judeo-Christian religious principles?

  148. 148.

    Martian Buddy

    @Persia: Good point. It also bears some resemblance to one of the arguments used against gay marriage: “But what if everyone in the U.S. became gay sterile? There’d be no children at all! It’d be anarchy!” It’s somewhat ironic considering that Brooks is allegedly a proponent of marriage equality (at least according to his Wiki page.)

  149. 149.

    Wile E. Quixote

    @worriedman

    There is something strangely comforting in imagining the catastrophic. Susan Sontag touched on this in “The Imagination of Disaster”, an essay about 50/60’s sci-fi films. There is even a sub – genre of British sci-fi – “Cozy Catastrophe ” typified by John Wyndham and John Chritopher.(“Day of the Triffids” etc.) I’m pretty sure a fundamental part of the fantasy involves not being among the solar sterilized or vaporized in the Nuclear Armageddon and leading the Last of Humankind against the Mutant Zombies and becoming King.

    John Varley completely destroyed this genre of science fiction with his short story The Manhattan Phone Book (Abridged). It is, for my money, the most brilliant thing Varley has ever written, and the man has written some brilliant stuff. Go read it, it’s brilliant and if anyone, after reading this, still believes that they’ll be the last men standing after the massive apocalypse (nuclear, biological, environmental, scientists cloning an army of mindless David Brooks and Jonah Goldberg clones) then you’re deeply, deeply stupid.

  150. 150.

    Wile E. Quixote

    Oh, I wasn’t directing my comment about being “deeply, deeply stupid” towards worriedman and I’m sorry if it appears that I was, it was just bad writing on my part (but you should go read the Varley story) and now WordPress won’t let me edit my comment.

    Fucking WordPress, it’s such a piece of shit; it’s like a bunch of neoconservatives said “You know, we’ve completely fucked America’s economic and foreign policies, let’s go write some software using the same brilliant policies we used to fuck up everything else.”

  151. 151.

    Martian Buddy

    @Tax Analyst: It figures; give a wingnut a choice between doing something useful about our carbon emissions so that Earth doesn’t start to resemble Venus, and nuking a space rock, and they’ll spring for the latter every time.

  153. 153.

    Wile E. Quixote

    I wonder if we should take up a pool to see which SF idea a conservative columnist will steal next to use as the basis of a deeply stupid column. We’ve already had the relativistic projectiles idea that was introduced by Charles Pellegrino and Larry Niven’s <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inconstant_Moon”planet wrecking solar flare what will the villagers steal from next? I’ve listed several SF disaster scenarios below, which one is most likely to be the subject, with the serial numbers filed off, of a column by the likes of Brooks, Goldberg, Easterbrook, et al. I’m leaving out zombies (they’ve been done to death, reanimated and then done to death again) and asteroid strikes, which have suffered the same fate, so you won’t find Lucifer’s Hammer listed below. Now if someone writes a novel or makes a film about an asteroid made of zombies slamming into the Earth, well that would be really fucking stupid, so never mind.

    A thermonuclear war between the US, USSR and China results in massive environmental devastation and the only country that is unaffected, Africa, expands and takes over the world enslaving white folks, castrating them and eating them. (Robert Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold).

    An AIDS vaccine causes an immune reaction that prevents a woman from having more than one child by a man with the same blood type. The cure for this is the development of a race of cyclical hermaphrodites. (F.M. Busby’s The Breeds of Man).

    The United States loses World War II and the country is split between the victorious Axis powers with Japan getting everything west of the Rockies and the Germans and Italians everything east of the Rockies. (Philip K. Dick’s, The Man in the High Castle).

    A deranged arms manufacturer hires a black magician to open the gates of Hell and let all of its demons loose on the world for one night just to see what would happen. Once the demons get out though they won’t go back and we find out that God is dead (James Blish, Black Easter and The Day After Judgment).

    The earth passes into a region of the galaxy where certain physical constants are changed and as a result thought processes become much, much faster, turning humans into super-geniuses and making most animals, including Jonah Goldberg and Sarah Palin, borderline sentient (Poul Anderson’s, Brain Wave, one of the finest SF novels ever written).

    An alien race comes to earth and reanimates the dead by stimulating their pituitary and pineal glands (Ed Wood’s, “Plan 9 From Outer Space”. OK, I know I said “no zombies”, but this is different, this is Edward D. Wood, Jr, damnit!).

    Helpful alien emissaries, give mankind all the necessary tools to survive and to end wars and famine. As a further token of friendship they even freely transport humans to their paradise-like planet. Then we find out that the book they left behind To Serve Man is a cookbook (Damon Knight’s, To Serve Man, which M. Night Shalamalamadingdong would make into a three hour movie that would be absolutely terrible).

    An untested serum designed to disrupt the breeding cycle of rabbits and prevent them from destroying crops turns out to instead cause rabbits to grow to enormous size and become vicious carnivores (Night of the Lepus).

    Nuclear testing in the deserts of the American southwest mutates ants causing them to grow to the size of automobiles (Them).

    Step on up and take a guess, which one of these ideas from an SF novel or film will be the subject of a future column by David Brooks? Myself I’m hoping for Night of the Lepus. A Brooks column speculating upon how the nuclear family and traditional American values such as the Applebee’s salad bar would be affected if the American southwest were overrun by giant, carnivorous rabbits would be, even in the surreal times we live in, an outstanding monument to surreality.

  154. 154.

    Tax Analyst

    Wile Q: Question –

    In the following item does the “black magician” you refer to have a valid, long-form United States issued Birfh Certificate?

    “A deranged arms manufacturer hires a black magician to open the gates of Hell and let all of its demons loose on the world for one night just to see what would happen. Once the demons get out though they won’t go back and we find out that God is dead (James Blish, Black Easter and The Day After Judgment).”

    I wish I could do a “page preview” now, I don’t know if I tagged “black magician” properly to bold it. Oh, well.

  155. 155.

    Tax Analyst

    Well, I bolded a lot more than I was trying to, but I guess that will have to do. This really kills the hell out of trying to be clever with this shit.

    But like I said, “Oh, well”

  156. 156.

    Tax Analyst

    Hey, how about “Nefarious powers breed a black politician with a questionable birfh certificate to unleash sZocialism on the United States to de-stabilize the economy of the Western World, allowing Third World Nations to enslave white folks, eventually culling out the juicier segments of this population in order to create especially elegant and exquisite dining opportunities for the new ruling class, the leaders of the aforemention Third World Nations and their cronies.”

    It’s sort of a combination of some of your other choices with a couple of current event twists thrown in.

  157. 157.

    Martian Buddy

    @Wile E. Quixote: One you should add is The White Plague by Frank Herbert, in which a grief-maddened biologist seeks revenge for the death of his family at the hands of the IRA by unleashing a pandemic intended to wipe out every woman in Ireland. A story with a biologist as a genocidal villain would be a perfect starting point for one of Ben Stein’s “science kills people” diatribes. On the movie front, a creative wingnut could probably use the “Terminator” franchise as an starting point for an argument in favor of funding F-22s rather than drones.

  158. 158.

    les

    But I don’t like cookies. Am I stuck with this shitty appearance for ever? What changed?

  159. 159.

    Brachiator

    @Scruffy McSnufflepuss:

    What about a zombie uprising? Will the Bobo write a New York Times op-ed about the impact that a zombie uprising might have upon America, and upon traditional Judeo-Christian religious principles?

    Shhh. You’re going to get the fundies all up in arms about the rights of the undead.

  162. 162.

    Scruffy McSnufflepuss

    “Shhh. You’re going to get the fundies all up in arms about the rights of the undead.”

    But what about the Second Amendment? Could this be a wedge issue between the gun nuts and the pro-lifers?

  164. 164.

    Wile E. Quixote

    @Tax Analyst

    Hey, how about “Nefarious powers breed a black politician with a questionable birfh certificate to unleash sZocialism on the United States to de-stabilize the economy of the Western World, allowing Third World Nations to enslave white folks, eventually culling out the juicier segments of this population in order to create especially elegant and exquisite dining opportunities for the new ruling class, the leaders of the aforemention Third World Nations and their cronies.”

    Dude, that’s awesome. If you can fit something in there about the Nation of Islam mothership you will have a ready to spread internet meme that will crank the insanity at RedState to record new levels.

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