Political Cynic attempts to come to terms with Brooks pepetual mendacity, masquerading as an ersatz Wisdom!
Sep 19, 2025
Headline: The Era of Dark Passions
Editor: My patience with Mr. Brooks ‘morlizing chatter’ is exhausted by his self-congratulation: Even his unremarcable ‘The Collapse of the Dream Palaces’ of 2003 which brought him to The New York Times, was a shopworn amagamation of War Mongering, via its feckless protaganist ‘Joey Tabla Rasa’! I will limit my commentary some select portions of his essay! Mr. Brooks re-writes his Own History in the first three paragraphs of his essay!
Sometimes when I have nothing better to do, I think back on the elections we had in the before times — when, say, Mitt Romney ran against Barack Obama or John Kerry ran against George W. Bush. I try to figure out why politics and society in general felt so different then.
It’s not because we didn’t have big disagreements back then. The Iraq war kicked up some pretty vehement arguments. It’s not because we weren’t polarized. Pundits have been writing about political polarization since at least 2000 and maybe well before.
Politics is different now because something awful has been unleashed. William A. Galston defines this awful thing in his fantastic new book, “Anger, Fear, Domination: Dark Passions and the Power of Political Speech.” Even before the Charlie Kirk assassination it was obvious that the dark passions now pervade the American psyche, and thus American politics.
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Editor : What Reader of Mr. Brooks present essay will recall his War Mongering chatter via ‘‘Joey Tabla Rasa” ?
I will post this as of 9:02 AM Pacific Time 9/19/2025 and will add to its later in the day. ?
Political Cynic.
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