Their Master Brooks

Oh, come along, Comrade Pressbeater! Señorito Brooks is simply not clever enough to be ‘mendacious’ on any significant scale.

The little laddie may not even be clever enough to have figured out yet that when its elders speak of ‘lies’ (pardon my Unfrench) they assume the liar knows better than she says. Master Davey's big three fibs about public medicine -- other people's supposed invisible garments as detected and deplored by Davey, that is -- are

(1) The current law institutes death panels. (2a) The Smirk of Janesville's proposed law involves a privatization of Medicare; (2b) SmirkCare would constitute "the end of Medicare."

If one draws the line around the category of "merely verbal" where I happen to, these propositions are all objectively untrue. On the other hand, it does not take much factional zeal to believe otherwise. To believe otherwise SINCERELY.

As given, (2b) is especially silly: features in the draft version of a Thirty Year Plan that would not take effect for a dozen years are not sanely to be called "the end " of anything here and now. Plus of course we Antismirkists almost invariably say "the end of Medicare *as we know it*," which is rather different.

The _señorito_ probably did that last bit of twistification -- misquotation of its Class enemies -- deliberately. But since it misquotes by truncation rather than positive contradiction, perhaps the word ‘mendacity’ need not apply.

In any case, the whole little circus is far more illustrative of Don Davidito's limited cleverness than of any actual malice. It seems really to suppose that we jennies and jackasses will have no serious objections left to raise once we have been reassured (truthfully) that in 2023 and 2045 -- and why not 2437? -- there will still be a Fedguv program called Medicare in existence to throw taxpayers’ money at insurance companies.

Looking towards the better side of the railroad tracks, it supposes, with almost equal weirdness and improbability, that its own Party base and vile can be persuaded to give up chantin’ "Death panels" at the drop of a blood pressure. Being a _señorito_ is not without drawbacks, and this is one of them: Don Davidito's sympathy with the Tee Putty peons out workin' its Papà's fields does not extend to understanding them well. Similarly, its grasp of Papà's serious agribusiness concerns is also far from perfect.

Nothing could be clearer than that the _señorito_ passionately wishes everybody could be more moderate and civil and generally "grown up." Like Tio Pedro de Péterson y Concordia looks to it to be, for example. Unfortunately, Master Davey does not have much of a clue what any major class of economic adults is up to all day long. Plainly they tend to have longer faces and less fun than ‘conservative’ ‘intellectuals’ like Davey do, but beyond that . . . .

In short, one of the least readworthy books in the world is titled "The Economic Consequences of David Brooks." For practical purposes, there are no consequences. Long faces and less fun and tea-party manners are all very well in their way, perhaps, but they disappear into the background noise at once if one tries to consider them as part of the Gross Domestic Product.

Like the Marie Antoinette of Edward Burke, as told by Tom Paine, Don Davidito de Brooks is all plumage and no bird.

So let's knock off the ‘mendacity’ malarkey, shall we?

Happy days.