NYT's David Brooks Is to Fluff as Marshmallows are to Fluffernutter

David Brooks just doesn't get it.  That was amply proven here.

But "relax" he wrote on Monday.   Forget the breakdown of our national media -- aka our "Fourth Estate"-- or the increasing level of misinformation shaping our national "debates," the increasingly ill thought out laws, and rhetoric coming out of Congress, and most troubling of all the increasing gap between rhetoric and reality:

America's not "headed" in the wrong direction, because America has a lot of young people, and will have even more in the future! And because:

Developers have been filling in with neo-downtowns — suburban gathering spots where people can dine, work, go to the movies and enjoy public space.

Wow, that is so much more than the far more trivial issues mentioned above that help shape and define our actual democracy.

Oh, Brooks adds, perhaps not fully understanding what the word "headed in the direction of" means, we are also headed in the right direction because we are way more productive than China.  Please China, stay repressed and non productive, so we can be headed in the right direction.   The otherwise irrelevant fact that China has gained on us?  According to Brooks, evidence we are headed in the right direction.

But then Brooks, to put it nicely, is essentially somebody who often really doesn't know what he is talking about. Perhaps that is why he has a job as a columnist.  The lowest common denominator, more often than not,rises to the top.  Increasingly, today, in "headed in the right direction" America.

A few more provocative examples here, here -- and, for a contrary point that still manages to agree at least on the point of believing Brooks, once again, to be wrong, here.

We Don't Like the Bill for Specific Reasons, But Why Exactly Don't Tea Partiers Like the Health Care Reform Bill

Someone asked via email:

What is the far right mad about?  It upsets me that this Admin' and many Democrats think it's a good thing to force people to get health insurance.  The argument being I guess that the 'system' can not work unless everyone has health insurance.  I don't buy that, but even if so.....

I think our government has no right to do this. But then I'm an unusual Democrat; I guess just by default more than anything.  I am more opposed to the government forcing stuff on people than most people. At least stuff that does not go to protect other people's rights.  Like the right to clean air or water, or to reasonable freedom from excessive pollution and bio-accumulating toxins.  The right to some privacy, etc. 

Fluoride in drinking water is a good example of overwrought government -- crazy as that sounds. I like doing things collective that make sense and don't impinge upon freedom. I see a potential health issue here where people have concerns about it that at least according to some medicine are legitimate; and thus see the forced inclusion of this in everyone's water supply as somewhat of an outrageous and needless philosophical imposition, and stupid. If there is concern, just give people toothpaste, for crying out loud.  Let it be up to them to brush their teeth regularly.  So I see things differently.

But is this what the far right is mad about? That it "forces" people to get health insurance that they largely really have anyway? They seemed to favor so much big, intruding government under the Bush administration that it was scary. And they seem to favor a lot of big government stuff; more unchecked power - so long as it is not Obama or another Democrat who has it; a bigger fear of differing opinions and different types of people; more rules regarding personal choices and morality, more government intrusion into what are individual, private decisions; and more stereotyping by group or race.  May be this is wrong, but that's the way it seems to me. But what is it about this health care plan that has them so riled? Have they ever said, or has it just become pure rhetoric all the time?

Is it that employers are forced to get health insurance for employees? I think I'm against that too. Probably big time. But I probably need more information; am no expert on the economics or the philosophy of it.

This seemed like a good question. We hear all the time how many who are political opponents of Democrats hate this bill. But what specifically about the bill is it that they hate?

Maybe HERE's why they don't like it:

Glenn Rounsevell, 88, a retired State Department employee from Falls Church [Virginia], said this year he will vote the tea party way. "It's terrible," he said of the new health care law, "because of the amount of money that is being proposed and the way it was put together in secret."

Of course. It was all a secret. The Republicans tried and tried to participate to create a better bill, but the Dems just shut them, and everybody out. Hell,nobody even said the words health care reform" in America until what, two weeks ago or something? 

The amount of money being proposed?  The bill is designed, properly or improperly, to lower health care costs.  And lowering costs is a good goal.  Last year, the only thing government spent more money on than health care, was national defense.  And that, by only about four percent, total.

Forcing people to get health insurance might be an unwieldy imposition. And there may not be enough in this bill, despite many claims to the contrary, to cut costs of these same insurance companies:  companies whom the government is now forcibly throwing extra business to.  But could it be that this person has heard so much generic, usually misleading, and often even venomous rhetoric against it for over half a year, that he has come to hate it without even really knowing why?