David Brooks was a so-called public intellectual, at least he advertised himself as such. Today he is little more than a bloviating Trump Derangement Syndrome-suffering, pseudo-intellectual.

His weekly pieces in the failing New York Times, his appearances as an “oh so thoughtful” conservative on PBS Newshour, and his wild diatribes at the far-left Atlantic (a magazine that under the patronage of Steve Jobs’s widow has become a well-funded cesspool) provide windows into a deepening pool of madness. His recent Atlantic article, “The Rise of the Vineyard Vines Nihilists,” is a case in point. It is a silly title and a worse argument.

In this piece, Brooks screams his remorse: The “reactionary fringe”—you know, those people who bother to engage in the real fight against the left—has won. MAGA now rules. Using Orwell, of all people, Brooks quite unoriginally suggests that Trump is an aspiring autocratic king who is ruining Brooks’s America by daring to put national sovereignty and citizenship first. In Brooks’ way of looking at things, this amounts to being un-American and anti-constitutional.

All this vehement and nasty arrogance, to say nothing of his misreading American history, comes from the delicate personality who pens psychology self-help tomes like, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. Maybe Brooks should practice what he preaches on his former colleagues who are still conservatives.

Brooks’ brand of conservatism is, in almost every way, a product that is past tense and flimsy. He deserves it, so let’s unpack it.

Brooks, who was Jewish is now a convert to some nebulous kind of Christian evangelicalism. Brooks who was a fanboy for Republican John McCain is now a solid progressive who always votes for and defends the left side of the American political spectrum. Brooks who was Canadian is now somewhat American, although his globalist colors constantly shine through. He dislikes sovereignty, borders, and all things Trump. We get that. Orange Man Bad is his preferred bumper sticker.

The University of Chicago graduate is today a wannabe stand-up comic in his speeches but offers little substance in his scholarship. He talks about Edmund Burke but can’t quote him. He points to Adam Smith but has seemingly not read either his Theory of Moral Sentiments or the Wealth of Nations, nor can he explain the linkage between the two.  

Brooks was a journalist for William F. Buckley’s National Review when he began his career but moved on to a host unheard of and small circulation neocon publications, before landing at The New York Times as one of its “token” conservatives.

This has become a kind of calling card for Brooks and other disaffected former conservatives. He plays a conservative for a living for an audience that can’t be bothered to know better, and he spouts virtues as signals to this self-assured set without any substance.

In recent years, he has taken on the tone of the modern Ivy League knee-jerk progressive liberal. He divorced not only his wife, but his religion, his country, and his previous ideas. He took on new loves, like the Aspen Institute “in” crowd and of course, Davos. Brooks is no chameleon, though, and has become a hard-core believing leftist, even as he makes his living pretending to be what he once was.  

There are many  reasons to dispense with frauds, has-beens, and haters like David Brooks who represent the worst of the old thinking that once infected the conservative movement and is now completely out of step with where America is headed.

First, there is a new Republican Party. Yes, it belongs to Trump. Brooks doesn’t like the electoral facts or the emerging national conservatism with its populist twist. He especially does not like the people represented by this change. He prefers RINOs and the old Bush-era wing of the party that has been superseded. It barely exists anymore, and Brooks is dismayed by the fact. His moorings are shaken loose. In response, he has taken on the persona of a self-righteous Jeremiah crying in the wilderness for a past that is long gone and, we may hope, will not return. The “Whig tradition” Brooks laments died more than a century and a half ago and Mitt Romney may as well be ancient history.

Brooks so detests the current and twice-elected president that it gets in the way of his deliberation and rhetoric. He can’t read Trump’s plan or his strategy for a golden age because he doesn’t see how it would benefit him. Brooks loathes Trump in large part because he does not have a seat at the governing table.

Clearly, Brooks does not understand practical economics of any kind. If Brooks ever studied economics, there is no evidence of it in his writing. It is clear that he has no idea what a profit and loss statement comprises or how to run anything—besides his mouth.

Finally, anybody who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016, a total loser who blames her loss on everyone but herself, must be morally challenged.

Brooks may wish to present himself as sophisticated, suave, debonair, and stylishly quippish—but he is nothing more than a pretender.