In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “This may be where history is leading,” our columnist David Brooks writes: “Smothering progressivism produced a populist reaction that eventually descended into a nihilist surge.”
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If David Brooks could read these comments he’d be very upset.
aug 22, 2025, 3:33 pm • 3 0 • view
Elitist extraordinaire and warmongering zionist fruitcake David Brooks can just go poke himself sideways with a cheese grater.
aug 22, 2025, 3:39 pm • 1 0 • view
Electing a black man as president produced a racist reaction that evolved into full anti-constitutional white-supremicist fascism
aug 22, 2025, 3:38 pm • 12 0 • view
Yes, how dare we!
aug 22, 2025, 3:53 pm • 0 0 • view
No. 60+ years of Southern Strategy generationally perpetuating neoConfederate, white supremacist, Christian dominionist cultural resentments...while the oligarchy captured the info industry and assisted it because they promised plutocracy...is what produced the current KKKristofascist kkklownshow.
aug 22, 2025, 4:05 pm • 1 0 • view
DAVID BROOKS IS A KKKRISTOFASCIST COLLABORATING APOLOGIST. #BOYCOTTNYT
aug 22, 2025, 4:01 pm • 0 0 • view
We should not let preening dipshits like David Brooks smother progressivism.
aug 22, 2025, 3:29 pm • 14 0 • view
Brooks should crawl under a rock and stop subjecting us to his drivel. He's been consistenly wrong for a decade or more. Desparately trying to provide an intellectual framework that excuses the deplorables on the right.
aug 22, 2025, 11:05 pm • 0 0 • view
thank God the days of FDR and smothering America You were an with his New Deal're Awful big part of now behind us forever of smothering it away mister Brooks. how many pieces of silver
aug 23, 2025, 5:45 am • 0 0 • view
“Smothering progressivism” is to blame for our descent into right wing authoritarianism? Are you forking kidding? What’s happening now is what the right always wanted, they just needed someone like trump to tell them it was ok to crawl our from under their rocks and be proud of their bigotry
aug 22, 2025, 4:09 pm • 3 0 • view
Maybe hanging the Ten Commandments in the classroom will fix it 🫠
aug 22, 2025, 3:58 pm • 0 0 • view
BOO HOO HOO! I'm trying to watch football and there's an ad with gay dudes in it! I wanna watch my team, BIG GUYS! RIGHT OUT OF CENTAL CASTING! LOTS OF MUSCLES! TOUGH FACES NOT LIKE THE LIBS! I want to watch them smack each other's asses in their tight pants and I don't want no gay dude ads!
aug 22, 2025, 4:00 pm • 0 0 • view
There was never such a thing as “smothering progressivism,” progressivism itself was smothered, and now look where we are.
aug 22, 2025, 3:49 pm • 4 0 • view
What shitty writing
aug 22, 2025, 6:56 pm • 0 0 • view
Bravid Dooks
aug 22, 2025, 3:46 pm • 2 0 • view
“Smothering progressivism” I’m gonna stop you there, David.
aug 22, 2025, 3:22 pm • 14 0 • view
Pls don't... 😄 bsky.app/profile/davi...
aug 22, 2025, 3:35 pm • 0 0 • view
True- we should never have smothered progressivism.
aug 22, 2025, 3:22 pm • 46 0 • view
🎯
aug 22, 2025, 3:33 pm • 1 0 • view
That is how I read it! I thought, hey David Brooks haven’t you been helping to smother progressivism for decades?
aug 22, 2025, 3:26 pm • 23 0 • view
Yeah, this is how it should be read. ☺️
aug 22, 2025, 3:33 pm • 6 0 • view
Yep- see, David? If you hadn't been smothering progressivism we'd all be better off.
aug 22, 2025, 3:29 pm • 2 0 • view
The US has never had anything even remotely approaching "smothering progressivism." We still don't even have universal health care.
aug 22, 2025, 3:26 pm • 20 0 • view
This creep definitely beats his wife.
aug 22, 2025, 3:44 pm • 0 0 • view
Wildly disingenuous to use 18yo in college, who are likely being confronted with different viewpoints and, you know, facts for the first time, and need that space to form their own opinions away from their parents, as examples of people forced to “publicly lie” to “conform to progressive orthodoxy”
aug 22, 2025, 3:51 pm • 1 0 • view
So, progressives articulate their values and populists hunk over and sulk and then get violent so progressives should refrain from articulating their values lest they offend someone who doesn’t want to hear something they don’t agree with? Nope.
aug 22, 2025, 4:55 pm • 1 0 • view
What tripe. Pure "look what you made me do" abuser mentality.
aug 22, 2025, 8:35 pm • 1 0 • view
"Smothering progressivism" and it's literally just asking people not to be racist, sexist, or classist.
aug 22, 2025, 3:29 pm • 32 0 • view
WTF kind of apologist word salad BS is this? Nihilism is what happened to us Gen X kids - this isn’t that. If your hot take is to blame progressives for fascism, you might be a fascist.
aug 22, 2025, 4:25 pm • 3 0 • view
Way to blame progressives for 50 years of Republicans building to this day. Infuriating.
aug 22, 2025, 4:20 pm • 4 0 • view
while progressives warned everyone of this day coming...
aug 22, 2025, 4:32 pm • 3 0 • view
Of course “smothering progressivism” is to blame and not a 40+ year effort by conservative libertarianism to drive Americans towards a right wing, economic, and theocratic oligarchy.
aug 22, 2025, 3:29 pm • 16 0 • view
You are completely full of shit.
aug 22, 2025, 3:38 pm • 2 0 • view
If you felt “smothered” by progressivism, you are simply amoral.
aug 22, 2025, 3:32 pm • 0 0 • view
Progressivism or the internet?
aug 22, 2025, 7:14 pm • 0 0 • view
He’s a joke, this guy lol
aug 22, 2025, 3:43 pm • 0 0 • view
I am so tired of David Brooks. He always acts like these conservative scumbags have no agency, and blames people for wanting Equal Protection or a stable climate or whatever. Can't he just retire with his intern?
aug 22, 2025, 3:45 pm • 3 0 • view
Opinion | The Rise of Right-Wing Nihilism f the nyt gift link
aug 23, 2025, 4:23 pm • 0 0 • view
More precisely, they want a small, petty advantage at the expense of everyone else: Feel superior, feel vindicated, feel a win against an imaginary opponent, grift. Even more potent with the US childish culture of "I didn't know", "it's not my fault, "they made me do it".
aug 22, 2025, 3:31 pm • 1 0 • view
Smothering ???? Does he feel smothered by diversity? By the rule of law? By science? I could go on but I don’t want to smother anyone.
aug 22, 2025, 3:44 pm • 1 0 • view
how's david brooks 15 year old girlfriend doing
aug 22, 2025, 3:26 pm • 18 0 • view
www.breitbart.com/entertainmen...
aug 23, 2025, 2:56 am • 0 0 • view
www.foxnews.com/media/politi...
aug 23, 2025, 2:56 am • 0 0 • view
www.kvi.com/2025/08/22/i...
aug 22, 2025, 8:36 pm • 0 0 • view
www.spiked-online.com/2025/08/22/p...
aug 22, 2025, 5:40 pm • 0 0 • view
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAVf...
aug 22, 2025, 5:31 pm • 0 0 • view
podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/l...
aug 22, 2025, 4:35 pm • 0 0 • view
www.tabletmag.com/sections/new...
aug 22, 2025, 4:34 pm • 0 0 • view
'Progressivism's' smothering of democratic and constitutional norms... www.racket.news/p/listen-to-...
aug 22, 2025, 4:27 pm • 0 0 • view
Remember when you guys weren’t a complete fucking joke?
aug 22, 2025, 3:49 pm • 2 0 • view
Oh for pity's sake. Treating others with kindness, seeing that all people deserve dignity, opportunity, and equality is morally right and economically effective. Blame the current administration's cruelty, grift, and destructiveness on your support of the Bushes and Reagan.
aug 22, 2025, 3:29 pm • 6 0 • view
So being progressive "smothers" people who can only live in a segregated past and that somehow forces them to be fascist trash?
aug 22, 2025, 3:27 pm • 6 0 • view
Tell me where progressives tried to make trans people not exist, attempted to take away an adult's ability to marry, or stripped basic medical services from the most needy.
aug 22, 2025, 3:39 pm • 2 0 • view
Dumbest take ever. Always blaming the left even as we’re looking down the barrel of straight authoritarian rule.
aug 22, 2025, 3:31 pm • 4 0 • view
aug 22, 2025, 4:21 pm • 0 0 • view
Can anyone share a gift link for this?
aug 22, 2025, 3:28 pm • 2 0 • view
It's not paywalled.
aug 22, 2025, 3:38 pm • 0 0 • view
Archive dot today
aug 22, 2025, 3:30 pm • 0 0 • view
aug 22, 2025, 3:30 pm • 4 0 • view
The feeling of validation when a comment section already overwhelmingly says what you came in to say. Thanks for 2% of a restoration of my faith in humanity, everybody.
aug 22, 2025, 3:56 pm • 3 0 • view
That's an odd context for the term nihilism. The 'progressives' consistently fail to describe the hard right correctly, making the job of progressively kicking their arses much more difficult.
aug 22, 2025, 3:33 pm • 0 0 • view
This is the BS claim in the run-up to every fascist regime. The fact is, America's sick relationship between government and business resulted in a system of legalized bribery that has given rise to a highly parasitic society/economy. That left a populace frustrated and begging for scapegoats.
aug 22, 2025, 3:32 pm • 6 0 • view
Well said
aug 22, 2025, 3:52 pm • 0 0 • view
Did I sleep through the Smothering Progressivism era?
aug 22, 2025, 3:33 pm • 6 0 • view
STFU
aug 22, 2025, 4:52 pm • 0 0 • view
I'd like to smother David Brooks with a pillow filled with progressivism.
aug 22, 2025, 3:29 pm • 1 0 • view
“That’s a bit how it feels to be more conservative in the West today — to feel drenched by a constant downpour of progressive sermonizing.” As opposed to the dewy springtime morning of incompetence and the beach mist of explicit nihilist fascism experienced by liberals? Fuck this clown.
aug 22, 2025, 3:39 pm • 3 0 • view
Progressives are responsible for their own conduct, and MAGAs are mere cherubic victims wholly lacking in agency, so progressives are responsible for the reactionary right’s worst asymmetrically violent excesses as well!
aug 22, 2025, 3:29 pm • 12 0 • view
He's a creep
aug 22, 2025, 4:17 pm • 2 0 • view
Since I was born we've been smothered by conservatism and made baby steps away from it before the current admin decided to pull the plug on our country. The NYT is a rotten propaganda rag.
aug 22, 2025, 3:53 pm • 0 0 • view
Radical ideology spread by Christo fascists = MAGA
aug 22, 2025, 3:43 pm • 0 0 • view
This has a very "look what you made me do" line of reasoning. That feeling when you take your lede from a domestic abuser's playbook.
aug 22, 2025, 3:53 pm • 3 0 • view
It wasn’t me! They made me do it! Progressivism gave us the far-right. Absolutely absolves Brooks and the conservative movement of the last 60 years of any responsibility. What a ludicrous but convenient take: this way Brooks has to answer for nothing. Just repulsive.
aug 22, 2025, 11:01 pm • 23 4 • view
He posits a world in which right-wingers are smothered by a flood of progressive ideas and media... as if Fox News does not exist. It's laughable. And church is the answer for incels? I think not.
aug 22, 2025, 3:59 pm • 0 0 • view
The old gray lady just ain't what she used to be...(has David Brooks ever been right about anything?)
aug 22, 2025, 3:36 pm • 2 0 • view
aug 23, 2025, 12:23 am • 0 0 • view
I feel so smothered by one candidate running on the promise of Free College Tuition and Medicare for All 8 years ago!!!
aug 22, 2025, 3:25 pm • 7 0 • view
So fucking Brooksian. “I can’t support what is happening right now, so let me find a way to blame the left for authoritarianism.” Wanker.
aug 22, 2025, 3:52 pm • 0 0 • view
It is never their own fault.
aug 22, 2025, 3:36 pm • 5 0 • view
aug 22, 2025, 3:45 pm • 6 0 • view
I'm just here to see how bluesky responds to this piece
aug 22, 2025, 3:22 pm • 3 0 • view
Domestic-abuser logic, dressed up in pretentious bullshit. Brooks is so complicit: he’s made a career pretending to write for/about a “real” constituency of thoughtful conservatives beneath all the Birchers, racists, and a.m. radio cranks. In fact, he’s mostly written for delusional liberals.
aug 22, 2025, 3:45 pm • 4 0 • view
Smouldering progressivism 🤔 This Canadian is understanding this politics less and less...
aug 22, 2025, 3:23 pm • 2 0 • view
That's right, David, the liberals are responsible for Trumpist nihilism. Ignore the "Conservatives" cowering in the corner obsequiously going along with his Fascist agenda, afraid of his wrath. Yes, it must be the liberals' fault.
aug 22, 2025, 4:22 pm • 2 0 • view
With all due respect to moralistic fraud and culture scold, David Brooks, smother this, asshole.
aug 22, 2025, 10:15 pm • 1 0 • view
And Brooks got rich (as well as trading in his old wife for a 26 year younger model) spending decades laying the groundwork for this to happen.
aug 22, 2025, 3:23 pm • 33 0 • view
mealy mouthed bootlicker Brooks is. Nothing real about him. He is a tool.
aug 23, 2025, 4:19 am • 1 0 • view
logic of abusers
aug 22, 2025, 3:29 pm • 10 0 • view
Waaaa, you think we should have a habitable planet in 50 years so I should consume slightly less than I do now, soooo smothering! Guess we have to burn it all down! These people are barely sentient.
aug 22, 2025, 3:31 pm • 0 0 • view