Telegrams from Outer Space: David Brooks Edition

David Brooks wrote another characteristically boneheaded op-ed piece in the NYT yesterday, titled "The Grand Delusion." And yes, the irony of the title is completely unintended. Brooks does his best work (illustrating the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of "moderate" Republicanism) by accident.

Here's my favorite part of the op-ed:

To his eternal credit, after 9/11 George Bush quickly understood that the terror threat was fundamentally an ideological threat, a product of deep historical consciousness.

What do you even say to a guy who thinks Bush deserves "eternal credit" for understanding the fundamental nature of the terror threat? Isn't that just completely and totally wrong, in an Orwellian up-is-down way? Isn't the truth of the matter that Bush's "understanding" of the terror threat is fundamentally cartoon-like? Look, you may or may not agree with me that Bush is an imbecile and that his access to objective reality appears to be so tenuous as to be virtually non-existent. But to claim that Bush deserves "eternal credit" (eternal!) for apprehending some elusive truth about the real nature of the "terror threat" is just, well, boneheaded.