Imagine the late James Earl Jones’ resonant bass intoning, “THIS is Trump Derangement!” and you have the perfect backdrop for my depressing story.
A retired lawyer of great accomplishments and gravitas has recently erupted into repeated anti-Trump/anti-Republican rants on Facebook. I consider him a good freind and generally a wise one—and he’s a passionate baseball fan!—so it pains me to read this sad evidence of mental and ethical deterioration. His most recent screed began with a declaration that he now detests David Brooks. As the Ethics Alarms Brooks dossier vividly shows, there are plenty of reasons to detest Brooks, an obnoxious and arrogant conservative in his Daily Standard days, and now a sell-out who accepted the dishonest role as a token non-progressive propagandist on the New York Times opinion page and quickly “cut the cloth of his conscience to fit the fashion of the Times,” (to quote Lillian Hellman at the McCarthy hearings, except that when she said it, she used a small “t.”)
[Yikes! I just looked over my own collection of Brooks posts, and he’s even worse than I remembered. In October of 2023, for example, I nailed him for writing that President Biden was still sharp and capable though it was obvious then, a year before Biden’s debate babble-fest, that Joe was demented.]
But my learned, once rational friend wasn’t critical of Brooks for any of his lies and hypocrisy; he now detests Brooks because of this column, in which the pundit gives President Trump credit for something. It is a trait that I have also noted: Trump has amazing energy and drive, to the point of being indomitable. Brooks begins his column this way:
[The] Trump administration possesses one quality I can’t help admiring: energy. I don’t know which cliché to throw at you, but it is flooding the zone, firing on all cylinders, moving rapidly on all fronts at once. It is operating at a tremendous tempo, taking the initiative in one sphere after another.
A vitality gap has opened up. The Trump administration is like a supercar with 1,000 horsepower, and its opponents have been coasting around on mopeds. You’d have to go back to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration in 1933 to find a presidency that has operated with such verve during its first 100 days.
Some of this is inherent in President Trump’s nature. He is not a learned man, but he is a spirited man, an assertive man…
How can anyone deny the accuracy of that analysis? And yet, in a display of breathtaking Trump Derangement, my once perceptive and honest friend wrote that he now reviles Brooks for telling the truth, because doing so involved complimenting Donald Trump. The episode brought back rueful memories of how the NPR host I thought was a supporter and friend blackballed me at the network for explaining on the air with 100% accuracy a confounding factor in sexual harassment scandals, because she felt my analysis could be used to defend the Evil Orange Man.
While my friend was revolted by Brooks’ unusual attack of integrity and thus giving credit where it was due, I found another example of Brooks’ bias, incompetence, and ethical bankruptcy. He appeared on the “PBS NewsHour” Friday to declare that Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, accused of trying to hide an illegal immigrant from ICE agents, may have broken the law, but was “heroic” anyway.
“Let’s say she did escort this guy out the door,” he said. “If federal enforcement agencies come to your courtroom and you help a guy escape, that is two things. It strikes me as maybe something illegal, but it also strikes me as something heroic,” Brooks continued. “In times of trouble, people are sometimes called to do civil disobedience. And in my view, when people do civil disobedience, they have to pay the price. That’s part of the heroism of it, frankly.”
No. There is nothing heroic about a judge violating the law, nor is a judge in a position to engage in civil disobedience, because the judge’s duty is to follow the law, execute the law, and enforce the law. When a judge determines that the law is repugnant to the extent that he or she feels it must be defied, then that judge must resign from the bench and engage in civil disobedience as an ordinary citizen. Citizens have the option of deliberately breaking laws and accepting the consequences. Judges do not by definition. The ABA’s Model Code of Judicial Conduct begins with Canon I, “A judge shall uphold and promote the independence, integrity, and impartiality of the judiciary, and shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety,” and Canon 2, “A judge shall perform the duties of judicial office impartially, competently, and diligently.” Neither of those two foundational requirements of the judge’s role can be reconciled with civil disobedience.
Moreover, there was nothing “heroic” about the Wisconsin judge’s deliberate attempt to interfere with lawful law enforcement. Judge Dugan was not open and transparent regarding her actions. She did not approach ICE agents and say, “I have facilitated the escape of an illegal immigrant because I believe that laws prohibiting immigration are a violation of human rights, and I hereby admit my illegal conduct, surrender to your custody, and accept whatever consequences my principled actions earn.” She was caught, and she is currently retaining an all-star team of defense attorneys to try to avoid accountability. When one is engaging in civil disobedience, high-profile defense lawyers are superfluous, because the who point is to plead guilty.
I find David Brooks repulsive because he is a hypocrite, a liar and a phony.
My friend finds him repulsive because the Times mouthpiece admitted a truth that reflects positively on the leadership of Donald Trump.
Ethics Alarms 
A had a similar experience with a former colleague. He’s gone completely TDS. I can only conclude these seemingly rational, competent adults have been living a lie for their adult lives. Beneath the veneer, which is now crumbling away, they are the rebellious undergrads they were forty and fifty years ago. They never grew up, they just got older. They’re still angry at their father and are looking to get even with “the man,” even though to all appearances, they are “the man.” What a peculiar revelation in late life. I guess “baby” can’t be taken out of the Baby Boom.
I concluded many years ago that adulthood was a myth, at least for a vast majority of the human race.
In my never-to-be-humble view, adulthood is wickedly and greatly overrated. I mean, what does it involve? Working hard day in and day out, swearing a mortgage and car payments, hoping the dreaded IRS doesn’t select my tax return for review, and wondering if I have provided enough life insurance to protect my long-suffering wife (but not enough to encourage her to season our meals with arsenic)? If that’s adulthood, then maybe Lord Remington Winchester Burger, I, Esq., Dog of Letters, has the right idea. He gets to eat, sleep, eat some more, sleep a lot more, go on nice walkypoos, chase cats and squirrels, eat and sleep some more.
jvb
That might be the single greatest dog name in the history of naming dogs.
Well, a regal dog deserves/demands a regal name.
jvb
Regarding Dugan, I will hold my tongue on the civil disobedience angle because I am not sure what she is charged with. As with all criminal charges, the elements of the crime are critical. She might have done nothing criminal.
However, as I pointed out to the criminal lawyers blog I am on (where I was the sole voice NOT condemning the FBI and ICE whole-heartedly), he conduct was certainly unethical. But I did not focus on the language you did; I focused on the preferential treatment toward one of the parties in a case before her. As I argued, if that was a WITNESS in a case against my client, or an alleged VICTIM of my client, I do not want the Judge helping that person avoid detention; that is tantamount to assisting the State meet its burden to produce witnesses against my client.
-Jut
The Wisconsin State Supreme Court shares your view. She has been suspended: https://www.wisn.com/article/wisconsin-supreme-court-suspends-milwaukee-county-judge-dugan/64625821
jvb
“adult hood is a myth” – in my pastoral experience of counseling couples premaritally, intra maritally, and post maritally I have observed that the looming problem is the sheer incidence of “afective immaturity”. Affecctive immaturity aka ‘Peter Pan syndrome” (I WONT GROW UP) devastes marriage!
BTW the only production of Peter Pan I have ever enjoyed is Mary Martin’s version that was o broadway in 1954 and later aired on TV
You have forced me into a digression! No production will top Mary Martin, who is in the Judy Garland class as an immortal musical performer, singer and actress, and Cyril Richard is about as great a captain Hook as we will ever see. The show has some good songs, but it is structurally doomed by the same problem “The Poseidon Adventure” had: the best comes at the beginning. The show is all down hill after the first scene that ends with Peter and the kids flying out into the London sky. It’s one of the great moments in American theater. I saw Sandy Duncan’s “Peter Pan” on its way to Broadway, and she was very good. But not good enough to make the show work for the whole evening.
I read the Brooks piece. I cannot understand why your friend would think that was a glowing endorsement of Orange Man MAGAEvil at all. It was derogatory, dismissive, and petulant. Brooks equates Trump’s tenacity and energy with evil dictators and despots, from Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Stalin, Castro/Guevara, and the like, and the MAGA supporters in the Executive Branch with the Jacobins, Stalinites, Leninites, and other revolutionaries wrapped in mindless zeal to support their loved leader. Brooks also states that Trump is not statemanlike but the proverbial bull in the diplomatic china shop. Yeah, your Facebook friend must have lost his reading comprehension skills.
jvb
A single compliment was enough to make it unbearable for him.
“Madness! Madness!”
This entire phenomenon makes me wonder or speculate as to had it not been induced by Trump, what would have induced this weird, mass psychosis at this time?
Going forward, I can’t help concluding every single Republican candidate and president will get the same unhinged response. Unfortunately, as I remember concluding during Trump I, there is a staggering portion of the population that wants single party rule a la Cuba pr China or Venezuela. They know what’s best for the country and that clinches it. Their way or the highway. Stunning.
It is fascinating, isn’t it? I am not certain they realize what they are advocating. Trump once stated he admired the CCP for its efficiency in implementing executive power. The media and Democrats went nuts accusing him of want to be president for life in his own Trumpian Totalitarian Paradise. He didn’t say that, just that he thought a dictatorship was more efficient because the courts and the legislature only work to do the executive orders issued by the chairman. Trump was correct but he was not making a moral, ethical, or legal argument. He knows it would never work in the US.
jvb