Informed and Happily Scrolling

Who the hell does this Arthur Brooks cat think he is?

The four-eyes, bullet-headed, akimbo-sitting, New-Age-spewing “intellectual” really has it in his mushbrain that he knows what makes my bell ring.

How? The guy gets gifted a Ph.D. from something called the RAND School of Public Policy and now he deeply understands what tickles my uvula? Fat chance!

Smarmy smarties like Brooks are always warning about the poisonous effects of politics as rec sports. Here comes his coaxing ‘script, like my damn fascist doctor always insisting I take my Seroquel. Brooks writes in The Free Press… *ding* ah! New York Times alert. Iran just struck the Ras Laffan gas plant in Qatar! Dammnnnnn. I don’t know what that even is, but it’s probably really bad. Just think: gas prices are about to skyrocket. The price of everything is going to jump. Whatever hope Republicans had for the midterms just got flushed like a wad of loo roll. A shame, really.

Guess it’ll be a hot summer. Oh well, where was I? Oh, right. Boffin boy Brooks! He etched out an entire column calling “political dilettantism” a “national obsession.” I don’t even know what that d-word means, but I do know that anyone who uses it probably dries their eyes in front of CNN while blowing their nose at us regular Joes. Sniffy Arthy says that treating politics like a “hobby” isn’t the same as being an informed citizen. He cites some bespectacled poindexter at one of those hoity Ivies. Well, I say, take your white papers, and hardbacks, and data sets and shove ‘em up your grundle. Brooks quotes a white-haired weirdo; I quote Catturd. Hey! Look at his latest tweet. “If libtards were so smart, they wouldn’t be so confused about what bathroom to use.” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That’s great! *Slaps you on the back.* Isn’t that great!? Huh? LOOK AT IT. *Shoves phone an inch from your face.*

Oh right, Brooks the fun-crook. He claims the Twitter news stream is the equivalent of a salesman inducing “emotional fluctuations” to keep users in a kind of irrational spiral, too addicted to log off. Phooey! Do I seem addicted to yo…

Wait. Wall Street Journal push notification. Let’s see… my phone is making me “sad”? Huh? Do I seem sad? Well, do I?? This supposed sullen sack doesn’t have time to feel gloom. The only blue I have room for is the glow of my trusty news relayer.

Here! Look at this. Some guy named Sohrab Ahmari just suplexed Brooks on Twitter. “Aristotle: Man is by nature is (sic) a political animal. Arthur Brooks: You should take up my self-help therapeutic claptrap and leave the politics to my think tank.” BOOM! I bet Brooky felt that one. Maybe he even deleted his account. Aristotle was right. Us men are, by natural facility, political. And that means keeping our eyeballs spinning in political viscera.

Libs of TikTok, Breaking 911, Red Wave Press, Aaron Rupar, Benny Johnson, Medhi Hasan, End Wokeness, Johnny Maga, Hasan Piker, Breitbart, Daily Caller, CNN, Fox News, MS NOW—these are the Praetorian Guards of democratic deliberation! I can’t be an informed citizen without scrolling each account and more every waking hour.

Gainsaying quips that “own” the opposition are the beating heart of the body politic and uphold… WHOA. Here, look at this. Tucker Carlson livestream alert. “Mark Levin is a bloodthirsty ogre.” HAHAHAHAHA. Shots fired! See, this is the real democratic zeitgeist in action. WHOA again! Levin responded in kind on X. “Qatarson is a propagandistic quack.” Now we have a real debate over American militarism in the MidEast. OH LOOK. Megyn Kelly just leapt in the tussle. “Mark Levin can’t cut the mustard.” Yes! YES! YESSSSS!!!

See, bluenosed virtuepushers like Brooks shake their heads at this kind of discourse. But this is how the polity actually hashes out disagreement. Algorithm-driven hyperpolitics is the new Periclean agora. All these cortisol-jumping updates at my shaking fingertips. Exactly what the Founders envisioned in a citizen republic.

Ooooh! New Mamdani reel to rage at. Whoa! New Trump screed to cackle over. Oooooh wow. Another viral Senator Kennedy clip, with his daggum homespun one-liners! OMG! Some dumb lib just said another dumb lib thing on that stupid roundtable show. And Comfortably Smug just dunked on him!

What could be better than this? Dopamine, serotonin, and all types of surging chemicals are fighting a battle royal in my brain. It’s exhilarating! I go from chirpy to chippy to ecstatic to pissed to thrilled to seeing red, all in the course of a 30-second scroll.

Then I vote. Down-the-line R, naturally. What’s this? A bond question? Hmmm. “Should the county issue a bond for $500 in debt in order to finance a new public safety course in…” Eh. So boring. I’ll just circle “Yes” and see if anyone else is keying Brooks a new hide on Twitter.