Didn’t I just say one of our priorities has to be burying the Republican party? Case in point of how contemptible conservatives have become, Ross Douthat, who has a counter-proposal to Elizabeth Warren’s idea of free college and debt forgiveness:
I guess the only favored people in Douthat’s America are the Quiverfull and their priests. May your loins be bountiful and your church be wealthy.
From the beginning, his column had been a recurring essay on The Scientific Validity of the Catholic Church.
From his beginning, I read a column from the NYT that was so stupid that I made a mental note of the author.
It was a mindless defense of the Catholic church after their child sexual abuse scandals had become known.
The author was…Ross Douthat.
I’ve never seen a single column of his that showed the slightest intelligence.
#2 raven,
I have always thought that intelligence is not the missing item for those who defend the indefensible. In fact, I think it takes a lot of intelligence to twist oneself into a pretzel in order to defend the powers that be. For instance the problem with Kellyanne Conway is not intelligence. She is quite intelligent and metally quick in her defense of the President. Another example is Ben Shapiro, he is intelligent enough to set up his assumptions in order to argue his way to his pre-ordaiined end result.
What these folks are missing is empathy, introspection, integrity, and wisdom. All of which are far more important than intelligence.
I worked as a copy editor at a conservative newspaper for a while and Douthat was one of the regular columnists on the opinion page. He was so bad that even the conservative copy editors would laugh and join in when I started making fun of his gibberish, his lame sophistry, his hateful boilerplate GOP talking points. We called him Douche-Hat.
And he wasn’t the worst! When we (the other liberal copy editor and I) quite maliciously decided to rank the syndicated columnists, Douche-Hat was ranked second stupidest. The winner was Kathryn Jean Lopez. It wasn’t even really a contest. She makes David Brooks look like Reed Richards.
FTFY, Ross.
Douthat’s proposal would simply favor the rich.
Who don’t actually need student loan debt forgiveness.
The poorer college graduates who are struggling to pay off their student loans are unlikely to have…two kids.
He really doesn’t get cause and effect or realize that people with no health care insurance, money, or stability are unlikely to even have two children.
The correct conservative proposal (for certain values of “correct”) is to pit the young parents and the clergy against each other in a fight to the death — no holds barred, anyone or anything may be used as a weapon. Everyone else can gamble on the outcome and sell their crap during commercial breaks. Those who survive will have a chance to win in the next round of betting.
Well, there’s a surprise! /s
Since Quiverfull is mostly white fundamentalists, it’s also an anti-immigrant policy! Win-win for Republicans.
We could take his “AND” literally, and say the conservative position is debt forgiveness for those seminary students that also have two or more children.
Wait, that is the conservative counter proposal? I thought they were all for judging individuals on their own merits? (At least, that is what they pretend.) So why would an individual who just happened to have no brothers or sisters be burdened by college debts, and an individual who happened to have brothers and sisters not be? This really doesn’t make sense on any level. This is dumb, even for Douthat, but I guess it must be difficult to find your niche in the stupid-swamp that is contemporary “conservative” “thought”.
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blockquote>So why would an individual who just happened to have no brothers or sisters be burdened by college debts…
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I think Douthat means that the debtor needs to have two of more children of their own before they get forgiveness.
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Well, why not? After all, the NYT is a staunch supporter of the Establishment and the status quo. Its business model is to pander to the privileged white professional class (and those who aspire to be in it.) They (the newspaper and their audience) are fine with classism and racism and such, as long as it isn’t crass enough to be seen as declassé .
@Akira MacKenzie
OK thanks, I read that wrong. Still doesn’t make much sense though.
zenlike @ 15
It makes sense when you realize that the only people of worth in Douthat’s right-wing Catholic worldview are those who can reproduce. The more potential Christians you create, the better you are.
Someone needs to tell Ross Douthat to Ross don’t Douthat.
Someone needs to tell Ross Douthat that the country is FULL. Maybe Donald J Trump can get on that. (But, it’s as Akira MacKenzie has noted, it’s white children that matter.)
Some bright spark once referred to him as “Douche Hat” and I can never unsee it.
Douthat is a closet francoist.
Why does he have a column in the NYT? Because they have to balance good reporting with inane Op-Eds for some unknown reason.
What a little wink Douthat makes at the fears of White Genocide crowd’s anxiety about low birth rates. This is why I hate the #nevertrumpers more than the MAGA crowd.
Ross Douthat’s proposal seems like trolling to me. It is a very odd list of people to forgive student loans for. Does he have any justification for that curious selection?