David Brooks' mind stopped working when Ronald Reagan was elected President and since that time he has been sitting behind his desk viewing the outside world from the large end of the binoculars. What he sees is a world which, though quizzically blurred, must somehow be getting better because Daddy took charge, removed those dastardly 55 mph speed limits, and blew down the Berlin Wall with the simple force of his own baritone breath. 

In his latest article in the NYT, The Structure of Gratitude,  Brooks has somehow managed to recall feelings he might have had forty years ago at a budget motel, purposefully ignorant of the reality that since Reagan's time a budget motel is a battle ground of have-nots stringing their lives out for one more day, hoping that luck, not gratitude, will come their way. Thanks to his beloved conservative politicians who have sucked the life out of our middle class culture, there is not much expectation of any relief in life, especially not gratitude---because to expect anything nice is to drop your guard---a foolhardy and dangerous act at a budget motel in the real world.

David, in a budget motel anywhere outside Westchester or Fairfield counties, one will, like an infantryman in a foxhole on the front lines of war, stay awake all night. About midnight the couple in the next room, heard through a wall of cheap construction with no insulation, will have stopped banging and just as you are about to doze off you feel a bite on your leg, strip off the sheets and realize that the mattress is full of bed bugs. So pack up the car and try finding another motel?

The problem is that some white dudes on the other side have come back and are drinking beers outside your door. They have their shirts off, are drunk, and are stacking empty long necks on the hood of your car.

Going outside even to throw your bags into the car and haul off?  No way.

 How about you call the "manager"?

---she's a single mom behind a bullet proof plastic window and her phone is off the hook because she has to get a few hours of sleep before her next part time job.  Maintenance guy or security person, even a high school kid running a vacuum or polisher on the dirty floors in the lobby?. You're joking, right?

It's barely a week before the demagogues in Brooks' party will be on stage demeaning the 47% in our society who are the takers. They will want to pare the safety net. They will bomb Iran the first day in office. The answer to rowdy dirty budget motels and movie theaters will be "not enough guns yet". The single mom must not get birth control or an abortion. The confederate flag must fly. The private equity guys must still get favorable tax treatment so they can finance more shoddy motels. Dig those tar sands. It still snows so how could there be global warming? It's no wonder Brooks tries to reconstruct the past and turn in his later years to digging out some psychology paper he wrote a hundred years ago at Yale.

David, this society is in so much trouble that the mere topic of "gratitude" is an insult to the intelligence.

Would I like some gratuitous gratitude? Of Course.

Would I like a return to civility, the society of your imagination before the disastrous wars, the pandering to religious extremists, the shift of wealth to the top, and the devastation of the middle class---which were brought forth in large part by your conservative friends? Yes I would.

But what I would like most if for one of the sixteen conservative aspirants in your party to address one single problem facing those lost souls in the budget-motel-world of today.

David, when I am on the road with the workers in my small company we stay in budget motels. We tough it out. I stay where they stay. I know budget motels. My guess is that you don't have a clue about budget motels, nor for that matter, "gratitude"---otherwise you wouldn't be writing such ridiculous gibberish.