As for “spontaneous social movements”, I doubt Brooks would know one if it picketed his house. There was no spontaneous social movement behind Obama, that was a carefully orchestrated campaign with excellent marketing and was carefully plugged into the majority perception that we had been going the wrong way for 8 years. The Tea Party Movement does include within it many people who are legitimately angry at the way things are going in America, but they are funded, promoted and co-opted by corporate interests and there is little spontaneity left in its ranks.

Lastly, it’s very difficult to believe that there is deep-seated anxiety about the federal deficit sufficient to trigger a social movement. There is a deep river of lies and half-truths being propagated about this issue in the media. The thrust of that anti-deficit campaign seems to be that we must cut social spending and infrastructure spending and keep the government from creating jobs. No one seems to want to discuss rolling back the Reagan tax cuts and the runaway “defense” spending that put is into this mess – those are sacrosanct because they benefit wealthy interests. Somehow the entire burden for the deficit must be borne by those least able to pay. Kind of difficult to imagine a spontaneous social movement demanding that government provide less services to its members while leaving taxes where they are.