And what did you expect, Mr. Brooks?

David Brooks is aghast:

Reconciliation has been used periodically before. That was bad enough. But at least for major legislation like the first Bush tax cuts, there was usually significant bipartisan support. Now we have pure reconciliation mixed with pure partisanship.

Once partisan reconciliation is used for this bill, it will be used for everything, now and forever. The Senate will be the House. The remnants of person-to-person relationships, with their sympathy and sentiment, will be snuffed out. We will live amid the relationships of group versus group, party versus party, inhumanity versus inhumanity.

We have a political culture in which the word “reconciliation” has come to mean “bitter division.” With increasing effectiveness, the system bleaches out normal behavior and the normal instincts of human sympathy.

To which a far smarter pundit of a different era replies:

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

I know you don't think of yourself as common, Mr. Brooks, but you supported the election of this Congress and this administration on the theory that the common people deserved the ministrations of your friends with top notch pants creases. And now we're getting it through reconciliation, good and hard.

This is the world you requested, Mr. Brooks. No complaining now.