From today's New York Times:
In 1966, only about 19 percent of high school students graduated with...By 2013, 53 percent of students graduated with...As late as 1987, nearly half of high school students...By 2006, less than a third of all students...In 1966, 48 percent of students said...By 2006, more than 60 percent of students said...If you go back and read oral histories conducted in the 1950s and 1960s...In 1974, 77 percent of students enrolled...By 2013, only 57 percent...In 1976, 50 percent of freshmen...By 2006, 69 percent of freshmen...Since 2005, the number of students who say...In 1966, only 42 percent of freshmen...By 2005, 75 percent of students said...In 1966, 86 percent of college freshmen said...Today, less than half say...[S]tudies suggest that today’s students score about 40 percent lower...In 1985, only 18 percent of freshmen said...By 2013, 33 percent said...In 1985, 64 percent of students said...[I]n 2009, roughly 75 percent of freshmen said they had a stronger...
So what do all of these maths teach David Brooks about the lives of little people going about their business far, far below?
Not much:
...Human nature hasn’t changed much. The surveys still reveal generations driven by curiosity, a desire to have a good family, a good community and good values. But people clearly feel besieged....The inner world wanes; professional intensity waxes.
Reading David Brooks for his incisive content is like masturbating to Good Housekeeping magazine.
Sure, it's theoretically possible, but who the hell would actually do such a thing?
12 comments:
Or has the time?
(Or ability to suppress the gag reflex for that long.)
**Human nature hasn’t changed much.**
And why would human nature designed by hundreds of thousands of years of evolution change over the last five decades?
Any why is this even a column in NYTimes?
Human nature hasn’t changed much. The surveys still reveal generations driven by curiosity, a desire to have a good family, a good community and good values. But people clearly feel besieged.
__________________________________
Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Thank you Mr. Brooks, and you too, Polonius.
From somewhere in the ether-nets comes a steaming pile of both sides:
The goals of corporate capitalism are increasingly indistinguishable from the goals of the state. The political and economic systems are subservient to corporate profit. Debate between conventional liberals and conservatives has been replaced by empty political theater and spectacle. Corporations, no matter which politicians are in office, loot the Treasury, escape taxation, push down wages, break unions, dismantle civil society, gut regulation and legal oversight, control information, prosecute endless war and dismantle public institutions and programs that include schools, welfare and Social Security. And elected officials, enriched through our form of legalized corporate bribery, have no intention of halting the process.
Meanwhile,
Something, Something Brit Hume
Something, Something David Gregory
Shorter Cheese Eater:
"The Faux-Liberal Dinocratic Emperor is just as nekkid as the Wingnut Reptilian Emperor!"
At least on issues of foreign policy, war, and covert action.
And issues of economics and the proper distribution of society's wealth.
And issues of police power, "toughness" on crimes not committed by the 1% or their minions, and the War On (Some) Drugs.
Indeed, about the only noticeable difference between the Sane Faction of the 1%, which uses the safely de-liberalized Dinocratic Party as its primary vehicle, and the Insane Faction of the 1%, which uses the Reptilian Party as its primary vehicle, is the Sane Faction really doesn't care what consenting adults do with their genitals in private, and the Sane Faction at least pretends to care about equal rights for women, non-white, non-Anglophone men, and erotic non-conformists.
Oh, and the Sane Faction realizes their continued power, wealth, and even survival, depends on the maintenance of a strong central United States government to repress rebellions against capitalism at home and abroad, and so the Sane Faction does not flirt with wingnuts who want to tear down that government.
The Sane Faction realizes that Capital needs Uncle Sam to play Darth Vader to Capital's Emperor Palpatine.
"Reading David Brooks for his incisive content is like masturbating to Good Housekeeping magazine.
Sure, it's theoretically possible, but who the hell would actually do such a thing?"
How about Glamour?
Monster from the Id: I saw Gore Vidal on some talk show (Dick Cavett?) over 40 years ago. He noted that there is only one party in the USA, the Property Party. "Republican" and "Democrat" are just the two wings of that Party. The ensuing decades have only clarified and reinforced that statement.
So, yeah -- what you said.
You think David Brooks might be one of those Nerdy brainiac-tic elitists the Republican-Conservative-Tea Potters complain about?
You know, confusing Nerdy Barainiac-tic elitists with the very well educated.
I mean, wouldn't Einstein be a mere elitist intellectual to the GOP today? I mean he did not inherit extreme wealth and use that wealth to build more as the Koch Brothers.......
If I wasn't so lazy, I'd find a Good Housekeeping magazine just to prove you wrong :-P
Hey Cheese Eater, re:
Corporations, no matter which politicians are in office, loot the Treasury, escape taxation, push down wages, break unions, dismantle civil society, gut regulation and legal oversight, control information, prosecute endless war and dismantle public institutions and programs that include schools, welfare and Social Security. And elected officials, enriched through our form of legalized corporate bribery, have no intention of halting the process.
You really are to be complimented for one of the most incisive single paragraph descriptions of our current "democracy" that I have read in a very long time.
I wonder what FDR would think of the political system we have today. I wonder what his assessment of Obama's first two years in office, when Democrats had majorities in both houses of Congress, would be.
I wish I could write like that! The above paragraph comes from the Left-Wing, Both Sides Road Show.
Plus, both sides don't! Something David Brooks, something else Fox News and Crazy Uncle Liberty.
But where does David Brooks stand on Benghazi?
Just waiting in anticipation to here what Brooks feels about the House Benghazi Select Committee?.
A republican House Majority who shut down Government because of budgetary so called responsibilities, now decided to spend $millions of tax payer dollars to campaign to their base= John Birchers who are busy drinking the Tea at the party.
What next? Will Monica Lewinsky be trotted out?
JAMES KWAK! TONIGHT ONLY!! 7:30 PM ON THE MAIN STAGE OF THE LEFT-WING BOTH SIDES ROAD SHOW!!!
"President Obama talks a good game when it comes to inequality, but he hasn’t backed it up with actions. There may have been extenuating circumstances, sure. But when it comes to tax policy, his main impact has been to make permanent most of the inequality-increasing tax cuts that [are] his predecessor’s most treasured legacy."
http://baselinescenario.com/2014/05/07/tax-policy-revisionism/
Book signing in the side tent after the show.
Typical rejoinder? Something Fox News, Something Neal Cavuto.
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