The 7,000 words of meandering TL;DR Both Siderism that The Atlantic paid David Brooks to write is actually just three David Brooks New York Times, "The Extremes on Both Sides" columns in a trench coat.
Once again Brooks has divided the human universe into "traditionalists" and "progressives", who are both a little bit right and both equally wrong. Example:
...to contend successfully with the traditionalists’ effects on our politics and culture, we also need to recognize that elements of their worldview are correct. But which parts are correct, and which are completely off the rails?
And, as always, Brooks offers up a Third Way out of the artificial and reductive binary human universe he has invented: a sorta forward-leaning revival of tradition within modernity.
It's really nothing more than that, bloated up to 7,000 words.
Some scientists have theorized that the reason David Brooks has been unwilling to write anything other than variations on "Both Sides Do It" for the last quarter of a century is that he was traumatized by this terrible season three episode of Star Trek TOS at a tender age --
-- and that, in order to temporarily exorcise that trauma, he enacts and externalizes it every time he sits down to write.
Others, who are less charitable, think that Mr. Brooks figured out early on that the American political, academic and corporate elite will never tire of having their favorite cliche Beltway fairy tale endlessly repackaged and repeated back to them. And that dedicating his professional life to doing that one thing was the key to winning the devotion of those elites, and a a license to print money.
You give Brooks too much credit...his life's work has been a performative exercise is raising banality to high art.
ReplyDeleteThe question, as the crystal-gazer pointed out at the end of the seers' convention*, is how to seize power from organized and entrenched men of Common Sense (TM).
ReplyDelete* Kenneth Fearing, "End of the Seers' Convention" (c. 1947, I think).
it is easier to set yourself up to learn FARKING NOTHING from anything if you are not wrong. mr. brooks is not about learning, he is about excusing the part where you learn nothing.. the grand old party isn't about getting better, it is about excusing not getting better.
ReplyDeleteTraditionalists are the ones denying vaccines for their children and bringing back diseases we had once eliminated.
ReplyDelete-Doug in Sugar Pine
Been trying to recall of anyone I have known who has raised a DFB article and point of view on an issue to me , for discussion or debate.
ReplyDeleteRush Limp-Paw, Hannity, the O Reilly but never the DFB.
The wealthy right wingers who use their tax cuts to create is life long job for sure read his Op Eds and books. and most likely do so under the presumption he is influencing and converting people to worshipping the Oligarch world view for the peons.
Since FDR sent yhr Hoover into oblivion. These wealthy right wingers have ben using their money in a socialized manner to make the right what it is today and will spend generously to make it worse for the future.