Moralizing Nostalgia Leads to Bad History – and Helps the Anti-Democratic Right
David Brooks’ “How America Got Mean” offers an ahistorical tale that obscures rather than illuminates – and provides fertile ground for a politics of reaction.
The story Brooks tells is one of moral decay – where once there was personal virtue and a whole network of institutions dedicated to “moral formation,” there is now a black hole of amoral emptiness that people try to fill by engaging in “moral war” and “tribalism.” 2/
@tzimmer_history Does he include himself in that story of moral decay, having divorced his wife of 27 years to marry his assistant who is 23 years younger than him?
Brooks’ story doesn’t hold up to scrutiny and is indicative of a much larger problem: A pervasive longing for a golden past that never really existed, providing dangerously fertile ground for a reactionary politics of weaponized nostalgia. 3/
There are at least three major problems with the diagnosis Brooks presents here. First, he operates entirely on the level of individual behavior, unwilling to grapple with the systemic injustices and inequalities against which individual morality must fail as an antidote. 4/
Secondly, Brooks completely obscures the specifics and the stakes of the political conflict that is shaping the country and has shaped much of U.S. history by dissolving everything into an ultimately apolitical morality tale. 5/
Look closely at the phenomena Brooks presents as evidence for his morality tale and they point to a concrete political conflict. For that, however, Brooks has nothing but contempt. Brooks is as disgusted as he is frustrated by what he perceives as silly “tribalism.” 6/
Brooks is either entirely oblivious or utterly dismissive of the actual stakes in the current political struggle; that people might engage in politics because their basic rights and civil liberties are under assault seems beyond him. 7/
Are trans people just reveling in “tribalism” because they feel spiritually empty? Are women mobilizing because they are looking to fill the moral void – or could it have something to do with the fact that millions have been degraded to the status of second-class citizens? 8/
@tzimmer_history Conservatives, including Brooks (whether he'd ever have the intellectual honesty to say so or not), are absolutely fine with large chunks of society being second-class citizens. This is, in fact, necessary and central to American conservative aspirations.
Are Black Lives Matter activists merely flocking to “identity politics” because they are so “internally fragile” – or are they organizing because they are trying to somehow get the country to address racist police violence? 9/
The piece is over 11,000 words long. Yet there is nothing here about the political and ideological conflict over fundamentally incompatible ideas of what this country should be – a white Christian patriarchal society or an egalitarian multiracial, pluralistic democracy. 10/
@tzimmer_history that's something that kills me about him and his ilk--they're not even making structually sound arguments.
This is a six figure columnist who writes "very serious arguments" that wouldn't merit a C in a classroom because it's just intellectually lazy garbage he doesn't even bother to seriously support.
The third major problem with David Brooks’ interpretation: It is based on an utterly ahistorical understanding of the past and a rather bizarrely distorted perspective on U.S. history. Brooks is simply not a trustworthy narrator of how we got to where we are today. 11/
How does he reconcile his argument with the fact that the era of supposedly intact moral education, when “America was awash in morally formative institutions,” coincided with the worst forms of slavery, genocidal violence, and white supremacist apartheid? 12/
What does Brooks make of the fact that significant progress towards multiracial, pluralistic democracy was made after “moral formation” was, according to the author, largely abandoned? The answer is: He doesn’t. 13/
The message seems to be (my words, not his): “This society was horrible when all this morality formation was ubiquitous, and it has gotten so much better since that was abandoned – and yet, all of today’s problems can be traced to the tragic abandonment of morality formation.” 14/
@tzimmer_history the overall message of his writing (beyond this one) is that if we just let rich white men with the proper pedigree (ie men like him) to rule everyone would be better off.
It's not a new argument. It's in fact centuries old. One of the things that's most insulting about it is he may as well have copy and pasted it from 100 years ago.
Brooks presents insufficient evidence to support an inconsistent and ahistorical diagnosis. But his view of America appeals to people across a relatively wide ideological spectrum not in spite of these flaws. They are precisely what makes the argument so attractive. 15/
To the center-Right, and “moderate” (former) Republicans, Brooks offers an apologist narrative for anyone who doesn’t want to engage in critical introspection over the question of how the party they used to support until very recently ended up uniting behind Donald Trump. 16/
No need to inquire about their own role in conservative politics, in fostering a cultural and ideological environment in which Trumpism could flourish. What could they have possibly done to avert a crisis that was brought about by secular amorality? Not their fault, certainly. 17/
Brooks’ diagnosis also has appeal well beyond the conservative political spectrum. Democratic Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, for instance, recommended the “very important piece from David Brooks” to his audience on Twitter. 18/
What liberal elites, in particular, almost reflexively support is the unity gospel aspect of “How America Got Mean” and the nostalgic view of the past in which America was supposedly characterized not by polarization, but by a common enterprise to be good. 19/
This is what makes this piece interesting: the way it articulates, justifies, and ennobles a sense of nostalgia that is prevalent among moderate conservatives, at the center, as well as deep into the liberal camp. 20/
Much of the mainstream political discourse is shaped by nostalgia – and the Right understands that they can latch onto that, weaponize it, in order to make their political project of rolling back the social and political progress of the past century more attractive. 21/
Weaponized nostalgia is an extremely potent tool in the hands of reactionaries, an important vehicle to transport rightwing ideas into the mainstream and make the reactionary project more palatable. 22/
@tzimmer_history Well, how do you plan to build the consensus necessary to enact policies that will be binding nation-wide? Policies that will inevitably not only be "inconvenient" but positively ruinous for individual people, whatever the net aggregate effect is?
Brooks is not a Trumpist, and reading “How America Got Mean” doesn’t make you one either. But fundamentally nostalgic arguments like this one help provide fertile ground for the politics of reaction. 23/
Once you are convinced the country is coming apart, you might decide it’s ultimately preferable to lend your support to those who promise to turn the clock back rather than to the “radical Left” – even if you have to hold your nose doing so.
@tzimmer_history True but it's not just that... if people are trapped in "the perfect past" they are less likely to work for a better future (and can be talked into burning it down...)
@tzimmer_history You're not going to be able to outlaw the normal distribution curve. You can't change the fact that 50% of the population will just never identify themselves as Leftists. If you're ever going to achieve more than self satisfaction, you have to have a much broader base than that.
@Robert_R_Freitag_II@tzimmer_history this seems like a complete non-sequitur. Where was the part that said you had to be a leftist in order to accurately interpret history and not frame it in a moralistically reactionary fairy tale?
I'll be honest, I'm not sure I quite understand your lingo here. I get the feeling that you're trying to label me as a moralist, which in Lefty circles is interpreted as kind of an insult.
I mean, it's kind of literally true--I did express a moralist perspective.
But what you did not do is explain how you intend to achieve a stable, productive society without any morality at all.
Lefties kind of lazily express this intense level of faith in rationality, without ever understanding that all syllogistic formulations ultimately depend on a completely arbitrary value judgment (i.e., morality) for their coherence.
If you never establish your moral predicates, you will be forever chasing your own tail in self-defeating circles.
@Robert_R_Freitag_II@tzimmer_history ok, but that's an opinion, that again, doesn't seem to apply to this thread. Seems like you're angry with leftists and are applying that disagreement to tangential targets because they've critiqued someone, whom i'm assuming, you're a fan of.
One can definitely critique a work without defining their own morality and which political beliefs spring forth from them. The critique can be accurate regardless of the critic's own outlook.
You're having this amazing conversation with yourself about King. I wish I could have been privy to the whole thing because I definitely have never said anything about him here and so have no idea WTF you think you are talking about.
By definition, reality is contingent--it's the thing that you do NOT control.
That's not what history is about. History is about interpretation beyond the nominal facts, which in any event can never be presented in their totality--they are always selectively curated.
If this piece truly is about "reality" then it cannot also be about history.
Try this. There are things that happened, and ignoring the full context of the events surrounding those things is the main critique of this piece. So whether or not the full extent of "reality" is explained, the fact that Brooks ignored key events in order to present a flawed, and ahistorical account, is a valid criticism.
You express a remarkably naive faith in your ability to fully capture context.
Clearly that is not true. We have, for instance, new archaeological technologies today that were never imagined 100 years ago. What reason do you have to believe that additional technologies will not revolutionize our historical perspectives in the future.
So your argument is that the consensus on these issues is so strong that it's not even worth considering whether you have truly captured the "full context" of the event.
Is that what you're saying?
I just want to know if this is what you are truly saying--that the current contemporary consensus is so strong that contemporary views of context don't really matter.
@Robert_R_Freitag_II@GhostOnTheHalfShell@tzimmer_history oh my goodness, the literal argument of this critique is that the full context of factual events were ignored in order to develop a spurious conclusion that is damaging to democracy
That is a very selective reading. Yes, the Left often is compassionate, but not always. I'll give an example where the Left advocates something directly opposed to compassion.
You talk about the lack of compassion on the right.
But what about the lack of compassion on the Left?
There is a certain Leftist idea that homemakers should be financially compensated for household tasks that have traditionally been considered part of the expression of emotional bonds (e.g., love for children, spouses) rather than wage labor. Wouldn't this financial arrangement essentially function as a replacement of the emotional bond?
If you want to meet some raggedy-ass motherfuckers, I suggest you go to Alabama, the deepest Red of the Red States. I doubt they consider their poverty as a mark of their own iredeemable immorality.
Maybe you don't understand the Right Wing as well as you think you do.
If you believe that your waking up this morning is important enough to constitute "history" instead of simply "a story", I don't think you're really engaged with the cultural importance of historical studies.
The point is that even if a set of nominal facts can be considered scrupulously accurate, they can NEVER be complete. Because any event of society-wide importance has too many variables.
I never said technology was the ONLY form of contextual blind spot. That you assuming that these SM microposts represent the totality of my thinking. That's on you.
No, that is one argument I made. It is NOT the only argument I have. You've said that is the only argument I have.
Another argument is the impossibility of fully capturing the urgency of pragmatic considerations contemporary to the event itself, but which are not currently in effect. Like the sense of urgency created in the parties to the 1877 compromise to ensure the smooth operation of institutions like law enforcement, etc.
"I find it kind of weird that you would believe that someone's full perspective can be captured in a couple hundred words."
Nobody reached any conclusions about you based on what you didn't say. I am reaching some unpleasant conclusions about you based on what you did say. Are they conclusions that capture the fullness of your entire personality? Of course not, but that's just a straw man you created a moment ago.
I have no idea what you're intending to convey here.
I mentioned to Ghost that history is about interpretation, and necessarily so because it is literally impossible to recapitulate the full context of an historical event.
I mentioned technological limitations as one example.
From that Ghost concluded that I believed that technology was the ONLY limitation. Which I most definitely did NOT.
@Robert_R_Freitag_II I'm conveying that your objection to having uncomplimentary conclusions reached about your opinions based on what you've chosen to type just now is frivolous. If you don't like people reaching conclusions about you, remain silent.
@Robert_R_Freitag_II Possibly. And yet, you wrote this: "I find it kind of weird that you would believe that someone's full perspective can be captured in a couple hundred words."
As I noted, that's a common cry of distress from people who have said some fucked up shit and would prefer people not judge them for having shit ideas.
Your ideas seem pretty bad based on what you've said here. You came in hot, guns blazing at a target you invented, and apparently believe that nobody on the left believes in morality. What is it that you're trying to accomplish here? Your point that history is contingent on interpretation is trivially true and doesn't affect the overall point made by the OP. You just seem to want to defend right wing ideas and bash left wing people.
Like, 99% of what you've written here is either simply wrong or incoherent.
But your idea that I have challenged the moral sensibility of the Left--yes, I totally own up to that.
If that is just an "assumption" on my part, it does seem to be borne out by the fact that I was immediately attacked as a "moralist". Seems like people don't attack each other with compliments.
My interpretation is that "morality" is the belief that there is such a thing as right action and wrong action. The opposite of such is amorality, attributing no moral value to any action.
I can't square this meaning with your statement, to paraphrase "the political Left is dogmatically amoral".
Sorry. You seem like a nice guy, and this probably would have been a productive discussion. But I got bored repeating what should have been very simple, self-evident arguments to disingenuous idiots on this thread. No longer care.
@Robert_R_Freitag_II That "morality", to you, is all about what strangers do in bed or inside their own bodies. And that the people attacking you are correct.
This is a very long thread. Can you quote specifically for me anywhere I discussed what people ought to do in bed or inside their own bodies?
I don't think you will be able to.
I think you have granted a kind of monopoly on morality to one very specific subjective sensibility. A sensibility that, for the record, I do NOT share, and certainly never expressed in this thread.
@Robert_R_Freitag_II Of course you didn't say that in this thread. To grant you a small irrelevant point, in this case I am reaching a conclusion about you based on what you didn't say. You said the left are widely hostile to morality. You have not, so far, defined morality. But in my experience, those sympathetic to right wing arguments (i.e., you) tend to define morality according to two things: first, a parochial adherence to religious rules about gender and sexuality, and second, adherence to an artificial hierarchy of wealth and class.
To say that the left is "hostile to morality," you must needs be defining morality in such a way that caring for the indigent and ensuring a habitable planet for future generations don't count as "moral" goals.
Like, your idea that at least some Leftist ideas are consistent with a specific moral sensibility, is not being contested. I kind of established that early on that all syllogistic logic is, in a sense moral. I never contested that.
Frankly, I interpret those statements of yours as essentially concessions of my point about the centrality of morality.
But the idea that the Left have a good command of this issue is clearly wrong
Well, your "feelings" tell you what is good, don't they? If you are saying that your ideas are instead objective facts, you are essentially pulling a Ben Shapiro.
@Robert_R_Freitag_II I think you first need to explain why you view attacking someone as a moralist and having a basic sense of morality as mutually exclusive.
Well, if I have made some assumptions, they don't seem to be wrong. I mean, my assumption was that the Left have a widespread and deep hostility to morality, and you immediately attacked me as a moralist.
That's interesting, if true, if he has ever really said that. But hardly decisive. That's just one kind of subjectivity. Out of like over 300 million distinct flavors in the USA alone. Like, although Trump may be influential, people clearly make thousands of moral decisions every day for which there is no obvious, unambiguous precedent in that sentence.
Well, yeah. But, you know: Fuck the immature people. I mean, I wish them all the best in your individual journeys, but I'm not hitching myself to that star.
Get it? Be the change you want to be. Don't encourage people to take the low road. The Left want to lead? Then lead, do something different, something great, instead of the petty, small-minded thing.
Okay, I think I have to block you now. It was fun for a while, and as a policy I don't like over doing the block thing, but I don't know how else to get rid of you.
@apples_and_pears@Robert_R_Freitag_II@paninid@mhanson101@GhostOnTheHalfShell@tzimmer_history And there are men & women of excellent character, proudly proclaiming their Christian faith informs all the good they do in this world, in every field... who get a cold-reception, like being called 'cretins', 'morons', 'racists', 'women killers', 'money-grubbers', & all the rest, which is deeply unfair. But, I'm conscious I'm merely airing a personal peeve, & not contributing to your fine debate.
So why don't you treat them as if they were a monolithic singularity? Like, dismiss them as prima facie unimportant You know, to make sure that they're COMPLETELY drowned out.
I know that's what you're here for. You like reach so fuckin' hard past the breaking point of an abstract theory that there's literally no other conclusion that I can draw. You just want to be admired as a clever boy.
Well, that's the way I see it. I'm making a point about the Left failing to engage with other moralities in order to reach policy conclusions compatible with Leftist orthodoxy.
The Left's well-attested use of the term "moralist" as a pejorative is an example of this refusal.
Instead I'm getting all these jerk-off abstract rationalizations and irrelevant semantic arguments.
I have no fucking idea what that is intended to mean. If you're having a private conversation with the voices in your head, fine, but do you want to keep out of earshot of everyone else who expects comments to be relevant to the topic at hand?
@Robert_R_Freitag_II You seem to be vacillating between knowing that "moralist" is typically used as a pejorative when called out on it vs pretending that "moralist" just means "someone who's moral" for the purposes of "proving" that "the Left is hostile to morality."
To me, that seems dishonest. And in my book, dishonesty is immoral. You, no?
I'm not vacillating. I'm stating the absolutely incontestible fact--demonstrated amply in this very thread--that the Left use the term as a pejorative.
My position, which I have made as clear as any possibly human can, is that it should NOT be a pejorative.
@Robert_R_Freitag_II Well, you appear to vacillate here. When I said "moralist" is not a synonym for "good guy," you said, "No shit." That conveys that you agree with me. But previously, you were using the premise that "moralist" is a synonym for "good guy" to claim that people calling you a moralist also hate morality in general. If I have misunderstood you, I humbly request clarification.
Take some time off. Come back to this thread later when you are well rested. I think you'll find that you injected yourself into an argument that you don't agree with and now you don't know how to get out.
@Robert_R_Freitag_II OK. How much of a time lapse will convince you that I am not being unduly swayed by my out of control emotions and/or lack of rest?
I wish you hadn't phrased it like that. It sounds like you intend to adhere to some arbitrary time schedule and then just blindly press 'send' on a comment you had prepared long in advance. Not a very authentic response.
@Robert_R_Freitag_II Well your concern about my emotional state and/or lack or rest don't seem authentic either. So. I'd just like to discuss the topic at hand without you playing amateur doctor. Could we just do that? If I have misinterpreted your remarks, simply explain where I went wrong rather than speculating on my internal state. Sound good?
You jumped the gun. I posted just a couple of seconds ago a real disagreement. Compare the two threads and any honest person could only come to the conclusion that you're trying to spin this "debate" about the term "moralist" into something it is not.
My views on communism represent an actual, legitimate disagreement with you.
Someone that identified “as the Left” hurt you. Who was it? What did they do? Or say? Are still unable to articulate the circumstances? Do you need more space and time to think and talk about it?
People who use “the Left” pejoratively tend to have an affinity for an worldview which protects, but does not bind themselves, yet binds, but does not protect “the Left”.
Someone who assets absolute morality and relativist history is taking the position of an intolerant extremist in the most vile tradition. Calling them a mere "moralist" is over-polite.
This is an area that the Left has a severe weak spot--the unwillingness to engage with other people's morality in an attempt to work with it instead of trying to destroy or overwrite it.
Like, there might be ways to work from somebody else's moral premises to reach a policy conclusion that is compatible with your own.
Just make a fucking effort.
That's my beef with the Left. They're fucking lazy.
@Robert_R_Freitag_II "Like, there might be ways to work from somebody else's moral premises to reach a policy conclusion that is compatible with your own."
This is a new idea to you? You have honestly thought that little about the values your political enemies hold that you never considered there might be a way to use their own premises to overcome their objections?
Then why do they insist on using the term "moralist" as a pejorative? Or they simply so stupid that they don't realize what they're doing or the effect it's having on policy debates?
You just want so bad for me to the inflexible doctrinaire Ben Shaprio stand in that you yourself are actually a Left Wing version of, don't you? You're so anxious for me to say something like that that you can't resist saying it yourself, can you?
Why don't you look through this thread to find out?
Just kidding. I don't think you're smart enough to recognize the nose at the end of your own face. Of course you won't recognize the answers I've given elsewhere many multiple times over.
You're just here for the artificial conflict to convince yourself that you're not at all an imbecile, but actually an intellectual warrior genius.
That is so typical of the Left. Not content getting their ass handed to them every day by Machine aparatchiks, they rush in to finish the job themselves.
@Robert_R_Freitag_II If I'm really as dumb as you claim, and it's true that you already answered the questions I'm asking (reminder: they are "why do leftists like UBI?" and "is moralist a synonym for good guy?") then it should be a simple matter for you to post a link to where you answered them. One link will suffice. I love being wrong, please indulge me!
Explain to us why you believe the movement which went to war against welfare, minimum wage increases, and universal healthcare would support universal basic income.
So your idea is that there should be one single policy that solves everything? That unless there is one complete solution for absolutely everything available instantly and all at once, it means nothing?
I want to say something like "don't be a jackass", but I feel like that would be to deny your right to be your authentic self.
@Robert_R_Freitag_II Oh dear, I do believe you're doing a logical fallacy! No other way to characterize answering the question "Why do you think a political movement that's against welfare and minimum wage increases would support UBI" with "So your idea is that there should be one single policy that solves everything? That unless there is one complete solution for absolutely everything available instantly and all at once, it means nothing?".
@GhostOnTheHalfShell I double-checked and I found it! @mhanson101 said "Where was the part [of the article] that said you had to be a leftist in order to accurately interpret history and not frame it in a moralistically reactionary fairy tale?"
And he was like "All I understood was moralist, which reminds me that LEFTIES HATE MORALITY"
So it's a discussion about policy that is not about policy because you looked in my heart and knew that it was not "sincere" (eg, "dog whistle"). Great.
Hard to figure out how the Left never seem to get anywhere, what their omniscient ability to see into everyone's heart and know whether they're being "sincere". As if that were a valid criteria for what constitutes "policy."
They are core concepts and guidance in which a society can operate.
Families, be it the nuclear family, extended, blended, or others work to instill these values in their children as they raise them.
It might be a surprise but atheist leftists in blended families are just as capable of instilling moral values in their children as a conservative Christian nuclear family is instilling hatred and racism.
Not all conservatives are good, not all leftists are bad - dropping that mindset is necessary for everyone to move forward.
I know this deviated from the initial discussion on history but I thought it was important to discuss.
Okay--so does this represent a real commitment? Like an admission that moralism has some merit? Like it shouldn't be used lazily as an ad hominem attack to enforce some version of Leftist orthodoxy?
Because if so, that was my whole point. One that could have been accepted a long time ago without impugning my sincerity.
Well, yeah. Feelings are critical. If you know anything about logic, you have to know that all syllogistic formations begin with an ultimately irrational value judgment (ie., major premise).
You can't have logic without feelings.
The least you can do is be honest about that fact and encourage people to commit to their values upfront.
I never said anything remotely like that. So your comment is best reserved for someone who did.
Your idea that it is possible for any historical analysis to fully recapitulate all relevant facts is essentially equivalent to "facts and logic don't care about your feelings". So some pretty rich irony there.
Well, you are kind of depicting the Right as a Monolith. You assume that their preoccupation with civil society is insincere. To be sure, it often is. But not always. Maybe not even most of the time.
Okay: YOU believe that. That would be at least on honest statement.
But your odd lack of curiosity about the inconsistency of that observation with the raggedy-ass nature of a lot of the Right Wing constituency needs to be explained.
Like, if you're not even willing to test the weaknesses of your theory, how are you ever going to enact effective policies that address it?
@tzimmer_history 11,000 words times, just guessing here, $8 a word, means he probably got paid more for this one article than most US reporters get paid in a year
@tzimmer_history Seems like he’s rubbing off in you. This was a whole lot of language just to say ‘Brooks is simply not a serious interlocutor’. He paved the way for Trump. His insistence on civility and related tone trolling, he made it difficult to counter Trump. His presence in the public discourse as a person who never had a useful contribution, merely by virtue of being invested with the trappings of institutional respectability, created an environment where merit is meaningless.
Brooks and others like him enabled the development of the current cult of reTHUGliCONs. Now that they see the shitstorm they created, they want us to admire them for shunning the monsters they are responsible for. We'll, I don't admire them, but I will acknowledge that they are smart enough to know autocracy will go after anyone and everyone once it attains power. No matter who they are.
@tzimmer_history A "morality" that includes selling your own children (conceived by rape upon your captives), deliberately infecting whole populations with smallpox, and stealing everything that's not nailed down, isn't worth having.
It’s so weird Brooks looks at a conflict between eliminationism on the one hand and multiculturalism on the other and considers that frustrating tribalism.
The ascension of one of those sides, even for people like Brooks, means exile or death.
@tzimmer_history #DavidBrooks is the archetype against which the phrase #OkayBoomer should be lobbed. So high on his own supply of "the good ol days", and utterly devoid of any measure of introspection or ability to learn.
His previous essay on happiness had him confusing happy/sad normal days with actual MDD, and he misused medical statistics in irresponsible ways that were pretty transparently "hey, this stat matches my assumptions".
It'm not surprised to see that he's as bad at playing historian as he is at playing doctor. The Atlantic's editorial staff have pretty much vanished, as near as I can tell, leaving their authors free to make stuff up.
@UncivilServant I think the more concerning explanation is that, ideologically and politically, this is the kind of diagnosis the leadership at The Atlantic favors and therefore happily platforms.
@tzimmer_history Good point. It's a hard ideology to nail down, since it's almost a faux-centrism. I mean that where centrism supports evidence-based policy, they seem to prefer "White suburban college educated common sense" and genuinely believe the two to be identical.
It's not populism, and not quite populism's cousin in a business suit. But I do think that to name a thing makes it easier to distinguish, otherwise it's easy to dismiss, as I did, as a simple lapse of standards.
@tzimmer_history It's amazingly astonishing reading the comments and seeing how a pseudo intellectual with illogical bad faith arguments can derail a perfectly sound and well written response to Brooks nonsense. 🙄
@tzimmer_history Thanks for doing this. I"ve been thinking on similar lines.
One striking thing about Brooks is his absolute inability to address politics. His desperate urge to transform every issue into a cultural framework is a reaction, I believe, to his unacknowledged awareness that all his political claims throughout his career have been wrong.
@tzimmer_history I love his "married people have decreased, sadness has increased" causation argument. That logic definitely checks out! Isn't he basically being tribal by suggesting that those who don't live by his idea of virtue are "mean"?
@tzimmer_history Brooks lives in a fantasy world. He still thinks there are "moderate Reagan conservatives" out there ... which is just wrong AND completely ignores the role Reagan had in the hateful rhetoric of the right, the tilting of the economy to massively benefit the wealthy and foreign policy that was at times completely illegal and unconstitutional. Further, THOSE policies are at the root of a lot of the instability today in central America and our "refugee crisis" at the border.
How America got mean... Newt Gingrich, extremist evangelicals. movement conservatives... they demanded power to rule over America at any and every cost... and here we are....
"Newt Gingrich turned partisan battles into bloodsport, wrecked Congress, and paved the way for Trump's rise."
a basic everyday mans perspective... obviously it's more than that, but... the line form Gingrich to the hate we see today.. pretty direct.
@tzimmer_history too many words to tell everyone that Brooks is a crook, my friend. He is verbally gifted enough to put the cloak of credibility on the amoral, if not immoral, ideology of the right wing. The con in the conservative is for cons and for their conniving nature.
@tzimmer_history this doesn’t seem too different from Hillary’s recent Atlantic piece to me though—looking to old-fashioned institutions. Could there be something true about this? That we need something to bring people together in the flesh? And if we are oppressed we need each other, in person, all the more?
@jillrhudy Well, you can make anything sound reasonable if you put it in a very abstract way. But Brooks isn’t simply saying “Hey, maybe some old-fashioned institutions could be helpful.” You said that.
@tzimmer_history I gotta agree with you that we can't just separate morality and politics the way he does. The New Gilded Age creates massive genuine misery. Poverty and misery go together. I had exemplary "moral training" and yet when I gave my children all the food and went to bed hungry I was miserable.
@tzimmer_history let me read the Brooks article in full and then comment further. I agree with you that false nostalgia can be poisonous. I just subscribed to the Atlantic, because with @TheAtlantic on here I see something I want to read every day.
Add comment