Tag Archives: David Brooks

In a comments thread I was reading last week, one of the commenters was ranting about how one of the left’s weaknesses is the “secret Disney liberals.” By which he meant (IIRC — I wasn’t able to find it again) naive liberals who believe the endgame should be a “post-political” world in which everyone has the lower levels of the hierarchy of needs marked off. That is, they have food, shelter, safety, emotional support and self-esteem/respect, leaving them free to work on self-actualization, the highest level. The commenter seemed to think this concept hilariously unrealistic.

I can’t recall encountering the attitude he talks about, though as I only browse a fraction of the liberal blogosphere that doesn’t prove anything. I don’t think it’s unrealistic, however, and I don’t think it’s at all post-political.

Working to build a world where everyone has their basic needs met is what we should be doing. It’s a sentiment that goes back to the Book of Micah: “Everyone shall sit under his vine [olive vine, I believe] and under his fig tree, And no one shall make them afraid; For the mouth of the LORD of hosts has spoken.” (Micah 4:4) As I wrote back in 2021, peace and prosperity are what we’re striving for. The Clinton years with the good economy, federal budget surplus and our nemesis of decades, the Soviet Union, having collapsed (back then we actually discussed shrinking military spending and putting the money to use for peaceful purposes. Imagine that), would be the best example in my lifetime.

Astonishingly, a lot of people proclaimed that era a dystopian nightmare. What’s the point of living in a country where people can work a 40-hour week, then go home and play video games, read, watch TV, cuddle their spouses or children or dog? Where people don’t worry about being downsized or not having enough to pay the bills? Why were we spending money to give senior better Medicare coverage instead of sending our military out to establish the American Empire? Some pundits celebrated 9/11 for putting an end to all that: now Americans would have to fight and struggle and suffer! Needless to say, pundits such as David Brooks who took this view had no plans to suffer or struggle themselves.

The thing Brooks and ignore is that (to paraphrase Raymond Massey in Things to Come), peace and prosperity don’t eliminate challenge, striving and struggle. They simply leave it up to us whether to struggle and what to strive for. I can state from personal experience that when life is hard and stressful, accomplishing anything beyond the basics can become overwhelming. When you’re safe and have a financial cushion in the bank, it’s much easier to be creative, work on a side hustle, help out your neighbors, train for marathons, etc. The opponents assume ease and comfort will make us slothful and lazy, never accomplishing anything; it can free us up to do more (as this company discovered a few years ago).

Writing a novel, spending more time with your loved ones, doing nothing: it’s up to each individual to figure out what represents the good life to them. As Fred Clark says, “It’s true that in a liberal democracy, the state refrains from supplying you with ‘a teleological vision of the good.’ That’s not something to complain about.

That explains why achieving Micah 4:4 is not a “post-political” project. It’s very political. I’m sure those pundits referenced at my links would love to sit comfortably under their own fig tree but they’re not happy when their inferiors get the same treatment. Racists and misogynists would freak out if a black man or a single mother had as nice a fig tree as theirs. Other people would immediately start scheming to buy up every fig tree and vine in their area and then start charging usurious rates.

Getting to peace and prosperity is political; fighting to keep it is political. It’s an ongoing effort, not a victory we get to declare forever. Contrary to the commenter, I think it’s a worthy goal to shoot for.

You may have heard that police in a small Kansas town recently carried off the newxpaper’s computers as part of a search. At the link, a look at what happened and why.

Partly it’s “weaponizing” the courts against unfavorable coverage, as witness Wisconsin businessman/politician Cory Tomczyk sued a local paper that reported him calling a gay boy “a fag.”

Fox claimed an Afghanistan veteran’s family had to pay to ship the body home. The Pentagon cries bullshit. Fox yanked the story off its website without publishing a retraction.

Right-wing hatemonger and female misogynist Ann Coulter once told an interviewer she’d have been fine with Timothy McVeigh blowing up the New York Times. The NYT now gave her a byline for an op-ed piece — as if someone with her history of extremism and lies is now respectable. Another NYT pundit explains liberals will lose to Donald Trump in 2024 because we’re still fighting the cold war. No, we’re not, and no, the original piece (it’s not a direct link) doesn’t make sense. But then, the NYT has published David Brooks for years.

John Ganz looks at a general problem with pundit cliches: ” the “perversity thesis,” where any action actually result in the opposite of its intent, the “futility thesis,” where any action will actually accomplish nothing, and the “jeopardy thesis,” where any action will threaten some already accomplished social good. These three simple guides provide a template for the pundit for a long career in journalism. They give the appearance of thoughtfulness and counter-intuitive brilliance, when they are just methods to generate rote responses.”

Or there’s the dread “both sides” approach, such as an NYT article saying some people think Trump’s being persecuted, some thinking he’s guilty, as if it were all a matter of opinion. As Paul Campos says at the link, ” if one person says it’s raining and another says it’s not, a journalist’s job isn’t to report that disagreement, but rather to look out the window.”

Great work from the Miami Herald fact-checking DeSantis’ story about a baby who survived multiple abortion attempts — all of which took place before Roe v. Wade.

I know, Newsmax isn’t journalism, but it’s still worth noting Newsmax host Greg Kelly dismissed death threats against the judge in Trump’s case as no big deal.

Remember the case of the 10-year-old who had to cross state lines for an abortion? Forced-birth government officials insisted it never happened; journalists proved otherwise.

“How could these stories be too Black for Atlanta?” — a look at how the higher-ups at Atlanta Magazine appear to be pushing it away from black and LGBTQ coverage.

The FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago had already produced some bizarre Republican responses when I blogged about it last week. They’re not getting better, possibly because the case against Trump is getting worse. What was he doing with classified nuclear documents or possibly information identifying intelligence sources.

It’s no surprise Trump is freaking out. It’s what he always does whenever he’s challenged, balked or criticized. But as his handling of declassified documents could violate the Espionage Act, the right wing has suddenly decided the act is bad. As noted at the link, that’s true in general — it’s the default law for prosecuting whistle-blowers — but Trump wasn’t blowing the whistle or releasing the Pentagon Papers (one comparison some Repubs are making). Nevertheless, Rand Paul wants the act killed. Other right-wigers want FBI agents killed.

Florida State Rep. Anthony Sabatini, who’s running for the federal House, thinks state law-enforcement should arrest FBI agents and other federal law enforcement officers if they’re acting against Trump. Breitbart doxxed two FBI agents involved in the raid. Remember when Republicans were so loud and proud about how they backed the blue? Now it’s defund the FBI — though as Zeeshan Aleem says, they’re lying when they pretend to care about the FBI’s history of bad behavior (see here). Don’t be fooled: if the search was the political persecution they pretend it is, but directed at A-OC or Rashida Tlaib, they’d be cheering.

Heck, they’re already cheering in advance: Charlie Kirk and Eric Metaxas are demanding right-wing state attorneys general raid liberals to pay them back and warn them away from pushing Trump: “State attorney generals that are Republican have to authorize raids against Soros groups, BLM, Planned Parenthood, the alphabet mafia, groomers, the chemical castration of children now! Here’s why—a hundred facilities should be raided by next week” even without a legal pretext (given the current Repub mindset, I’m assuming groomers means teachers not religious conservatives).

Right-wing pundit Mark Levin scraped the barrel to come up with this brilliant insight: how can we know Obama and Biden and W don’t have documents at home too, huh? How come nobody searched them? Um, possibly because nobody put together enough evidence to justify a warrant? By Levin’s logic, I could ask how we can be sure Mark Levin doesn’t have dead bodies in his basement — I mean, have we checked so we can know for sure? Oh, and Fox posted a fake photo of the judge who authorized the warrant in hopes of making him look bad.

Some QAnonites are claiming the raid is good news: the (non-existent) pedophile Satanist cabal is going after Trump because he’s about to destroy them at last! David Brooks faux wrings his hands with concern: what if this enrages the base so Trump wins re-election? Which as Roy Edroso says at the link, is like arguing if Pence had only done what Trump wanted in 2021, we wouldn’t have had the Jan. 6 attempted coup — or as someone quipped online, that we shouldn’t have infuriated Sauron’s base by sending those hobbits into Mordor. Because only Democrats have agency.

Regardless of its effect on politics, I agree with Edroso that Merrick Garland made the right call.

“For all the nostalgia for the sense of national unity in the 9/11 aftermath, I remember feeling rubbed the wrong way by one specific variant of triumphalism: the idea that post Cold War we’d grown soft and frivolous and now we’d at least toughen up and deal with reality. [But] Peace and prosperity are the point of all the policy, right? The goal? Give me a soft society doing yoga and pottery and starting businesses and going on nice vacations over a tough, purpose-minded society where everyone is joining the military to fight a big foreign threat. The latter is necessary at times but it’s hardly to be desired for itself.” — from Lawyers, Guns and Money.

As Corey Robin documents in Remembrance of Empires Past (which I’ve blogged about before), that was a controversial view back when 9/11 hit. Pundit Frank Rich declared the attack “has awakened us from a frivolous if not decadent decade-long dream” and David Brooks celebrated that “it is no longer possible to live so comfortably in one’s own private paradise.” None of this sitting around on our butts enjoying life, nosirree! We’d be forced to fight! To achieve greatness! No more living comfortably … unless you were multimillionaire David Brooks, whose sacrifice to the war effort was devoting columns to how embarrassed liberals would be for criticizing W’s stunning success rebuilding Iraq (when he later wrote about how our leaders misjudged Iraq, he somehow forgot to mention his own errors). He remains enthusiastic about other people fighting wars while he cheers them on.

The belief (as John Stuart Mill put it “that savage life is preferable to civilized; that the work of civilization should as far as possible be undone” is not a new one. Nor is the belief of countless rich conservatives that working minimum wage jobs to support yourself is a proud and noble endeavor. That doesn’t make these views any more palatable or sensible. It’s true that someone who can work 40 hours a week, then chill in front of the TV knowing their bills are paid (during the Clinton years a lot more people could live that way) may never be driven to high achievement. But while someone who has to work 60 hour s a week to keep a roof over their kids’ head may be struggling harder and showing greater self-sacrifice, their life is not preferable.

And while I have respect for people who serve honorably in the military, coming home from Afghanistan with PTSD or a missing limb from combat is not preferable either. Certainly not compared to not getting involved in wars when it’s not necessary. Some conservatives wail that we’re not all stoic like the Donner Party, but you know what? Avoiding situations where people have to resort to cannibalism is preferable. If that takes government intervention, I’m okay with that.

It’s possible that people who have it easy will never achieve greatness, but struggling just to survive isn’t achieving greatness either. I’ve done a small bit of that and it’s not pleasant. Living more comfortably actually makes it easier to achieve: less stress, more time, greater mental resources.  It’s also possible to make sacrifices and contribute to the public good even in time of peace and prosperity. Donate to charity. Run a food bank. Give blood. Volunteer at an animal shelter. These are also easier to do when you have time and money.

There’s a line in the film Things to Come to the effect that “our revolution didn’t abolish danger or death, it simply made danger and death worthwhile!” That’s what people like Brooks and countless others who shit on peace and prosperity (for the common throng, that is — they ain’t giving up their own) don’t get. The challenge and struggle of launching a business, painting a masterpiece, writing a blockbuster investigative journalism piece, trying to change public policy, those mean something. The challenge and struggle just to put bread on the table? That’s necessary, but it’s not a desirable way to live. It’s depressing that some people think otherwise.

President Whiny continues crying that he’s being persecuted as no one ever has been. Right-wing militia are ready to fight if impeachment moves ahead. However it’s unlikely we’ll see civil war because most of those calling for it are as big a chickenhawk as Trump. John Fea points out the evangelicals enthusiastic for war are still benefitting from the aftermath of the last Civil War. And Paul Krugman calls out the “radical centrists” who insist Republicans just can’t be that much worse than Democrats.

Speaking of impeachment, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio goes with ROFL, Trump was just “needling the press” as an explanation of Trump calling for foreign governments to investigate the Bidens. At the NYT, Jamelle Boulle says this is less about fear of the base and more that Republican politicians support Trump on most issues. And both Jewish and Christian conservatives continue to argue that opposing Trump is opposing God.

Oh, and Trump mouthpiece attorney general William Barr says Trump doesn’t have to cooperate with impeachment because Watergate-related court decisions were wrong. Now, in other news:

David Brooks recently wrote a fantasy of what it’s like in the mind of an extremist. To follow that up, he has a fantasy conversation between an urban liberal and simple, plainspoken Midwesterner who has no interest in all the controversy (“There’s always some fight between Trump and the East Coast media. I guess I just try to stay focused on the big picture.”). Roy Edroso argues this kind of fantasy conversation is legitimate as a writing tool, but very badly done. LGM notes one of Brooks’ odder claims (which I’ve heard elsewhere) that liberal elites are big on marriage while telling other people to live in sin.

I’ve heard right-wingers freaking out about soy before, but now white supremacists are kicking it up a notch: veggie burgers are part of a Jewish conspiracy to destroy our standard of living. I can’t help suspecting the real issue (using the word “real” loosely) is the identification of eating meat with Real Manliness, so not eating it by definition means America is getting castrated.

An Alabama female inmate needed emergency medical treatment. The jail decided to check whether she had insurance to cover it. She died.

I doubt Trump reads comic books (they’re way beyond his comprehension) but that seems to be the source of his ideas for safeguarding the border.

A federal judge has ruled that Harvard using race as an element in weighing admissions does not discriminate against Asian-Americans.

McKrae Game spent decades running an “ex-gay” ministry. He’s now come out and admitted he never stopped being gay. At the link, Fred Clark looks at the failure of Game and similar anti-gay activists to prove gays can change their orientation.

Bill Maher thinks standing up to political correctness is the hill Democrats should die on.

Amber Guyger claimed she shot a black neighbor by accident thinking she’d walked into her apartment, not his. The court found her guilty. The most hair-raising part besides the tragic murder of her neighbor is the possibility that simply by thinking she was in her own apartment, the killing could be justified.

Fred Clark shows how the Southern strategy — shift from screaming racism to saying the out loud parts quietly — shapes conservative politics, but many believers don’t realize it. I think he has a point. When Jerry Falwell founded the religious right in the 1980s, opposing abortion made a better rallying cry than his pet issue, segregation. But certainly a lot of people now believe in forced birth as an end in itself.

Right-to-lifer James Patrick Johnston believes based on no evidence that ectopic pregnancies can be reimplanted so they shouldn’t be aborted (he also believes it’s better for the mother to die than abort any fetus). At the link, a look at how his bullshit is spreading.

Greta Thunberg is seriously triggering to right-wingers.