Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

David Brooks

Read for free his What if We Are the Bad Guys Here? 

I invite Vito Caiati's comments and anyone else's who is capable of saying something intelligent and to the point.

Addendum 8/6

I wonder if David Brooks can understand the point of the graphic below. In its third clause, the First Amendment guarantees free speech and the freedom of the press.  Now there was evidence of election fraud in the 2020 election.  Maybe a lot, maybe a little. No matter. But even if there was none all, we all have the right to express our opinion on the question, even Donald J. Trump. No man is below the law! Not even the president of the United States.  By indicting him, the deep state operatives in the DOJ, CIA, FBI, NSA, the White House, and wherever else are plainly interfering with the  2024 election.

And yet these people go on and on about democracy. But what could be more anti-democratic than election fraud? 

 

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Bill Vallicella

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12 responses to “David Brooks”

  1. Joe Odegaard Avatar
    Joe Odegaard

    The author of that article does not live in the real world, as shown by this quote of his:
    Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch hunt? Of course not. As a card-carrying member of my class, I still basically trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice. Trump is a monster in the way we’ve all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison.
    My bolding.

    Reply
  2. jim reibel Avatar
    jim reibel

    Brooks exposes his loyalty to the club by omitting any reference to Murray and Putnam and only referring to members of the elite club who are late to recognizing the obvious. He and the club would never reference Burnam.

    Reply
  3. Vito B. Caiati Avatar
    Vito B. Caiati

    This is one more of Brooks’ periodic self-serving exercises in evasion and deception, designed to propagate the fiction of his political moderation while actually advancing the ideology and practices of the radical Left, whose creature he is. To this end, he offers his gently cautionary “critique” of “the modern meritocracy,” made up of persons almost entirely on the Left, “most [of whom, Brooks assures his readers] are earnest, kind and public spirited. . .. [and who] take for granted and benefit from systems that have become oppressive,” thus driving “the less-educated classes [to]conclude that they are under economic, political, cultural and moral assault — and [to rally] around Trump as their best warrior against the educated class.”
    Leaving aside here the crucial question of the functional relation of this “modern meritocracy” to the classes in command of capital itself, what we have here is the simplistic reduction of the rising populism on the Right to that of exclusion and envy, something that could be remedied if the educated elite allowed broadened educational and occupational access and was less stringent in its linguistic and moral imperatives. In this way, all the fundamental issues that motivate those of us on the Right to oppose the current Leftist regime, wildly supported by the “meritocracy” are either masked or ignored: the undermining of national security and sovereignty with open borders (much more than the employment issue implied in passing by Brooks) and a globalist energy and industrial policy (again, involving much more than the loss of jobs à la Brooks), the assault on the most basic Constitutional rights, the destruction of the rule of law and public, the ceaseless attack on traditional social institutions and essentialist notions of sexuality, the weakening of the military through indoctrination in Leftist ideologies, the purposeful division of the people by race and ethnicity, and so on. None of this is mentioned because all of it is anathema to the Left, so Brooks, who either agrees with the latter on all or most of it or knows when to keep his mouth shut. You see, there is nothing to worry about, Brooks assures us, since he “still basically trust[s] the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice. Trump is a monster in the way we’ve all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison.” So, all will be well in the Republic, save for a bit of inequality, once the “monster” is properly restrained by our impeccably fair legal system. This is disgusting and beneath contempt.

    Reply
  4. JH Avatar
    JH

    Thanks for posting this article, Bill.
    Brooks carries the ball to the goal line and then fumbles it with regard to his self-awareness on his own position. Brooks paints a high-level picture of the frustrations that many Trump voters have and how Trump’s actions fight for these voters, but he ultimately retorts with a doubling-down of his unsupported trust of institutions and colleagues because of their goodness. The irony is palpable.
    If Brooks is serious about his position of the goodness of his institutions and colleagues that are steamrolling Constitutional rights, something more than “Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch hunt? Of course not” has to be said and supported. To be frank, the “of course” position that many of these elitist acolytes hold while using a sword of false rigorous academia is a great starting point for their additional self-examination.

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  5. Doug Avatar
    Doug

    Brooks deserves credit. In a world that has so weaponized “oppression”, identifying actual oppression and entertaining the possibility that it is quite different than politically-expedient oppression is exceedingly rare. The identities of the “oppressed classes” have become so central to the dogmas of the (actual) oppressors that those oppressors are, by and large, unwilling — perhaps incapable! — of questioning them.

    Reply
  6. EG Avatar
    EG

    Hi Bill,
    I did read David’s article. There was an interesting reply and rebuttal of sorts written up here (not mine): https://www.vox.com/2023/8/4/23818817/trump-support-david-brooks-economic-anxiety
    I’ll let others start the commentary, your interlocutors are (sometimes) interesting to read.

    Reply
  7. Eric "One Brow" Hogue Avatar
    Eric “One Brow” Hogue

    It’s easy to understand why people in less-educated classes would conclude that they are under economic, political, cultural and moral assault — and why they’ve rallied around Trump as their best warrior against the educated class.
    DeSantis is much more a warrior against the educated class than Trump, yet very few people are rallying around him. Perhaps Brooks misunderstands the thing being rallied around.

    Reply
  8. BV Avatar
    BV

    Vito penetrates to the heart of the matter:
    >>. . . what we have here is the simplistic reduction of the rising populism on the Right to that of exclusion and envy, something that could be remedied if the educated elite allowed broadened educational and occupational access and was less stringent in its linguistic and moral imperatives. In this way, all the fundamental issues that motivate those of us on the Right to oppose the current Leftist regime, wildly supported by the “meritocracy” are either masked or ignored: the undermining of national security and sovereignty with open borders (much more than the employment issue implied in passing by Brooks) and a globalist energy and industrial policy (again, involving much more than the loss of jobs à la Brooks), the assault on the most basic Constitutional rights, the destruction of the rule of law and public, the ceaseless attack on traditional social institutions and essentialist notions of sexuality, the weakening of the military through indoctrination in Leftist ideologies, the purposeful division of the people by race and ethnicity, and so on. None of this is mentioned . . . .<< It is difficult to understand how someone as intelligent as Brooks can fail to perceive the fundamedntal issues that Vito mentions. Is he willfully self-enstupidated? Is this what happens when one lives in a bubble and associates only with the like-minded? Could the man really believe what he wrote? Did he write so that he remains in good standing in the 'club'? Ignorance of the other side's view is not possible for conservatives since we are slapped in the face by leftist claptrap, lies, and linguistic hijacking ever which way we turn. They don't want to know our views, but we can't escape their views: leftists have captured and are undermining all our institutions.

    Reply
  9. Malcolm Pollack Avatar
    Malcolm Pollack

    What Vito has said here is spot-on. I’ve thought for a long time that Brooks holds a particularly contemptible position in the imperial court, as a kind of exotic, but thoroughly house-broken, jungle animal kept in lavish comfort for the amusement of his masters.
    “Brooks! Come over here and show our guests your fangs. Ah yes, there’s a good boy.”
    I’ll also second Jim R: for Brooks to write about assortative mating and how it has led to America’s “coming apart” as if it is his own observation, without mentioning Charles Murray’s scholarly book by that title, is tantamount to plagiarism. If Brooks had an ounce of virtue, he’d have given Murray full credit for his work, and would have denounced, for Murray’s shameful proscription, the ruling class he serves so cravenly.

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  10. Joe Odegaard Avatar
    Joe Odegaard

    Brother Bill, I would wager that Mr. Brooks really does believe in what he wrote; that he lives in a bubble, and especially that he has never worked with physical reality using his own hands, much less that he has ever worked in concert and harmony with other people, trying to produce something useful in the real, physical world.

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  11. Joe Odegaard Avatar
    Joe Odegaard

    I just looked up David Brook’s CV on Wiki. …
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Brooks_(commentator)
    And as I suspected, he has been a professional blabbermouth all his life, and has never built anything 3-dimentional.
    And, if he considers DJT to be a monster, then he consider DJT’s supporters either to be stupid, or otherwlse, monsters also.
    But he won’t say that out loud.

    Reply
  12. BV Avatar
    BV

    Steven Hayward (Powerline) on David Brooks. Here: https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/08/why-are-the-baddies-so-bad.php

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