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I've always thought that David Brooks was a boring Milquetoast - or is it milksop? - with no talent or energy for incisive analysis. And so, I hesitate to link him, but this may be useful.
Every single idea associated with the educated class has grown more unpopular over the past year.The ideas are old, but they now seem to have become street wisdom.The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.
The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should “go our own way” has risen sharply.
A year ago, the Obama supporters were the passionate ones. Now the tea party brigades have all the intensity.
The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against. They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy — with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation.I think that this is the definition used by the "educated class", who lack a sufficiently useful education to understand the ideas that animate the tea people.
This is an opportunity for those who wrongly think of themselves as the best and brightest, and who have had many advantages in our society, to live up to their own self images and truly seek to grasp what the tea people are for, rather than just keening about the sacred cows of the "educated class" that are being severely and repeatedly goosed.
It seems to me that the issue is lack of grounding. The supposedly educated classes believe their own bullshit, mistake rhetoric for reality, maps for territories, models for instantiated systems. The tea people are reacting to the absurdity of the free floating naked emperors because they are for reality, territories and the instantiated systems where real people actually live and work.
The educated classes are dreamy, irresponsible children. We indulge them somewhat since on rare occasion useful truths come from the mouths of babes. The dreamers need to come back to earth a bit and develop a more accurate self image. They are free to dream because there are sober adults on duty to provision and protect them.
I'd like to think that Brooks is wrong, but I have yet to see a clear and authoritative statement with respect to exactly what the tea party people want. Perhaps it's too soon to develop a platform/philosophy but until they do, this libertarian will sit on the side lines and watch.
Posted by: Rob at January 5, 2010 11:01 AMI'd prefer that there not be "a clear and authoritative statement with respect to exactly what the tea party people want" since that would necessarily be a resumption of business as usual and the moment would have passed.
I'd prefer a long simmering era of discontent - an age of skeptical animus - in which a thousand pretenders offer themselves as leaders but none garner significant support, and so great projects languish for lack of enthusiasm while multiple experiments are conducted on smaller scales.
Posted by: back40 at January 5, 2010 12:32 PMI dunno. I kinda like Brooks, partly because he's pretty consistent about tweaking the educated classes. I became aware of him when a cousin recommended "Bobo's in Paradise," which I liked very much when I read it.
He's also written some good advice for students, such as "Advice for High School Graduates":
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/10/advice-for-high-school-graduates/
and "Stressed for Success":
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/30/opinion/30BROO.html?pagewanted=1
I'd call him calm and self-deprecating rather than milquetoast. And such pundits (e.g. Mickey Kaus and Michael Barone) are often the most insightful.
And perhaps he's not "incisive", but thatword might be viewed as a mild approximation of "hubristic". Brooks is more likely to see the grey than most pundits.
Hi Dave, been a while.
One semi-compelling defense of Brooks notes that his job is to explain things to those who buy and read NYT, and that the style and substance of his writing is therefore highly constrained. There's only so much reality that the audience can take.
I find him to be uninteresting, like Kaus and Barone. It's just a matter of taste I suppose.
Brooks wasn't the subject of this post so much as was his class of semi-educated, self-regarding elitists who consistently disparage and disregard the views of other classes, educated or not. It hampers them in this situation since they have no tools to understand events.
It's not yet clear if these events will be very important a year from now, but it seems that they could be, and so are worth understanding now.
That's what I'm trying to do. My current take that they are objecting to reality departures and demanding grounding may well be wrong. What think you about that?
Posted by: back40 at January 6, 2010 05:51 PM