Ego Tripping With David Brooks

[Reader’s note: I wrote this last August and forgot to publish it. But all the points are still relevant and David Brooks is still useless, so here you go.]

David Brooks once came close to a useful thought, but as usual his own lofty credentials (and ego) got in the way. Here’s an archived version in case you want to follow along at home. Let’s jump right in to the nitwittery.

Donald Trump seems to get indicted on a weekly basis. Yet he is utterly dominating his Republican rivals in the polls, and he is tied with Joe Biden in the general election surveys. Trump’s poll numbers are stronger against Biden now than at any time in 2020.

“Seems to get indicted?” Like or hate Donald Trump, indictments aren’t things that “happen” to someone, like hurricanes, cancer, or the sudden onset of another David Brooks column. It’s not like Trump keeps doing new stuff to get indicted - these cases are all based on past events, while the timing of each indictment is quite suspiciously politically convenient.

Either Trump is Orange Hitler or the DOJ has been politically weaponized. Brooks’ passive language removes any responsibility - it just happened. And Trump must be a bad guy - see, he keeps getting indicted!

But Trump is still polling well compared to the poster boy for Conflict of Interest currently occupying the White House. How have all these randomly occurring indictments not managed to make Trump supporters understand he’s just plain evil?

We anti-Trumpers often tell a story to explain that. It was encapsulated in a quote the University of North Carolina political scientist Marc Hetherington gave to my colleague Thomas B. Edsall recently: “Republicans see a world changing around them uncomfortably fast, and they want it to slow down, maybe even take a step backward. But if you are a person of color, a woman who values gender equality or an L.G.B.T. person, would you want to go back to 1963? I doubt it.”

We’ve had our first glimpse of why no populist voter bothers to read David Brooks anymore. His example is a ludicrous false choice - we must either have 1) everything as it is today or 2) everything as it was in 1963.

[We’ll be addressing the difference between a Republican and a populist another time.]

Brooks reasons like a ten year old, but outside the adult daycare center that is The New York Times we can handle the concept that some things might have been better in 1963 and other things might be better today. It’s like he’s yelling “let us put porn in middle school libraries or all the black people return to riding in the back of the bus!”

He’s already mis-characterized the group of people whose motivations he’s analyzing, and immediately draws a dumb conclusion:

Many Republicans support Trump no matter what, according to this story, because at the end of the day he’s still the bigot in chief, the embodiment of their resentments, and that’s what matters to them most.

I partly agree with this story; but it’s also a monument to elite self-satisfaction.

Did you get that? Trump embodies the resentments and bigotry of the lower classes, and that’s all they care about. They definitely couldn’t have any reasonable criticisms about how their country is being demolished (After all, it’s controlled by people like David Brooks and we all know he’s super educated and smart).

It can’t possibly be that Trump’s supporters are people who recognize that many things are worse today and that he’s the only viable candidate willing to talk about it. Brooks is ignoring the possibility that many people might be supportive of Trump not because they like Trump, but because he’s their antidote to people like David Brooks.

I’ve met plenty of these folks (fine people?). The typical Trump supporter doesn’t think Trump is the second coming of Jesus (although they love teasing the other side about that). Most of them have a list of issues with Trump - he’s no one’s paragon of moral virtue.

But he’s also the only option they see to fight back at the national level.

As an analogy, Trump is a bit like chemotherapy. Nobody likes chemotherapy - but how else were you planning on treating the cancer that is the current administrative state? People don’t get to assemble their ideal Presidential candidate from a bin of parts, carefully building the perfect human.

Their assumption (and it’s a reasonable one) is that whomever the deep state hates most is the person who will do the most damage to the deep state. They recognize the real enemy.

Ironically, a lot of these voters would probably be willing to switch to Robert Kennedy, Jr. for the same reason. They’re willing to compromise with him on environmental issues if he’s willing to shut down the CDC. And the FDA. And the ATF…

Brooks then talks about both conscription in the Vietnam War and the school busing program, and the impact these things had on regular folks when they saw their elite betters being unaffected by their own policies.

The ideal that “we’re all in this together” was replaced with the reality that the educated class lives in a world up here, and everybody else is forced into a world down there.

Throughout the piece he continually conflates “credentialed” with “educated.” It’s actually the credentialed class who live “up there” while the rest of us live down here. They may have expensive diplomas, but educated they most certainly are not.

And because he just can’t help himself, we get some Weapons Grade Condescension.

Members of our class are always publicly speaking out for the marginalized, but somehow we always end up building systems that serve ourselves.

Apparently members of his exalted class “always” speak out for “the marginalized.” Marginalized, as in pushed to the margins of society. You mean like Trump voters? Of course not. Remember, they want to go back to 1963!

Did it ever occur to Brooks that small business owners being wrecked by policies he supports are also being marginalized? No, his little buzzword is really code for “those whom I have determined, in my infinite class wisdom, are worthy of aid.”

But somehow he and his buddies always end up benefiting themselves rather than the intended recipients of their grand benevolence. Getting close, David! But Brooks decides not to pursue the obvious follow-up question. Why do those systems always end up benefiting people in “his class"?”

Those of us without his fancy credentials already know the answer. Because that’s the actual goal of those systems. Most non-profits, for example, pay huge salaries to their top executives and board members. That position on the Board of Directors of The Benevolent Society to Aid the Poors impresses one’s upper class friends, and nobody discusses the additional thousands of people who could have been helped if the Noble CEO were willing to fly coach. One can’t act nobly without the benefits and trappings of nobility!

Like all good responsibility-dodgers Brooks focuses in on something systemic, and therefore not the fault of the people raking in the Benefit Bucks. And this is where the hard-core stupid starts.

The most important of those systems is the modern meritocracy. We built an entire social order that sorts and excludes people on the basis of the quality that we possess most: academic achievement.

Having equated “credentialed” with “educated” he now goes on to conflate “credentialed” with “possessing merit.” The connection he’s drawn is that academic credentials are the equivalent of merit, and we live in a meritocratic society. No and no.

In a society that more and more is conferring degrees on students who by all rights should never have been admitted to a university, we’ve created a generation of graduates for whom the relationship between their diploma and their competency is zero. But the kids at Brooks’ elite schools will wind up running companies because their daddies run those companies today, and for no other reason.

This next quote is so moronic and nonsensical that’s it’s reached the depths of Not Even Wrong.

Daniel Markovits summarized years of research in his book “The Meritocracy Trap”: “Today, middle-class children lose out to the rich children at school, and middle-class adults lose out to elite graduates at work. Meritocracy blocks the middle class from opportunity. Then it blames those who lose a competition for income and status that, even when everyone plays by the rules, only the rich can win.”

If only the rich can win, THEN IT’S NOT A MERITOCRACY. Dipshit. Ask yourself “but why do middle-class kids lose out to rich kids?” A lawsuit against Harvard showed us their minority admissions program is really just a cover for the fact that the children of elites always get in, regardless of merit. So stop manipulating the Harvard admissions panel. Meritocracy isn’t blocking the middle class - you are.

And which group’s members end up running daddy’s company? We already know the answer. His entire screed is based on the assumption that an elite education creates knowledgeable, worthy leaders - and that’s why they get the plum jobs.

The reality is that being handed an impressive sounding degree from an Ivy League school is just one of the steps in the process that enables them to pretend merit is involved. This isn’t academic achievement. It’s the anointing of the pre-chosen few.

This part of the essay adds nothing to his basic argument, so I assume it’s there to remind everyone how grateful we should be to live in a country dominated by people like David Brooks.

In 2020, Biden won only 500 or so counties, but together they are responsible for 71 percent of the American economy. Trump won over 2,500 counties, responsible for only 29 percent.

What the hell does “responsible for” even mean? If a company’s headquarters is in Delaware but it’s manufacturing plant is in rural Tennessee then the revenue, profit and taxes are all handled in Delaware - which isn’t where the work took place.

If the oil is in North Dakota but the holding company is headquartered in San Jose, what is the actual source of the value?

If all the work is now done in China - well, I suppose we should all be grateful that Brooks’ friends throw the poors a bone in the form of welfare, rather than be angry that they moved all the manufacturing jobs overseas.

People keep telling me that “the bottom half of earners pay no tax.” If that’s true, then force that bottom half to be completely idle all year and let’s see if tax revenue stays the same. It won’t. Jeff Bezos doesn’t ship packages, the people who work for him do.

The fact that our f’d up system sends the financial rewards into Bezos’ pockets before part of it goes to the IRS doesn’t mean the peons in the trucks aren’t the ones responsible for the economic output. But it’s easy to ignore this when you’re a member of the upper class - they don’t spend much time with the poors.

In the book “Social Class in the 21st Century,” sociologist Mike Savage and his co-researchers found that the members of the highly educated class tend to be the most insular, measured by how often we have contact with those who have jobs unlike our own.

At least he admits they’re all a bunch of douchebags. It’s really easy to denigrate the value of work you never see.

Brooks moves from “a meritocratic society keeps some people down because they didn’t get my fancy diploma” to another dimension of stupidity.

We also change the moral norms in ways that suit ourselves, never mind the cost to others. For example, there used to be a norm that discouraged people from having children outside of marriage, but that got washed away during our period of cultural dominance, as we eroded norms that seemed judgmental or that might inhibit individual freedom.

After this social norm was eroded, a funny thing happened. Members of our class still overwhelmingly married and then had children within wedlock. People without our resources, unsupported by social norms, were less able to do that.

[Interesting use of the word “we” here. David Brooks used to claim to be a conservative, and I’m pretty sure it’s the liberals who have had cultural dominance for many decades - just look at the arts, entertainment and education.]

Notice he asserts they changed social norms in ways that suit themselves, but still have their children within wedlock. So what about changing that social norm “suited” Brooks and his ilk? It suits them because they benefit from destroying two-parent homes in the lower classes, which justifies their other interventions.

Time to go Thomas Sowell on his elitist ass.

Sowell has often pointed out that in the early 20th century black families were less likely than white families to be single parent homes - until welfare started rewarding single parent homes. Which came first, the welfare programs or the change in norms that made single parenting more acceptable?

For working class people being a single parent is hard for very the practical reasons of time and money. His elitist social programs eased those constraints - and in fact provide so much support that some women are essentially being paid to make babies for the state to indoctrinate. The “erosion of norms” was done to make this outcome acceptable to the rest of us.

This is one of the concerns of those people who “want to go back to 1963.” The thing that should have been the exception (single parent homes) has become the norm, and the wider non-elite society is suffering as a result. That’s what those evil Trump supporters are objecting to.

And at the end, Brooks blows any tiny bit of credibility he could possibly have left. This part resulted in a literal spit-take while I was reading:

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.

“I still basically trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice.” Does everyone get it now? This is why David Brooks has a syndicated column. He’s paid to convince us simpletons that The System Works. Simply incredible.

Hey Brooks, where did all those credentialed experts you trust so much come from? Oh right, from the “meritocratic” system that only rewards people in your class - of course they’re trustworthy. Both their and your power (and lifestyles) depend on that system, so of course you all insist the system is sound. Are you brainwashed, or the brain-washer?

After the disastrous government responses to multiple crises in the last few years, the rest of us have realized the whole place is run by crooks and idiots. But according to Brooks the government is run by meritorious educated class Fellows like himself, so it can’t possibly be the problem.

He’s David Brooks, by God. He knows better.