Someone please tell
David Brooks that it doesn't matter that Dubya is a "Manager" and went to business school and drives a pick-up.
Bush is destroying America from the inside.
I don't really care that John Kerry plays classical guitar.
He might be able to turn America's disastrous tidal path. We're heading for the rocks.
It's been said that every society has two aristocracies. The members of the aristocracy of mind produce ideas, and pass along knowledge. The members of the aristocracy of money produce products and manage organizations. In our society these two groups happen to be engaged in a bitter conflict about everything from S.U.V.'s to presidents. You can't understand the current bitter political polarization without appreciating how it is inflamed or even driven by the civil war within the educated class.
--David Brooks
Of Managers and Professionals
I worked for a major corporation most of my life as one of David Brooks' "Managers" in a "Professional's" skin. A false career for me, I suppose, when you consider my nature, although I did very well and derived a sense of personal satisfaction for a job well-done. After a post 9/11 career change, I now do the work that better suits my nature. 9/11 informed me in a way that no career-advisor could ever inform a client.
Life isn't very long.
We need to do what we can while were here.
Watching all Bush has done after 9/11..pick-up truck and classical guitar considerations aside...I know that part of what I need to do is to remind my fellow Americans that we have a dangerous man at the helm of a country so many of us love with breath and depth indescribably immense.
Brooks blames the citizenry
One look at a man like Lincoln Chaffee or Christopher Shays completely dilutes Brooks' pick-up/management overgeneralizations. Chaffee, Shays, Chuck Hagel, Richard Lugar...just a few examples of GOP men who do not fit Brooks' "Manager" overgeneralization. Brooks says, if not for the civil war within the educated class in America, this country would be far less polarized. I wonder why it is Brooks fails to fault leadership in Washington, D.C. for the absolutely shitty job they've done this past decade (especially the "vast Mellon-Scaife-style right-wing") to show the American people what it means to intelligently argue their ideals without all the ad hominem attacks? These are the figureheads of our nation. If they are not charged with heavy responsibility for setting the tone of civility, who should be? To fail to assign blame where blame belongs is little more than delusional and misleading dissemination on Mr. Brooks' part.
America was born through the driving force of David Brooks' Professionals
David Brooks says:
"Managers are more likely to value leaders whom they see as simple, straight-talking men and women of faith."
Let me be blunt. Ben Franklin got more tail than a toilet seat. He loved the women. That wouldn't go over big with the faith-crowd in today's technological news age. Yet, Ben Franklin's abundance of ideas fostered the creation of our nation.
David Brooks says:
"[Managers] prize leaders who are good at managing people, not just ideas. They are more likely to distrust those who seem overly intellectual or narcissistically self-reflective."
Dear heavens. "Managers" would have HATED Ben Franklin.
If Brooks thinks he's broken some magical political code with this analysis, someone needs to know we're out here laughing...through our tears.