David Brooks is always good for a laugh. Like Buster Keaton, he may sit stone-faced while the building burns, but he always gets his message of why a ruling aristocracy in America is the best of all possible worlds out there courtesy of all the hyper-liberal unpatriotic anti-American folks at that bastion of Marxist syncretism, The New York Times. As an aside, funny how folks like Brooks never acknowledge that when the liberals hire a conservative, it's someone like him, and when the conservatives hire a liberal, it's someone like Alan Colmes.
His column of October 26, where he name-checked two patron saints of aspiring aristocrats, Edmund Burke and Alexander Hamilton, was a gas. Burke, of course, was the man who disapproved of the French Revolution not because of the Reign of Terror, which was indeed worthy of disapproval but hadn't happened yet when he published his Reflections, but really because it embodied ideas beyond those of his accepted status quo of men who will pay lip service to liberty but indeed relish authority greater. Hamilton, of all the major figures among the founding fathers had the least amount of commitment to democracy, making a speech at the Constitutional convention for a form of government far closer to a monarchy than that envisioned by his fellows. Brooks also went on about colluding corporatists, and generated other punch-lines.
His column of November 4 was as much of a hoot. Just for grins and because I have nothing better to do on this Thursday night, I'd like to pick it apart.
"Nov. 4, 2008, is a historic day because it marks the end of an economic era, a political era and a generational era all at once. Economically, it marks the end of the Long Boom, which began in 1983."
A Long Boom to your peers, David, but a reduction in the real buying power of wages to the great bulk of the American populace, as they saw the cost of higher education, homes and living soar while their paychecks failed to keep up. It's good, however, that you see this as the end of the Long Boom, as the aristocratic, class-war inducing, un-American, anti-democratic, shunt all the economic benefits to the top 1% gravy train will, hopefully, finally dry up after three decades of non-stop fun.
"Politically, it probably marks the end of conservative dominance, which began in 1980."
Amen to that.
"When historians look back at the era that is now closing, they will see a time of private achievement and public disappointment. In the past two decades, the United States has become a much more interesting place."
Interesting? You mean as corporate media destroyed individuality in radio and television to the point where commercial radio in America universally sucks, regardless of format? Where television is a wasteland of offal and lowest-common-denominator mind-numbing unimaginative escapist fantasy? Where our social meeting places are not communities but endless identical malls and mini-mart profit centers owned by people who never set foot in them? Where scant reference is ever made in the mainstream media to the legacy of human literary, artistic, and philosophical achievement from past history because it might interfere with corporate marketing schemes to keep people focused on a continual ever-present now of shopping bargains? That kind of interesting?
"Companies like Starbucks, Apple, Crate & Barrel, Microsoft and many others enlivened daily life."
My God, David, do you actually read your own drivel?
"Private citizens, especially young people, repaired the social fabric, dedicated themselves to community service and lowered drug addiction and teenage pregnancy."
Through Christian abstinence programs, no doubt. After all, drugs and sex are the real threats to the social fabric, not poverty, lack of affordable and quality education, hopelessness from an empty society fixated on immediate free-market consumer gratification and free-market destiny as cogs in the machine working soul-sucking jobs for a good percentage of the populace. Kids are always going to have sex, David. Maybe you remember this from your own youth. As far as the drugs are concerned, kids will always be excited by anything considered taboo, and adults continue to do them, at times, because they have no faith in finding a place they can call their own in our reality. A free market reality isn't concerned with promoting the general welfare or securing the blessings of liberty. A free market reality has to create winners and losers, David, there's no other way for it to function properly.
"Yet, at the same time, the public sphere has not flourished. Despite decades of affluence, longstanding issues like health care, education, energy and entitlement debt have not been adequately addressed."
Gee, I wonder why that happened, David? Have you noticed this: millions of Americans, at a grassroots level, have been demanding reform to health care for over ten years, but their pleas have gone unheeded by conservative-controlled Congresses. NAFTA, however, for which there was no grassroots entreaty, was presented to the American people as a fait accompli. Democracy in action, n'est-ce pas?
"The baby boomers, who entered adulthood promising a lifetime of activism, have been a politically undistinguished generation. They produced two presidents, neither of whom lived up to his potential. They remained consumed by the culture war that divided their generation. They pass their political supremacy today having squandered the fat years and the golden opportunities."
I agree, some of this is true. But I would submit that baby boomers who are less heralded, those who pursued activities of lower-visibility community activism, careers in restaurants, artisanship, crafts, writing, academia, and others not as well-rewarded by such free-market faves as insurance and investment banking, enriched your life, David, in ways you cannot begin to account. Before you object with some twaddle about the free market creating an equitable space for all of these individuals to pursue their lower visibility activities, David, please remember that the free market loves banking and insurance ahead of pursuing something that isn't solely about finance. How many big law firms are on retainer for high school teachers, small restauranteurs, editors of small-town newspapers, and furniture makers, and how many for insurance companies and banks, hmmm? Also, the baby boomers created culture. The culture wars were created by conservative reactionaries unable to accept the civil rights movement, unable to accept women wanting control of their own lives and their own bodies, unable to accept the fact that homosexuals are human beings first and foremost, unable to accept that while diplomacy may be slow and often frustrating it really is better than war, unable to accept that the separation of church and state embodies the often quicksilver quality of wisdom, unable to accept that America became a multi-ethnic and diverse nation long before the baby boomers arrived, and unable (at the time) to appreciate fabulous records by Bob Dylan, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, the Velvet Underground, and James Brown.
"Month by month, frustration has mounted. Americans are anxious about their private lives but absolutely disgusted by public leaders. So change is demanded."
Be more specific, David. Didn't they teach you that at U Chicago? Americans are absolutely disgusted by specific public leaders. That was clear on November 4.
"But the public demand for change was total, and if the polls are right, voters will elect the man who breaks from the recent past in almost every way."
Again, specifics. It couldn't be because of finally having a front-running Presidential candidate perceived as a progressive after a long stretch of nothing but moderates and nightmarish reactionaries, it couldn't be due to the disastrous reality inflicted upon America and the world by the previous administration and its attendant (and I do mean attendant) Congresses; it had to be due to some kind of inexorable historical tide. In a sense, that's true, but the backlash was against actual policy decisions by real individuals, not vaguely identifiable factors.
"Obama is not only a member of this temperate generation, but of its most educated segment. He has lived nearly his entire adult life within a few miles of one or another of the country’s top 10 universities."
And this is a bad thing because? Of course, the University of Chicago is just this modest little junior college, no? You were a history major, David. Ever read Richard Hofstadter?
"His upscale, post-boomer cohort has rallied behind him with unalloyed fervor. Major college newspapers have endorsed him at a rate of 63 to 1. The upscale educated class — from the universities, the media, the law and the financial centers — has financed his $600 million campaign (which relied on big-dollar donations even more heavily than George W. Bush’s 2004 effort). This cohort will soon become the ruling class."
According to the FEC, Obama received approximately 50% of his donations at $200 and under through October 15. I found this out on the Internet in two minutes. According to the same source, McCain received approximately two-thirds of his donations at greater than $200. And, as for this up-scale educated class becoming the ruling class, would you prefer a down-scale ignorant one instead? Especially if they pursue something other than just lining the coffers of themselves and their buddies in big business with as much coin of the realm as they can grab?
"Raised in prosperity, favored by genetics, these young meritocrats will have to govern in a period when the demands on the nation’s wealth outstrip the supply. They will grapple with the growing burdens of an aging society, rising health care costs and high energy prices. They will have to make up for the trillion-plus dollars the government will spend to avoid a deep recession. They will have to struggle to keep their promises to cut taxes, create an energy revolution, pass an expensive health care plan and all the rest."
Right, after all the money has been siphoned off to banks in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands by conservative would-be aristocrats feasting on the Long Boom, scarce resources remain to deal with the unadressed problems and new problems their legacy has left behind. On top of that, the remaining conservatives in Congress who spent like drunken sailors during the Bush II era will suddenly, miraculously, turn into the most stringent fiscal penny-pinchers imaginable. Trillions for a heinous war in Iraq, where no-bid contracts flourish, no problem. Money for affordable health care, sustainable energy programs, solutions to global warming? I'm sorry, Mr. President-Elect, didn't you see the figures on the deficit and the crippled economy we left you?
"In the next few years, the nation’s wealth will either stagnate or shrink. The fiscal squeeze will grow severe. There will be fiercer struggles over scarce resources, starker divisions along factional lines. The challenge for the next president will be to cushion the pain of the current recession while at the same time trying to build a solid fiscal foundation so the country can thrive at some point in the future."
You're really shameless, aren't you, David? Heaven forfend should you truthfully acknowledge the sources of the recession, the stark factional divisions, the scarcer resources. All these things just sort of arrived like sunrise or the weather, yes? That tidal forces thing again?
"We’re probably entering a period, in other words, in which smart young liberals meet a stone-cold scarcity that they do not seem to recognize or have a plan for."
We understand scarcity, David, some of us have been living it for a long time now. We do have a plan as well, and maybe President Obama and the 111th Congress will see it. It's called a New Deal, where Corporate America and the top income bracket pays its way in taxes commensurate to the benefits they receive from our society and its way of life. Unless, of course, you believe that it is indeed Corporate America and the top income bracket that creates our society and its way of life, and that the rest of us exist by the leave of our aristocratic masters.
"In an age of transition, the children are left to grapple with the burdens of their elders."
The activities of those elders, David, you have been cheer-leading for quite a good long time.
Well, that's it for now, David, and I hope I have entertained you as much as you have entertained me. You'll have a new column on Friday, and I can't wait.