HOW AMERICA GOT MEAN

[Satchel 6908]

“Meanwhile, the world is FUCKED! Freaking out is a completely normal and logical response to Donald Trump being President and Trump’s behavior in office. What is NOT logical is being the contrarian millionaire who steps back and folds his arms and points at the fire alarm and declares, “Now THAT might be the real problem here."

Isn’t this how we collectively deal the the scourge of gun violence?

[atomheartbevo 89450]

9 hours ago, Satchel said:

Since our sanctuary is undergoing significant renovations, we have not returned to the multiple services format. The programming for the one service we have is heavily programmed to appeal to young people. It’s disorienting to the majority of boomers in attendance, but it’s where we are. 

Hyde Park Baptist?

[wildcat09 29260]

10 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

So, I am unfamilar with Brooks beyond relatively recent writing in The Atlantic.

According to some of you, he was at one time the Grand Dragon?

He's been among the "center-right" intellectual pundits who helped cover up and deflect concern from the growing rise of fascism among the right for the past few decades. He's particularly irksome because all he really does most of the time is a slightly higher-brow version of Tom Friedman's "when I was in Mumbai I was riding in a taxi and saw a Nike billboard and this is why..." schtick, with a gloss of faux-humility over everything that is transparently bullshit if you know anything about him or read him for long. For example, anyone with any real humility wouldn't have the gall to teach a course on humility at Yale where he just made students read his own NYT op-eds. 

[G650 14108]

10 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

So, I am unfamilar with Brooks beyond relatively recent writing in The Atlantic.

You serious Clark

[crash_davis 23084]

Everyone feels entitled. From fuck head thieves mass robbing stores to asshole Karens in retail store lines going off on hourly workers who are just trying to survive in this economic bullshit, it's a fucking disease. It doesn't help that we have politicians acting like 12 year olds wishing harm and hurling profanities and insults at people who don't agree with them.

People of faith will have you believe it's because we turned away from some magical book but that's utter bullshit. Using their warped, perverted views of their holy books as justification, those same people of faith are adding fuel to the bullshit by driving fatwas against groups of people. It's ok to hate people because they are entitled by god.

As a society, I don't see how we turn around this bus to hell. 

[Biff Tannen 45499]

12 hours ago, cactusflinthead said:

All that matters are performative culture displays. Because Brooks’ life is free from oppression, he believes oppression does not exist. In those rare moments when it does exist, it is practiced by liberal agitators and crafty postmodern academics.

Fatty is Brooks?

[atomheartbevo 89450]

2 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

As a society, I don't see how we turn around this bus to hell. 

Trump is extremely unique, and there is nobody like him on the horizon for the whackos, the emos, etc. to rally around. He will lose again, but continue to grift , after he is gone, we will just get distracted by the newest reality TV show or Netflix show or sports story and then move on.

All of these people angry about everything weren't born yesterday, and once their Lord God King Emperor Trump is locked up or buried, and once they realize there are consequences for their actions (and arguably that is happening even as we speak), they will learn to keep a lid on the stupid shit like they were doing before 2016.

[Macanudo 12928]

3 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Trump is extremely unique, and there is nobody like him on the horizon for the whackos, the emos, etc. to rally around. He will lose again, but continue to grift , after he is gone, we will just get distracted by the newest reality TV show or Netflix show or sports story and then move on.

All of these people angry about everything weren't born yesterday, and once their Lord God King Emperor Trump is locked up or buried, and once they realize there are consequences for their actions (and arguably that is happening even as we speak), they will learn to keep a lid on the stupid shit like they were doing before 2016.

Trump really wasn't on the horizon before, what, 2014?   I know he was involved in the birther crap before that but did anyone really think he was going to run for, let alone win, the presidency in 2010?   2012?   He ramped up really, really fast.  The next demagogue might take a little longer but he's probbably out there somewhere.

[crash_davis 23084]

Just now, atomheartbevo said:

Trump is extremely unique, and there is nobody like him on the horizon for the whackos, the emos, etc. to rally around. He will lose again, but continue to grift , after he is gone, we will just get distracted by the newest reality TV show or Netflix show or sports story and then move on.

All of these people angry about everything weren't born yesterday, and once their Lord God King Emperor Trump is locked up or buried, and once they realize there are consequences for their actions (and arguably that is happening even as we speak), they will learn to keep a lid on the stupid shit like they were doing before 2016.

It's like the Genie, after you unleash crazy, you probably not going to put it back in the bottle.

Millions of people like this dumb bitch are not going to just turn off the crazy switch. They are empowered by crazy. This bitch was on a high during this show. Everyday after, I bet she masturbated with a cucumber remembering this moment, how fucking awesome she was for creating a fucking scene. 

 

[David Dennison 18661]

20 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

Everyone feels entitled. From fuck head thieves mass robbing stores to asshole Karens in retail store lines going off on hourly workers who are just trying to survive in this economic bullshit, it's a fucking disease. It doesn't help that we have politicians acting like 12 year olds wishing harm and hurling profanities and insults at people who don't agree with them.

People of faith will have you believe it's because we turned away from some magical book but that's utter bullshit. Using their warped, perverted views of their holy books as justification, those same people of faith are adding fuel to the bullshit by driving fatwas against groups of people. It's ok to hate people because they are entitled by god.

As a society, I don't see how we turn around this bus to hell. 

We should probably stop catering to the elite with neo-liberal policies that channel capital upward. 

But who am I kidding? This is America.

[ultimaton 2966]

1 hour ago, crash_davis said:

It's like the Genie, after you unleash crazy, you probably not going to put it back in the bottle.

Millions of people like this dumb bitch are not going to just turn off the crazy switch. They are empowered by crazy. This bitch was on a high during this show. Everyday after, I bet she masturbated with a cucumber remembering this moment, how fucking awesome she was for creating a fucking scene. 

 

That felt like a real life I Think You Should Leave bit

[UpperWestside 6136]

13 hours ago, cactusflinthead said:

 

But, there's this from Magary.

way back in 2017

You know what? Fuck your worrisome. You’ll pardon me if I find the fact that Donald Trump is in charge far more worrisome than whether or not his detractors rightfully assume he’s into some bad shit. Brooks has the whole Tasteful Objection verbiage down. Things are worrisome, or troubling, or raise serious questions, or give him pause. Meanwhile, the world is FUCKED! Freaking out is a completely normal and logical response to Donald Trump being President and Trump’s behavior in office. What is NOT logical is being the contrarian millionaire who steps back and folds his arms and points at the fire alarm and declares, “Now THAT might be the real problem here."

 

https://www.gq.com/story/david-brooks-trump-whitewater

That's two. There's so much more.

Can you really trust what a fan of the Minnesota Vikings thinks? 😉 I’m a subscriber to Defector (read him for years on Deadspin before that) so of course I love reading Magary. His WYTS (Why Your Team Sucks) articles every August are a must read.

[Anastasis 23394]

On 8/17/2023 at 9:50 AM, Brisketexan said:

What have we done?  We have create a secular societal religion that is based on the utterly false, counter-productive foundational beliefs that 1) the individual is god, and 2) kindness and empathy for others are a betrayal of that god.

Spot on, imo. 

It can be framed up any number of ways, but I think that it fundamentally boils down to erosion of community orientation and a growing depersonalization and failure to see the humanity in others and in ourselves. Toss in certain accelerators, like social media for example, and you can start to unravel civilization and its institutions pretty quickly 

[Captainant 27467]

1 hour ago, Anastasis said:

It can be framed up any number of ways, but I think that it fundamentally boils down to erosion of community orientation and a growing depersonalization and failure to see the humanity in others and in ourselves. Toss in certain accelerators, like social media for example, and you can start to unravel civilization and its institutions pretty quickly 

It's less so an individually decided or directed depersonalization, and moreso depersonalization being pushed down on us by our corporate overlords in the quest for greater profit. Everything is so geared on removing people from the process in order to reduce costs (to improve profits) that we the people are also internalizing that and operating on that basis.

It's abundantly clear in how modern American society operates in everything from schooling to medicine to housing to food: profit matters above all else, and all other human concerns are subservient to it. Hell, there's a vocal contingent on surly that don't support anything unless it can fund/pay for itself - right down to lifesaving care!

[fattyflattie 4636]

4 hours ago, Biff Tannen said:

Fatty is Brooks?

I understand oppression exists.

[nbmishoid 941]

4 hours ago, crash_davis said:

Everyone feels entitled. From fuck head thieves mass robbing stores to asshole Karens in retail store lines going off on hourly workers who are just trying to survive in this economic bullshit, it's a fucking disease. It doesn't help that we have politicians acting like 12 year olds wishing harm and hurling profanities and insults at people who don't agree with them.

People of faith will have you believe it's because we turned away from some magical book but that's utter bullshit. Using their warped, perverted views of their holy books as justification, those same people of faith are adding fuel to the bullshit by driving fatwas against groups of people. It's ok to hate people because they are entitled by god.

As a society, I don't see how we turn around this bus to hell. 

Chris Rhea with the lyric

[nbmishoid 941]

2 hours ago, Anastasis said:

Spot on, imo. 

It can be framed up any number of ways, but I think that it fundamentally boils down to erosion of community orientation and a growing depersonalization and failure to see the humanity in others and in ourselves. Toss in certain accelerators, like social media for example, and you can start to unravel civilization and its institutions pretty quickly 

I’ve heard it referred to as the atomization of society, referring to much of your list.  Just individuals, weak institutional fidelity.  Hard to see show to cobble Humptey back together again.

[Anastasis 23394]

20 minutes ago, nbmishoid said:

Hard to see show to cobble Humptey back together again.

I don't see it either. Societies fail. Civilizations fail. They are replaced by new ones. 

[tbone_ 14026]

Spot on, imo. 
It can be framed up any number of ways, but I think that it fundamentally boils down to erosion of community orientation and a growing depersonalization and failure to see the humanity in others and in ourselves. Toss in certain accelerators, like social media for example, and you can start to unravel civilization and its institutions pretty quickly 

I’d add constant never ending assault of media messages of how bad things are. That as much as anything has fucked people up imo.

[Hermanator 6945]

On 8/22/2023 at 2:58 PM, nbmishoid said:

 Hard to see show to cobble Humptey back together again.

Won't ever be able to get it back completely but right now we need to work on cutting back the vitriol. 

On 8/20/2023 at 1:35 PM, atomheartbevo said:

Here you go @Brisketexan and everybody else in this thread.

 

One thing from this video that would absolutely help is banning all algorithm based recommendations on social media. No more recommendations allowed, period. People are lazy shits and if they have to search and type in something to find it they mostly won't do it. Most of them are too stupid to figure it out anyway. Remove the firehose of hate being blasted into people's faces and they'll start to lose interest. 

[Bama Llama 1447]

This (video below) still resonates. This and “cynicism is not the answer either.” Light candles and quit wasting time cursing the darkness. Treat others the way you want to be treated and keep

moving

foward.

 

Edited August 25, 2023 by Bama Llama
Splellink

[troph 24563]

gilded age levels of wealth inequality, population increases near expected sustainability limits, resource scarcity, weather extremes… We are tribal, ruthless, filthy consumers of resources. The veneer has always been thin. So, good luck getting people to be nice without solving for those concerns.

Edited August 25, 2023 by troph

[Biff Tannen 45499]

6 hours ago, Hermanator said:

Won't ever be able to get it back completely but right now we need to work on cutting back the vitriol. 

One thing from this video that would absolutely help is banning all algorithm based recommendations on social media. No more recommendations allowed, period. People are lazy shits and if they have to search and type in something to find it they mostly won't do it. Most of them are too stupid to figure it out anyway. Remove the firehose of hate being blasted into people's faces and they'll start to lose interest. 

Isn't it pretty to think so?

The almighty dollar will never allow it.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13414]

anecdotal story on being being mean or at least inconsiderate: I've started traveling more over the last few months than I had since 2018 or so. With charging for checked bags, we all know that people bring on more carry-ons. In my recent flights, it's very common for the gate agent to ask people to put their 1 large carry-on in the upper compartment while placing their smaller carry-on by their feet. This allows for the last boarding people to not gate check their bag. 

I see plenty of people put all their shit in the upper compartment even small bags or backpacks. It's basically screw the last people getting on. A not-my-problem attitude. Many don't seem willing to take on the smallest sacrifice to help an unknown person.

Or I've seen online attitudes from people that don't care about their behavior at a concert because the ticket price justifies them doing whatever they want even if it harms the person next/behind them in also enjoying the concert. 

[safe sex 11684]

Unless big structural changes happen to the American form of capitalism, I don't think we can make any progress.

[nbmishoid 941]

1 hour ago, safe sex said:

Unless big structural changes happen to the American form of capitalism, I don't think we can make any progress.

No FDR on the horizon, safe.  We are supposed to choose from the repub debate positions of last night.  Cue vomit emoji.

[wildcat09 29260]

A pretty good critique of the David Brooks piece:

Quote

David Brooks believes he has finally figured it out: He has identified the root of all evil that plagues the United States. In a long feature for The Atlantic’s September issue titled “How America Got Mean,” Brooks outlines his diagnosis of a country in a deep “emotional, relational, and spiritual crisis” that also “undergirds our political dysfunction and the general crisis of our democracy.” But why? Why has the once great nation succumbed to despair and degenerated into, in David Brooks’ estimation, such a mean, sad place? The story Brooks tells is one of moral decay – where once there was personal virtue and a whole network of institutions built to foster it, there is now a black hole of amoral emptiness that people try to fill in the most disastrous of ways: by engaging in “tribalism.”

David Brooks is one of the country’s most famous pundits and a leading voice of the “moderate” center-Right. He is also, undoubtedly, a key target for the political Left – and frankly, for people like me who consider him a prime example of a vacuous pundit class with a regrettably large influence that presents itself as reasonable and above the fray while only ever preaching the gospel of status-quo preservation. Not that David Brooks would ever care to engage with whatever criticism I have to offer. But if he were to stumble upon this essay, I am certain he would consider it yet more evidence of how “mean” everyone has become.  

How about this: Instead of going for the short, easy dunk, I will present his argument in quite some detail, as fair and precise as I can, then outline why I don’t think it holds up to serious scrutiny. And I will explain why I believe it is indicative of a much larger problem: A pervasive longing for a golden past that never really existed – something in which elites across the political spectrum love to indulge – that provides dangerously fertile ground for a reactionary politics of weaponized nostalgia.  

What’s wrong with America, according to David Brooks

David Brooks paints a depressing picture of the miserable condition in which he sees the United States: Its people are being rude and selfish, social trust has completely deteriorated, a loneliness epidemic has spread across the land, suicide rates are soaring, and there is crime, so much crime.

Brooks dismisses the usual explanations that focus on social media, economic insecurity, or racial and cultural anxiety as inadequate. There is something deeper going on: A lack of what the author calls “moral formation,” leaving people stranded in a pitiful state of amoral desperation. As Brooks describes it, “moral formation” is a process by which a “web of institutions” trains people how to “restrain their selfishness,” teaches them “basic social and ethical skills,” and helps them “find a purpose in life.”

According to Brooks, the United States used to do a good job at this. For about the first 175 years of its existence, from the founding all the way through the Second World War, “America was awash in morally formative institutions.” Brooks talks about the Founding Fathers designing the Constitution to mitigate the flaws of human nature, he brings up schools, churches, and private clubs as pillars of a functioning system of moral education. Americans, according to Brooks, grew up and learned to live as part of a moral society because they existed in this system that trained “the heart and body” rather than just the intellect, made sure people understood there was an “objective moral order” that is beyond individual perspective, and emphasized personal virtue above all else.

All that changed around the middle of the twentieth century, however. After the Second World War, David Brooks explains, a new – and dangerously corrosive! – gospel spread like wildfire: The idea that society needed to prioritize individual liberation from coercive structures. In turn, “moral formation” was largely abandoned: “In sphere after sphere, people decided that moral reasoning was not really relevant.” The result was a culture devoid of moral education, and Americans had to grow up in a morally inarticulate, self-referential world. With pity rather than scorn, Brooks describes what he sees as a largely amoral younger generation, devoid of a discernible moral compass.

The abandonment of “moral formation” has a direct political impact. All these amoral narcissists are fundamentally insecure people, and Brooks warns us that they will seek to fill the gaping hole that defines them: “Over the past several years, people have sought to fill the moral vacuum with politics and tribalism.” We are now past the state of “hyper-individualism” into something far worse, far more treacherous. The only way for amoral people to feel righteous, Brooks explains, is to engage in “tribal” group conflict and claim to be victimized at the hands of their enemies. The result is no longer what Brooks understands as “normal politics,” but a dangerous “politics of recognition.” As people are trying “to escape sadness, loneliness, and anomie through politics,” they have created “a world marked by fear and rage, by a sadistic striving for domination.” What is really threatening the Republic, according to David Brooks, is “the pulverizing destructiveness of moral war.”

A terrifying diagnosis – just not a convincing one

The diagnosis that is outlined in “How America Got Mean” is very David Brooks, and very conservative. It has all the hallmarks of the Brooksian style of punditry: Big arguments are often based on impossible-to-verify anecdotes – if that is even the right term for some of the assertions in this piece. If you have ever read a David Brooks column or book, you know he likes to present conversations with anonymous people, just regular folk, as evidence. In here, he recounts what a restaurant owner told him, or a head nurse at a hospital. Did these conversations actually happen in exactly this way? Maybe. Even if they did, should we base a story of secular decline of an entire nation on them? There is more, of course. Brooks weaves together an eclectic mix of de-contextualized references. That’s the kind of evidence you find here – it is a diagnosis defined by a chasm between the enormity of the claim and the rather uninspiring empirical basis.

The resulting narrative is a variation of the standard conservative lament about the present, with many of the central building blocks of the conservative worldview: A society defined by a lack of morality; too much focus on individualism, self-actualization, and selfishness; hollowed-out materialism and consumerism. Oh, the young generation, what is to be done with them? And now, on top of all that, the common good under siege from “tribalism” and “identity politics.” In contrast, the past is presented as virtuous and invoked with reverence. Brooks tells a tale of decline and loss.

There are at least three major problems with the diagnosis Brooks presents here. First, he operates entirely on the level of individual behavior – be kind, be nice, be considerate. That’s all well and good. But Brooks seems completely unwilling to grapple with the systemic injustices and inequalities against which all the individual niceties in the world must fail as an antidote.

Secondly, Brooks completely obscures the specifics and the stakes of the political conflict that is shaping the country and has shaped much of U.S. history. It’s worth going into some detail on this point. How misleading this approach of dissolving everything into an ultimately apolitical morality tale is becomes clear if we look a little more closely at some of the evidence Brooks presents. “At the far extreme of meanness,” we are being told early on, “hate crimes rose in 2020 to their highest level in 12 years. ... Same with gun sales.” Gun sales did indeed spike during the pandemic – a basically unprecedented historical event that Brooks simply ignores. He is not interested in grappling with how the pandemic might have distorted some of the numbers and trends he is citing, everything has to fit into his grand tale that spans centuries. Are all Americans hoarding firearms? Not quite. Republicans are a lot more likely than Democrats to buy or own a gun, let alone many guns. And only one of the two major parties has made the gun cult a key element of its political identity. Doesn’t matter to Brooks – to him, everything must fit under the “America got meaner” label.

What about the rise in hate crimes in 2020? According to the Department of Justice and the FBI, it was almost entirely due to an increase in racist and antisemitic incidents, in attacks on Muslims and other people of non-Christian faiths, in crimes against people who present as gender non-conforming and against trans people. Once again, there seems to be a specific political valence here, one that Brooks is adamant to ignore. It’s all just a lack of “moral formation,” across the board.

Look closely at the phenomena Brooks presents as evidence for his morality tale and they point to a concrete political conflict. For that, however, Brooks has nothing but contempt. Brooks is as disgusted as he is frustrated by what he perceives as silly “tribalism,” all this virtue signaling to fill the moral void: “The person practicing the politics of recognition is not trying to get resources for himself or his constituency; he is trying to admire himself. He’s trying to use politics to fill the hole in his soul.” Brooks is either entirely oblivious or utterly dismissive of the actual stakes in the current political struggle; that people might engage in politics because their basic rights and civil liberties are under assault seems beyond him. Are trans people just reveling in tribalism because they feel morally and spiritually empty? Are women mobilizing because they are looking to fill the moral void – or could it have something to do with the fact that millions have been degraded to the status of second-class citizens who no longer have a right to bodily autonomy? Are Black Lives Matter activists merely flocking to “identity politics” because they are so “internally fragile” – or are they organizing because they are trying to somehow get the country to address racist police violence?

You will have to spend around three-quarters of an hour reading the whole piece – it is over 11,000 words long. And yet, you will learn absolutely nothing about the conflict over democracy, the fundamentally incompatible ideas of what this country should be – the anti-pluralistic vision of a white Christian patriarchal society or the egalitarian ideal of a multiracial, pluralistic democracy – and how that translates into opposing political projects. America is in a moral crisis, and that’s why we have Trump: “When private virtue fails, the constitutional order crumbles. After decades without much in the way of moral formation, America became a place where more than 74 million people looked at Donald Trump’s morality and saw presidential timber.” That, according to David Brooks, is it. The central fault line in U.S. history, the animating struggle that has defined the American project since the beginning? Of secondary importance at best. Ignore it all.

And that brings us to the third major problem with David Brooks’ interpretation: It is based on an utterly ahistorical understanding of the past and a rather bizarrely distorted perspective on U.S. history. Brooks is simply not a trustworthy narrator of how we got to where we are today. Look at the relatively straightforward claim he makes early on, presenting it as one of the major pieces of evidence for his overall thesis: “Murder rates have been surging, at least until recently.” But the actual timeline is a lot more complicated than that, and not just because, again, Brooks simply ignores the unique circumstances of the pandemic during which this surging occurred. Murder rates probably peaked sometime around the Civil War era, but the picture is somewhat hazy before the early twentieth century. In any case, they declined in the 1930s and 40s, reaching a low point in the 50s before rising again from the late 1960s onwards. In the early 90s, the murder rate in the United States was back to where it had been sixty years earlier. But then it fell sharply, stabilizing at a low level in the twenty-first century until the spike during the pandemic years. And now, it is falling again. These trends simply don’t align with Brooks’ grand tale of a country with intact “moral formation” until the 1950s and a deepening moral crisis ever since.

But it gets worse. As a warning of what life in an amoral society comprised of lonely individuals is like, Brooks brings up America’s frontier experience. “Lonely eras are not just sad eras; they are violent ones. In 19th-century America, when a lot of lonely young men were crossing the western frontier, one of the things they tended to do was shoot one another.” It’s quite remarkable, really, to boil down the imperial conquest of the continent that was accompanied by – and, to a significant degree, only achieved through – mass displacement of and genocidal violence against native Americans to “those poor lonely young men shot each other dead.”  

We have, finally, arrived at the most obvious and most important critique of David Brooks’ grand tale of America’s moral history: How does he reconcile his argument with the fact that the era of supposedly intact moral education until the 1950s, when “America was awash in morally formative institutions,” coincided with the worst forms of slavery and genocidal violence, with white supremacist apartheid in significant parts of the country, with a racist, patriarchal regime that accepted something approaching “democracy” only for white Christian men? What does Brooks make of the fact that significant progress towards multiracial, pluralistic democracy was made after “moral formation” was, according to the author, largely abandoned? The answer is: He doesn’t. Let me quote the entirety of what Brooks has to say about this rather big inconsistency at the heart of his story:

“A couple of obvious things need to be said about this ethos of moral formation that dominated American life for so long. It prevailed alongside all sorts of hierarchies that we now rightly find abhorrent: whites superior to Blacks, men to women, Christians to Jews, straight people to gay people. And the emphasis on morality didn’t produce perfect people. Moral formation doesn’t succeed in making people angels—it tries to make them better than they otherwise might be. Furthermore, we would never want to go back to the training methods that prevailed for so long, rooted in so many thou shall nots and so much shaming, and riddled with so much racism and sexism.”

This paragraph doesn’t actually address the issue, however. Brooks briefly concedes there might be a problem, but then proceeds as if there isn’t one. He simply starts the next sentence with a hearty “Yet…” and continues from there, apparently unconcerned with the actual implications of what he just wrote. The message seems to be (my words, not his): “Well, ok, this society was horrible when all this morality formation was ubiquitous (which might indicate that, at the very least, it didn’t actually help?), and it has gotten so much better since that was abandoned (which could, at minimum, suggest that it wasn’t a necessary ingredient to achieve improvement?) – and yet, all of today’s problems can be traced to the tragic abandonment of morality formation and we need it back asap.” Again, Brooks wrote over 11,000 words in total, but these few lines are all he could muster. That he didn’t think this merited more than what can only be described as lazy handwaving is disqualifying.

The bipartisan appeal of nostalgia politics

The reason why any of this matters is not just that David Brooks has the ear of some very powerful people, or that this piece was prominently platformed in one of the nation’s leading political journals, thus guaranteeing a significant audience. It’s because even though “How America Got Mean” presents insufficient evidence to support an inconsistent and ahistorical diagnosis, it has garnered widespread praise from elites. I believe Brooks’ view of America appeals to people across a relatively wide ideological spectrum not in spite of these flaws. They are precisely what makes the argument so attractive.

To the center-Right, and “moderate” (former) Republicans, Brooks offers a tale that is in accordance with conservative principles and sensibilities. More importantly, probably, he provides an apologist narrative for anyone who doesn’t want to engage in critical introspection over the question of how the party they used to support – in David Brooks’ case: for decades – ended up uniting behind Donald Trump. No need to inquire about their own role in conservative politics, in fostering a cultural and ideological environment in which Trumpism could flourish. What could they have possibly done to avert a crisis that was brought about by secular amorality? Not their fault, certainly.  

Brooks’ diagnosis also has appeal well beyond the conservative political spectrum. Democratic Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, for instance, recommended the “very important piece from David Brooks” to his audience on Twitter. Did he not actually read it? Did the fundamentally conservative outlook on the past and present not bother him? What, I believe, liberals like Murphy – and liberal elites, in particular – almost reflexively respond to with approval is the unity gospel aspect of “How America Got Mean” and the nostalgic view of the past in which America was supposedly characterized not by polarization, but by a common enterprise to be good. There is a significant part of the Democratic party that longs for a revival of bipartisanship and traditional political norms, that wishes not so much to win the fight, but for the fighting to end and “normalcy” to return. This is exactly what Brooks offers: Forget all the flaws and inconsistencies – who could resist the message of returning the country to a better state of understanding?   

This is what makes this piece interesting: the way it articulates, justifies, and ennobles a sense of nostalgia that is prevalent among moderate conservatives, at the center, as well as deep into the liberal camp. Much of the mainstream political discourse is shaped by nostalgia – and the Right understands that they can latch onto that, weaponize it, in order to make their political project of rolling back the social and political progress of the past century more attractive to people who probably don’t consider themselves conservatives, certainly not reactionaries.

Weaponized nostalgia is an extremely potent tool in the hands of reactionaries, an important vehicle to transport rightwing ideas into the mainstream and make the reactionary project more palatable. It is so pervasively seductive because it builds on and amplifies widespread anxieties regarding the fundamental political, social, and cultural changes America has been undergoing over the past few decades.

Brooks is not a Trumpist, and reading “How America Got Mean” doesn’t make you one either. But fundamentally nostalgic arguments like this one help provide fertile ground for the politics of reaction. Once you have convinced yourself that the country is coming apart, you might decide it’s ultimately preferable to lend your support to those who promise to turn the clock back rather than to the “radical Left” – even if it means you’ll have to hold your nose while doing so.

The thing about this piece, the thing about anything ever written by David Brooks or any of the other pablum written by well-respected center-right pundits with prime space in the op-ed pages of our largest newspapers, isn't that it's necessarily wrong. It's that it appears to be a serious intellectual exercise, but it is fundamentally empty. It may even touch on something interesting, but will never actually investigate that or grapple with any contrary facts. Because the purpose isn't actually to to inform.  The real purpose is usually to tell the readers (who are overwhelmingly college educated, upper-middle to upper class and range from center-right to center-left in political ideology)  that the status quo is fine, and when that becomes too hard a sell it shifts to telling them that it's not their fault.

All in all, it's not really much different from how conspiracy theories appeal to their adherents: they both present an alternate world that somewhat overlaps with our own but is a more comfortable place, psychologically speaking.  Just as it's actually easier for some people to believe that there was a huge conspiracy to spread a pandemic rather than the truth that there's a lot of shit humanity still can't really control, it's also easier for a lot of people like us to believe that the problems today are as simple as a decrease in institutions of "moral formation," and not a result of a much more complex story that goes back to the beginning of the settlement of this continent by Europeans. A story that would force us to reconsider what we were taught about many of our country's most revered figures and that just might force us to engage in some critical introspection about whether the values we think we hold are really the values we've supported with our votes and in how we've lived our lives. 

[nbmishoid 941]

So, neither the magats nor their opposition has a reality based perspective.  Very encouraging post.

[MissingInAction 24824]

Fuck everything. 

Edited August 25, 2023 by MissingInAction

[Mole 4320]

From the posted critique:

Quote

The resulting narrative is a variation of the standard conservative lament about the present, with many of the central building blocks of the conservative worldview: A society defined by a lack of morality; too much focus on individualism, self-actualization, and selfishness; hollowed-out materialism and consumerism

Maybe I’m misreading him, but I’m struggling to align lamenting “too much focus on individualism, self-actualization, and selfishness; hollowed-out materialism and consumerism” with the conservative worldview. From my vantage point, those are all things conservatives seem to think are awesome.

[David Dennison 18661]

18 minutes ago, Mole said:

From the posted critique:

Maybe I’m misreading him, but I’m struggling to align lamenting “too much focus on individualism, self-actualization, and selfishness; hollowed-out materialism and consumerism” with the conservative worldview. From my vantage point, those are all things conservatives seem to think are awesome.

Narrator: They do.

[Biff Tannen 45499]

1 hour ago, Mole said:

From the posted critique:

Maybe I’m misreading him, but I’m struggling to align lamenting “too much focus on individualism, self-actualization, and selfishness; hollowed-out materialism and consumerism” with the conservative worldview. From my vantage point, those are all things conservatives seem to think are awesome.

Yes, that's what he's saying.

[Hermanator 6945]

On 8/25/2023 at 2:04 PM, Mole said:

From the posted critique:

Maybe I’m misreading him, but I’m struggling to align lamenting “too much focus on individualism, self-actualization, and selfishness; hollowed-out materialism and consumerism” with the conservative worldview. From my vantage point, those are all things conservatives seem to think are awesome.

That's the point. They claim those are all bad things yet their actions show otherwise. 

They claim they want fiscal responsibility but their actions show otherwise. 

They claim they follow Jesus and the New Testament yet their actions are the opposite of what the New Testament states. 

They claim to want limited small government but their actions are for authoritarian fascism. 

It's all bullshit with these people. Their level of disingenuous behavior is so high they cannot be reasoned with. That's why politics cannot succeed in the US and won't until they're destroyed and rendered voiceless in government like the groups of fascist monsters that came before them. 

[Biff Tannen 45499]

29 minutes ago, Hermanator said:

That's the point. They claim those are all bad things yet their actions show otherwise. 

They claim they want fiscal responsibility but their actions show otherwise. 

They claim they follow Jesus and the New Testament yet their actions are the opposite of what the New Testament states. 

They claim to want limited small government but their actions are for authoritarian fascism. 

It's all bullshit with these people. Their level of disingenuous behavior is so high they cannot be reasoned with. That's why politics cannot succeed in the US and won't until they're destroyed and rendered voiceless in government like the groups of fascist monsters that came before them. 

This

[Stilicho 1397]

On 8/25/2023 at 10:48 AM, safe sex said:

Unless big structural changes happen to the American form of capitalism, I don't think we can make any progress.

I'm with you. I think there might be a shift coming, but I have no idea what it looks like.

I do think we're on an unsustainable track vis-à-vis what "wealth" means in this country and what it can, and also what it refuses to, accomplish. The fundamental power behind wealth, and the myriad ways it can and is weaponized, doesn't quite gloss over as easy. It's a harder shine job because we actually see the truth, even though we don't like the look.

Maybe it's generational for me, but the old ideas that large swathes of the American population was comfortably in the middle class (with extreme wealth and poverty being simply that, the extremities of the spectrum attributable to "personal factors") has disappeared. Not because we've been brainwashed by evil socialists, but because a lot of us have lived lives where these old myths are wildly out of touch with reality. 

We've lived lives with much smaller financial margins for error than our parents. Turns out, giant swathes of the American population are actually trapped in a financial hellscape of debt and low-wages, with no hope of escape. Fuck, my parents bragged about the fact that there would be no social security for me. What a wonderful message to your children: all of this socialist safety net stuff is bullshit, but don't worry, there definitely won't be any of it left over for you once we have our way. Only bootstraps for you, my boy. 

Our modern society, with all of its hate and emphasis on the immediate, has ripped open all those lies that we were told as kids in the 80s and 90s that never quite seemed to fit in real life. We've come to find out that it wasn't about the kids, it was about the control. It wasn't about Jesus, it was about the power. It wasn't about deficits, it was about the giant piles of easy cash.   

Someone in another thread nailed the idea: we v. Me. I think that's going to be played out across our entire society for the next generation, probably in ways we cannot predict. Financially, I think it will be different. I think it sorta has to be. 

[Hank Kingsley 20710]

The death blow has been the fact that technology - which originally helped connect and bring people together - has split us apart. All the positive connections from Facebook turned into click-baity disinformation. Twitter being a productive curated newsfeed has turned into clout/engagement farming algorithm money-making clusterfuck. Instagram turned into a life competition where unhappy people pretend they are living the dream to make themselves feel better and others end up feeling worse. 

We're staring at our phones all day. While working from home is clearly beneficial/better for certain people, the majority that can go to the office but don't are losing simple interactions that are generally positives for our mental health. 

Have been thinking about this lately: remember in the 80s and 90s when you'd be driving with the windows down blaring your local rock station, and when at a stoplight another car pulls up beside you rocking out to the same song? And you'd give each other a smile/nod? Those little random connections are practically dead. And it's killing us. 

Edited August 28, 2023 by Hank Kingsley

[atomheartbevo 89450]

6 hours ago, Hank Kingsley said:

The death blow has been the fact that technology - which originally helped connect and bring people together - has split us apart. All the positive connections from Facebook turned into click-baity disinformation. Twitter being a productive curated newsfeed has turned into clout/engagement farming algorithm money-making clusterfuck. Instagram turned into a life competition where unhappy people pretend they are living the dream to make themselves feel better and others end up feeling worse. 

We're staring at our phones all day. While working from home is clearly beneficial/better for certain people, the majority that can go to the office but don't are losing simple interactions that are generally positives for our mental health. 

Have been thinking about this lately: remember in the 80s and 90s when you'd be driving with the windows down blaring your local rock station, and when at a stoplight another car pulls up beside you rocking out to the same song? And you'd give each other a smile/nod? Those little random connections are practically dead. And it's killing us. 

That summed it up perfectly. Ironically, and arguably, the rise of Trump and large-scale manipulation of people through social media could have petered out after a few years, except COVID was the perfect storm to ramp up these people.  It put them in a situation where their personal interactions with people they may disagree with, whether it be family, co-workers, service workers, fellow students if college-aged, etc., was drastically reduced at the same time many people were stressed the fuck out and looking for answers.  Reducing that in-person interaction with people that they disagreed with meant far less push-back on the batshit ideas, especially since the rational people they were interacting with didn't have time for their batshit ideas.

I've joked about how the preppers who spent years preparing for some kind of apocalyptic event that would cause them to have to live off the grid or reduce their human contact drastically, were broken by COVID and not being able to go to Chili's or Supercuts to get their haircuts, while at the same time they were able to connect with far more people than ever before (through the internet), but they were connecting with people who were reinforcing their worst ideas, and those people were able to personally and socially isolate them from their family/friends.

And that period where we drastically reduced our human interaction (in-person) came as we had the least-suited person in the White House as President, who reinforced an ideology that it doesn't matter that what you do affects others as much as what you think is being done to you (whether real or perceived).  He told everybody that it's okay to be an asshole to other people, but that they can't be assholes to you (and he still runs on this idea to this day in 2023). He wants Joe Biden locked up but doesn't want to be held accountable himself.

Trump publicly reinforced the idea that the individual matters more than anything else, which, sure, many people may believe privately, but then he said it was okay to act upon it - it didn't matter if what you did fucked over your family, your community, other people, companies, organizations, schools, that were minding their own business, your state, your country, as long as you were satisfied, as long as you got revenge for whatever grievances you had ginned up in your mind.