Long Op-Ed short, Brooks says "cyclicalists" (unnamed) think we should deficit-spend our way to prosperity, because, according to Brooks, they believe that "the level of government spending is the main factor in determining how fast an economy grows." (No one actually believes this.) But according to Brooks, all of our problems are "structural," which is to say that the reason we have mass unemployment and debt and growing wealth disparity is because of "technological change" and crappy schools. And "special-interest deals" in the tax code.

Continue Reading...

Lin is a point guard who rocketed to near-instant celebrity when he came off the bench and had a series of monster games, dragging the Knicks to a .500 record while their two biggest superstars were sitting out games. His celebrity then became a "mania" in part because he's Asian-American and a Harvard graduate, two rarities in the NBA. It also obviously doesn't hurt that he plays for the dominant team in the nation's biggest media market (also it's the fallow period between football and baseball). That's basically the whole deal, and if you'd like to learn more read Andrew Leonard's account of the early social media explosion and Alexander Chee's take on Lin and Asian-American identity. Whatever you do, don't read David Brooks' take on the Lin phenomenon, because David Brooks doesn't understand basketball or social media or race or religion or American society in general.

Continue Reading...

He can make a defense of racist demagoguing sound benign. He obfuscates and misleads on income inequality, while, as always, accusing those damned coastal liberal elites of disrespecting Real Americans. Accusing liberals of disrespecting Real Americans is one of Brooks' go-to lines, even though there's absolutely no evidence that he has any clue whatsoever how the middle and working classes live in America in 2011.

Continue Reading...

For example: David Brooks, whose most annoying schtick is to write something that sounds reasonable until you realize what he's actually arguing (like, for example, "people often don't intervene when they see something horrible happening" is a very interesting point, unless your real point is that this is because of hippies and the terrible '60s), wrote earlier this month that American income equality is overstated, and that the real income gap worth examining is that between the college-educated upper middle class, who are doing well, and those with only a high school education, who have been left behind by our post-industrial economy. (In this case Brooks' "actual" point is that "Blue inequality" is merely the resentment of educated liberals who hate success while "Red states" have the real authentic American inequality.)

Continue Reading...

David Brooks flew to London so now he's an expert on British politics, and in his New York Times column this morning, he explains why "the British political system is basically functional while the American system is not."  Here's the crux of what makes their system so admirable in his eyes:

Britain is also blessed with a functioning political culture. It is dominated by people who live in London and who have often known each other since prep school. This makes it gossipy and often incestuous. But the plusses outweigh the minuses.

It has long been the supreme fantasy of establishment guardians in general, and David Brooks in particular, that American politics would be dominated by an incestuous, culturally homogeneous, superior elite "who live in [Washington] and who have often known each other since prep school."  And while these establishment guardians love to endlessly masquerade as spokespeople for the Ordinary American, what they most loathe is the interference by the dirty rabble in what should be their exclusive, harmonious club of political stewardship, where conflicts are amicably resolved by ladies and gentlemen of the highest breeding without any messy public conflict.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

His column earlier this week, on "The Experience Economy," demonstrates this vividly. It bears all the hallmarks of a Brooks classic. Reference to the hot policy book of the moment? Got it: Tyler Cowen's "The Great Stagnation" -- and in the first sentence, no less. Substitution of "values" explanations for political, economic and historical context? Check. A set of generically benign character traits anthropomorphized into an "average" (ostensibly white, middle class, male) American? Not just one, but two.

Continue Reading...

John Boehner on "Meet the Press"

The Republican House Speaker conceded that the White House has dealt with Egypt "as well as it could be handled." He also addressed the deficit and reports that he'd warned former Rep. Chris Lee -- the "Craigslist congressman" -- about his conduct before Lee's shirtless email was revealed last week:

Continue Reading...

The evidence of Lieberman's usefulness is that he voted for various things the Democrats wanted him to vote for, eventually. But politics -- especially in the Senate -- is about more than the final vote. It's about the process. And Lieberman acted as poisonously as he could during the process of passing legislation like the healthcare reform bill. He helped drag it out and he killed the Medicare buy-in for no reason other than spite. Brooks knows this full well, because in his penultimate paragraph, he writes:

Continue Reading...

Gibbs, like Obama, hates the press. Which is fair enough, because the arm of the press they have to deal with -- the Beltway political media -- is fairly awful! But despite his hatred for the press, Barack Obama does respect certain members of the commentariat.

Continue Reading...

But he's wrong to suggest that association with the Tea Party movement hasn't hurt individual Republican candidates in key races. Brooks writes:

In Ohio, Republican Rob Portman has opened up a significant lead on his Democratic opponent. In Kentucky, Republican Rand Paul is way ahead, as is Marco Rubio in Florida. In Illinois, Republican Mark Kirk has a small lead, and Linda McMahon has pulled nearly even in Connecticut. Sharron Angle, a weak candidate, is basically tied with Harry Reid in Nevada.

Continue Reading...

But now, David Brooks and Thomas Friedman are using the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality to claim that Americans are going soft and that America is losing its place in the world because of it.

Brooks laments that America is in decline because "people are moving away from commercial, productive activities and toward pleasant, enlightened but less productive ones." As more people choose careers in consulting and nonprofit activism over manufacturing and other "productive" careers, he suggests, "America may become more humane, but it will be less prosperous."

Continue Reading...

Moral Materialism

In a way, you've proved Brooks partially wrong, but not in the way you think. Your simple-minded approach to his point indicates that Americans such as yourself have a long way to go until they reach the moral maturity he is optimistic about.

Brooks' point about the complexity of the TV shows he named was not related purely to their content as you seem to believe (believe it or not "gangsters exist" is not the message of "The Wire" -- you should stop watching it if that's what you think). The message is the moral relativism of these shows and the idea that people's motives and existences are not as simple and Manichean as we (you) might think.

Moral materialism is not, as you seem to believe, the idea that "greed is good" -- Americans debunked that idea on a mass social level in the '80's. Nor is it assigning easy labels to consumer goods (sorry -- the idea that anyone would think so simplistically is laughable).

Moral Materialism is the idea that it's okay to want and to acquire "stuff" as long as the greater social cost isn't untenable. It’s about finding balance between being an acquisitive and class-conscious race (we are -- don't try to deny it) and creating a society that cares for its less fortunate and strives for a greater cultural/societal/environmental "good." The definition of that "good" remains fluid and escapes narrow definitions by necessity since society is constantly re-defining it according to conditions. I know that won't be enough for you, but attaining a purely ascetic condition as a society is a non-starter. If you think it's attainable, you will fail.

--jboisseau

I could take issue with some of jboisseau's characterizations of my argument -- I don't believe I equated moral materialism with the idea that "greed is good" or that I desire a society that attains "a purely ascetic condition" or that the message of "The Wire" is that "gangsters exist." And the implication that I would try to deny that Americans are class-conscious is kind of nutty. But I'm sure David Brook would argue that I misinterpreted and unfairly characterized his argument too. All's fair in love, war, and Web discourse.

Continue Reading...

One could spend weeks unpacking and evaluating every assumption woven into the tapestry that is "Relax, We're Fine," but that would be a job fit for an encyclopedia author, not a blogger, so I'll place the magnifying glass on just one paragraph.

As the world gets richer, demand will rise for the sorts of products Americans are great at providing -- emotional experiences. Educated Americans grow up in a culture of moral materialism; they have their sensibilities honed by complicated shows like "The Sopranos," "The Wire" and "Mad Men," and they go on to create companies like Apple, with identities coated in moral and psychological meaning, which affluent consumers crave.

Continue Reading...

Continue Reading...

David Brooks' column today perfectly illustrates what lies at the core of our political discourse:  namely, self-loving tribalistic blindness laced with a pathological refusal to accept responsibility for one's actions.  Brooks claims there is a unique evil that one finds in the "fringes of the Muslim world":

Most people select stories that lead toward cooperation and goodness. But over the past few decades a malevolent narrative has emerged.

That narrative has emerged on the fringes of the Muslim world. It is a narrative that sees human history as a war between Islam on the one side and Christianity and Judaism on the other. This narrative causes its adherents to shrink their circle of concern. They don’t see others as fully human. They come to believe others can be blamelessly murdered and that, in fact, it is admirable to do so.

This narrative is embraced by a small minority.  But it has caused incredible amounts of suffering within the Muslim world, in Israel, in the U.S. and elsewhere. With their suicide bombings and terrorist acts, adherents to this narrative have made themselves central to global politics. They are the ones who go into crowded rooms, shout “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” and then start murdering.

Continue Reading...

David Brooks today says he wanted to write a column about Obama's pending decision over Afghanistan, and in order to write this column, this is what he tells us he did:  "For the past few days I have tried to do what journalists are supposed to do."  Sounds intrepid.  What, exactly, is it that "journalists are supposed to"?

As he describes it, Brooks "called around to several of the smartest military experts [he] know[s] to get their views on these controversies."  These are people "who follow the war for a living."  He wrote down (at least some of) what they said.  He then passed it on without quoting -- or even identifying -- a single one of these experts.  That's his whole column.

Continue Reading...

Others made the same point in the comments. And they weren't the only people to notice the gaping lacunae in my fault-finding. Paul Krugman makes precisely the same point this morning.

Andrew Leonard is unhappy with my colleague David Brooks for suggesting that rising debt in America reflects moral decay. Surprisingly, however, Leonard doesn't make what I thought was the most compelling critique.

David points out, correctly, that something changed around 1980 -- that consumers started spending a larger share of national income and that debt began increasing. Although he doesn't point this out, this was also when the federal government first began running substantial deficits even in good years.

David would have you believe that what happened then was a decline in Calvinist virtue. But, um, didn't something else happen around 1980? Can't quite remember ... someone whose name begins with the letter "R"?

Yes, Reagan did it.

Continue Reading...

My my my. I've seen some high horses in my day, but David Brooks is perched on a saddle so far aloft in the clouds of self-delusion that he can't even see the earth, much less reality. Let's examine his thesis more closely.

Americans ran up a lot of debt in the last few decades. There's no question about that. But one of the most striking developments of the last year has been how Americans have responded to the financial crisis at an individual level. We made a collective decision to start saving and stop spending. Is this because we woke up one morning last fall and suddenly became born-again Calvinists? No, it seems clear that we were responding rationally to economic incentives. The economy crashed, unemployment surged, home prices plummeted, and presto: We all started pinching pennies. Morality, insofar as expressed via our spending habits, is merely a reflection of the economy.

Continue Reading...