Well, Brooks has gone and done me in.
David Brooks says that there are two visions in the country, one held by liberals and Barack Obama and one held by conservatives and Mitt Romney. Brooks does Obama the service of actually waving in the direction of what he actually thinks. He then does Obama the disservice of inventing a position for the other side. I don’t exaggerate; this is an act of pure creation. He cites nothing, or nothing verifiable; he refers only to “Republicans he speaks to,” as instrumentalized and anthropological a creation as Thomas Friedman’s third world taxi drivers. In fact, in an act of almost impossible ballsiness, he admits that the alternative that he’s projecting onto Romney is not one he’s articulated. No, Romney’s regard for this worldview that he hasn’t articulated is shown because “this worldview is implied in his (extremely vague) proposals.”
Well: accusations of hypocrisy aren’t much, when we’re talking about the future of our country. But for Brooks to accuse Romney of being vague in this piece is just too much. Because what Brooks articulates for a Republican philosophy– and let’s be clear, we’re talking about the course of our country, the well-being of millions of people, and the creation or prevention of enormous suffering– what Brooks lays out is utterly empty. There’s nothing there.
What’s his plan?
“He would structurally reform the health care system, moving toward a more market-based system.”
That means nothing. “A more market-based system” means nothing. It articulates no endpoint, nor does it suggest how a president is supposed to “structurally reform” a health care system that is under the purview of Congress, states, hospitals, insurance companies, doctors….
“He would simplify the tax code.”
In what way would he simplify it? How would American taxation change? How can a president simplify the tax code, which is under the purview of Congress?
“He would reverse 30 years of education policy, decentralizing power and increasing parental choice.”
How would he reverse it? What does “reversing” years of education policy mean? What does decentralizing power mean in this context? How can you claim to be decentralizing power when you’re talking about a presidential takeover of our vast education system? What does “increasing parental choice” mean beyond a sop to privatization schemes that decades of empirical evidence demonstrate don’t work? What authority does the president have to take control of education away from districts, municipalities, and states?
“The intention is the same, to create a model that will spark an efficiency explosion, laying the groundwork for an economic revival.”
This means nothing. It’s an utterance in a language I speak, and yet it is utterly without content. There is nothing there. What is an efficiency explosion, beyond the most trite feint at corporatese this side of a shitty MBA paper? How could an efficiency explosion mean nearly the same thing in health care, the tax code, our education system? How and why do any of these things lead necessarily to an economic revival? There is nothing here. In my nightmares I am buffeted by this kind of jargon-ridden empty bullshit; demons sneak into my room and whisper “efficiency explosions of dynamic risk that cause creative destruction and facilitate innovation.”
Now, if you wanted me to climb into my Bobo suit and perform a mindmeld with members of the Tea Party– the type of people who, let’s be clear, David Brooks wouldn’t invite into his fabulous mansion in a million years– I’d say that they are just generally angry and afraid and weak and self-injurious. No, not crazy, not mentally ill. Just angry, because they’ve been sold out by an economic philosophy that has totally undermined their ability to provide for their families or secure a better life, the economic philosophy espoused by Brooks and the rest of the thought leaders that control our society. Afraid, because three decades of economic policy designed to punish workers have left them totally insecure, not knowing from day to day if they can trust their present condition. Weak, because they fall for a ruthlessly efficient propaganda machine that teaches Republican to take their fear and direct it out at the people that don’t look like them, especially the black Kenyan Marxist socialist who occupies the White House. Self-injurious, because they could benefit from a stronger redistributive system as much as anyone else.
Hannah Arendt said that cruelty has everything to do with abstraction. David Brooks resides in that abstraction and embodies that cruelty. In Brooks’s work, there’s nobody who goes hungry at night; there’s just the dynamism that animates capitalism. There’s nobody dying of a preventable disease; there’s the necessity of risk. There’s nobody despairing because there aren’t any jobs; there’s just creative destruction. Think of any human misery you prefer and I’m sure Mr. Brooks has an Aspen-approved euphemism that can cover it up. What a privilege all that money can buy: to live in a world without victims.
I could deal with the horrible vulgarity of a millionaire saying that things have got to get worse for those with nothing, while he hides behind big ideas and empty words. I could live with it, if I didn’t know that the whole system was predicated on just this mechanism, on the separation of ideas and their consequences. I’ve been reading a lot about Chris Hayes’s Twilight of the Elites. And when I read the discussion out there, the excerpts and reviews and interviews, I can understand why some reviewers say that the least convincing part of the book is Hayes’s solutions. I don’t think there are any solutions. Who could be a clearer example of the failure of our meritocracy than David Brooks? He’s a man who holds a position in the most prominent, respected news organization in the world. His work is a weekly exercise in unsupported claims, in vague jargon, in narrative that means nothing and achieves nothing. And no one is ever going to take that position away from him; how could they? There is no accountability for him whatsoever. He calls for dynamism and change, and he’s buried in like a tick.
I know giving up is a luxury most people don’t have, but for now, I’m just spent, exhausted by the effort of running up the slippery walls of this kind of empty argument. Congratulations, David Brooks, I give up.
amorphous
Yes, but he did all of that in less than 50 minutes. Therefore: successful plan for Amercia!
Todd
He’s getting ripped in the comments.
Davis X. Machina
It only looks like there’s nothing there — but it’s the event horizon of a black hole.
ETA:
Efficiency explosions are the leading killers of furiously sleeping colorless green ideas.
Wag
It is all sound and fury
Signifying nothing
Baud
Even the failed 1928 Hoover campaign (actually the RNC) had the decency to promise something tangible like a chicken in every pot.
Efficiency explosion indeed.
General Stuck
Brooks does this sort of thing occasionally. I think it is because he has some kind of deadline, and needs to put something out. So he has a version of wingnut talking point word salad blender, currently set on campaign mode, and we get a chopped up mess of canned nonsense, instead of the better thought out nonsense.
He has had some masterpieces of this kind of inanity, that touch every erroneous zone from the tard team . Maybe it’s the weekend, and he and Mojo are fixing to sekret off for some pundit panky. Forget it Freddie, it’s Times Town.
LosGatosCA
This is the way the world ends: Not with a bang but a whimper.
Clean Willie
This whole post rocks, but the line “Who could be a clearer example of the failure of our meritocracy than David Brooks?” is pwnage of a marvelously apt and profound kind.
Davis X. Machina
@LosGatosCA: This is the way the world ends: Not with a bang but a
whimperwanker.Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
For the life of me, I don’t know why you all bother to read this stuff. I’ve never read Brooks, Friedman or any of the other pundits that bother everyone. I’ve never watched Tweety, Dave whatshisname, Stephanopoulous, or any of the cable news shows. I don’t know anyone in the real world who does — co-workers, friends, or relatives.
So why read this crap and get upset?
Limbaugh and Fox, I understand. They have an audience, consisting mainly of all our annoying relatives. These guys? Not so much.
liberal
Reasons to hate the media, part …:
Is there any evidence at all that Ryan is particularly smart?
Every rightwing pseudointellectual douchebag is somehow smart…
Davis X. Machina
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: Depends on your milieu. I go to conferences and the gimme-bag contains a Friedman book (I’m a school teacher, everyone wants us to Prepare for the Future, and the Moustache has seen It.). I go to workshops, everyone saw Brooks on PBS that Friday night.
Basically I’m up to my ass in tote-baggers. It’s a tote-bag-heavy profession. Not even the custodians listen to Limbaugh — but then one of them’s a Hatian, and the other one heads the ESP local.
bcinaz
Well what did you expect from a guy who hangs out with the crowd at the Applebee’s Salad Bar.
liberal
Oh, yeah, back to the topic of the post…speaking of pseudo-intellectuals…
Amir Khalid
I don’t know what Bobo has risen to the top of, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t deserve the description “meritocracy”.
Rich2506
I had the same problem with Ron Paul after seeing the “Two Paul’s” debate. Paul is into all this vague, fuzzy, abstract speculation about what a deficit might do as opposed to what unemployment is actually doing, right NOW, here in the real world. Yeah, it’s nice that Paul agrees that austerity doesn’t work, but his answer is to engage is so many vague abstractions, you’re left with no idea as to what his solution actually is. Bobo and Paul, two of a kind.
cathyx
The details are for the little people to solve. He’s just the idea man.
russ
maybe his point is “empty” is what Rmoney is.
RSA
Notice that Brooks is an equal opportunity fabulist. He begins by saying, “Democrats frequently ask me why the Republicans have become so extreme.” Brooks could be living in a world populated entirely by imaginary friends on both sides.
Davis X. Machina
@RSA:
Considering the range of modern psychotropic drugs, and his probable prescription coverage, I’m guessing ‘liar’, not ‘psychotic break’.
cathyx
Romney is like the Amazon book description. If you want to know the details you have to elect him(buy the book) first, then you can find out what they are.
driftglass
Every day
Every day
Every day he writes the book…
David Brooks — “A Series Of Invisible Incidents”:
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/06/series-of-invisible-incidents.html
I know that a first blush it may seem pretty weird that a U. of C. history major like Mr. Brooks could so routinely omit or radically misrepresent such huge swaths of American history, but you have to remember that Mr. Brooks is 1) A lying, partisan hack, and, 2) Very, very lazy.
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2012/06/david-fucking-brooks.html
arguingwithsignposts
Brooks breaks us all. driftglass has a post about this column with the most frightening photoshop you’ll ever see.
ETA: haha – link is just above me.
Ben Franklin
Republicans don’t have an illness, they have a viewpoint
And here’s the viewpoint;
Republicans argue, the welfare state is failing to provide either security or dynamism. The safety net is so expensive it won’t be there for future generations
Sounds like an illness to me. Did anyone ever say Social Services were dynamic like a business model for profitology? The security comes from giving the poor shelter from your Hobbesian Dysotopia, and it’s expensive, but not as expensive as the alternative.
Citizen_X
@RSA: Oh, sure I believe him, because if there’s anyone I’d turn to in search of deep insight into human behavior, it’s Bobo (eyeroll).
Mike in NC
Just elect the obscenely rich white guy and all these problems will go away!
Linda Featheringill
@Todd:
The comments on the Brooks article are interesting, even though they essentially say the same things: either Brooks didn’t say much or he reached the wrong conclusion. The commenters seems to agree that social services haven’t caused Europe’s problems. Activities of the investors are blamed instead.
I did think that Brooks had a point in his observation that Progressives as a whole want to reform and control capitalism so that it better meets the needs of more people while the Conservatives actually want to tear the current capitalism apart and build it up again. He really should have gone ahead and included Marxists who want to tear the current system apart and build up a different, needs-based system instead of our present profit-based system.
[Sorry, anarchists. None of these views includes the state fading away.]
Radicals, radicals, radicals. Vanity, all is vanity.
slippy
@RSA: Sociopaths don’t really have friends. They have tools, acquaintances, and victims.
kth
“Simplify the tax code” means cut rates but also deductions. But the deductions come back, like weeds, while the tax rates can never be raised. That means programs have to be cut, because there’s supposedly no money, when in fact what is lacking is not the ability to pay, but the willingness.
Baud
@Linda Featheringill:
I hope to one day meet an anarchist. I am simply confounded about how their philosophy would work. Whatever my disagreement with other political philosophies, I can at least envision the world they seek to create. Not so much with anarchists.
Linda Featheringill
@driftglass:
The illustration: Brooks and who?
MattF
I think Brooks is slowly creeping up to an outright Romney endorsement. Of course, there are problems with this, Romney’s actual views (in so far as one can discern them) are psychopathic, and consequently, unacceptable to David Brooks. So, Brooks has to invent ‘acceptable’ views that are not flatly inconsistent with what Romney has said. This means they have to be abstract. But Brooks has no choice; this is the dilemma of the fellow-traveler, e.g., Stalin did some bad things, but you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.
Linda Featheringill
@Baud:
Anarchists:
Hang around MoveOn. The organization itself is not anarchist but several individual members are.
General Stuck
OT
Apparently, Obama gave the wingnuts in congress an Atomic Wedgie this morning in his weekly Saturday Address.
Did Obama just accuse the republicans of deliberately sabotaging the economy for political purpose and gain. Why yes, Virginia, me thinks he did.
Which in turn, has given Mark Halperin an Atomic Sad.
“Only makes it worse” Yep, like leading a dead horse to water.
via the indispensable, imo, Taegan Goddard at Political Wire.
mai naem
David Brooks just needs to get laid by a drop dead bombshell blonde bimbo who will then get married and stay married to him(after he gets divorced etc.) Even if the liberals paid for a hooker to get him laid on a regular basis, his whole attitude will change. Yes, I am saying he’s jealous of most Dem pols because he perceives them as having a better sex life than him.
Also too, Paul Ryan is a ringer for Eddie Munster. Can we just start calling him Eddie?
arguingwithsignposts
@Linda Featheringill: I think it’s Lindsay Graham {shudder}
Baud
@General Stuck:
Shorter Halperin: The President, by failing to resign his office, is only making Beltway gridlock worse.
maryQ
Thank you for writing this. This is the very best thing I have read in a while. I mean it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Ben Franklin:
The alternative is tumbrel rides.
These morons have not figured this out yet. If you piss off the masses long enough, they will take your money AND your life. Without the slightest regret.
SOME in the top 1% know enough about history to understand this. Brooks however is not one of them.
Linda Featheringill
@arguingwithsignposts:
Graham: I have to laugh at the thought of it!
It would have been an interesting sight, though, if the two guys had demonstrated their true physical conditions.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est: Powerful people always think things will be different because they are so special and unique.
Frankly, that’s not surprising since a lot of non-powerful people think the same way. It’s a human failing — powerful people just have more opportunity to indulge in it.
JGabriel
Freddie de Boer:
Because Mitt Romney is the kind of Orwellian wordsmith who can say:
Wait, what? How do you help people by cutting the government services that help people?
I expect the next GOP arguments will be, “It’s time for us reign in the excesses of rich people and cut their taxes! It’s time for us to improve democracy and make it harder to vote! It’s time for us to help seniors and cut Social Security! It’s time for us to save children and cut school lunch programs!”
And so on.
.
geg6
Freddie, I have not always been a fan, but I just fell in love with you a little on the strength of this post. Bravo!
300baud
I’d partly disagree. I think what he’s saying is reasonably clear; I just think it’s wrong on a lot of levels. And, as you point out, evil where it isn’t wrong.
This sentence, for example, means something: “The intention is the same, to create a model that will spark an efficiency explosion, laying the groundwork for an economic revival.”
It is true that in some circumstances you can empower the people closest to the problem to solve it directly, leading to substantially reduced waste, which can end up as increased value for consumers, which then is counted as economic growth. This approach is basically how Toyota kicked the ass of American car manufacturers for decades.
But Bobo is wrong that Mitt Romney is up to that; he’s just indulging in pareidolia, seeing noble dragons in the clouds puffed out by Mitt’s say-anything campaign.
And he’s wrong again in that the policies he describes won’t lead to that. The Toyota approach only works in a context of incredible support for the individual worker and an attitude of deep service to the customer.
Bobo and Mitt are big fans of the worker-squeezing, asset-stripping, value-destroying road to wealth. They’re lovers of the kind of top-down corporate feudalism that is the diametric opposite of what that sentence supports. They dress up their billionaire-fluffing policies with a reference to something that does actually work (e.g., the ubiquitous love for “job creators”). And then when their policies don’t achieve the goal they were never really meant to achieve, they’ll insist we double down.
Lydgate
I checked out the Hayes book on Amazon. It looks interesting. Perhaps it picks up where Christopher Lasch’s Revolt of the Elitesleft off? (minus the fondness for patriarchal authority). Lasch, writing 20 years ago, during the height of the culture wars, was quite prescient in describing just how empty the idea of “meritocracy” was/is.
arguingwithsignposts
@300baud:
I’m sure someone has already mentioned this, but the US has had an “efficiency explosion” over the last 30 years and look where it’s gotten us.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
the raw money strategy is very clear but it starts with what republicans, and people who will vote republican in case of a tie(lesser of two evils, broderian candidate types) think.
they believe, in part or in whole, that obama won because nobody knew who he was, where he came from, or what he stood for. they believe this is why the permanent republican majority got iced.
so raw money, and the republican strategy, is to replicate that assumed vagueness in the hopes that they can stir up enough anti-incumbency to reverse 2008.
Omnes Omnibus
@JGabriel:
It is obvious that you are some kind of Kenyan Islamofascist, because the answer is, and I quote, “Because SHUT UP, that’s why!” You should know that.
Davis X. Machina
@Marcellus Shale, Public Dick:
In other words….
The same geniuses who voted Republican to get a divided-so-as-to-rein-in-its-excesses government will now vote Republican to get a nothing-gets-done-so-long-as-the-government-is-divided government.
driftglass
@Linda Featheringill: Lindsey Graham from this 2009 post:
First comes the sparkly shock that “Wow, this guy really does have his hand up near my junk.” Now, as every gentleman knows, protocol dictates that if the grabass is unwanted, you arch one eyebrow, say “Dude!” clearly and unambiguously, and move his nasty, earmark-fondling paw away from your bikini area. Usually that’s enough.
But Bobo — being an uptight, itchily-uncomfortable-in-his-own-skin power-groupie to begin with — clearly didn’t recognize a male-dominance power play when it literally crawled right up his leg. And so instead of asserting himself, in a moment of fight-or-flight/carnal-panic-versus-suckup-to-authority freakout, Bobo clenched up and tried to play the entire incident off by getting giggly, ignoring the hand between his legs and pretending it amounted to nothing.
What happens next is sadly predictable…
http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2009/07/you-shore-got-purdy-column.html
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Baud:
__
During the Spanish Civil War the southeastern part of that country, centered around Barcelona, was taken over by a coalition of anti-Franco groups in which Anarchists played the leading role. From what I’ve read, far from dismantling the govt, instead they (the Anarchists) did what was by Spanish standards at the time an exceptionally fine job of administering the regional govt and providing services to the local population, at least until local Stalinists succeeded in sabotaging their military efforts to defend themselves, to the point where the Fascists were able to roll in and conquer. To the best of my knowledge that’s the only practical example of an Anarchist-run administration on a semi-large scale. Apparently it worked quite well until it was murdered.
Joey Giraud
@Baud:
That’s because Anarchism presumes a world populated with responsible adults.
I agree; it *is* difficult to imagine.
Villago Delenda Est
@Joey Giraud:
For a good example of why such a presumption is ridiculous, I give you three words:
George Walker Bush
Baud
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Then I guess my first question to anarchist would be “What exactly do you believe?” because I apparently don’t understand what they’re all about.
slippy
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m just about there myself, and I still have a job. The only reason I am not marching in the streets screaming is that I still have something to lose, and I have to work to keep it. God help the 1% if I ever find myself with nothing left to lose. And I know I am not the only one. I worked my ass off for what (little) I have (left). You betcha I’ll be pissed if I wake up one morning and find it’s ALL gone.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: I, casting my mind back to undergrad political philosophy courses, would say that anarchists of this stripe had an ultimate goal of a society in which the state is unnecessary, but recognized that this society did not actually exist. They, therefore, needed to work to create the underpinnings of such a society by fostering things like education, social welfare, and other rather liberal or social democratic things.
ETA: All in all, I would say they were/are rather admirable people.
Joey Giraud
@Baud:
Maybe someone else is composing a Wikipedia-worthy response, but AFAIK Anarchism is the belief that people can get along fine without governmental coercion. The details are unclear.
I think it will work great, as soon as Homo Sapien version 2.0 comes out.
Metrosexual Black AbeJ
@LosGatosCA:
Not with a bang but a tote bag.
RossInDetroit
The one thing I like about a Brooks column is Charles Pierce is going to torch it to the ground, pour water on the ashes, stir them and douse them again. Every writer needs a Muse and Pierce seems inspired to unusual rhetorical heights by Bobo.
ETA: what is it with Brooks and binary options? Does he just sit and think about two possible opposing things, or invent them (probably), and then free associate about this construction for his column? He pulls that shit at least half the time.
driftglass
If your plan for change includes the sentence “And then the masses will rise up in righteous indignation” then your plan is doomed.
The masses rarely rise up and when they do, more often than not, they are whipped by demagogues to burn the wrong temples.
Atlas2000
An old professor of mine wrote a book called “On Bull—t” – in it, he posits that both honest men and liars care about the truth at a fundamental level (enough to either support it or deny its existence), but what makes BS artists so dangerous is that they really don’t care about whether anything is actually true, they care whether it is useful to them in some way.
Brooks is trying to provide an pseudo-intellectual justification for demonstrably bad ideas. It’s pseudo intellectual because he’s using words that he’s seen other smart people use, without the rigor or clarity they did. Brooks knows that there has to be a justification- he just can’t articulate it clearly because it’s so horrifically ugly to the general public and the track record is so bad. So to justify it, you end up with abstract hackery of this ilk. You can’t argue with it in an intellectual framework because it’s not intended to be evaluated or even thought through as if it were true. It’s intended for two audiences – to allow his paymasters to feel better about themselves and to provide a fig leaf for people too lazy to figure anything else out. After all, it’s in the NYT – it has to be right….
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
@Joey Giraud:
Thanks. This is the first paragraph from Wikipedia:
The rest of the Wiki piece is over my head and beyond by patience.
Ecks
It’s like Dennis Hopper’s line in Speed: “Poor people are crazy, Jack. I’m eccentric.” Except substitute in “hypocrites” and “provocative”.
More seriously, they don’t hire pundits to be accurate. It’s never been part of the job description. It’s a form of straight-faced high brow theater.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Baud:
__
I’m not an anarchist so take this with a grain of salt, but my understanding is that in Spain at the time the left-anarchists believed not in eliminating the govt but in decentralizing it and having a much greater degree of citizen involvement than we take for granted. Not “shrinking the govt until you can drown it in a bathtub”, but rather “breaking the govt up into smaller, less tightly coupled pieces so that each one is small enough so that it can spend time sitting in your living room, listening to your concerns and asking for you to get involved”. Like community organizing scaled up to run the govt in a highly federated manner.
__
I could very well have it wrong, however.
Omnes Omnibus
@driftglass: I see discussions of the masses rising up as something more akin to a warning than a plan. You know, along the lines of provide the New Deal or else you may get Paris 1792, St. Petersburg 1917 or Berlin 1932. Now, our proto-fascists might be okay with Berlin, but they can’t be sure it is the result they will get.
Davis X. Machina
@RossInDetroit: Binary thinking is not just Brooks’ (tote)bag — after all, you’ve already been given a choice between a Lexus and an olive tree.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Metrosexual Black AbeJ:
__
Humankind will never be free until the last pundit is strangled with the strap-handles of the last totebag.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Wag: You missed a great opportunity by not quoting the line before that:
It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.
Davis X. Machina
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: The principle of subsidiarity, in other words. One of the reasons why anarchism resonated strongly in Spain and Italy is that it had been — and still is — a cornerstone of Catholic social teaching, and of anarchist theory, in a pair of very, very Catholic countries.
All those anarchists were something before they were anarchists.
Oh, and check out the Mondragon cooperative movement.
bfeinberg
you all have to get to know Moral Hazard at Charlie Pierce–makes us all feel better!
Baud
@Davis X. Machina:
Interesting links. The idea strikes me as more workable in communities that are defined and bound by a preexisting social or cultural ties. Maybe not so much in more diverse and complex societies.
jwb
Krugman went directly at Brooks this morning.
Davis X. Machina
@Baud: I’m not sure there really are such things as complex societies, just networks of simple ones.
My brief experience of New York was that it wasn’t one big city, but a thousand villages, for most practical purposes, most of the time. Juridically, yes, and for utilities, yes — they don’t scale — but the functional limits of the world are 20, 40 blocks.
I guess the issue is one of granularity — how small are those smallest practical units.
dww44
@liberal: Didn’t some lobbysist or 2 or 3 actually provide the genesis/underpinning of his famous Ryan plan? Or were all the premises and proposed actions on which it was based his very own?
I really would like to know. Tried to google that a couple of days ago with no success.
Baud
@Davis X. Machina:
I think that was true for most of history, but things like intermarriage, trade, popular media, and the secularization of society tend to break down the lines that separate simpler networks from the larger, more complex one.
BrianM
@Baud: The wikipedia articles on anarchism are a good intro. There are a lot of strains of anarchism.
driftglass
@Davis X. Machina:
Mondragon rocks.
FYI, there is a group in Chicago trying to borrow/transplant their experience into our soil:
http://www.chicagomanufacturing.org/about
Davis X. Machina
@driftglass: Jerry Brown used to talk up Mondragon during his presidential campaign. He knew of them from his time in Jesuit formation. (I heard about the movement from various Jesuits I had studied with or worked for…)
RossInDetroit
@jwb:
He’s careful not to call Brooks a lazy, lying sack of shit. He says that conservatives are wrong to say that the welfare state is expiring. he also questions whether they actually believe it or not.
handsmile
Those interested in contemporary anarchism might wish to become acquainted with economic anthropologist David Graeber, now at the University of London, formerly an associate professor at Yale.
He is one of the intellectual leaders of the Occupy Wall Street movement whose writings and personal activism have been inspiring and insightful.
Graeber’s recent book, Debt: The First 5000 Years, has been widely praised, including enthusiastic recommendations by a number of commenters here. In fact, several proposed that it be selected for the (evidently now moribund) Balloon Juice Reading Group.
http://www.amazon.com/Debt-The-First-000-Years/dp/1933633867
His Wikipedia entry is a fine introduction, with a broad selection of linkable books and articles (Fragments of an anarchist anthropology and “The New Anarchists” particularly recommended, though both require attentive reading).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Graeber
someofparts
Your third paragraph from the bottom, the one about abstraction, just nails it.
Okay if I bookmark it?
With all that is written about Brooks, I think that paragraph is the definitive one.
Incredible writing. Thanks so much.
Baud
@handsmile:
That there’s my Achilles heel. But thank you for the rec.
BrianM
@Baud: Since you didn’t like wikipedia, here’s a quote:
From the Anarchist FAQ, which is not entirely unbiased and too quote-heavy for my taste.
A lot of anarchism is not hopelessly idealistic. There’s a lot of focus on “build[ing] the structure of the new society within the shell of the old” (an old Wobbly slogan), what I’ve seen called “the anarchy of evasion”. You can see a lot of that stream of thought in the Occupy movement. I’ve read some anarchists of this stripe saying that the way to find out how much anarchism is possible given the realities of human nature is to keep pushing the boundaries, often via small-but-growing groups. Phrases to search for are Kevin Carson’s “homebrew industrial revolution”, “resilient communities” (including John Robb’s stuff). “Locavores” and “intentional communities (some varieties)” seem to be going in roughly parallel directions.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@BrianM: from your quote
Which is just plain stupid – or as you charitably put it – hopelessly idealistic. Humans are wired to form social hierarchies. It’s what we do.
Baud
@BrianM:
This, to me, is why a lot of anarchism does seem hopelessly idealistic. Non-coercive institutions are a pleasant idea, but I can’t fathom any reality in which a functioning — and relatively permanent — society can operate without some (hopefully minimal) level of coercion.
arguingwithsignposts
@jwb: Someone must have finally let KThug off the leash.
BrianM
@handsmile: I actually preferred Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value to Debt. They cover some of the same ground, but Theory is heavier on gift economies, which interest me.
Also recommended: “ON THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF GIANT PUPPETS: broken windows, imaginary jars of urine, and the cosmological role of the police in American culture” because it made me understand and even sympathize with the makers of those damn giant puppets. From its introduction:
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Baud: I expect that the non-coercive social structures will be run by a herd of unicorns.
Donut
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason:
I pretty much agree with you and I also rarely read the Village and when I do it’s usually a click through from DougJ or John Cole. Then after I feel dirty and complain that I was tempted and was too weak. They read so I don’t have to.
And the reason why these dongalongs (iPad typo for dingaling, but I’m leaving it) matter is because they are extremely influential on their friends and admirers in the old media structure. They are not there to enlighten. That is just the pretense. The Brookses of what our pal Atrios calls the Failed Media Experiment are there to reinforce the Preferred Narratives of the Order of the Universe, of which they are Moral Masters and Annointed Leaders. On and on…
We desperately need a better propaganda machine on our side to combat them. We should learn from them and co-opt when we can. Reasonable arguments and evidence certainly don’t win in politics.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Donut: Or just a few committed HVAC workers/activists with a bag full of anthrax and access to the NYT a/c system.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
Allow me to serve as translator:
Translation: “Fire as many workers as possible to increase profits.”
Translation: “Repeal ACA, and it’s back to the Law of the Jungle for you little turnips, just as God intended.”
“Vouchers, so you can go to the shitty school of your choice. If you can’t afford private school, your Human Capital must be of insufficient quality to be worth educating anyway”.
I’ve been liking Hayes’ book so far (1/4 way through), but I don’t think that David Brooks is an example of actual meritocracy at all. Is the he smartest among us? The wisest? The bravest? Does he have any particular talents at all, to commend him?
Nope. He was lucky enough to get into U. Chicago, drank deep of the Austrian Kool-Aid served there, made important friends, and eventually married a rich, rich lady.
My only beef with Hayes’ book so far is that he fails to distinguish between actual meritocracy, and the illusion of meritocracy. Maybe he gets into this later, maybe not… but Brooks isn’t a meritocrat. He’s just a properly-credentialed Courtier.
Naw, don’t give up, just take a break… the anti-Brooks bench is deep here.
jwb
@RossInDetroit: Give him time. He knows the powers that be at the Times won’t let him go straight to “lying bag of shit.” He’s probably not even sure what kind of blowback he’s going to get for posting this. But he’s clearly been playing the escalation game with respect to Brooks for about the last month, and it will be interesting to see whether he’s allowed to continue or will be forced to return to delivering his critique of Brooks in snarky asides.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@jwb: Considering that he is like the only credible and prominent writer with an opinion column at the NYT it will be interesting to see how they handle KThug breaking one of their stupid tenets. I’m glad to see him challenging Brooks, and the NYT directly, in any case.
arguingwithsignposts
@danah gaz (fka gaz): Maybe they’ll fire Brooks like they did Bloody Bill Kristol. One can hope.
The level of criticism of Brooks seems to have stepped up considerably over the past couple of months. Not just from KThug, but Pierce, DeLong, Baker, etc.
OTOH, they may just see it as drawing more eyeballs.
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@arguingwithsignposts: I’d love to see that. If they cleaned up their opinion pages, and got rid of the worst hacks it might start being worth the price of subscription. KThug if anything, has been carrying them for too long.
Maybe Arthur Brisbane will end up leaving the fold, too. That’d be nice.
Donut
@danah gaz (fka gaz):
I think we would be better off not doing the whole terrorist thing. Not your best option, and really not all that funny, either.
tony in san diego
@Villago Delenda Est:
Hungry people will defeat fat people any day.
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
The thing anarchists can’t seem to process is that simply not giving authorities official-sounding titles any more will not get rid of Authority™—it will just make it so invisible that no one can even imagine being free of it. There’s always Authority—and it’s the worst when fragmented into the smallest bits. Imagine a world ruled by Mrs. Kravitz peeking out her curtains at you.
For my fellow sci-fi junkies—this is why I found the description of Anarres so horrifying, especially because it was held up as exemplary. No Government to tell you what to do—but always in fear of the admonition: “You’re egoizing, Shevek!” Gah!
danah gaz (fka gaz)
@Donut: I’m sorry I said that, particularly since it offended you. It was snark. I guess I ran afoul of Poe’s Law. FTR, I don’t actually advocate violence. My intent was to point out the hopelessness of reaching the privileged. Anyone in a position of power will succumb to group-think. Playing the game traps you in the game. Or, when you roll around with the pigs, you both get dirty and the pigs like it.
Sadly, the non-violent solution to these problems are shaky and vague, while the French seemed to have figured out an effective way to handle these people (at least at points passed).
I’d like a third option. I have no idea what it would look like. But I doubt that amassing the kind of wealth, power and time it would take to build a counter-media machine would have the result you’d intend.
Omnes Omnibus
@danah gaz (fka gaz): I prefer to think in terms of how we dealt with the first Gilded Age a little more than 100 years ago. Populists and then Progressives made real changes. I will note that fear of violence from workers served as a motivator for some to, if not get on board, at least acquiesce in the reforms.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: That fear of violence was based on actual violence however. The late 19th Century was indeed a bloody one in the US. And not all of it was against the workers. There are very good reasons why socialism left a bad taste in our mouths.
Omnes Omnibus
@Yutsano: Oh, I agree that there really was something to fear. I would like it if people could remember the lessons from that era without having to actually, literally live through it all again. This is why all the STEM education in the world cannot replace a good liberal arts program. If people actually read and understood history, among other things, we might not have as many dipshits running things. And I want a pony too.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: Your pony. She’s even named after a liquor.
As a holder of a liberal arts degree I concur. Knowing a lot about why we are where we are today might just help us figure out how to solve some of the issues we face now.
Tehanu
@Baud:
The Very Reverend Battleaxe at 98 mentions Anarres, which is in Ursula LeGuin’s great book The Dispossessed. I would disagree that Anarres is “held up as exemplary”; the whole plot is based on Shevek’s having to leave Anarres to get his work done without constant interference from people criticizing him for not buying into the ideology enough. He goes back because — with all its faults — it’s home, not because it’s (as her subtitle calls it) “an ambiguous utopia.” However, I do think it’s the best fictional example of an anarchism-based society you’ll find.
RaflW
Ask John Yoo:
It’s all utter nonsense of course. Except Yoo knows a lot about creeping Presidential power.
SiubhanDuinne
@300baud:
Thank you for the lovely new word.
Chris
@Baud:
That just proves Hoover was a liberal and liberals caused the great depression.
Yastreblyansky
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: The Fox and Limbaugh audience are people who don’t do anything but vote, normally for the most racist-sounding candidate and without reading the fine print. Brooks and Friedman and the hi-concept centrists and conservatives at the Washington Post and Atlantic, etc., are read by people with actual power who see themselves validated by the fake-intellectual tone, the vapid vocabulary, shallow logic, and profound ignorance of most people’s lives. They reveal a lot about how the ruling class thinks.
fuckwit
he’s a corporate whore.
perhaps he’ll utilize synergy to acheive objectives and maximize shareholder value .
it’s empty, meaningless corporate-speak.
Bob
Yeah – the connection between cruelty and abstraction. Not that we didn’t understand it before, but put just this way it it is perfect and cuts you with the truth, and you never forget it. That’s what writers do, of course.
kc
This is WAY better than your “Girls” posts, Freddie.
300baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
Glad you like it. It’s one of my favorite concepts. I suspect that using only pareidolia, the Dunning Kruger effect, feedback loops, and an open bar tab, I could explain almost anything.
shep
You sir, are not a tickhead.
mclaren
Dare I say it? Brooks is actually speaking truth. Though he’s sugar-coating it and using euphemisms.
“[Romney] would structurally reform the health care system, moving toward a more market-based system”” is quite true. Under Romney, if you’re not a millionaire and you get sick, you will die.
“[Romney] would simplify the tax code” is also entirely true.
Under Romney and a Republican House, the millionaires will pay no tax and the bottom 99% will get crushed with fees and taxes and fines.
All entirely true. Brooks just lards a bunch of raspberry syrup on top of the reality to make it seem palatable.
A Romney presidency with a Republican House will be like what Conan described in the first movie:
“…To crush enemies, to drive them before you, to hear the lamentations of their women.”
…As long as you understand that Romney & the Republicans in the House view their enemies as: the bottom 99% of America.
Chad
@Clean Willie: Aye. Very well done, Freddie.