Hey, poor people! Get your shit together and have some morals, says David Brooks in a recent New York Times op-ed:
Reintroducing norms will require, first, a moral vocabulary. These norms weren’t destroyed because of people with bad values. They were destroyed by a plague of nonjudgmentalism, which refused to assert that one way of behaving was better than another. People got out of the habit of setting standards or understanding how they were set. Next it will require holding people responsible. People born into the most chaotic situations can still be asked the same questions: Are you living for short-term pleasure or long-term good? Are you living for yourself or for your children? Do you have the freedom of self-control or are you in bondage to your desires?
Because the only thing better than judging the poor is doing it from your high pedestal of privilege.
Team Blackness also discussed the police shootings in Ferguson and the dealings of one gentleman known as the poop burgler.
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Belafon
What David really wanted to say: Since we stopped judging people by the color of their skin, this country’s gone to shit.
Rand Careaga
Brooks has inexplicably neglected to pose to his inferiors the most important question:
“Do you have vast spaces for entertaining?”
If not, you might as well give up, fuck like bunnies and kill one another (but not, of course, your betters).
schrodinger's cat
@Belafon: You forgot giving the uppity wimmens a vote and a voice.
Cacti
In another episode of the truth will out:
Salon finds that Trey Gowdy has a private internet domain (treygowdy.com) with a private e-mail address (@treygowdy.com). His office has yet to respond to requests concerning: 1. The location of his server, 2. How it is secured, or 3. How he separates official/constituent e-mails from personal ones.
Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), new chair of the House Oversight Committee, lists an @gmail.com address on his official Congressional business card.
Link
Porco Rosso
Ah the notion of personal responsibility, its a great way to excuse corporate and societal responsibility.
c u n d gulag
” People born into the most chaotic situations can still be asked the same questions: Are you living for short-term pleasure or long-term good? Are you living for yourself or for your children? Do you have the freedom of self-control or are you in bondage to your desires?”
Bobo,
You insipid and banal elitist douche-canoe, are you prepared to ask this same question not just of those of us in the 47%. but of your pals the uber-wealthy Banksters, Wall Street types, hedge-fund managers, and MIC war-mongers?
Many of the richest of the rich are the most immoral! Look at the Bible – OLD and NEW Testaments!
And so are many of their children.
Unlike some minority kid who does something stupid/illegal, they know that Daddy’s bucks will bail them out, get them a good lawyer, and leave them with a clean record.
That’s not true of some minority kid caught with some pot or coke. THAT kid’s bound for jail.
But, if it’s some rich kid, she’ll walk away with a clean record.
Chris
They are really never going to get it until someone guillotines a few hundred of them in a public square in the middle of Washington or New York.
Even then, the survivors probably still won’t get it, but at least they’ll know enough to shut the hell up.
Percysowner
But, but, but! Isn’t the real problem that we have become TOO politically correct and the world is falling apart because people can’t express what they feel? Johnathon Chait was pretty sure that if we could just not censor speech the world would be a better place. Make up your minds guy!
Sloegin
I’m so looking forward to his companion column all about noblesse oblige and scolding the failings of his betters.
Yep.
Any time now.
kc
@Cacti:
BWAHAHAHAHA!
Roger Moore
And this is the critical defect in the argument. Poor people aren’t thinking short term because they’re addicted to personal pleasure; they’re thinking short term because they’re in survival mode. It’s more or less impossible to think about the long term when you don’t know how you’re going to pay for your next month’s rent or even your next meal. Poor people aren’t going to start thinking about long-term planning until they have some short-term security.
Kay
Talk of economic inequality terrifies him, so he has to retreat to scolding people.
This is a tough analysis of the whole debate (she goes after Putnam for being, basically, a coward), but I found this part oddly hopeful:
Pogonip
@Roger Moore: When you’re really poor, next month, or next week, IS long-term planning. That doofus who wrote the article should have asked for comments from those who’ve been there.
Villago Delenda Est
Brooks’ condescending, holier-than-Jesus-Himself tone is why the world will be a much better place the day his broken, exsanginated body is found in an alley. Bereft of empathy, understanding, or even the slightest hint of decency.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. How does it work? Don’t ask David Fucking Brooks.
Chris
@Roger Moore:
They’ll tell the poor to nut up and take a huge risk, and then point you to some people who totally took a risk and had it work out for them. They won’t tell you about all the other times when people took a risk and it didn’t pay off – these people were clearly just irresponsible or bad.
ET
‘Cause Bernie Madoff and the a$$holes in charge of Enron are people to emulate.
MomSense
@Chris:
I’m sharpening my knitting needles.
/tricoteuse deFarge
MomSense
@Roger Moore:
QFT
How exactly are people supposed to do long term planning when they earn $7.35 an hour and have schedules that change weekly if not more frequently?
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: Thank Reagan and his economic policies for the current state of affairs.
Kay
Also, he loves the “chaotic families” line but he doesn’t understand how it’s used. When people in social services use it, they recognize that what it means as a practical matter is economic insecurity. That’s the root of most the “chaos”.
It doesn’t just spring up because they’re “bad people”. It’s A leads to B which leads to C. The chaos comes from the economic insecurity. It’s concrete.
KG
@Roger Moore: yup, gotta love the false dichotomy born of ignorance.
Chris
@MomSense:
And now, let us end this meeting on a high note…
Roger Moore
@Pogonip:
If he were the kind of person who thought poor people had anything worth saying about their situation, he wouldn’t have written that drek in the first place.
Kay
@schrodinger’s cat:
They kicked most of the supports out from under them and are now blaming them for falling.
Put the supports back in and see what happens. How about that idea?
MattF
Note this blog post from Krugman:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/when-values-disappear/?module=BlogPost-Title&version=Blog%20Main&contentCollection=Opinion&action=Click&pgtype=Blogs®ion=Body
He doesn’t actually say the words “David Brooks is a fool” but there’s no doubt about the message.
NCSteve
Has anyone ever noticed how a New York Times columnist can write the same column over and over and over again and still get paid and treated like the journalistic aristocrats? Because I can name you four that seem to have figured that out, and, oddly the economist isn’t one of them.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
It’s worse than that. They kick out the supports, note that they’re falling, and use this as proof that they should never have had those supports in the first place. Because you can be absolutely sure that’s the political intent of this kind of crap. Blaming the poor for their own problems is only the first step in justifying further destruction of what remains of the social safety net.
benw
@MattF: yeah, Krugman’s basically lost his temper with Brooks and called out his stupid bullshit a couple other times, too.
I swear the only reason the Times keeps giving Brooks a national platform is that the goddam hippies aren’t going to keep punching themselves.
Roger Moore
@benw:
Haven’t these people ever watched liberals in action? What are circular firing squads but hippies punching each other?
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris: Well, those poor people obviously didn’t get a startup loan from their parents, or were reluctant to cash in that wedding gift stock. So they deserve their fate.
Kay
@Roger Moore:
I think it’s telling, too, how panicky they get when it’s white working class really falling into the abyss. . That’s what the book is primarily about-working class white people.
All of a sudden income inequality is this giant 4 alarm fire because now it’s reached “our” people! The people in those truck commercials are at risk!
Litlebritdifrnt
@Roger Moore: This.
As I noted a week ago, here in NC the legislature is introducing legislation that would require driver licenses for people who ride mopeds and scooters. The majority of people who ride mopeds and scooters don’t have a license for some reason or another (unpaid traffic ticket, prior DWI). In a State which has little or no public transportation to speak of how are people expected to get to work? I love it how these RWNJs tell people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and then promptly pass legislation to take away their fucking boots.
Frankensteinbeck
This is a major conservative complaint, that they’re not allowed to shame and beat people down for being different. They can’t force people with violence and humiliation to stop being gay or Jewish or defying their abusive parents or whatever asshole rule they think everyone should conform to. Conservatism is the visceral anger at the government taking away their right to hurt other people.
@Kay:
This is a conservative dog whistle. Since at least the 80s, one way racists have loved labeling blacks as inferior is to point to a higher rate of unwed parentage. They fit this into their other prejudices to present black women as lazy sluts and black men as irresponsible thugs who get women pregnant and abandon them.
Doug r
@MattF: Wow Krugman actually preemptively bitch slaps Brooks
geg6
Don’t worry! Nick Kristoff has Brooks’ back on this! We should all just read Daniel P. Moynihan’s work on the lack of morality inherent in black families to understand! Blame the victim and all your problems are solved!
Violet
I find this an offensive question. The premise that “living for yourself” is somehow less worthy than “living for your children” is offensive. Sure, good parents sacrifice some things so their children can have others. But living only for your kids is a recipe for disaster. Plenty of guilt and anger can go along with that. A good situation is where the parents live for themselves and also for their kids. They enjoy life themselves and balance that with making sure their kids are taken care of and have opportunities.
The moral scolding inherent in that one line is truly offensive.
Quaker in a Basement
They were destroyed by a plague of nonjudgmentalism,
Wasn’t there some famous dude who said, “Judge not, lest…” something, something? Whatever became of him?
Kay
@Frankensteinbeck:
I love it because they’re wrong about teenage parents. There are fewer teenage parents. Huge declines across all groups-white, black, Latino. Big successes on the teen parent front. It isn’t about irresponsibility, these “chaotic families” they babble about. It’s about economic security.
I remember the DAY my youngest got it- that his household has more money than some of his friends houses. He told me “Kia is poor, isn’t she?” Yup.
Eric U.
@Roger Moore: I hired a guy to do some work for me. He was pretty good at it. His economic situation just floored me, he was always less than a week away from being homeless.
Villago Delenda Est
@Quaker in a Basement: He was some dirty fucking hippie in the Middle East who wasn’t on a kick to build Jewish settlements on Arab lands.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay:
One of the keystones to economic security? Stable, reliable health care access. You know, what the ACA is all about.
Which the GOP hates with the heat of ten thousand burning suns.
Alex
One day, Elon, I know you’ll learn how to post here properly.
Another Holocene Human
And to think Brooksie taught a seminar on “humility”.
Can we replace David Brooks and his yabbering about poverty and humility with a monk named “Cadfael”? I’m pretty I’d prefer whatever he had to say on the topic.
Violet
I bet the NYT could let David Brooks go as a cost cutting measure and hire Ta-Nehisi Coates and add in Richard Mayhew and still be spending less money.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Villago Delenda Est: One of the paralegals from another law firm dropped off a flyer about a barbeque fundraiser for a kid diagnosed with leukemia. I know the ACA has helped a lot but there is still suffering out there. How people in this country are not embarrassed is beyond me. People are waving their foam fingers and yelling “USA, USA” when in every convenience store in the country there is probably a pickle jar begging for money for some kid’s medical care. Think how it must make people feel to have to beg to strangers to save their own child. It is disgraceful.
schrodinger's cat
@geg6: I hate smug face Kristoff, he is such a pretentious twit.
Another Holocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est: He was a historical god-man pastiche with a fleshly-spiritual answer to the disastrous, traumatic, and final drubbing the Jewish people endured after their umpteenth attempt at revolution caused Supreme Leader Hadrian to lose all patience.
“No, God didn’t mean that the Messiah would literally defeat the unbelievers in a military contest. The Messiah is a spiritual leader who brings about the Kingdom of God in your heart.”
Kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
I think that it will take awhile for health care to be defined like that for people. I thought the same thing, “this is a security measure”, but what I discovered was people considered access to regular care almost a luxury item. It was never portrayed as a “right” or a “necessity” other than ER patch ups. I genuinely think it will take a while for that to be up there with “food” and “shelter”. It’s what they got if they had extra, or in an emergency, health care. They don’t consider it a necessity, because they went without for so long.
Another Holocene Human
Some vandals, I’m guessing Jewish, wrote “your god’s mother is a whore” on an Armenian seminary in Jerusalem in what kind of looks like a price-tagging attack. I found that sort of funny because a) it’s such bog-standard Rabbinical cant, see Pantera, etc, & so on, b) the Jesus character hung around with whores and (shudder) Samaritans, so I think he gave about zero fucks. (Which is not to say hate crime vandalism isn’t bad, etc.)
Kay
@Violet:
What happened to “writing about what you know”? He reads (or claims to have read) this book and then felt qualified to develop a whole elaborate theory about these specific people?
Another Holocene Human
@Violet: But it wouldn’t feel as pretentious, and who can put a price tag on that?
jl
Brooks should buy the rights to Prairie Home Companion and revive it. It would be the same as Keillor’s except without the humor of friendliness. In it all children are above average only in the past. The bland sourness of the new version would be unique. Probably like the taste of skim milk about to go bad.
I can’t find the Alexander Hamilton quote right now that is obligatory for Brooks in his moral scold mode, but paraphrasing:
It is a mistake to think that the rich are more virtuous than the poor. The rich merely have vices which are more conducive to the acquisition and maintenance of wealth and power.
Oh, man, the course of US conservatism is sad. Started with Adams and Hamilton, and been mostly downhill since then.
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: How health care can be considered a “luxury item” is utterly beyond my comprehension.
But there are plenty of seriously stupid things like that in this country that are beyond my comprehension. We have, collectively, so much wealth, yet it’s distributed in the most perverse way that it can be. There is absolutely no excuse for anyone to be denied the bare necessities of life, yet we have moral scolds like David Brooks at large, apologizing for the greedy and insisting that the poor are that way because of moral failings of some sort. The principle of which is they stupidly fell out of the wrong uterus.
Central Planning
both.
Both.
BOTH!
Another Holocene Human
@Eric U.: My mom hired a guy to install some tiles. He sent over an Irish immigrant, not sure of immigration status but this was post Kennedy-Irish-special-amnesty so ya know. He did a really awesome job and my mom was disappointed she wasn’t hiring him directly, but the dude was like my boss has the license and connections. Anyway moral of the story is these racist ranters go on and on about ill eagles but ignore that Boston and I’m sure other areas were absolutely heaving with undocumented Irish immigrants working construction under the table, undercutting our wages and tooking er jawbs but because they were white and Catholic and so was the mayor of Boston it was all wink wink nudge nudge.
I think fundamentally human beings have a right to move across national boundaries and the labor movement should get their head out of their ass and end the disparate treatment of “legal” and “illegal” labor so we all get paid properly. Let’s start claiming our share of productivity gains and stop fighting each other, trying to make a wage by restricting labor just doesn’t work for long.
These shrieking fucks getting their xenophobia on never threw themselves to the floor and munched the carpet over all of the Europeans sneaking into the country or overstaying visas. Is my contempt for these pukes obvious? Good.
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: Not know anything about a subject doesn’t deter our Punditubbies from opining.
Kay
@Villago Delenda Est:
If you think about it, though, that was the real fundamental battle: is this something everyone should get or is this a consumer item?
I think a large swathe of low income people considered regular health care a consumer item that they just didn’t get. We have had people come in here with the entire side of their face swollen up with dental infections and they are going to work like that. They self-treat. They let things go.
I think it makes sense that they have to come around to the idea that this is not just available to them, but something they can expect. It’s helped me to understand why the people who had the most to gain were so passive about it. It is a new idea. A different way of looking at it.
jl
@jl: And can’t help also noting that Alexander Hamilton also understood the point that Krugman made in his blog post: the range of opportunities created by a society mold men’s character as much as natural character molds the society. I think that is in one of his reports (maybe ‘on Manufactures’) where he argues that a country organized around laissez-faire economics would thwart full development of talents and industrious enthusiasm for worthwhile pursuits.
What we call conservatism in the US today is what Jefferson once called ‘the croakings of reaction’.
schrodinger's cat
@Another Holocene Human: AFAIK there are quite a few Irish illegal immigrants (>50,000) in Boston and NYC combined. I remember an article about it in NYT when Comprehensive Immigration reform was discussed back during W’s admin.
Another Holocene Human
@Roger Moore: Exactly, their anxiety is dialed to 11 because the 1% have socialized the risks. Brooks is being violently cruel in his assertions, secure in the knowledge that the 99% don’t read his columns … they don’t have time … and NYT costs too much … they get news from CBS updates on the hour and Cousin Joe’s email forwards (fwd: FWD: Re: re: fwd:)
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: Plus the legal ones who shilly shally along every summer to took our summer jobs and I guess with the recession they’re probably sashaying in full time NOT THAT THERE’S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT but seriously the hypocrisy people ugh.
Chris
@Frankensteinbeck:
Front-pagers, can we get this inserted into the glossary as one of the definitions of “conservative?”
Another Holocene Human
Don’t forget lots of Irish tourists too, just pointing out the well baked hypocrisy cake. I have no problem with Irish immigrants, tourists, immigrant-tourists (yes, they come over and think it is fun to get a summer job and hit all the NEC beaches or at least that was true in the late 1990s, much like New England teens try to get jobs on exclusive islands like MV, you really only break even with ferry fees and board expenses, but for some reason kids do this every year).
jl
@schrodinger’s cat: I’m not sure Brooks knows much more than how to cook up tendentious just-so stories.
I remember an interview where he said he realized in college that he could make more money and perks and fame for less study and work by going into the pundit business, so went after that main chance (at least for him).
Anyone know what interview I am talking about? I’ve looked for it a couple of times. Brooks discusses decisions he made in college.
I’d like to find it again, would go well as introductory reading about Brooks along with the Sasha Issenberg piece that investigated Brooks’ empirical methodology:
Boo-boos in Paradise
Sasha Issenberg
http://www.phillymag.com/articles/booboos-in-paradise/
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: Pundits are merely the tools of the 1%. Destroying and corrupting one institution after another in the country with their “common sense” analysis.
Nocera and a think tank guy had two back to back columns about the problems with universities. Among the usual litany of complaints about the high cost of tuition etc., they also attacked universities for conducting research.
Another Holocene Human
One thing I noticed in New England is that peeps would be so excited about getting their very own European
slaveemployee, for example an au pair, and then get super pissy when they found out that European attitudes about work and personal time differ significantly from American ones. Maybe this is why all the richie strivers in NYC try to get Central Americans or boat people from China to work in their houses*. Europeans just don’t show the proper deference to job creators, same thing is true at WDW here in Florida, just chat up the Euro “interns” long enough and they’ll start dishing on how this job sucks, cost of living in the Disney barracks is too high, and they can’t wait to go home. European youth think they’re entitled to have time off and enjoy themselves, the horror … the horror.*-not from the Big Apple so I mostly know about this from The Nanny Diaries and New York Daily News
schrodinger's cat
Apart from Gail Collins and Paul Krugman, NYT op-ed pg is a vast wasteland
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: I thought research and IP were the new profit center, that’s why all the new buildings are for housing research and they make you sign a contract signing all of your work for the next several years to the university, even stuff you do “on your own time” at “home”. Lol, you don’t have your own time when you’re a student.
schrodinger's cat
@Another Holocene Human: Wasn’t there wide spread abuse of the J-1 visa by Russians, a few years ago. Exchange students were being made to work in substandard conditions, in Hershey PA.
Lurking Canadian
One of the things I learned in my reading about the financial crisis was that Jimmy Cayne of Bear Stearns was famous for playing golf on the company dime, playing bridge when he should have been working and smoking his weight in weed.
Apparently being a lazy, thieving, drug-using slacker is okay when you run a major investment bank. If you are struggling to make ends meet, though, any one of those three is enough to justly sentence not just you, but all your dependents, to a life of penury and squalor.
Not for the first time do I say that we’d all be better off if David Brooks were strapped to a rocket and fired at the sun.
Another Holocene Human
@Kay: The drop in teen parenthood has happened DESPITE conservative policies not because of them, so it doesn’t count.
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: Wouldn’t surprise me one bit. They send foreigners on visas to some pretty remote places (not that Hershey is super remote, but it’s pretty out there if you come to the US from another country).
Sad_Dem
We do need to revive moral values in this country, starting with those who profit from war. Let’s make sure those folks get the message, OK, Bobo?
RaflW
These are excellent questions to ask just about every elected Republican in the US of A right here in 2015!
Beth in VA
Wow.
May it rain down upon our heads, this plague!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Kay:
That’s the other part of the chaos poor people are living in: untreated illness, both physical and mental illness. Even beyond the monetary costs, it costs a lot of time and effort to take care of a sick family member. There was a story Elon (?) posted the other day about truancy courts in Texas, and a lot of it was poor kids getting dinged because they were late or absent because they had to take care of a sick parent or help care for their younger siblings. When we treat good health as a luxury good, poor people are going to suffer more.
agorabum
@RaflW: Yeah, the real non-judgmentalism that is damaging America is beltway hacks failing to hold Republicans responsible for stupid destructive policies, for their ‘both-sides’ ism and failure to constantly tell America that on political party – which now controls all of Congress – has gone insane and is totally unfit to govern.
Are any of them working for long-term good? Or just until the next Republican primary?
Same goes for corporate leaders – are they just looking out for the next quarter, or trying to actually build the economy and their company responsibly?
The problem is not the moral scolding – in a weird way Brooks is on to something. The problem is the target of his moral scolding…somehow he always manages to turn away from the wealthy and powerful that actually run things to blame the poor and distressed for America’s ills.
Matt
Are you, for instance, spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure that your fossil-fuel profits aren’t affected by things like “reality” or “science” while those same fuels destroy the fucking planet? Are you working hard to sabotage and undermine your country’s government just so you can put a few more bucks on your personal Cash Mountain? Are you so hypnotized by hatred of poor people that you’ll actually root for them to die of preventable diseases to save a few bucks? Are you so terrified that people might not live in shame and fear of your imaginary friend that you’ll bankroll homophobic fascists all over the world?
Oh wait, Bobo isn’t talking about the utter lack of morals in our *rich* people, is he?