The balance of David Brooks’s column in the New York Times is just a preamble to the single sentence highlighted below:
Those of us in the opinion class have been complaining that Trump voters are post-truth, that they don’t have a respect for expertise. Well, the experts created a school system that doesn’t produce skilled graduates. The experts designed Obamacare exchanges that are failing. Maybe those of us in the professional class need to win back some credibility the old-fashioned way, with effective reform.
Just saying “give us a free hand and we’ll fix everything”, the usual retort, isn’t nearly good enough. And it’s what every tyrant has said since the dawn of time.
Accomplishing that will require listening. Is the “professional class” up to it? Why listen when you already know it all?
John F Kennedy – we will put a man on the moon.
Barack Obama – we will put men in women’s bathrooms.
And the professional class thinks that’s just great. Reading most of the popular commentary I’m not thinking change is in the air.
Like most of the elites and their experts, David Brooks is useless and worthless. Again, what value would be lost if he were to be suddenly sucked up by a black hole? What actual value does he contribute to GDP?
Hey, at least Brooks had one good sentence in an 800 word column. Half the columns I’ve read today didn’t even have that many. 797 words leading up to “Who can say?”
There’s a sort of Chekhov’s Gun of newspaper columns. If your column opens by stating that “X is a problem” somewhere in the column there should be some proposed solutions for X.
Drew, that was an “enlightening” contrast of goals set by two very different presidents!
President Obama has tackled some very desirable and difficult objectives—extending healthcare insurance to more Americans, ending Iran’s nuclear weapons program (if any), tightening the relationship among the countries of the Pacific Rim, just to name three.
I don’t think he can be faulted for his limited aspirations but I think weak execution is a fair complaint. I expect my pointing that out will provoke special pleading on his behalf. I think the reality is that President Obama is completely convinced of the fundamental rightness of his policies, thinks that opposition to them is unfair, foolish, motivated by politics, racism, etc., and not particularly interested in engaging in the ordinary political hoss tradin’ that presidents have routinely done to achieve their objectives, not to mention secure their legacies.
“Why listen when you already know it all?”
I think that’s a major trait of the progressive left. They feel they are above the rest of American minions, and innately know what is right, good, and fair for America as a whole. The problem is that most of these intellectuals are concentrated in the right/left coastal areas, and have little to no contact with what the rest of the country considers as important, as well as a basic understanding of some totally opposite belief systems based upon very different every day experiences.
For instance, my husband and I were at a party Sunday evening. It was a great group of professional people — mainly working in the entertainment and medical fields. Most were liberal and lamenting the election. And, their comments radiated a disdain for what they viewed as lame, overly religious, uneducated people, stuck in passe traditional values, who voted for Trump. The snobbery was so apparent to me (despite how much I enjoyed their company outside of politics). However, such “elitist” attitudes were totally obscured to them. Confirmation bias, perhaps?
Heading out to Indiana for a wedding in 2 weeks. I expect that on just like every theory visit I will be with a bunch of people who pretty funny and fun to be with and will have a good time, unless politics comes up. Then I will hear about how everyone on the coasts is a liberal, hates America, we are all hypocrites, need safe spaces, etc. My favorite, of course, will be the part of the family who makes sure I never get to be around their kids unescorted lest my propaganda ruin them. Of course, they homeschool the kids, the girls mostly in home economics. (They have essentially no science courses and little math beyond basic arithmetic.) God forbid that I do something like talk about science with them. They have nothing but contempt for those who have political views different from theirs. They have no idea, nor do they care, that half the population lives on those coasts.
Steve
I think the differences of opinion are serious enough that there are only a handful of resolutions. Tyranny, divorce, or (my preference) a commitment to leave the other well alone.
That last requires devolution–doing less at the federal level and more at the state and local level.
Many times a person does not have the ability to propose a solution or the solution would be worse than the problem. Most people who see a metal beam on a bridge cracking know there is probably a problem, but they have no idea of how to fix it.
If David Brooks and his cohorts were not such a**holes, I might sympathize with them. They have been thrown down the rabbit hole. It is as if the Laws of Physics have been upended, and Laws of Nonsense have replaced them.
It would be as if somebody suggested that your dogs were to run your household and that you would sit around all day taking orders. How would there be any income to pay the bills? Who would pay the bills? How would they communicate with humans? Who would do the shopping and how? On the internet, how would they pretend to be human when their paws could not type?
Would you consult your dogs about the feasibility of the project? Let me guess, no, and why, because they are not capable of rational (or irrational) thinking. Even if they have some cognitive abilities, they do not have the physical features to function in the human world.
The progressives are in the same place. How can the fruit flies or the earthworms believe that they can run a complex (or simple) society? It is mind boggling. For them it is like Lewis Black’s bit If it weren’t for my horse ….
They were in a Do-Loop, and they assumed that it must be an eternal Loop because that was the way things are. There was no Exit Do, and there was no Do While. (Meaning, it would go round and round without stop until the end of time or until it broke.) The Loop kept going, and eventually, it used up all the available memory and threw an error.
The elites and their experts cannot explain what occurred because in their framework there is no explanation. It is like dividing by 0. There is no answer, or the answer is nonsense. Any answer is meaningless, and the elites and their experts are trying to resolve that impossibility and the recent reality. For better or worse, it cannot be done.
For the everyday progressives, it is even worse. They only understand what the high priests deliver to them as divine knowledge. When the high priests are bewildered by an event, the sheep fight back as best they can by protesting reality.