Everybody has advice for the Democrats after Tuesday’s elections. You should see what James Carville had to say. Here’s David Brooks’s advice from his New York Times column:
Democrats need a positive moral vision that would start by rejecting the idea that we are locked into incessant conflict along class, cultural, racial and ideological lines. It would reject all the appurtenances of the culture warrior pose — the us/them thinking, exaggerating the malevolence of the other half of the country, relying on crude essentialist stereotypes to categorize yourself and others.
It would instead offer a vision of unity, unity, unity. That unity is based on a recognition of the complex humanity of each person — that each person is in the act of creating a meaningful life. It would reject racism, the ultimate dehumanizing force, but also reject any act that seeks to control the marketplace of ideas or intimidate those with opposing views. It would reject ideas and movements that seek to reduce complex humans to their group identities. It would stand for racial, economic and ideological integration, and against separatism, criticizing, for example, the way conservatives are often shut out from elite cultural institutions.
Democrats will be outvoted if they are seen to be standing with elite culture warriors against mass culture warriors, or imposing the values of metropolitan centers. On the cultural front especially, they have to be seen as champions of the whole nation.
I’m afraid he misunderstands what is going on. The people he’s exhorting aren’t Democrats, broadly, they’re progressives who have embraced a version of Marxism substituting race conflict, culture conflict, gender conflict for class conflict. They’re also a vanguardist movement which as I have explained previously means they believe that the plebs needs their guidance. They don’t care what the plebs wants.
How likely is it they will take his advice?
The very language of David Brooks is off-putting in that column. He speaks in highly theoretical prose, laced with milk-chocolate idealism and aspirations. His words just do not jive with the common everyday person, out there trying to make a satisfactory life for themselves and their family. And, when you juxtapose his suggestions with the enriched lives of political leaders who get generous waivers from abiding by their own mandates or laws, it also becomes pie-in-the-sky tripe.
David Brooks: “Kumbaya my lord….”
Progressives: “Shut up and submit, deplorables.”
But I’m choosing to stay positive. Joe Biden may be impaired, but we are in good hands with the leadership of the moderate wing:
https://twitter.com/Ablonde20211/status/1456631801271574534?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1456631801271574534%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitchy.com%2Fsamj-3930%2F2021%2F11%2F05%2Fstroke-or-glitch-you-decide-you-can-actually-see-nancy-pelosis-brain-break-in-real-time-during-press-conference-watch%2F
I don’t take it as badly as you do. In the Congress they converse in slogans and jargon that becomes incomprehensible to outsider ears. In linguistic terms it’s an argot—sort of like the members of a gang.
I understand that completely. Its not the jargon, its the halting, almost spastic, delivery. Drunk or addled? Afterall, for consistency, what was one of the big criticisms of Trump. His acerbic, unstatesmanlike style.
Would you give a delivery like that to a client? How much confidence do you think it would inspire? I know that if we were interviewing someone to assist with an issue at a portco who gave that performance we would nod, smile and then politely exit them from the building, never to be seen again.
I decided to go find some clips of Pelosi from the 2016-2018 timeframe, to compare. Like Biden, unrecognizable from current public performances. A different person. I don’t want to dance on a grave. I’m watching my mother in law go through this right now. Every six months is a new stage. It happens.
Two of the most senior people in our government are either flat out senile, or so impaired that the difference is not really worth debating.
Not inspiring.
My hackles raise whenever anyone starts talking about “unity.” Unity as a value leads to authoritarianism. People calling for unity are only interested in others uniting with their vision.
I’m much more of a live-and-let-live person. Peaceful coexistence is a better mantra than unity.