As a responsible citizen, I don’t “hate-read” Illusionist David Brooks in The New York Times. His columns in the daily—I draw an Obama red line (kidding!) at watching him perform on cable TV—are soft, namby-pamby, and the “Bobo in Paradise” indulges in several paragraphs of folderol before getting to the nut (hardly ever clearly-defined) of what he’s paid to say. However, no matter how repulsive (or dull) the failed ripostes of Brooks, Michele Goldberg From Brooklyn, Thomas Friedman or David French turn out, it’s not too much to ask a skeptic to at least give them a skim.
Brooks’ April 17th column was slightly more direct, though, as usual, larded with qualifiers that ensures he won’t get ejected from Peter Baker and Susan Glasser’s weekly Italian and French wine salon in D.C. where select Beltway Democrats and media “uprisers” (theoretical at this point) gather to top one another on first-tier knowledge of the works produced by Alexis de Tocqueville, John Locke, David Halberstam, Thomas Hobbes and Molly Ivins.
Brooks, preparing for the water-pistol shot, extols the virtues of scientific institutions, news outlets, charitable organizations, international alliances, businesses and universities (“crown jewels”), which “make our lives sweet, loving and creative, rather than nasty, brutish and short.” He says, “Trumpism… is about ego, appetite and acquisitiveness and is driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit.” I’d hope fair-minded readers, regardless of political ideology, would think, “Hmm, isn’t a description of Brooks and the elite media?”
In any case, Brooks does a microscopic-Paul Revere and asks Americans (or at least his readers) to band together and form a non-violent movement to squelch Trump and his plan to end civilization, at least the interpretation of “civilization” that some hold. He continues: “I’m not really a movement guy. I don’t naturally march in demonstrations or attend rallies that I’m not covering as journalist [I can’t recall the last time Brooks did that.] But this is what America needs right now. Trump is shackling the greatest institutions in American life. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
Never mind that if Brooks is wearing “chains” then I’m once again a 21-year-old who’s full of beans, mixed intentions and tossing the sardines around. I like non-violent protests. I like demonstrations. But where does Brooks believe the bodies are going to come from? Social media? Not likely, since that integral part of the current culture, for better or worse, has wiped out the incentive to stage a march of 500,000 in Washington, D.C. You see pictures of anti-Trump rallies in different cities, but they’re sparse and mostly comprised of guys and gals who receive discounts at movie theaters.
This isn’t a defense of Trump, whose capricious economic policy is causing agita in parts of the country (I’m not a Jerome Powell fan, but Trump’s sporadic bellicosity about the Fed Chair is a distraction); and his continued consultation with the odious Steve Bannon is hardly optimal. But the fallacy of Brooks’ plan is that, unlike he and his colleagues, a majority of Americans aren’t as sympathetic to law firms, universities, the media or a bloated government. Right now, it’s a New York Times fantasy. I’d say “parody,” but that’s “so 1990s.”
The photo above is one I took in Berkeley, years after Mario Savio (probably not a Brooks hero) and the Summer of Love—where a disillusioned George Harrison, in 1967, visiting Haight-Ashbury, spoke of the “hideous, spotty little teenagers.” It was my first trip west of Chicago, first time I ate Indian food and though the picture isn’t technically great, it captures that moment in time. Aside from the fashion, what’s notable is seeing how many youthful students or residents are reading papers or pamphlets while walking, not dissimilar (but superior in my opinion) to people doing the same with their cell phones today.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Dino Martin is arrested on suspicion of possession and sale of machine guns; Terry Knight wins a cash settlement with Grand Funk, the horrible band he once managed; Elvis attracts 44,000 for a concert at the 8th Wonder of the World, the Houston Astrodome; Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock,” fueled by silly nostalgia, returns to Billboard’s Top 40; Big Star’s Radio City is released; Alex Jones is born and Chet Huntley dies; Fran Ross’ Oreo, James Wambaugh’s The Onion Field and James Herbert’s The Rats are published; Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal is Time’s Man of the Year; the Cleveland Indians host “Ten Cent Beer Night,” a failed promotion; Chris Evert is named A.P.’s Female Athlete of the Year; and New Year’s Day is celebrated as a public holiday for the first time in the U.K.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023