David Brooks:The God That Fails

[cal04]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/01/opinion/01brooks.html?ref=opinion

During the middle third of the 20th century, Americans had impressive faith in their own institutions. It was not because these institutions always worked well. The Congress and the Federal Reserve exacerbated the Great Depression. The military made horrific mistakes during World War II, which led to American planes bombing American troops and American torpedoes sinking ships with American prisoners of war.

But there was a realistic sense that human institutions are necessarily flawed. History is not knowable or controllable. People should be grateful for whatever assistance that government can provide and had better do what they can to be responsible for their own fates.

That mature attitude seems to have largely vanished. Now we seem to expect perfection from government and then throw temper tantrums when it is not achieved. We seem to be in the position of young adolescents — who believe mommy and daddy can take care of everything, and then grow angry and cynical when it becomes clear they can’t.

(snip)
Many people seem to be in the middle of a religious crisis of faith. All the gods they believe in — technology, technocracy, centralized government control — have failed them in this instance.

In a mature nation, President Obama could go on TV and say, “Listen, we’re doing the best we can, but some terrorists are bound to get through.” But this is apparently a country that must be spoken to in childish ways. The original line out of the White House was that the system worked. Don’t worry, little Johnny.

(snip)
For better or worse, over the past 50 years we have concentrated authority in centralized agencies and reduced the role of decentralized citizen action. We’ve done this in many spheres of life. Maybe that’s wise, maybe it’s not. But we shouldn’t imagine that these centralized institutions are going to work perfectly or even well most of the time. It would be nice if we reacted to their inevitable failures not with rabid denunciation and cynicism, but with a little resiliency, an awareness that human systems fail and bad things will happen and we don’t have to lose our heads every time they do.

[Pirate Smile]

1. The immaturity in the reactions to almost everything is just astounding.

Temper tantrums in response to not getting your way is seen as the appropriate negotiating tactic. It's truly pathetic.

[rwheeler31]

2. We look like a bunch of shoppers yelling at sales clerks.

It is so stupid.

[babylonsister]

3. David Brooks is wrong more than he is right. He's not even seeing

He's another tool of the r/w, no more, no less.

[Warpy]

5. Right, he's completely missing that crisis of faith among people

who really bought prosperity theology, tithed and voted GOP thinking everything would come back to them tenfold.

All they got for their belief, charity and frugality were a preacher living large on 10% of the incomes of hundreds of people, declining house and 40lK values, and a GOP government that betrayed them and their beliefs at every opportunity

A lot of these people are teabaggers, furious because they dimly suspect they've been had but incapable of realizing who all the scammers really are.

GOP economic philosophy has been tried and has found to be a disaster in practice. Instead of investing in the US, the rich upon whom all wealth was lavished have hoarded it, invested overseas, or turned to accounting games to increase their numbers on paper. Now the whole thing is threatening to come apart at the seams, with the true believers who failed to prepare for it the most vulnerable.

Poor Brooks, one often wonders what sort of alternate reality he inhabits, where the dogma he put his heart and soul into has worked and the only crisis of faith in institutions is on the left. He's totally missed the fact that the anger is now on the right, that Rick Warren's church's money problems are as much a symptom of it as the rage at teabagger meetings, and if the poor people on the right ever catch a clue as to what has really happened to them, his head will be on a pike.

[babylonsister]

6. Warpy, Happy New Year to you. You are always a voice of reason

I value on DU. I hope 2010 treats you well.

[Warpy]

8. Thanks, and the same to you, all of it

I especially hope the economy turns around so that people facing the disaster prolonged unemployment is bringing have their lives turned around for the better.

[regnaD kciN]

7. So what else is new...?

:shrug:

[BrklynLiberal]

4. Funny to have David Brooks writing about this. He is one of those that willingly

towed the Bush party line for 8 solid years.

[regnaD kciN]

9. Yes, I remember an insufferably-pious column of his from 2004-2005...

...warning that, no matter how much right-wing hatred had been spewed, or how divisive and polarizing the Bush Administration had been, it was Democrats who had to be super-ultra-careful to not appear too partisan, negative or "angry," because voters would reject that kind of "incivility." :eyes:

[BrklynLiberal]

10. He tests to see which the winds are blowing, and that is where he goes...

[travelingtypist]

11. Er, David? What a load of bullshit.

These people, his side, made a political party and an ideology out of government doesn't work, government doesn't work, government is evil, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" is the scariest nine words in the English language, and on and on and on. Then they got in power and instituted polices like deregulation and appointing unqualified horse trainers to key positions in order to prove that government doesn't work, all the while screaming that anything bad that ever happened was the other guy's fault, i.e., inheriting 9/11 even though it happened while Bush was in office. So all of the things he's decrying didn't happen in a vacuum. There was cause and effect, that he seems to be willfully ignoring.

At least he doesn't smirk on TV anymore. He used to have that same death's head face that Bill Kristol wears all the time.

[struggle4progress]

12. Following the 2004 Madrid bombing, Brooks advocated postponing elections after terrorist acts:

Op-Ed Columnist
Al Qaeda’s Wish List
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: March 16, 2004
I am trying not to think harshly of the Spanish. They have suffered a grievous blow, and it was crazy to go ahead with an election a mere three days after the Madrid massacre ... http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/16/opinion/16BROO.html?pagewanted=1

Now he wishes the President would just say some terrorists are bound to get through. But, of course, 2004 was an election year, and Brooks may simply have been concerned back then about the prospects for Bush's re-election. It's less obvious what he's concerned about now: maybe it's the fact that a Bush appointee still sits atop TSA

[blueworld]

13. Brooks babbles best when using others as fuel for his ego trip

Expecting honesty and nobility of ideal from the public servants we elect & the agencies we pay for isn't quite the same thing as asking "Mommy & Daddy" to support & protect us. But then he has to get those columns out so he can make the big bucks.

[senz]

14. Brooks is a sneaky little pundit --

It's a complete anti-government screed. "The God that Failed" was a 1949 book on the failures of communism. Rightwing conservatives have been trying for decades to equate the good government of democracy with the bad government of totalitarian regimes. Ever the loyal foot soldier for the Right, Brooks does everything he can to perpetuate the old lie. Amazing that gullible types still persist in calling him a moderate.