In spring 2021, The New York Times ran an editorial by Samuel Goldman in which he defended the disproportionate influence exerted by the “elite” – effectively an American aristocracy – on the nation’s governance. The gist of it seemed to be that the betters of society should not hide their privilege and excellence under a bushel and we poor hoi polloi clods should submit to their deserved rule. Yuck. This could not be allowed to pass without comment. The New York Times took a pass.
Samuel Goldman, “America Has a Ruling Class,” The New York Times, 4 April 2021, SR5 (www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/opinion/america-politics-elites.html).
Samuel Goldman’s call for the acknowledgement of a quasi-aristocratic ruling class is larded with disquieting a priori assumptions. He believes there is a properly functioning “meritocracy” despite all contrary evidence. Is he unaware of the concept’s origin, Michael Young’s satire lampooning a dystopia forged meritocratically? Thumbing through Chris Hayes’ Twilight of the Elites would profit him.
For him, this ruling class is a reality to tolerate, not something inherently problematic in a pluralistic democracy. Do the “best” – the original Greek meaning of aristoi – inevitably rise to the top in a society riven by bigotry, sexism, and income inequality? He assumes a smoke-filled room crammed with the “best” is where governance is transacted, a rejection of transparency. Is he oblivious to the scorched-earth politics practiced since Mr. Obama’s election in 2008?
His quasi-Nietzschean emphasis on the “great man” spurs his cajoling of the “ruling class” to proclaim its pedigree yet be judged solely by its actions. Radical honesty from the “best” instead might often look like this: “I’m the scion of an aristocratic family whose influence removed every sharp edge, stunted me in empathy, and elevated me to a sinecure for which I’m unfit by temperament, experience, and ability.”
By the time I departed for the biannual hajj to the Bluegrass, The Gaslighter in Chief’s conduct had become so egregious that Nancy Pelosi could no longer temporize on doing something about it. I had my customary I-64 sleepover in Lexington and bought a copy of The Lexington Herald-Leader. The paper had picked up The New York Times’ reporting by Nicholas Fandos on the speaker’s announcement of the opening of an impeachment inquiry regarding President Perfect Conservation’s alleged shakedown of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. I did a riff on Representative Adam Schiff’s soliloquy regarding what is “okay.” The Lexington Herald-Leader was not sufficiently amused to print it.
Nicholas Fandos, “House Opens Impeachment Inquiry of President Trump,” The Lexington Herald-Leader, 25 September 2019, 1A, 2A (www.nytimes.com/2019/09/24/us/politics/democrats-impeachment-trump.html). If Lexington Herald-Leader posted an online version of this article, its search engine is unable to locate it. The link above is to the version that appeared the The New York Times.
This past week’s torrent of events demands an updating of Representative Adam Schiff’s litany of questions to his colleagues on the House Intelligence Committee on 28 March. The GOP members of the House and Senate should ask themselves whether it is okay that a president’s personal attorney dabble in foreign affairs outside of official channels. Is it okay that a president pressure a foreign head of state to gather and perhaps even to concoct damaging information on a domestic political opponent? Is it okay that a president, whether tacitly or explicitly, dangle the provision of congressionally appropriated assistance as a carrot or the withholding of it as a stick to compel the head of state to bow to his wishes? Is it okay that a White House flout the whistleblower statutes and stonewall Congress in its performance of responsible oversight of the executive branch? Would any of this be okay if done by any Democratic president or White House, past or future? The nation waits and watches. It is a sad reality that the GOP’s answer may already be easily enough guessed.
Drat, Grey Lady. Have you no sense of humor? This may be the blog’s shortest entry. The boy scout for all seasons, James Comey, wrote an opinion regarding The Spray Tan Man as the eater of souls. The obvious point Mr. Comey missed is that the already soulless need not fret.
James Comey, “How Trump Co-opts Leaders Like Barr,” The New York Times, 2 May 2019, A25 (www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/opinion/william-barr-testimony.html).
James Comey’s explication of how President Trump corrupts and reduces those around him is well taken. However, Attorney General William Barr’s conduct suggests his soul was well masticated before he entered the administration and Mr. Trump devoured whole what little remained of it.
The Grey Lady strikes again, and I was even trying to be nice. Drat. Dang, double dang, triple dang. Whatever. One of The New York Times’ reporters, Laurie Goodstein, wrote an informative bit on the Red Letter Christians, a group of evangelicals who emphasize the words of Christ, the dialogue printed in red in fancier Bibles. This proclivity leads them to push back against The Fantasist in Chief. The article was a corrective against the tendency to consign all evangelicals to the same basket.
Laurie Goodstein, “Confronting the Flock over a Zeal for Trump,” The New York Times, 29 May 2018, A11 (www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/us/anti-trump-evangelicals-lynchburg.html).
It was refreshing and uplifting to meet in Laurie Goldstein’s article a band of Christian evangelicals committed to their faith’s most foundational principle. In a possibly quixotic effort to persuade conservative evangelicals to reconsider their support for President Trump’s most objectional policies, the Red Letter Christians are an embodiment of amor alienum, the absolute love of others, the boundless compassion for the most downtrodden and the least among us. Jesus himself was ultimately a “social justice warrior” of the type now routinely derided by conservatives and misunderstood, perhaps willfully, by Mr. Trump’s more rabid evangelical adherents.
Foiled by the Grey Lady again. Drat. The Republicans engaged in procedurally dubious, middle-of-the-night ramming through of their 2017 tax bill. Political hypocrisy is undying. Bush the Younger’s 2001 and 2003 tax giveaways cleared the Senate through reconciliation as did this turkey, yet the Republicans hyperventilated in 2009 when Mr. Obama availed himself of the process to enact the Affordable Care Act and the GOP cried foul again when Mr. Biden resorted to it for the American Rescue Plan.
Anyway, the wee-hour shenanigans afforded another opportunity to hiss at the GOP’s Swiss Army Knife policy: Tax cuts yesterday, tax cuts today, tax cuts forever!
Jim Tankersley, Thomas Kaplan, and Alan Rappeport, “G.O.P. Scrambles to Push Tax Bill Through Senate,” The New York Times, 2 December 2017, A1, A12 (www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/us/politics/senate-tax-bill.html).
Would that the GOP’s passage of “tax reform” under cover of darkness could be read as political farce, not as an act of stark political cynicism. Nothing now obscures the GOP’s obeisance to plutocratic donors. No one need any longer take the Republican Party’s claim of principled fiscal responsibility as anything beyond politically useful but empty Pablum. How can Congress, as a coequal branch, blunt President Trump’s worst impulses when its majority party cannot restrain its own baser instincts and in fact tolerates Mr. Trump’s dangerous antics so that its donors can be satisfied?
Once President Ramp Waddler was comfortably installed in his sinecure, he and the congressional GOP revved up the legislative engine to implement its policy for all seasons, the measure that resolves every problem, addresses every issue, redresses every grievance, and virtually ensures the coming of the millennium, except that it has never once delivered on its promise when assessed empirically. It was time to cut some taxes. And, if it’s time to cut some taxes, it’s time to release the Laffer. Yes, voodoo economist – Poppy Bush’s characterization, not mine – Arthur Laffer hit the cable news bricks. The man is incorrigible. His imperviousness to contrary data, indeed to reality, amazes.
Peter Baker synopsized the Laffer saga well. My letter is largely anti-supply-side boilerplate; however, it does contain a small critique. Mr. Baker, had he more room to run, might have examined what was happening in states that were inflicting the Laffer orthodoxy on their citizens. He might also have looked at the states embracing the heretical path and raising taxes. The GOP loves the “fifty laboratories of the states,” except when it doesn’t, and this is one of those times.
Peter Baker, “A ’70s Economic Theory Comes to Life Once More,” The New York Times, 26 April 2017, A19 (www.nytimes.com/2017/04/25/us/politics/white-house-economic-policy-arthur-laffer.html).
The evergreenness of Arthur Laffer’s supply-side theory is a marvel. Given more space, Peter Baker’s lucid assessment of supply-side economics as federal tax policy might have included a few words concerning its efficacy in the putative laboratories of the states.
Kansas’s shuttered classrooms, truncated school years, neglected infrastructure, exploding deficits, and flirtation with fiscal insolvency since Governor Sam Brownback – with Mr. Laffer as his guru – sharply reduced taxes in 2012 are well known. Perhaps more instructive is the counter-example of California’s robust economy since Governor Jerry Brown hiked taxes, also in 2012, an increase borne mainly by the wealthiest, those who routinely benefit most from Lafferian tax schemes.
And yet, despite no instance in which the theory has fulfilled its promise of fiscal neutrality – a balancing of lost tax revenues by economic growth and a broadened tax base – the idea persists. Perhaps it is evergreen like a weed.
Messrs. Trump, Ryan, and McConnell should remember that GOP control of the government grants them full ownership, for good or ill, of a Laffer-style tax giveaway.
Another whiff. It is sometimes possible to say something nice. Stanley McChrystal is one of the more interesting soldiers to have become a general officer. He’s what passes for unconventional in that rarefied demographic. He supports public broadcasting and makes a good case for it, so I sent a note.
Stanley McChrystal, “Save PBS. It Makes Us Safer,” The New York Times, 5 April 2017, A23 (www.nytimes.com/2017/04/05/opinion/stanley-mcchrystal-save-pbs-it-makes-us-safer.html).
Kudos to Gen. Stanley McChrystal for his thoughtful defense of public broadcasting and its crucial role in childhood education. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting remains a great value per dollar spent and public radio and television not only inform but uplift and strengthen the bonds of our common humanity. I suspect that General McChrystal has had the experience common to public radio listeners of sitting in the driveway with the car idling while waiting for a compelling report or story to conclude.
The third installment of the David Brooks trilogy contains a truly epic distancing of movement conservatism from the world as it exists. In his editorial, Mr. Brooks offers a nearly perfect, indeed textbook, description of the corrosive impact of the neoliberal consensus on the country’s economic and social fabric. Somehow the cause of this socioeconomic carnage evaded his notice. He did not even, as a rhetorical ploy, mention neoliberalism or supply-side economics as a potential explanation so that he could dismiss it. He in fact offers no explanation aside, perhaps, from a vague, indefinable, hard-to-put-one’s-arms-around degradation of the spirit. Puh-leeze.
David Brooks, “This Century is Broken,” The New York Times, 21 February 2017, A23 (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/21/opinion/this-century-is-broken.html).
David Brooks identifies the “bubble” imprisoning American elites and finds the wellspring of popular outrage in a cruelly unfair economy; however, he ultimately engages in victim-blaming. Thomas Piketty, Lewis Lapham, Robert Reich, et al., have better accounted for the country’s troubling socioeconomic plight and corrosive politics.
Longue durée analysis reveals that grave maldistribution of income historically undercuts social mobility because of the proclivity for a fortune to “age well,” for a wealthy family to maintain its position generationally not necessarily from superior business acumen but by dint of affluent birth.
Furthermore, a shifting conception of ideal entrepreneurial behavior has exacerbated America’s bend toward plutocracy. Once expected to balance the interests of shareholder, employee, and community, the businessman now favors the shareholder über alles, a formula for short-term thinking and callous expedience. The sad result is an economy generating stupendous wealth without prosperity while consigning the many to insecurity.
Rather than languid resignation to a Hobbesian future, Mr. Brooks might consider whether reshaping of socioeconomic regulation offers hope for a fairer, more inclusive economy despite the election of Mr. Trump, the self-aggrandizing plutocrat’s avatar, Lewis Lapham’s “prosperous fool and braggart moth.”
This is part two of the David Brooks trilogy. A phrase cribbed from the Ramones says it best: “Second verse, same as the first.” There’s no subtlety in Mr. Brooks’ effort to paint President Id Incarnate as the right-wing Other, an aberration that could not possibly be Republican. Is it possible that Mr. Brooks, as a conservative thought leader, breathes such rarified air in his high sinecure that he has sniffed not a single whiff of what’s been wafting from the dank right-wing dungeon for decades? Is he inobservant or disingenuous or both? Whatever the case, he called for all good Republicans to stiffen their spines and limit The Chiseler In Chief’s depredations. Mr. Brooks would have been well advised not to hold his breath on this one, as he should now know.
David Brooks, “The Republican Fausts,” The New York Times, 31 January 2017, A29 (www.nytimes.com/2017/01/31/opinion/the-republican-fausts.html).
David Brooks correctly characterizes the GOP’s “Faustian” bargain with Mr. Trump and commendably urges Republican legislators to oppose the Trump administration’s manifest incompetence and overreach. However, confidence in Mr. Brooks’ prescriptions is difficult to find. His recently expressed hope – that the new cabinet and the executive branch’s professional staff would blunt Mr. Trump’s worst impulses (“The Internal Invasion,” January 20, 2017) – was proven illusory by the rollout of the executive order on immigration. Does Mr. Brooks believe that the GOP, beholden to its base and more fearful of primary challengers than Democratic opponents, will effectively resist a president ticking off the base’s entire wish list? The low impulses he ascribes to Mr. Trump gestated in the conservative movement’s fever swamps and have long been cynically manipulated by the GOP for electoral gain. Mr. Brooks should ask himself whether Mr. Trump would have risen to the presidency had he run as a Democrat. A cure requires clearheaded diagnosis of the illness’s genesis.
And then the Grey Lady struck out the side. Perhaps the next three entries should be called the “the David Brooks trilogy.” Over a few weeks in early 2017, three letters were sent to The New York Times in response to opinions by Mr. Brooks. Each was consigned to the epistolary boneyard.
David Brooks has long been a sad character. He’s what passes for an intellectual in conservative circles and this has left him the unenviable task of defending a political theology – it requires too much willing suspension of disbelief and magical thinking to be a philosophy – that is well beyond its expiry date. If Mr. Brooks has an admirable quality, it’s his devotion to this Sisyphean endeavor. His seemingly irresistible and inexhaustible impulse to hold movement conservatism blameless for the Trump phenomenon serves him well. The intellectual contortions this job demands are a sight to behold.
There’s a fair question to pose: If these three essays by Mr. Brooks and my three responses are placed cheek by jowl, whose views have been vindicated by the four years of the Trumpian rule?
In the first essay, David Brooks posits that a kumbaya moment will materialize in which The Orange Waddler’s cabinet appointees and GOP legislators will summon the integrity and forthrightness to enforce political and constitutional norms and place The Boy King on a leash. Right.
David Brooks, “The Internal Invasion,” The New York Times, 20 January 2017, A29 (www.nytimes.com/2017/01/20/opinion/the-internal-invasion.html).
When David Brooks identifies gemeinschaft and gesellschaft as the wellspring of our political dysfunction, he offers a tattered fig leaf to the GOP to obscure its willful dumbing down of its electorate and Mr. Trump’s Svengali-like manipulation of these voters’ basest instincts. Is Mr. Brooks so naïve that the kabuki theater of the confirmation hearings portends for him an effective curtailing of Mr. Trump’s narcissistic, authoritarian impulses, when his cabinet selections mostly share his proclivities? Does Mr. Brooks believe that the GOP – long a power-obsessed, non-legislating party – will magically succumb to a quasi-Hegelian melding with a vanquished opposition to thwart Mr. Trump’s nascent corporate statism? Does Mr. Brooks foster confidence in his opinion when his crystal ball is a light British comedy of the early 1980s with dubious relevance to our troubling circumstance? Mr. Brooks should suppress his pseudo-intellectual maundering and offer a sober analysis of how best to navigate the Trump era.