this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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Watching David Brooks, of all people, develop more introspection and self-awareness than the entire Democratic party leadership has been a real trip.
I know nothing of his work, but my immediate assumption is that he's just a contrarian asshole that has no actual principles.
In media (as in politics), this kind of thing is almost always a product of cynical expediency rather than sincere introspection.
He's an old-school Regan conservative who writes a column for the New York Times. He also does a weekly PBS news segment; it used to be with this even older liberal named ~~David Brooks~~ (Mark Shields, what a dumb typo), but he retired, and now it's with a young liberal who's so moderate they barely even disagree.
Funny enough, I actually don't think he's being contrarian. He was on PBS Newshour for their election night coverage, and he seemed shook. The next day, he commented on Twitter something to the effect of, "maybe the answer is that the Democrats need to pick someone that makes people like me unconformable." I think he's watched his economic outlook completely win American politics over the last 40 years, only to find the prize at the end was fascism.
Thank you - that's interesting - particularly the quote about making him uncomfortable.
I'm surprised that the shifting Overton window, which has left the Democrats far closer to Reagan than MAGA, (who are busy speed-running fascism) hasn't swept up more Reaganites, but that boils down to naivete on my part, I think.
Whatever the case, I certainly agree that the Dems need to move from institutional neolib/neocon positions to populist left positions, but that's the last place the party wants to go - even when failure to do so represents an existential threat to the party.
Don't assume that he actually developed any self-awareness. I'm sure he takes no responsibility for the horrible columns he's written over the past few decades. To him, the facts on the ground changed, and certainly he never got anything wrong.
Well, I doubt he blames himself for anything that's occurred, and I certainly don't think he's going to become a socialist or anything like that. He does seem aware that 40 years of free market capitalism without any pushback from a real progressive party on behalf of the working class has created the conditions necessary for Trump, and that's more self-awareness than I've seen from Nancy Pelosi. That being said, I'm sure this newfound progressive streak will boil down to, "let's raise the federal minimum wage so we can get back to capitalism as usual."