The Search For The Perfect Contraindicator

David Brooks, "The Upside of Opportunism". October 29

IN which the Opportunism in question is Mitt "Windsock" Romney's, and the Upside is, why, it's Yours and Mine, America!

To get re-elected in a country with a rising minority population and a shrinking Republican coalition, Romney’s shape-shifting nature would induce him to govern as a center-right moderate. To get his tax and entitlement reforms through the Democratic Senate, Romney would have to make some serious concessions: increase taxes on the rich as part of an overall reform; abandon the most draconian spending cuts in Paul Ryan’s budget; reduce the size of his lavish tax-cut promises.

Or, if it's the Tuesday Before The Election, It Must Be Time To Paint The Republican As David Brooks.

("Shape-shifting nature"! I'm surprised Brooks didn't cite a sociological paper to back that one up.)

Leave us remind everyone, one more time, that 2012 is the election season when Republican mouthpieces actually became desperate enough to announce that lying on the campaign trail means absolutely nothing, that it's the ultimate reckoning that counts. I'm sure they'll be generously applying that rubric to both party's candidates from now on.

You'll also note, of course, that in BrooksWorld there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that a) Republicans, however nutty, are going to flat-out cut 3% of GDP off the national budget and then b) stand willing to take the responsibility for it, although c) that is, apodictically, an immediate, roaring success for the national economy.

In other words, precisely the opposite effect of the last 24 years of Republican economic engineering.

Republicans would like to take the reform agenda that Republican governors have pursued in places like Indiana and take it to the national level: structural entitlement reform; fundamental tax reform.

Oh, I'm sure they would. And when the national economy becomes as amenable to flimsy PR manipulations in place of real results, I'm sure they'll be eager to take Mitch Daniels back at OMB.

Fuck: Mitch Daniels raised the sales tax in Indiana 17%. He did that to pay for capping property taxes, a showy little soak-the-poor accomplishment he got away with because it's Indiana. He slashed spending across the Procrustian board, because he had a compliant state legislature, and because Indiana doesn't have any aircraft carriers or nuclear warheads. Thank God. And, as a result of this Economic Miracle Finaglin', Indiana's unemployment rate is 8.2%, compared to the national rate of 7.8%, and it's right in line with the rest of the region. Except for Ohio, which is at 7%.

So thanks, Mr. Brooks. But if you're just gonna make shit up, I'd prefer to stick to butchering reality. Those flights of sociological fancy of yours are downright disturbing.

History Is Written By The Victors. Then Forwarded To The Ad Writers For Punching Up.

David Brooks, "The Conservative Mind". September 24

EVEN David Brooks…

When I joined the staff of National Review as a lowly associate in 1984, the magazine, and the conservative movement itself, was a fusion of two different mentalities.

I'd just remind everyone that a couple decades later, having joined the staff of the New York Times as an overrated opinion writer and finding his party in a very different sort of quagmire (aka the Bush Administration), a quagmire it had marched into in lockstep while shouting "Traitors!" at everyone who disagreed, David Brooks informed us that we had it all wrong, that there were hundreds of "conservative" factions, all debating discussing the wisdom of Edmund Burke all weekend.

You'd imagine, really, that if that cacophony of metaphysicians had developed in such a short time, over precisely the professional careerspan of one David Brooks, that his work would provide us with a timeline and an explanation. Someone wanna locate that for me?

On the one side, there were the economic conservatives. These were people that anybody following contemporary Republican politics would be familiar with. They spent a lot of time worrying about the way government intrudes upon economic liberty. They upheld freedom as their highest political value. They admired risk-takers. They worried that excessive government would create a sclerotic nation with a dependent populace.

You could put it that way. Or you could say they spend a lot of time polishing turds like Supply Side Economics and the Trickle Down Theory so that they, or their masters, could seal the triumph over Franklin Delano Class Traitor Roosevelt they imagined Reagan had begun. And fighting, then as now--something else someone following "contemporary" Republican politics will find familiar--against labor, organized and disorganized, the underclass in general, environmental and fiscal regulation, a sensible Defense posture, and academia.

By the way, I'm kind of a shut-in, so maybe I've missed some, but the next "conservative" I meet who is actually concerned about a social safety net creating dependence will be the first. I know quite a few who are terrifically concerned that a small fraction of their tax dollars, if any, might buy someone a sandwich or some insulin, but, frankly, if you could figure out a way to get China to foot the bill for Big Macs and meth for every poor person who wanted to sign up they'd be fine with it. Thrilled, in fact, so long as the cages were escape-proof.

But there was another sort of conservative, who would be less familiar now. This was the traditional conservative, intellectual heir to Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, Clinton Rossiter and Catholic social teaching. This sort of conservative didn’t see society as a battleground between government and the private sector. Instead, the traditionalist wanted to preserve a society that functioned as a harmonious ecosystem, in which the different layers were nestled upon each other: individual, family, company, neighborhood, religion, city government and national government.

In other words, Mr. Brooks, you're having a spot of trouble with your party at present, (or, more accurately, with its prospects), and need somewhere to hide, preferably well-stocked with principles you can use to hurl the exact same Republican crap at people after another defeat/disaster/metaphysical depantsing.

The two conservative tendencies lived in tension. But together they embodied a truth that was put into words by the child psychologist John Bowlby, that life is best organized as a series of daring ventures from a secure base.

The economic conservatives were in charge of the daring ventures that produced economic growth. The traditionalists were in charge of establishing the secure base — a society in which families are intact, self-discipline is the rule, children are secure and government provides a subtle hand.

Lemme just repeat, for those of you who came in late, that where Nabokov once opined that "reality" was the only word which should always appear in quotes, I believe that "conservative" should join in when speaking of the American post-war variety. And Mr. Brooks has just explained why.

This is like having a three-legged stool where each leg is on a different plane. Paleoconservatives (no, sir, I don't care for the term either, but y'all gave it to yourselves, and well-earned it was), who supported, acquiesced, or just stood around complaining about the temperature of the sherry while international corporate piracy took over their party, proved themselves to be nothing but political hacks with an inordinate fondness for Latin derivatives. It ain't like the Nixon administration wasn't enough fucking warning. And there's nothing, nothing whatsoever which is conservative about Daring Ventures, LLC. Traditionalists went through the Great Depression, too. Even those who didn't suffer personally saw the result of unfettered Capitalism. They saw the absolute need--whether or not they admitted it--for disciplined markets, legally enforced. They'd seen, while we're at it, the shame of war profiteering (and they'd seen a lot of those responsible held legally accountable, another thing no contemporary political observer will be much familiar with). And once tens of thousands of their fellow citizens--and tens of millions of Godless Soviets--had disposed of Germany and Japan, they looked around and asked themselves how they could get back to making an extra buck off it.

Ronald Reagan embodied both sides of this fusion,

"When Stupidity Met Cupidity". Yeah, he's to "Conservatism" what Ronald McDonald is to cuisine.

And by the way: like Fun he did. Reagan, or, in the interest of accuracy, his handlers, ran screaming every time imposing "traditional conservatism" clashed with Daring Ventures and Large Sums of Cash. Reagan--meaning Reagan Idolatry--is the very reason you're in this mess today. There was no "traditional conservatism" left by the time he and Mommy left Washington. Just the slime trail from everyone who'd been gorging himself at the public trough for eight years. If you wanna reform the Republican party, there's your place to start. And Godspeed.

and George W. Bush tried to recreate it with his compassionate conservatism.

Translation: there's a paper trail, or I'd deny I ever heard of him.

But that effort was doomed because in the ensuing years, conservatism changed.

No it didn't. It ran to its extremist elements in the 60s because it was afraid of the Negroes. And eventually, with Reagan, the money boys found a way to affect a leveraged buyout.

It’s not so much that today’s Republican politicians reject traditional, one-nation conservatism. They don’t even know it exists. There are few people on the conservative side who’d be willing to raise taxes on the affluent to fund mobility programs for the working class. There are very few willing to use government to actively intervene in chaotic neighborhoods, even when 40 percent of American kids are born out of wedlock. There are very few Republicans who protest against a House Republican budget proposal that cuts domestic discretionary spending to absurdly low levels.

It’s not so much that today’s Republican politicians reject traditional, one-nation conservatism. They don’t even know it exists. There are few people on the conservative side who’d be willing to raise taxes on the affluent to fund mobility programs for the working class. There are very few willing to use government to actively intervene in chaotic neighborhoods, even when 40 percent of American kids are born out of wedlock. There are very few Republicans who protest against a House Republican budget proposal that cuts domestic discretionary spending to absurdly low levels.

The results have been unfortunate. Since they no longer speak in the language of social order, Republicans have very little to offer the less educated half of this country. Republicans have very little to say to Hispanic voters, who often come from cultures that place high value on communal solidarity.

Y'know, Dave, I agree with you. And here's the thing: I agreed with you in 1980, before you ever thought it.  It took you thirty years to notice? Bullshit. You were converted, not by St. Ronnie the Fusioner, but by Milton Friedman, who'd be doing campaign appearances with Paul Ryan right now, assuming Milt was alive and out of prison.

Where's this column been in all this time? Where was the recognition? If there are such things as actual Times readers who actually give a shit, this might fool some of 'em. But to me you're the guy who didn't just champion Bush II's Middle East adverturism, but the guy who crowed about our stunning victory in Afghanistan. Eleven years ago. And the guy who, once Iraq II turned unquestionably to a stinking shitpile, said he needed to take some personal time and think things over, then never spoke of it again until it was time to champion The Surge! (You'll always be that guy to me.) This is just more covering fire on the "moderate" flank for when "Conservatism" needs to retreat again. It's a concern for the Hispanic voter which equals the "conservative" concern for the African American voter, a serious rumination on what the non-white, non-Republican voter wants, assuming he's able to climb over the obstacles and vote anyway.

Pop Quiz: Name One Fortune 500 Company That Hires Consultants Who Neither Know Nor Care Anything About Its Products

David Brooks, "Guess Which Side of the Chicago Teachers' Strike I'm On, Entirely Due To Principle?" September 13

SPEAKING of business, if a salesman starts spinning a line of earnest, transparent horseshit like the following, how many seconds before you figure it's a scam?  a) Twenty b) Ten c) If he simpers and smirks like David Brooks? Soon as I see him coming.

(By the way, the real title of this thing is "Après Rahm, Le Déluge". We don't presume that Brooks writes his own headlines. But who did? This is either a) an historical reference the person using it did not understand or b) an historical reference the reader was not supposed to get, but was nevertheless expected to translate from the French. Either way, Th' fuck?)

Modern nations have two economies, which exist side by side. Economy I is the tradable sector. This includes companies that make goods like planes, steel and pharmaceuticals. These companies face intense global competition and are compelled to constantly innovate and streamline. They’ve spent the last few decades figuring out ways to make more products with fewer workers.

This being on the World Wide Web an' all, I'm sure there's someone out there noting how often David Brooks' Universal Dichotomies turn out to be Fiduciary Republican talking points vs. how often they turn out to be, y'know, actual dichotomies or somethin'.

Economy II is made up of organizations that do not face such intense global competition. They often fall into government-dominated sectors like health care, education, prisons and homeland security. People in this economy believe in innovation, but they don’t have the sword of Damocles hanging over them so they don’t pursue unpleasant streamlining as rigorously. As a result, Economy II institutions tend to get bloated and inefficient as time goes by.

Bloated inefficiency vs. intense competition and constant innovation. And "such as" vs. "often fall". Gee, I guess I didn't realize it was such a no-brainer. I mean, literally.

For example, between 1960 and 2006, health care spending increased twice as fast as G.D.P., but there were no comparable gains in health outcomes. A study by the Institute of Medicine estimates that 30 cents of every $1 spent on health care is wasted — about $750 billion a year.

Okay, so let's forget the clumsy slight of hand here which turned American health care from private enterprise to government-run operation. There's been "no comparable gains in health outcomes" in forty-five years? Average life expectancy for the general population is up by eight years. It's up by nine for African-Americans since 1970. A heart attack went from 75% survivable to 96% survivable. Organ transplants went from experimental to common. You can get procedures as an outpatient now that would have laid you up for weeks then.

The only excuse for saying something like this is to win an argument by misdirection. Something that is still worth exactly what it was in 1960.

Over the past 50 years, spending on K-12 education has also skyrocketed. In 1960, Americans spent roughly $2,800 per student, in today’s dollars. Now we spend roughly $11,000 per student. This spending binge has not produced comparable gains in student outcomes. Education productivity is down, too.

Assuming, arguendo, that there was some way to qualitatively compare an education in 1960 with one today, and there isn't, the fact is that we don't have it. It's a completely bogus statement. If comparing test scores would do it, and it won't, the fact is that we have no such test. The closest thing we have is the NAEP, which dates to about 1970. And while there's still a considerable methodological challenge in comparing scores over forty years, for whatever it's worth the NAEP shows American education improving over that period, and improving considerably for African-Americans, the general, if usually unspoken, targets of "educational" "reform".

Of the dollars argument, which can only impress someone who's impressed by basic arithmetic, and thus probably unqualified to judge educational practices, may I just mention that I actually attended public school in 1960? That the cost to educate me then was the sum total cost of fat pencils, lined paper, Dick and Jane readers, addition and subtraction flashcards, and construction paper? They expected us to do all that learning without a single computer. Practically child abuse. 'Course they had built us a new school building, courtesy a thing called "taxes" they collected in those days from "citizens". Nowadays that money goes to keeping seventy-year-old buildings from collapsing. At least in the Indianapolis public school system, which last built a new high school in 1964. It's a little different in the suburbs.

Not to mention, of course, things like school lunches, guaranteed special education, and non-English speaker programs, the sort of things "reformers" ought to champion, but somehow never do.

If Economy I is great at generating output without generating employment, Economy II is great at generating employment without generating output.

Well, I'll grant you this: over the past fifty years the American educational system has not generated the sort of informed reader who demands things like "evidence" or "critical thinking skills" from his Op-Ed columnist.

But let's just keep our methodology constant, shall we? Has "Economy I" been "great" at generating output? If we can blithely make illusory comparisons to an educational system in the days when Plate Tectonics was sneered at, then we can compare outputs between the old analogue, metal age and our digital, plastic one. Whose watches would you rather own? Whose cars would you rather work on? Whose clothes were better made, whose appliances built to last? Whose burger would you rather pop down to the corner and eat? If your life depended on a single phone call getting through, would you choose Ma Bell or AT&T?

The point--it shouldn't need to be spelled out, Dave, but apparently it is, at least to you--is that "technological innovation" is not a measure of "improvement". "The trading economy is great at generating output" is a tautology. That's what it exists for. Much of that output is just shit being churned for the sake of a dollar. And that's not a proven benefit. Not for anyone who doesn't get the dollar, at least.

By Thursday night, this strike seemed to be heading toward a resolution. Both sides are giving ground, but, as best as I can tell, Emanuel has successfully preserved the core of his reform agenda. There will be longer school days and a longer school year. A child who begins in the Chicago school system in kindergarten and goes all the way through high school will have an extra two-and-a-half years of learning time. That’s huge. There will also be no caps on parental choice. As more charters and different types of public schools are created, parents will have an array of options for their children.

Phones will be smaller! Bluebirds will sing! Shit will still float!

Call me when it happens. Hell, call me when you've figured out an honest way to measure whether it happens, and how to go back, dig up Rahm Emanuel, and kill him again if it doesn't.

Emanuel’s willingness to hang tough and accept a strike was itself a hopeful sign that some Democrats are hardy enough to take on interests aligned with their own party. Emanuel certainly didn’t get everything he wanted. The unions won concessions, too. But if the final results resemble what I’ve been hearing in any way, then Chicago will move toward the forefront of the reform movement. That result would also be a national credibility booster for Emanuel’s party. It would be a sign that Democrats may be able to successfully reform ailing public institutions, so that the nation as a whole can prosper.

All those people behind all the great creative innovation and constant streamlining of Economy I? Where were they educated, again?

Good Evening, Class, And Welcome Once Again To The Pitsville Mall University's Guest Lecture Series

David Brooks, "The Debt Indulgence". June 4

YES, class, this is the same lecture you've heard the last twenty times, but today I'm going to tack on a line about the Scott Walker recall!

Every generation has an incentive to borrow money from the future to spend on itself. But, until ours, no generation of Americans has done it to the same extent. Why?

Um, because that isn't true?

A huge reason is that earlier generations were insecure. They lived without modern medicine, without modern technology and without modern welfare states. They lived one illness, one drought and one recession away from catastrophe. They developed a moral abhorrence about things like excessive debt, which would further magnify their vulnerability.

Goin' with it anyway, huh? Well, if you were born in 1920, as my father ("World's Greatest Dad from the Greatest Generation") was, your life expectancy at birth was 53.6 years, which was up 12% in just twenty years. He's still alive and kickin', by the way. When I was born, in 1953, it was up to 66 years, another 12% gain. In my lifetime--almost three times that twenty--it's gone up 8.6 %, to 76.5. In other words, it's still three score years and ten, which ain't exactly news, and if people are throwing caution to the winds then the advances of medical science, for some reason, come with a concomitant decrease in intelligence.

Not that this has anything to do with the National Debt. My dad was 12 (life expectancy 61; I'm using the figures for males, by the way) when the "welfare" state was born, and he was forty-five and a Goldwater Republican when the Great Society turned up, and none of it had anything to do with him, or with Polio.

Recently, life has become better and more secure. But the aversion to debt has diminished amid the progress. Credit card companies seduced people into borrowing more. Politicians found that they could buy votes with borrowed money. People became more comfortable with red ink.

Professor Brooks? Would it be possible for your side to, I dunno, take a fucking position on unfettered capitalism and stick with it? Financial markets are vital to Our Economy, but people shouldn't have anything to do with them.

Today we are living in an era of indebtedness. Over the past several years, society has oscillated ever more wildly though three debt-fueled bubbles. First, there was the dot-com bubble. Then, in 2008, the mortgage-finance bubble. Now, we are living in the fiscal bubble.

Listen, the only thing "society" had to do with that is that "society" elected the bozos who took their hands off the wheel, and "society" is what the careening truck smashed into as a result.

In this country, the federal government has borrowed more than $6 trillion in the last four years alone, trying to counteract the effects of the last two bubbles. States struggle with pension promises that should never have been made.

Wow, we went from descriptive to proscriptive pretty quick.

Europe is on the verge of collapse because governments there can’t figure out how to deal with their debts. Nations around the globe have debt-to-G.D.P. ratios at or approaching 90 percent — the point at which growth slows and prosperity stalls. It all goes back to the increase in the tolerance for debt.

I'm sorry; I could swear I've been awake all this time, and somehow I missed the proof of that. The United States of America has been in debt constantly from the founding of the Republic to today, with the exception of one afternoon during the Jackson administration. That has historically been due to war expenditures. And this period of "incredible, impossible, unprecedented debt" of yours corresponds one hundred fucking percent to the permanent war footing the country has been on since 1946, thanks, not to increasing life spans or carefree indebtedness, but to the mindless paranoid militarism driven mostly by your own party. The one so concerned with Debt.

Democrats and Republicans argue about how quickly deficits should be brought down. But everybody knows debt has to be restrained at some point. The problem is that nobody has been able to find a political way to do it.

Except Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.

The common view among politicians is that pundits may rail against debt, but voters don’t actually care. Voters don’t want to face the consequences of their spending demands. They’ll throw you out of office if you make the tough decisions required to cut deficits. That’s why debt mounts and mounts. Voters want it to. Until maybe today.

Yeah. Because Scott Walker is the very model of fiscal good sense. And Wisconsin is the state all other states look up to when it comes to handling the financial morass.

 And because if there's anything that measures the good sense of the American voter, it's the results of our elections.

How Shit Gets Sugared

David Brooks, "How Change Happens". May 21

IT is May 23rd in Indiana, Land of the Midnight Sun, and I have already seen 5,673 Mike Pence For Governor spots.

I tuned out 5,672 ago, but that isn't the point. What is the point is that this is what people like David Brooks peddle as "freedom". But the system this replaced, where campaigns did not begin until Labor Day, and the Trustees of the Public Airwaves had a responsibility to present a balanced picture, wasn't Tyranny; it was Decency. Of course, the modern American Right didn't invent Doublespeak. It simply, as here, realized the benefit in raising generations of Americans so inundated with crap that few can tell the difference anymore.

(Which reminds me that in between Pence commercials yesterday I saw somebody's exposé of rampant teacher cheating on Indiana's standardized high-stakes testing. Teachers are cheating on tests. Sometimes en masse. Congratulations all around. I'm sure the state legislature would get around to finding innovative solutions to the problem in twenty years, or at least auctioning off the right to find a solution to the highest bidder, but there won't be any public schools left, so why bother?)

Forty years ago, corporate America was bloated, sluggish and losing ground to competitors in Japan and beyond. But then something astonishing happened. Financiers, private equity firms and bare-knuckled corporate executives initiated a series of reforms and transformations.

Once again, one starts off picking a nit with Brooks and finds his whole column unraveling. Forty years ago it was 1972. The less said about the political situation the better, but let's say this about economics, with the usual caveat that I know nothing whatsoever about the subject and cannot be induced to care: Nixon and his advisors had frozen Wages and Prices the previous year, imposed an across-the-board tariff, and taken us off the Gold standard. The last of these either acceded to, or kicked the ass of, the international financial community, which had been devaluing the Dollar relative to Gold because, if I may be so illiterate, of Vietnam. Like it or not, Mr. Brooks--and just joking; I know the answer--our little Indochina excursion showed a lot of people worldwide what we had truly become since the days of the Marshall Plan. And it had created commodities scarcities which seemed for the first time to get people thinking about limited global resources. Or so it seemed to me; I was seventeen, and make no apologies for not understanding everything that happened before my time, seeing as how so many people earn a living at the New York Times writing as though the history of the Republic precisely corresponds to their cherished notions about it.

Anyway, maybe the international financial community had also glommed on to what the Big Three were beginning to figure out: that so long as American industry could finagle the courts it could pretty much do as it damned well pleased. And would. It's true that at the time UAW workers made 50% more than comparable working people in other industries. Nobody's ever said that the history of trades unionism is one of unprecedented altruism. But if you want Bloat, try what was stuffing the skulls of the Big Three boardrooms of the era. Japanese car makers didn't eat America's lunch because of innovation (and they weren't doing so in 1972, a year before the first Oil Embargo). They made smaller, quality vehicles, while the nepotistic Big Brains in Detroit insisted good gas milage and reduced emissions were un-American.

Which organized American (that is, multinational) business is still doing, mutatis mutandis. If "bloat" is a large, prosperous workforce, "slimming" doesn't consist of letting Mitt Romney and his fellow sociopaths make 50 times the yearly income of the average family of four per hour. The word I believe we're looking for there is "piracy".  Nobody (that I know of) has questioned whether what Mitt Romney was up to at Bain was legal. Many of us question its morality, and its sanity.

Private equity firms aren't founded by moral crusaders. They're founded, and operate, in order to use large piles of capital to strip value from anything in their path. That much is pretty straightforward. You can't simultaneously praise their economic carrion-feeding and pretend they're all charity organizations.

Oh, sorry. You can, of course.

But the rest of us might see it from a little different perspective, and many of us are old enough that the whining about "how our elections have sunk to this point" just provokes a memory of the cruel laughter this sort of hypocrisy used to jam in our gorges, back when it at least seemed fresh. And with all due respect to the hard scrabbling economists at the Harvard School of Business and the University of Chicago--I'm sure someone will be along any minute now to explain to me how much respect they are due, and why--anytime someone with a vested interest can do no better than to claim "a modest overall effect"--no one in Vegas would take my bet that the reveal would be "modest overall negative effect", even if I discounted "modest"completely--it's time to put both hands on your wallet. For all the good that does ya.

Six percent job loss due to equity scavenging. That's the best they can do. In other words, rust would be an improvement. Unless you're Mitt Romney.

Group Hug

David Brooks, "The Fertility Implosion". March 12

SHORTER David Brooks: the Market is perfect, it's the people who keep fucking it up.

Look: isn't it time some Republican tried to pull the plug on Brooks, for the same reason that the Koch Brothers want to stop the Cato charade?

The GOP doesn't need the cover anymore. The Republican party needs some smarty-pants quoting "experts" like a Baptist picnic needs margarita glasses.

Sure, sure, for some reason Brooks seems to need the Republican party more than it needs him. But if that "there are no moderates in the Republican party" piece a couple weeks ago was the strangled cry of a man who just found out his girlfriend dumped him four years ago, this--pseudo-science intended to show that the Bronze Age fertility superstitions his party can no longer keep hidden are really quite sound, if you squint hard enough--is the work of a man who picked himself up, admitted that she changed her phone number, email addy, and her locks, that it's just never meant to be, and who promptly went to the florist and ordered her flowers.

Y'know, assuming the worst, that I was a member of a political party, and my short-range goals were that it either a) come to its senses or b) prove to be not quite the disaster it almost surely will be, I think I'd be examining other options.

It's interesting, ain't it, that the only time Republican economic "thinkers" believe Malthus is when the subject is Social Security? Our reliance on fossil fuels, global climate change, * an insane healthcare system, * our ever-increasing reliance on a vulnerable communications system that's one Chinese bottle rocket away from being space junk, even the results of galloping anti-immigrant insanity on our food crops, will all be solved automatically by the Market. Projected deficit in twenty years in the Social Security system, unless the Congress pays back the money it swiped from the till? Cosmically insurmountable. Dismantling the system is the only way to solve it.

For decades, people took dynamism and economic growth for granted and saw population growth as a problem. Now we’ve gone to the other extreme, and it’s clear that young people are the scarce resource. In the 21st century, the U.S. could be the slowly aging leader of a rapidly aging world.

But we'll still have the most rapidly aging billion-dollar military gizmos. And old people can't get out of the way so quickly.

For fuck's sake, was it only people who "saw population growth as a problem" who took economic growth for granted? It's not the way I remember it. Could that be just another passive-aggressive snipe at environmentalists? Hmmm? Maybe Brooks should try applying his dilettante's mind to their literature for a change.

Here's an idea; it doesn't come from an economist writing a sociology treatise, but from the plumber I had paint my house: we don't need more people. We don't even need smarter people. We need you fucks to stop filling everybody's head with bullshit designed to make yourselves wealthier no matter what.


___________

* assuming they admit it.

Look, Dave, I Know Things Are Desperate Over There, But If You've Decided To Tell The Truth At Least Ease Into It, Huh?

David Brooks, "The Possum Republicans". February 27

AFTER all, sudden exercise kills more sluggards and lay-a-beds than not-exercising does:

Politicians do what they must to get re-elected. So it’s not unexpected that Republican senators like Richard Lugar and Orrin Hatch would swing sharply to the right to fend off primary challengers.

As Jonathan Weisman reported in The Times on Sunday, Hatch has a lifetime rating of 78 percent from the ultra-free market Club for Growth, but, in the past two years, he has miraculously jumped to 100 percent and 99 percent, respectively. Lugar has earned widespread respect for his thoughtful manner and independent ways. Now he’s more of a reliable Republican foot soldier.

Thanks for the excuse to bring up Lugar, who's now just about caught up with Mitch Daniels' ad expenditures during the 2008 primary season. Of course Mitch didn't have a primary challenger. He didn't have Citizens United, either, and the ability to fob off expenses on the fucking National Chamber of Commerce. Officially, I mean.

Fifty-some years in politics and Lugar absolutely freaked to be opposed by some nobody Teabagger. This tells you all you need to know. It certainly tells you more than Brooks' column, excepting the unintentional revelations.

So that we in Indiana are now entering our third? seventeenth? month of Dick Lugar campaign ads which run something like this: I'm Dick Lugar, and I hate that black guy in the White House as much as you do! And I've been as dilatory and obstructionist about it as anyone! Pipeline!

This is Dick Lugar, The Oldest Surviving Scam in the US Senate. And what's more, it's the real Dick Lugar, Dave. The "respected and thoughtful" Lugar is a canard, and the "independent" Lugar is a Fucking Lie. He moved to the Senate from being Nixon's Favorite Mayor. That only qualifies one as a "moderate" by today's whacked-out standards. He's voted the party line for forty years. Absolutely reliably. One of his Obama-bashing ads--which is, come to think of it, the only kind he has, other than the one that bashes his Teabagger opponent for daring to question him--says he "Sponsored a Balanced Budget Amendment Seventeen Times." Yeah, and voted for deficit spending thirty-five times.

Dave, if it gives you a sad to see Dick Lugar, Octogenarian Wingnut Fellator, you either haven't been paying attention, or you've lost whatever ability to tell reality from fantasy you began with.

Still, it is worth pointing out that this behavior is not entirely honorable.

Not entirely honorable? Saying things to get elected may--may--be thought necessary, but nothing about it is honorable.

But, of course, this is exactly what has been happening in the Republican Party for the past half century. Over these decades, one pattern has been constant: Wingers fight to take over the party, mainstream Republicans bob and weave to keep their seats.

Republicans on the extreme ferociously attack their fellow party members. Those in the middle backpedal to avoid conflict. Republicans on the extreme are willing to lose elections in order to promote their principles. Those in the mainstream are quick to fudge their principles if it will help them get a short-term win.

'Scuse me, but would you be the same David Brooks who "suddenly" began looking for astroturfed common ground with the Teabaggers the minute their shit began to stick?

In the 1960s and ’70s, the fight was between conservatives and moderates. Conservatives trounced the moderates and have driven them from the party. These days the fight is between the protesters and the professionals. The grass-roots protesters in the Tea Party and elsewhere have certain policy ideas, but they are not that different from the Republicans in the “establishment.”

This recap of Republicans tossing out moderates in the 60s and 70s brought to you by David Brooks, Moderate Republican since 1980.

And this umpteenth attempt to portray the Teabaggers as some sui-generis "grass-roots" "protest" movement, and not the province of the Dick Armey/ Koch Brothers "wing" of Mr. Brooks' party, is as fulla shit as the last three years of attempts have been (see Weigel, David, career of).

The big difference is that the protesters don’t believe in governance. They have zero tolerance for the compromises needed to get legislation passed. They don’t believe in trimming and coalition building. For them, politics is more about earning respect and making a statement than it is about enacting legislation. It’s grievance politics, identity politics.

Of course, the professional politicians don’t want to get in the way of this torrent of passion and resentment. In private, they bemoan where the party is headed; in public they do nothing.

As opposed to the "moderate" "conservative" voices at the New York Times, who snipe about it just enough to keep what they imagine as their credibility intact.

All across the nation, there are mainstream Republicans lamenting how the party has grown more and more insular, more and more rigid. This year, they have an excellent chance to defeat President Obama, yet the wingers have trashed the party’s reputation by swinging from one embarrassing and unelectable option to the next: Bachmann, Trump, Cain, Perry, Gingrich, Santorum.

You'll forgive me; I try to get through every David Brooks column, but my memory ain't what it was. When did Brooks complain about this before it all but capsized his party's planned Victory Parade 2012? Where'd he say it plainly? Where'd he call Sarah Palin an unqualified buffoon? Snarking about Arizona while being a reliable dispenser of Republican talking points for the PBS audience doesn't qualify, any more than being against everybody else's nuclear arsenal makes Dick Lugar a humanitarian. This shit comes up because you're losing. The Republican party has been making you look like an idiot ever since St. Ron said trees cause pollution. You cannot possibly have missed it, unless maybe Mark Shields really is the only "opposition" voice you ever hear. Oh, his and Joe Lieberman's.

Really, all this time as a "principled" "conservative" who winked at the rabid racists of the base at election time, secure in the knowledge that you weren't actually one of them, all those Burke weekends dreaming up snappier slogans to get the rabble to Vote Aristo, and now you're beginning to realize that actions have consequences? And now you wanna know why your brand of well-born party official didn't take on Rush Limbaugh earlier? The way you did: the measured snark that none of his listeners would ever hear, or get if they did? They at least have jobs to lose; you've got a sinecure. When did you speak honestly and openly about the culture wars (oh, you're sort of for gay marriage and reproductive rights, provided the wind blows your cloudy pronouncements just right), let alone speak sense about global climate change, energy policy, banking reform, campaign reform, or any of the other crackpot schemes you "reasonable Republicans" need to keep the spigot turned on? Fer chrissakes, you don't like the Rabid Right, now that it may cost you an election? You gotta set the Wayback Machine for a lot earlier than five years ago to kill it in its cradle.

Oh, Do Shut Up

Bush the Dumber's Council on Bioethics recommended he approve Federal funding of stem-cell research, over the religious objections of some Christian denomination or other whose name escapes me at the moment.

Charles Merkwürdigeliebe Krauthammer, "Overreach--Obamacare vs. the Constitution". February 16

REALLY, I was just trying to find someone, anyone, objecting to the contraception mandate on grounds it violates the Free Exercise clause who would either 1) acknowledge, clearly, that the law exempted the Catholic Church and/or 2) that similar restrictions on religious liberty are numerous, even commonplace.

Well, Merkwürdigeliebe went the other direction.

Sensing, perhaps--but not admitting, oh no--that the religious objection ship had sailed, and without anything in the manifest the majority of Americans are interested in buying, Krauthammer decides on that favorite of prosecutors everywhere: if you can't make the case, charge 'em with conspiracy:

This constitutional trifecta — the state invading the autonomy of religious institutions, private companies and the individual citizen — should not surprise. It is what happens when the state takes over one-sixth of the economy.

Okay, so 1) nope; that isn't a) what's happening, b) un-Constitutional, nor unprecedented, even if it were; or c) even a particularly imaginative updating of anti-fluoridationism; 2) nope; try the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act of 1986, fer instance; it ought to be familiar to anyone pontificating about health care in this country; and 3) I'm guessing that

because never before has the already hypertrophied Commerce Clause been used to compel a citizen to enter into a private contract with a private company by mere fact of his existence.

[emphasis mine] was added to make it sound like you have an argument, and not as a leg-pull, "existence" being the prior condition which predisposes one to require health care. I'm not sure where the Constitutional guarantee of "reasonably-termed mandates" resides. I doubt many Court observers would be astonished if the Roberts Court finds one anyway, but that's another matter.

Every presidential challenger says that he will repeal Obamacare on Day One. Well, yes. But is any of them making the case for why?

You mean as opposed to hurling handfuls of shit at a wall to see what sticks?

Look, Chuckles: it's your end of the spectrum loves it some Imperial Presidency, so long as it's Republican; I don't recall any concern from y'all when George W. Bush asserted his right to go to war based on his facile reading of a post-expiration UN resolution. I didn't hear you screaming when Dick Cheney invented himself a Fourth Branch of government, though it would have been hard to hear over the sniggering. But, really, now, if you wanna lecture us on the Constitution, demonstrate a little competence. Don't trot out "hypertrophied Commerce clause" in defense of a religious exemption that doesn't exist.

All In Favor Of Chaotic Markets And Ordered Lives...?

David Brooks, “The Materialist Fallacy”. February 13

SO it turns out that Charles Murray is to the “conservatives” at the Times what Halley's Comet is to a superstitious medieval peasantry.

This is Brooks' second Murray column in two weeks, meaning this one is designed to make it appear that his earlier teenaged crush has been accompanied by the appropriate somber adult reflection on the issues. In other words, it's even worse.

It is, in fact, a near-textbook example of what makes Brooks truly awful: the “I'm a stern-task-master instructor at an exclusive high-school for overachievers” tone, the “comparison” of competing conservative and liberal “philosophies” made up on the spot for the sake of the piece, the ensuing demolition of the liberal philosophy by application of Brooks' iron Fiat, the wholesale larding of a piece--already sporting a fat-to-muscle ratio so high it would cause people in Muncie, Indiana, to goggle in disbelief as it waddled by--with various pop-sociology and -psychology treatises, roughly 90% of which, should the reader go to the trouble of tracking them down, turn out to have been written by economists or political scientists, the backhand assertion that these findings Brooks is sharing with us are universally acknowledged in their fields, or whatever fields they were aimed at, leading us--by process of scientific ratiocination and proper living--to the Economic Republican position. The only thing missing is the “I'm a moderate, and boy do the ‘conservatives’ beat me up over it” simpering (see PBS News Hour, The), absent because he can't pull off that one and the “Newt and Callista Gingrich Endowed Chair of Applied Psychobabble at Southland Mall Community College” tone simultaneously.

To be fair, Brooks does mix it up this time. For reasons of his own the "conservative" philosophy has become twain: a “neocon” philosophy (we abandoned bourgeois social norms) and a “libertarian” philosophy (social programs encourage indolence and baby-poppin'). There must be a distinction here, and a good reason why we're ascribing “major” philosophical lines to groups which did not exist in the 1970s except in some Sociology lab. The 70s! When neocons and libertarians could have “congregated” jointly at a refrigerator box and not been able to link hands around. A congregation of libertarians in the 1970s consisted of two people buying Atlas Shrugged bumping into each other in the college bookstore check-out line and discovering they're in the same Freshman Comp section.

Now, your guess is as good as mine. Is this the typical lazy Reagantot history from someone who came of age in the 1980s, and assumed the past was just like the present, only longer? Was Brooks throwing a bone to Charles Murray, after throwing him a boner two weeks ago? Are we trying to hide what the New Nixon Republican Coalition was actually saying about race and class in those days? Or is Brooks just rewriting a current flap as though it represented Eternal Verities, the better to rhetorically humiliate vast stretches of one's imaginary opponents?

Of course the “libertarian” and “neocon” “philosophies”of “the 70s” immediately disappear from the piece, having co-performed their function as The Only Theory Standing Now That David Brooks Has Razed The Liberal Village. This is part of the Brooks MO: announce the “real belief” behind competing Left/Right opinions (maybe “Center/Right” is more accurate, not that we want to introduce “accuracy” at this late date); spend the next 300 words disputing the liberal philosophy, buttressed by quotes and scientificalism; then declare the liberal philosophy dead by “possibly several” paper cuts. Which makes “conservatism” the winner. And still undefeated heavyweight champ. This is generally stated with a soupçon of ambiguity as to Brooks' personal support, the better to continue peacefully grazing on the prairie margins of PBS and NYT liberalism, which is where congenital simpering and the increasing lunacy of his party have forced him to ruminate.

Here it is in action:

As early as the 1970s, three large theories had emerged to explain the weakening of the social fabric. Liberals congregated around an economically determinist theory. The loss of good working-class jobs undermined communities and led to the social deterioration.

Do we have to go on? I'm sure liberals were in favor of jobs in the 1970s. I trust that they were. Used to be both parties did. I just can't say I remember running into the argument, at the tail-end of the post-war US economic hegemony, that the manufacturing jobs still humming across the Rust Belt were the cause of social disintegration. I remember a lot of liberals talking about the alienation of the working man, or the privileged idiocy behind the anti-environment, anti-safety, anti-regulation, You'll Buy Gas Guzzling Behemoths And Like It attitude of the Big Three, which was just then beginning to bleed market share to smaller, better-built vehicles, and would have finished ceding the future to Japan by the end of the decade. That's the way liberals actually talked in those days, as I recall it.

So the alternative explanation, Mr. Brooks, is that you're somehow trying to fob off some contemporary Democratic argument as the guiding star of the "liberal" point of view, rather than a specific response to the clear, dismal, and beyond-the-help-of-pop-sociology Reagan record. Which, unsurprisingly, owes its popularity among liberals not to the 1970s, but to the latter days of the Clinton administration, when their man's economic record so eclipsed that of St. Ronnie of the Miracles.

Which means there's no value to examining this cornerstone of American liberal thought; but supposing it were actually of vital importance. So what? If you're hungry, do you weigh the competing culinary philosophies of Northern China and Northern Italy, or do you decide what you'd like to eat?

And if there was some value in demolishing a single-clause definition of Liberalism, wouldn't you still be required to, you know, do so? Maybe I'm way off base, Dave; not only do I not take your point on this, I'm not sure you have one. It seems to run:

1) Neo-conservatives (in the 70s!) argued that "the abandonment of traditional bourgeois norms led to social disruption."

2) It's still a good idea to finish high school, even if there aren't any jobs.

therefore:

3) "[E]conomic determinism would be bad enough if it was just making public debate dumber. But the amputation of sociologic, psychological and cognitive considerations makes good policy impossible."

Q.E.D. If I missed some subtlety in the middle there that explains all this, kindly let me know, ℅ this blog.


JUST another word about Murray Worship at the Times Op-Ed Carnival. It reminds me of nothing so much as some winking conjugal scene in Hayes Code Hollywood, where one foot is kept firmly planted on the floor, and the real action is off-screen. Neither Brooks nor Douthat wants to shower in Murray's antebellumisms, but will take just a splash behind the ears; neither wants anything to do with his conclusions, which apparently admit the ungodly hybridization of libertoonianism and religious mania has no more prescription for the doom and Negroes it sees everywhere than do either of those programs alone. This is unacceptable to either man, as they prefer to believe, at least in public, that a good talking to by Pope or Sociology prof might still turn this thing around. Murray seems to exist as way for Brooks and Douthat to demonstrate how quickly they'd point to evidence if by chance they had any.

Where Are The Snow Globes Of Yesteryear?

David Brooks, "Hope, but Not Much Change". January 26

THE drool of idiots and the haughtiness of kings is in all eras the same; it's the flattery and excuses of the sycophants, the toadies, the mouthpieces, the Yes men and the ass-kissers that changes.

There's no question about the discomfort being felt by the David Brooks/Mitch Daniels wing of the Republican party now that the Republican Presidential Sweepstakes has come down to: Mitt Romney, who is, essentially, what would have resulted had they been able to replace George W. Bush's non-existent aptitude for public speaking with Ronald Reagan's highly-overrated one; Rick Santorum, the reverse; Newt Gingrich, the most accomplished of the post-Nixon race-baiters, who they're forced to pretend has turned into a lunatic since the glorious days of his glorious Republican Revolution of the Week; and Ron Paul, the Ghost of Anti-Fluoridationism Not-Quite Past. I'd like to know what the problem is. It's like they took Reagan and cut him in quarters, nurtured the Four Horsemen of his Middle-American Appeal in petri dishes, and grew themselves a primary season. So, okay, Herman Cain would make it the Five Blocks of Granite, both numerically and intellectually. I miss him, too. But you can't have everything.

And this has all come about because Sarah Palin was so toxically ignorant, and so illiterately greedy? How long has Rush Limbaugh been a major player in Republican politics again? The party took Nelson Rockefeller out and shot him before Mitch Daniels was old enough to vote. Who do they think they're fooling? You broke it, you bought it.

This has lead, in a direct line, to David Brooks using prime New York Times Opinion Mall space to begin a column thus:

The Simpson-Bowles report wasn’t just a policy document. For a few months, it expanded the national debate. Everybody seemed to realize that the country was beset by large challenges that could no longer be neglected: soaring debt, lagging growth, wage stagnation, family breakdown, political dysfunction.

Suddenly, there was a sense of urgency. There were grand plans coming from all directions.

Yeah, remember that exciting Twenty Minutes? Anyone?

Anyone remember believing that Simpson-Bowles would change anything? Or knowing anyone who believed that? Anyone think there was anything about Simpson-Bowles that couldn't be extrapolated ahead of time, just by knowing who Simpson and Bowles were? Anyone remember being surprised/dismayed/dumbfounded when Congress ignored it?

Anyone, in other words, remember Simpson-Bowles as anything other than a cloak of idiocy designed to give everyone inside the Beltway who favors Cupidity over Insanity a few weeks of cover?

It’s sad to compare that era of bigness to the medium-sized policy morsels that President Obama put in his State of the Union address. He had some big themes in the speech, but the policies were mere appetizers. The Republicans absurdly call Obama a European socialist on the stump, but the Obama we saw Tuesday night was a liberal incrementalist.

There was nothing big, like tax reform or entitlement reform. There was no comprehensive effort to restore trust in government by sweeping away the tax credits and special-interest schemes that entangle Washington.

A lifelong Republican mouthpiece, a youthful liberal transformed by beatific beam of Milton Friedman like Ben-Hur swigging from Jesus' bottomless canteen, wishes a "Democratic" President would come up with the big ideas necessary to salvage the mess he and his fellows have made of things ever since Ronald Reagan bought a microphone.

(By the way, did anyone else see Mitt this week do his "I didn't pay for this microphone, but…" schtick? The only genuine moment in primary season since the Three Babblers dropped out. About halfway through you could see that he realized he was about to 1) use humor on a Republican audience without the subject being watermelons in the White House garden, and 2) use an historical reference, even though it was one of their own, and well within the lifetimes of most of the old white people present. There was a flicker when Romney almost froze, before instincts born of seven years on the Republican stump took over and he realized that facts go right over everyone's head, regardless, and relaxed.)

Some of the ideas were lamentable. Instead of simplifying the tax code, Obama would muddy it up with more tax loopholes for corporations as long as they conformed to this or that industrial policy.

"Hiring Americans". But I agree, Dave. The tax code is no place to encourage American corporations provide American jobs. The criminal code would be much better.

It’s odd that an administration that once wanted to do everything all at once now should be so gradualist. Maybe its members were scarred by the traumas of health care and the 2010 election. Maybe they just want to win the election, so every policy has to be politically easy instead of politically challenging..

Assuming this administration once "wanted to do everything"--including the younger sisters of Republican voters, I think--is that really so odd? We'd'a been a helluva lot better off today--probably--if that actually were the case. And Obama would already have 2012 won, especially against your bunch.

Legislatively, the president has to build a center-left governing majority that can overwhelm those Republicans who will never support him. That can be done only with ground-shifting policies.

Now you tell him. Y'know, the President had a center-left governing majority. It was called "the people who elected him". And the first thing he did after he was elected--hell, the first thing he did when he secured the nomination--was to run to the other side of the aisle and ask them to friend him. These are the instincts of a man who resembles…David Brooks.

It was an historic opportunity which nearly matched FDR's, but the President wanted Tim Geithner and Larry Summers to run things, and John Boehner to approve his every move. This wasn't a miscalculation; no one with an ounce of sense would have calculated that way in 2009. It was pure Democratic "centrism", the sort of "centrism" which could travel 98% of the distance to meet David Brooks halfway, but which considers rank-and-file Democratic voters only slightly less repugnant than rank-and-file Republicans. (And which, may I say, is a compliment I gladly return, mutatis mutandis.) What was missed should not be forgotten. Nor should we have to endure some Republican "moderate" telling the rest of us about it, three years and a busted flirtation with the Teabaggers later. It was as true an example of the utter moral and intellectual failure of the American center as the Bush administration was of the Right.

Piers, n. : The Vertiginous Self-Loathing That Follows An Ill-Considered And Lube-Free Bout Of Sodomy With A Fatuous Clown

SO Piers Morgan asks Rick Santorum how he'd counsel a raped and pregnant daughter:

“I would do what every father must do: Counsel your daughter to do the right thing.You can make the argument that if she doesn’t have this baby, if she kills her child, that too could ruin her life."

“This is not an easy choice. I understand that. As horrible as the way that son or daughter was created, it still is her child.”

Okay, first: we have to raid British teevee to find this guy? For fuck's sake, this--The Kitty Dukakis Gotcha!--is the way we still ask this question? Santorum's willing to sentence thousands of women to death in childbirth because the representatives of a 2000-year-dead imaginary carpenter tell him so. What does how he claims he'd counsel his own child have to do with anything, except the apparent expectation that he might suddenly admit that his one claim to campaign contributions doesn't apply to him personally? Sure. Sure he would.

How many times do we imagine Rick Santorum has practiced answering this question for a national audience? You think some consultant asked him if he could choke up on "son or daughter", maybe just a little?

It's like asking Mitch Daniels whether some incident of corporate rapine would cause him to burn his five copies of Atlas Shrugged. What's he supposed to say? "Wow, ya got me, Piers. I'm actually a total fraud, and just in this for the money. You Brits are tough."

How 'bout asking Santorum about women who're fortunate enough not to be part of his brood, whom he nonetheless helped sentence to much riskier medical procedures regardless of their religious beliefs, or the wishes of their parents?

And if you have to ask stupid questions, how 'bout following up by asking him why he doesn't have the courage to defend his theological beliefs without weaseling? It's not an easy choice? According to the Roman church it is, at least morally. It's certainly one Rick Santorum is ready, willing, and eager to make in millions of cases where he doesn't know anyone involved, or the medical issues, or anything else but the Pope's wishes. You wanna trap him in hypocrisy, ask about the hypocrisy which claims that procedure designed to save his wife's life at the expense of his "baby" differed qualitatively from 99.999% of late-term abortions.

Santorum is a loathsome slug; he's Newt Gingrich without the entertainment value. He may deserve to have any sort of frothy mix hurled at him, in public. The public, on the other hand, deserves better. Just for the novelty, if for nothing else.

Purity Of Essence

SHORTER David Brooks: "Sure, Mitt Romney's character has been shaped by piratical capitalism and kooky theology. But only the good parts."

Okay, for starters: the issue with Bain isn't whether Mitt Romney obeyed the law, and it's certainly not whether we can find right-wing mouthpieces willing to defend him in public by spouting some blather about the American "system"; it's whether one can do everything up to the letter of the law and thereby claim to have been ethical, even moral, beyond question. It's whether there are different rules for the rich guys who make the rules than for the poor schlubs who keep imagining, against all evidence, that they are voting for honest men. And it's about just how much plutocracy Republican shills will defend without losing their self-appointed status as spokesmen for the Real America.

There's no sacred text of Alexander Hamilton which consecrates what was done at Bain. There's no shrine to unfettered rapine honored in every American household. What Bain did--what Willard Mitt Romney and his two hard-scrabbled Hahvahd degrees did--was take every advantage of a gamed system, a gamed system we can call, not for want of a better term but because there is no better term, the Reagan Revolution.

Faced with a troubled, stagnant economy which was in trouble, and had stagnated, largely because its multinational colossi did not want to be bothered adapting to a changing world--one in which energy wasn't plentiful and cheap, one in which the United States did not stand as the only global player, one in which consumers had begun to take their rightful place in the endless merry-go-round of merchantilism--in other words, the world of the 21st century, the one we're failing to adapt to today--unless their built-in advantages were preserved. So the Reagan administration, and the Western-Southern alliance in the Congress, defanged and dismantled the legislative safeguards which had for two generations somewhat leveled the playing field, and protected the vulnerable public from the worst of Boom and Bust. Which allowed the "visionaries" and "tenacious achievers" to bleed the system, to convert assets into cash. Meanwhile destroying the assets.

Fooled plenty of people. Made Reagan look like an Economic Miracle Worker, provided you didn't look too closely or ask why he simultaneously had the worst jobs creation record of any post-war President. Until his successor inherited the snake oil inventory.

That's what Romney did; his tireless efforts were designed to prove that any idiot with money can make more money, provided making more money is the only thing he cares about.

Mitt Romney is running for President of the United States, not the CEO of Citicorp. I know, GOP shills aren't supposed to recognize any difference. But the rest of us do, and we haven't had any choice in the matter since 2007. Romney chose money over morality; now that choice has bitten him in the ass. If it was all so innocent--heroic, even--in the first place there'd be no need for all the hoop-jumping going on in its defense.

Speaking of which, Dave, I know it's tough to come up with 800 words defending the inexcusable, but turning 600 of the over to a recapitulation of some guy's book about the Pioneer Mormon Romneys? And, you should pardon the expression, fer chrissakes:

It is a story of relentless effort, of recovery and of being despised (in their eyes) because of their own success. Romney himself experienced none of this hardship, of course, but Jews who didn’t live through the Exodus are still shaped by it.

Only if they ignore the clear historical record that nothing like the Exodus happened, since nothing like the Egyptian Captivity happened. Modern Jews, of course, are entirely justified in being shaped by the Holocaust, but you didn't wanna go there, right? Especially since the victims of Hitler's genocide are all now unwitting Mormons. And while Romney's progenitors certainly faced an armed and bigoted populace, that was nothing compared to what African-Americans faced, so I glad you skipped that too, Dave. So, I'm sure, is the rest of the Mormon hierarchy, which finally got around to making colored boys into men in 1978. When Willard Mitt was thirty-one.

I'm sorry. Was that a cheap shot? Is it unfair, since "Mitt Romney can’t talk about his family history on the campaign trail. Mormonism is an uncomfortable subject." ? Y'all sure expected Barack Obama to explain Jeremiah Wright.

Shorter David Brooks: I Agree With Everything I Hate About The Republican Party. And Vice-Versa.

David Brooks, "The Gingrich Tragedy". December 8

TAKE my lunch money. Please:

Of all the major Republicans, the one who comes closest to my worldview is Newt Gingrich. Despite his erratically shifting views and odd phases, he continually returns to this core political refrain: He talks about using government in energetic but limited ways to increase growth, dynamism and social mobility.

In other words, you and Newt belong to that shrunken subset of Republican operatives who still believe it's necessary to come up with rational-sounding arguments in order to win over independent voters. Whereas the rest of the party, with good reason, settled on the irrational-outburst-with-the-emotional-content-of-a-junior-high-slumber-party-discussion method fifteen or twenty years ago.

As he said in 2007, “It’s not a point of view libertarians would embrace, but I am more in the Alexander Hamilton-Teddy Roosevelt tradition of conservatism. I recognize that there are times when you need government to help spur private enterprise and economic development.”

Y'know, bullshit. In 2007 the party was so far gone it was taking advice from Ross Douthat. And while it certainly has more than its complement of economic fire-eating snake-handlers--and whose fault is that?--they get to act that way secure in the knowledge that the party itself--and its Democratic doppelgänger--will vote every advantage to "growth, dynamism, and social mobility", aka "corporate welfare".

Look at American history, Gingrich continued,

The hell with that. Let's look at faux-American history. Stick with what ya know.

“The government provided railroad land grants to encourage widespread adoption of what was then the most modern form of transportation to develop our country. The Homestead Act essentially gave away land to those willing to live on it and develop it. We used what were in effect public-private partnerships to bring telephone service and electricity to every community in our nation. All of these are examples of government bringing about public purposes without creating massive taxpayer-funded bureaucracies.”

Well, one, it's easy to make a profit without creating much of a bureaucracy when 1) it's the 19th century and 2) you've stolen the underlying asset and put its rightful owners in internment camps. Just as it's easy to praise a program when you have no intention of looking at any negative aspects, which, in the case of the Homestead Act, was massive fraud, including corporate theft of public lands, all of it unaddressed (because there was no bureaucracy to keep people honest), and, in the case of land grants to railroad barons, was a public giveaway of hundreds of thousands of acres which were then resold for private profit, if they weren't used to blackmail localities first.

But, hey, good examples, Professor Gingrich. It's not like you get any more accurate as we approach the 20th century, unless we take "what were in effect" to mean "the following is mostly bullshit". The "public" portion of the "public-private partnership" in the development of telephone communications basically consists of the government giving Bell the right to a monopoly, for the sake of rational development (because, prior to that, unfettered capitalism had been hindered by inconvenient state laws). As for rural electrification, the government did, essentially, bribe private electric companies to provide service to rural users, which the Perfect Market was refusing to do to that point. It'd be nice if you'd acknowledge that that's some sort of evidence that your "hands off the private sector, except to give it a needed leg up" routine is, well, debatable. Or if you'd acknowledge that it was in fact accomplished as part of the biggest, most hated taxpayer-funded bureaucracy of all, the New Deal.

This was not one of Gingrich’s passing fads. It is one of the most consistent themes of his career. His 1984 book, “Window of Opportunity,” is a broadside against what he calls the “laissez-faire” conservatism — the idea that government should just get out of the way so the market can flourish. As he wrote, “The opportunity society calls not for a laissez-faire society in which the economic world is a neutral jungle of purely random individual behavior, but for forceful government intervention on behalf of growth and opportunity.”

Would that by the same 1984 book, Window of Opportunity, in which he says that "government actions, generally, are a threat to everyday life"? C'mon, Dave; the man's given us four decades of evidence about his ideas on public-private partnerships. From each side. And they both stink.

Over the years, this approach has led Gingrich to support cap-and-trade energy legislation to combat global warming. It has led him to endorse universal health care coverage. It has led him to support humane immigration reform. He enthusiastically backed Jack Kemp’s efforts to fight poverty, the precursors to compassionate conservatism.

We live in wondrous times, all right.

Though his ideas stray, his most common theme is that government should intervene in crucial ways to create a dynamic, decentralized, low-tax society.

1) Build trough. 2) Fill trough. 3) Avert your gaze from trough. 4) After a suitable time, turn back and declare the existence of a couple of enormous porkers validates your system.

So why am I not more excited by the Gingrich surge?

Oh, because, yet again, Dave, the purest expression of your "principles" come from the mouths of imbeciles (although this one's semi-literate, which is at least a step up) and you don't like how it reflects on you.

In the first place, Gingrich loves government more than I do. He has no Hayekian modesty to restrain his faith in statist endeavor. For example, he has called for “a massive new program to build a permanent lunar colony to exploit the Moon’s resources.” He has suggested that “a mirror system in space could provide the light equivalent of many full moons so that there would be no need for nighttime lighting of the highways.”

I’m for national greatness conservatism, but this is a little too great.

Yknow, Dave, let's flip some cards over here, one of 'em being the Ad Hominem card. It's one thing for someone who was indoctrinated by the Church from the age of blastocyst to be in denial about The Great Altar Boy Buggery Cover Up; it's another for someone who supposedly had a Road to Damascus conversion when struck by Milton Friedman. It never, ever occurs to you that it's always your side which talks like this? You don't hear Democrats, or not the stereotypical Democrat you're fond of, pledging rockets to Venus and Space Defense Shields, and The Solution to All Our Energy Worries Is Right Offshore, do you? No. High speed rail and windfarms and strict emissions standards, maybe, if you catch 'em with the wind at their back, which is not a position most Democrats feel comfortable with anyway. No, indeed; Democrats at least have the decency to sound like they want to put average Joes and Jolenes to work doing something other than killing brown people, and then sell everybody out under the table. Why, in other words, do you persist in Republican idolatry? Those aren't the actions of an someone whose "conversion" happened after the age of majority. Barack Obama is going to give you everything you'd get from Newt Gingrich while appearing sane, if by "appearing sane" you include "making any number of decisions which would be wholly inexplicable in a man who truly had the convictions he claims."

Furthermore, he has an unconservative faith in his own innocence. The crossroads where government meets enterprise can be an exciting crossroads. It can also be a corrupt crossroads. It requires moral rectitude to separate public service from private gain. Gingrich was perfectly content to belly up to the Freddie Mac trough and then invent a Hamiltonian rational to justify his own greed.

So he's a Republican. Or a Democrat. And, sure, a particularly ham-fisted one, which is appropriate in the nation's most porcine politico. It's not like "right-wing sinecure" isn't on your resume.

Then there is his rhetorical style. He seems to have understood that a moderate Republican like himself can win so long as he adopts a bombastic style when taking on the liberal elites. Most people just want somebody who can articulate their hatreds, and Gingrich is demagogically happy to play the role.

C'mon, David. I know you don't really want to know about the 60s, or the 70s, but Gingrich is simply the fattest little piggy at the Post-States'-Rights trough. This is where "Newt Gingrich, Futurist" comes from. He's of an age where he saw that Ol' Jim Crow wasn't gonna fly anymore, and what was needed was a new sort of Snake Oil salesman. He may have truly believed that overt racism was dead, a decade or so before the rest of the Republican excuse-mongers caught up with the idea, but he's never quite given up the idea that it had its good points.

I’d make a slightly similar point more rudely. In the two main Republican contenders, we have one man, Romney, who seems to have walked straight out of the 1950s, and another, Gingrich, who seems to have walked straight out of the 1960s. He has every negative character trait that conservatives associate with ’60s excess: narcissism, self-righteousness, self-indulgence and intemperance. He just has those traits in Republican form.

I gotta tell ya, I really can't hear this enough. It's like theological arguments about dancing angels and pinheads, proof positive of the absolute pathology of anyone who claims transcendent truth. Narcissism, self-righteousness, self-indulgence and intemperance are supposed to describe "conservatives"' opponents?

As nearly everyone who has ever worked with him knows, he would severely damage conservatism and the Republican Party if nominated. He would severely damage the Hamilton-Theodore Roosevelt strain in American life.

That's you, and who else? Dear God, Ronald Reagan destroyed, for all fucking time, the notion of Republican fiscal responsibility, Republican intellectualism, and Republican intellectual honesty. And look where we are now.

But how you believe something is as important as what you believe. It doesn’t matter if a person shares your overall philosophy. If that person doesn’t have the right temperament and character, stay away.

Yeah. Find a convenient cocoon.

It's The Canadian Border We Should Be Worried About

David Brooks, "Let's All Feel Superior". November 14

STARTERS:

An adult male who has sex with young boys is called a pederast. The word--wait for it!--comes to us from the Greek, via Latin, and entered the English language in the early modern period, around the middle of the 17th century, following pederasty, which entered in the early 17th.

A young boy used for sexual services is known as a catamite. Again, from the Greek, via Latin, which got it from Etruscan, it dates to the late 16th century.

A corporation which is treated as a person de jure has no English term, perhaps because the Greeks and Romans would have laughed themselves into societal collapse at the notion. We can trace the idea to a scribbled note in the margin of some 14th Amendment decision, the scribbler in question being, not a Justice, nor a clerk, but, evidently, a stationery salesman trying to get a sample pen to work, and we can trace the idea that such an idea would be taken literally, and not as an inside joke, to the confirmation of Antonin "Fat Tony" Scalia. The concomitant idea, that your good friend Mr. Corporation deserves your silence the same way Aunt Martha did because her bathroom linen was furnished by the Holiday Inn Corporation, is of similar vintage, though no historian of religion need be reminded that the Toad is not merely an amphibian.

So of course in Brooks World the polluted debauchery of a young boy's--a motherfucking ward, fer chrissakes--sphincter would never have taken place without, y'know, Hugh Hefner:

In centuries past, people built moral systems that acknowledged this weakness. These systems emphasized our sinfulness. They reminded people of the evil within themselves. Life was seen as an inner struggle against the selfish forces inside. These vocabularies made people aware of how their weaknesses manifested themselves and how to exercise discipline over them. These systems gave people categories with which to process savagery and scripts to follow when they confronted it. They helped people make moral judgments and hold people responsible amidst our frailties.

But we’re not Puritans anymore. We live in a society oriented around our inner wonderfulness. So when something atrocious happens, people look for some artificial, outside force that must have caused it — like the culture of college football, or some other favorite bogey. People look for laws that can be changed so it never happens again.

First, let me belatedly mention that ifthethunderdontgetya™³²®© told us yesterday that Brooks was working this angle on the Sundays, and that, as he mentioned, driftglass has it handled.

And, second, let me say, yet again, that if David Motherfucking Simperer Brooks wants to come right out and say this shit, instead of dancing around it for fear someone will stuff him in his locker again, I'll reimburse his lunch money. (Apparently he felt a little more comfortable around fellow stuffees E.J. Dionne and David Gregory than the readership of the Times, since there he explicitly made it "30 or 40 years muddying the moral waters ".) Here, we're just not Puritans anymore, as though modern life lost the sheet music, or got drummed out for smoking. So evidently nothing like the Penn State Shower Stall Scene could have happened before 1970, because the Hayes Office wouldn't have allowed it. Just like, of course, it could never happen in an institution devoted to Christian morality.

Do we need a return to Puritanism (Brooks really means Victorianism, I suppose, but we'll play along) ? Then fucking say so. 'Cause else, we do not really need to be reminded that we are no longer 16th century English Protestants, though some of us could use a refresher course as to why this is. Victorian morality is laughable today; chalk that up to the developments in that human psychology Brooks imagines himself an amateur master of. The social enforcement of moral concepts, for which "Puritanism" is a poor metonym, would wipe out how many current Republican Presidential contenders in a wink? (And don't look at what's left.) What corporate persons would still be standing if 16th century morality had the force of law, or even the force of magically preventing all transgressions like it did in the old days?

Spit it out. Stop saying, "well, if my preferred historical dream world existed this would never happen, therefore no one should demand the law solve problems". The law does solve problems. This one. Unquestionably there is less child sexual exploitation today than there was in the good old moral days.

How long has this construction been growing mold? Something bad + some vague connection with sex = Dirty Hippies (let's hear David Brooks say this about AIDS). Jerry Sandusky (b. 1944) played football at Penn State in the early 1960s, then went into coaching. This is not Mr. Brooks era, nor--just guessing--was American football his preferred sport. I played--not particularly expertly--at the junior high and high school level in a mid-sized Midwestern city in the late 60s. And not once did I have a coach tell me that if something felt good I should just give it a shot. I was told a couple times to cut my hair, because I looked like a girl. The full import of that bit of wisdom didn't strike me until later.

What of Mike McQueary? Are we supposed to believe he didn't stop the rape of a 10-year-old because he figured it felt good? That the guy who oversaw the Penn State police department was a libertine, and the AD a voluptuary? No one can be that tone deaf, Mr. Brooks. Except, same as they were, for money, because if Jerry Sandusky was a Dirty Hippie, what's that make the Occupiers, eh?

The murder of Kitty Genovese has nothing whatsoever to do with Penn State. Nor Abu Ghraib, not the Holocaust. Try Enron, Dave. Try Arthur Andersen. Maybe Bernie Madoff's dick did get hard cheating people. The smart money still says it was the Money.

Getting In On The Ground Floor, Before It Sinks Any Lower

David Brooks, "In Praise of Fracking, and Other Theological Developments". November 3

I'M in a bad mood already, so don't start with me about America. Because we watch The Daily Show/Colbert at supper around here, I just caught thirty or forty seconds of Tom Fucking Brokaw with Jon from Wednesday night. (And only because my Poor Wife had the controls and the idea that I'd do my Brokaw impression, which is barely passable, and which it is probably more accurate to describe as my impression of Harry Shearer doing Tom Brokaw. I'm more of a phonetic impressionist. A week or so ago my PW was watching Camelot in the living room--I can only assume the remote was lost again--and I was in the kitchen, and started repeating a single syllable as Richard Harris, over and over, until she snorted her way into finding the thing and changed the channel.)

We watched just long enough to hear Brokaw lamenting the horrible, worse-than-ever divisions in our nation's capital--would you please retire, already? Or take up Japanese?--which apparently is creating unpleasant cross-currents for the centrist tide-bobber. So unlike the good ol' days of "Dutch" Reagan and "Tip" O'Neill giving each other after-hours backrubs. Why can't politics be fun again?

Does Stewart really believe that Brokaw is less responsible for this state of affairs than Tucker Carlson? Brokaw was the Princeling of Faux Balance. He's the guy NBC went to when it wanted to convert from news organization to infotainment, when it wanted to syphon off some of ABC's successful right-wing mojo in the era of Librul Media backlash. He was the spokesmodel for tearing down the grand old structures of television news, replacing them with Megamalls, and then filling the B. Dalton window inside with his lavishly illustrated paean to those great old buildings.

This is when the working class got stiffed (I mean, when the current round began); don't tell us you didn't notice, Tom. Don't tell us that Ronald Reagan's affability had you hypnotized. The loss of Courtesy now is deeply troubling to you, but the loss of All Reason in the 80s bothered you not one whit, or not enough to actually report on the actual effects of the Great Reagan Looting Party until after they had occurred, and the statute of limitations run out.

You were on the anchor desk, Tom--meaning that 1/3 of most Americans got their news from you--throughout the Reagan Swindle, through the transparently phony PR campaign which turned him into an American Folk Hero Action Figure, against the Details Formerly Known As Facts, and blamed all the bad stuff on Jimmy Carter. That's where you sat when his reelection campaign appropriated Bruce Springsteen. And Reagan's veniality there is not the issue; it's that Springsteen's clear message of an America of closing factories and broken promises and co-opted freedoms was increasing difficult to find during your tenure, faux-balanced and whited-out from a classic American narrative as old as Old Hickory and as relevant as the Civil Rights movement, becoming something that resembled a rude, persistent coughing from the back of the lecture hall where Heinz Kissinger and Jerry Falwell were discussing the Founders. The 1988 Presidential election was about Willie Horton. The '92 and '96 elections were about Bill Clinton's dick, as was everything else in those days, for that matter. The 2000 election was about Al Gore inventing the internet. You stood by. Forgive me, but I don't think the fact that sane people want nothing to do with Louie Gohmert quite measures up.

One of our major parties is clinically fucking insane; the other is corrupt and cowardly. And you're afraid to mention it, and so hope that scolding them for a lack of bonhomie will have some results. This is not necessarily unprecedented in the history of the Republic, but it continues at a time when the powerful are more powerful than ever, and the powerless increasingly so. Our problems--our fingertips-on-the-ledge dilemma--were not created by both sides, and are not to be solved by admonishing both to Work Together. If you won't leave the Newsotainment industry, Mr. Brokaw, and you think things may be so serious that at some future date you might have to let the weekend chauffeur go, or write your own books, then start putting what blame belongs on your own side where it belongs.

Is David Brooks a minor or a major problem? I think you know my thoughts. If I'm the Times and I read this I have to wonder why, in a period of contracting ad revenues, Big Energy gets a free slurpee on my Op-Ed page; if I'm a Timesman I have to wonder why I'm bothering with getting anything right. Brooks pens a column which begins, ostensibly, as a poignant tearstained letter about our modern muddle; the miracle of shale oil production--everyone who stands to make a buck on it agrees--is yet thwarted by environmental concerns.

The U.S. is polarized between “drill, baby, drill” conservatives, who seem suspicious of most regulation, and some environmentalists, who seem to regard fossil fuels as morally corrupt and imagine we can switch to wind and solar overnight.

Sure, sure, it's a Tell--or several--you could go All In on all night long: "conservatives" "seeming a little suspicious of regulation" vs. environmentalists who are frequently unbathed and are motivated by hatred of decent people. Never mind that this followed six paragraphs of the sort of puffery which would make a Pope blush. The sober, Grown-up, David Brooks view is that a couple of "conservatives" may be a little too radical about laissez-faire capitalist plunder, while environmentalists plain go too far. And we must balance these extremes, because they are preventing the "conservative" view from running the field at will.

It takes another three paragraphs before we learn that maybe, just maybe, the dirty hippies have a point, though one which they're not smart enough to realize is trivial:

Like every energy source, fracking has its dangers. The process involves injecting large amounts of water and chemicals deep underground. If done right, this should not contaminate freshwater supplies, but rogue companies have screwed up and there have been instances of contamination.

The wells, which are sometimes beneath residential areas, are serviced by big trucks that damage the roads and alter the atmosphere in neighborhoods. A few sloppy companies could discredit the whole sector.

Martin Luther may or may not have been the first to note that much depended on whose ox was being gored. What we do know is this: we've known about it since the 16th century at least. "Special interests"--in true Libertarian fashion Brooks is willing to add the coal industry to the villains list, since this gives him Let the Chips Fall Where They May credibility while costing neither him nor his energy sector friends with benefits anything--are what oppose you screwing with someone else's property; "Sound regulation" is what opposes someone else screwing with yours. For the corporate apologist and Bright Future human mic, criminality, environmental disaster, and eroding personal rights are always the result of one or two bad actors, not the inevitable consequence of letting the worst sort of person do the worst sort of thing because Profit will make it all better, and clean up after.

I don't know any more about shale oil than Brooks does; I'm just honest, and poor, enough to know that when someone calls Effects "side-effects" you might look for a financial interest, and not be surprised to find one. We can't expect to solve, or even salve, real problems while virtual jabberers promote the opposite, and their fellows recommend splitting the difference.

"Dear Penthouse: I Never Thought I'd Be Writing You At Age 70. Then One Day I Bought A New York Times…"

David Brooks, "This Oughta Be Good For Two Holiday Columns At Least". October 27

I RARELY tackle Brooks in one of those Sociology reveries of his, when he's apparently imagining himself at some private, exclusive, expensive liberal arts college, be-Tweeded and Meerschaum'd, privately discussing her semester grade with some pillowy coed, just enough of sixteen, or fifteen, still echoing in her cheeks, or tongue-moistened lips, just enough college girl experience in her eyes, stubby little fingers a bit too fidgety, paint-chipped some ridiculous color or two. Extra credit! The sinecure's wet dream of a sinecure. Because, frankly, I'm subject to fits, and this computer desk has sharp corners.

If the Times wants to pay a rank amateur to regularly fill its Op-Ed pages with unlettered and highly selective culls of social science articles written for the general reader, well, it's not like it has much of a reputation left to lose.

It's bad enough that Brooks evinces no awareness whatever of the basic issues in the social sciences; what's worse--or, at least, what's a greater risk to my maxillofacial structures--is how Brooks seems to imagine he can use this stuff to reinforce his Preppy Monarchist routine without anyone being the wiser. It's always relentlessly aspirational, always wowed by some Untapped or Recently Discovered Human Potential which, in the future, will serve the ever-perfection-bound perfection of Capitalism well, or would, if it weren't largely a shell game. Brooks didn't get where he is on the back of a turnip truck. That doesn't mean he doesn't actually believe this shit. It just means he has to know that not everyone does, and might consider writing accordingly.

Today's column is a bleg for seventy-something readers to write their life stories, and a couple of columns, for him ("around Thanksgiving". Good timing.). This will benefit young readers, who rarely get the advice about adulthood they so desperately crave from withered senescents.

And so does Youth turn to David Brooks for help! like he's an elevated sleeping platform 12 hours up the overnight trail. Actually, Dave recently "stumbled across" brief biographies written by Yalies, Class of 1942, for their 50th reunion. While looking for the definition of "bleg", I'm guessing.

So, first off, young reader, I'm with Dave on this one. I wish someone had advised me to be wealthy enough to attend Yale during a Great Depression.

Of course, Young Dreamer, we are not here to discuss what sort of effect Every Fucking Opportunity in the Book might have on your Life Story, as this is why you have been provided bootstraps, or a Times to sleep under. There is, after all, a 1 in 2 chance you are female and a 1 in 5 chance you're black, or otherwise disadvantaged, and so wouldn't be writing about your time at Yale in the 40s in the first place. Mutatis mutants, future entrepreneur! Enjoy your refrigerated beverage! Not so common among your kind back in those days, yet look where you are now. Consider the selection in the beverage aisle! Consider the opportunities in the burgeoning field of refrigerator repair. Or the admittedly spartan, but relatively inexpensive housing afforded by their ubiquity. David Brooks did not happen to stumble on a treasure trove of bios from the Alumni of the Watts Riots or Khe Sanh or the Auto Industry. Take what aid life gives you, and be thankful he didn't stumble over your bedroll on his way to the Deli.

For example, you might consider a double major--"Appliance Repair" and "Dumpster Diving", say--if you wanna be truly happy:

The most common lament in this collection is from people who worked at the same company all their lives and now realize how boring they must seem. These people passively let their lives happen to them. One man described his long, uneventful career at an insurance company and concluded, “Wish my self-profile was more exciting, but it’s a little late now.”

This, of course, is welcome news had you planned on a career in public education, manufacturing, or anything else, actually, not involving nepotism.

Looking back, many were amazed by the role that chance played in their lives. Others point to the pivotal moment that changed their lives. One man was nationally humiliated when he lost to Charles Van Doren in a television quiz show (Van Doren was cheating).

From which you may learn, Future Leader, that it's a lot better to be the major corporation running the crooked game than it is to be the pawn in that game who broke no law, went on to a distinguished academic career, and will forevermore be referred to as Cheater. At least so long as it's up to the David Brookses of the world to assign blame.

The men all mention serving in the war, but none go into detail about their war experiences.

Take note, Young American! Although if you actually do happen to be headed to Yale you can just skip that part.