What if we are the bad guys here?

[vanceen]

I generally like David Brooks a lot, and I think he brings some interesting and useful insight in this piece. In fact, there are some things in it that our society will avoid understanding only to its peril.

Contrary to some of the posts above, his comments don't excuse or justify Trump. They help explain why there is so much pent-up resentment that it has become possible for a barbarian like Trump to become prominent by playing on it.

But in the end, I think Brooks is wrong in his main point. Meritocracy is not the the problem. After all, what's the alternative? Mediocracy? Idiocracy?

The problems are, as I see it:

1. The avenues to achieve "merit" have become more narrow and hard to attain. University tuitions are inflated because of the misconceived policy of government backing of student loans.

2. Structural economic changes and technological innovations have sharply reduced the value of unskilled and semi-skilled labor in the US. People without university degrees or highly specialized skills are competing with people in China, Vietnam, and India, who get what is for us an unimaginably small price for their labor.

3. Our social and cultural development - and here Brooks is exactly right - have developed to a point where the "meritocrats" typically have scathing contempt for people who have not been able to climb the new economic ladder (with the theoretical exception of racial minorities and LGBTQ....). This is of course accelerated and exacerbated by the tendency of many of those at the foot of the ladder to identify with movements like Trump's, which encourages them to return that contempt. So the cycle feeds itself and gets worse.

Some solutions are obvious. We need major, major investment in infrastructure and education, including free university education for any student who is qualified to do the work.

And, as Brooks says, we need leadership from those who are in the privileged positions that merit has brought them. Someone who will consistently deliver and live by messages similar to the ones that Obama gave, before he was elected President (and in my view, lost his way).

 

[HK.227]

So ... you are advocating that we have our own french revolution??

No, merely that if the other two options aren't chosen, then the third becomes inevitable.
Reform, revolution, or decay. That is the fate of all civilizations. (Well, all systems actually.)

 

[HK.227]

The elites you chose to mention all presided over successful nations or empires. And being destroyed "from without or within" often led to collapse of those nations or empires.

This thing all things devours;
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats mountain down.

All things fall in the end. Some deservedly so, other not.
The point was that those empires failed specifically because of those elites I mentioned. Their art and science may have been great, but they failed to survive as significant entities because they refused to acknowledge their problems.

Or you can live lives content that even in decadence, great nations and empires take a long time to fall. If you're on the losing end, then you really have to think long and carefully about whether being dead is preferable. Or if maybe there's something easier you could do, to be happier in your life.

The poor in America are middle class by global standards. But relative affluence makes them feel like shit. Some call it the "politics of envy" but they're seeking to exclude social justice from the realm of politics. Social justice frightens them.

I'm not American, so my main concern with your accelerating instability is what effect it will have on the rest of the world if you ever decide to fight it out amongst yourselves.
As I said to Slartibartfast, you have the same choice as every other civilization that has ever been. Reform, revolution, or decay. I'm hoping you choose reform, but I'm not counting on it. It would require you to abandon tribalism and engage in honest discourse with each other, and I don't see that happening anytime soon. But I'm not sure that it is really my problem. I'll probably be dead before the consequences really start to be felt.

“And so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

Apologies for the mangled quotes. I was just brushing up on my Tolkien the other day...

 

[Big Brother]

...

It wasn't too long ago that conservatives were insisting that corporations get as much legal protection and personhood as possible, while also encouraging deregulation that allowed for the mass exploitation of overseas labor and resources.

...

It wasn't long ago that democrats weren't the party in favor of the donor class and were against the DC establishment, big corporations, war, pharmaceutical companies gouging patients, Mansanto, and a whole slew of other establishment darlings who at the time favored the republicans and threw their money and support behind them. Then all of a sudden the DNC around the time of Bill Clinton came up with the the great idea to become the party of the establishment and enjoy all the power and money that comes with it. Now the democrats are the establishment darlings, and how they now love the big corporations, especially the tech giants, are pro-war, just love the pharmaceutical companies, won't touch Monsanto and instead turned the blame for ruining the earth on themselves and not big corporations. The democrats have become everything they once hated and fought against. An astute person will notice that there is a big raging battle between two parties to be the better servant to the establishment. At the moment the democrats are winning and it is the republicans that have to take up the fight against the establishment, although half of the republicans are still firmly espoused to the establishment.

 

[vanceen]

It wasn't long ago that democrats weren't the party in favor of the donor class and were against the DC establishment, big corporations, war, pharmaceutical companies gouging patients, Mansanto, and a whole slew of other establishment darlings who at the time favored the republicans and threw their money and support behind them. Then all of a sudden the DNC around the time of Bill Clinton came up with the the great idea to become the party of the establishment and enjoy all the power and money that comes with it. Now the democrats are the establishment darlings, and how they now love the big corporations, especially the tech giants, are pro-war, just love the pharmaceutical companies, won't touch Monsanto and instead turned the blame for ruining the earth on themselves and not big corporations. The democrats have become everything they once hated and fought against. An astute person will notice that there is a big raging battle between two parties to be the better servant to the establishment. At the moment the democrats are winning and it is the republicans that have to take up the fight against the establishment, although half of the republicans are still firmly espoused to the establishment.

Democrats were always an establishment party.

What you describe didn't become an important part of Democratic Party thinking until the late 60's and early 70's. After the 1968 convention, in the context of the unpopularity of the Vietnam war and the zenith of the counter-culture movement, there was a flourishing of the kind of thing you describe within the Democratic party. That led to George McGovern's nomination and the electoral disaster that brought. Reagan's big win was in large part a reaction to the capture of a significant percentage of the Democratic party by this kind of ideology. Clinton figured out that if the Democratic Party ever wanted to win more Presidential elections, they had better tack to the center.

 

[Big Brother]

Democrats were always an establishment party.

What you describe didn't become an important part of Democratic Party thinking until the late 60's and early 70's. After the 1968 convention, in the context of the unpopularity of the Vietnam war and the zenith of the counter-culture movement, there was a flourishing of the kind of thing you describe within the Democratic party. That led to George McGovern's nomination and the electoral disaster that brought. Reagan's big win was in large part a reaction to the capture of a significant percentage of the Democratic party by this kind of ideology. Clinton figured out that if the Democratic Party ever wanted to win more Presidential elections, they had better tack to the center.

That's not how I remember it. Bill Clinton was very afraid of not getting reelected and was told he would have to get Wall St. and the media on his side. He did exactly that; he gave the media the Telecommunications Act of 1996 from which they have been forever grateful and loyal, and he gave the banks the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 which basically repealed Glass Steagall and made Wall St. turn left. Winning the center, or independents, is just a story they tell to hide the truth. Clinton made peace with Big Money and it's political establishment and the democrat party has never looked back and has become more and more greedy ever since. Everything they once hated became the defining characteristics of democrats from that point on.