I rarely read the NYT's opinion pieces these days, but I happened to see Brooks' headline that day and laughed way too hard for an early morning. Democracy is truly on fire when Captain Milquetoast sounds the alarm.
All I can add to your excellent critiques of Brooks is that, as an actual sociologist with a PhD and career based on the kinds of things that actual sociologists do, you might imagine how livid it makes me when he is referred to as a sociologist or social scientist.
+1 though I would say Ezra Klein has done far more of the damage of guiding thinking into very narrow channels that benefit Klein (and Brooks). It is striking how much elite para-academic opinion depends on Brooks once upon a time and now increasingly Klein who is a "must listen!" or must read. Not noticing that that very elitism is why we have the current administration.
I’d argue that cognitive dissonance resulting from shockingly poor education in critical thinking skills has led to the current administration, which has to be the most elitist group of “leaders” ever assembled, if measured by the number of empty-suit billionaires involved in it.
But I’d also posit that the successful labeling of anyone who can correctly use an apostrophe half the time as being “elite” or “elitist” is a consequence not of Klein’s or Brooks’s ideas (both of which I personally tend to find repugnant) but rather of the unending stream of ignorance pouring out of the right-wing noise machine since the simultaneous rise of talk-radio and the Internet in the Clinton era.
I'd push back slightly on this sentence: "it’s not clear to me how much understanding the causes matters to the solution in this moment anyway."
I agree on welcoming as many folks as possible to the resistance, and I also worry that so many people (especially folks like Brooks) are looking to bring us back to "normal" which in their minds is a time before Trump when they could ignore the systemic issues that led directly to him. I worry that their poor causal analysis will lead to continued cycles of authoritarianism as the second Trump is out of power they will fight tooth and nail against larger systemic change.
I suspect “normal” for Brooks still reminds him of when Tucker Carlson and Pat Buchanan were considered “mainstream” conservatives by the producers of “Crossfire.”
I thought I’d misread the byline on that piece after I got finished with it. The spirit of Mark Shields must surely be smiling with some measure of “I fuckin’ kept telling you, buddy…”
Now if Ross Douthat writes a piece eviscerating Vance’s imitation of Pius XII, we will have gone fully through the looking-glass (except for the fact that, as you note, most of those needing to hear this most will be tuned in to Joe Rogan, Jesse Waters, or far far worse).
That's hilarious -- I used to love watching Shields politely shred Brooks on election nights on PBS. It was like watching the exasperated uncle who is tired of his smarty-pants nephew spewing nonsense.
In regards to "I also wonder what took him so long and how anyone could go beyond the date of January 6th 2020 when a mob stormed the Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the certification as the era of “normal politics.”
There was a moment after the first Trump impeachment when Susan Collins, whose politics I disagree with but is probably reasonably sane, made the insane comment, "I think he learned his lesson." Declining to hold someone accountable for their actions does teach a certain lesson - the lesson that you can do whatever you want with no permanent repercussions. But more broadly, Collins' comment is the kind of head in the sand, passing the buck, hopes and prayers thinking that Brooks all too frequently embodies as well, and that I would say is one of the big reasons we've arrived at this point.
Collins’s voting record hardly differs from those of Josh Hawley or Tom Cotton. Her performance of “concern” is, on nearly every occasion, proven fully vacuous.
Kinzinger and Cheney hold reprehensible positions on 95% or more of issues that matter to me, but at least they each had enough conviction to not just say Jan. 6 was wrong but actually to vote publicly to hold Trump accountable for his role in it. That’s infinitely more than the “moderate” Collins has ever done.
I usually do read David Brooks, and I think this latest is one of his best columns in years. It's almost direct! And I was struck with the column that appeared soon after his in the Times, by Ross Douthat. (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/19/opinion/extinction-technology-culture.html) That these two conservative columnists should publish these columns at the same poiint in time should tell us to pay attention--not necessarily to them, but to what we can see with our own eyes.
I rarely read the NYT's opinion pieces these days, but I happened to see Brooks' headline that day and laughed way too hard for an early morning. Democracy is truly on fire when Captain Milquetoast sounds the alarm.
All I can add to your excellent critiques of Brooks is that, as an actual sociologist with a PhD and career based on the kinds of things that actual sociologists do, you might imagine how livid it makes me when he is referred to as a sociologist or social scientist.
+1 though I would say Ezra Klein has done far more of the damage of guiding thinking into very narrow channels that benefit Klein (and Brooks). It is striking how much elite para-academic opinion depends on Brooks once upon a time and now increasingly Klein who is a "must listen!" or must read. Not noticing that that very elitism is why we have the current administration.
I’d argue that cognitive dissonance resulting from shockingly poor education in critical thinking skills has led to the current administration, which has to be the most elitist group of “leaders” ever assembled, if measured by the number of empty-suit billionaires involved in it.
But I’d also posit that the successful labeling of anyone who can correctly use an apostrophe half the time as being “elite” or “elitist” is a consequence not of Klein’s or Brooks’s ideas (both of which I personally tend to find repugnant) but rather of the unending stream of ignorance pouring out of the right-wing noise machine since the simultaneous rise of talk-radio and the Internet in the Clinton era.
I'd push back slightly on this sentence: "it’s not clear to me how much understanding the causes matters to the solution in this moment anyway."
I agree on welcoming as many folks as possible to the resistance, and I also worry that so many people (especially folks like Brooks) are looking to bring us back to "normal" which in their minds is a time before Trump when they could ignore the systemic issues that led directly to him. I worry that their poor causal analysis will lead to continued cycles of authoritarianism as the second Trump is out of power they will fight tooth and nail against larger systemic change.
I suspect “normal” for Brooks still reminds him of when Tucker Carlson and Pat Buchanan were considered “mainstream” conservatives by the producers of “Crossfire.”
Speak it, John! Loved this column. Thank you.
I thought I’d misread the byline on that piece after I got finished with it. The spirit of Mark Shields must surely be smiling with some measure of “I fuckin’ kept telling you, buddy…”
Now if Ross Douthat writes a piece eviscerating Vance’s imitation of Pius XII, we will have gone fully through the looking-glass (except for the fact that, as you note, most of those needing to hear this most will be tuned in to Joe Rogan, Jesse Waters, or far far worse).
That's hilarious -- I used to love watching Shields politely shred Brooks on election nights on PBS. It was like watching the exasperated uncle who is tired of his smarty-pants nephew spewing nonsense.
In regards to "I also wonder what took him so long and how anyone could go beyond the date of January 6th 2020 when a mob stormed the Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the certification as the era of “normal politics.”
There was a moment after the first Trump impeachment when Susan Collins, whose politics I disagree with but is probably reasonably sane, made the insane comment, "I think he learned his lesson." Declining to hold someone accountable for their actions does teach a certain lesson - the lesson that you can do whatever you want with no permanent repercussions. But more broadly, Collins' comment is the kind of head in the sand, passing the buck, hopes and prayers thinking that Brooks all too frequently embodies as well, and that I would say is one of the big reasons we've arrived at this point.
Collins’s voting record hardly differs from those of Josh Hawley or Tom Cotton. Her performance of “concern” is, on nearly every occasion, proven fully vacuous.
Kinzinger and Cheney hold reprehensible positions on 95% or more of issues that matter to me, but at least they each had enough conviction to not just say Jan. 6 was wrong but actually to vote publicly to hold Trump accountable for his role in it. That’s infinitely more than the “moderate” Collins has ever done.
I usually do read David Brooks, and I think this latest is one of his best columns in years. It's almost direct! And I was struck with the column that appeared soon after his in the Times, by Ross Douthat. (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/19/opinion/extinction-technology-culture.html) That these two conservative columnists should publish these columns at the same poiint in time should tell us to pay attention--not necessarily to them, but to what we can see with our own eyes.