Political
commentator and columnist David Brooks wrote in a recent “New York Times” (1) essay lamenting the emergence of Donald Trump
that Trumpism, such as it is, represents a paradigm shift in conservative
thinking and, by extension, an opportunity to redefine conservatism. The problem, as always with conservatism is
that, as the Brooks’ effort clearly demonstrates, conservatives first fail to
recognize the shortcomings of their own intellectual constructions and secondly
they fail further to recognize the brazen internal contradictions between their
major and minor premises and the conclusions they divine therefrom. The result, all too predictably are babbling Brooks of nonsense.
Brooks rightly
now describes the current Republican malaise as “groaning under the Reagan
Orthodoxy” (2) that somehow went from a Rising Tide America to a Coming Apart
America.
Now
along comes Trump whom Brooks describes as an “Angel of Destruction”, blowing
to “smithereens” the comfortable old bromides.
“He represents not only a rejection of the existing Reaganite
establishment, but also a rejection of Reaganite foreign policy (he is less
globalist) and Reaganite domestic policy (he is friendlier to the state).” Trump, in Brooks’ view is “prompting what
Thomas Kuhn, in his theory of scientific revolutions, called a model crisis”. Declaring Trump totally devoid of any ideas
or policies, Brooks concludes that Trump “will almost certainly go down to a
devastating defeat either in the general election or—God help us—as the worst
president in American history.” (3)
But,
alas for Brooks at least, every looming political catastrophe bears a silver
lining. Now is the chance, he writes,
for a “mental purging: casting aside many existing mental categories and
presuppositions, to shift your identity from one with a fixed mindset to one in
which you are a seeker and open to anything.
The second step is probably embedding: going out and seeing America with
fresh eyes and listening to American voices with fresh ears….” (4)
Brooks
then waxes on about the need to replace the soulless and loveless Trumpist
vision with compassion, moving conservative doctrine to a more sociologically
compassionate philosophy and away from the fetish conservatives demonstrate for
tax cuts, enterprise zones, and the “utility-driven individual”. “Somehow”,
Brooks writes, “the Republican Party will have to rediscover a language of
loving thy neighbor…. because today’s problems relate to binding a fragmenting
society, reweaving family and social connections, relating across the diversity
of a globalized world. Homo economicus
is a myth and conservatism needs a worldview that is accurate about Human
nature.” (5) Indeed, so it does.
Again,
to paraphrase Gibbon, if with regard to our conservative brethren “experience is powerless to instruct”,
we must at least give Brooks credit here for some well-intentioned, if not long
overdue soul-searching. It is not often
that we find this kind of courage exhibited so publicly among the chattering
class.
But,
alas, our friend has miles to go before he sleeps. We can begin with the failure to honestly
apprehend our national experience. Referring
to the legacy of his patron Saint Ronald Reagan, Brooks openly declares that “We’ve
gone from Rising Tide America to Coming Apart America”, from the “Reagan
worldview…based on the idea that a rising tide would lift all boats. But that’s
clearly no longer true.” (6) It never
was.
Brooks,
like all of the chattering class, the myriad talking heads that sometimes
enlighten but often pollute the airwaves, is a victim of his own self-imposed
myopia. He has spent a lifetime caught
in the confines of the Washington Beltway and the conservative
echo-chamber. The fact is that had he
made even a modest effort to expand his horizons and, therefore, his peripheral
vision, he would have discovered that the Kennedy, not Reagan, dictum that a ‘rising
tide lifts all boats’ while administered by a good Liberal-Democratic administration
became, in malignant conservative hands, more properly “a rising tide lifts all
yachts”.
To
discover this, Brother Brooks would not have been required to read the
collective works of Karl Marx, or even those of Jeremy Bentham. He would not have been required to consult
with pols like Ted Kennedy, or even a Bernie Sanders. He would not have had to search in vain for a
conservative stink-tank offering an alternative point of view. All he would have had to do was consult the
likes of Kevin Phillips—author of Nixon’s Southern Strategy—and longtime
card-carrying Republican who has written extensively about the lingering
effects of Reaganomics. Beginning in the
late 80’s right after Reagan left office, Phillips began to publish the early
returns and by 1993 he declared straightforwardly in his book “Boiling
Point” (7), that the middle class had lost ground, if not taken a
thrashing, under Reagan—even during the High Tide period of the 80’s when the
policies first went into effect. It hasn’t
got any better in the ensuing quarter century as administrations both Democratic
and Republican have ratified the inspired stupidity of what the host of “Death
Valley Days” had wrought. The
returns have been in now for over quarter century, we are now nearly two
generations into this failed experiment and only now a lonely soul far off on
the political wrong begins to give voice to doubt. It has been a long time coming.
What I
am suggesting here is that Brooks has not gone nearly far enough in casting
aside long held categories and presuppositions, beginning of course with the category
that man is entirely a utility-driven economic animal and with the supposition
that unfettered capital will ‘raise all boats’.
The first is a deeply one-dimensional, if not completely self-serving
(from the view of the capitalist elites) proposition and the second has never
been demonstrated in the whole of human experience. Indeed, precisely the opposite occurs with
nauseating certainty.
Secondly
the conclusions divined by late 20th century conservatism are wholly
at odds, it should now be painfully apparent with the objective, empirical,
measurable reality—as writers like Phillips have so laboriously and
conclusively demonstrated. Plainly one
simply cannot institute a regime in which a form of Social Darwinism is
fostered which does not in the end strain the social, economic and political
bonds to the breaking point. A clear
contradiction emerges in which the “freedom” of those who through effort and
intelligence, or inheritance and sloth, assume such massive advantages as to
stifle the aspirations if not the very well-being of the rest of society. Society bifurcates into the Have’s and
Have-Not’s. The Middle Class gives
ground, as does the ‘political center’.
Politics becomes a reflection of the divisions now deep in a society
coming apart.
It's the
Coming Apart America, in Brooks phrase, that Trumpism represents. In subsequent columns Brooks admonishes us to
forge ‘intermediate’ relationships, and make ‘Covenants’ with each other (8). All that is well and good but he is
overlooking the necessary first step and that is to recognize the damage that
Reagan had wrought and to repudiate it. “Reagan orthodoxy”, wrote Brooks, “….
was right for the 1980’s but has become increasingly obsolete” (9). This represents not even the first step
toward honesty. No, David. Reagan Orthodoxy is a purely 19th
century construct and was obsolete at conception; that it ill-suited the 1980’s
has been demonstrated by your fellow conservative and former Republican Kevin
Phillips. No, David, there are reasons why the country
and your movement is groaning under the weight of the Reagan Orthodoxy and that
is that it never worked.
And now,
your movement and your party are finally being abandoned as those who create
the wealth through their labor have become painfully aware that they do not
share the same interests or the same world-view as those who appropriate the
value of that labor and manage it for their own selfish ends.
Trump
would be the worst president in American history? That is quite an assertion betraying a pique
unbecoming a man revisiting the country with fresh eyes and ears. In any case it may be an abyss too far. It is, for instance, difficult to imagine a
President Trump sending troops off to the frontier as states secede from the
union, or playing guitar while a major city drowns.
_____
(1).
Brooks, David. “The Post-Trump Era” “New York Times” March 25,
2016. Page A23
(2).
ibid
(3).
ibid
(4).
ibid
(5).
ibid
(6).
ibid
(7). see
Phillips, Kevin. “Boiling Point: Democrats, Republicans, and the Decline of Middle-Class
Prosperity”. 1993 Random House, New York. 307 pages
(8).
Brooks, David. “How Covenants Make Us” “New York Times” April 5, 2016. Page A23
Brooks, David. “How to Fix Politics” New York Times” April 12,
2016. Page A23
(9). Op
Cit
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