NYT Columnist Asks, 'What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?'
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NYT Columnist Asks, 'What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?'
n an op-ed piece for the New York Times on Wednesday, David Brooks had the headline, “What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?” In it, Brooks struggles with the question of why Trump has a commanding lead over the other GOP hopefuls and why he seems essentially tied with Joe Biden on a national basis. All of this despite the fact that Trump continues to rack up indictments like a grandma on a winning bingo streak at The Villages.
To his credit, Brooks does conduct a fairly exhaustive self-examination. In the piece, he enumerates the ways and provides examples of how America’s elites have lost touch with, well, everyone else. He reflects on how elitism extends to the workplace:
Over the last decades we’ve taken over whole professions and locked everybody else out. When I began my journalism career in Chicago in the 1980s, there were still some old crusty working-class guys around the newsroom. Now we’re not only a college-dominated profession, we’re an elite-college-dominated profession. Only 0.8 percent of all college students graduate from the super elite 12 schools (the Ivy League colleges, plus Stanford, M.I.T., Duke and the University of Chicago). A 2018 study found that more than 50 percent of the staff writers at the beloved New York Times and The Wall Street Journal attended one of the 29 most elite universities in the nation.
He also observes:
Members of our class also segregate ourselves into a few booming metro areas: San Francisco, D.C., Austin and so on. In 2020, Biden won only 500 or so counties, but together they are responsible for 71 percent of the American economy. Trump won over 2,500 counties, responsible for only 29 percent. Once we find our cliques, we don’t get out much. In the book “Social Class in the 21st Century,” sociologist Mike Savage and his co-researchers found that the members of the highly educated class tend to be the most insular, measured by how often we have contact with those who have jobs unlike our own.
Brooks rightly notes that the elites have manipulated the economy and the culture for their own purposes. He concludes:
But there’s a larger context here. As the sociologist E. Digby Baltzell wrote decades ago, “History is a graveyard of classes which have preferred caste privileges to leadership.” That is the destiny our class is now flirting with. We can condemn the Trumpian populists all day until the cows come home, but the real question is when will we stop behaving in ways that make Trumpism inevitable.
But scrolling up for a moment, one of Brooks’ more interesting comments was:
Like all elites, we use language and mores as tools to recognize one another and exclude others. Using words like problematic, cisgender, Latinx and intersectional is a sure sign that you’ve got cultural capital coming out of your ears. Meanwhile, members of the less-educated classes have to walk on eggshells, because they never know when we’ve changed the usage rules, so that something that was sayable five years ago now gets you fired.
This reminds me of an incident in high school. It was the last few months of my senior year. I was never in the cool kids’ clique and, to be honest, I never thought to try to join. In perfect sync with a scene straight out of the yet-to-be-made “The Breakfast Club,” a popular girl commented to me that everyone in the school looked up to her clique and wanted to hang out with them and be like them. I commented, “No, we don’t.” One of my friends piped up “We’ve pretty much just been putting up with you all this time.” The stunned silence that followed was delicious.
With that in mind, sir, let me break it down for you from the point of view of those of us considered to be the Great Unwashed.
First, allow me to sincerely congratulate you on taking a hard look at you and yours. What you have failed to understand, Mr. Brooks, is that we less-educated members of the proletariat (and by less educated, we’re talking anyone without an Ivy League education) have pretty much been putting up with you all this time. We have swallowed more words than can be found in Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. We weren’t walking on eggshells. We were rolling our eyes and gritting our teeth and waiting to see if at some point you came out of your derangement. We were waiting to see if perhaps it might dawn on you that we don’t hate black or brown people. We don’t hate gay people or lesbians. We don’t even hate trans people. As for trans people, we just got bored with their egomania and angry with their predation on our children. Those in our ranks who keep guns don’t do so because they plan to shoot up a school or church. They keep them because the people who ostensibly run the country have abandoned every pretense of law and order and continue to give the nod to rioters, looters, and homeless people defecating on the streets and threatening their families. We don’t want to see the world burn, but we can’t afford $5.00 for a gallon of gas and astronomical grocery bills for the rest of our lives. We are tired of the people who crowed about welcoming immigrants and then expected us to accommodate them and cope with the human trafficking and the risks created by the cartels, gangs, and the spread of fentanyl. Ask the residents of the Woodlawn neighborhood in Chicago how they feel about the crush of illegal immigrants in their community. We wanted to be left alone. But that wasn’t good enough for you.
There is an old joke which I believe is from Jeff Foxworthy, “Nobody likes a redneck around until their car breaks down.” And there is a great deal of truth in that. The American elites have showered disdain and outright hatred on those of us not lucky enough to be numbered among their ranks. And yet, without this despised class, life in America would be impossible. You elites have no idea how to manage livestock or crops. You cannot frame houses, install plumbing, or run electrical wires. If your cars die, you have no idea what to do next. And often those things are not particularly easy to address. They all require a great deal of intelligence and an education that cannot be found in the Ivy League. These people who you have hated so much don’t just do the jobs the elites won’t do. They do the jobs the elites can’t do.
While we’re on the subject, sir, once upon a time my wife and I traveled to the Democrat bastion of Hawaii. I noticed a funny thing about Hawaii. The only native Hawaiians I saw were doing menial labor. I never saw them at the hotels or restaurants. The same is true about the ski resort towns we have visited. The only Latinos I have ever seen were mowing grass, cleaning rooms, or working in the kitchens. Funny, I thought the elites were going to take care of that. It is interesting how many opinions the elites have about problems that never reach them.
It is ironic that my mother desperately wanted me to be one of you and tried to impart a love of art, music, and literature. But we just weren’t rich. As a result, I enjoy the works of Klee, Seurat, Chagall, and even Michelangelo, Van Gogh, and Joan Miró. I also have an affinity for Mahler. But I’ve worked as a busboy, garbage hauler, house painter, waiter, bartender, truck driver, and lumber yard attendant. I’ve helped run cattle, and I’ve fought wildfires. I took my first job in high school because my family needed grocery money. As a result, I am able to enjoy the “finer things” in life without looking down my nose at the guy who operates a backhoe for a living. I am not Trump’s biggest fan. While the readers here at PJ Media may take me to task for that, keep in mind that there is nothing anyone could say or do that would make me vote for the opposition.
And don’t think for a moment that it has escaped our attention that every time someone on your side is at risk of getting their keister put in a sling, one of you manages to light your hair on fire and run around the building waving your arms screaming “Trump!” “January 6!” “White supremacy!” It’s getting tedious, sir. You need a new schtick. You don’t even know who we are.
So, Mr. Brooks, I am glad to see that the scales have fallen from your eyes, at least in the short term. Perhaps you and yours at some point may even acknowledge that we have souls. Until that day, here is a message for you to take back to the Carr’s Water Cracker crowd: the only ones who benefit from white privilege are you. Oh, and from now on, you can change your own damn oil.
NYT Columnist Asks, 'What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?' – PJ Media
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