How NY Times columnist and amateur psychologist David Brooks supports the NRA

The urbanity of NY Times columnist David Brooks, author of The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character and Achievement, conceals at times the underlying crassness of his positions on issues, e.g., when he glibly spouts psychological nonsense in support of arming the populace. Allen Frances, professor emeritus of Duke University, would like a word with Brooks:

I have an offer for David Brooks. If he promises to stop being an amateur psychologist, I promise to stop being an amateur columnist.

What Brooks doesn't know about psychology is a lot. Everything he says about it has a shallow ring, is misinformed, and displays the same bias and ulterior motive. Brooks is a complacent apologist for the status quo. Whenever events scream out that there is an obvious defect in one of his cherished social policies, Brooks comes to its defense with a muddled pop psychological explanation -- hoping in the process to deflect attention away from any serious policy discussion of what has gone wrong and what can be done to correct it. The consistent tactic is to rationalize a failing public policy by putting all the blame on messed up individual psychology.

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A stealth campaign against scientific validation of a more egalitarian and humanistic political order

Glenn W. Smith’s post today at FDL highlights one of those recurring controversies between liberals and conservatives. 

This one goes deep. It’s about the human capacity for empathy over against our need for aggression in defending our rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 

It reminds me of the debate that erupted in the 60s and early 70s between authentic anthropologists, who argued that human beings were as wired for cooperation as they were for competition, and pseudo-anthropologist Robert Ardrey, who theorized in “The Territorial Imperative” that we were all innate killers.

Smith is taking on NY Times columnist David Brooks, the modern day incarnation of Robert Ardrey:

New York Times columnist David Brooks has long been engaged in a stealth campaign against the discoveries of science – especially neuroscience – that validate a more egalitarian and humanistic political order.

Brooks has skillfully branded himself as the Pundit Who Will Tell You About New Findings in the Human Sciences. But in Brooks’ hands all the new science somehow becomes justification for top-down, conservative and even authoritarian government. It’s all just a magical confirmation of Hobbes.

Smith continues:

Conservative political philosophy is built upon the Hobbesian premise that only an elite authority can keep us from killing one another. So, when the human sciences are discovering that we are hard wired for empathy and cooperation – not self-interest and war – Brooks & Company move into action.

They first attack empathy, misrepresenting it as some kind of hippy conceit that would lead us to a peaceful utopia if we’d only pay attention. This is Brooks’ ploy in last week’s column, “The Limits of Empathy.”

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PBS will keep its federal subsidy even if benefits for veterans, the poor, and the elderly are cut

 

Mark Shields

David Brooks

Okay, while watching the PBS NewsHour this evening, including the Analysis of Shields and Brooks, I finally got it. By zealously going after gutting those “entitlements” that refer to benefits received by veterans, the poor, and the elderly, the NewsHour allies itself with conservatives and can therefore better defend itself against long-time charges by the Republican Party that it is has a liberal bias. The NewsHour crew will thereby increase the odds that Federal funding of PBS will not be cut in order to reduce the Federal deficit.

Never mind that Social Security beneficiaries paid into the system throughout their working lives or that Washington has raided the trust fund to pay for its two wars and avoid taxing the rich and closing tax loopholes for large corporations – ever notice how many of those corporations underwrite the NewsHour?

And why should veterans of the US Armed Forces consider themselves more worthy of benefits than the NewsHour crew?

Still, I must say it was especially disheartening that last Friday night, Mark Shields stood up to David Brooks in his attacks on “those entitlements,” but in tonight’s so-called analysis, he had evidently been silenced by his superiors.

NewsHour regulars protect PBS' taxpayer support by going after 'entitlement' programs

The Public Broadcasting System, funded in part by the nation's taxpayers, has seduced donations from its viewers over the years by boasting about its unbiased news coverage on the NewsHour.  

 Lately, NewsHour regulars have demonstrated their contempt for at least one group of American citizens they apparently deem unworthy of respect – that would be those same seniors whose trust fund has been ransacked since 1983 to bankroll Washington.

On last night’s edition of the NewsHour, Gwen Ifill repeatedly badgered Jacob Lew, director of the United States Office of Management and Budget, in an attempt to provoke him into explaining why the Obama Administration’s budget didn’t address those 'entitlement' programs. Ifill repeated the word 'entitlement,' with its derogatory connotations, at least four consecutive times until Lew finally explained to her the Administration’s rationale for dealing with the issue.

Later on in the program, Judy Woodruff, referring to those “so-called entitlement programs,” pressed Robert Portman, Republican senator from Ohio, on the same issue. Portman, who once held Lew’s position as director of the OMB, at least noted that the government had raided the Social Security trust fund over the years to pay for everyday expenses.

America’s seniors paid into Social Security and Medicare throughout decades of their working lives, believing those high payroll deductions would provide a safety net for their retirement years. Many of them also served in the military in times of peace and war. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan signed into a law an amendment supposedly protecting the Social Security trust fund in a “lock box.”

Those same seniors were deluded into believing their nation respected them and wished them well. Now they are facing the reality that the government violated the law by using the Social Security trust fund to pay its everyday expenses, including support for PBS and funding for its two costly wars, while avoiding the necessity to tax the wealthy and close the tax loopholes of major corporations.

In the meantime, seniors are being treated with contempt by political leaders from both parties and media reps like David Brooks and Gwen Ifill as they try to pressure the Obama Administration into gutting Social Security and Medicare.

On behalf of PBS, the NewsHour may be more aggressive in its zeal to go after those ‘entitlement’ programs in order to protect its own government funding from cuts.

Our senior citizens could justifiably sue Washington for violating the law in its misuse of their retirement funds, and PBS viewers should have second thoughts when considering whether or not to donate money to support its flagrantly biased coverage of programs serving the elderly and disabled.

Take your pick: a diplomatic response to the Egyptian crisis or another neocon shock and awe adventure to overthrow the regime of a sovereign nation?

A US soldier watches as a statue of Saddam Hussein falls in Baghdad on April 9, 2003. Courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald.

 

Neocons as romanticists? You’d think that was the case in reading David Brooks’ interpretation of the Obama Administration’s response to the Egyptian crisis in which the erudite, comparatively moderate Republican columnist at the NY Times takes a swipe at both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (See No Quarter’s Larry Johnson for more about the neocons’ “trying to light the fires of democracy in Egypt.”)

Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic offers a more thoughtful, in-depth analysis of how Washington has responded to the unfolding revolt in Egypt. Ambinder clearly points out the difference between an Administration benefiting from the expertise of a cadre of seasoned diplomats and taking well-considered steps rather than following the advice of neocons to rush blindly into the turmoil erupting on the soil of another sovereign nation.

Ambinder writes:

After Tunisia, the intelligence community, the diplomatic community and the White House all anticipated that protests would spread. The sheer number of calls the State Department was fielding from other governments was a clue: lots of mid-level diplomats in the Mideast wanted to know what their counterparts at State were hearing and seeing.

What they were seeing was "a sort of contagious element," a senior administration official said. (Like others, the official offered a candid assessment on the condition of anonymity because events were still unfolding.) "By Thursday night we were warning journalists and our allies that we anticipated that Friday would be a tough day ... and that there would be some stark images."

Egypt was simply the most logical candidate for unrest. Protests of some sort erupted in the country fairly regularly. Anger at President Hosni Mubarak for breaking his promise to lift the country's decades-old emergency law was acute. A food shortage was in the offing. The government wasn't able to distribute coupons for bread that many smaller vendors relied upon. Mubarak had long ago lost the formal support of the Egyptian Army, who, the U.S. was fairly certain, would never take up arms against the people.

On Monday, January 24 and Tuesday January 25, the White House watched the first wave of mass protests in Cairo. Ironically, there was little about the internal political debate inside the country that the U.S. was not privy to, a consequence of its close military relationship with the Egyptian Army and Air Force, which had kept informal tabs on the government for Americans.

Most Egyptian military officials of consequence were in the U.S for an annual training exercise assessment last week, as were several of the country's intelligence officials. The early briefings were basic. Outside of the National Security staff and State Department desk officials, the knowledge about Egypt's political structure was thin. A number of White House officials were given an Encyclopedia Britannica-like briefing about the basics: how many U.S. citizens were inside the country and contingency plans to get them out; reminders that Egypt wasn't a Muslim country; Hosni Mubarak was a Coptic Christian of a certain sect; the Muslim Brotherhood was at once an opposition political party and a co-opted part of the social system. The government encouraged its charities and even accepted its recommendations for cultural censorship while treating its political platform as anathema.

Read the entire article:

Is civility an insufficient goal for our national discourse?

Civil Discourse Please Dialogue Men's T-Shirt by KR Designs

Kathleen Reardon, a professor of management at the Univ. of Southern Cal. Marshall School of business, offers an insightful discussion of calls for greater civility since the Tucson shooting.  

 Reardon writes:

 I've been thinking about the calls for greater civility delivered eloquently by President Obama and many in the media. David Brooks, for example, with whom on occasion I've disagreed, wrote of civility as "the natural state for people who know how limited their own individual powers are and know, too, that they need the conversation." The conversation is our engagement in "social enterprise" -- listening to the views of others so that we might improve our own.

Civility usually refers to politeness and courtesy extended to others. When this becomes rare, confrontation is more frequent and disdain more common. Tensions between people arise and escalate quickly. When others must be wrong in order for us to be right, civility suffers.

Civility, therefore, is good. But recent calls for greater civility remind me of calls in the past for tolerance toward people not of your own race, religion, gender or nationality. Tolerance is better than no tolerance, but it's not as admirable a goal as appreciation. Civility is better than incivility, but not half as socially substantive as empathy and compassion.

So, to start with civility is an insufficient goal for a society seeking to raise the tenor of its public and private discourse.

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The Obama-Brooks Bromance and, er, Brokeback Mountain?

Nahh – I wouldn’t go so far as to say that David Brooks gave Barack Obama a scolding in today’s op-ed in response to Gabriel Sherman’s post in The New Republic titled The Courtship in which Sherman observed:

These days, the center-right Brooks frequently seems more sympathetic toward Obama than the liberal Paul Krugman. He has written columns praising Obama’s Afghanistan policy, education proposals, and economic team. Even on broad areas of disagreement--deficit spending, the sprawling stimulus bill, health care reform--Brooks tends to treat Obama and his administration with respect. “My overall view,” Brooks told me, “is ninety-five percent of the decisions they make are good and intelligent. Whether I agree with them specifically, I think they’re very serious and very good at what they do.” It is an odd situation to say the least: David Brooks, prominent conservative, has become the most visible journalistic ally of arguably the most liberal president of his lifetime.

On the other hand, the first comment following Sherman’s post might well have pushed Brooks to put a little distance between himself and Obama. Commenter Gw concludes his little playlet with this scene:

Brooks: Well, of course, I know little of that. But then my most cherished dream has always been to be thought of, first and foremost, as a writer the caliber of which we encounter only at The New Republic.

Obama [leaning forward and patting Brooks gently on the knee]:

There, there, David...that, of course, is understood.

[Then after a long pause]: David, do these intimate chats we have remind you of the movie....

Brooks [giddy with excitment]: ......Brokeback Mountain? Oh, yes, Mr President, oh yes!!

Obama [with a grandiloquent wink]:

Okay, pardner, let's go saddle up!!

But, hey, let’s give Brooks a little credit. Despite Sherman’s long list of favorable columns, today is not the first time Brooks has criticized Obama. Check out this quote from his June 20, 2008 column.

But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there’s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes.

Okay. In today’s column, Brooks writes about The Obama Slide:

Two tides swept over American politics last winter. The first was the Obama tide. Barack Obama came into office with an impressive 70 percent approval rating. The second was the independent tide. Over the first months of this year, the number of people who called themselves either Democrats or Republicans declined, while the number who called themselves independents surged ahead.

Obama’s challenge was to push his agenda through a Democratic-controlled government while retaining the affection of the 39 percent of Americans in the middle.

The administration hasn’t been able to pull it off. From the stimulus to health care, it has joined itself at the hip to the liberal leadership in Congress. The White House has failed to veto measures, like the pork-laden omnibus spending bill, that would have demonstrated independence and fiscal restraint. By force of circumstances and by design, the president has promoted one policy after another that increases spending and centralizes power in Washington.

The result is the Obama slide, the most important feature of the current moment. The number of Americans who trust President Obama to make the right decisions has fallen by roughly 17 percentage points. Obama’s job approval is down to about 50 percent. All presidents fall from their honeymoon highs, but in the history of polling, no newly elected American president has fallen this far this fast.

Anxiety is now pervasive. Trust in government rose when Obama took office. It has fallen back to historic lows. Fifty-nine percent of Americans now think the country is headed in the wrong direction.

You can read the rest of Brooks’ lament here.

The Media’s Good Old Boys + Arianna and Maureen: Let the Hillary-Bashing Continue

"Media Guru" Arianna Huffington

Watching a video of Arianna Huffington, along with George Will, David Brooks, and Robert Kuttner, on ABC’s This Week triggered an “aha” moment for me. Arianna was at the Round Table moderated by George Stephanopoulus, and she was obviously enjoying her status as the only woman present. You could almost feel the bonhomie emanating from the TV screen as Arianna seized yet another opportunity to trash Hillary Clinton.

At today’s Huffington Post, Arianna repeated her line of attack against Sen. Clinton, warning of the dire consequences Clinton’s appointment at state will hold for the Obama Administration. (Keep in mind, the Huffington Post has been a leading mouthpiece for Barack Obama since he first announced his candidacy for the presidency.)

Arianna writes:

“Hillary + Obama = High Drama. It's too early to tell what changes Hillary Clinton will bring to Barack Obama's foreign policy, but she's already had an enormous effect on his brand. Her addition to his team has turned "No Drama Obama" into "Mo' Drama Obama." Hillary's appointment isn't even official, but the Obama/Clinton narrative has already left the realm of politics. Its twists, turns, shadings, and complex emotions are the stuff of literature. But who would be the best writer to do this saga justice? Henry James (Portrait of a Lady Secretary of State)? Shakespeare (Clinton II)? Or is the Obama/Clinton relationship more like a Nora Ephron romantic comedy? When Hillary Met Barack. Sleepless in Chappaqua. You've Got Fundraising Email.”

As Georgetown University law professor Heidi Li Feldman noted at her blog today the accusation that Hillary Clinton will add drama to the Obama Administration is “another latently sexist turn of phrase: women create drama; men bring charisma.”

But back to that “aha” moment that I mentioned above. I’ve been repeatedly stunned and puzzled by the attacks of women like Arianna and Maureen Dowd on Hillary Clinton. I just didn’t get it. Watching ABC’s This Week video finally did it for me, and it’s pretty simple. By beating up on any woman who appears to be destined for a national leadership role, Arianna and Maureen win acceptance in the media’s good old boys club.

As a result Arianna is known as a “media guru” – despite the tabloid journalism practiced at Huffpo - and she gets to hobnob with the likes of Brooks, Will, and Kuttner.

The minimally talented – except in the area of hate-mongering - Maureen Dowd is one of two women columnists at the NY Times and one of a very few women columnists featured on the opinion pages of newspapers nationwide.

I’m going to give Arianna and Maureen the benefit of the doubt by suggesting their reprehensible behavior is unconscious stuff. God knows it must be terribly threatening to have to report on the achievements of a power house like Hillary Clinton. Unlike either Arianna or Maureen, Hillary has succeeded both personally and professionally. She has kept her family together over the years and maintained many close friends, while simultaneously earning worldwide respect in the political arena.

In sum, putting Clinton down appears to be a pathological defense mechanism for the obvious inadequacies of Arianna and Modo and as mentioned earlier, they get the benefit of hanging out with the good old boys.

Arianna has suggested that Hillary Clinton brings the stuff of literature with her, and I would agree that Hillary’s life story would be a most compelling read. On the other hand, the petty lives of Arianna and Maureen wouldn’t even make the comic books.