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I was asked to have a look at it by an Occasional Reader, who I think -- though I'm not sure -- had been impressed by it. I was not impressed. I found it limp and confused. Void of any real meaning, too much fluff and cotton candy, evanescent to the touch, nothing to crunch on. I guess if you're going to be the token "Republican" on the New York Times, you're going to be pretty much a RINO, or at least a Never Trumper. Bari Weiss found out the hard way -- if you're going to be the token conservative at the Times, you have to pretty much a leftie, or you're out. She herself ended up out.
The audience, however, did seem to enjoy the Brooks talk. As did the YouTubers, nearly 4 million of whom watched it and most of the comments are positive.
My comments:
2:15 "The Rigged Meritocracy, and the caste system"
Surely if we're going to have a meritocracy, and I think we ought, then it should be based on the system we know to be the best at the time.
In the 1950s and 1960s, we already knew about Fascism, via Germany and Italy. Autobahns, on-time trains, snazzy Hugo Boss uniforms in Black Nazi chic; we liked all that. But those aside, we knew we didn't much like Nazism, or the Nazi lite of Italian fascism. Too much of that Jew-killing thing. And we knew a fair bit about Communism too, and learned even more in later decades. Enough to know that these were rather horrid as well.
Which left our system. The system we knew best, the market system, aka Capitalism. Which also happened to be generating the most wealth for the most people in the fastest time, than had ever happened in history. So that's the one we chose, the one we used and the one we lived in.
That's the one we decided to be Meritocratic about.
Why should this be called "Rigging" the system, as Brooks snidely does? In a later panel discussion, Niall Ferguson called Brooks' talk "disparaging" of western civilisation. I don't think Ferguson much liked it. As neither did I. And this must be one of the reasons. That all he did in the whole speech was to disparage.
I suppose there's the thing that shovelling ordure from a height is always going to get more laughs and claps -- more clicks as it were -- than something telling us that we're doing rather well, better than all other systems we know.
3:04 "Pretending to be egalitarian"
No, we're not pretending. The US is not pretending. What educated observers of the United States do say is that the system of meritocracy in the US has allowed for more people to move up the economic ladder than ever before in history. Most people in the US end up in a different, at higher, income stratum than they started life.
I don't think many people in the US claim to be egalitarian. Just that they want a system fair enough for people to have the chance.
The Democrats, by contrast to Donald Trump's Republicans, specifically reject the meritocracy in favour of Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies that base progress on one's skin colour and genitalia. Not on merit. That's a party the majority of the American people rejected at the last election, but which Brooks made not a single mention of, even as he disparaged the Trump administration and modern conservatives generally. (While claiming to be one himself; hardly persuasively).
3:40 "Your own Truth, your own Values"
Brooks does not mention that this was a project of the Left, beginning in the 1960s. I remember when it all started, although it wasn't obvious or clear at the time. It's only become clear in retrospect. And only in retrospect do we see the damage to our society that the Moral Equivalence mindset has had. And that that's all a result of the Left pushing these ideas. And that they continue to push them. Why does Brooks not mention this. Such that the thought of a Harris-Walz presidency makes me shudder.
5:15 "Trump and Musk don't have a vision".
This is plain wrong. Elon Musk's vision is both simple and grand. It's to ensure the candle of human consciousness lives on as long as possible. The first step to which is to make mankind interplanetary. And the first step to that is to get to Mars and establish a colony. And the first steps to that is what he's doing now with SpaceX. Pretty big vision.
Trump's vision is to Make America Great Again. This is a motto developed from the America First policy of the Democrat president Woodrow Wilson. Updated, it means to secure borders -- to give security to the homeland, to allow for more work opportunities for the working class; to stem crime; to bring back manufacturing to America, again to give more opportunities to the middle and working classes. To keep America secure with a strong military. A protectionist trade policy. And, yes, to fight back against the Woke agenda of the crazy Left. But Brooks speaks as if that's all they're about. As if the only thing they're about is Anti-Woke.
Brooks speaks sneeringly of the university education of Elon Musk and JD Vance, as if it had been easy for them, as if they hadn't both struggled to get to university. In fact, they both struggled. But they also both excelled and are now in high positions -- elites, yes -- befitting their talents. To Brooks, this is all to be mocked. To sneer at.
6:44 "Trump eviscerated the AIDS assistance going to African countries".
No, he did not. There was a pause to some of the aid, resulting from an overall pause of aid money, but when advised about its need -- as well as for Ebola -- it was quickly reinstituted. Which is what Elon Musk had said would happen. You cut quickly then add back the truly critical items.
In any case, Aid is not something you should make your mind about, on the basis of anecdote. Which is what Brooks does. I've also been all over Africa. If I see a nice piece of road built by Chinese aid, am I to assume that all Chinese aid is good?
There's plenty of literature out there, going back many years, showing that Aid does more harm than good. Even on the Aids issue, would it not be better to educate Black South Africans, who have a 23% infection rate vs 0.13% of White South Africans, rather than simply medicating with US pharmaceuticals, via USAID? That's another issue, of course, and much more complicated, but just highlights how superficially trite David Brooks is, always determined at every turn to find something nasty to say about Trump.
7:10 "Donald Trump is declaring war on those Christians".
That is the ones fighting sex trafficking, poverty and national security, says Brooks.
This is patent nonsense.
Brooks has clearly not listened to the team around the president. Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, JFK Jr, and the rest, I've heard them all over and over again, talking about their strong Christian faith. Rather too much, TBF, as I'm a long-time atheist. They talk faith constantly, of their concern with issues of sex trafficking -- one of the main reasons they've shut down the border so quickly and effectively. They talk of poverty and how to alleviate it, a key project of the MAGA movement. Improving national security is at the core of the MAGA project. I'm flummoxed that Brooks could write such a sentence as "declaring war on Christians" and then actually deliver it. And that it should be greeted with general approval, gives me further consternation.
In sum, David Brooks tries to argue that the conservatives are the educated elite who are damaging to Social, Moral and Institutional fabric of American society. No.
He doesn't make the case. At least not for me. He is not persuasive. By not mentioning The Other Side, the Democrats, and the extent to which they may be the ones responsible to far greater extent for the any damage that has been done, in particular to the moral and social fabrics, Brooks loses me. He also loses the likes of Niall Fergusson, as we see in the follow-up conversation here. Where the ex Aussie Deputy PM, John Anderson also makes a strong contribution.
