David Brooks' Column Today: "Watch Me Blow Myself":
Sometimes when you rail Adderall, you can be forgiven for something grabbing your attention and not letting go. For, truly, this morning, the Rude Pundit was considering a half-dozen things to palaver about today when, after coffee and an a.m. bump, he tapped his touchpad on over to the Opinion page of the New York Times, thinking, "Well, let's see what method David Brooks is using to pleasure himself today." Would it be the Fleshlight of False Reasonableness? The Rosy Palm of Psychobabble? The Blow-Up Doll of Mock Intellectualism?
Then, wiping his nose repeatedly to see if the tell-tale blue mucus was appearing, he saw that Brooks was engaged in the rare Backwards Self-Fellatio of Selective Observation. And, indeed, no matter how hard he tried, the Rude Pundit could not let it go. He goddamned the Addy and swore it off for at least a month, but, hey, as long as we're all here, let's do this:
In his "column" today (if by "column," you mean, "the condescending squawks of an elitist shitbird that should have gone extinct years ago"), Brooks wonders why, oh, why American aren't as "mobile" as we once were. Why don't we move as much or change jobs as often as in the 1950s and 60s? Whatever could have happened?
Brooks is glad you asked because of course he is. He offers "true" things to possibly explain it, like an aging population, underwater home values, and labor markets that don't offer much difference from place to place. But fuck you if you think these are the problems. No, motherfuckers, David Brooks has observed us like we're a particularly amusing group of bonobos, and he has come to a conclusion: "[A] big factor here is a loss in self-confidence," especially amongst the poors.
Yes, the poors seem to prefer to move to places where poors can live, squatting in their poor ditches, living in their poor squalor: "they are moving to lower-income areas with cheap housing. That is to say, they are less likely to endure temporary housing hardship for the sake of future opportunity." It's stunning, that in an economy where decent jobs are hard to come by, people might be afraid of giving up the little they have. Why, wherever will they play squash? In public parks? And will they find a bar that can make a proper old-fashioned? Quelle horreur...
It goes on like that for a bit, with Brooks telling us that people, especially the young 'uns, have lost faith in capitalism. Hell, we're even breeding less. And, holy fucknuts, we don't believe in American exceptionalism as much, even though America is the most exceptionalest place ever, duh. We have become, in the word of those filthy Europeans, a Precariat. That is, "the growing class of people living with short-term and part-time work with precarious living standards and 'without a narrative of occupational development.'" We are "fatalistic," and that's a bummer for Brooks.
And the solution is...well, fuck. You gotta read this for yourself. It's what Brooks endorses: "No one response is going to reverse the trend, but Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute believes government should offer moving vouchers to the long-term unemployed so they can chase opportunity."
The Rude Pundit has one question, just one, and it's the reason that David Brooks is a simpering prig who should be punched in the face outside high-toned DC watering holes on a regular basis (rhetorically, of course, of course). The question: How the fuck do you write a column on, essentially, job-lock and not mention the words "health" or "insurance" or "inequality"? How the fuck is that possible?
We believe we are not exceptional anymore because we are not exceptional anymore, if we ever were. You can't mourn the decline of the middle class and not mourn the depravity of a nation that would rather cling to the destructive phantoms of "individualism" and "free enterprise" than take care of its people. You can't ask those same people to take risks when those with the most have made sure there is no net to catch those with much less if they fall. And you can take your moving vouchers and shove them up your food stamp-cutting ass.
There is a savage stupidity in Brooks' scribbles that he masks so very well. You can bet that when he finished, he stretched his neck, swallowed his jizz, and got out the Fleshlight to get ready for Friday's column.
