The Babbling Brooks of the NYT Instructs Us in Social Engineering
Abstract: David Brooks takes on some mighty and tough social problems with an insightful analysis using some poor person who did not have the best preparation for a good job as a leading point. He then identifies key systemic deficiencies in both the business and social spectrums of our society.
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[I offer extensive quotes in this blog so that the reader can view the exact language and can be confident that nothing was taken out of context or that nobody was misquoted. The easiest way to take in the salient points is to read the emphatic points in the quotes and then peruse my comments. Comments on my comments are always welcome: ryckki@gmail.com.]
Introduction to Incoherent Babblings and the New York Times:
In times of political stress mixed with economic turmoil, many anointed sages in our society call for new solutions to help us them struggle to cope with modern life in a capitalist society. Some of us must work for a living however repellent that concept is for the left and many of us have been well-prepared by our parents and also do very well in our jobs and careers despite the counterintuitive counseling of the rabid left. So they read more stirring accounts about social justice or take more drugs or squat and stink in tents in protest against Wall Street or other demons that wreck their lives and anxiously seek counsel from the far left writers at the near-bankrupt New York Times—aka the Walter Duranty Papers.[1][2] Wisdom resides there, they believe, in part and in part only stale jest. Here, they will find some form of remodeled hope if not the full truth, which is too soul-shattering to cope with. This ragzine, touting a notable ranking that intellectually scores only a tad above a crude pamphleteer’s production of pulp political sloganeering or perhaps a wheezy maudlin ragzine on politics, continues to produce little other than newly minted theorems on unfinished racial bias accusations, the crafting of some new amoral litany immersed in reversed racism or drug therapy mixed with all sorts of other projects designed to increase our taxes, but they have yet to rechart the course for their dedicated readers toward a modern understanding of the business world. This is too difficult a task given the salient fact that their mind-searing academic training stresses anti-capitalism. This is thus a formidable barrier they cannot broach with their own meager and misdirected attributes. Their never-ending quest for social justice seems limited to the summary conjuring of newly invented ways to increase the size of government via higher spending and taxes. They love other people’s money—they have little else. They prefer to wallow in misery and celebrate the self-inflicted horrors of the lives of True Believers[3] and through propagandistic means attempt to broaden the path to socialism.
He begins:
“I hope President Obama read about Maddie Parlier as he was working on his State of the Union address. Parlier is the subject of Adam Davidson’s illuminating article in the current issue of The Atlantic…yak yak….yak….A good attitude and hustle have taken Parlier as far as they can. It’s hard, given her situation, to acquire the skills she needs to realize the American dream.”-- Free-Market Socialism By David Brooks Op-Ed Columnist Jan 23, 2012.
This maudlin tale waddles onward toward barren intellectual obscurity with no solution so I will drop this sad case and present Our Babbler’s hard points, if I can find any. Oh!
Here is something that passes for analysis:
“Davidson’s article [on Maddie] is important because it shows the interplay between economic forces (globalization and technology) and social forces (single parenthood and the breakdown of community support). Globalization and technological change increase the demands on workers; social decay makes it harder for them to meet those demands.
Across America, millions of mothers can’t rise because they don’t have adequate support systems as they try to improve their skills. Tens of millions of children have poor life chances because they grow up in disorganized environments that make it hard to acquire the social, organizational and educational skills they will need to become productive workers.”-- Free-Market Socialism By David Brooks Op-Ed Columnist Jan 23, 2012.
Well, that was fairly good, but stumbles on two factors: [1] blame for this and [2] solutions to unravel such self-inflicted social buffeting. Here, absent from the text, is the notion that welfare has destroyed the minority classes almost in whole and some selected nonminority classes in part. Globalization and technology are not blamed here directly, but this is only a small blunder on the author’s part today. Government gets no blame here.
We can wonder what kind of ‘support’ systems are absent here that are different from the traditional family core system that made America so great without constant fussing and advice from the sordid left who are only horror-stricken and nauseated by stories about Father Knows Best and other priceless models of our successful society. What we see here is some crude form of identification of the problems with no solutions, as yet. We can wait for the clincher as it must come up before the keyboard cools off in Brooks’s office.
Some snippets on his elaboration of the controlling factors that produce such tragedies:
“Tens of millions of men have marred life chances because schools are bad at educating boys, because they are not enmeshed in the long-term relationships that instill good habits and because insecure men do stupid and self-destructive things.”--Free-Market Socialism By David Brooks Op-Ed Columnist Jan 23, 2012.
This is not news and we always wondered what the left would do in their fight against the core family structure. It turned out bad, whatever it was supposed to do.
“Over the past 40 years, women’s wages have risen sharply but, as Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney of the Hamilton Project point out, median incomes of men have dropped 28 percent and male labor force participation rates are down 16 percent. Next time somebody talks to you about wage stagnation, have them break it down by sex. It’s not only globalization and technological change causing this stagnation. It’s the deterioration of the moral and social landscape, especially for men.”-- Free-Market Socialism
Well, consider how many felons there are in our society given that we have 2 million mostly men in the jug and many have been paroled so the total is what? 15 million? Just look at h0w many government jobs would be lost if they solved the crime problems? Liberals would have engineered their own extinction.
The differing points of view of current political candidates:
“The idiocy of our current political debate is that neither side seems capable of talking about the interplay of economic and social forces. Most of the Republican candidates talk as if all that is needed is more capitalism. But lighter regulation and lower taxes won’t, on their own, help the Maddie Parliers of the world get the skills they need to compete.
Democrats, meanwhile, have shifted their emphasis from lifting up the poor to pounding down the rich. Democratic candidates no longer emphasize early childhood education and community-building. Instead they embrace the pseudo-populist Occupy Wall Street hokum — the opiate of the educated classes.”-- Free-Market Socialism
Well, strike me for being a lubber[4] and not expecting that last comment. We sometimes fear for the job of our Babbling Brooks as he wanders off the reservation in some instances and puts down key leftist activities with scorn. Impressive! As we get away from the offensive capitalism what do we put in its place, if any? Socialism??
The Clincher!!
“This materialistic ethos emphasizes reducing inequality instead of expanding opportunity. Its policy prescriptions begin (and sometimes end) with raising taxes on the rich.”-- Free-Market Socialism
Equality?
Since ‘equality[5]’ does not exist anywhere and particularly not in our pyramidal system of capitalism[6] we can emphasize with this view. The Bell Curve [The Bell Curve[7]]shows us that equality of the normal sort is not possible as there are distributions in cognitive attributes that cannot be equalized.
“If President Obama is really serious about restoring American economic dynamism, he needs an aggressive two-pronged approach: More economic freedom combined with more social structure; more competition combined with more support.
As a survey of nearly 10,000 Harvard Business School grads by Michael Porter and Jan Rivkin makes clear, to get companies to locate their plants in the U.S., Obama is going to have to simplify the tax code, cut corporate rates, streamline regulations, make immigration policy more flexible and balance the budget over the long term.”-- Free-Market Socialism By David Brooks Op-Ed Columnist Jan 23, 2012.
Here, we can still feel the hooks from meddling socialism tugging at the rigging here. It is fashionable for leftist writers to make important points using undefined phrases such as economic freedom and social structure and support. We are lost here, again, in the debt-soaked social swamp where meddling academics and free-loading governments spongers need to be relieved that, again, and facing more failure, their jobs and projects are secure.
Old stale stuff
“To ensure there’s skilled labor for those plants, Obama would have to champion different policies: successful training programs like Job Corps, better coordination between colleges and employers, better treatment for superstar teachers, more child care options and better early childhood education.”-- Free-Market Socialism By David Brooks Op-Ed Columnist Jan 23, 2012.
“This agenda is libertarian in the capitalist sector and activist in the human capital sector. Don’t triangulate meekly toward the center; select bold policies from both ends. That’s what would help Maddie Parlier and millions like her.”--Free-Market Socialism By David Brooks Op-Ed Columnist Jan 23, 2012.
The solution leaves us with nothing more but more government interference in what they pretend to call education [ejukashon[8]]. To think that the phony Jobs Corps gig has solved anything is a joke. To think that corporations are ready to hire drug-stoned whining, nattering types with social justice agendas is another joke. To include child care ‘options’ is just a fish to snare corporations into paying for that too. The education part is already too warped to analyze. Just look at the pitiful standardized test scores and the number of so-called college grads who majored in nonsense and cannot find jobs but still have debts above $50,000 with no way to service them. A
The article fits the dovetail that Brooks uses: he skirts the perimeter and pokes in some and interesting items, but, as usual, returns to the old, stale leftist big-government processes that have failed us for decades and have given us a 100% debt to GDP ratio with a 10% per year deficit.
rycK [a 5th generation Californian in exile]
Comments to: ryckki@gmail.com
[1] The Babbling Brooks of the NYT Babbles about Israel
[2] In honor of that celebrated Communist stooge and liar and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for the NYT . The color RED is used in my essays in honor of Walter Duranty, a saint, if there could be one, in the Marxist Archives of Honor.
“He said that these people had to be "liquidated or melted in the hot fire of exile and labor into the proletarian mass". Duranty claimed that the Siberian labor camps were a means of giving individuals a chance to rejoin Soviet society but also said that for those who could not accept the system, "the final fate of such enemies is death." Duranty, though describing the system as cruel, says he has "no brief for or against it, nor any purpose save to try to tell the truth". He ends the article with the claim that the brutal collectivization campaign which led to the famine was motivated by the "hope or promise of a subsequent raising up" of Asian-minded masses in the Soviet Union which only history could judge.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty
[3] Eric “Hoffer argues that mass movements such as fascism and communism spread by promising a glorious future. To be successful, these mass movements need the adherents to be willing to sacrifice themselves and others for the future goals. To do so, mass movements need to devalue both the past and the present. Mass movements appeal to frustrated people who are dissatisfied with their current state, but are capable of a strong belief in the future. As well, mass movements appeal to people who want to escape a flawed self by creating an imaginary self and joining a collective whole. Some categories of people who may be attracted to mass movements include poor people, misfits, and people who feel thwarted in their endeavors.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_True_Believer
[4] I spent two years at sea mostly on the Mekong river in Viet Nam so I ain’t no lubber. That is just a euphemism. Other sailor talk is not printable.
[6] The Pyramidal Theory of Capitalism Explained in Simple Terms.http://rycksrationalizations.blogtownhall.com/2010/01/07/the_pyramidal_theory_of_capitalism_explained_in_simple_terms.thtml
[7] This book[The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (ISBN: 0029146739) by Herrnstein, Richard J. and Murray, Charles Free Press of Glencoe , Inc, Old Tappan, New Jersey, U.S.A., 1994.] is blacklisted in leftist circles because it shows that when standardized test scores are sorted by race that blacks and Hispanics score much lower than whites and Asians. Thus, a refutation to this vast array of data must somehow be accomplished.
[8] A new word.
