What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?

Here is a very good opinion piece in the NYT.
Well worth the time to read!

Opinion | What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?

DAVID BROOKS
What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?
Aug. 2, 2023
By David Brooks
Opinion Columnist
Donald Trump seems to get indicted on a weekly basis. Yet he is utterly
dominating his Republican rivals in the polls, and he is tied with Joe Biden in
the general election surveys. Trump’s poll numbers are stronger against
Biden now than at any time in 2020.
What’s going on here? Why is this guy still politically viable, after all he’s
done?
We anti-Trumpers often tell a story to explain that. It was encapsulated in a
quote the University of North Carolina political scientist Marc Hetherington
gave to my colleague Thomas B. Edsall recently: “Republicans see a world
changing around them uncomfortably fast, and they want it to slow down,
maybe even take a step backward. But if you are a person of color, a woman
who values gender equality or an L.G.B.T. person, would you want to go back
to 1963? I doubt it.”
In this story, we anti-Trumpers are the good guys, the forces of progress and
enlightenment. The Trumpers are reactionary bigots and authoritarians.
Many Republicans support Trump no matter what, according to this story,
because at the end of the day, he’s still the bigot in chief, the embodiment of
their resentments and that’s what matters to them most.
I partly agree with this story, but it’s also a monument to elite self-
satisfaction.
So let me try another story on you. I ask you to try on a vantage point in
which we anti-Trumpers are not the eternal good guys. In fact, we’re the bad
guys.
This story begins in the 1960s, when high school grads had to go off to fight in
Vietnam but the children of the educated class got college deferments. It
continues in the 1970s, when the authorities imposed busing on working-class
areas in Boston but not on the upscale communities like Wellesley where
they themselves lived.
The ideal that we’re all in this together was replaced with the reality that the
educated class lives in a world up here and everybody else is forced into a
world down there. Members of our class are always publicly speaking out for
the marginalized, but somehow we always end up building systems that
serve ourselves.
The most important of those systems is the modern meritocracy. We built an
entire social order that sorts and excludes people on the basis of the quality
that we possess most: academic achievement. Highly educated parents go to
elite schools, marry each other, work at high-paying professional jobs and
pour enormous resources into our children, who get into the same elite
schools, marry each other and pass their exclusive class privileges down
from generation to generation.
Daniel Markovits summarized years of research in his book “The
Meritocracy Trap”: “Today, middle-class children lose out to the rich children
at school, and middle-class adults lose out to elite graduates at work.
Meritocracy blocks the middle class from opportunity. Then it blames those
who lose a competition for income and status that, even when everyone plays
by the rules, only the rich can win.”
The meritocracy isn’t only a system of exclusion; it’s an ethos. During his
presidency, Barack Obama used the word “smart” in the context of his
policies over 900 times. The implication was that anybody who disagreed
with his policies (and perhaps didn’t go to Harvard Law) must be stupid.
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 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.
Writing in Compact magazine, Michael Lind observes that the upper-middle-
class job market looks like a candelabrum: “Those who manage to squeeze
through the stem of a few prestigious colleges and universities in their youth
can then branch out to fill leadership positions in almost every vocation.”
Or, as Markovits puts it, “elite graduates monopolize the best jobs and at the
same time invent new technologies that privilege superskilled workers,
making the best jobs better and all other jobs worse.”
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,” the 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.
Armed with all kinds of economic, cultural and political power, we support
policies that help ourselves. Free trade makes the products we buy cheaper,
and our jobs are unlikely to be moved to China. Open immigration makes our
service staff cheaper, but new, less-educated immigrants aren’t likely to put
downward pressure on our wages.
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.
We also change the moral norms in ways that suit ourselves, never mind the
cost to others. For example, there used to be a norm that discouraged people
from having children outside marriage, but that got washed away during our
period of cultural dominance, as we eroded norms that seemed judgmental or
that might inhibit individual freedom.
After this social norm was eroded, a funny thing happened. Members of our
class still overwhelmingly married and had children within wedlock. People
without our resources, unsupported by social norms, were less able to do
that. As Adrian Wooldridge points out in his magisterial 2021 book, “The
Aristocracy of Talent,” “Sixty percent of births to women with only a high
school certificate occur out of wedlock, compared with only 10 percent to
women with a university degree.” That matters, he continues, because “the
rate of single parenting is the most significant predictor of social immobility
in the country.”
Does this mean that I think the people in my class are vicious and evil? No.
Most of us are earnest, kind and public-spirited. But we take for granted and
benefit from systems that have become oppressive. Elite institutions have
become so politically progressive in part because the people in them want to
feel good about themselves as they take part in systems that exclude and
reject.
It’s easy to understand why people in less-educated classes would conclude
that they are under economic, political, cultural and moral assault — and why
they’ve rallied around Trump as their best warrior against the educated
class. He understood that it’s not the entrepreneurs who seem most
threatening to workers; it’s the professional class. Trump understood that
there was great demand for a leader who would stick his thumb in our eyes
on a daily basis and reject the whole epistemic regime that we rode in on.
If distrustful populism is your basic worldview, the Trump indictments seem
like just another skirmish in the class war between the professionals and the
workers, another assault by a bunch of coastal lawyers who want to take
down the man who most aggressively stands up to them. Of course, the
indictments don’t cause Trump supporters to abandon him. They cause them
to become more fiercely loyal. That’s the polling story of the last six months.
Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch
hunt? Of course not. As a card-carrying member of my class, I still basically
trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice. Trump is a monster
in the way we’ve all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison.
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 until the cows come home, but the real
question is: When will we stop behaving in ways that make Trumpism
inevitable?
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. Weʼd like to hear what you
think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And hereʼs our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
David Brooks has been a columnist with The Times since 2003. He is the author of “The Road to
Character” and, most recently, “The Second Mountain.” @nytdavidbrooks

 

It's nice to see one of the bourgeoisie acknowledge the fact that there are multiple facets to this. Unfortunately, his analysis is pretty shallow.
He writes for the NYT, and describes himself as a moderate, centrist, conservative, whatever fits the narrative he's spouting. Somehow, he repeats the trope that conservatives are less educated. Looks like he hasn't had any additional education since graduating from the University of Chicago with a history major in 1983. 40 years...Mr. Educated, lol.

 

So he identifies the real problem the left wing progressive do gooders(in his mind) which he is a member, the bottom line is what is he going to do to right this wrong. Bet absolutely nothing and continue his ways.

 

What if there really are no good guys or bad guys, just a bunch of guys looking out for their own self interest.

 

I'd like this twice if I could! I feel the same way.

 

I always LMAO at people, especially those college-educated people, who look down their noses at those of us who never attended. Then surprise them with MY own SAT scores, GPA from high school, and background in nuclear power, for the US Navy.

Typically, I'm asked, "But WHY didn't you go to college??" Um, because I didn't see the NEED, nor did I want to go tens of thousands of dollars in debt, when I really didn't know what I wanted to do in life (which is probably only 90% of high school seniors, right?). Do I regret it? Sometimes.....but not often!

 

What a dick. Figures it's some NY Slime puke...and yes, 'condescending' is the perfect way to describe this prick.

Can you believe this crap? I can't even believe someone could say it never mind print it in an international newspaper.

"Why is this guy still politically viable, after all he’s done?"
er...like what has he done?

"I still basically trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice."
You would since it only protect a$$holes like you.

"Trump is a monster in the way we’ve all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison."
Prison? Again, for what? Name one factual thing this man should go to prison for... yet, his president can sell the position like a street corner prostitute to even our enemies and that is fine and dandy...

God, this this guy disgusts me... I have one thing to say to pricks like this, the guillotine is always thirsty. He better pray that there is no revolution...oh, that's right, his kind doesn't pray, then I suggest he learns...and fast.

 

The author is, sadly, educated beyond his intelligence.

 

I am taking a class now and TBH about 80% of the other folks in the class are wasting their time. Of Course it could be said I am wasting my time as well since it is not to advance a career or get into a career. It is a sad thing to see these 18-22 year olds as you said going tens of thousands of dollars into debt in field of study that they will never work in and also as you said have no idea what they want to do in life. I would agree that 10% know what they want to do and are focused on doing it. There are a couple other old farts in the class alongside me and we are just kind of laid back and taking the class for our own self improvement and personal benefit of learning. LOL one is a 73 year old Lady that is a retired Clerical worker for the State and just simply was bored in retirement and decided to take a couple of college classes each year. Other is a 68 year old man that is a retired Welder.

What I find disturbing is the outright disdain many of the younger students have for us and the older professors. Its almost like being older and having actual lived experience is a BAD thing. I take one or two classes every year and have since I was 27/28. There has always been a strong left leaning atmosphere in the colleges and universities. It has grown and changed from the garden variety progressive liberal type into something more sinister and toxic over the last couple of decades. I have 3 more classes to take to finish up the Psychology degree I have been working on for the last 9 years LOL. After that I do believe I am done with Community Colleges and Universities. With all of the diversity and Inclusion crap it is becoming a very exclusive and toxic environment on the campuses and just plain weird. If these kids represent the future I am afraid that the future of America is looking pretty dark and bleak. Can't help but overhear them talking before and after classes, lots of word are used like Deserve, Entitled and Owed A much different tone than when I started taking classes at 28.......

 

I see much the same, KK. I've done years of graduate study, and currently in a math/programming master's program. Most of the students are rushing through and just getting the credit. Us old guys are doing what we are doing for the sake of learning.
I am surprised by the amount of students from overseas, and the lack of domestic students in the program. Soon there won't be enough Americans to do the technical work. I suspect one day soon the MBAs won't have anyone or anything to manage.

 

Less and less American students are taking the hard science classes with the advent of instant communication a lot of the engineering , IT, medical is being farmed off shore. WE were once leaders in education, patents, innovation China is surpassing us.

 

A majority of the problem is simply not having jobs to go into anymore for young people. All manufacturing, at least a huge majority of it, has been moved outside the country. Be honest, almost all of it. So, what does that leave young people but university, whether they like it or not and, of course, Big Brother will help them obtain even useless degrees via loans. Getting a degree must have some value, right? So, their choice come down to a useless degree or no degree and they are in competition with each other for the same remaining jobs so what should they do? What will the employer do, hire a degreed individual or no degree? The only alternative is the building trades and there are not many apprenticeship programs. This whole concept is a losing situation for the country...and we got a rude awaking during Covid and will find out even more so in the future, probably during another crisis. In short, very little is made in the USA anymore and sadly never will be again. Who is to blame? Well, it's not the young people, they didn't move all the jobs out of the country, severely limiting their chances of opportunity. Politicians? Sure, but they are elected and who elected them? Us. We elected the people who greased the skids allowing jobs to leave this country but still be able to sell their products here allowing even bigger profit margins. The older generation is at fault here. Us.

Why is the government allowed to give across the board education loans for any ridiculous degree? Again, it wasn't the younger generation that put this program in place or even allowed it to remain. Why wasn't it changed to reflect only the disciplines that this country needs, requires for a good future? Because it had to be fair or was it because educational institutions could make so much more money and they could use 'make it fair' as a justification? Again, who allowed this to happen? Politicians. Who elected those dirt bags. We did.

Now, that doesn't explain or reflect the young people's political leanings, specifically, this feeling of entitlements. However, when you are in a storm, the ship is sinking, and your options are extremely limited - well - any port will do. Obviously, it much more complex than that but it's definitely one of the major reasons.

In short, I do not believe it is all the fault of the younger generation. I also think there simply isn't a lot of opportunity for young people, certainly not as much as when we were young. There is a lot of problems here, too many to discuss in a simple post but most of those problems were brought about by the older generations and they, the youngers, are and will pay the price. This is my opinion... I do think it could be changed; however, it won't be. Simple cancelation of the government involvement in education or limit its assistance to hard science could do much to improve the future if tied to keeping jobs here, in the country, and not shipping them overseas then bringing the products back here to sell to increase profits...that is a recipe for long-term failure of a country.

EDIT: One last point, real wages have not increased for the middle class or lower class since ~1970 some say ~1950 while the upper class, the elite class, has increased with the economy. Basically, there really isn't a middle class anymore. Why? Jobs. Pure and simple, those middle-class jobs are gone and a country that was once composed of a huge majority of middle-class has change to a majority of lower-class and a small upper-class with the majority of the money going to them. Think about it. Is that America? Working and studying hard simply no longer guarantees a reasonable, middle-class lifestyle in this country anymore. It used to but not anymore. Blame them if you want but, in my book, we're to blame. We allowed this to happen, and we still do.

 

Look at any third world country or dictatorship there a 2 classes the poor and the well off ruling elite. We are well down that road picking up speed to 3rd world status. Yes we have done that to ourselves- exporting middle class jobs, out sourcing engineering jobs and IT (white collar) jobs, Training our competition wasting our money on foreign entanglements, giving money away we don't have, running up debt to a point we can never pay. Sad

 

I often think of what will happen in the coming years when we have power outages (super-common here in the Midwest). At some point, there isn't going to be anyone to make the fixes. As older workers retire, the utilities are very slow to replace them. More than just a worker walks out the door, it is also a lot of knowledge and experience that is impossible to replace.

 

Couple that a declining work ethic --no one wants to work. Most high school graduates are equal to junior high level of education. Yep I'm afraid our run is about over.

 

"Yep, I'm afraid our run is about over."

Yes, I quite agree. I think we can see how this is going to end with China and Russia becoming best buddies and our struggle economy and debt. It's quite sad really not only for America but the world... I suppose it happens to all great empires; nevertheless, the world will change very harshly, more harshly than anyone can anticipate.

EDIT: I am not saying that America always was/is altruistic, or no mistakes were made, or that we didn't have corruption. No, we had badness along with goodness. Yes, a lot of goodness plus opportunity and not only for our nation but the rest of the world too. We showed that Democracy can work, and that a People can lead themselves...if given an honest chance. Nevertheless, like other empires, after a time, the bad outweighs the good and tips the scales beyond recovery. So, I wonder, will the world see another Dark Age that followed the Fall of Rome? Stalin's wet dream where only 'might makes right', a totalitarian world, where 'you own nothing and are happy.' God have mercy on us.

 

And it has all been designed to happen just as it has. I am beginning to believe TEOTWAWKI is not far away, and in the end there won’t be that much left to destroy. We’re done.

 

Lineman came down the road today looking for a fried squirrel in a transformer. While chattingI remembered your comment here and asked about the average age of Linemen at CoOp. Youngest is 49 if you don't count the revolving door of apprentices. With 3 going to retire in the next 6 Months. I am thinking now that this is not a coming problem that gets talked about much if at all, the GRID Discussions. A aging group of linemen that are retiring out with very few young coming in to replace them. LOL its not the button pushers monitoring the smart grids that get it back up and running after a storm or cruises around looking for the fried squirrel in a transformer.

 

Not to defend a liberal elite member of the mass media but admitting it and writing it in national syndication IMO is a start.