NYTimes: The Quiet Magic of Middle Managers

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > NYTimes: The Quiet Magic of Middle Managers

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Paul Krugman is cool and good

He is pretty much the exception to their op-ed staff tho

let me get a little more mileage out of this

David Brooks demonstrates hilarious stupidity

our esteem-able raconteur SHY NUDIST GRRL pointed out that most of the article was like those commenters on youtube who post "women/blacks already have enough"

# ¿ Jul 8, 2017 14:45

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 12:49

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Yeah as an elite he followed the DNC, but then again anybody who understood who Trump is had a strong motive to believe Hillary Goddamn Clinton was gonna save the day

also lol at "he criticized berniebros TF is bad", I mean what did he call the berniebros partisans or something

But unlike other columnists he's a legit expert in his field who can actually share insight into things

# ¿ Jul 8, 2017 19:54

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

H.P. Hovercraft posted:

We weren�t na�ve in inviting Mr. Murray to campus. We knew that he was one of the authors of �The Bell Curve.� We knew what happened at Middlebury.

But we invited him because we feel it is important to make an unequivocal statement that we believe universities should remain bastions of civil debate and tolerance. We want our school to be a place where people of different ideas and backgrounds can genuinely learn from one another.

Should the totalitarian attitudes of those very students who smear Mr. Murray as a fascist be able to intimidate their peers into shutting down voices that disrupt their ideological �safe space�? Should adherence to the prevailing political ideology of a given environment be requisite for addressing members of that community? Simply put, should the fact that some don�t want to hear an opinion mean that no one else gets to? We think not.

If given the chance, we�d invite Mr. Murray again.

lmao

So

"Centerists"

are now going around trolling people with trolls, but we're supposed to be cool with that because if you don't tolerate all speech you are literally a fascist, like Nome Chomsky defending that holocaust denier the right to deny the holocaust?

# ¿ Oct 15, 2017 21:45

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Fallen Hamprince posted:

Lindy West owns

# ¿ Oct 18, 2017 19:15

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

comedyblissoption posted:

NYT: Why Democrats Need Wall Street

The great thing about this is CSPAM has been saying this for like a year *sarcastically*

Because while this is what some obviously believe, they are too smart to come out and say it

# ¿ Oct 19, 2017 20:45

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

LinYutang posted:

Yes what a terrible thing it is to work to get not Donald Trump elected

# ¿ Oct 19, 2017 21:32

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Prav posted:

surely trump is both fatter and more pro-carbs than clinton

In person yes but he's all "You're FAT Chris Christie you're not being my VP"

# ¿ Oct 19, 2017 23:33

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Main Paineframe posted:

the failing NYT's opinion section is especially awful this morning

there's an article by Ted Cruz essentially calling for war against North Korea...

...a university president saying that peaceful student protesters who opposed his policies were the real fascists...

...and a pro-death-penalty article from a rape victim who complains that the criminal justice reform movement is bad because it makes retribution seem "irrational"

A bunch of pretentious old men playing at running the world. But the world left them behind long ago. We are the future.

# ¿ Oct 23, 2017 16:34

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

quote:

WALTON SIMONS
This plague -- the rioting is intensifying to the point where we may not be able
to contain it.

BOB PAGE
Why contain it? Let it spill over into the schools and churches, let the bodies
pile up in the streets. In the end, they'll beg us to save them.

WALTON SIMONS
I've received reports of armed attacks on shipments. There's not enough vaccine
to go around, and the underclasses are starting to get desperate.

BOB PAGE
Of course they're desperate. They can smell their death, and the sound they'll
make rattling their cage will serve as a warning to the rest.

Bob Page, NYT columnist

# ¿ Oct 24, 2017 14:16

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Disinterested posted:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/opinion/protestant-reformation.html

Your terrible takes on history courtesy of the New York Times Editorial Board.

FAUXTON posted:

# ¿ Nov 4, 2017 01:12

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

rudatron posted:

Can we just replace david brooks forever with assorted hot takes from kids, its not like the writing style is going to get any worse

hi liter posted:

https://twitter.com/IHateNYT/status/932817388176855040

I just-

"Instead of driving to work, there's now this thing called riding a bicycle. Best of all, doesn't need gas."

# ¿ Nov 23, 2017 16:58

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Barry Convex posted:

Water bottle filling stations are good and actually do save money though

Which is why small colleges in rural Canada adopted them around 2013

# ¿ Nov 24, 2017 23:01

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

Nazis are human, all too human.

In a supreme irony, Nietzsche fuckin' hated the proto-nazis of his time, and anytime he had to say anything remotely critical of Semitic culture he would immediately follow it up with a complement about Semitic culture, usually phrased in a way to specifically poo poo on proto-nazi beliefs, like "everything good in European culture was derived from Jewish culture."

# ¿ Nov 25, 2017 21:33

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

It's not that ironic considering Nietzsche's philosophy was a constructive one, and valued creativity over all other pursuits. The reactionaries of Nietzche's day, and the Nazis who would follow, glorified the past and sought to elevate their own ersatz imitations of perceived past glories instead of a genuine and creatively original culture. The Nazis took this all a step further by destroying actually existing German and European cultures to supplant them with their own perverse vulgarities.

Nietzsche certainly is a reactionary thinker in his own right, but in an individualistic way. To inflict misery and suffering was contrary to his idealistic framework.

I've actually tried to decide how much of a reactionary* Nietzsche was when it comes to his vision for a way forward, and it is genuinely hard. He's a brilliant critic of any number of topics IMO but he does seem to have this "return to the old ways" thrust in his thought. This is made complicated still further by some of his assumptions being wrong, so you get this thing where Nietzsche is super concerned about X but X is a misunderstanding of some sort and we really wouldn't think about it today.

*You may be using the term in a different way, I mean it in the sense of "a shitload of change is happening, we should go back to these previous values and ways etc."

# ¿ Nov 26, 2017 23:50

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

More on topic, I think the NYT is genuinely worried they are missing out on the hot Nazi trend sweeping rich white America, and also realize trolling is the best way to harvest dem clicks

which is a win/win as far as they are concerned

# ¿ Nov 26, 2017 23:54

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

GalacticAcid posted:

republicans are fundamentally un-serious. they have a sexual harasser tee vee star as the leader of the party

anyway time to defend al franken

un-serious is a weird criticism to make; I assume this is some sort of code for "does not sit with the cool kids" when the NYT makes it

It's also a bad criticism, like saying a politician/politicians "play politics" with something, as if the person saying it isn't engaging in politics themselves

# ¿ Nov 29, 2017 20:50

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

GalacticAcid posted:

it's a joke jesus christ dude

My bad, I knew that but wanted to write about lovely people (not you) using the term 'un-serious'

# ¿ Nov 29, 2017 22:27

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

The Trumpus doesn't read the New Yorker, so we have no idea if it is failing or not

Here's an oddity: an article talking about millennial that gets it right - naturally it was written by a millennial. (I'd prefer about 300% more anger and swearing, but it is the New Yorker, what can you do)

# ¿ Dec 3, 2017 22:20

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Fallen Hamprince posted:

https://twitter.com/nytopinion/status/939071916698210305

Also I read Paul Krugman's blog and based on today's post it's getting moved to the pay section?

# ¿ Dec 8, 2017 17:59

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

got any sevens posted:

the new tory times

The New Whig Times

A party of old bullshit that withered up and blew away once all the people who realized compromise isn't a valid position on slavery anymore left

# ¿ Dec 14, 2017 19:09

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

fart blood posted:

I like the NY Times more than a lot of you in this thread, but man you guys are really making me like them a lot less.

I actually think Paul Krugman is a great op-ed writer (pauses for Berniebros to run in, loudly denouncing him)

e: For example, Krugman described the new tax bill as "like the caning of Charles Sumner" in terms of how undemocratic and unjust he was, and goddamnit, he is right

but yeah, NYT as a institution, it is garbage

Nebakenezzer has issued a correction as of 19:33 on Dec 15, 2017

# ¿ Dec 15, 2017 19:30

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

The New York Times posted:

Well gently caress you too, buddy.

So, is it hard clamoring for reform that doesn't make rich people uncomfortable?

# ¿ Dec 16, 2017 18:50

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

A deep dive into a empty pool: David Brooks' latest op-ed

The Workers Paradise

I am not appalled that the Republican tax bill cuts the corporate tax rate to 21 percent. Some of my liberal friends treat this as a moral horror and trot out all sorts of awful distributional tables to prove it. But the fact is that Barack Obama repeatedly proposed cutting it to 28 percent and the average European corporate rate has now fallen to 18.4 percent.

All around the globe cutting the corporate rate has become the conventional way to attract business and spur investment. It�s not some plutocratic conspiracy.

I am appalled that Republicans didn�t seek to balance this tax bill with an equal effort to help the people who actually got them elected. The central problem of our time is the stagnation of middle-class wages, the disintegration of working-class communities and the ensuing fragmentation of American society.

Our political leadership has shown an amazing ability to look the other way. George W. Bush fought a war on terror. Obama devoted his presidency to expanding health insurance. Donald Trump is all talk and no policy.

It doesn�t have to be this way. While Republican politicians are myopically besotted with pleasing their donor class, a new generation of conservative policy wonks has been coming up with dozens of ways to help the workers and the middle class.

For example, Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute has been touting a broad workers� agenda: expand the earned-income tax credit for childless adults, cut payroll taxes, create fleets of buses so that struggling workers can commute to booming commercial centers, reduce the length of unemployment spells by giving jobless workers a modest cash bonus when they get a new job, streamline licensing requirements.

Currently about a third of all American jobs require a license, and these requirements to get them make no sense. The average emergency medical technician trains for 33 days, but the average cosmetologist has to spend 372 days in training for a license. This separates people from work.

Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, the Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world.

Yuval Levin�s journal, National Affairs, has become a foundry of ideas to enhance social mobility, covering a range of topics:

Labor Force Participation: Eli Lehrer and Catherine Moyer point out that while men drop out of the labor force at alarming rates, most of the fast-growing job sectors are dominated by women, like nurses, elementary school teachers and, yes, statisticians. They propose grants and other programs to induce men to get over cultural stereotypes and apply for these jobs.

They also point out that if you prevent employers from checking credit scores as part of the job application process, you can significantly boost work-force levels in poor credit areas.

Ex-Offender Policies. Robert Cherry touts municipalities that delay asking about job applicants� criminal records until the final stages of the hiring process. In one Minneapolis study, only 6 percent of the ex-offenders were hired when they had to announce their criminal record up front. When a new application form without that requirement was used, Minneapolis hired 60 percent of those with records.

Mobility vouchers. A great mobility divide has opened up in America. Since 2010, those with college degrees have increasingly been moving across state lines to get jobs. Those with a high school education or less have seen their mobility rates decline. Eli Lehrer and Lori Sanders recommend mobility grants, so the unemployed can move to where the jobs are. Migration zones would use federal and state tax credits to fund apprenticeship programs to ease the way for newcomers.

Career Pathways. In 2008, 90 percent of high school seniors said they were going to college. By 2013, only 32 percent of people in their mid-20s had a four-year degree. The �College for All� movement is misconceived, argue Robert Schwartz and Nancy Hoffman. The better approach is career and technical education, C.T.E.s. These can be schools that begin at the high school level and blend into the community college level and provide training for specific jobs without forcing students to complete a full four-year college course load.

Union Reform. Writing in City Journal, Oren Cass argues that worker co-ops, of the kind found in Sweden and Denmark, are better suited to today�s flexible labor markets than old-fashioned unions. These would be worker-controlled and worker-funded organizations that would train workers, represent workers and look after worker interests far beyond any individual workplace. They wouldn�t be compulsory, but they would be civic organizations providing support to workers in all aspects of their professional lives.

Right now, Republican politicians have shown astonishingly little interest in these and other ideas, except Senators Marco Rubio, Mike Lee and Tim Scott, Representative Kevin Yoder and a few others. And I confess, I don�t expect the G.O.P. to be hurt by the decision to stiff its own voters. The historical pattern is clear: The less Republicans do for workers, the more alienated the workers become and the more they vote Republican.

But doing something to address the biggest problem of the age, which is wrecking thousands of communities and millions of lives, would be good for the country. That used to be the sort of thing politicians were interested in.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2017 23:40

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

C. Everett Koop posted:

whoever wrote this has CTE

Unless this is a sick medical burn Dr. Koop, I'm really really sure he does not

Can you imagine somebody who low class enough not to go to Yale thinking "what we really need here are government wage subsidies and cash incentives for finding work"

# ¿ Dec 20, 2017 02:10

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

GoluboiOgon posted:

Never though I would hear a republican arguing for seizing the means of production.

I also love that he advocates for affirmative action for men to break into statistics, a field in which 43% of employees are women.

"Too many women statisticians leads to liberal bias"

# ¿ Dec 20, 2017 18:18

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Jose posted:

Yeah it's a very nice meltdown

So what's Greenwald's deal, anyway? Useful idiot? Contrarian douche? I mean obv. he is crazy, I just don't get what he thinks

# ¿ Dec 27, 2017 20:37

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

gradenko_2000 posted:

I don't know when or how we all collectively decided that the media was somehow not awful before, that we have to prove it again now that they've been engaging in yellow journalism since forever.

Was it because Trump insulted the NYT that people decided they wanted to rally around it?

As an old, I can answer this

When I was in High School, I saw the Manufacturing Consent movie and had my little mind blown. It seemed like thinking from Mars, and when you talked about media criticism with other people, it felt like thinking from Mars. Despite the 80s and 90s seeing huge media consolidation (and least we forget, budgets for newspapers slashed by management groups seeking profits in the short term.) (Actually, now that we're talking about it, Bill Watterson predicted the decline and downfall of newspapers with total fidelity during that time.) CNN was the most respected name in news. There was no criticism of the voice of the monolith outside of academics and their scruffy, confused students.

And yet, the ideas in Manufacturing Consent slowly became the norm for basically everyone not actually inside the media machine, both liberal and conservative. The Cons, of course, used the ideas of a media elite controlling the conversation to sell people on conservative voices controlling the population (and rolling white anger into supporting richers over their own class.) Another factor here, without a doubt, was the runup to the Iraq war. I mean, all the lies are old now, but it's not like even university educated me couldn't see that from online sources, the runup to war was lies. I remember talking with a friend about this at the time, and we thought that after a very long time, occupation forces would find *something* - a disused bunker filled with mustard gas shells - but that if no WMDs were found, Bush would resign or be driven from office. (I'd describe myself as very cynical back then, but clearly I had some naivete to loose.)

The Iraq war saw lots of people - my friends, basically anybody who didn't believe the monolith - start seeking alternate sources online, sometimes new media, sometimes foerign news sites like the BBC. This was after, of course, the dot-com bubble burst, which considering the media had more or less just repeated hype endlessly, was another blow to the monolith's credibility. So, lots and lots of people were much more open to media criticism ideas then they were in the late 90s. I say the run of the Daily Show with John Stewart opened people to the idea of how poo poo the MSM was, as well. The running joke about a half-hour comedy central program before the puppets that swear show being somehow the best newscast in North America really underlined to people the sheer emptyness of the modern media. I've no idea how popular he was, but a show like TV Wipe with Charlie Brooker was in a similar vein. While it was funny as hell, it was also sneakly educational, since the comedy often came out of media literacy.

And, ah, since the mid 2000s, you have the elite making GBS threads its own pants time and time again, which as already stated has eroded respect for the MSM, their voice. So, positive note: by the time Obama was re-elected, the ideas of media criticism and the wealth of alternate sources the internet has created over the years has really done a good job highlighting the bullshit of the traditional MSM.

# ¿ Dec 28, 2017 19:43

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

got any sevens posted:

are 100% of opeds garbage or just 99%?

I think 99% are bad but very occasionally you find one that good one

# ¿ Jan 3, 2018 21:49

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

got any sevens posted:

NYTimes could be the New Alderaan Times, saying we should support the empire's new weapon project because we need to keep an eye on those shifty people on Tattooine

I think you just created a comedy thread, friend

# ¿ Jan 3, 2018 21:50

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

The highly successful Washington Post:

Everybody should obviously move to where the jobs are, but these goddamn rural atoms are not moving because of "uncertainty." WTF?!? Maybe if we get rid of whatever remedial services they have in their tired, failing rural areas we can make them BEHAVE AS THEY SHOULD

e: and they are dying from opiate ODs by the shitload, meh, the President once said "maybe we should have an ad campaign" I'm sure we'll think of something

Nebakenezzer has issued a correction as of 19:50 on Jan 6, 2018

# ¿ Jan 6, 2018 19:48

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Jose posted:

The NHS needs and requests vastly more money than the Tories are willing to give it

https://twitter.com/BretStephensNYT/status/949178042286354432

Um I think this demonstrates that single payer can never poss- :commissar:

# ¿ Jan 7, 2018 18:02

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

GoluboiOgon posted:

Who even writes this poo poo? It cost me ~ $1.5k to move one apartment of furniture across state lines a few years ago, and the average american cannot afford a $500 expense. not rocket science at all.

Listen the theory says all the good little atoms move to where the jobs are and that process is completely frictionless OR I don't give a poo poo about the problems involved

# ¿ Jan 7, 2018 18:09

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

GoluboiOgon posted:

only sort of, the quality of the free healthcare is really bad, forcing people to use private insurers and doctors. i know people who are having American style insurance problems as treatments are randomly not covered so private insurers and hospitals can make money.

they also have huge problems with counterfeit medicines

At least they don't have problems sterilizing needles anymore

In the 1980s vaccines were unpopular in the USSR - not because of anti-vaxx horseshit but because they weren't sterilizing the needles and as a result people getting inoculations were also getting hepatitis

# ¿ Jan 8, 2018 20:45

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

NYT: Ben Shapiro is the cool kids philosopher

# ¿ Jan 16, 2018 14:31

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Shear Modulus posted:

the prestige media's fascination with sympathetically profiling and interviewing every white supremacist and trump supporter in the country has got to be pissing off liberals by now and not just leftists who wanted to no-platform the far right from the start right

When you want those troll-clicks, nothing is better than literal Nazis

It's like those "Men's adventure Magazines" of yesteryear, but the people doing it are self-deceptive

# ¿ Jan 18, 2018 23:52

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

I'm really bad at this:

# ¿ Jan 19, 2018 23:55

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Please quote and add your own comments, namaste

David Brooks: the Decline of Anti-Trumpism

Let me start with three inconvenient observations, based on dozens of conversations around Washington over the past year:

First, people who go into the White House to have a meeting with President Trump usually leave pleasantly surprised. They find that Trump is not the raving madman they expected from his tweetstorms or the media coverage. They generally say that he is affable, if repetitive. He runs a normal, good meeting and seems well-informed enough to get by.

Second, people who work in the Trump administration have wildly divergent views about their boss. Some think he is a deranged child, as Michael Wolff reported. But some think he is merely a distraction they can work around. Some think he is strange, but not impossible. Some genuinely admire Trump. Many filter out his crazy stuff and pretend it doesn�t exist.

My impression is that the Trump administration is an unhappy place to work, because there is a lot of infighting and often no direction from the top. But this is not an administration full of people itching to invoke the 25th Amendment.

:siren:

Third, the White House is getting more professional. Imagine if Trump didn�t tweet. :siren:

The craziness of the past weeks would be out of the way, and we�d see a White House that is briskly pursuing its goals: the shift in our Pakistan policy, the shift in our offshore drilling policy, the fruition of our ISIS policy, the nomination for judgeships and the formation of policies on infrastructure, DACA, North Korea and trade.

It�s almost as if there are two White Houses. There�s the Potemkin White House, which we tend to focus on: Trump berserk in front of the TV, the lawyers working the Russian investigation and the press operation. Then there is the Invisible White House that you never hear about, which is getting more effective at managing around the distracted boss.

I sometimes wonder if the Invisible White House has learned to use the Potemkin White House to deke us while it changes the country. [e- Yep, it's the he's so stupid he's a genius. David Brooks has now reached where stupid people on the internet were two years ago.

I mention these inconvenient observations because the anti-Trump movement, of which I�m a proud member, seems to be getting dumber. It seems to be settling into a smug, fairy tale version of reality that filters out discordant information. More anti-Trumpers seem to be telling themselves a �Madness of King George� narrative: Trump is a semiliterate madman surrounded by sycophants who are morally, intellectually and psychologically inferior to people like us.

I�d like to think it�s possible to be fervently anti-Trump while also not reducing everything to a fairy tale.

Kruger-Dunning falls in love with a black kettle and are on their way to David Brooks' swank condo with a shotgun
The anti-Trump movement suffers from insularity. Most of the people who detest Trump don�t know anybody who works with him or supports him. And if they do have friends and family members who admire Trump, they�ve learned not to talk about this subject. So they get most of their information about Trumpism from others who also detest Trumpism, which is always a recipe for epistemic closure.

The movement also suffers from lowbrowism. [Paragraph redacted: Brooks says it is vulgar and common to discuss the White House's vulgarity.]

We anti-Trumpers have our lowbrowism, too, mostly on late-night TV. But anti-Trump lowbrowism burst into full bloom with the Wolff book.

Wolff doesn�t pretend to adhere to normal journalistic standards. He happily admits that he�s just tossing out rumors that are too good to check. As Charlie Warzel wrote on BuzzFeed, �For Wolff�s book, the truth seems almost a secondary concern to what really matters: engagement.�

The ultimate test of the lowbrow is not whether it challenges you, teaches you or captures the contours of reality; it�s whether you feel an urge to share it on social media. [YEAH YOU FUCKIN' PEASANTS, DO YOU THING THE NEW YORK TIMES WOULD STOOP TO TRYING TO HARVEST CLICKS BY TROLLING?!?] Declasse, forsooth :monocle:

In every war, nations come to resemble their enemies, so I suppose it�s normal that the anti-Trump movement would come to resemble the pro-Trump movement. But it�s not good. I�ve noticed a lot of young people look at the monotonous daily hysteria of we anti-Trumpers and they find it silly.

This isn�t just a struggle over a president. It�s a struggle over what rules we�re going to play by after Trump. Are we all going to descend permanently into the Trump standard of acceptable behavior?

Or, are we going to restore the distinction between excellence and mediocrity, truth and a lie? Are we going to insist on the difference between a genuine expert and an ill-informed blowhard? Are we going to restore the distinction between those institutions like the Congressional Budget Office that operate by professional standards and speak with legitimate authority, and the propaganda mills that don�t?

There�s a hierarchy of excellence in every sphere. [Suggestion: thread title] There�s a huge difference between William F. Buckley and Sean Hannity, between the reporters at this newspaper and a rumor-spreader. Part of this struggle is to maintain those distinctions, not to contribute to their evisceration.

Words. I do not have them

# ¿ Jan 21, 2018 02:56

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Omg Brooks is just jealous of the succsess of Fire and Fury isn't he

# ¿ Jan 21, 2018 19:30

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Guys is this the wrongest column ever?

quote:

Democrats Go for the Jugular! (Their Own)
[David Brooks]

David Brooks JAN. 22, 2018

The Republicans are led by a bigoted, incompetent president whose approval ratings are near historic lows. The Republicans in Congress embrace one unpopular policy option after another, so that all the signs pointed to a G.O.P. blood bath in the midterm elections.

All of this has left those of us in the pundit class with a frustrating problem. Obviously, the Democrats were going to find some way to screw this up. But no matter how much we pulled and stretched our imaginations, we couldn�t quite figure out how exactly they were going to do it.

Et Voil�!

In just one short week the Democrats have succeeded in failing with a brilliant five-part plan.

First, the Democrats embraced the always-promising Guy Fawkes option. The Republicans have tried to blow up the Congress and shut down the government several times over the past few decades. The strategy has failed every single time. The Ted Cruz shutdown of a few years ago managed to garner a pathetic 19 percent approval rating even when it was directed at a then very unpopular Obamacare.

Democrats looked at this unbroken string of self-immolation and concluded: Of course! This is what we should do! The problem, as always, is that the American people are, well, democrats. They believe that if a party wants to get its way, it should, you know, win an election or two, not blow the place up just because it lost.

Second, the Democrats focused all their energies on those all-important Michel Foucault swing voters. When Democrats get all excited, they go into a hypnotic trance and think the entire country is the Middlebury College faculty lounge. The American story is a story of systemic oppression. Since the cultural discourse that privileges white hegemony is the world�s single most important problem, of course it�s worth shutting down the entire government to take a stand on DACA.

It�s not that people don�t like DACA. They do. It�s that they just don�t recognize themselves in a party that thinks it�s worth closing the government, destabilizing the economy and straining the military for it.

Third, Democrats devised a brilliant Tao Te Ching messaging strategy. The ancient Chinese master informs us, �Being and not being create each other. � Before and after follow each other.� In this way, he teaches the paradoxical infinity of ultimate truth.

The Democrats captured this same paradoxical profundity with their superb messaging over the weekend: We bravely shut down the government to save the Dreamers even though Donald Trump is responsible for shutting down the government.

The ancient Chinese master bows in respect.

Fourth, the Democrats launched a series of devastating blitzkrieg assaults on themselves. Minutes after the Democratic leaders announced their capitulation, the entire left wing of the Democratic Party went into uproar. Kamala Harris was furious. Ezra Levin of the Indivisible Project called it �morally reprehensible and political malpractice.� I don�t even want to think about how many tears of rage must be streaming out of Cory Booker�s eyes.

But of course the problem was not that the leadership capitulated on Monday. It was that the Democrats talked themselves into this crazy position on Friday.

The Democrats are the party that believes in government. It doesn�t do them any good to make the federal government look dysfunctional. The Democrats are trying to defend a bunch of seats in red states. This immigration �ber alles strategy was never going to play well there. The Democratic presidential contenders are going to be a big problem for the Democratic Senate candidates.

Fifth, the Democrats have set themselves up brilliantly for future capitulation. Mitch McConnell had already promised Jeff Flake a DACA vote down the road. Now the Republicans get to hold it knowing that the Democrats are not going to want to walk into another shutdown buzz saw. Stephen Miller, Trump�s immigration aide, has always wanted to trade DACA in exchange for some onerous restrictions on legal immigration. Now it looks more likely he�s going to get them.

Democrats, when you lose a negotiation to a president who doesn�t know his own position, you�ve really impressed me.

It�s fitting that we had a government shutdown over the issue of immigration. Racially tinged conflict has been the defining feature of the Trump era. Most of the outrage has been caused by the president picking at the nation�s wounds. But by now both parties have racial identity wings, which believe that political life is inevitably a power competition between identity groups. Both parties build their coalitions by magnifying racial identity and exploiting racial difference.

But there are some of us who are uncomfortable with the whole identity-politics drill. We believe that while racism is the central stain on American history, racial conflict is not inevitable. By reducing inequalities, by integrating daily life, we can eventually make our common humanity more salient and our racial difference less so. We believe that America has already made strides in this direction and that it�s everyone�s responsibility to make racial diversity a creative spark and not a source of permanent hostility.

One of these days some party should pay attention to us folks.

# ¿ Jan 23, 2018 16:19

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# ¿ Apr 25, 2024 12:49

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

First a column on how he's jealous somebody else wrote a best seller and now a column on how the democratic party isn't paying attention to him

# ¿ Jan 23, 2018 17:20

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > NYTimes: The Quiet Magic of Middle Managers

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