--- On Fri, 9/18/09, Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at rawbw.com> wrote:
From: Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at rawbw.com> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] I know, I know, I should never read David Brooks... To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Date: Friday, September 18, 2009, 8:04 PM
``...but this man [David Brooks] is either an idiot of the highest order, is so ideologically blind he hasn't a clue who runs the Republican Party, or goes out of his way to invariable tell half-truth lies... and he's a friend of the Prez?! oy...'' Alan Rudy
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I often have a hard time de-constructing Brooks. I decided he is not an idiot or stupid or ideologically blind. The incident he describes of the whitewing teabag crowd going over the black family reunion org to buy lunch is interesting to look at and think about.
A couple of points. This mingling proves what? The black crowd was a fund raiser and selling potluck is old fashion tradition. White money is just as green? The black crowd was polite? So who is getting over on who here?
A certain public social politeness face to face is pretty common these days as along white people keep that racist dial tuned down. That doesn't mean we are living in post-race America.
Nobody in either crowd was voting for each other's candidate back home, that's for sure.
Brooks is a master dissembler and apologist for the right. He is one of the guys who gave me the idea that the US right/repugnants were a white male identity politics based on declining white male majorities. So in effect Brooks is denying the white racist element in his whole political spectrum.
Then by inference, he is also saying that black groups got over their racism against whites. This is almost a complete inversion of what the race equation was/is about. There was nothing about de-segregation or black power that was black racism. The whole point was to stop oppression and a demonstration of minority power and self-determination. Where is the black racist equation in that formula? Was integration about the oppression of the white race?
Is the demand for equal rights, equal justice, equal economic opportunity, a racist demand? On the other hand to push the denial of rights, justice, and equality is most definitely is a racist demand.
Brooks' triangulation of leftwing and rightwing as two kinds of Populism is a another interesting conflation.
First what are the so-called US leftwing Populisms? Union organizing? The Abolitionists? Populism as a social phenomenon is almost universally associated with fascism, military dictatorships and mobilizing petite bourgeoisie resentments.
Anyway, the above is why I take Brooks pretty seriously. He is actually better at this weird conflationary political game played with reality and facts than Gingrich.
CG
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