David Brooks Bawdlerizing the 60's
David Brooks Bawdlerizing “The 60’s”
(Or: How Textualist Metaphysics Misreads the “Tea Party Movement”)
("recently a piece in Salon astutely compared Glenn Beck to Abbie Hoffman")
“The Wal-Mart Hippies” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/opinion/05brooks.html) is perhaps David Brooks’ most brilliant, and at the same time most self-condemning philosophical excursion yet. Which, though he cannot speak as a member of the 60’s generation, he is willing to sagely compare current Right wing disaffection, only illustrates how it had to turn out, under Jung’s law of opposites*. Apotheosis of any one-sided point of view ineluctably exposes its other. Brooks’ one-sidedness in comparing the mainly student led uprising of the ‘60’s to the Tea Party movement of ‘09ff consists in largely ignoring the Vietnam war's impact on that generation. In that context, the comments that “both movements have a problem with authority”, involving “belief in conspiracy theories”, are bizarre.
Faced by the Vietnam war draft, 60’s youth by no means stirred to “street theatre, mass rallies, marches and extreme statements” in order to “shock polite society out of its stupor”, or stop runaway federal spending.
Nor, conversely, do Tea Party leaders protest the Afhanistan war.
By dropping the Vietnam war* as motive of the 60’s revolt, Brooks omits reference to what justified it (the revolt). By inserting runaway federal spending* as major justification of the ’09 revolt, he omits reference to the unjustified military expenditures responsible for it (runaway federal spending). Such cunning surely deserves the description of “old Jew snake brain”, one of The Learned Elders even.
Brooks cunningly draws the comparison in a way that doubles the hate: Old Hippies, activists like Saul Alinsky (?), already despised,, now Wal-Mart Hippies.
Brooks deftly disposes of what they* “believe” by overlaying the unfocused (inchoate, confused, obsessed, deranged) group convulsed by rage, anger, hate; comprised of bigots, anti-semites, homophobes, misogynists’ Patriot Militia types, McVeigh admirers, …
This is, by smearing them with WSJ Goldman Sachs Rightwing Id talk. Doesn’t mean they don’t love ‘em. Quite the contrary. There are two wings of Rightwing Id talk: WSJ rich folks (elitists) Sarah Palin (creation of neocon Wm. Kristol, Lieberman) common folk (Fox News, Hannity. O’Reilley, Beck; and “conservative talk radio show hosts”, ex. Limgaugh.”.
Brooks can smash their grammar while preserving his (elite aloofness).
Like The Set of All Sets, an impossible logical construction (and, not coincidentally, Georg Cantor’s definition of “God”), the ’Tea Party movement’, as Brooks calls it*. Roundup of ‘the bad ones’ on the right is a totality contrived mostly from projection of (it’s own; but also of) the MSM “Left”. Altogether, a pretty loose bag on which hang any but the most arcane collective predicate. But, as a lot, Brooks finds they are most like the old New Left of the 60’s, aka “Wal-Mart Hippies”.
***
ps. I met Abbie Hoffman at Harpur College, at the old Vestal Steak House off Bunn Hill Rd.
(Or: How Textualist Metaphysics Misreads the “Tea Party Movement”)
("recently a piece in Salon astutely compared Glenn Beck to Abbie Hoffman")
“The Wal-Mart Hippies” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/opinion/05brooks.html) is perhaps David Brooks’ most brilliant, and at the same time most self-condemning philosophical excursion yet. Which, though he cannot speak as a member of the 60’s generation, he is willing to sagely compare current Right wing disaffection, only illustrates how it had to turn out, under Jung’s law of opposites*. Apotheosis of any one-sided point of view ineluctably exposes its other. Brooks’ one-sidedness in comparing the mainly student led uprising of the ‘60’s to the Tea Party movement of ‘09ff consists in largely ignoring the Vietnam war's impact on that generation. In that context, the comments that “both movements have a problem with authority”, involving “belief in conspiracy theories”, are bizarre.
Faced by the Vietnam war draft, 60’s youth by no means stirred to “street theatre, mass rallies, marches and extreme statements” in order to “shock polite society out of its stupor”, or stop runaway federal spending.
Nor, conversely, do Tea Party leaders protest the Afhanistan war.
By dropping the Vietnam war* as motive of the 60’s revolt, Brooks omits reference to what justified it (the revolt). By inserting runaway federal spending* as major justification of the ’09 revolt, he omits reference to the unjustified military expenditures responsible for it (runaway federal spending). Such cunning surely deserves the description of “old Jew snake brain”, one of The Learned Elders even.
Brooks cunningly draws the comparison in a way that doubles the hate: Old Hippies, activists like Saul Alinsky (?), already despised,, now Wal-Mart Hippies.
Brooks deftly disposes of what they* “believe” by overlaying the unfocused (inchoate, confused, obsessed, deranged) group convulsed by rage, anger, hate; comprised of bigots, anti-semites, homophobes, misogynists’ Patriot Militia types, McVeigh admirers, …
This is, by smearing them with WSJ Goldman Sachs Rightwing Id talk. Doesn’t mean they don’t love ‘em. Quite the contrary. There are two wings of Rightwing Id talk: WSJ rich folks (elitists) Sarah Palin (creation of neocon Wm. Kristol, Lieberman) common folk (Fox News, Hannity. O’Reilley, Beck; and “conservative talk radio show hosts”, ex. Limgaugh.”.
Brooks can smash their grammar while preserving his (elite aloofness).
Like The Set of All Sets, an impossible logical construction (and, not coincidentally, Georg Cantor’s definition of “God”), the ’Tea Party movement’, as Brooks calls it*. Roundup of ‘the bad ones’ on the right is a totality contrived mostly from projection of (it’s own; but also of) the MSM “Left”. Altogether, a pretty loose bag on which hang any but the most arcane collective predicate. But, as a lot, Brooks finds they are most like the old New Left of the 60’s, aka “Wal-Mart Hippies”.
***
ps. I met Abbie Hoffman at Harpur College, at the old Vestal Steak House off Bunn Hill Rd.
posted by Sid Thomas | 10:46 AM
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