Two columnists at the New York Times published an article within the last week, and wow are they an example of the good and the bad. Here are links for reference:
Keep in mind, I am an Obama supporter. Additionally, keep in mind a rhetorically and cognitively fossilized Lefty might resonate with both opinion pieces, but I like one and hate the other.
David Brooks takes the highest road here. Keep in mind Brooks is a conservative, and if he were to simply take a default stance it would be on the side opposite of populist liberal. In the his piece he praises the Obama appointments for cabinet and White House staff. He uses a phrase to describe the type of Democratic politician Obama is selecting: "First, these are open-minded individuals who are persuadable by evidence". With this sentence, Brooks has revealed the mantra of The New Age that is upon us.
The Old Age is the one where academics, voters, politicians, and agit-prop careerists in PR positions at think-tanks and watchdog groups stood lockstep in solidarity with these opposing Titans: A ) Hippie and black hating George Wallace campaign rhetoric that was co-opted into Nixon's southern strategy B ) Countercultural assumptions that industrialization is evil and needs dismantling, and every culture with brown or black people is inherently superior and should be militantly assisted in order to replace WASP hegemony. My question is, can we start brutally eliminating proponents of A and B now?
Back to this New Age that sprung up in 2008. It is political empiricism, performance and merit based. In the Old Age, you took a life long stance of hating or revering Blacks/Whites/Industry/Nature/Lesbians/Cities/Public-Property/Money/Localism/Bicycles/Air-Travel/War and you voted for whoever gave the sometimes coded messages in their speeches that signaled a support of your hate agenda ( I'm including you peace-lesbians in this who revere a mythical Tibet and would close the Pentagon, with a little spiteful blip in your hearts). Of course the letdown is when this politician isn't really gunning down Blacks/Whites/Industry/Nature/Lesbians/Cities/Public-Property/Money/Localism/Bicycles/Air-Travel/War, but merely implementing punitive dysfunctionalisms into agency practices that perpetuate the A vs B culture war.
The Old Age A vs B culture war is void of ratio, void of rationalism, mystical. But that is a view from high in the intellectual clouds. There is a corporeal basis for everything intellectual. Ah, the corporeal. Let's look at these old battle bots politically born in the 1960's. THEY ARE EITHER ELDERLY, POOR, OR THE YOUNG ARE ATTENDING INTELLECTUALLY SECOND OR THIRD CLASS COLLEGES. They are Spain after the smartest migrated to the Netherlands -a land of the mediocre beating their chests and talking about pride while a vacuum of merit sucks a good fate from all future scenarios.
Bye, Old Age.
Gail Collins is nice enough to write a column for every Old Age-ist on the left [B] side. Nevermind that no one in a position of political or intellectual relevance is talking about crushing the GWB regime, much like we are not talking about crushing Joseph McCarthy. The Anti-Bush T-Shirt industry should not be a perpetual, perennial phenomenon, get a life people, you're embarrassing anti-Bush people like me. So go ahead and read the Collins piece, it is an IQ test, an entrance test for whether you lack the intellectual heft to enter the New Age.
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1 comment:
Ha! Nice, I agree. I thought Friedman's article of Nov 18 ("Madame Secretary?") was reasonable, well-thought, and helpful, as well. A loyalist might want to jam these two politicians together (and many, I believe, want this very thing), but my skepticism runs parallel with Friedman's.
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