David Brooks, Boob
Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 10:17PM in politics Look, I'm a Republican. Obama man this time, but I'm proud my first vote was for Bob Dole in '96. I've never voted for a Bush (or a Clinton, of course), but I admire Bush the Elder and had I been old enough, I would have voted for him in '92. He represents the best of the American upper-class. His son, the apotheosis of its decline.
If I can't vote Obama, that means Hill and Bill have pulled a dirty trick, and I'll take it personally. Not only will I vote McCain, I will volunteer for the campaign--happily, with lips smacking at the prospect of a throwdown with the Arkansas Hill-Billy.
But I've never been a loyal Party member. That's the kind of sh*t the Communists used to pull. (See Orwell, George, Spanish Civil War.) So I don't normally read David Brooks. I got enough pseudo-intellectual, "conservative," brainwashing at Yale to last a lifetime. But he's been pretty good re Slick and his wife, so I thought, what the hell.
Mistake.
His column, Pitching With Purpose, epitomizes the problem with his work, and, by extension, the work of the "intellectuals" in the Party. Most of it is a boring summary of a book that is itself a bad synopsis of Aristotle, but the last paragraph is shoddy and dishonest, unworthy of anyone who values intellectual integrity. I doubt Brooks, Party hack to the core, cares much about that, but it's why I can't take him seriously.
"Not long ago, Americans saw the rise of a therapeutic culture that placed great emphasis on self-discovery, self-awareness and self-expression. But somehow the tide seems to have turned from the worship of self, and today’s message is: transcend yourself in your job — or get shelled."
The turn is ironic because therapy enables the pursuit of excellence. Self-discovery, self-awareness, self-expression--these are the paramount goals of every human life. The meaning of life is not difficult to discern. It is written in all the Old Books, in all the Old Languages.
We are called to worship God, to honor the gods, to love each other, and to respect ourselves. To be true to ourselves and burn the candle as hot as the wick will allow. The journey of life is the soul overcoming obstacles and realizing itself.
Therapy is one way to help remove some of the obstacles. Religion is another. So are philosophy and music, art and poetry, friendship, beauty, love.
The contempt Brooks expresses in the last paragraph represents the opposite: a narrow, bigoted, contemptuous worldview. He isn't a Yale man, is he? The arrogance tells me Harvard, but the inferiority complex he evinces in his writing and the sartorial choices in his wardrobe tell me not Ivy League.