Talk vs. Action
David Brooks is unequalled as an observer of middle-class American social mores. He has a truly great column this week on the contemporary American culture of braggadocio. He contrasts the tone of American reaction to victory in WWII with our current habit of empty boasting about, comparatively speaking, trivia.
He quotes Ernie Pyle from 1945, who sounds nothing like loudmouths bragging about how “we” saved the world:
We won this war because our men are brave and because of many things — because of Russia, England and China and the passage of time and the gift of nature’s material. We did not win it because destiny created us better than all other peoples. I hope that in victory we are more grateful than we are proud.
The closing line of his column is a gut punch:
It’s funny how the nation’s mood was at its most humble when its actual achievements were at their most extraordinary.
Ah nostalgia!
“The 1964 Supreme Court case Jacobellis vs. Ohio centered on the obscenity conviction of Ohio theater owner Nico Jacobellis for screening the 1958 French film The Lovers (Les Amants). Again at the risk of sounding condescending, I’m not sure a modern audience can fully appreciate that there was a time in this country when a person could be put on trial for showing a film like The Lovers (or for publishing a book like Ulysses for that matter.)”
“But as unbelievable as it sounds, it’s true. In 1964 in a lot of places in the US marriage between blacks and white was illegal; in 1964 in a lot of places in the US it was illegal even for husbands and wives to engage in oral sex; and in 1964 screening a film like The Lovers could land you in jail. “
Much of the Boomers’ parents’ culture was toxic, many of their mores antisocial. The Civil Rights movement and other aspects of the Social Revolution were, in many cases, long overdue. I don’t want to go back to how things were 1964. I’d bet David Brooks doesn’t want to go back either, and I’d guess you don’t either, Jim.
But you know: baby, bath water, blah, blah, blah. I understand the “we saved the world” as an apology from the Baby Boomers to their parents. A recognition (finally) that as much as their parents stood by, silently tolerating evil, they didn’t tolerate all evil; and in fact they did some things that were remarkably courageous.
I think we’re still working it out, still sorting out what will replace a stoic, know-your-place, faux plurality. “If it feels good, do it” didn’t work out so well. Victim culture doesn’t look promising either.
And of course Brooks is cherry picking, from the past of course, but from the present as well. Lebron James is doing the radio talkshow circuit in support of his book, and comporting himself with a grace and humility that I’m sure would warm Brooks’ heart.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 17, 12:03 PM · #
Tony:
Sure, I take your point, and don’t want to “go back”. But the implication of your “baby with bathwater” argument (if taken to an extreme) is that we can’t ever observe specific aspects of our past, recognize that these aspects might be worth emulation, and attempt to integrate the best of them within our current social context.
— Jim Manzi · Sep 17, 12:46 PM · #
“But the implication of your “baby with bathwater” argument (if taken to an extreme) is that we can’t ever observe specific aspects of our past, recognize that these aspects might be worth emulation, and attempt to integrate the best of them within our current social context.”
Is that really what you think I’m saying, Jim? Really?
— Tony Comstock · Sep 17, 12:50 PM · #
Tony makes a good point. Anybody who’s paid attention to the NBA — or pop culture for that matter — knows that Brooks is about 8 years late on braggadocio. It’s peak was somewhere around 2000. Nowadays, the most popular stars are also excellent citizens (Tony mentioned James; to that I’d add Wade, Howard, Paul; hell, even Carmello nowadays). Even when they’re not really “great people”, like Kobe, they’re forced to act like it if they want to keep getting the endorsements.
And I wouldn’t necessarily call Kanye and Michael Jordan exemplars of the middle class (I’m not sure if you did, but still). They’re celebrities, which is another way of saying they’re nowhere close to the norm. Joe Wilson is just a buffoon, which is another way of saying he’s in Congress. God help us.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Sep 17, 12:52 PM · #
Tony:
Yes, I thought that was part of what you were saying, but obviously I was wrong.
Sarge:
That might be true, though I think it would be hard to find the signal from the noise on that trend to believe that there is a long-term counter-trend.
— Jim Manzi · Sep 17, 12:59 PM · #
I’m not persuaded by Brooks’s cherry-picking. There are enough counterexamples to call his entire thesis into doubt. Recall, for example, the pictures of V-E Day in New York, which surely surpassed in exuberance any reaction to any subsequent military event. Correlatively, note that although trash-talking and braggadocio are the norm in the NBA, major league baseball remains a bastion of men who “let their bats do the talking,” who don’t show up the other team, etc.
At any time in history I think you’ll find some people saying “Both [sides] read the same Bible,” while others write “Song of Myself.”
— y81 · Sep 17, 01:10 PM · #
y81:
Great point, but don’t you see baseball as an essentially nostalgic sport ad ethos? (I say this as someone who only goes to see baseball live, rathe rhtna basketball, football, hockey, etc.)
— Jim Manzi · Sep 17, 01:21 PM · #
Jim,
And I agree with you. I would note, however, that the exponential growth of sports coverage and commentary was made possible by middle class patronage. The result is a huge, middle class, moralistic Sauronic eye on sports players 24 hours a day (the E in ESPN might as well stand for ethics). This creates a strong regulating force on sportsworld public behavior, and the effect of this force has been especially visible in the last several years, mostly as a counter to the centrifuge of celebrity, which pulls in the other direction toward absolute distinction.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Sep 17, 01:41 PM · #
Then again, you have Usain Bolt, Serena Williams and Michael Crabtree, so maybe it’s just the blacks.
(Too soon?)
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Sep 17, 01:51 PM · #
On another thread I posted the well known face/vase drawing as a way of suggesting that what is not said in a person’s argument (the negative space) is as important as what is said. Effective communications depend on being accountable for the positive and the negative space. If my comment has left you thinking that there is no way to throw out the bath water without throwing out the baby as well, then the fault is mine. Let me be more direct.
I find David Brooks mawkish, especially in this essay. He talks about “capitalist routine” which is just a fancy way of saying “schtick”, and these sorts of maudlin observations are Brooks’ schtick.
What I hoped to imply, and should have said plainly, is that our pre-Social Revolution culture was so egregiously wrong about matters of such importance, it’s not surprising that there were also worthwhile things that got tossed out with the drinking fountains labeled “colored”; and that it’s no small trick to have a revolution without these sorts of excesses. And while it’s not surprising, it doesn’t mean that we haven’t done ourselves a disservice in rejecting mores that are worth emulating merely for their proximity to mores we’ve rightly come to abhor.
My question remains, both in general, and to you specifically, “Now what?” That’s what I’m trying to sort out. Now that we’ve (maybe) realized we can’t build a functioning society in pure reaction or counter reaction, what do we do?
I suspect the answer lies in the same mental processes that allow men and women who are profoundly accomplished in the area of science to also believe with all their hearts that there is a Divine Plan. I readily acknowledge saying that leaves a lot unsaid, and a lot of room for misinterpretation. Life is full of paradoxes.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 17, 01:53 PM · #
Tony:
“Now what?”
I have no idea. I think Wittgenstein said that trying to recreate vanished social norms through conscious action is like “trying to fix a spider web with your bare hands”. In any event, I believe that.
— Jim Manzi · Sep 17, 03:24 PM · #
My father, being a Brit, is unceasingly amazed by American braggadocio, particularly concerning WWII and other wars. He served in the British Merchant Marine in WWII, was sunk twice, and was off Normandy for D+1.
He recently met and has spent time with (largely b/c having someone to walk with at the park is good when you’re 83 and have occasional fainting fits and might need someone to call EMS) a former US Marine (served in Korea, I think). About the first thing this guy says to him is “we kicked your butts in 1776!” He apparently did this w/o rancor, but my father was a bit surprised. “We?” my father thought.
This, combined with excessive flag-waving, “Greatest Nation on Earth,” etc., really puzzles him. He asks me “Rob, why are Americans so macho?” I can’t give him an answer, as, being a chip off the old block, I’m not. But then I can’t explain to him why baseball players are always spitting, either.
— Rob in CT · Sep 17, 03:54 PM · #
But then I can’t explain to him why baseball players are always spitting, either.
Crotch-grabbing is a far worse epidemic than spitting.
— Kristoffer V. Sargent · Sep 17, 04:12 PM · #
For a different perspective on Brooks:
link
— Sunny · Sep 17, 06:32 PM · #
“ I think Wittgenstein said that trying to recreate vanished social norms through conscious action is like “trying to fix a spider web with your bare hands”. “
When I was in school I took physics from Dr. Rudy Hwa, and one day I went to see him during office hours to see if he could give me a “physics appreciation” version of relativity that I could grasp. All I can remember is something about if we treat the speed of light as a constant, we have to have a more flexible view of time and space, otherwise the numbers don’t work.
I also remember him telling me that light didn’t travel in waves, it travelled in spirals. This stuck with me, because depending on your point of view, spiral motion can look like perpendicular motion, circular motion, or wave motion. That doesn’t mean it is anyone of these things, but if you’re stuck a particular frame of reference, you can’t tell that it isn’t, so you’re stuck describing circles that aren’t there.
That was about 20 years ago. Maybe I misunderstood at the time, or maybe in the interval, new information about light has rendered “spirals” obsolete. None the less, the spiral idea has been useful to me in conceptualizing how history seems to run in cycles, but somehow doesn’t seem to seem to end up in the same place.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 17, 08:11 PM · #
If Usain Bolt is wrong, I don’t want to be right.
On a slightly more serious note, Brooks really seems to be cherry picking his data. Jack Johnson and Babe Ruth were not exactly humble.
— bailey · Sep 17, 09:40 PM · #
Also, I can’t put into words why, but this post and the post it’s about made me think of this video.
— Tony Comstock · Sep 17, 11:07 PM · #
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— diesel jeans · Sep 18, 03:06 AM · #
“trying to fix a spider web with your bare hands”.
I agree with Tony, Brooks is mawkish… and I’ll add maudlin.
I’m tired of watching conservatives run around like dinosaurs trying to lay eggs in a New IceAge snowstorm.
The environment has moved on, and you can evolve or go extinct.
Actually you are extinct already but the tiny little brains in your dinosaur hips don’t know it yet.
— matoko_chan · Sep 18, 01:07 PM · #
And David Brooks is a Big Fat Liar.
Of course it is partly about race.
but this true.
It’s another type of conflict, equally deep and old.
yup, its Kylon vs Pythagoras…..and Brooks is one of the servitors of Kylon.
..and citing Jefferson is slimy.
Our country was concieved, designed, and implemented by elites. In a democratic meritocracy, we ALWAYS elect some stripe of aristoi, either natural like polymath Thomas Jefferson suggested (see Barack Obama) or artificial (see George Bush Presidentsson).
To use Noah’s metaphor….which is excellent, btw…….Brooks just told the crazies it is okfine to piss on the sleeping bags because they aren’t really pissing on the sleeping bags.
Thanks, David!
— matoko_chan · Sep 18, 05:37 PM · #
Dr. Manzi……who is the audience for a disengenous piece like Brooks on race?
These people?
Because there is some pretty obvious racism there.
He is obviously not talking to me, or anyone that knows anything about American history.
For example, for generations schoolchildren studied the long debate between Hamiltonians and Jeffersonians. Hamiltonians stood for urbanism, industrialism and federal power. Jeffersonians were suspicious of urban elites and financial concentration and believed in small-town virtues and limited government. Jefferson advocated “a wise and frugal government” that will keep people from hurting each other, but will otherwise leave them free and “shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.”
Jefferson’s philosophy inspired Andrew Jackson, who led a movement of plain people against the cosmopolitan elites. Jackson dismantled the Second Bank of the United States because he feared the fusion of federal and financial power.
You see, Obama is Jefferson’s dream of the natural aristoi…..and George Bush Presidentsson was Jefferson’s nightmare. I’m currently reading the Jefferson/Adams letters. It is pretty damn obvious that Jefferson understood an elite had to lead the Union. That is why the Union was designed as a democratic meritocracy….and a Republic. Brooks interpretation is a wild populist fantasy.
I also read American Lion…..Andy Jackson would have shot gutshot Beck on sight as a dirty seccessionist and told sarahpalin to stay home with her kids.
So who is Brooks target audience?
Not anyone on the right side of the bell curve, that is for sure. Only people that can’t read perhaps.
Is that the conservative base now? Illiterate twodigit racists?
And this is a very old fight….its Kylon vs Pythagoras.
And Brooks is just the latest in a long line of republican servitors of Kylon.
— matoko_chan · Sep 18, 09:24 PM · #