THOUGHTS FROM A MUSHY BRAIN

Many of you already know that reading David Brooks' columns in the New York Times turns my brain to mush.  His latest on Friday the 13th is no exception, so if I sound a bit strange in this post, you know why.  About the Hilary Clinton email story, I think it's much like Whitewater; there's no there there. Suppose she had used two email accounts, the State Department account for business and a private account for personal correspondence.  She could have deleted the emails in her personal account at any time. Besides, Colin Powell did it, and the Cheney/Bush maladministration did it, too.

Brooks once again presents the false equivalency between the president's actions and the actions of the Republicans in what may be one of the worst Congresses in history in terms of getting anything done and blocking every policy of the president, simply because it's his, even when the policy originated in the Republican Party.  His repeated use of the technique is quite annoying and mush-making for my poor brain.

All the informal self-restraints that softened the brutality of politics are being torn away. It’s like going to a dinner party where all the little customs of politeness are gone and everything is just grab what you can when you can.

It seems to me that Obama has been pretty damned polite in the face of ugly and shameful personal attacks and insults that demonstrate a complete lack of self-restraint from certain Republicans and a shocking disrespect for the office of the president.  And they call themselves patriots and claim Obama doesn't really love America!  Who is it that doesn't love America?

But the worst of the column is in the following two paragraphs:

The only way to reverse the protocol crisis is to create policies that can win bipartisan support. If the next president gets the substance right, the manners will follow.

Can Hillary Clinton do this? Is she strong enough to rise above hostility, to instead reveal scary and vulnerable parts of herself so that voters feel as though they can trust and relate to her? We’ll see. 

Which policies of substance would those be, David, that would be win bipartisan support and inspire a polite response from Republicans?  Dream on.  The model for Obamacare is Romneycare, which Mitt Romney (R) signed into law when he was governor of Massachusetts.  Was that sufficient to blunt the opposition?  Lawsuit after lawsuit to have the program declared unconstitutional instigated by Republicans is your answer.  If Clinton announces she will be a candidate for president, we will see drama on steroids, as we saw throughout Bill Clinton's presidency. 

The present attacks on Clinton are all about Benghazi and trying to catch her in some heinous dereliction of duty that caused the death of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, and the two Marines in the diplomatic facility in Benghazi.  Republicans seem to suggest in a roundabout way that Clinton may have attempted a coverup about Benghazi by deleting her personal email correspondence.  Benghazi! Benghazi!  Benghazi!  The story will never be over for them, though the matter has been thoroughly investigated by Congress, and we will hear about it from Republicans till kingdom come, either overtly or covertly, as in the email flap.

A two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees.

While I admit the Clintons attract drama as flypaper attracts flies, I'd like for Brooks to name  a Democratic candidate for president who could work with the present Congress and inspire them to practice good manners.  Also, is Brooks strong enough to reveal scary and vulnerable parts of himself so that readers feel as though they can trust and relate to him?  

DAVID BROOKS AND SCRAMBLED EGGS

Here's what I mean when I say David Brooks' columns in the New York Times turn my brain into scrambled eggs.

Brooks discusses "big data" versus "narrative" as predictors of human behavior.

Then there is the distinction between commodity decisions and flourishing decisions. Some decisions are straightforward commodities: what route to work is likely to be fastest. Big data can help. Flourishing decisions are things like who to marry, who to befriend, what career calling to pursue and what college to choose. These decisions involve trying to find people, places and things that harmonize with your subjective self. It’s a mistake to take subjective intuition out of this decision because subjectivity is the whole point. 

Grammar!  Should be "whom to marry, whom to befriend," right?  Brooks' column appears in the "Newspaper of Record."  I assume the newspaper employs editors.  If Brooks does not know that when a pronoun comes before an infinitive, the object form is used, then surely a checker at the paper does.  Or has grammar usage of "who" and "whom" changed when I wasn't paying attention?

The meaning of the paragraph is cloaked in fog.  I believe Brooks sees himself as a wise, unshrill moderate, who can look at both sides of an issue or problem and come up with opinions that everyone agrees are quite reasonable, even when they disagree with him.  From this position, he sees himself as qualified to advise us how to remake our society into his land-of-the-free-and-home-of-the-brave ideal.  Ah, if only he made sense. 

I remain amazed that Brooks appears regularly in such prestigious forums as the NYT , "Informed Sources" on PBS, and the Sunday talk shows.  That's to say nothing of Yale's invitation to to Brooks to teach a course on humility.  And not just because of the grammar lapses.   He may know what he means, but his muddled style of writing makes it difficult for me grasp the points he wishes to convey to readers and listeners.  Is Brooks the best the hirers at prestigious forums can do?
 
Brooks seems to want everyone to be moral and responsible.  Well, don't we all, each of us with our individual views on what is moral and responsible behavior?  Oh, and he probably wants us to be humble, too, a virtue which he knows well, because he's teaching the course at Yale on humility. 

Moving on; the final paragraph in the column left my brain in so scrambled a state that I can only guess at the root of Brook's worries.

Most of the advocates understand data is a tool, not a worldview. My worries mostly concentrate on the cultural impact of the big data vogue. If you adopt a mind-set that replaces the narrative with the empirical, you have problems thinking about personal responsibility and morality, which are based on causation. You wind up with a demoralized society. But that’s a subject for another day.

My best guess is he means that the use of narrative is superior to big data for the purpose of encouraging moral and responsible behavior, or the culture collapses.   Before he writes on the subject of the state of our society, I hope Brooks looks around outside the upscale suburb, from which he observes the world in his nearly $4 million house, and notes that we are already, in large part, a demoralized society.  Once he's made the discovery, I'll try to remember to read his commentary - that is, if my brain is unscrambled by the time he writes.

H/T to Charles Pierce at Esquire for calling my attention to Brooks' column.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.