Disingenuous Hypocrites

When men like David Brooks write that “Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare”, though its true, it strikes me as disingenuous and too little too late. David Brooks has written so much pro neo-conservative commentary over the years (e.g. his praise of Palin’s debate performance, the BoBo book) that it is unbelievable that he would have finally come to this conclusion. This is like Andrew Sullivan coming to the very belated conclusion that Bush was bad, even though he sang his praises in 2000 and 2004 (I think).

These types of commentaries (and the many other conservative bemoaning of late – Fred Barns, George Will) indicate a deep fear within the republican conservative/neo-conservative party. Hopefully they are in their death throws. However, it is unlikely that they will truly take psychological responsibility for all of the horrible policies they have foisted upon the country. David Brooks is absolutely right that it has been the Republicans who are engaged in Class Warfare (though they of course feel that the class warfare began with social security, welfare, the new deal, great society, and other progressive movement policies). The Republicans have been so tunnel-visioned in their pursuit of these policies that they are unable to account for the failures other than blaming the system for not really trying their ideas fully. (Though to me, as I have written before, are ideals which can never really be fully implemented). The death throws are a relief to see, but why have we had to go through this entire cycle of self-destruction to begin with? There are of course many reasons but one of the central reasons is that human beings have the need to self-destruct. We seem unable to maintain stability within ourselves or within the greater society. We seek out reasons to create problems for ourselves.

A real means for fighting against this has always been the acquisition of knowledge and a memory for history. When those in power want to lead us down the path of self-destruction they devalue education and devalue history. This is precisely what has occurred. David Brooks’ own analysis indicated that the republicans have “Alienated whole professions” and “It (republicans) has lost the educated class by sins of commission – by telling members of that class to go away.” And Brooks concluded “Republicans developed their own leadership style. If democratic leaders prized deliberation and self-examination then republicans would govern from the gut.” Aside from the problem of Brooks semantics – calling educated people a class – he is absolutely right. There has been a total devaluation of being educated, smart, sophisticated in ones thinking, and mindful of history. The fact is that it is the conservative ideology that logically leads to these types of tactics, though right wing thinkers cannot accept this basic truth. Brooks asserted that original thinkers in the conservative movement did not devalue these things and the movement was taken over by those who did, or at least used these means to win power. To me it does not matter, it is the logical conclusion of such an ideology to lead to these kinds of problems. Actually, it reminds me of my hundreds of interviews with gang members while working in state prisons and how street gang members (Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings, and others) talk about their gangs. They say that it all started with a good idea – that if society were not going to care for them then they would care for themselves. Then they bemoan the way the idea was implemented. The problem with this reasoning is that fending for themselves could never work because they are part of a greater society that would not tolerate such behavior. Then the gangs had to turn into criminal organizations in order to function, and then they turned into plagues on the very society they were “meant” to uplift. Then they created their own history (completly distorted) and version of reality. The gang member cannot accept that it was the very ideology that led to these problems in the first place. This is precisely what has occurred in the Republican party/conservative movement. They cannot perceive how their original ideas were so fundamentally flawed that the inevitable result would be economic and social tragedy. The same thing happened in the early 20th century that led to the great depression and will likely happen again because no matter how many times we say it, history repeats itself and people do not learn from history - especially when they forget it or are never taught it or just plain ignore it because their ideology blinds them to it.