Brooks’s nostalgia for aristocracy
A month ago, David Brooks drew fire for a column about Haiti that many readers found offensive. His broad generalizations about Haiti’s supposedly irresponsible and entitled culture prompted accusations of racism.
Brooks’ most recent column is likely to add charges of “classism” to the list. He suggests an interesting frame from which to view our current crises of trust in our most important political, economic, and cultural institutions – the transition, over the last half-century or so, from aristocracy to meritocracy.
As we’ve made our institutions more meritocratic, their public standing has plummeted. We’ve increased the diversity and talent level of people at the top of society, yet trust in elites has never been lower. It’s not even clear that society is better led.
Hmm… That’s a pretty wide sweep, but interesting. But why would this be? Brooks offers up a few suggestions, which I’ll try to summarize in one sentence: Yesteryear’s elites had broader skill sets, lived locally, got along better, took the long view, and were more private; Today’s elites are too technically specialized, geographically centralized, partisan, short-sighted, and transparent.
There’s a lot that could be said here, since he’s put a lot on the table. But let me offer one thought. If it’s indeed true that things seemed so much simpler back then, it’s probably because things were much simpler back then. The core point here, which Brooks seems to be aware of, is that it’s obviously easier to share power among a homogeneous few than it is to conduct business democratically in a large, racially-, culturally-, and ideologically-diverse populace. If the subtext of Brooks’ Haiti piece was “Why can’t these poor, foreign black people behave like middle class American white people?”, then the subtext here is “Wouldn’t we have a lot less drama if America looked like Leave it to Beaver again?”
There are some points worth seriously considering in his piece-by-piece analysis of where today’s elites go wrong (especially by over-specializing and shooting only for short-term wins / political points), but the general thrust here is no more profound than George W. Bush’s jovial suggestion that “If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.”
Simplicity and trust are often inversely proportional to democracy and equality. Freedom ain’t free, right?
-Colin
Related posts:
- The David Brooks manual of style
- Brooks vs. Taibbi on Haiti
- Make it better David Brooks
- David Brooks for eternity
- In my day…
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