David Brooks: Protecting Us From Poor People

At 7:14 AM this morning, I learned that the recession is being caused by dumb, poor people. David Brooks, one of many elite and clueless New York Times's writers, injected some crazy into his normally awful column:

Our moral and economic system is based on individual responsibility.

BAM! Right out the gate, I got slapped across the face with Brooks's giant, wet fish of a declarative statement. Here I've been, assuming the American tax system unfairly favors large corporations and the upper echelons of our society, but apparently we've been operating on a level playing field this WHOLE time! I can't believe I've been so silly, assuming the minimum wage is slave labor, and it reenforces a de facto caste system where the poor are forever poor, and the rich elite hoard all wealth, prosperity, and power among their tiny tribes forever, and ever, and ever..

Thanks, David! These stupid poor people just need to take some darn responsibility for all of those shady mortgages sold to them with the ludicrous interest rates from subprime bandits working on commission.

As proof of popular discontent with crafty food stamp insurgents, Brooks cites the babbling outbreak by CNBC contributor, Rick Santelli:

Brooks writes:

These injustices are stoking anger across the country, lustily expressed by Rick Santelli on CNBC Thursday morning. "The government is promoting bad behavior!" Santelli cried as Chicago traders cheered him on. "The president ... should put up a Web site ... to have people vote ... to see if they want to subsidize losers' mortgages!"

This is really a beautiful illustration of our mainstream media: a wealthy, white, male columnist citing another wealthy, white, male reporter (along with a cluster of wealthy traders) as proof that Average Americans blame poor people for the state of the country.

David Brooks has been here before. Some of you may remember this embarrassing episode.

Obama's problem is he doesn't seem like a guy who can go into an Applebee's salad bar and people think he fits in naturally there. He has to change to be more like that Applebee's guy and as he's done that he's become much more transactional. Much more, I'm going to deliver this and this and this to you on policy.

Um, David? Applebee's doesn't have a salad bar. You probably made that mistake because you've never been in an Applebee's, or anywhere near Average People in the last couple decades.

Just when I thought we had reached the zenith of crazy, Brooks shot this one out of a cannon:

That's because government isn't fundamentally in the Last Judgment business, making sure everybody serves penance for their sins.

What exactly does Judge David Brooks have in mind as punishment for poor people? I always imagined being poor was sort of punishment in itself, but apparently blood-hungry David Brooks has something else in mind. Also, who are we punishing? Brooks unfairly groups all borrowers into the shady, not-to-be-trusted category. The reality is that many people are losing their homes: some because they were lied to, some because they were being dishonest, and some are truly innocent bystanders. Mind you: all of them are poor.

Brooks conveniently avoids the topics of HUD, Section 8 housing, and renters, who are losing their homes because of the Wild West tactics of Wall Street.

To ensure delicious well-roundedness, Brooks wedges an inappropriate metaphor into the middle of his Insanity Sandwich.

Psychologists have a saying that when a couple comes in for marriage therapy, there are three patients in the room -- the husband, the wife and the marriage itself. The marriage is the living history of all the things that have happened between husband and wife. Once the patterns are set, the marriage itself begins to shape their individual behavior. Though it exists in the space between them, it has an influence all its own.

In the same way, an economy has an economic culture. Out of billions of individual decisions, a common economic landscape emerges, which frames and influences the decisions everybody makes.

To clarify: David Brooks is comparing a marriage between two people to the entire machine of our economy. On the spectrum of Intimacy, I can think of no two points that lay further from each other than marriage and the economy. In a marriage, all parties are visible and personally understood in the fullest possible way. In an economy, there are billions of players, variables, laws, interests, ideologies, etc. Blaming poor people for what's happening in the economy because they bear the same weight of responsibility that they would in a marriage is ludicrous. Poor people don't exercise the same degree of control and influence in the economy as they do in their personal relationships. Oftentimes, they are victims of a larger economic paradigm that unfairly favors the rich.

It's typical of a Conservative to compare the economy, the free market, and corporations to people or forces of nature. That way, they can argue that these institutions deserve the protection afforded to individuals, and/or these forces simply exist as part of nature, and no cadre of individuals can be held accountable for crafting corrupt, evil standards to uphold the systems of the economy and the free market.

Right now, the economic landscape looks like that movie of the swaying Tacoma Narrows Bridge you might have seen in a high school science class. It started swinging in small ways and then the oscillations built on one another until the whole thing was freakishly alive and the pavement looked like liquid.

A few years ago, the global economic culture began swaying. The government enabled people to buy homes they couldn't afford. The Fed provided easy money. The Chinese sloshed in oceans of capital. The giddy upward sway produced a crushing ride down.

Brooks is describing this scene:

The Tacoma Narrows Bridge sways because of wind. The United States is in a recession because of a housing bubble blown up by the shady practices of an elite class of Wall Street and governmental players. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge sways because of a force of nature. Our economy is tanking because of the acts of a group of dishonest people, who are now placing the blame on the shoulders of the most vulnerable people in our society: the poor.

It makes sense for the government to intervene to try to reduce the oscillation. It makes sense for government to try to restore some communal order. And the sad reality is that in these circumstances government has to spend money on precisely those sectors that have been swinging most wildly -- housing, finance, etc. It has to help stabilize people who have been idiots.

Brooks makes no mention of the Idiots of Wall Street. For some reason, he fails to explain what their punishment should be. Brooks is brave enough to condemn poor people, who will never read his article, and will never see his cruel, ignorant words. From his ivory tower, Brooks applauds the manipulation of markets, the corruption of government, and the systematic repression and exploitation of the poor.

I'm wondering if the New York Times editors ever read Brooks's columns before they go to print, and if they do, if the following words have ever been uttered: "Hey, don't say this. You'll look like an elitist tool, or like a CRAZY person."

Eventually, Brooks chokes at the end of his glutunous jerk-off Neo-Conservative banquet, and heaves this turkey leg from his chariot to the trembling serfs reading his words:

The nation's economy is not just the sum of its individuals. It is an interwoven context that we all share. To stabilize that communal landscape, sometimes you have to shower money upon those who have been foolish or self-indulgent. The greedy idiots may be greedy idiots, but they are our countrymen. And at some level, we're all in this together. If their lives don't stabilize, then our lives don't stabilize.

...Thanks? Just when I'm sure David Brooks isn't human, he reminds me in the last sentence of his otherwise dreadful tirade against the poor that he's actually friendly Davey Brooks from the Kibbutz, tilling the soil for the benefit of his brothers and sisters. And when the crops grow anew, Davey will be the first to sully his hands in the soil, and feed the newly blossomed fruit to the street urchins he keeps forever at his sides.

Crossposted from allisonkilkenny.com.

Comments

[Jay O'Connell]

Great article. Watching the MSM, you sometimes get the feeling--am I insane? Am I the only one who sees how these jackals are getting away with blaming the victims for the crimes they have committed, while they laugh all the way to the bank?

No, I'm not the only one.

The MSM is still a tool of the conservative elite. If anything like the truth were printed by the MSM, there would be riots.

[Maria Alvarellos]

We need to be upset at the way our culture, heavily influenced by the decadence and irresponsibility of the 80s era, has become obsessed with the material, encouraged to buy on credit, with money that does not exist. Am I the only one that thinks it is not coincidence that our public schools began the process of churning out mindless consumers with little to no concept of the world as it lay around them and the beginning of a mass spending frenzy with money that isn't there? As soon as the Cold War was over, we threw our hands down and muttered, "We won?" and that was the end of it- consumerism has won, we no longer need to use our brains! Government (or lack of) leadership has steered us this way.

To think that our economy is based in the faith of the dollar when so many people can't name the three branches of government but can tell you the judges on American Idol is scary. I'm not strictly anti-capitalist but I have to wonder how sharp a lot of economists are when they cannot acknowledge that a capitalist economy is inherently unstable. Our markets are based on confidence and not yet understood sociological phenomena. Centralized systems do a better job at controlling the instability (although we all know that they have their drawbacks as well).

Thank you for this piece however, I thought it was good to call out this "fiscal conservative"ideology for what it is.

[Jenny73]

I feel for people who have lost homes due to foreclosure but in the end they share some of the blame, if it sounds too good to be true it usually is. Many people saw ARM's for exactly what they were, a payday loan scam and still chose to get one, then there were those that had really good credit and bought more house than they could possibly afford and financed the whole deal with some very interesting terms, these are the $400,000 houses that now sell for $150K.

The problem of foreclosure in the end has very little to do with poor people and has everything to do with greed on the part of the lenders who made shady deals and buyers who decided that they needed more home than they were worth, with 0% financing, as a person who did not involve myself in any of it and is now having a hard time paying rent due to job loss, I do have to say that I am a little pissed.

[formerprosecutor]

Well written. I am so weary of the Republicans finding a small percentage of homewners in toruble that have some ave runners and ATV's and other toys and using them as the poster children for "irresponsible homwowners". Whe IN FACT most people facing foreclosure are there because they had variable rate mortgages; one or (God help them) both have lost their job(s); had a life changing crisis (death, accident, illness) or have had some other extraneous factor that changed where they were, financially, when they bought their house. Having said that.

The people, through the government, has a compelling interest in keeping people in their homes; and encouraging home ownership. Most familial wealth , in this country, is created through homeownership. This has been true for 150 years. Though, at this time, real estate is "down"; it won't remain so. The working class nest egg IS their home. The stabilty of home ownership brings with it societal responsibility, social change, the stabilty of community, the betterment of individual and community standards. Roots and "membership" in the "group" is critical.

Creating a mass of renters; transient people with nothing to lose and nowhere to go will craete a breakdown of society; and a whole new underclass, the children of which will start from zero and it may take another 3 generations to bring them back to where graduate degrees are the norm in that family.

[anachoret]

So, big surprise, the conservatives have gone back to the old "Culture of poverty" argument.

[dadw5boys]

Has anyone ever given "FITTING IN AT APPLEBEE'S " a first thought ?

WHAT KIND OF FOOL THINKS ABOUT FITTING IN AT APPLE BEE'S????

The drunks who hang around the bar ?? The old weido's who hang out there hoping to hit on Young Women ?
THE SUGAR DADDY WANNIBE'S ????

It is mindnumbing that someone actually thinks ANYONE WANTS TO fit in at a BAR !!!!!!!

If your life rotates around a BAR and fitting in there YOU HAVE NO LIFE !!!!!!!!

[jhNY]

Mr. Brooks will probably grow a bit more compassion for the disadvantaged once his employer goes out of business. Which will likely happen very soon. Just yesterday, the Gray Lady suspended dividend payments, you know, the stuff widows live on if their hubbies invested seemingly well in yesteryear's market. The NYT recently required and received a major influx of cash to shore up their credit worthiness, which looks just now like good money after bad. Once he's out of work, Brooks will discover he's got deep feelings for folks like himself, as that's all the feelings he's ever had, from the beginning.

[Poboy]

Great post! I've just become your fan.

[formerprosecutor]

If he REALLY thinks that the homeowners are "irresponsible"; why doen't he also blame the loan originators for giving the loans to "irresponsible " borrowers? Aren't they the professionals when deciding the homes value and the "worthiness" of the borrower? Where was the math formula traditionally used to calculate the affordibility ? Why isn't he just as outraged at keeping the "irresponsible banks" intheir "homes'; shoudln't they be evicted also?

The rant is that of the " clueless rich man"; when people quit buying homes; stuff to improve them with and stuff to put in them our economy will REALLY collapse...oh wait that is happening now!

(renters don't buy stuff since they are sure have to move it, nor do they do home improvement )

[David Lewis 1]

Thank you for calling the game on David Brooks -- and so quickly! He's perhaps the most inane of the "major" columnists in the "major" papers. His piece the other day, also, was a piece of twaddle -- reprising in high-falutin' language what Phil Gramm said -- that we are a nation of whiners in a psychological recession.

I personally wrote Brooks off a couple of years ago when he fatuously insisted that, when Ronald Reagan began his campaign for President in the postage-stamp community of Philadelphia Mississippi, he was not at all sending a message of Republican support for southern racism, and not in any way raising the stakes on the extensively documented Republican "Southern strategy". Oh, come on, Mr. Brooks -- Philadelphia Mississippi, population 7000, site of the infamous murder of three civil rights workers.

I don't know whether to be vindicated or dismayed that Brooks has continued to live up to this standard of pure, ideologically-inspired twaddle.

[Lon]

There was a lot of silliness in the Brooks column, particularly the first line that Kilkenney quotes suggesting that our system is one in which success is highly correlated with effort. (Actually the silliness comes in the lines that follow the quoted one).

But Kilkenney seems to largely miss the point of Brooks column. He is not supporting the Santelli argument, he is attacking it. As a conservative columnist he writes for a primarily conservative audience. And so he overloads his examples with blame for the people conservatives blame (certainly more of the idiots are on the republicans side) but his argument is ultimately the correct one, namely that we cannot afford to be making decisions based primarily on questions of making sure people who behaved badly get punished. We are now in the position that policy needs to be made in terms of what will help the economy, and in some cases that will mean rewarding people who acted badly.

The liberal version of this argument is Barney Frank's description of helping wall street profits as collateral damage.

In this case Brooks is arguing for the right side. I am willing to overlook the large degree of condescension he uses in getting to the right position. A more accurate set up would lose conservatives before they get to the important part of the argument.

[jhNY]

You write as if you believe helping these bad actors will right the economy. Please study the problem until you grasp its immensity and intractibility. However badly you or I might want it, the attempts to save the financial sector will not succeed, despite the fact that many feel they must. Sometimes broken stuff can't be repaired, like it or not. The international capitalist overclass has folded its many layered con and skipped town with all the extractible wealth of the world, although occasionally they will return to the public square long enough to see if anybody's left who's gullible enough to give them another wad of cash which, if profferred, will then disppear. It's what they mean by 'the magic of capitalism.'

[Lon]

You mean you think we are going to avoid a prolonged recession without a healthy banking system, and by letting everyone who took out loans they couldn't afford fall into foreclosure?

Brooks is arguing that it is silly to oppose the Obama foreclosure avoidance plan on the grounds that it helps people who fell into debt at the expense of people who bought homes they could afford. Are you arguing it makes sense to oppose the Obama plan on the grounds that it helps homeowners who don't deserve to be helped, or are you missing the point of Brooks' article?

[NFS]

I have no idea what bible these supposed "moral" Rethugs read. They certainly don't read the official one, because they are so far outside what the bible says "Christians" are supposed to be, it ain't funny. It's hateful and talk about being Anti-Christ, no people epitomizes satan that Republicans. They care about no one but themselves and their money. If they ever get to see God, the God whom they say and do things in his name, will say he never knew them.

[lizr]

thank you Allison! My new favorite columnist.

If the NYT had any sense they'd can Brooks the capitalist bore and hire you.

But we all know the NYT has no sense - and is just a dynasty to boot.

Oh well.

New media is what is happening and soon the NYT will be history along w the rest of print.

This column by Brooks is one reason why.

Another nail in their coffin.