This may actually be the salient point.
Could be.
The kinds of grant money that are likely to be at risk are funds that we currently use, and have used in the past, to prepare for the effects of climate change and for general infrastructure, e.g. repairing a bridge in town. There are some smaller grants - six figure - for energy conservation and decarbonization programs.
The climate change stuff is especially relevant because we're a peninsula, with water on three sides. The lower lying areas include the site of the town's electric plant.
We'll muddle through, but it's gonna be a loss.
It's the lawyers that are gonna show up on the "charge us money" tab.
Really, I just brought it all up as an example of class based segregation. A sufficient number of people in town don't want more people coming to town who can't afford single family houses.
2025-08-18 18:34:37
Roid Rage
Yeah, I'll be glad to be done with the steroid. It's like pushing the magic "asshole" button.
Haven't followed today's goings on in any detail but I'm assuming it's been just as weird and inexplicable as the Alaska thing. Just in different ways.
These days I find myself wishing I lived in some small, competent, unambitious country. Denmark or the Netherlands, maybe? Ireland? Botswana perhaps.
Go about my business, live my life in peace, and watch the "Great Powers" choke on their own hubris.
Not jaundiced or despairing, really, just so freaking tired of the pointless dick-measuring drama.
Better days.
2025-08-18 12:39:25
They went nowhere because the Town Council basically said "We don't have funds to pay the fines for non-compliance."
In my case, the no-comply locals are basically taking the "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead" approach.
The town is likely to lose several million dollars in state money. Competitive grants, mostly, for which we will no longer qualify. And we're likely to spend a lot of money - I don't know how much, but it will be a sum measured in legal billable hours - arguing with the state in court about it all.
Where is the money for legal fees gonna come from? :: shrug ::
The legality of the law has already been established at the MA Supreme Court. Precedent has already been set by other towns that have challenged all of this on similar grounds and lost. We don't really have a leg to stand on.
The state isn't really asking a lot, here. They want the town to identify some areas where people can build multi-family housing without pulling a special permit. The areas the town government had identified are areas where there is already multi-family housing, or which are already zoned for mixed use. There is no requirement to actually build anything, we just have to say *if* somebody wants to build multi-family housing in a particular area, someday, they don't have to pull a special permit to do so.
NIMBY strikes again.
2025-08-18 12:37:25
They went nowhere because the Town Council basically said "We don't have funds to pay the fines for non-compliance."
In my case, the no-comply locals are basically taking the "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead" approach.
The town is likely to lose several million dollars in state money. Competitive grants, mostly, for which we will no longer qualify. And we're likely to spend a lot of money - I don't know how much, but it will be a sum measured in legal billable hours - arguing with the state in court about it all.
Where is the money for legal fees gonna come from? :: shrug ::
The legality of the law has already been established at the MA Supreme Court. Precedent has already been set by other towns that have challenged all of this on similar grounds and lost. We don't really have a leg to stand on.
The state isn't really asking a lot, here. They want the town to identify some areas where people can build multi-family housing without pulling a special permit. The areas the town government had identified are areas where there is already multi-family housing, or which are already zoned for mixed use. There is no requirement to actually build anything, we just have to say *if* somebody wants to build multi-family housing in a particular area, someday, they don't have to pull a special permit to do so.
NIMBY strikes again.
2025-08-18 07:53:20
I'm sitting here laughing at myself, looking at my novella-length posts in this thread.
I've just started a short course of prednisone to deal with an inflammatory reaction I'm having to COVID, which I had back in June.
My wife and I were visiting with friends yesterday and they asked about it all. Was it making me aggressive?
No, my wife said. But it's making him talk a lot.
:: rimshot ::
I will try to be more concise, going forward.
2025-08-18 02:20:21
Thanks for sharing all of that, wj.
The immediate situation in my area is this: in 2021 MA passed a law requiring that towns with public transportation access, or towns adjacent to them, had to allow multi-family zoning in areas near the public transportation.
A number of communities affected by the law refused to comply. Most or all of these are upper-middle-class bedroom communities. Failure to comply is likely to result in the loss of significant state money, and the state may also appoint a special manager to write a compliance plan for you.
I live in one of those towns, and the issue has been front and center. Folks who object to the law give lots of reasons for their objection, but basically they DO NOT WANT multi-family housing. Or, more multi-family housing, we already have some.
They have a point. The town is already pretty densely populated, more people will require more services, etc etc etc.
But the town also has a lot of very, very wealthy people in it, and many more who are aspirationally very, very wealthy. Those folks don't want development that is going to make the town look down-market, because it will undermine the market value of their property. And those property values are, indeed, high - insanely high, because there is a lot of money chasing housing in this area.
So a lot of folks who work in the town - tradespeople, cops, nurses, teachers, mechanics - live somewhere else. A lot of people who work in the town *and grew up in the town* live somewhere else.
It's a really old town, and there are some old-timers and children and grand-children of old-timers who still do hands-on labor. Lobstermen, couple of boatyards. But they're aging out.
And so, segregation by class.
It's not a universal thing, the vote to not comply was quite close - a lot of people here would be more than fine with complying.
The political angle of all of this is that the folks who instigated the vote against complying were notable local MAGAs, and the folks who voting against compliance were likewise on that end of the spectrum.
I personally live in a neighborhood that sounds like it's a lot like yours. Neighbor across the street are a cop and nurse, to the right is a postal worker and the buyer for a museum gift shop, to the left is a retired local photo print shop owner and nurse. Folks behind us are a bit more upscale, but their street is a little more upscale, so I guess that makes sense.
Basically, we live in the starter home neighborhood of our town, closer to downtown Salem than to our own downtown. But even our more modest neighborhood is likely out of reach for a lot of middle class working folks. We bought in 2002, we would likely never be able to do so now.
There are lots of similar stories to tell from around here. The schools in my upper middle class town are not so great, because we don't pay well, because people DO NOT WANT TO PAY TAXES and the wealthier folks in town just send their kids to the private school. Salem is running into conflict over a proposal to allow a very limited kind of multi-family housing - basically, in-law units that could be rented or used for extended family housing.
The town I live in is quite old - settled in 1629, mostly by fishermen and somewhat famously by drunks and ne'er do wells who couldn't get along with the Puritans in Salem. It has a history as a working town - fishing, boat building and related trades, light industry - there was even a small airplane factory here at one point. But those folks are getting pushed out. The ones who are still here are largely folks who've been here a really long time and got in before the big real estate gold rush(es). Or come from families who've been here forever.
The folks to our right bought their place a couple of years ago. It's a bog standard mid-century suburban colonial, 3 bed 1 1/2 bath, 1/8 acre plot. It went for almost $900K. They're working people - postal worker and museum gift shop buyer - so maybe there's some family money there, who knows. But holy crap, that's a lot of money for a perfectly nice but totally unremarkable house in a perfectly nice but totally unremarkable neighborhood.
That's the scene here.
2025-08-17 22:27:11
What that Mets hat does is show an interest in breaking down that barrier. And a refusal to sneer at the people he's talking to.
I'd like to try to be very clear about what I'm saying about Brooks.
I fully believe he wears the Mets hat in an effort to break through social barriers. And who knows, perhaps his conversations about the Mets do expand into topics of greater substance vis a vis our various public and social dilemnas. And no, I'm not being sarcastic in saying that.
And no, I don't believe Brooks is sneering at the people he's talking to, or at anyone in particular.
My issue with Brooks is that he seems to feel that the world's problems can be resolved through improvements in our personal, private virtue.
Want to break through the socio-economic barriers that divide the college-educated professionals from their working class counter-parties?
Sign up for one of the volunteer opportunities on the Weavers' website. In my area, those opportunities are (1) lead playtimes for homeless kids who are living in area shelters and (2) drive seniors to appointments.
Those are great things to do. I have done, and continue to do, similar things that somehow don't appear on his list - put in hours at a local food bank, provide overnight chaperoning for homeless families camping out in my church. Cook meals at a local homeless shelter. And so on.
What I can tell you from my experience with these things is that they *do not solve* the systemic problems that cause families to be homeless, or seniors to be without any form of useful public transportation. For example.
They do not prompt wealthy college-educated folks living in islands of privilege to welcome cops, welders, nurses, and carpenters into their neighborhoods. They certainly and absolutely *DO NOT* prompt those people to do anything that would make lower-income housing more available in their communities, because that would put the assessed values of their own lovely homes at risk. And if the schools in their areas are not up to snuff, they quite often respond by sending their kids to private school, rather than take whatever steps would be needed to improve the local public schools.
Without going into the gory details of my own situation, I can tell you that I live this stuff. Live around it, live with it. The class divide, as Brooks notes, is quite real. But signing up for a two-hour shift playing with homeless kids is not going to solve it. Driving somebody's grandma to her haircut is not going to solve it. Those are more than fine things to do, let's all go do our share of them.
But they don't address the root causes of the class divide. The class divide is fundamentally about money and power - who has it, what can they do with it. Me, a retired white software guy with basically enough money living in a nice suburban bedroom community going and playing with homeless kids at a local shelter *does not house that kids family*. It *does not magically provide that kids family with the resources to get them the hell out of the shelter*.
Right?
And Brooks' digs at the Democrats in the "segregation" piece are unwelcome, and frankly less than honest. The educational "red state surge" is frankly not all that. Some states have improved from really bad to somewhere between middling and pretty good, which is an outstanding result. And that's it. And education in some other red states absolutely suck, as does education in some blue states, or parts of some blue states. And education in some red states is actually exemplary, as it is in some blue states. It doesn't appear to have all that much to do with whether you're in a red state or blue state.
Brooks talks about working people feeling that have no power. And he's not wrong, most of the power in this country belongs to wealthy educated folks. How did that happen?
In this country, historically, the way that working people have gained any measure of political and social power was through organization. Organized labor. Unions.
I don't see Brooks supporting organized labor. I don't see him calling out for greater labor participation in corporate governance. I don't see him calling out for employee ownership or other forms of meaningful equity in businesses.
Those are the things that give working people power.
I don't see Brooks calling for any of the kinds of systemic changes that would actually address the "class divide" by *making the fucking divide smaller*. On the contrary, his history is one of supporting the kinds of (R) policies that exacerbate the problem.
And his solution is for all of us to volunteer to do helpful stuff in our local community to "bridge the divide" and "rebuild social trust".
More meaningful forms of creating social trust, IMO, would be relaxing local zoning rules to make affordable housing in your neighborhood available. Would be supporting institutions like the CFPB so that fucking predatory financial institutions would stop ripping people off. Would be finding a sane way to fund public education so that It's not just rich towns that get good schools. Would be supporting organized labor and employee participation in equity ownership and governance.
I think David Brooks is a decent person. I think he intends good things. And I think he's incapable of challenging the assumptions and policies of the conservative institutions that have been his professional home, and whose policies are largely responsible for the social ills he laments.
He's a nice man. And he doesn't get - seems incapable of getting - the connection between the things he has spent his life endorsing, and the problems he clearly sees. So, his solution to things is for everyone to be nicer, volunteer, and talk to each other.
If you want working people to have more power, support the things that have been the source of that power, historically.
If you want people of different educational and social backgrounds to mix, make it possible for people with less-privileged backgrounds to live in places where the more-privileged people live.
If you want to build social trust, address the gazillion forms of corruption that distort and undermine people's trust in public institutions. Start with making sure that everybody gets to vote, and that their votes aren't neutered by partisan gerrymandering - which of course means walking back yet another bullshit SCOTUS decision.
Trust is built on hearing and respecting each person's voice. It's built on, not just the perception, but the tangible reality of fairness. And not just while you're driving a nice old lady to her haircut, although by all means do it there as well. But also in the voting booth, in the workplace, in the doctor's office. In people's dealings with banks and insurance companies. In the immigration office. Right?
The kind of almost cartoonish venality and abuse of power we see with Trump has been building for decades, and it's the modern conservative movement, in which Brooks is knee-deep, that planned for it, laid the groundwork for it, built the institutions to make it happen.
He won't see that. Doesn't seem capable of seeing that. Where's Kamala's education plan, he asks. It's the (D)'s fault.
Yeah, no it's not. But he'll never own that. So I don't care for him. Don't hate him, don't wish him ill. But don't think he's got much to offer us. For all the reaons enumerated at probably tiresome length above.
And with all of that, I think I've been sufficiently unkind to David Brooks for one day. He's a nice man, in the context of all the shit that is going on he is very, very, very far from being public enemy #1. I appreciate his lack of cynicism and his instinct toward moderation.
The current state of the nation has me in kind of dark place. Thank you for indulging my rant, apparently I needed to get some crap off my chest. I promise I'll do my best to cheer up.
Night all.
2025-08-17 16:43:20
russell: I hear you.
Thanks GFTNC.
My comments about Brooks were probably off-topic, and probably not that constructive or useful. I'm sure I do him a disservice, at least to some degree.
I'm generally disgusted with the state of public life here in this country at the moment, and I think it colors my thoughts about a lot of things. Disgusted doesn't quite cover it - angry, broken-hearted, feeling generally helpless to know how to counter the widespread and gob-smacking folly and senseless cruelty that we are obliged to live with, and under, at the moment.
It sucks.
I appreciate your more generous thoughts about Brooks' work, it reminds me to look for the positive.
Better days, y'all.
2025-08-17 15:32:18
taking the high road is conceding the contest, and that cannot happen.
This ^^^^
2025-08-17 15:11:49
It seems to me that the Mets hat thing is a way of trying to experience goodwill and a human connection between groups who may not have many other interests or passions in common
Yes, I think that is correct. And yes, I agree that trying to make connections and find common ground are good things. And yes, I understand that the motivations of the callow art student in the Pulp song are quite different.
In general, I think Brooks is a decent person.
But I also think there is, probably inevitably, a limit to the degree to which someone from Brooks' background and in Brooks' position can understand and speak for the experience and interests of people who do not share his advantages. Mets hat or not.
Brooks tends to frame things in moralizing terms. I think he does that honestly, because it seems like his personal values and interests lead him to think in those categories. Which I don't fault him for, exactly, but I think it causes him to miss the mark in a lot of ways. And it also makes him seem like something of a scold. To me, anyway.
His argument often seems to be "Gee, we should be better people". Well, OK, yeah, I guess we should all be better people. But transforming the general character of the public doesn't seem like a particularly practical approach to what are actually, in many cases, systemic problems. Problems amenable to concrete solutions, solutions that you could actually implement. And that would actually make people's lives better in ways that would, in turn, make it a hell of a lot easier to be "better people".
It's easier to be virtuous when your larder is full.
And that's probably enough from me about Brooks. He strikes me as a basically decent person. I just can't think of anything I've read of his that seemed especially useful. And, intentional or not, I personally find what I take to be the moralizing tone of his work kind of condescending.
Just my opinion, offered more or less as an aside.
2025-08-16 22:33:56
I'd be interested to know whether this is a well known phenomenon
The NAEP stats.
To the degree that the states Brooks calls out have made good progress in their educational outcomes, I applaud them. No snark. Well done, I hope they continue. In general they've advanced from pretty bad to somewhere between not-so-bad and not bad at all, which is actually a big jump, and worth celebrating.
Good job. Keep it up.
If you look at the NAEP stuff you'll see that educational outcomes are not an especially blue state / red state thing. California doesn't do very well, Utah does. IMO it's more about the culture and history of the place, and what resources they bring to the table. Money, yes, but also an investment in the future mindset.
At the risk of coming off like a coastal elitist snob, I note that my adopted home state of Massachusetts does quite well. We aren't smarter than people in other states, we just have a long history of valuing education. A lot of the folks who settled the area were literate people, unusually so for their time. They valued education, and so they created pretty good schools. That culture persisted, and thus we do well on the NAEP stuff.
I'm glad to see that some states that historically have lagged in that area are taking steps to improve. Well done, carry on.
As an aside, I'll also say that Brooks annoys me. Perennially. I think he's sincere and I appreciate what I see as a real lack of cynicism. He seems to honestly be trying to make best sense of the world and his own life.
But I also think he's remarkably clueless. The story about wearing a Mets hat to break the ice with "ordinary people" just makes me think of that Pulp song. You know the one.
I mean, he is genuinely a lifelong fan of the Mets, so by all means wear the hat. And if that helps break the ice, go for it. But I just don't think he's able to see outside of his white-shoe bubble.
He's just not a guy I think I need moral direction from. And that seems to be his primary way of framing his thoughts.
I hope Mr. Brooks will forgive me if I misjudge him here.
And that's enough stream of consciousness from me for one night.
2025-08-16 17:18:47
class in America.
Yes, once upon a time there was a greater mix of higher-educated white collar professionals and non-college-grad working people in neighborhoods, schools, and social organizations.
It was like that when I was a kid. Doctors, lawyers, business executives lived in the same neighborhoods as cops, plumbers, local mom-n-pop business owners. Their kids went to the same schools, familes went to the same churches, etc. The doctors and lawyers might live in nicer houses, but still in the same town and general area. So, a while back, but not that far. In living memory, mine at least.
What's different? Among other things, higher-educated white collar professionals make a sh*t-ton more money relative to their non-college-grad working class than they did back then. This is from 2015 and EPI are a bunch of commies, of course, but it gets the idea across.
Higher-educated white collar professionals used to pay more in taxes. Non-college-educated working people used to be unionized a lot more than they are now.
I don't mean to be reductionist about it, but the increased income gap goes a long way to explaining the class-based segregation Brooks talks about. IMO.
Maybe instead of waxing nostalgic about the loss of our common values and social bonds, we could tax wealthy people a little more and support organized labor.
Sometimes things actually are as simple as that.
As far as the summit goes, it's just another episode in the Donald and Vlad show as far as I can tell. Trump clearly admires Putin, he adores bullies, autocrats, and "tough guys", and Putin checks all of those boxes. He's a Putin wanna-be, and if there is a more despicable role model on the face of the planet than Vladimir Putin, I'm at a loss as to who that might be.
I have no idea how things are going to play out in Ukraine, Canada and the EU will likely have something to say about it all, and Ukraine by god most certainly will. But it's pretty clear to me that Trump is not going to do anything of significance to hinder Putin's desire to annex eastern Ukraine for now, after which he will likely rebuild a bit and return for the rest of the meal.
Trump somehow combines the venality and corruption of Nixon with a breathtaking ignorance and incompetence all his own. He is a deeply stupid man. It's remarkable.
This may actually be the salient point.
Could be.
The kinds of grant money that are likely to be at risk are funds that we currently use, and have used in the past, to prepare for the effects of climate change and for general infrastructure, e.g. repairing a bridge in town. There are some smaller grants - six figure - for energy conservation and decarbonization programs.
The climate change stuff is especially relevant because we're a peninsula, with water on three sides. The lower lying areas include the site of the town's electric plant.
We'll muddle through, but it's gonna be a loss.
It's the lawyers that are gonna show up on the "charge us money" tab.
Really, I just brought it all up as an example of class based segregation. A sufficient number of people in town don't want more people coming to town who can't afford single family houses.
Roid Rage
Yeah, I'll be glad to be done with the steroid. It's like pushing the magic "asshole" button.
Haven't followed today's goings on in any detail but I'm assuming it's been just as weird and inexplicable as the Alaska thing. Just in different ways.
These days I find myself wishing I lived in some small, competent, unambitious country. Denmark or the Netherlands, maybe? Ireland? Botswana perhaps.
Go about my business, live my life in peace, and watch the "Great Powers" choke on their own hubris.
Not jaundiced or despairing, really, just so freaking tired of the pointless dick-measuring drama.
Better days.
They went nowhere because the Town Council basically said "We don't have funds to pay the fines for non-compliance."
In my case, the no-comply locals are basically taking the "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead" approach.
The town is likely to lose several million dollars in state money. Competitive grants, mostly, for which we will no longer qualify. And we're likely to spend a lot of money - I don't know how much, but it will be a sum measured in legal billable hours - arguing with the state in court about it all.
Where is the money for legal fees gonna come from? :: shrug ::
The legality of the law has already been established at the MA Supreme Court. Precedent has already been set by other towns that have challenged all of this on similar grounds and lost. We don't really have a leg to stand on.
The state isn't really asking a lot, here. They want the town to identify some areas where people can build multi-family housing without pulling a special permit. The areas the town government had identified are areas where there is already multi-family housing, or which are already zoned for mixed use. There is no requirement to actually build anything, we just have to say *if* somebody wants to build multi-family housing in a particular area, someday, they don't have to pull a special permit to do so.
NIMBY strikes again.
They went nowhere because the Town Council basically said "We don't have funds to pay the fines for non-compliance."
In my case, the no-comply locals are basically taking the "damn the torpedos, full speed ahead" approach.
The town is likely to lose several million dollars in state money. Competitive grants, mostly, for which we will no longer qualify. And we're likely to spend a lot of money - I don't know how much, but it will be a sum measured in legal billable hours - arguing with the state in court about it all.
Where is the money for legal fees gonna come from? :: shrug ::
The legality of the law has already been established at the MA Supreme Court. Precedent has already been set by other towns that have challenged all of this on similar grounds and lost. We don't really have a leg to stand on.
The state isn't really asking a lot, here. They want the town to identify some areas where people can build multi-family housing without pulling a special permit. The areas the town government had identified are areas where there is already multi-family housing, or which are already zoned for mixed use. There is no requirement to actually build anything, we just have to say *if* somebody wants to build multi-family housing in a particular area, someday, they don't have to pull a special permit to do so.
NIMBY strikes again.
I'm sitting here laughing at myself, looking at my novella-length posts in this thread.
I've just started a short course of prednisone to deal with an inflammatory reaction I'm having to COVID, which I had back in June.
My wife and I were visiting with friends yesterday and they asked about it all. Was it making me aggressive?
No, my wife said. But it's making him talk a lot.
:: rimshot ::
I will try to be more concise, going forward.
Thanks for sharing all of that, wj.
The immediate situation in my area is this: in 2021 MA passed a law requiring that towns with public transportation access, or towns adjacent to them, had to allow multi-family zoning in areas near the public transportation.
A number of communities affected by the law refused to comply. Most or all of these are upper-middle-class bedroom communities. Failure to comply is likely to result in the loss of significant state money, and the state may also appoint a special manager to write a compliance plan for you.
I live in one of those towns, and the issue has been front and center. Folks who object to the law give lots of reasons for their objection, but basically they DO NOT WANT multi-family housing. Or, more multi-family housing, we already have some.
They have a point. The town is already pretty densely populated, more people will require more services, etc etc etc.
But the town also has a lot of very, very wealthy people in it, and many more who are aspirationally very, very wealthy. Those folks don't want development that is going to make the town look down-market, because it will undermine the market value of their property. And those property values are, indeed, high - insanely high, because there is a lot of money chasing housing in this area.
So a lot of folks who work in the town - tradespeople, cops, nurses, teachers, mechanics - live somewhere else. A lot of people who work in the town *and grew up in the town* live somewhere else.
It's a really old town, and there are some old-timers and children and grand-children of old-timers who still do hands-on labor. Lobstermen, couple of boatyards. But they're aging out.
And so, segregation by class.
It's not a universal thing, the vote to not comply was quite close - a lot of people here would be more than fine with complying.
The political angle of all of this is that the folks who instigated the vote against complying were notable local MAGAs, and the folks who voting against compliance were likewise on that end of the spectrum.
I personally live in a neighborhood that sounds like it's a lot like yours. Neighbor across the street are a cop and nurse, to the right is a postal worker and the buyer for a museum gift shop, to the left is a retired local photo print shop owner and nurse. Folks behind us are a bit more upscale, but their street is a little more upscale, so I guess that makes sense.
Basically, we live in the starter home neighborhood of our town, closer to downtown Salem than to our own downtown. But even our more modest neighborhood is likely out of reach for a lot of middle class working folks. We bought in 2002, we would likely never be able to do so now.
There are lots of similar stories to tell from around here. The schools in my upper middle class town are not so great, because we don't pay well, because people DO NOT WANT TO PAY TAXES and the wealthier folks in town just send their kids to the private school. Salem is running into conflict over a proposal to allow a very limited kind of multi-family housing - basically, in-law units that could be rented or used for extended family housing.
The town I live in is quite old - settled in 1629, mostly by fishermen and somewhat famously by drunks and ne'er do wells who couldn't get along with the Puritans in Salem. It has a history as a working town - fishing, boat building and related trades, light industry - there was even a small airplane factory here at one point. But those folks are getting pushed out. The ones who are still here are largely folks who've been here a really long time and got in before the big real estate gold rush(es). Or come from families who've been here forever.
The folks to our right bought their place a couple of years ago. It's a bog standard mid-century suburban colonial, 3 bed 1 1/2 bath, 1/8 acre plot. It went for almost $900K. They're working people - postal worker and museum gift shop buyer - so maybe there's some family money there, who knows. But holy crap, that's a lot of money for a perfectly nice but totally unremarkable house in a perfectly nice but totally unremarkable neighborhood.
That's the scene here.
What that Mets hat does is show an interest in breaking down that barrier. And a refusal to sneer at the people he's talking to.
I'd like to try to be very clear about what I'm saying about Brooks.
I fully believe he wears the Mets hat in an effort to break through social barriers. And who knows, perhaps his conversations about the Mets do expand into topics of greater substance vis a vis our various public and social dilemnas. And no, I'm not being sarcastic in saying that.
And no, I don't believe Brooks is sneering at the people he's talking to, or at anyone in particular.
My issue with Brooks is that he seems to feel that the world's problems can be resolved through improvements in our personal, private virtue.
Want to break through the socio-economic barriers that divide the college-educated professionals from their working class counter-parties?
Sign up for one of the volunteer opportunities on the Weavers' website. In my area, those opportunities are (1) lead playtimes for homeless kids who are living in area shelters and (2) drive seniors to appointments.
Those are great things to do. I have done, and continue to do, similar things that somehow don't appear on his list - put in hours at a local food bank, provide overnight chaperoning for homeless families camping out in my church. Cook meals at a local homeless shelter. And so on.
What I can tell you from my experience with these things is that they *do not solve* the systemic problems that cause families to be homeless, or seniors to be without any form of useful public transportation. For example.
They do not prompt wealthy college-educated folks living in islands of privilege to welcome cops, welders, nurses, and carpenters into their neighborhoods. They certainly and absolutely *DO NOT* prompt those people to do anything that would make lower-income housing more available in their communities, because that would put the assessed values of their own lovely homes at risk. And if the schools in their areas are not up to snuff, they quite often respond by sending their kids to private school, rather than take whatever steps would be needed to improve the local public schools.
Without going into the gory details of my own situation, I can tell you that I live this stuff. Live around it, live with it. The class divide, as Brooks notes, is quite real. But signing up for a two-hour shift playing with homeless kids is not going to solve it. Driving somebody's grandma to her haircut is not going to solve it. Those are more than fine things to do, let's all go do our share of them.
But they don't address the root causes of the class divide. The class divide is fundamentally about money and power - who has it, what can they do with it. Me, a retired white software guy with basically enough money living in a nice suburban bedroom community going and playing with homeless kids at a local shelter *does not house that kids family*. It *does not magically provide that kids family with the resources to get them the hell out of the shelter*.
Right?
And Brooks' digs at the Democrats in the "segregation" piece are unwelcome, and frankly less than honest. The educational "red state surge" is frankly not all that. Some states have improved from really bad to somewhere between middling and pretty good, which is an outstanding result. And that's it. And education in some other red states absolutely suck, as does education in some blue states, or parts of some blue states. And education in some red states is actually exemplary, as it is in some blue states. It doesn't appear to have all that much to do with whether you're in a red state or blue state.
Brooks talks about working people feeling that have no power. And he's not wrong, most of the power in this country belongs to wealthy educated folks. How did that happen?
In this country, historically, the way that working people have gained any measure of political and social power was through organization. Organized labor. Unions.
I don't see Brooks supporting organized labor. I don't see him calling out for greater labor participation in corporate governance. I don't see him calling out for employee ownership or other forms of meaningful equity in businesses.
Those are the things that give working people power.
I don't see Brooks calling for any of the kinds of systemic changes that would actually address the "class divide" by *making the fucking divide smaller*. On the contrary, his history is one of supporting the kinds of (R) policies that exacerbate the problem.
And his solution is for all of us to volunteer to do helpful stuff in our local community to "bridge the divide" and "rebuild social trust".
More meaningful forms of creating social trust, IMO, would be relaxing local zoning rules to make affordable housing in your neighborhood available. Would be supporting institutions like the CFPB so that fucking predatory financial institutions would stop ripping people off. Would be finding a sane way to fund public education so that It's not just rich towns that get good schools. Would be supporting organized labor and employee participation in equity ownership and governance.
I think David Brooks is a decent person. I think he intends good things. And I think he's incapable of challenging the assumptions and policies of the conservative institutions that have been his professional home, and whose policies are largely responsible for the social ills he laments.
He's a nice man. And he doesn't get - seems incapable of getting - the connection between the things he has spent his life endorsing, and the problems he clearly sees. So, his solution to things is for everyone to be nicer, volunteer, and talk to each other.
If you want working people to have more power, support the things that have been the source of that power, historically.
If you want people of different educational and social backgrounds to mix, make it possible for people with less-privileged backgrounds to live in places where the more-privileged people live.
If you want to build social trust, address the gazillion forms of corruption that distort and undermine people's trust in public institutions. Start with making sure that everybody gets to vote, and that their votes aren't neutered by partisan gerrymandering - which of course means walking back yet another bullshit SCOTUS decision.
Trust is built on hearing and respecting each person's voice. It's built on, not just the perception, but the tangible reality of fairness. And not just while you're driving a nice old lady to her haircut, although by all means do it there as well. But also in the voting booth, in the workplace, in the doctor's office. In people's dealings with banks and insurance companies. In the immigration office. Right?
The kind of almost cartoonish venality and abuse of power we see with Trump has been building for decades, and it's the modern conservative movement, in which Brooks is knee-deep, that planned for it, laid the groundwork for it, built the institutions to make it happen.
He won't see that. Doesn't seem capable of seeing that. Where's Kamala's education plan, he asks. It's the (D)'s fault.
Yeah, no it's not. But he'll never own that. So I don't care for him. Don't hate him, don't wish him ill. But don't think he's got much to offer us. For all the reaons enumerated at probably tiresome length above.
And with all of that, I think I've been sufficiently unkind to David Brooks for one day. He's a nice man, in the context of all the shit that is going on he is very, very, very far from being public enemy #1. I appreciate his lack of cynicism and his instinct toward moderation.
The current state of the nation has me in kind of dark place. Thank you for indulging my rant, apparently I needed to get some crap off my chest. I promise I'll do my best to cheer up.
Night all.
russell: I hear you.
Thanks GFTNC.
My comments about Brooks were probably off-topic, and probably not that constructive or useful. I'm sure I do him a disservice, at least to some degree.
I'm generally disgusted with the state of public life here in this country at the moment, and I think it colors my thoughts about a lot of things. Disgusted doesn't quite cover it - angry, broken-hearted, feeling generally helpless to know how to counter the widespread and gob-smacking folly and senseless cruelty that we are obliged to live with, and under, at the moment.
It sucks.
I appreciate your more generous thoughts about Brooks' work, it reminds me to look for the positive.
Better days, y'all.
taking the high road is conceding the contest, and that cannot happen.
This ^^^^
It seems to me that the Mets hat thing is a way of trying to experience goodwill and a human connection between groups who may not have many other interests or passions in common
Yes, I think that is correct. And yes, I agree that trying to make connections and find common ground are good things. And yes, I understand that the motivations of the callow art student in the Pulp song are quite different.
In general, I think Brooks is a decent person.
But I also think there is, probably inevitably, a limit to the degree to which someone from Brooks' background and in Brooks' position can understand and speak for the experience and interests of people who do not share his advantages. Mets hat or not.
Brooks tends to frame things in moralizing terms. I think he does that honestly, because it seems like his personal values and interests lead him to think in those categories. Which I don't fault him for, exactly, but I think it causes him to miss the mark in a lot of ways. And it also makes him seem like something of a scold. To me, anyway.
His argument often seems to be "Gee, we should be better people". Well, OK, yeah, I guess we should all be better people. But transforming the general character of the public doesn't seem like a particularly practical approach to what are actually, in many cases, systemic problems. Problems amenable to concrete solutions, solutions that you could actually implement. And that would actually make people's lives better in ways that would, in turn, make it a hell of a lot easier to be "better people".
It's easier to be virtuous when your larder is full.
And that's probably enough from me about Brooks. He strikes me as a basically decent person. I just can't think of anything I've read of his that seemed especially useful. And, intentional or not, I personally find what I take to be the moralizing tone of his work kind of condescending.
Just my opinion, offered more or less as an aside.
I'd be interested to know whether this is a well known phenomenon
The NAEP stats.
To the degree that the states Brooks calls out have made good progress in their educational outcomes, I applaud them. No snark. Well done, I hope they continue. In general they've advanced from pretty bad to somewhere between not-so-bad and not bad at all, which is actually a big jump, and worth celebrating.
Good job. Keep it up.
If you look at the NAEP stuff you'll see that educational outcomes are not an especially blue state / red state thing. California doesn't do very well, Utah does. IMO it's more about the culture and history of the place, and what resources they bring to the table. Money, yes, but also an investment in the future mindset.
At the risk of coming off like a coastal elitist snob, I note that my adopted home state of Massachusetts does quite well. We aren't smarter than people in other states, we just have a long history of valuing education. A lot of the folks who settled the area were literate people, unusually so for their time. They valued education, and so they created pretty good schools. That culture persisted, and thus we do well on the NAEP stuff.
I'm glad to see that some states that historically have lagged in that area are taking steps to improve. Well done, carry on.
As an aside, I'll also say that Brooks annoys me. Perennially. I think he's sincere and I appreciate what I see as a real lack of cynicism. He seems to honestly be trying to make best sense of the world and his own life.
But I also think he's remarkably clueless. The story about wearing a Mets hat to break the ice with "ordinary people" just makes me think of that Pulp song. You know the one.
I mean, he is genuinely a lifelong fan of the Mets, so by all means wear the hat. And if that helps break the ice, go for it. But I just don't think he's able to see outside of his white-shoe bubble.
He's just not a guy I think I need moral direction from. And that seems to be his primary way of framing his thoughts.
I hope Mr. Brooks will forgive me if I misjudge him here.
And that's enough stream of consciousness from me for one night.
class in America.
Yes, once upon a time there was a greater mix of higher-educated white collar professionals and non-college-grad working people in neighborhoods, schools, and social organizations.
It was like that when I was a kid. Doctors, lawyers, business executives lived in the same neighborhoods as cops, plumbers, local mom-n-pop business owners. Their kids went to the same schools, familes went to the same churches, etc. The doctors and lawyers might live in nicer houses, but still in the same town and general area. So, a while back, but not that far. In living memory, mine at least.
What's different? Among other things, higher-educated white collar professionals make a sh*t-ton more money relative to their non-college-grad working class than they did back then.
This is from 2015 and EPI are a bunch of commies, of course, but it gets the idea across.
Higher-educated white collar professionals used to pay more in taxes. Non-college-educated working people used to be unionized a lot more than they are now.
I don't mean to be reductionist about it, but the increased income gap goes a long way to explaining the class-based segregation Brooks talks about. IMO.
Maybe instead of waxing nostalgic about the loss of our common values and social bonds, we could tax wealthy people a little more and support organized labor.
Sometimes things actually are as simple as that.
As far as the summit goes, it's just another episode in the Donald and Vlad show as far as I can tell. Trump clearly admires Putin, he adores bullies, autocrats, and "tough guys", and Putin checks all of those boxes. He's a Putin wanna-be, and if there is a more despicable role model on the face of the planet than Vladimir Putin, I'm at a loss as to who that might be.
I have no idea how things are going to play out in Ukraine, Canada and the EU will likely have something to say about it all, and Ukraine by god most certainly will. But it's pretty clear to me that Trump is not going to do anything of significance to hinder Putin's desire to annex eastern Ukraine for now, after which he will likely rebuild a bit and return for the rest of the meal.
Trump somehow combines the venality and corruption of Nixon with a breathtaking ignorance and incompetence all his own. He is a deeply stupid man. It's remarkable.