David Brooks Starts To Open His Eyes

He's Not Awake Yet, But Stretching In His Bed

David Brooks is the resident New York Times conservative. That means he is a RINO at best, and would find more in common with Mitt Romney and Lisa Murkowski than he would Rand Paul or JD Vance. He’s a University of Chicago graduate. UChicago is an elite institution where smart people go and very highly regarded and accomplished professors work. I point that out because in his article he states, “Only 0.8 percent of all college students graduate from the super elite 12 schools (the Ivy League colleges, plus Stanford, M.I.T., Duke and the University of Chicago).”

I graduated from Chicago Booth, an elite institution. But, the people I grew up with are the people that David Brooks thinks are “less educated” than himself because Brooks is a Chicago grad and they went to a “lesser college”. Just like me. I went to USAFA, dropped out. Junior college then Illinois. Thank goodness I finally made it to Chicago so I could be on Brooks's level.

At my junior college, I was one of the only White kids on the team. I was great pals with plenty of my teammates and I learned about their path. A lot of them had great difficulty because their prior experiences in school didn’t prepare them for even junior college. But, some of them made it out and led a successful life. They got married and had kids.

The American Dream isn’t to be rich or prestigious. Brooks and his ilk tend to see things that way. The American Dream is to be able to pursue the life you want with freedom. Everyone doesn’t get a trophy, but everyone has a chance.

50% of my high school didn’t go to college. If they did, they went to junior colleges or lesser schools for the most part. In many cases, they were the first kids in their family to go to school or because they couldn’t qualify for a hardship scholarship at an Ivy, they went to “Directional U”. For what it’s worth, the Ivies recruited me for basketball but my family didn’t qualify for a scholarship, and we didn’t have that kind of money. We also didn’t believe in graduating with a lot of debt. A very small minority of friends from my school did go to very elite institutions and did well. But, for the most part, they never forgot where they came from.

My life has straddled both sides of the divide. I know it. I lived it.

The Ivy League network is exclusionary. They are trained to look down their noses at the rest of the world. Most of the network migrates to urban areas, primarily NYC. This magazine cover is satire, but it’s not far from the truth. An updated cover today would show San Francisco, with the campuses of Stanford and Berkeley populated by chauffer-driven Teslas. Unfortunately for Mr. Brooks and myself, Chicago is barely on the map.

I mention his school because UChicago is an elite school. For the right person, it can be a tremendous place to go to school. But, just because you went there doesn’t mean you don’t put your trousers on one leg at a time. Mr. Brooks wrote an article asking if people like him were the bad guys. The answer is an emphatic yes, but it is much more nuanced than a simple black-and-white bad vs good idea. Perhaps Mr. Brooks could engage the Socratic method he supposedly learned at UChicago to discern why his class is the bad guy.

His tone in the article is evidence that he is not fully awake yet. It is a tone that continues to look down his nose at the people who aren’t like him. It’s sort of like when a city person goes to a rural area and tells them what they are doing wrong. It is a self-congratulatory tone and I hope he doesn’t break his arm patting himself on the back.

The people like Brooks can’t understand Trump and never saw him coming. Hence, Trump is evil and must be stopped at all costs.

For people in the “lower class”, they are ticked. Paraphrasing the frat boys in Animal House, they say, “We fucked up, we trusted you.” Now it’s full-on war.

I have a very good friend that is in the golf business. Golf is an elite sport. He has all kinds of people come to his golf courses. All colors. He has all kinds of people working at his golf courses. When Trump declared for the Presidency in August 2015, he said there is no chance anyone will better him. He said, “save your money and get on the Trump train.” He was right and he was seeing things early.

I asked him why. He said the people that work and patronize his golf courses understand Trump. They will follow him and vote for him. They did. Hillary and her people are in the same bubble as David Brooks. They don’t get it and even if like Mark Zuckerberg they spend a few months milking cows, they still don’t get it.

I get it.

I agree with people that think Trump is a narcissist. He’s a barroom brawler. He makes you uncomfortable. He is combative. He is the bull in the China shop. His politics are scorched earth. He doesn’t act politely when he lets people go and if someone disagrees with him his temper doesn’t just flare but becomes an incendiary fire. He hurts himself with his actions as much as he hurts anyone else. Trump is his own worst enemy.

But, Trump’s ethos is in the right place even if all of his policies weren’t. That’s what people like Brooks don’t see and people who are looked down upon by Brooks's card-carrying class see clearly.

Brooks and his card-carrying class think going to a place like Mississippi is some exotic excursion into points unknown. My daughter went to Ole Miss. Brooks would never even consider sending his kids to a state school unless it was the University of Pennsylvania. By the way, the people of Mississippi are truly nice and I met a lot of super interesting people when my daughter went there. Some of them have bank accounts that would put most New Yorkers to shame.

Brooks’ class recoils at fast food, especially Chik-Fil-A. NASCAR was dirty but Formula One is cool. Pimm’s Cup is wonderful, but who would drink a Boilermaker?

When you put on your sportcoat and slacks and go to parties to have conversations with people like David Brooks they go something like this. “Well, we would never do that but for those people it’s good.” That policy "isn't for people like us" but it's "good for Americans"-when that's said, what's David Brooks’s reaction? My gut turns over.

Better yet, you go to those parties and one of the elites asks if they should “know” you or not. If it is important to “know” you, then you will be approached and flattered, even if you went to a lesser school. That’s because somehow their social standing is improved because they had a conversation with you and know you, or you can do something for them or their kids.

People like Brooks don’t socialize with you purely because they are interested or like you.

That being said, there are people that attend those schools and have important jobs that are exactly like me and we get along great. We don’t always agree and we won’t, but there is empathy and understanding. We find some commonality that holds us together. People like Brooks don’t exhibit those qualities. They find separation and look for ways to separate.

Here is an example of the tone, and the tenor of people like David Brooks.

Donald Trump seems to get indicted on a weekly basis. Yet he is utterly dominating his Republican rivals in the polls, and he is tied with Joe Biden in the general election surveys. Trump’s poll numbers are stronger against Biden now than at any time in 2020.

What’s going on here? Why is this guy still politically viable, after all he’s done?

Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch hunt? Of course not. As a card-carrying member of my class, I still basically trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice. Trump is a monster in the way we’ve all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison.

Maybe Brooks should try and answer other questions.

• Why is a person like Joe Biden politically viable after selling out his office to enrich his family? Hillary Clinton? Why are they even respected?

• Why doesn’t Brooks ask hard questions about Fauci and his handling of Covid along with all the money he funneled to labs that in all probability engaged in gain of function research that caused Covid?

• Does Brooks still think the Covid vaccine worked? Can he point to any objective data why? Further, does he think that lockdowns and masking worked? Or was it a big charade spurred on by opponents of Trump to get rid of Trump?

• Why doesn’t Brooks look at Big Tech and the actions of the government to kill the free speech rights of normal Americans? How can he not see it? We don’t understand. Perhaps he can clearly explain himself.

• Why does he refer to himself as a card-carrying member of an elite class instead of just an American citizen the same as any other American citizen? David Brooks is in this picture but instead of admiring, he would be admonishing that man to sit down and shut up.

  

• Why can’t he grasp that in fact, it might be a political witch hunt? The Russian Dossier was a lie, and formulated by Hillary Clinton and acted upon by Adam Schiff and the Democrats. The FBI was 100% corrupt and still is. The current DOJ is acting like a political arm of a fascist government yet Brooks can’t put the pieces together which shows he is still safely ensconced in his bubble. Holiday (not Christmas in his circles) Party invitations will be in the mail soon and so will invitations to the Hamptons.

• Does Brooks think the George Floyd riots were about racism? If so, explain clearly. The great unwashed that Brooks is not a card-carrying member of see those riots as an excuse to undermine Trump, and a brazen plan to enrich a few Marxists in the name of racism no different than Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton.

This quote is telling.

We anti-Trumpers often tell a story to explain that. It was encapsulated in a quote the University of North Carolina political scientist Marc Hetherington gave to my colleague Thomas B. Edsall recently: “Republicans see a world changing around them uncomfortably fast, and they want it to slow down, maybe even take a step backward. But if you are a person of color, a woman who values gender equality or an L.G.B.T. person, would you want to go back to 1963? I doubt it.”

First, why 1963? Every time I see one of the elites talk about social issues like this they select the year 1963. When you watch PBS it seems like every show goes back to the early 1960s. As if we haven’t moved on. The simple fact is, America has moved far beyond 1963 and people like David Brooks haven’t. They need 1963 as their focal point so their logic makes sense.

Brooks talks of a “meritocracy” except we who aren’t in Brooks's meritocracy know exactly what that means. It means privilege for the credentialed people and we struggle for what’s left.

Like all members of his class, Brooks convolutes statistics to support his arguments ignoring basic things that might be “wrong think”. His stats on marriage are a perfect case and point. Out-of-wedlock births are high among people who didn’t graduate from college because the Black out-of-wedlock birthrate skews the stats. Yet, you can’t say that in polite company because the solutions to that problem are painful, and not centralized government related. If you did, the response from people like Brooks would be “Thank goodness we still have a lot of access to abortion.”

Because you know that killing poor kids is a great solution to societal ills.

Another issue Brooks would find hard to grasp is school choice. People in Mr. Brooks class put a lot of faith in institutions. No way would they go out of their way to hurt people. Really? During Covid that hurtful ethos was on full display. The education bureaucracy didn’t even try to hide it. Who was hurt the most? Public school kids. The private school kids were Brooks’s class sent their children had a few ripples but they were able to overcome it. If not, they were wealthy enough to hire tutors who would come to their homes.

We watch as corrupt politicians like Biden and Clinton use their office to enrich themselves and it grates on us. We watch corruption in our local governments. We watch Nancy Pelosi give us a tour of her kitchen with Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream brimming in her SubZero refrigerators meanwhile she is one of the best stock traders in American history and we know we are locked out of that sort of arrangement. But Brooks and his ilk aren’t. They get the favors.

Do we really think Hunter Biden matriculated to Yale Law based on some sort of meritocracy? Is he that intelligent? Do we really think that JB Pritzker was some sort of genius so he was able to go to Duke undergrad and Northwestern Law? His sister attended Stanford and Harvard. Could it be the fact that their family donated millions to those schools a part of the equation?

Here is where Brooks still keeps his veil on. He is still asleep.

Are Trump supporters right that the indictments are just a political witch hunt? Of course not. As a card-carrying member of my class, I still basically trust the legal system and the neutral arbiters of justice. Trump is a monster in the way we’ve all been saying for years and deserves to go to prison.

We know that the legal system in the United States works differently for people like Brooks than it does for us. We can cite chapter and verse on many many cases far outside of Trump. Harvey Weinstein, Alec Baldwin, Jeffrey Epstein, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton just to name a couple of high-profile ones. In my home state of Illinois, the wheels of justice turn slowly for people like Ed Burke and Michael Madigan.

We have seen the justice system be used politically to destroy good people. Michael Flynn is one example.

If I, or anyone like me, did the same things as those people, we would have been behind bars in less than a year. So when Trump says that we are “next”, we immediately understand it.

Continuously, we are told by media and institutions that we suck. We are told we are narrow-minded when we aren’t. We are told that government solutions are best when we know they aren’t. We are told to “conserve” and “use less”, “avoid” and “the community should come together to” do whatever and people like Brooks don’t have to do any of those things and in fact, flaunt the fact they don’t. Hey, there goes John Kerry in his private jet to fight global warming.

When we question, we are demeaned. When we see things happen and take civil action, we are dragged out of the meeting. Remember when the trans person raped the girl in Loudon County and the school covered it up? Who got the worst of it? The trans person that raped the girl or the girl’s family? That symbolizes the difference between people like Brooks and people like us.

Brooks and some people like him are just starting to stir. It will take a long detox in Elites Anonymous to really help them see the light.