David Brooks has nailed 2010’s political divide:The tea party movement is a large, fractious confederation of Americans who are defined by what they are against. They are against the concentrated power of the educated class. They believe big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals are merging to form self-serving oligarchy — with bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation.
Brooks is describing a populist movement we have followed here, one much bigger than the “tea party” activists. Otherwise, Brooks has it right. People are rallying against “the educated class,” defined as “big government, big business, big media and the affluent professionals,” an elite “merging to form self-serving oligarchy” that inflicts on the rest of us “bloated government, unsustainable deficits, high taxes and intrusive regulation.”
Looking ahead, Brooks believes
the tea party movement will probably be transformed. . . several bright and polished politicians, like Marco Rubio of Florida and Gary Johnson of New Mexico, are unofficially competing to become its de facto leader.
Well, how about Sarah Palin, the most widely known populist today? Oh yes. According to Brooks, “She's a joke. I mean, I just can't take her seriously.”
And Gary Johnson? Future leader?? I follow politics pretty closely, but I had to look Johnson up. A libertarian, his current cause is ending America’s war on drugs. Is Palin really the joke, and Johnson the future leader? More likely, Brooks is flashing his “anybody but Palin” true colors.
Nevertheless, Brooks has captured the big division emerging in American politics today, which is why conservative political commentator Tunku Varadarajan spent a whole entry discussing the Brooks piece. Varadarajan in the "Daily Beast" writes:
populism does not conform to the standard left/right divide. . . The populist’s personality is driven as much by wounded pride as by economic concerns, and so he resents the cultural elitism of the liberal elites, including their patronizing desire to help him, as much as the economic elitism of the wealthy.
Yes, the populists fear and hate the big businesses and Wall Street; but—and this is the heartening thing—they have not let this turn them against capitalism and the free market. They seem truly to have taken in the point, long emphasized by libertarians and others, that big business is not the same thing as capitalism or the free market. . . the Obama administration has finally driven this point home, as it has been an object lesson in how the party of big government is really in bed with big business. . .
I will take [populists] any day over the “educated class,” the bureaucratic mollusks and the defeatist sad sacks in Washington. . . the content of [the Tea Partiers’] politics is deadly serious. The professional politicians will dismiss them at their peril.
1 comment:
Actually, the divide is a lot simpler than that -- it is between those who think they are "entitled" above everybody else, and everybody else, who usually presume that merit and cause and effect should dictate outcomes.
People (everybody else) are just waking up to this colossal betrayal of trust by those who merely used them to gain their own advantage and not want to ensure that those privileges become their permanent entitlements.
The two Dans of Hawaii set a bad precedent and example -- of those who expect to remain at the top of the social hierarchy permanently as though Hawaii was still a monarchy -- instead of rightfully preparing for redundancy and orderly succession. Instead, they kill whomever they feel may be viable successors to them -- and so the gene pool is purged of talent, and mediocre nonentities are the order of the day in the public schools and institutions, including the media -- which has their own illusions and delusions of being the smartest people on the planet.
There's just so much room for those with great ambition but no talent and ability. They need a fresh supply of victims to sacrifice to their gods so they can remain in favor.
Information levels the playing field -- more than education does, which is merely propagating, perpetuating, and defending the old status quo with themselves permanently affixed at the top. And that is what the public schools in Hawaii are ONLY about anymore -- that each public school teacher should be treated and compensated as the governor, because we don 't know how difficult and challenging running a kindergarten is -- and after one or two years, the kids catch on and challenge their authority and so they have to be promoted to management positions in the DOE or the kids will torment them.
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