David Brooks Calls For The Bobos To Rise Up!
Anyone who's able to get past both paywalls just like that is probably subscribed to a good deal else besides The New York Times and Matt Taibbi's substack -- for starters, maybe The Atlantic and The Wall Street Journal, which means they're likely paying hundreds of dollars a year, or maybe expensing it, to get material that's not worth that kind of money. And at least it used to be blogger etiquette not to link to items behind paywalls. But that's Glenn Reynolds and Salem Media these days.
Taibbi quotes a single paragraph from Brooks:
We live in a country with catastrophically low levels of institutional trust. University presidents, big law firms, media organizations and corporate executives face a wall of skepticism and cynicism. If they are going to participate in a mass civic uprising against Trump, they have to show the rest of the country that they understand the establishment sins that gave rise to Trump in the first place. . . [that] this is not just defending the establishment; it’s moving somewhere new.
Taibbi himself comments,
It’s hard to convey the scale of the comedy in this article, which received a lot of attention. Brooks lifts the opening from Genesis (“In the beginning there was agony”) and the ending from the Communist Manifesto (see below). In between lay a call for “mass civic uprising” which spends much of its time trying to figure out where to find the “civic” part, after drafting corporate lawyers, university administrators, “corporate executives,” reporters, and — what other kinds of people live in America? It’s either the funniest revolutionary manifesto ever, or the most touching. You be the judge:
So, if it's "received a lot of attention", maybe I can find more free bits and pieces elsewhere. I did a web search on "David Brooks normal rebellion" and got not a whole lot, but at the Daily Kos I found an additional two paragraphs:
It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.
Peoples throughout history have done exactly this when confronted by an authoritarian assault. In their book, “Why Civil Resistance Works,” Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan looked at hundreds of nonviolent uprisings. These movements used many different tools at their disposal — lawsuits, mass rallies, strikes, work slowdowns, boycotts and other forms of noncooperation and resistance.
The writer there says, "he is... IMO... on the spot with this." Mediaite has a more play-by-play sort of summary:
Conservative [sic] New York Times columnist David Brooks has called for a mass uprising to oppose President Donald Trump, going so far as to quote The Communist Manifesto.
In a blistering piece published on Thursday, Brooks wrote that modern civilization is buttressed by several pillars, including “Constitutions to restrain power, international alliances to promote peace, legal systems to peacefully settle disputes, scientific institutions to cure disease, news outlets to advance public understanding, charitable organizations to ease suffering, businesses to build wealth and spread prosperity, and universities.”
He went on to say that Trump threatens all of these because the president is only interested in the acquisition of power “for its own sake” and is engaged in “a multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men.”
Noting that Trump has targeted law firms, government agencies, NATO, and global trade, Brooks said these various efforts are part of a singular mission to reverse the “civilizational order.”
. . . Brooks went on to defend universities, which he has criticized for their progressivism.
Nonetheless, he said, “I have seen it over and over: A kid comes on campus as a freshman, inquisitive but unformed. By senior year, there is something impressive about her. She is awakened, cultured, a critical thinker. The universities have performed their magic once again.”
He added that the civic uprising should “have a short-term vision and a long-term vision. Short term: Stop Trump. Foil his efforts. Pile on the lawsuits. Turn some of his followers against him. The second is a long-term vision of a fairer society that is not just hard on Trump, but hard on the causes of Trumpism — one that offers a positive vision.”
In closing, he quotes Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
“I’m really not a movement guy,” he wrote. “I don’t naturally march in demonstrations or attend rallies that I’m not covering as a journalist. But this is what America needs right now. Trump is shackling the greatest institutions in American life. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
In one instance here, Brooks unintentionally undermines his own point. In an effort at pronoun probity, he says of a college freshman, "By senior year, there is something impressive about her. She is awakened, cultured, a critical thinker." According to the Pew Research Center,
College enrollment among young Americans has been declining gradually over the past decade. In 2022, the total number of 18- to 24-year-olds enrolled in college was down by approximately 1.2 million from its peak in 2011.
Most of the decline is due to fewer young men pursuing college. About 1 million fewer young men are in college but only 0.2 million fewer young women. As a result, men make up 44% of young college students today, down from 47% in 2011, according to newly released U.S. Census Bureau data.
This shift is driven entirely by the falling share of men who are students at four-year colleges. Today, men represent only 42% of students ages 18 to 24 at four-year schools, down from 47% in 2011.
So college enrollment is declining -- wait. Doesn't that mean fewer bobos overall? But of those who are going to four-year colleges now, only 42% are men, which has implications for who will join Brooks's not normal uprising -- mostly women. Women with four-year degrees.It's also plain that Brooks sees this not as the proletarian revolution that Marx and Engels envisioned, but a revoluton of the bourgeois bohemian class he hinmself invented in Bobos in Paradise: lawyers (especially white shoe types), MBAs, nonprofit administrators, university administrators, legacy media columnists and reporters, scientists, and civil servants. Of these, most will be women. But think about it for a mement. Who are the revolutionary vanguard of the bobo uprising?
Of course. The refined and educated managers, scientists, and civil servants who've been keying Teslas while taking their daily neighborhod strolls from their homes and condos. What they're doing, of course, is damaging the environmentally friendly Teslas that are pricey assets owned by members of their own class. Might it not be more strategic to key, say, gas-guzzling Toyotas? That's what Brooks seems to think Trump voters drive. Nobody's proposed that yet.
Actually, I can only begin to imagine what Toyota owners might do to a non-profit administrator toff who wandered into their neighborhood to key their cars. I'm not sure that sort of revolutionary tactic will take hold anytime soon.
Brooks calls for lawsuits, which we're getting, bizarre as they may be. But he also wants to see "mass rallies, strikes, work slowdowns, boycotts and other forms of noncooperation and resistance", which we're so far not seeing. What we do see is bobos keying Teslas that are owned by other bobos. Brooks is at least right that this uprising, whatever else it may be, is not normal.
