We’ve All Just Made Fools of Ourselves — Again

Opinion

We’ve All Just Made Fools of Ourselves — Again

The awful corruption of scandal politics.
March 25, 2019

Representative Adam Schiff speaking in 2017 about the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into possible ties between the Trump administration and Russia.Credit...Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times




By David Brooks

Opinion Columnist

“You have a president who, in my opinion, beyond a shadow of a doubt, sought to, however ham-handedly, collude with the Russian government, a foreign power, to undermine and influence our elections.” — Beto O’Rourke, presidential candidate

“I think there’s plenty of evidence of collusion and conspiracy in plain sight.” — Adam Schiff, chairman of House Intelligence Committee

“I called [Trump’s] behavior treasonous, which is to betray one’s trust and aid and abet the enemy, and I stand very much by that claim.” — John Brennan, former C.I.A. director

“The biggest scandal in U.S. history is coming into focus. On Friday Rachel Maddow made it clear. Donald Trump conspired with the enemy.” — Rob Reiner, film director

Maybe it’s time to declare a national sabbath. Maybe it’s time to step back from the scandalmongering and assess who we are right now.

Democrats might approach this moment with an attitude of humility and honest self-examination. It’s clear that many Democrats made grievous accusations against the president that are not supported by the evidence. It’s clear that people like Beto O’Rourke and John Brennan owe Donald Trump a public apology. If you call someone a traitor and it turns out you lacked the evidence for that charge, then the only decent thing to do is apologize.

Republicans and the Sean Hannity-style Trumpians might also approach this moment with an attitude of humility and honest self-examination. For two years they’ve been calling the Mueller investigation a witch hunt. For two years they’ve been spreading the libel that there are no honest brokers in Washington. It’s all a deep-state conspiracy, a swamp. They should apologize for peddling the sort of deep cynicism that undermines our country’s institutions.

And what about the rest of us? What about all the hours we spent speculating about the Mueller report, fantasizing about the Trump ruin or watching and reading speculation about these things? What about the superstructure of scandal politics we have built and live in today?

The sad fact is that Watergate introduced a poison into the American body politic. Richard Nixon’s downfall was just and important, but it opened up the mouthwatering possibility that you don’t need to do the hard work of persuading people to join your side. Instead, you can destroy your foes all at once through scandal.

Politics since Watergate has been defined by a long string of scandals and pseudo-scandals — Iran-contra, Whitewater, Valerie Plame, Benghazi, Solyndra, swift-boating. Politico last year compiled a list of 46 scandals that were at one time or another deemed “worse than Watergate.”

The nation’s underlying divides are still ideological, but we rarely fight them honestly as philosophical differences. We just accuse the other side of corruption. Politics is no longer a debate; it’s an attempt to destroy lives through accusation.

The political media, especially on TV, now has a template it can apply whenever a scandal looms into view, to hook viewers into the speculative story line. According to the Tyndall Report, the three main broadcast networks made the Russia collusion investigation the second-most-covered news event of 2018, trailing only the Kavanaugh hearings, another scandal.

All the players slip into their assigned roles. Straight reporters are doing good, hard work. But the flow of information is not fast enough to keep up with 24/7 programming, so you get this toxic deluge of raw speculation.

The accused’s political opponents assume maximum guilt. Imaginative pundits take a few dots of information and connect them to vast if speculative constellations of guilt. “I hear the indictments are coming down next week,” they whisper to one another.

Members of the accused’s party attack the investigators themselves. They get to enjoy their own sense of spiritual superiority when it turns out the scandal is much smaller than it appeared, which is almost always the case.

It’s all a wonderful game. You don’t have to know anything about a boring policy subject like economics, poverty or foreign affairs. You can have a long career in politics and media by simply treating public life as an arena of life-or-death gossip.

Since Watergate launched this Age of Investigation, government has become much more transparent. As a result, public trust in institutions has plummeted. The scandal culture hasn’t ultimately helped one party over the other. It’s just spread a corrosive cynicism that has disabled government altogether.

The ray of hope is that out on the campaign trail voters rarely ask about the scandals du jour, which obsess the cognoscenti. Most of the Democratic presidential candidates spent the last few months trying not to talk about Russian collusion. They have found a vein of voters who would rather focus on the substance of our historical moment: What motivated so many Americans to vote for a presidential candidate they knew was untrustworthy? How do you provide affordable health security? Is China a mortal foe?

The Democrats won the 2018 midterms by focusing on the issues, not collusion. For most voters, politics is about their lives, not a self-righteous TV show.

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David Brooks has been a columnist with The Times since 2003. He is the author of “The Road to Character” and the forthcoming book, “The Second Mountain.” @nytdavidbrooks

Source

We’ve All Just Made Fools of Ourselves — Again

The awful corruption of scandal politics.

By David Brooks
Opinion Columnist
March 25, 2019

Representative Adam Schiff speaking in 2017 about the House Intelligence Committee's investigation into possible ties between the Trump administration and Russia.

Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

“You have a president who, in my opinion, beyond a shadow of a doubt, sought to, however ham-handedly, collude with the Russian government, a foreign power, to undermine and influence our elections.” — Beto O’Rourke, presidential candidate
“I think there’s plenty of evidence of collusion and conspiracy in plain sight.” — Adam Schiff, chairman of House Intelligence Committee
“I called [Trump’s] behavior treasonous, which is to betray one’s trust and aid and abet the enemy, and I stand very much by that claim.” — John Brennan, former C.I.A. director
“The biggest scandal in U.S. history is coming into focus. On Friday Rachel Maddow made it clear. Donald Trump conspired with the enemy.” — Rob Reiner, film director

Maybe it’s time to declare a national sabbath. Maybe it’s time to step back from the scandalmongering and assess who we are right now.
Democrats might approach this moment with an attitude of humility and honest self-examination. It’s clear that many Democrats made grievous accusations against the president that are not supported by the evidence. It’s clear that people like Beto O’Rourke and John Brennan owe Donald Trump a public apology. If you call someone a traitor and it turns out you lacked the evidence for that charge, then the only decent thing to do is apologize.

A priest's powerful impact on the New York Times' David Brooks

David Brooks. Credit: David Burnett (B&W) 2011.


Denver, Colo., May 21, 2015 / 04:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- New York Times columnist, best-selling author and all-around pundit David Brooks has made headlines recently for his bold new book making the case for a societal return to morality.

Perhaps lesser known, however, is some of the inspiration behind the work – a humble priest described by Brooks as an “insanely joyful” man who sparked a nagging, internal question. Why was this cleric so happy and fulfilled?

What followed was a meticulously researched and engaging book which poses a provocative thesis: we as a modern society are cultivating outwardly impressive but ultimately superficial “resume virtues” – not character. And it's costing us dearly, the author says, both personally and communally.

In a conversation with CNA editors, Brooks recounted his experience with the priest along with his thoughts on why his book – “The Road to Character” (Random House/2015) – is so important, and how it speaks to everything from politics, to religion to education.

He also gave a hat tip to Pope Francis, whom he called “the embodiment of being a Christian.”

Below is the full Q&A, edited for clarity.

You're very brave – all of your recent headlines explicitly touting the need for “morality.” Your book's glaring reference to “sin.” Has there been any fallout from this? What's the reaction been from your peers?

A friend of mine who is an editor at another publishing house – a really good editor – called me and said, you know, I love the way you talk about your book, but I wouldn't use the word “sin” – it's just such a downer, so you should use the word “insensitive.” I of course think that “insensitive” is very paltry substitute for the word “sin,” so there has been some pushback on that. And, there’s some hostility towards religion in general. The book is not super religious, but it does have religious characters, and certainly religious words and religious context. But I'd say the main reaction has just been welcoming. People are hungry for a conversation. And so, whether people are Christian, Jewish, atheist – I've been sort of surprised by the general desire to be in this general field of conversation.

When did you realize in your own life that you'd been building “resume virtues” instead of forming your character?

There wasn't one big thing – but there were certain moments in my life when I saw people who had spiritual and moral gifts that I lacked. One of them was a guy named Monsignor Ray East, who is a priest in the Anacostia neighborhood in D.C. – a very poor neighborhood. He was part of a lunch I do every year for Catholic Relief Services, which I do with my friend, Mark Shields. And every year, Monsignor East would give the benediction. He was just insanely joyful – such an insanely joyful man, and I was just so struck by him. Just being in his presence would lift me up for a few weeks. I had the realization that whatever I had achieved in career terms, I haven't achieved the inner joy that he possesses. And I was just curious: how do you get that?

In your book, you talk about a cultural shift over the last 50 plus years away from humility – and a natural sense of self-effacement people had – into the notion of the “big me.” What caused this?

There are many aspects, of course. One of them derives from the consumer society, that teaches that you have these desires and you should satisfy them, and so you should just go around satisfying your desires. And so I think you come to believe that your desires are good and to have tremendous trust in them – and that is a shift away from what people thought in previous centuries. Second, after WWII, people had been through deprivation and had seen a lot of darkness, from the Holocaust and just the death that WWII created. (A series of books from the time promoted the idea) that when we look inside ourselves, we see that our nature is beautiful and full of good and that we need to love ourselves more. That too is a sharp break from the biblical tradition which says that we are broken – so there was both a commercial and philosophical shift that happened.

A recent Pew survey documents the rise of “nones” – religiously unaffiliated people – in the U.S. With the general decline of those who identify as religious, would you say this correlates to a general lack of emphasis on character?

They go along together – character is the ability to commit to things outside of yourself, whether it is a political movement, or faith, or friendship, or a love affair, or a cause. I think people have a harder time committing. They are more autonomous, more individual, they have FOMO (fear of missing out) so they don't want to ruin any option, and that leads to a general era of de-commitment. People are walking away from political parties, from organized faith – they are just living more individually. And I think that's due to our inability to commit to things.

What about education? How does the school system help or hinder your concept of the need for more virtuous people?

I think obviously Catholic schools can teach us specific code, specific theology, but public schools really can't. I do think that they can familiarize students with the religions and the faiths and the philosophies that are out there. So what I do when I teach a course is say: here are a bunch of moral ontologies, different systems that people have come up with. There is a Greek system favoring honor and courage, the Jewish faith favoring obedience and law, the Christian system favoring grace and humility – I'm not going to tell you which one to pick, but here are a bunch of systems, do what seems true to you. But we don't even give students the words or an education there. I think we have to at least make them literate in spirituality and moral matters.

Let's move to politics. Many of the U.S. founding fathers either implied or explicitly said that democracy will only work if we are a nation comprised of people with character. What are the implications of your thesis for the American experiment?

I think that our founders were very clear on that. A healthy country requires a decent citizenry. And they also believed that statecraft is soulcraft – that in forming a government we’re helping to shape the character of the people within it. I think as we’ve lost the whole vocabulary and the whole focus, we now focus a lot on economics and economics as really the gateway between all social thinking and government policy.

And that’s not true – that doesn’t evaluate what people seek...And so we've kind of neutered the public square. I'm not the kind of person who thinks we're in a state of national decline or anything like that. I think people find ways to behave decently towards one another as best as they can. But I just think we’re inarticulate and that we could be living satisfying and more fulfilling lives if we actually had words and more – greater – self-consciousness and better road maps for how to lead a life of depth and kindness.

Is social media to blame for some of our narcissistic, “big me” tendencies as a society?

I'm not hugely fearful about it. I don't think Facebook is making us lonelier. I don't think video games are making us more violent. The two things I do think are: first, social media and the desire for likes and attention on Instagram and such is amplifying the self where we are broadcasting ourselves and just sort of being big about ourselves and win fame. And I do think social media damages our attention span. I've certainly noticed that in myself where I have trouble reading for long periods of time without checking my phone. So I do think that's probably the most harmful thing that’s happened to us. Moral reflection takes stillness. You've got to hear that soft voice inside...So I think those are the two things I worry about.

What, in a concrete, practical sense can your readers take away from your book? What effect do you want to have on people?

First, I just want them to live in this space and think about this world. Second, I think we become better people by copying others. So I hope they’re excited by some of the characters and they just want to live a life like Dorothy Day or live a life like Philip Randolph. I think that’s how we are motivated – by exemplars.

As for the practical things, some of them are mundane. I have a friend who when he goes home at night he asks how he did in his struggle against his core weakness that day and he resolves ways to do better. I think you can surround yourself by friends and also by heroes – people you can put on your walls in your room who remind what a decent, good life looks like. I think you can have discussion groups raising the subjects of: how do you turn suffering into a moral occasion? How do you build your relationships?

So there's a spiritual component. I think you learn from Samuel Johnson the virtue of reading and how just having a settled philosophy of life is important in having and living a life of character. You can learn from Francis Perkins about a vocation. You can ask, what is the mortal world around me calling me to do right now?

I think there are a few different things that can be done. There's no seven step process to doing it but there's a lifelong journey that I'm hoping people find different avenues towards.

As a Catholic news entity, we'd be remiss if we didn't ask your opinion on Pope Francis...

I have a quote in the book from Dave Jolly, a veterinarian, who says ‘the message is the person’ - the way we communicate, what we value is not necessarily from the theology that we found, but by the way we act, the way we are. And I think Pope Francis is the perfect exemplification of that. I'm not a huge expert in Catholic theology but I like the way he handles himself and I admire the way he behaves in matters large and small. So to me, he simply is the embodiment of being a Christian. He radiates love, radiates joy, shows mercy, shows empathy. That's the way Jesus asks Christians to live and Pope Francis lives that way. And so the message is the person.

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Brooks travels 'The Road to Character'

Gregory Korte, USA TODAY9:36 p.m. EDT May 10, 2015



(Photo: Random House)


One of David Brooks' great virtues as a columnist is his unpredictability. Hired as the token conservative on The New York Times' op-ed page, he's become the liberal's favorite conservative writer, alternately infuriating those on the far right and the far left. His columns often diverge into varied and non-political subjects like the psychology of pitching and the meaning of meaningfulness.

But in many parts of the commentariat, he's seen as also an off-putting egghead moralist — something Brooks acknowledges in the opening pages of The Road to Character (**1/2 out of four), his examination of how human nature has evolved from the classical era to the age of social media and the selfie stick.

"I'm paid to be a narcissistic blowhard, to volley my opinions, to appear more confident about them than I really am," he writes. "I have to work harder than most people to avoid a life of smug superficiality."

That confession is the closest Brooks comes to a first-person confrontation with his own character. The Road to Character is not a memoir, but a series of hagiographic essays extolling virtues of humility, self-sacrifice, discipline and generosity.

The soundbite thesis of the book is this: There are résumé virtues, the kinds of talents and job skills that lead to material success, and there are eulogy virtues, the kinds of things you'd like to be remembered for after you die: kindness, honesty, faithfulness.

Borrowing from Joseph Soloveitchik, an Orthodox Rabbi, Brooks calls these Adam I values and Adam II values. In the first chapter of Genesis, Adam I is created in the image of God, and is told to "fill the earth and subdue it." Adam I is ego-centered, majestic and masterful.

But there's a different creation story in the second chapter, where Adam II is created from dust. Adam II is humble, vulnerable and communal. "It is not good for man to be alone," God says.

Throughout the book, Brooks uses words like sin, vocation, soul and grace — words loaded with religious meaning but which Brooks tries to humanize and secularize. He argues for a new moral vocabulary to help balance out the more self-aggrandizing tendencies of modern society.

In the biographies that form the meat of the book, Brooks chooses as subjects religious figures such as St. Augustine of Hippo and Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker Movement (herself on the road to sainthood); civil rights leaders like A. Philip Randolphand Bayard Rustin; military leaders like Dwight Eisenhower and George Marshall; and writers like George Eliot and Samuel Johnson.

At his best, Brooks is a normative version of Malcolm Gladwell, culling from a wide array of scientists and thinkers to weave an idea bigger than the sum of its parts.

The book grew out of a course Brooks taught at Yale University, and it sometimes reads like a series of undergraduate essays, with great thinkers thrown in haphazardly in an effort to impress the teacher. Like his columns, Brooks' chapters can be original and eye-opening, or inconsistent and hard to follow.

The title of The Road to Character suggests a map to help the reader develop the eulogy virtues. But it's not quite a self-help book, which Brooks sees as a fool's errand anyway. "The existence of more and more self-help books is proof that they rarely work," he writes.

Instead, he says, "I wrote this book not sure I could follow the road to character, but I wanted at least to know what the road looks like and how other people have trodden it."

It's not until the acknowledgements that the reader learns that this book wasn't supposed to be about character at all. What was conceived as a book about "cognition and decision-making" evolved into one about "morality and inner life."

Brooks can be unpredictable, even to himself.

The Road to Character

By David Brooks

Random House, 270 pp.

2½ out of four stars

Gregory Korte is a White House reporter for USA TODAY. Follow @gregorykorte on Twitter.

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