David Brooks Meets the Devil

David Brooks Meets the Devil

Lillian Rubin: David Brooks Meets the Devil

I?m a fan of David Brooks, even when I don?t like his politics. I admire his intellect, his ability to construct an argument, to make me stop and think. So my first response to his New York Times column, ?Faustus Makes a Deal,? was: ?Oh, that?s clever. He?s right; the country keeps moving further to the right.? But then as I looked at his argument, so simple and so satisfying, I had lots of other thoughts. The big one is this: He gives too much credit to liberals for the kind of Machiavellian strategy he lays out–that is, planning and machinating to bring about all the catastrophes that have struck us lately from economic meltdown to oil spill. When was the last time you even heard of the fractious liberal-left ever being united enough to develop a strategy, let alone implement it? In truth, what he lays out here isn?t a Faustian deal but what he imagines to be a Trotskyist plot: leave capitalism alone and it will get so harsh that the iron fist will come out of the velvet glove, and the masses will see the light. But remind me: who was it that left capitalism alone?

Given that the Democratic Party is supported by the same corporate-capitalist interests as the Republicans, and that Americans (even poor ones) are so firmly in the capitalist mindset that they aren?t even outraged when the Republican establishment and their mouthpieces apologize to BP for President Obama?s insistence that they compensate the victims of their neglect, the whole idea of a Trotskyist plot seems to me like a delusion. So I have to assume that Brooks has either forgotten (which is too bad for such a smart guy) or he truly believes (which is even worse) that the sixteen Bush-Reagan years of deregulation and strangling of any meaningful oversight don?t count in creating a rapacious corporate and financial world that brought us to the brink of disaster.

This is not to say that the Obama administration hasn?t made some mistakes, or that the President hasn?t been aggressive enough in fulfilling the promises–explicit and implicit–that got him elected. Nor do I overlook the lock-step determination of the Republican minority to frustrate any proposal of this administration, even those they formerly supported. But none of that makes Brooks? argument of a Faustian bargain anything more than a literate version of Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, Bachman & Co., who fulminate that Obama and the liberals are engaged in a socialist plot to overthrow American capitalism.