Halfway through a talk peppered with quips calling Costco “Wal-Mart on acid” and describing a future economic crash on the scale of “Greece, Argentina, or the rise and fall of the Roman Empire,” I realized I actually liked David Brooks.
While Brooks’ predictions of a more conservative government after the midterm elections and “two years of posturing for 2012” to follow frustrated me, his belief in the current generation’s ability to save the world filled me with pride in my peers for all of the great things we have yet to accomplish.
Hearing Brooks place such high hopes in this new generation — my generation — was his number one sell for me. Too often people write off youth as being irresponsible and vapid, but Brooks suggested just the opposite. In a place and time Brooks described as filled with “moral materialism,” he also described the youth of our country as “leading a cultural revitalization.”
In stark contrast to advertisements warning us we need safe cars and good insurance to protect against the youthful menace of teen drivers, Brooks’ claim that the young would save the world made him seem to be a hero in his own right: a grown-up who saw the young as something other than hoodlums.
Brooks seems to be an overall optimistic man. As a committed cynic I strongly admire this trait. It takes a very big man to watch a Tea Party protest filled with signs declaring Obama an incarnation of Hitler and see, as Brooks does, a crowd of good people trying to make sense of and fix an unjust world.
Even on the subject I expected to disagree with Brooks the most on — Barack Obama and the current administration — I found him reasonable. Brooks did not claim we were being forced into socialism unseen since the death of Karl Marx. Instead, Brooks calmly described the administration as a bit “hyperactive.” While this is not exactly my understanding of the last few months, it is not an unfounded claim. I can see where the administration may have overestimated their abilities. It is very hard to completely disagree with someone when you can see the merits of their argument.
After the talk, Brooks met with a smaller group of students, including myself. It was that small discussion that sealed my opinion of Brooks.
During this talk Brooks summed up an unfortunate trend in today’s political punditry with a simple statement: “(Televised journalism) encourages passion in the competition for attention.” Brooks said this in the context of discussing the angry, semi-incoherent rants that have become commonplace in today’s news cycle. According to Brooks, it is easier to write these rants because of the momentum they create.
I have to say he is right. For the second time in a row, I have taken an article on a topic I was expecting to be furiously impassioned by, with the expectation words would simply fall out of me and onto the page. For the second time, I have been proven wrong.
During his talk, I realized David Brooks is actually a reasonable man, and that has made writing this piece that much harder.