Thomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
Moralizing Nostalgia Leads to Bad History – and Helps the Anti-Democratic Right
 
David Brooks’ “How America Got Mean” offers an ahistorical tale that obscures rather than illuminates – and provides fertile ground for a politics of reaction.
 
A thread, based on my new piece: https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/moralizing-nostalgia-leads-to-bad
Moralizing Nostalgia Leads to Bad History – and Helps the Anti-Democratic Right

David Brooks’ “How America Got Mean” offers an ahistorical tale that obscures rather than illuminates – and provides fertile ground for a politics of reaction

Democracy Americana
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
The story Brooks tells is one of moral decay – where once there was personal virtue and a whole network of institutions dedicated to “moral formation,” there is now a black hole of amoral emptiness that people try to fill by engaging in “moral war” and “tribalism.” 2/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
Brooks’ story doesn’t hold up to scrutiny and is indicative of a much larger problem: A pervasive longing for a golden past that never really existed, providing dangerously fertile ground for a reactionary politics of weaponized nostalgia. 3/
Show threadThomas Zimmer
There are at least three major problems with the diagnosis Brooks presents here. First, he operates entirely on the level of individual behavior, unwilling to grapple with the systemic injustices and inequalities against which individual morality must fail as an antidote. 4/
Aug 23, 2023 at 1:11pmIvory for iOS
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
Secondly, Brooks completely obscures the specifics and the stakes of the political conflict that is shaping the country and has shaped much of U.S. history by dissolving everything into an ultimately apolitical morality tale. 5/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
Look closely at the phenomena Brooks presents as evidence for his morality tale and they point to a concrete political conflict. For that, however, Brooks has nothing but contempt. Brooks is as disgusted as he is frustrated by what he perceives as silly “tribalism.” 6/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
Brooks is either entirely oblivious or utterly dismissive of the actual stakes in the current political struggle; that people might engage in politics because their basic rights and civil liberties are under assault seems beyond him. 7/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
Are trans people just reveling in “tribalism” because they feel spiritually empty? Are women mobilizing because they are looking to fill the moral void – or could it have something to do with the fact that millions have been degraded to the status of second-class citizens? 8/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
Are Black Lives Matter activists merely flocking to “identity politics” because they are so “internally fragile” – or are they organizing because they are trying to somehow get the country to address racist police violence? 9/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
The piece is over 11,000 words long. Yet there is nothing here about the political and ideological conflict over fundamentally incompatible ideas of what this country should be – a white Christian patriarchal society or an egalitarian multiracial, pluralistic democracy. 10/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
The third major problem with David Brooks’ interpretation: It is based on an utterly ahistorical understanding of the past and a rather bizarrely distorted perspective on U.S. history. Brooks is simply not a trustworthy narrator of how we got to where we are today. 11/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
How does he reconcile his argument with the fact that the era of supposedly intact moral education, when “America was awash in morally formative institutions,” coincided with the worst forms of slavery, genocidal violence, and white supremacist apartheid? 12/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
What does Brooks make of the fact that significant progress towards multiracial, pluralistic democracy was made after “moral formation” was, according to the author, largely abandoned? The answer is: He doesn’t. 13/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
The message seems to be (my words, not his): “This society was horrible when all this morality formation was ubiquitous, and it has gotten so much better since that was abandoned – and yet, all of today’s problems can be traced to the tragic abandonment of morality formation.” 14/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
Brooks presents insufficient evidence to support an inconsistent and ahistorical diagnosis. But his view of America appeals to people across a relatively wide ideological spectrum not in spite of these flaws. They are precisely what makes the argument so attractive. 15/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
To the center-Right, and “moderate” (former) Republicans, Brooks offers an apologist narrative for anyone who doesn’t want to engage in critical introspection over the question of how the party they used to support until very recently ended up uniting behind Donald Trump. 16/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
No need to inquire about their own role in conservative politics, in fostering a cultural and ideological environment in which Trumpism could flourish. What could they have possibly done to avert a crisis that was brought about by secular amorality? Not their fault, certainly. 17/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
Brooks’ diagnosis also has appeal well beyond the conservative political spectrum. Democratic Connecticut senator Chris Murphy, for instance, recommended the “very important piece from David Brooks” to his audience on Twitter. 18/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
What liberal elites, in particular, almost reflexively support is the unity gospel aspect of “How America Got Mean” and the nostalgic view of the past in which America was supposedly characterized not by polarization, but by a common enterprise to be good. 19/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
This is what makes this piece interesting: the way it articulates, justifies, and ennobles a sense of nostalgia that is prevalent among moderate conservatives, at the center, as well as deep into the liberal camp. 20/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
Much of the mainstream political discourse is shaped by nostalgia – and the Right understands that they can latch onto that, weaponize it, in order to make their political project of rolling back the social and political progress of the past century more attractive. 21/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
Weaponized nostalgia is an extremely potent tool in the hands of reactionaries, an important vehicle to transport rightwing ideas into the mainstream and make the reactionary project more palatable. 22/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
Brooks is not a Trumpist, and reading “How America Got Mean” doesn’t make you one either. But fundamentally nostalgic arguments like this one help provide fertile ground for the politics of reaction. 23/
Show threadThomas ZimmerAug 23, 2023
Once you are convinced the country is coming apart, you might decide it’s ultimately preferable to lend your support to those who promise to turn the clock back rather than to the “radical Left” – even if you have to hold your nose doing so.
 
More here: https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/moralizing-nostalgia-leads-to-bad
Moralizing Nostalgia Leads to Bad History – and Helps the Anti-Democratic Right

David Brooks’ “How America Got Mean” offers an ahistorical tale that obscures rather than illuminates – and provides fertile ground for a politics of reaction

Democracy Americana
Show thread🍸Pooka🥕Boo🍸Aug 23, 2023

@tzimmer_history

Brooks and others like him enabled the development of the current cult of reTHUGliCONs. Now that they see the shitstorm they created, they want us to admire them for shunning the monsters they are responsible for. We'll, I don't admire them, but I will acknowledge that they are smart enough to know autocracy will go after anyone and everyone once it attains power. No matter who they are.

Show threadSheebAug 23, 2023
@tzimmer_history Is there anything in the culture war that Chris Murphy won't be bamboozled by?
Show threadAlexander KarnAug 23, 2023

@tzimmer_history

Gah. No longer on Twitter to observe the irresponsible revisionism and "leadership" there.

Show threadNoel KellyAug 23, 2023

@tzimmer_history
@Alienated53

I miss Mark Shields.

Show threadDarrel PlantAug 24, 2023

@tzimmer_history

He's never even been a trustworthy narrator of what we are today.

Show threadAlyson DeckerAug 23, 2023
@tzimmer_history it’s somewhat wild that the people rallying against tribalism are only rallying against non-white cis straight male tribalism.
Show threadSynkr3tykAug 23, 2023
@tzimmer_history Conservatives, including Brooks (whether he'd ever have the intellectual honesty to say so or not), are absolutely fine with large chunks of society being second-class citizens. This is, in fact, necessary and central to American conservative aspirations.
Show threadDavid RolfeAug 24, 2023

It’s so weird Brooks looks at a conflict between eliminationism on the one hand and multiculturalism on the other and considers that frustrating tribalism.

The ascension of one of those sides, even for people like Brooks, means exile or death.

@tzimmer_history