Writes David Brooks, in "Imagining What’s in Trump’s Brain" (NYT)(gift link).
I'm expending one of my gift links on this one because this snippet, taken out of context, gives rise to the question Are artists authoritarians?
Brooks is "imagining what's in Trump's brain" and we're stuck with the added task of imagining what's in Brooks's brain when he's imagining what's in Trump's brain. Trump is an artist because he's imagining — conjuring up an "alternative world" that is satisfying to the downtrodden. But don't all politicians depict the world in a somewhat abstract and fictional framework? They impose a narrative. They choose which facts to highlight, while their opponents select other facts from the big bag of "facts." The "coastal elites," the "snobs," have their creative narratives too... and this David Brooks column is one of them.
Quite apart from Trump and Brooks, I am fascinated by the question Are artists authoritarians? I am reminded of something I blogged 20 years ago: "To be a great artist is inherently right wing."
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Too much to ponder early Saturday morning. Need time for the caffeine to kick in...
Speaking of alternate realities: here’s the NYT kicking off the Russia hoax nine years ago. Althouse calls it political junk, as do the center/right commenters. Guess which group immediately falls for the hoax? Well, I don’t wanna spoil the surprise… :)
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2016/12/american-intelligence-agencies-have.html
Totalitarians come in flavors of right or left wing. Fold your wings and submit to the totality of the artist. Ask Cosima Wagner (or her first husband) about Richard Wagner. Ask the acolytes of Frank Lloyd Wright or Le Corbusier. These people weren't put here for our convenience. They had something to do while they were here.
They were a force of nature. Human nature to be sure, but human nature as dangerous and powerful as a hurricane or twister.
So much wrong with that passage…
Is Russia right to feel humiliated? Or is the working class wrong? Is he pro -Russia in the Ukraine war? Or anti-working class in America?
Is it Trump or Brooks who thinks he can conjure alternate worlds by stringing words together to tell stories?
Rayburn: A man can be an artist... in anything, food, whatever. It depends on how good he is at it. Creasy's art is death. He's about to paint his masterpiece.
What's in Brooks's brain is material for the NYT readership, That readership is the market for that particular narrative. Brooks is just intuiting and producing it for them.
District Court judges are authoritarian. How much more evidence do you need?
I always found it which quotes they included in this song interesting.
"I remember distinctly an image of--we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant," Brooks says, "and I'm thinking, a) he's going to be president and b) he'll be a very good president."
Speaking of propaganda, I drove the highways of LA yesterday and listened to NPR for three hours. I learned that not only is Trump an authoritarian, but he is responsible for the loss of SNAP benefits and all the flight delays and cancellations.
Gasoline is nearly $5; under $3 in Omaha. But the Getty Villa was fabulous and tonight is the Rose Bowl.
I also heard Reality Winner pitch her book after she served 3 or 4 years in the Big House.
Reality’s reality is that, yes, Russia influenced the 2016 race and helped Trump win. Now we know!
Trump is the most transparent President of my lifetime. Why do all this imagining when you can actually see or hear what’s right in front of you?
What a crock o’ elitism.
’Reality’s reality is that, yes, Russia influenced the 2016 race and helped Trump win.’
Those Rooskies are sneaky bastards, so it must be true.
Mr. Forward reminding us of another Brooks quote...
"I remember distinctly an image of--we were sitting on his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly creased pant," Brooks says, "and I'm thinking, a) he's going to be president and b) he'll be a very good president."
H.L. Mencken said...
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
It seems like the word "good" is being used the same way in both quotes.
I had the same thought, that Brooks is projecting. Whether he is also describing Trump is something we might discuss, but not something he could ever perceive one way or the other. His own narrative is in the way.
District Court judges are authoritarian. How much more evidence do you need?
…ordered the plane to turn around…
“That man is a spellbinder! I haven’t been able to think straight since he came to town!”
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
― George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
Unfortunately, just after posting that I realized what unreasonable people what isn't always "progress", but you can't have one without the struggle with the other.
Performance artists like Trump and Putin are like a big jam doughnut with cream on the top.
Well, no one’s going to confuse Brooks with an artist. Not sure why Althouse chooses to quote him.
The Democrat party in this special election has openly embraced the murder of Republicans and their children. You are watching the Democrat party fall apart in real time. David French is a loser and a turd who has been paid to shovel shit to idiots by the owners of corporate media his whole life.
He was a "Republican" but after 2012 the Conservatives like French completely lost their influence with "Republicans" and Trump was the result.
The real cause if this is X. When it was twitter it was part of the machine that was used to shape and control the town square. Now that Twitter has become X and the corporate media and social media are no longer monolithicly controlled for the first time in history you are seeing what a grassroots consensus looks like.
Nick Fuentes gets more reach and impressions now than the Shapiros, Murdochs, NYTs, Fox's etc by an order of magnitude.
Likewise on the left they are choosing people like Mamdani and Platner and Jay Jones over Cuomo.
A real consensus is forming among the people on the right and the left. You are seeing what people in both camps really want.
Democrats want murder and fascism.
Republicans want America First with a capital F and the Israel lobby is losing their shit right now.
Brooks is not intellectually capable of recognizing that Trump tells you what he thinks and does what he says he will do.
Rocco said...
H.L. Mencken said...
“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
Democracy will always fail if universal suffrage is used. Not even most people should vote.
Democracy will only work in a population that is overwhelmingly a true representation of a protestant christian moral framework.
Any deviation from this and democracy will produce a corrupt gerontocratic kleptocracy in a native population.
New York City is different. NYC imported 40% of it's voters from poor countries. NYC is going to show us why poor people shouldn't vote. They are poor for a reason and it isn't because the world is not fair. Poor people are generally stupid and susceptible to snake oil salesmen who promise to tax their way to prosperity.
I heard a YouTube video about how Neanderthals never standardized their toolmaking like modern humans. Each was its own unique creation. The researcher said Neanderthals were artists vs. the modern industrial humans. Now authoritarians are artists. Are authoritarians Neanderthals?
Yes every great artist is a lefty but every great artist is right wing. What nonsense. Great artists create by destroying what came before. Which is why being on the left appeals to them. That’s lefty ideology. However the grifters and totalitarians who latch on to lefty movements are only attracted to the destruction and care nothing about the creation that’s supposedly supposed to follow.
Brooks does not ever remove all doubt Putin was the reaction to the oligarchs created by summers and sachs policy recommendations
Guernica: It would never occur to an artist like Picasso to paint something called Dresden. That's the rub. For the last two hundred fifty years most of the artists have been solidly on the side of the left. Farms go bankrupt and we have Tom Joad and The Grapes of Wrath. Collective farms never go bankrupt and, despite forty to sixty million deaths by starvation, there is no artist who thinks their deaths are worth dramatizing.....Putin is definitely a failure, but not so much of a failure as Lenin or even Yeltsin. Lenin and Yeltsin were failures but bards like Brooks hastened to sing their lays. Speaking of lays, Picasso treated the women in his life very shabbily. Worse really than Clinton's treatment of Monica, although not so bad as Teddy's treatment of Mary Jo.
Brooks thought mild earnest Sarah was a cancer ponder on that
In 1980, Garry Trudeau did a Doonesbury story arc called "Inside Ronald Reagan's Brain." It was expanded into a book:
https://a.co/d/ga4WGP6
CC, JSM
It's embarrassing and pernicious to see Brooks resort to the logical fallacy of argumentum ad Putinum.
For chrissakes, whatever happened to comparing politicians to the Music Man?
Aktually poor and middle class voted for cuomo perhaps sliwa
Eva Marie said...
Yes every great artist is a lefty but every great artist is right wing. What nonsense. Great artists create by destroying what came before. Which is why being on the left appeals to them. That’s lefty ideology. However the grifters and totalitarians who latch on to lefty movements are only attracted to the destruction and care nothing about the creation that’s supposedly supposed to follow.
There really is no right and left anymore. Just different tribes seeking tribal spoils.
Multiculturalism and democracy will never mix.
Big greedy mob money = Pritzker-Walz-Biden Puppet party
what's in Brook's brain? Sand worms.
Leftists, well, like our beloved Inga, just don't accept that they are extremely authoritarian. No, the fact they want to (and do) compel others to wear masks, get rid of gas cars, and switch to solar and wind power against their will never occurs to them as being "authoritarian". Oh no, it's those horrid right-wingers who want to force them to, you know, follow the laws regarding, immigration, theft, and murder (and especially by those poor, poor people who broke the law to get here) who are the authoritarians.
On the week when the cobra takes manhattan brooks has to disl up to eleventy!!
Achilles: "Multiculturalism and democracy will never mix."
I differ with you a bit on this. I agree that multi-kulti crap is against the Anglosphere concept of one man/one vote and the industrial-age idea that the individual (or even the nuclear family) is the basic unit of society.
However, you could have a stable system where different groups openly and honestly horse trade. "I want a factory in my neighborhood!" "Screw you, Mick - you Irishmen have all the good jobs. Time to give the Albanians a chance." "Oh yeah? Your 5,000 votes ain't gonna swing the election, Enver." "Yeah, but we're willing to commute to the black neighborhood. And they have a lot more votes. Right, Willie?" "Damn right, bruv!" Etc.
This is kind of how Chicago operated in the 50s and 60s - the height of its economic accomplishments.
As opposed to what we have now, where tribal interests feel compelled to masquerade as ideological movements that are only trying to serve truth and justice for everyone.
Imagine if the recent NYC election had just been carried out on these lines. I mean, Mamdani openly said stuff that boiled down to "let's take Whitey's money." But no one felt comfortable coming back and explicitly saying "Hmm. Okay. Let's go over exactly what Whitey does for NYC already. And let's project how many whiteys are going to move out of the city if you try that crap. How do you think that's going to work out for you in the long run, Jose? Abdelkarim?"
If people just say out loud what they're thinking, everyone benefits. Trump has gotten us at least halfway to that. RLTW, JSM
It's good work if you can get it. I'll bet Obama would love to have that kind of star power, but it's a little too late for him to be a right winger if that's what it takes.
I don't think it's about Trump creating an alternate world but more about the speculative discussions that journalists have about how the United States would be different without Trump's influence.
Brooks' shallow little essay sounds like something a DC or NY elite would say at a dinner party to put his cleverness on display for the other guests. As in that context, what he's saying here will have no next-day effect on how people think about Trump, Putin, artists, authoritarians, or anything else. Just some erudite-sounding prattle while everyone's waiting for the dessert wine to come out.
Dad Bones said...
It's good work if you can get it. I'll bet Obama would love to have that kind of star power, but it's a little too late for him to be a right winger if that's what it takes.
Obama openly embraced Mamdani and Jay Jones.
Artists are masters of their domain, which may be diverse or Diverse, where the former is liberal (e.g. conservative) and the latter is progressive (e.g. authoritarian), individual and divergent, or a bloc act and monotonic, entrepreneur and assembly, cooperative and dictatorial.
Obama openly embraced Mamdani and Jay Jones.
And, living in Virginia as I do, I think a good case can be made that Obama is the main reason Jay Jones won.
Obama characterized human creativity as a "burden". Six weeks, Obama, under law, later under your religion.
To be fair, human rites can be a creative enterprise, a skilled endeavor, a woke of art with blocs.
Mamdani is an avowed leftist, an actual NYzi: Diversity, redistributive change, and Pro-Choice religious. Never again, and again, and again. Good luck.
Brooks is a classic bullshit artist.
Pompous ass collectors the world over fantasize about having David Brooks in their kill jar. He's a perfect specimen.
Left-wing ideology demands, commands conformance, which is highly monotonic. That said, the left-right nexus is leftist. Oh, and wicked solutions. #HateLovesAbortion
Jay Jones is the Democrat party.
the assassination party.
And spanberger is the brotherhood company candidate
Artist=Auteur= auteuritarian!!??
It's always "not our kind, dear" with Brooks. I give him credit, though - he's made a 40-year career out of sneering and reassuring his fellow socially insecure liberal arts majors that they are indeed good enough, smart enough and that the best people do like them.
Brooks talking about other peoples' alternative realities is pretty funny. Has he even been somewhere without busses and subways for him to avoid?
"Mamdani is an avowed leftist"...
Mamdani is an expression of frustration similar to the frustration of many Trump voters. These voters are trying a different approach. Not a new theme either.
Trump is a liar, a fraud, an ignoramus, a criminal, a demagogue, and the most dangerous man to ever be president. But damn if he doesn’t still make for great television.
It was never about “inflation,” it was about things being too expensive and Trump promising to lower prices. With that as the state of play, when prices continue to go up at a normal rate, people will of course blame him. You can’t have it both ways. Live by the moron, die by the moron.
Ironically, a future president actually would be able to lower prices, simply by eliminating these godawful Trump Tariffs.™️
Colorado Democrats - Worse that Hitler, Stalin and Putin.
@Althouse, have you forgotten this quote?
”Some men see things as they are and ask, ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were and ask, ‘Why not?’”
— Robert F. Kennedy, Sr.
You would have been in high school when Bobby uttered this paraphrase of George Bernard Shaw’s lines from “Back to Methuselah,” but surely you heard it. And Bobby was 100% politician.
Mamdamni (D) is first and last - a radical Islamist Supremacist.
He is an anti-melting pot zealot, dividing Americans into victim sub-categories.
Mamdamni is the perfect modern Democratic.
People support an authoritarian not because they like this or that policy but because they embrace the authoritarian’s artistic vision.
People did vote for Trump because they liked his policies. They aren't able to draft the laws or craft the programs, but they know what they wanted to change. If Trump had a charm or an outrageousness that made him able to survive and win, that was beside the point. Brooks's point of view is based on his believing that the state of the world that benefits him can't be changed and attempts to remedy grievances can only be demagoguery or charlatanism.
"Artistry" is a part of politics. Kennedy and Obama were able to cast spells over the population, to create an image that commanded admiration, without actually doing much. Reagan and Roosevelt created similar auras but were able to achieve things. And for years afterwards every politician tried to be a Reagan or an Obama, an FDR or a JFK. Dictators may be frustrated artists, but not everyone in politics with an artistic touch is a dictator.
From the comments in that link:
"lmeade: Well observed."
Indeed. Indeed.
Because they wouldnt work for such a savage background boby was naive about some things
Elites rule by narrative, Brooks's job is to provide the narrative that keeps the people paying his generous wage and providing his cushy position in life in charge. The job is to create an alternate reality that will convince us to do things that our normal morality would forbid, and one of their first tools is to accuse others of doing the stuff they themselves start doing first thing in the morning, right after they punch the clock.
I thoroughly distrust politics in general and politicians in particular. When Brooks says that Trump isn’t a politician, he thinks that’s a bad thing. In truth, that’s one of the best things about him.
I read in a book "Victory over verbal abuse" that verbal abuser defines other people. It said something to the effect that when someone defines you in any way, tells you what you are, tells you your motives, tells you what you think, feel or know, he or she is behaving as if he or she were you, or were God! People who behave as if they are God are mentally ill. No treatment exists to help them, sadly.
People like David Brooks are not serious people.
David Brooks is the house nigra for the Times. He can always be counted on to sniff at the field hands and their ways. It keeps him in the house, and employed.
People did vote for Trump because they liked his policies. They aren't able to draft the laws or craft the programs, but they know what they wanted to change.
@Lazarus, BINGO! People who really want to know what’s going on with the voting public should stop reading Brooks, curled up as he is in his bubble and getting insights from martinis and his bong, and instead read Butler, by Salena Zito (available through the Althouse Amazon portal).
Kak: "Ironically, a future president actually would be able to lower prices, simply by eliminating these godawful Trump Tariffs."
Or...the nominal prices won't go down, but after several years of tariff-incentivized reshoring, and Americans paying the higher nominal prices to each other instead of to foreign workers, the real prices will be lower.
Very few people will put 2 and 2 together, and even fewer of them will credit Trump, but he won't care. CC, JSM
@Eva Marie, I like to think of Prof Althouse's observation as the operation of Conquest's First Law of Politics - everyone is conservative about what they know best. What does an artist know better than their own product?
The tariffs are taxes on foreign producers and those who profit through labor, environmental, and monetary arbitrage schemes. Progressive prices are the product of fiscal deficits, primarily CMS under the Obamacares umbrella.
Rather than artists, maybe Brooks is saying that Trump and Putin are "non-human AIs"? From Instapundit today:
1: A law school graduate who has not yet passed the bar exam is writing the briefs for this law firm. The law firm submits one of those briefs written entirely by the law school graduate to the 9th Circuit.
2: The law graduate used AI to help write the brief. Tough to blame the law graduate: that's a lot of pressure so early in one's career.
3: The lawyer arguing the case doesn't review the work submitted by the law school graduate to make sure that the AI hasn't made up cases that don't actually exist in our physical world and instead only exist in the digital world inhabited by non-human AI's.
There's a difference between artists and great artists. Great artists are usually egoists who believe they are great and have some personal vision of the world they must express. Their art doesn't toe the party line - its toes their line.
But that doesn't mean that they wont support leftwing causes that don't conflict with their artistic vision.
David Brooks rights such dishonest blather. He starts with the objective: attack someone who he doesn't like. Then he dresses all up in this pompous, reasonable sounding, learned bullshit without any desire to make sure it reflects reality.
You could take his columns, change a few words and labels and say the same thing about Obama or Netenyahu. Or 20 other people. Its just that brooks hates Putin and Trump. As do his readers.
Great artists are uncompromising, so yes, authoritarian.
Let's lower prices by eliminating the "economic inefficiencies," you know, decent wages paid to American workers! That will lower prices! Paying coolie wages to get the work done overseas is always cheaper!
I hate the way the MSM hijacks the language with these vague meaningless labels that have no relationship to reality. "Authoritarian" means nothing when talking USA elected officials. "Democracy" as in "Saving our Democracy" means nothing. "Far-Right" is applied to European Parties that are getting more support than anyone else. It reminds me of when Reagan - after getting elected as Governor of California twice and POTUS - was referred too as "Ultra-conservative". which meant 50 percent of the USA was "Extreme rightwing"
Its illogical nonsense.
And we now have "anti-semitism" which now means anything from Hitler to making a Jew unhappy by attacking Israeli Government war crimes. The meaning is so expansive as to be meaningless. It bascially just means "Jews don't like it".
Language should be clear and have precise meaning. But if your desire is to smear and attack, I guess you want the opposite.
I just read the linked reference which made the point that strong individualism is a right wing characteristic. I can see that point but leftist leaders are strong individualists as well. Communist ideology is not theoretically anti individual.
And to the extent that artists interpret their ambition and drive as perhaps on the right side of personality characteristics, those are the qualities they wish they could overcome. It is often those features of their personalities that alienate them from the rest of society.
RCOCEAN II - If you read the whole article (I don't blame you if you didn't!), Brooks does name Benjamin Netanyahu on his list of authoritarians.
john mosby said...
Achilles: "Multiculturalism and democracy will never mix."
I differ with you a bit on this. I agree that multi-kulti crap is against the Anglosphere concept of one man/one vote and the industrial-age idea that the individual (or even the nuclear family) is the basic unit of society.
It only works if there is one vision. There has to be a common thread and an agreement on a common social contract. The contract has to be based off one ideology and one normative framework of morals and ethics.
As soon as you introduce more than one vision for government and more than one normative moral framework politics will turn tribal.
Wince said...
Rather than artists, maybe Brooks is saying that Trump and Putin are "non-human AIs"? From Instapundit today:
...
3: The lawyer arguing the case doesn't review the work submitted by the law school graduate to make sure that the AI hasn't made up cases that don't actually exist in our physical world and instead only exist in the digital world inhabited by non-human AI's.
The problem is that AI is already better at being a lawyer than lawyers are. Hopefully all lawyers are gone soon.
Lawyers make shit up all of the time. It is there job. Their only real skill is read through stacks of cases to find the one or two that support their case.
AI is better at that than they are.
The point I was trying to make is the label "authoritarian" is meaningless when used by Brooks and the MSM. And it can be applied to anyone. For example, Netenyahu is not an "Authoritarian" he's the duly elected leader of Democracy. And he's done nothing outside the bounds of the Israeli laws. The same as true of Trump. The same is true of Putin, although you can argue the Russian Constitution and laws allow him to be more power than is normal in a Democracy.
In any case, applying it to Trump is just an "insult label". Just a variation on "facist" or "Neo-Nazi".
Colleen Brown said...
RCOCEAN II - If you read the whole article (I don't blame you if you didn't!), Brooks does name Benjamin Netanyahu on his list of authoritarians.
Anyone who uses the word Authoritarian in a political discussion at this point is a retard looking for justification for their retardation.
Every single political leader in history is an Authoritarian. It is the definition of politician. They want to say Nazi because they are dumb and unimaginitive so they moved on to the next thing their masters told them to say.
Like hal they have learned to lie then cover it up
“Trump is a liar, a fraud, … blah blah blah”
Of course none of these insults have any kind of meaning after Democrats installed a lying corrupt potato in 2016. For better or worse, the days of holding your opponent to a higher standard are pretty much over.
Brooks is a glory hole recepticle.
Brooks is projecting. It is in fact the leftmedia who create alternate realities with “the big lie” based on the political goals of evil people. Democrats: “Trump is deporting citizens;” “Republicans shut down the government;” “MAGA are fascists.” Muslim terrorists (and Democrats): “Israel is committing genocide in Gaza;” “Gazans don’t support Hamas.” Baby killers: “Unborn babies are not human beings.” All the evil ones need do is wait until the media “big lies” takes hold.
Is an author an authentic authorized authority on authoritarian behavior?
Do you just post on the Brooks stuff just so that we can all discuss what a pretentious pointy-headed phony twit he is?
"Authoritarian" was used during the Cold war to differentiate (sic) between totalitarian governments (USSR, Mao's China, etc.) and countries with one-man dictatorships or Kings. Franco or Nasser weren't in the same league with Communist Countries.
After 1990 it fell in popularity. Then in 2016, the MSM needed an insult label for Trump. "Fascist" was too harsh and absurd, so they settled on "Authoritarian". It still makes no sense.
Art cannot be authoritarian. Art just sits there.
It might inspire your thoughts... inspire awe or revulsion... but it has no power.
Interesting. But not as interesting as the 20-year-old link posted at the very end. Now that was something.
You (or someone you quoted, nailed Dylan). I was amused by one of the commenters (eli?) who wrote It is Conservatives, not Liberals who are always trying to get books tossed from the library, get internet sites censored, put stickers in your children's biology textbook telling them not to believe it
AP Reports Truth About Narco-Terrorist Boats Is More 'Nuanced' Than Trump Says (Then Proves Him Right) – Twitchy https://share.google/V5VoU8H4CyBUbfPcO
David Brooks apparently has never heard that "Politics is the art of the possible". That surprises me a little. He is an annoying little shit, but not actually ignorant.
“Of course none of these insults have any kind of meaning after Democrats installed a lying corrupt potato in 2016.”
Whatchu talkin’ ‘bout Willis?
Rest assured lefties think hes a moron too
I can't believe that nobody has pointed out that history's most despised authoritarian, Adolf Hitler, was a frustrated artist.
Obama the grifter, Trump the governor, and Biden the groper.
David Brooks is not someone I listen to for his take on political figures, especially after he had a public wet dream about Obama. But I'm sure he's a big hit with the deep state cocktail party circuit.
To say that Hitler was a "Frustrated artist" is a well put, but slightly inaccurate. Hitler was a very good painter, he just wasnt an elite painter. Not good enough to be among the select few that were allowed into Vienna Fine arts Academy. There were only 30 students accepted of the 120 that applied and the total number never exceeded 300.
David Brooks is a man holding onto his job and status by telling lies. He is neither a partisan nor an artist.
RCocean: who the hell are you? You get everything pitch-perfect.
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