Another excellently hurried attempt to conjure an abstract perspective on things you'll never experience inside of a Long Island mansion. He's right about the growing distrust of institutions, though. And authority. Like establishment journalists, sometimes. I mean, he read a book. He read one book, an essay, and listened to an Erykah Badu song. Thanks David, it's been weird. At least I agreed with this: But I don't think everyone's on board with that.That’s because the cool person has found his or her own unique and authentic way of living with nonchalant intensity.
It isn't "wrongness" that makes David Brooks so entertaining. It's that he's the Thurston Howell III of pundits. You can tell he has no spite for the rest of humanity and is fundamentally empathetic to the struggles of his common man. He's just doesn't grasp that his conception of "common man" is wholly removed from most of America, which makes his empathy feel like well-intentioned condescension from another planet.
"Why don't you just take some Juicero packets for the road?"
When I clicked through the link and saw the actual title of the article, it was a solid 20 seconds of guttoral guffaws.
I'm not sure that it's actually growing. The 60's happened, and then the punks in the 70's. NWA came a long time before BLM. I feel like folk trust institutions a regular amount these days. Not so say that they like them, but I don't think there is an unusual interest in changing them. I don't see 'woke' as organic.He's right about the growing distrust of institutions, though. And authority.
Black Lives Matter is a reaction to police violence against African Americans. Whether that reaction is due to increased awareness or increased violence is an open question. That graph is from here, which argues that police killings have gone way down since the '60s (nonetheless, note the uptick). On the other hand, here's Politifact: They determine that while the available statistics indicate a steady climb, the sources of those statistics suck. "more study needed" is a shitty place to be when the subject under scrutiny is "your race" and "being shot by police."
Re: Institutionalized Distrust: For the zillionth time this lifetime, I'm ashamedly guilty of letting my microcosm boil over into my worldview. When "woke" became a synonym for "lit", its etymology ceased to significantly matter, I guess. Maybe it was organic, originally, but I'm not going to attempt to dissect that timeline. And 'bl00 is right, Brooks definitely means well with his efforts, but there was already a lot of whiff'ing going on in the generation gap. Sprinkling in race wasn't going to bridge anything. Almost-good hustle, though. I also apologize for the generally negative vibe I've been rolling with around here. Apparently, I'm trying to go from a B.S. to a PhD in three years. Wasn't my idea.