Dude Lolbrooks has always pined for the fjords, a time when Francis Fukuyama could credibly argue that Americans had won forever, a time when NAFTA was going to save the world and presidents could be dragged through the mud for eight years over a land deal they lost money on. Here, lemme add three little letters and it's a very different editorial:

The normal thing to say is that the neoliberal world order is in crisis. But just saying that doesn’t explain why. Why are people rejecting neoliberalism? What weakness in neoliberalism is its enemies exploiting? What is at the root of this dark century?

Ignore the words lolbrooks is putting in John Stewart Mill's mouth for a minute:

Neoliberalism is a way of life built on respect for the dignity of each individual. A neoliberal order... is one in which people are free to conduct “experiments in living” so you wind up with “a large variety in types of character.” There’s no one best way to live, so neoliberals celebrate freedom, personal growth and diversity.

Here's what John Stuart Mill actually said:

“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.”

Now here's lolbrooks' Saint Thatcher

I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand ‘I have a problem, it is the Government’s job to cope with it!’ or ‘I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!’ ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’ and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.

… [It] is, I think, one of the tragedies in which many of the benefits we give, which were meant to reassure people that if they were sick or ill there was a safety net and there was help, that many of the benefits which were meant to help people who were unfortunate … [t]hat was the objective, but somehow there are some people who have been manipulating the system … when people come and say: ‘But what is the point of working? I can get as much on the dole!’

Here's the thing. Neoliberals believe that they have given the rats a t-maze to get through. Choose left, die a communist, choose right, open a hedge fund:

But what Neoliberals have actually given the rats is more like the thing at the end of Time Bandits:

AND THEY DON'T LIKE IT. They never have.

I'm two thirds of the way through Graeber's last. He and Wengrow make a couple fundamental anthropological points that I've never seen mentioned anywhere before ever:

- The formative principle of human culture is schismogenesis: "we are not that." Pacific Northwest Americans were bandit kings with a culture of slavery and spectacle; California Americans were minimalist aesthetes. "Plains people farm, and we hate plains people, so we forage like all good humans.

- Cultures are run by controlling a mixture of violence, information and charisma. While there are examples of cultures run on only one, most have some sort of blend.

Neoliberalism is a reaction to Communism. Democracy under FDR/Wilson/Etc was not neoliberalism: much of the New Deal was a pre-emption of Huey Long, who was a lot further along on the road to Marx than FDR ever would be. However it took a while to see the long-term effects of communism on Russia, because Russians have never been egalitarian. What was ostensibly a culture of equality was actually an oligarchy which allowed the neoliberals to also create a culture of equality that was actually an oligarchy.

Fundamentally? people are catching on.

I would argue that populism is nothing more than an erosion in the charisma of the standing culture. It is an attempt to influence the culture towards different leaders. The basic problem with the United States is it is run by two deeply unpopular factions:

Shifting party preferences in 2021 are likely tied to changes in popularity of the two men who served as president during the year. Republican Donald Trump finished out his single term in January, after being defeated in the 2020 election, with a 34% job approval rating, the lowest of his term. His popularity fell more than 10 points from Election Day 2020 as the country's COVID-19 infections and deaths reached then-record highs, he refused to acknowledge the result of the election, and his supporters rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an attempt to prevent Congress from counting the 2020 Electoral College votes.

Democrat Joe Biden enjoyed relatively high ratings after taking office on Jan. 20, and his approval stayed high through the early summer as COVID-19 infections dramatically decreased after millions of Americans got vaccinated against the disease. A summer surge of infections tied to the delta variant of the coronavirus made it clear the pandemic was not over in the U.S., and Biden's approval ratings began to sag. Later, the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan caused Biden's ratings to fall further, into the low 40s. His ratings remain low as the U.S. battles rising inflation and yet another surge of COVID-19 infections, tied to the omicron variant of the virus.

For most of the country? It's "our guy" vs. "their guy" but it's fundamentally elitists vs populists. Always has been. Always will be. David Brooks is a dyed-in-the-wool elitist.

Look. Joe Manchin singlehandedly increased the childhood poverty rate by 41%. This system is working for NO ONE, Q. E. Fucking D. David Brooks' problem?

He thinks he isn't personally, culpably, demonstrably to blame.