Shorter David Brooks:
Broken down into skeleton form, the itinerary on this occasion is something like this:
1. Deconstructed quotation no. 1:
2. Definition: A house divided is a contradictory individual or institution. [jump]
* Not many people know this, but this is what deconstruction actually means—turning an overfamiliar idea upside down and seeing if it works any better that way.
3. Evaluation: Contradictory individuals are good, contradictory institutions are enduring except when slavery is involved.
4. Example: The Olympics are a contradictory institution, since they feature both cooperation and competition, and they endure. Also, athletes don't smile when they're at work, which is a good thing.
5. Definition: The competitive virtues are "tenacity, courage, excellence, supremacy, discipline and conflict." There are possibly cooperative virtues too, but they are not discussed.
6. Inference: The example of the Olympics shows that
8. Example: A.G. Laffley of Procter and Gamble, torn between the idea of cutting costs to remain competitive, and that of improving products to remain competitive, decided to go for both simultaneously.
9. Definition: Monomaniacs are abnormal people who cannot hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time.
10. Example: Certain monomaniacal schoolteachers insist that cooperation is OK but competition is not.
11. Example:
Still, beneath this superficial incoherence lies yet another layer, which you can only become aware of by looking at the thing structurally. In the column's 800 words, there are a couple of concepts that are mentioned three times each, although neither seems to be all that close to the center of the discourse: that dichotomy between cooperation and competition, and the idea of an "enduring institution" or "institution that lasts".
In my view these, and the weight Brooks gives them without apparently realizing it, represent the share of the column written, so to speak, by his unconscious; the anxieties that shove themselves to the fore as he babbles about Scott Fitzgerald and A.G. Laffley.
The first is familiar; we've been there ourselves, à propos of his Henry V column: he's obsessed with an imaginary teacher of progressive leanings (drives Volvo, swills Chardonnay) who hates boys and doesn't allow competitiveness in her classroom ("How about you play the game but you don't keep score?"), presumably because that would give the boys an advantage.
I can't believe this is Brooks's own idea, but Dr. Google and I are having a hard time flushing out a pedigree for it; seems to be a hybridization between the talk radio response to Robert Slavin's "cooperative learning" and more recent concerns about the "feminization" of schools and the crisis of boys. In Brooks's case, believe me, it's all about unresolved masculinity issues.
The other pole is harder to figure. In repeating like a prayer that a self-contradicting house really can stand he seems plainly to be fending off the fear that it will fall, but which house is he afraid of? His own? His family? The Republican Party, the nation? Or is it perhaps the temple of his mind? Does he believe he is doomed to collapse, like the bourgeoisie in classic Marxist theory, from his own internal contradictions? Before his pen has gleaned his teeming brain? Stay tuned.
A house divided against itself actually can stand, as long as it doesn't have anything to do with slavery, and if it's a house of Congress it's a good idea, because then politics will be just like the Olympics, i.e., incoherent.While Friedman may get much of his information from taxi drivers (or perhaps, come to think of it, it's just one polyglot taxi driver following him around from exotic location to exotic location, because he always says pretty much the same thing), Brooks tries to think like a taxi driver: about how long he can keep the meter running and still have the passengers think they're getting a surprise shortcut.
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| Charon's Big Yellow Taxi. Photo by Desolate Places. |
1. Deconstructed quotation no. 1:
"A house divided against itself cannot stand." I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. (Abraham Lincoln, June 1858)Deconstruction: Actually, it can. *
2. Definition: A house divided is a contradictory individual or institution. [jump]
* Not many people know this, but this is what deconstruction actually means—turning an overfamiliar idea upside down and seeing if it works any better that way.
3. Evaluation: Contradictory individuals are good, contradictory institutions are enduring except when slavery is involved.
4. Example: The Olympics are a contradictory institution, since they feature both cooperation and competition, and they endure. Also, athletes don't smile when they're at work, which is a good thing.
Dancers, especially at the opening ceremony, smile in warmth and friendship. No true sport is ever done smiling (this is the problem with figure skating and competitive cheerleading).
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| Carmelo Anthony, future cheerleader. |
6. Inference: The example of the Olympics shows that
if you find yourself caught between two competing impulses, you don’t always need to choose between them. You can go for both simultaneously.7. Deconstructed quotation no. 2:
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. (F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up)Deconstruction: Actually, it's the test of a normal mind, and the "mark of any institution that lasts."
8. Example: A.G. Laffley of Procter and Gamble, torn between the idea of cutting costs to remain competitive, and that of improving products to remain competitive, decided to go for both simultaneously.
9. Definition: Monomaniacs are abnormal people who cannot hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time.
10. Example: Certain monomaniacal schoolteachers insist that cooperation is OK but competition is not.
11. Example:
Politics has become a contest of monomaniacs. One faction champions austerity while another champions growth. One party becomes the party of economic security and the other becomes the party of creative destruction.12. Conclusion:
The right course is usually to push hard in both directions, to be a house creatively divided against itself, to thrive amid the contradictions. The Olympics are great, but they are not coherent.Which sounds like the compromise the Republicans were hoping for: austerity for thee, more government contracts for me. And to paraphrase (not deconstruct) Ralph Waldo Emerson, a foolish coherency is the hobgoblin of little monomaniacs. Which is not just making his point, but also defending his column, which may have many virtues but coherence, foolish or otherwise, is not one of them today.
Still, beneath this superficial incoherence lies yet another layer, which you can only become aware of by looking at the thing structurally. In the column's 800 words, there are a couple of concepts that are mentioned three times each, although neither seems to be all that close to the center of the discourse: that dichotomy between cooperation and competition, and the idea of an "enduring institution" or "institution that lasts".
In my view these, and the weight Brooks gives them without apparently realizing it, represent the share of the column written, so to speak, by his unconscious; the anxieties that shove themselves to the fore as he babbles about Scott Fitzgerald and A.G. Laffley.
The first is familiar; we've been there ourselves, à propos of his Henry V column: he's obsessed with an imaginary teacher of progressive leanings (drives Volvo, swills Chardonnay) who hates boys and doesn't allow competitiveness in her classroom ("How about you play the game but you don't keep score?"), presumably because that would give the boys an advantage.
The other pole is harder to figure. In repeating like a prayer that a self-contradicting house really can stand he seems plainly to be fending off the fear that it will fall, but which house is he afraid of? His own? His family? The Republican Party, the nation? Or is it perhaps the temple of his mind? Does he believe he is doomed to collapse, like the bourgeoisie in classic Marxist theory, from his own internal contradictions? Before his pen has gleaned his teeming brain? Stay tuned.
