Thread by @TomLevenson

So now I've finished @nytdavidbrooks Atlantic piece. It's not all terrible. I even agree with much of his last few paragraphs!

But he has such a narrow and clearly inadequate grasp of causality, based on his deeply, and I believe sincerely held view of power in the US. 1/

https://twitter.com/TomLevenson/status/1422344753354530822

2/ The short version: he argues that woke tech/creative elites have monopolized cultural power and both lock out and disdain white working class America, leading to violent right-wing revolutionary impulses that faux-populist scum like Trump exploit.

What's missing from that?...

3/ The sustained attack since Nixon (at least) on education, science etc., ramped up in recent years by the post-truth stylings of Murdoch's empire and much else besides. Resentment against current elites isn't some natural response to overweening incumbents...

4/ It has been carefully nurtured for economic ends and the pursuit of political power. FL's DeSantis is presiding over a pandemic disaster to own the libs; that's not "BoBos fault," pace Mr. Brooks.

What's more...

5/ There is nothing comparable in the hands of the left, or the so-called creative class, to the network of both public-intellectual BS shops and blunt political cash flooded organizations run by the billionaire class on the right.

6/ Any analysis of partisan resentment that doesn't look at who fuels such resentment & to what end is...not just weak, but suspect: if Brooks isn't providing cover for the right's anti-democratic move, his words are indistinguishable from those of someone trying to do just that.

5.5/ See, e.g., this, fresh off the presses at the New Yorker: newyorker.com/magazine/2021/…