As we recently reported, the New York Times' David French wrote a piece decrying the Right (of course) for trolling on social media. Now David Brooks is reminiscing about the old days before America got so rude and crass.
The most important story about why Americans have become sad and alienated and rude, I believe, is also the simplest: We inhabit a society in which people are no longer trained in how to treat others with kindness and consideration. https://t.co/HzHsAvfdBo
— David Brooks (@nytdavidbrooks) August 14, 2023
The thing about progressives is that they live for "progress." All of the laws being passed by Republicans are dragging the country backward. And God forbid you wish for the times when America was a kinder, gentler place, some nutjob like author Joyce Carol Oates will accuse you of wanting slavery back.
"why we have become sad"
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) August 14, 2023
David Brooks (again) lamenting that lost great moral upstanding feel-good Norman Rockwell America when women & minorities were not uppity, family-fun lynchings were not frowned upon by élites, & enslaved persons didn't get to sass their owners. https://t.co/lOiMvSnv0r
They really hate Normal Rockwell too.
You’re underrated at fiction.
— Anthony Bialy (@AnthonyBialy) August 14, 2023
Every summer weekend in the early 90s my family would pile into the minivan and head to a lynching.
— Coddled affluent professional (@feelsdesperate) August 14, 2023
It is a rather nasty form of evil to read into a decent person (Brooks is a often daft but he isn't pining for a rebirth of 50s style oppressions) a desire, intention, or motive that clearly is not present. It is sick, actually.
— Dillon Freed (@dillonfreed) August 15, 2023
You have a mind-disease, Joyce. 😵💫
— Theo Jordan (@Theo_TJ_Jordan) August 14, 2023
You cannot imagine that Brooks has anything but favor for this broader-scope social progress. America's more recent gathering social decay - strikingly in incivility - is well supported by data (suicide rates, opioid epidemic, loneliness) and an important subject to write about.
— John Achterhof (@JohnAchterhof) August 14, 2023
He acknowledges these realities early and often. Asserts there's no going back. Cites what IS worth keeping. Listen a little.
— Daniel Carpenter (@DanielC87173381) August 14, 2023
This just proves his point, since in a more moral society one would be ashamed to tweet something so blatantly dishonest in light of the actual "lament": pic.twitter.com/Mx2Kb126y6
— Steve Singleton (@SteveDSingleton) August 14, 2023
Gore Vidal was often wrong but he was right when he said “Joyce Carol Oates” are the three saddest words in the English language.
— Kevin Rennie (@DailyRuctions) August 14, 2023
Joyce you've always had a misanthropic streak. What do you like about humanity? Try to do it on hard mode, without low-hanging fruit like art in all its permutations. Have you ever had hemorrhoids?
— Grümpenführer (@Grumpenfella) August 14, 2023
Fascinating that Rockwell has been coded as racist when he painted one of the iconic images of the civil rights movement. pic.twitter.com/l6D99xS7Ag
— Juan Bandini (@CasaDeBandini) August 14, 2023
Rich white lady says what?
— PunkDoc™, Ex NYT subscriber (@DockPunk) August 14, 2023
There's no looking back at America with nostalgia … it was always a horrible country and it's only thanks to progressives that it's turning into the socialist utopia we're seeing in the blue cities.
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