I sort of have to go line by line...
First point, the title itself: he is not talking really, deep down, merely about the two party system as such at all, but rather things much bigger...
First half 90s, WSJ, nothing but good news (for him, back then; not at all, even back then, for me), sort of sets him up as having been in La La Land for rather a long time already,
rather like Michael Pillsbury's confession, re engagement with China, hope springing eternal for a very long time (40 years)...
The War in the Balkans, the most important event for him...supposedly emblematic of zero sum conflicts (borrowing a term for military conflicts made famous from Thurow's liberal economics book.
The war in the Balkans was not the most important event back then, by far. The conflicts in the Middle East were far more important.
He thinks there has been a transformation in 'an unconscious mind set'.
If 'it', whatever he thinks he is talking about, were unconscious, as he claims, how would anyone, especially Brooks, ever know?
How would anyone ever know, for sure, that what they each thought of as their unconscious mind set, was the same or even similar to anyone else's?
How would one see or measure an unconscious mind set in the first place to then determine whether another ostensible mind set were a total transformation of the first? Maybe he got this philosophical psychology from someone at The Stone Desk.
He says there was an unconscious abundance mind set....
The idea of an ever broadening field of progress, of the ability of science to improve the lot of all mankind, was hardly an unconscious mind set. It has been the self conscious bedrock notion of the Enlightenment:
"Paradoxically, the men who trusted so highly in the powers of intelligence regarded the mind as essentially vacant and inert; the idea of the passive mind was indispensable to their system. it was the guarantee that the truths of nature might be perceived without distortion. It was the basis for the distinction, then so important and so clear, between enlightenment and prejudice. It was the metaphysical groundwork for the belief that men were equal, and that they possessed the quality of perfectibility, that is, susceptibility to progress. Minimizing the effects of will, denying original predisposition, refusing to see any inevitability in human nature, the doctrine was flatly contrary to the Christian idea of sin; and by representing man as a passive child of circumstances, easily abused by his environment, it slipped sometimes into a notion that human nature, when crude, is good; and that order, restraint, discipline, and suppression are affronts to man's dignity and freedom." Palmer, p 133, 134
What was, however, also part and parcel of the Enlightenment was Locke's disastrous epistemology, described very briefly above, and its tendency toward psychologism, individualism, intuitionism, skepticism, and of course Brooks' unconscious.
But let's move on.....
Guess what? This unconscious mind set is only among people in the West and the US.
The unconscious mind set of the billions of people of the Rest is the opposite of Brooks' mindset of scarcity: theirs' is increasingly one of abundance.
One group's unconscious mind has mysteriously taken over another groups unconscious mind!
They are rather like counterposed groups of zombies! Or a cross between zombies and bonobos!
Call it a trading places, a la Prestowitz, of unconscious mind sets, between the West and the Rest!
He makes it sound like our problems really only started in the 1990s. That is where his whole essay begins, sadly. The mind set of scarcity only gradually developed from then until now.
Because pundits like Brooks and Friedman and Krugman had sold the educated American, both Democratic and Republican, on endless growth and prosperity, it is little wonder that he would now say that an insidious mind set of scarcity should have somehow gradually, and unconsciously, arisen, against his will, and his advice, to oppose his benevolent ideological rule, and his unconscious realm of abundance.
The unconscious mind set people of scarcity are Children of Darkness, while Brooks' unconscious mind set people of abundance are Children of Light.
Brooks' Enlightenment reminds of Voltaire's, a pseudo liberal Simon Says Religious Revolt against a relatively liberal Catholic Establishment and the Old European Order. See Palmer, Catholics and Unbelievers, circa p 7.
Call Brooks' Enlightenment The Simon Says Enlightenment.
The test of liberalism, its raison d'etre, is gathering progressive abundance, not abundance in the mind, but abundance in the real world around one; the failure of liberalism is scarcity in the real world, not a mind set of scarcity.
You know you've got a problem when you believe in endlessly, though fitfully, increasing prosperity, progress, and perfectibility, call them the PPPs.
The shift in philosophies (not unconscious psychologies, now), from abundance to scarcity, is really a shift from philosophy to anti philosophy, according to Brooks. He has thrown off the mask of pop Freudian depth psychology now. This is sort of classic Voltaire rhetoric.
After all, the philosophes were the only philosophes, weren't they. All others were imposters or orthodox Catholic apologists, or Jansenists.
We might see Trumpism as a sort of Rousseau esque natural man Romantic populism, the idiot fringe but also the spirit of the Enlightenment, but that would be speculating beyond Brooks' effort here.
Brooks' pretzel logic:
Reagan abundance mind set: Philosophy.
Trumps scarcity mind set: Anti Philosophy.
Utter shallow sophisms.
A way to distract readers from any deeper, or farther back in time, realities.
Reagan had been elected by duping the electorate, an electorate, already in the late 70s, demoralized by stagnation and relative decline, reflected in stock market malaise. It was hardly a time of an 'abundance mind' set among the electorate.
Trump has now been elected under similar, and further decaying, economic conditions, after Reaganomics, and Clinton globalism, combined, have not produced anything like abundance for the average or lower than average income American. Although the stock market has been booming (until the past number of days), that has not been of much benefit to many Americans.
Brooks cuts loose in the latter part of the article...
The scarcity mentality demands a perpetual warrior style, he claims, utterly without foundation.
These two, together, then, also without foundation, are claimed to be incompatible with any civilized political creed.
Evangelicalism, now under the sway of the scarcity mentality and the perpetual warrior style, being incompatible with civilization itself as he has claimed, turns into a siege mentality, and worships a pagan immoralist.
Even liberalism itself breaks down under the weight of Brooks' metaphysical framework.
The scarcity mentality ends up eating the host mentality (it turns out it was always a parasite) because it operates at a more fundamental level of the Brooks unconscious psyche.
Now he drops the bomb, these are not unconscious dueling mind sets at all, but rather they are brought on by real underlying conditions of scarcity in the real world (not the products of an unconscious scarcity mind set) which he asserts are only going to get worse.
This really spells the death of his kind of liberalism.
He can twist and turn, but the proof of laissez faire Adam Smith liberalism has always been in the pudding.
Where there is no pudding, there is no liberalism.
Brooks' pretzel logic:
Reagan abundance mind set: Philosophy.
Trumps scarcity mind set: Anti Philosophy.
Utter shallow sophisms.
A way to distract readers from any deeper, or farther back in time, realities.
Reagan had been elected by duping the electorate, an electorate, already in the late 70s, demoralized by stagnation and relative decline, reflected in stock market malaise. It was hardly a time of an 'abundance mind' set among the electorate.
Trump has now been elected under similar, and further decaying, economic conditions, after Reaganomics, and Clinton globalism, combined, have not produced anything like abundance for the average or lower than average income American. Although the stock market has been booming (until the past number of days), that has not been of much benefit to many Americans.
Brooks cuts loose in the latter part of the article...
The scarcity mentality demands a perpetual warrior style, he claims, utterly without foundation.
These two, together, then, also without foundation, are claimed to be incompatible with any civilized political creed.
Evangelicalism, now under the sway of the scarcity mentality and the perpetual warrior style, being incompatible with civilization itself as he has claimed, turns into a siege mentality, and worships a pagan immoralist.
Even liberalism itself breaks down under the weight of Brooks' metaphysical framework.
The scarcity mentality ends up eating the host mentality (it turns out it was always a parasite) because it operates at a more fundamental level of the Brooks unconscious psyche.
Now he drops the bomb, these are not unconscious dueling mind sets at all, but rather they are brought on by real underlying conditions of scarcity in the real world (not the products of an unconscious scarcity mind set) which he asserts are only going to get worse.
This really spells the death of his kind of liberalism.
He can twist and turn, but the proof of laissez faire Adam Smith liberalism has always been in the pudding.
Where there is no pudding, there is no liberalism.
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