UBT: David Brooks Says Goodbye

Columnist David Brooks says goodbye to his New York Times gig and lectures us all on morality. Which is always rich coming from the guy who left his wife for his much younger research assistant.

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Say it isn’t so! David Brooks is leaving his job at the New York Times as finger-wagging moralist, deli meat snob, and righteous scold of single mothers. He doesn’t say exactly what his next job is, but you know he’ll be quoting Edmund Burke.

Oh David. I’m sorry. We never did buy you that Sissinghurt spoon rest. This just feels so sudden. We’ll try not to Leave and Cleave.

We’d never accuse you of popularity, David. Unless you mean dining with Jeffrey Epstein.

Gosh, your exit is kind of curiously timed with that photo dump. But let’s not be conspiratorial. You’ve got things to do! People to meet! A much younger wife to amuse!

David Brooks is saying goodbye.

And the Universal Bullshit Translator is here for it. Brooks’ farewell (gift link) was too long for a single column. The UBT is a mere machine and cannot take this much postwar global analysis in the morning. Suffice it to say, we’re all going to hell in a hand basket and this makes David despair. But he believes in today’s youth. Because he married one.

So, leaving your wife appliance of 28 years for your much younger researcher assistant is the lens through which the UBT shall now parse David Brooks’ goodbye.

It’s been the honor of a lifetime to work here, surrounded by so many astounding journalists. But after 22 wonderful years, I’ve decided to take the exciting and terrifying step of leaving in order to try to build something new.

What was once exciting (dinner with Jeffrey Epstein!) is now terrifying (pictures!). Let’s exit and call it reinvention.

The fundamental questions of life

In reality, I’ve long believed that there is a weird market failure in American culture. There are a lot of shows on politics, business and technology, but there are not enough on the fundamental questions of life that get addressed as part of a great liberal arts education: How do you become a better person?

By dedicating your book on moral character to your researcher assistant/muse/future wife, but giving a passing mention to your current wife and mother of your children?

How do you find meaning in retirement?

Viagra?

Does America still have a unifying national narrative? How do great nations recover from tyranny?

The UBT doesn’t know, but it’s taking notes from your ex-wife.

The world has changed.

When I think about how the world has changed since I joined The Times, the master trend has been Americans’ collective loss of faith — not only religious faith but many other kinds. 

Like faith in the commitments you make to others?

Loss of faith produces a belief in nothing. Trump is nihilism personified, with his assumption that morality is for suckers, that life is about power, force, bullying and cruelty. Global populists seek to create a world in which only the ruthless can thrive. America is becoming the rabid wolf of nations.

The UBT cannot find fault with this analysis. It just wishes to not be lectured about morality from a pompous git with a history of misogynistic tropes about single mothers. #bullying

Nihilism is the mind-set that says that whatever is lower is more real. Selfishness, egoism and the lust for power drive human affairs.

Selfishness, egoism and lust drove my affair with my much younger research assistant.

Altruism, generosity, honor, integrity and hospitality are mirages. Ideals are shams that the selfish use to mask their greed.

And then they write books on Moral Quests. #sham

What is freedom for?

We have widened personal freedom but utterly failed to help people answer the question of what that freedom is for.

To boff our much younger researcher assistant.

Every healthy society rests on some shared conception of the sacred — sacred heroes, sacred texts, sacred ideals — and when that goes away, anxiety, atomization and a slow descent toward barbarism are the natural results.

The slow descent toward barbarism is what I call my p*n*s.

Where do people and nations go to find new things to believe in, new values to orient their lives around? Where do they go to revive their humanistic core? 

In the laps of their much younger research assistants. Revive my core, baby.

We all create a moral ecology around ourselves, one that either elevates the people we touch or degrades them.

I didn’t leave my wife of 28 years for my much younger researcher assistant, I created a moral ecology that elevates.

I have attempted books.

My books have been attempts to bring humanistic thinking to popular audiences, and wherever I go I confront people who long to feel uplifted, who hunger for the wisdom that has been handed down by sages and prophets through the centuries.

They throw their panties on the stage and scream “UPLIFT ME, DAVID!”

If you’ve read my columns, you may know that one of my favorite observations from psychology is that all of life is a series of daring explorations from a secure base.

I paid my secure base a generous divorce settlement for my daring explorations.

People need a secure base. Part of that base is emotional — unconditional attachments to family and friends.

People need a secure base in which to raise the children and perform spousal appliance chores, until such a time as they are deemed obsolete. Do not cleave.

You will be rewarded.

Part of that secure base is material — living in a safe community, with a measure of financial stability. Part of that secure base is spiritual — living within a shared moral order, possessing faith that hard work will be rewarded, faith in a brighter future.

Your hard work will be rewarded, Wife #1. I have listed you in my acknowledgements. Have faith in my brighter future with my much younger research assistant. I know my happiness is your greatest endeavor. Do not cry for me, New York Times. I am retiring to whatever lecture circuit will have me. Except the radical leftist coffeehouses of Takoma Park Maryland, where barbarians project pictures of Jeffrey Epstein on the walls and hurl inferior lunch meat at my head. Single mothers, barbarians, uppity bloggers, do not try and shame me. This pomposity does not break. Edmund Burke would agree.