If there's one thing “tolerant” liberals hate, it's being told they're wrong about something. That was the case when New York Times columnist David Brooks declared that the Women's Marches on Saturday "can never be an effective opposition to Donald Trump” because “this movement focuses on the wrong issues.”
It didn't take long for posters on the Twitter website to come out swinging, from complaining about the columnist's use of the term “mansplaining” to sarcastically noting that the article “should have come with a head pat and an ass pinch at the end.”
Brooks began his column by stating:
The women’s marches were a phenomenal success and an important cultural moment. Most everybody came back uplifted and empowered. Many said they felt hopeful for the first time since Election Day. But these marches can never be an effective opposition to Donald Trump.
In the first place, this movement focuses on the wrong issues. Of course, many marchers came with broad anti-Trump agendas, but they were marching under the conventional structure in which the central issues were clear. As the Washington Post reported, they were “reproductive rights, equal pay, affordable health care, action on climate change.”
“These are all important matters, and they tend to be voting issues for many upper-middle-class voters,” he continued. “The crucial problems today concern the way technology and globalization are decimating jobs and tearing the social fabric.”
Brooks continued: “All the big things that were once taken for granted are now under assault: globalization, capitalism, adherence to the Constitution, the American-led global order. If you’re not engaging these issues first, you’re not going to be in the main arena of national life.”
His second criticism was that “there was too big a gap between Saturday’s marches and the Democratic and Republican parties.”
“It’s significant that as marching and movements have risen, the actual power of the parties has collapsed,” Brooks noted. “Marching is a seductive substitute for action in an anti-political era and leaves the field open for a rogue like Trump.”
“On Friday, Trump offered a version of unabashed populist nationalism,” he asserted. “On Saturday, the anti-Trump forces could have offered a red, white and blue alternative patriotism, a modern, forward-looking patriotism based on pluralism, dynamism, growth, racial and gender equality, and global engagement.”
“Instead, the marches offered the pink hats, an anti-Trump movement built, oddly, around Planned Parenthood, and lots of signs with the word 'pussy' in them,” the liberal columnist stated before claiming: “The definition of America is up for grabs.”
Brooks then referred to a column -- written in mid-November by Professor Mark Lilla of Columbia University -- exploring the concept that progressives seem intent on doubling down on exactly was has doomed them so often.
The fixation on diversity in our schools and in the press has produced a generation of liberals and progressives narcissistically unaware of conditions outside their self-defined groups and indifferent to the task of reaching out to Americans in every walk of life.
“If the anti-Trump forces are to have a chance, they have to offer a better nationalism, with diversity cohering around a central mission, building a nation that balances the dynamism of capitalism with biblical morality,” Brooks stated.
“The march didn’t come close,” he concluded.
In an article on the Mediaite.com website, Justin Baragona stated: “Well, as you’d expect, Brooks’ column wasn’t seen all that positively by many folks, especially since it was a man essentially telling women how to better improve their political activism.”
“First off,” Baragona noted, “there was ample use of the term 'mansplain.’”
Hadley Freeman sarcastically posted: “Oh good, David Brooks is here to mansplain the Women's Marches to us silly ladies *stabs own eyes*.”
"Why does the idea of women standing up for themselves scare you?” Tara Obama Dublin asked. “Your mansplaining game is so weak.”
Roxane Gay had a brief and angry recommendation: “Stop reading David Brooks.”
“Just read the David Brooks column on the women's march,” Jessica Valenti noted before indicating that it ”should have come with a head pat and an ass pinch at the end.”
Tbogg carried the columnist's points to their logical conclusion: “You gals need to smile more. There, see? You could light up a room with that smile. Now go make me a sandwich. Scoot.”
Nevertheless, Brooks noted, many liberal movements “descend into internal rivalries about who is most oppressed and who should get pride of place.”
“Sure enough, the controversy before and after the march was over the various roles of white feminists, women of color, anti-abortion feminists and other out-groups,” he stated.
Only time will tell if Brooks' prediction regarding the future of participants in the Women's Marches is correct. After all, we can't depend on the liberal-loving “mainstream media” to tell us if he's right.
