[Mb-civic] Lunch Period Poli SciBy DAVID BROOKS

[Michael Butler]

The New York Times
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April 30, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
Lunch Period Poli Sci
By DAVID BROOKS

College is still probably a good idea, but everything you need to know about
America you can learn in high school. For example, if you want to understand
American class structure you'd be misled if you read Marx, but you'd
understand it perfectly if you look around a high school cafeteria.

The jocks sit here; the nerds sit there; the techies, drama types, skaters,
kickers and gangstas sit there, there and there. What you see is not class
in the 19th-century sense, but a wide array of lifestyle cliques, some
richer, some poorer, but each regarding the others as vaguely pathetic and
convinced of its moral superiority.

Similarly, when it comes to politics, high school explains most everything
you need to know. In 1976, Tom Wolfe wrote an essay for Commentary in which
he noted that our political affiliations are shaped subrationally. He went
on to observe that especially when we are young and forming our identities,
we make sense of our lives by running little morality plays in our heads in
which the main characters are Myself, the hero, and My Adolescent Opposite,
the enemy.

"Forever after," Wolfe writes, "the most momentous national and
international events are stuffed into the same turf. The most colossal
antagonists and movements become merely stand-ins for My Adolescent Self and
My Adolescent Opposite.

"If My Opposite, my natural enemy in adolescence, was the sort of person who
seemed overly aggressive, brutish and in love with power, I identify him
with the 'conservative' position. If My Opposite, my natural enemy in
adolescence, seemed overly sensitive, soft, cerebral and incapable of
action, I identify him with the 'liberal' position."

And so it goes. In every high school there are students who are culturally
and intellectually superior but socially aggrieved. These high school
culturati have wit and sophisticated musical tastes but find that all
prestige goes to jocks, cheerleaders and preps who possess the emotional
depth of a cocker spaniel. The nerds continue to believe that the
self-reflective life is the only life worth living (despite all evidence to
the contrary) while the cool, good-looking, vapid people look down upon them
with easy disdain on those rare occasions they are compelled to acknowledge
their existence.

These sarcastic cultural types may grow up to be rich movie producers, but
they will remember their adolescent opposites and become liberals. They may
grow up to be rich lawyers but will decorate their homes with interesting
fabrics from the oppressed Peruvian peasantry to differentiate themselves
from their jock opposites.

In adulthood, the former high school nerds will savor the sort of scandals
that befall their formerly athletic and currently corporate adolescent
enemies ‹ the Duke lacrosse scandal, the Enron scandal, the various problems
that have plagued the frat boy Bush. In the lifelong struggle for moral
superiority, problems that bedevil your adolescent opposites send
pleasure-inducing dopamine surging through your brain.

Similarly, in every high school there are jocks, cheerleaders and regular
kids who vaguely sense that their natural enemies are the brooding poets who
go off to become English majors. These prom kings and queens may leave their
adolescent godhood and go off to work as underpaid sales reps despite their
coldly gracious spouses and effortlessly slender kids, but they will still
remember their adolescent opposites and become conservatives. They will
experience surges of orgiastic triumphalism when Sean Hannity eviscerates
the scuffed-shoed intellectuals who have as much personal courage as a
French chipmunk in retreat.

Because these personal traits are so pervasive and constant, Republican
administrations tend to be staffed by people who are well-balanced but dull,
while Democratic administrations tend to be staffed by people who are
interesting but neurotic. Because these rivalries are so permanent, nobody
has ever voted for a presidential candidate they wouldn't have had lunch
with in high school.

The only real shift between school and adult politics is that the jocks
realize they need conservative intellectuals, who are geeks who have decided
their fellow intellectuals should never be allowed to run anything and have
learned to speak slowly so the jocks will understand them. Meanwhile, the
geeks have learned they need to find popular kids like F.D.R. to head their
tickets because the American people will never send a former geek to the
White House. (Bill Clinton was unique in that he was a member of every
clique at once.)

The central message, though, is that we never escape our high school selves.
Vote for Pedro.

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