New York Time conservative columnist David Brooks, who has mostly been wandering in the political wilderness since the election of Donald Trump, had a highly amusing, and mostly on target, satirical piece in the Jan. 4, 2019, edition of the paper.
It was all about what constitutes being a "good person" in the current age.
I will focus on one of his four recommendations: feeling indignant all of the time.
"When you are indignant, or woke, you are showing you have a superior moral awareness. Your indignation itself is a sign of your goodness, and if you can be indignant quicker than the people around you, that just shows how much more good you are," Brooks wrote.
This is called "signaling virtue" and I cited an example of it in a recent column where Washington Post critic Ron Charles, a white male, expressed his indignation that J.D. Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" is still in the canon of great books.
"We live in a world overpopulated by privileged white guys who mistake their depression for existential wisdom, their narcissism for superior vision," Charles said, beating his breast for even greater effect: "We have met the phonies and they are us."
To be a good person these days it is also necessary to attach the word "privileged" to every mention of white males and as you can see above, Charles hit that particular "signaling virtue" nail on the head, too. Actually, "privileged" is the currently right adjective for white females, too, but it is best not used by a male. Any criticism of women, no matter what race, could be viewed as misogyny and one then certainly can't be a good person.
There was a time, Brooks said, when people thought being good meant living up to some external standard of moral excellence. But not now. "Self display" is where it's at.
If you feel a need, you can signal your own virtue by getting very indignant about this post.
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