Tucker Lieberman
2 min readAug 24, 2023

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I'd volunteer David Brooks as an example of RWGV. Regarding Brooks's article in the current issue of the Atlantic (Sept 2023), "How America Got Mean," Thomas Zimmer wrote on Substack a couple days ago that this voice "presents itself as reasonable and above the fray while only ever preaching the gospel of status-quo preservation." https://thomaszimmer.substack.com/p/moralizing-nostalgia-leads-to-bad

Brooks also had an NYT column on August 2, "What if We’re the Bad Guys Here?" Someone I know forwarded it to me. Brooks wrote: «Using words like “problematic,” “cisgender,” “Latinx” and “intersectional” is a sure sign that you’ve got cultural capital coming out of your ears. Meanwhile, members of the less-educated classes have to walk on eggshells because they never know when we’ve changed the usage rules so that something that was sayable five years ago now gets you fired.» Obviously this is nonsense on various levels: people with more formal education are not in charge of language usage rules and do not change the rules in stealth every couple years just so they can fire workers with less formal education; the four words Brooks highlighted are words we use to describe real people, real situations, and common perceptions thereof (not a grab for "cultural capital"); and this vocab isn't even difficult to learn. Anyway, the reason I bring it up is that, in this line, Brooks is giving a mini-playbook that supports your analysis. He's saying that people who speak like him and his friends are trustworthy, while people who ever find reason to say the words "Latinx" or "cisgender" are simply not his people. Rather than using his column to teach his audience what these words mean and why people use them, he teaches his audience that anyone who uses this vocab is an elitist playing mind-games to disparage the working class and cancel them from their jobs — and that, more generally, how someone says something (e.g., "Latinx" contrasted with "Latino or Latina," or "cisgender" contrasted with "not transgender," to kick off Page 1 of the RWGV style guide) is more important than what they say.

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Tucker Lieberman
Tucker Lieberman

Written by Tucker Lieberman

Cult classic. Author of the novel "Most Famous Short Film of All Time." Editor for Prism & Pen and Identity Current. tuckerlieberman.com

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