Literary Corner: Make Like an Alt-Man

Unexpectedly, David Brooks ("And Now, a Word From a Fanatic—Inside the Mind of an Internet Extremist") offers a kind of Browning-like dramatic monologue in which he tries to get inside the mindset of, I think, the kind of unpleasant person who says rude things on the Internet, but right from the outset

I am a sick man. I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased.

I am one of those fanatics on the alt-right and the alt-left, the ones who make online forums so vicious, the ones who cancel and call out, the minority of online posters who fill the air with hate. I’m one of those radicals whose rage is intertwined with psychological fragility, whose anger at real wrongs is corrupted by my existential panic about myself.

I found the words organizing themselves into a more specific rhythmic form, to the tune of a particularly great song:

I

I'm one of those radicals whose rage is intertwined
with psychological fragility
whose anger at real wrongs is corrupted with existential
panic about myself

to know something about me you must understand the chaos
of my innermost being
for I was raised without consistent moral frameworks
to be like an alt-man

I was raised in fragmentation and division in the flux of
liquid permanent modernity
I can't trust an adult and I can't trust a friend and women
always do reject me

I passed through the torment of my school unseen
I can't deal with pain man
I was raised with the coddling that protects you from risk
to be like an alt-man 

I'm a sick man
I'm a spiteful man
yeah I'm an alt-man

I'm an unattractive man
I think my liver is diseased
yeah I'm an alt-man

I'm one of those fanatics on the right and the left
who make online discourse so cruel and bereft
the warp that is coming to unravel your weft
and make you an alt-man

II 

Politics provides me with the Manichaean binaries
I can't find nowhere else man
I crave the single narrative that makes everything clear
yeah I want fundamentalism man 

catastrophizing is my mind-set, catastrophizing is pure
the glass might be half-full man
every human is reduced to a category
and I am an alt-man

I want leaders and spokesmen who will tell a simple story blaming
bankers or immigrants
I want put-down artists who will crush the other side as I
enjoy them on YouTube

I've got a simple moral system that says up is evil
and down is good man
if you are above me in the hierarchy
than you're not an alt-man 

I'm a sick man
I'm a spiteful man
yeah I'm an alt-man 

I'm an unattractive man
I think my liver is diseased
yeah I'm an alt-man

I'm one of those fanatics on the right and the left
who make online discourse so cruel and bereft
the warp that is coming to unravel your weft
and make you an alt-man

Come on and love me
my alt-man girl
and we'll be so happy
in my alt-man world....

III 

I'm raised on gourmet coffee and on yoga pants and yet I found
a way to rebel man
but politics won't fill my soul or bring me peace or end
my existential anxiety

I've created a world without vulnerability
and without relationships man
and relationships are all that can save me except
if I can be like an alt-man

From the abstract vantage point of my computer screen I see a
world of oppression man
they have exclusive cliques and then they disdain me and I don't
get recognition man

it's the ultimate injustice that those guys are recognized
while I am not man
from that molten core my indignation flows
and makes me an alt-man

I'm an indignant man
I'm a superior man
yeah and I read Dostoevsky man

I'm an unattractive man
I think my liver is diseased
yeah I'm an alt-man

I'm one of those fanatics on the right and the left
who make online discourse so cruel and bereft
the warp that is coming to unravel your weft
and make you an alt-man

na na na na na-na-na
na na na
na na na na na-na-na
na na na

I think this is probably Brooks's contribution to the war against people who make fun of Bret Stephens, but I can't be too sure. Not all the words are his, but an alarming number of them are. The preciousness is the searching way he tries to imagine what it's like to feel a passion: dangerous, and ultimately unsatisfying, and probably caused by an unhappy childhood, but still he's so interested in what it might be like!

As always, though, he's wholly incapable of seeing that the way to achieve a deep understanding of a group of people isn't to tell them but to ask them.