David Brooks perhaps inadvertently reveals the chasm between our two political parties. If I can modify his recent essay...
"You (don't) treat your opponents like legitimate adversaries, not illegitimate enemies. You (don't) tell the truth as best you can. You don’t (do) make naked appeals to bigotry."
Pretty much the Republican playbook since 1968.
And yet, Brooks hangs on, evermore desperate to defend a Party that increasingly has no use for people like him.
54
Like vocal fry, voting for trump was a cultural meme at the time and memes are not susceptible to persuasion. As is the anti-democratic tendencies of many of us. Long term it’s going to take a significant global problem generated by our over population and worn out planet to get people to skip the fluff and focus on truly important issues....forget Berlusconi, trump, Duterte...,eh?
8
I agree that the country can survive, that the Constitution will help to bring us back to normality. But we need to be very active to make sure that happens. It will not happen if we sit and wait and are only amused by the antics of the Oval Office Occupant (here's a thought: let's give him a shirt with the monogram OOO).
The rabid right is strongly supporting all of the wrong stuff. Let's make sure that we support the right stuff.
23
The left and the right are not the same. One is culturally inclusive, the other culturally segregationist. They both claim to want an end to economic inequality, but one wants to take from the rich, the other from the poor. One wants to save the environment, the other denies it needs saving. One looks more to the future, the other looks more to the past. One is appalled by Trump and the other idolizes him. There are two directions we can choose and only one will take us to a better America.
72
I'm sadly disappointed in the attitudes of David Brooks and the Republican party. Where are the sane adults in the room? The wheels of the car are off, the headlights are out and our society is uncontrollably falling off the cliff with no solid ground beneath us. I am just one voice in the crowd. Mr. Brooks is a giant with a megaphone and all the space, air time and words he needs to sound his points. Everything that is described in this article did not happen yesterday. It has been eroding our social fabric for many a year. Again I ask, where are the adults in the room and why are they looking the other way?
34
lf democracies depend on such political codes as "You tell the truth as best you can," then American democracy has been broken for some time now in a very fundamental way which Mr. Brooks still cannot fathom. Donald Trump is an extraordinary, compulsive, obsessive liar. His lies are as commonplace as his language. Trump follows a long line of liars. Remember Johnson's Gulf of Tonkin? What about the mountain of lies from all levels of the Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson administrations that created and perpetuated the Vietnam War. Every day on every channel. What about Saint Reagan's Contra War, which not only contravened international law but domestic laws as well. Countless officials lied in front of Congress (a felony), and those convicted were pardoned. Ten years later, Bill Clinton was impeached for lying. And five years after that, the Mother of All Lies, the Weapons of Mass Destruction -- a civics course in government and establishment media mendacity. Does it have to be said that no one, none of the perpetrators, none of the liars, none of their flatterers and sycophants paid a price? American democracy sure did and we're still paying. And these are but few examples, before we even get to 2008 and Libya. I suggest if you want to identify the causes of the current crisis in American democracy, you begin by looking in the mirror.
18
It is hard to predict the future, even for you David. In any case, I can't imagine ever having nostalgia for Donald Trump. If there is a worse President waiting in the wings, I don't want to know yet. I'm old so maybe I won't be around to see it. I pray for my adult children and grandchildren. More bad news, to me, is that Congress has the power to push back against Trump's worst proposals, instincts and denigrating of our politics but refuses to exercise that power. Their cowardice is soul crushing. I was a young woman during Watergate and felt so proud of our institutions and the people who inhabited the Congress and the Courts who acted to uphold the rule of law. Where are such people now?
45
I don't know enough about how Italy elects candidates to office but I do know that our system is very broken.
The SCOTUS decision on Citizen's United basically gave the elections to whichever side could raise the money, almost no questions asked. That's not good for a democracy. From there, we have the billionaires taking control of the elections, pouring in so much money, they essentially get to choose who our next elected, whatever will be. That sure isn't a function of democracy.
And the social media is destroying not only our democracy, with Russia's help , but civil discourse. Between that and the 24 hour news cycles, especially on the Right, there's no stepping back, doing some research, giving the issues careful thought, then working to support what you can that is available that you find worthwhile. There's just the constant drumbeat of mostly hate-filled rhetoric. It's demeaning, depressing, and destructive. We have to put in the time, the work, the brain power, the commitment, to take our country back. Or we're doomed.
12
The answer to Brook's question is glaringly obvious to ANY student of History...NO! Our Democracy most certainly will NOT simply "self-repair" once we impeach/imprison the Manchurian-grifter currently (illegitimately) occupying the WH.
The immediate example that leaps to mind is "the Gracchi brothers" of ancient Rome. The parallels to Bernie are astonishing, reformers attempt to forestall impending social crisis...caused by the insatiable GREED of "the Boni" (aka Rome's version of ".01%'ers"). Thus began the downfall, soon hastened by
Lucius Cornelius "Sulla", the first Roman General -in 700 YEARS- since the founding of the Republic, to disregard the (sacrosanct) rule that a General MUST dis-band his army, BEFORE returning to Rome, designed to prevent exactly what happened...a General marching AGAINST Rome & slaughtering fellow Countrymen.
Segue to G. Julius Caesar whose defeated & spared political opponents sycophantically voted the "honor" of "Dictator for Life" -Then promptly murdered him, assuming they'd magically repair ALL the damage done. "The People", of the "Senate and..." had long figured out that the "system was rigged", & rioted.
All the"Liberators" accomplished for their ill-considered murder was another 25 years of civil war, & death of countless citizens.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot...& the collapse of the Res Publica and institution of Caesar Augustus, as the First Autocratic ruler of
the "Roman Empire".
I'm afraid we are doomed!
7
Lobbyists and special interest groups (like the NRA) now control the Congress especially since Citizens United. In light of the enormous influence those with unlimited funds have to buy our elections, I worry that democracy will continue to suffer.
13
"The Chaos After Trump"?
AFTER Trump?
How about BECAUSE OF, CAUSED BY, and utterly ignored BY Trump? Trump is the cause of immense chaos in our nation and the world!
It's NOW--i.e. the PRESENT TENSE, David!
14
"Nothing is inevitable in life, but liberal democracy clearly ain’t going to automatically fix itself."
That clearly will require the same level of courage and self-sacrifice that created it. Volunteers...?
7
Wait, what, huh? How is the best indicator of US politics after Trump Italy?
Whatever it is Brooks is having (a SuperTuscan?) I'd like some of that.
4
During the 2016 presidential campaign, the media failed to call out patently false claims made, primarily by those on the far right. Instead, there was such an effort to give an equal hearing to all sides.
Until we all respect (and acknowledge the need for) fact-checkers, the electorate will be at risk of accepting those who offer 'alternate facts.' In that case, we will get the government that we deserve--and it will not be a democracy.
9
Maybe we don't need a President? Even if if Trump is gone, we could yet get another one, perhaps someone much worse! It is time we took so much power away from an individual and tried a British type of government. The executive branch should be run by the head of a party who is subject to a no-confidence vote in Congress or some kind of voter recall before the entire term is up.
8
David Brooks' column gets it wrong in a couple respects. Post-war Italian democratic politics has always been unstable at the national level. During the Cold War, the CIA meddled in Italian politics because of a fear of the Left, which came out of the war with a great deal of credibility for having played an important role in the resistance. It is fair to say that Berlusconi has contributed to the chaos of Italian politics, but the United States is not Italy. We have our own history, with its thread of populism and right-wing paranoia.
The second deficiency in Mr. Brooks' column is that he tells only one side of the political story in the United States. While Trump has been destroying political norms, women in the heartland have been getting increasingly involved in local and state politics. These women represent, by and large, the center-left spectrum. They are organizing and running for office. I highly recommend the research of historian Lara Putnam and social scientist Theda Skocpal, whose work was recently referred to in a NYT column.
Finally, I am hopeful that we may be seeing a rising youth movement in this country. Do the young people from MSD high school seem radical politically? Not to me. They may have been radicalized by the shooting at their school, but their politics seem center-left to me.
14
Something decent happened last week in my hometown. The favorite candidate to fill a vacancy on our city council lost because a bunch of old Democratic pols, like me, got out and walked, telephoned, and wrote letters to the editor. Plain old fashioned political action. Our guy surprised everyone, ourselves included, and won. One data point is not a trend, but it is heartening to see that a motivated leadership can reverse an expected outcome and produce a liberal result.
Can we replicate this on a national level in 2018? I think we have to. Otherwise we may be writing the obituary of our political system. As Brooks says, liberal democracy can't fix itself. But it can be fixed by liberal democrats.
20
Am I dreaming? I see the Dems sweeping back into majorities and cutting off Trump at the knees. Meanwhile, the Republicans will see what he did to them and drag him down themselves. I wish the Democrats pinned more blame on the Republicans. The should put Trumps words into every Republican congressional mouth. I'd like to see sardonic political ads like 1964. They made Goldwater sound dangerous and foolish. A sweep like 1964 would suit me right down to the ground
12
The ID is on the rampage.
2
May there be an after Trump soon, very very soon....
6
So, Mr Brooks, this is YOUR political party!
12
I work in Europe and I go to Italy almost every week for business. I speak to hundreds of Italians from all social extractions. I would like to get some facts straight:
1) Berlusconi was totally defeated in the election. His time is over.
2) Salvini (northern league fascist, bigot and racist) only got traction in the North, but overall less than 20% of the vote: his movement only exists in a coalition with Berlusconi, otherwise it's still smaller than the left-leaning Democratic party.
3) The five star movement only won in the South.
4) The real fascists and neo-nazis got LESS than 1% of the vote and are irrelevant, with no seats in parliament.
So effectively Italy is now split in three - the right wing in the North, and the populist, impractical, inexperienced dreamers of the Five Star movement in the South. Plus the traditional center-left parties, who still control 20% of parliament and maintained control of a few regions.
That said, young Italians for the largest part still believe strongly in democracy. Only a few braindead neo-fascists believe in the need for "strongmen" and go around with their shaved empty heads chanting for Mussolini and beating people up. Italians have a strong sense of freedom and individuality, as a nation they will never fall for a dictator again.
17
The liberal democrats must unite in battle against the autocrats.
5
Yasha Mounk recently commented: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/03/yascha-mounk-d...
"...the geopolitical consequences of America abandoning its commitment to liberal democracy. Countries in Western Europe often forget to what extent America has protected them from the ill winds of world politics over the past half century. If the United States evolves toward illiberalism, the consequences would be disastrous. European democracies like France and Germany would become increasingly dependent on Russia. Japan and South Korea would become open to influence from China. ...
Despite all of America’s specific problems, it is the oldest democracy in the world. With the exception of Canada, it has the deepest experience with trying to make a multiethnic democracy work. If the forces that are pulling us apart are strong enough to make democracy fail in this country, I fear that similar reasons will also prove strong enough to make democracy fail in most other countries in the world. ..."
This is not cheery stuff. We are watching our republic deteriorate, and not in slow motion--given the events of the past two years.
With respect to the polls on flagging faith in democratic regimes, I do wonder how the questions were framed, how was "strongman" defined. I get the sense that things are more complex than some select polls might indicate: http://www.pewglobal.org/2017/10/16/globally-broad-support-for-represent... .
5
It's the anger.
Pent up by the frustration of flat wages since the 1980's, the gross injustice of "to big to fail", the apparent inability of the mega wealthy to channel their tax breaks back into the "Main Street" economy, and stoked up on right wing conspiracy theories on Fox, it had nowhere to go but the dark side.
Where once George Washington stepped away from power for the good of the nation, we have petty, venal men who embrace power, not for the good of the nation, but for what it can do for them.
It is why we have stopped talking and taken up shouting slogans, accomplishing nothing more than feeding more anger.
Stop the anger and we can save democracy.
8
Trump didn't win the popular vote; instead he lost by 3 million votes. Yes he's chaotic and he's given voice to the bigots among us but he's also revealed what life under the GOP is truly like and people are starting to push back. Don't count our country out yet, there's still some fight left in us.
7
Mr. Brooks, time will tell if you are correct; you might be. I hope not. Of course there is the US history of the 40-50s that was rampant with racism, then the 60's brought the civil rights movement. Then the 70's with Nixon and the change in right wing media brought about a nostalgia for the 40-50's. In another 30 years, as U.S. demographics changes and as skin tones become more brown, people may well yearn for the 60's.
The change may be happening today already. For example, in Texas, in early voting, there is by various reports a 98% to 115% increase in Democratic early voting. The pendulum may already be swinging back.
4
Russian bots......fueled the discontent of those whose vote didn't and still
doesn't count....because of the rule of those who can buy a legislator in Congress....with the money poured into media....and everyone watches media
religiously....and believes what the propaganda sells the viewers....
Trump is the barker for this propaganda....Trump could care less about those
who are gullible to believe his outright lies...as those bought the propaganda
Trump sold to get people into his phony Trump University....
So...when Mueller gets Trump under a subpoena...then we will see the tide
turn and the truth be told about how Russian planted lies into our social media
....and the media...has to get a bit smarter and get out of the mire of tabloid
news....perhaps act more like BBC...than CNN........a better grade of reportage
is definitely needed.
2
This article is interesting because Trump took Bush /Cheney to the next level and now Bush is acting like what Trump is doing is wrong. Since Citizen's United American democracy has begun to vanish.
2
"What happens to American politics after Donald Trump? Do we snap back to normal or do things spin ever more widely out of control?
The best indicator we have so far is the example of Italy since the reign of Silvio Berlusconi.
I don't thinks so. Italy has had 62 governments since 1946. That's a different government every 1.1 years. Italy has 7 major political parties and 27 minor political parties. After Trump, we are starting from a totally different place and there is no indication we will inevitably have to repeat Italy' history.
Italy after Berlusconi and the United States after Trump... I can't think of a worse "indicator."
1
Those born in the 1930's and even those of us born in the 1950's fear fascism because we saw how it just about took over the world in the 30's and 40's and wrought unbelievable destruction and crimes against humanity.
Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Stalin, and Hirohito/Togo. The world was prolific with dictators then and there was no guarantee democracies would win the resulting world war.
I believe David is saying that democracy is descending and dictatorship is ascending as a solution to the problems in the world. All the underlying reasons are the same as in the 30's: racism, immigration, unsolved economic problems, disgust with elites, and national feelings of being treated unfairly. Democracy is under assault on all fronts for seeming unable to constructively address these fears.
American democracy has been particularly hypocritical due to buckling to the military-industrial-congressional complex and undermining democratic governments in favor of dictatorships around the world. Now we have a government completely disconnected from the needs of ordinary people. Irregardless of Trump we are a failing democracy.
Is it any wonder that now, foolishly, people are looking at dictatorship as a better solution?
Perhaps David is right that there is no easy fix to this dilemma.. It has been decades in the making
4
And, of course, David will say both sides are to blame.
I don't know any way to defeat the Right without resorting to their tactics. What did 8 years of "When they go low, we go high" get us? The key is to maintain our souls in the process so we come out the other end with our sense of what is right and fair play.
3
I disagree. The silent majority and formerly silent, moderates will finally get off the couch into action. I cannot imagine we'll elect someone else with as severe of a personality disorder as the current narcissist in office. Being on TV might just become an automatic disqualification. (I hope, and I was formerly on TV.)
1
You know what would help David? A little less generosity towards the people in the upper middle class circles you run with and the crazies on the right whose sympathies for Donald Trump helped bring us to this juncture and the GOP you gave a pass for years, albeit, perhaps, unwittingly.
The Ronald Reagan you admired brought a lot of this on us .. from "welfare queens" and "black bucks" on race to trickle down economics on class, to W's dissembled war on Iraq and his liberalism ... with our civil liberties ... the Republican Party whose values and respect for American tradition has been a complete charade which you yourself never seemed to notice .. till it was way way too late. We won't get out of this predicament till the modern Republican Party gets its just desserts and is removed from the seats of power. Maybe we'll get a stronger Democratic center when people aren't being tossed out on the street, health care is delivered to all Americans, and jobs pay living wages. But there's the rub because your GOP pals are still standing strong against all of it.
3
In comparing today’s USA with Italy, who could pay their debts to EU, Mr Brooks is saying that we have gone down the ladder of leadership to the bottom of Europe! Pretty soon, he may take us to the next lower level, when our President declares bankruptcy for the US treasury. Massive tax cur for the super rich, including himself, is the first step towards that declaration.
One in 6 Americans prefer military rule?????? I need a cite for that.
10
Oh, I don't know about this. Italy is not the best test case to compare American politics to. They've had serious govt strife since Fascism/WWII, culminating in the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Muro by a militant Communist group - and that was in 1979. I do not see American politics in the reflection of Italy's.
RE: Silvio- It was about 15 years later when he won his first govt position, meaning he's been an "elected" official the political scene for 20 years. Now, the obvious differences are Italy has had a multi-party government for quite some time. Furthermore, I quoted "elected" above, because Silvio has considerable mob connections (now we're getting closer to trump).
That's where I see the most crossover - corner-cutting billionaires making deals with the devil. If our govt holds criminals accountable - if there are ones to be held accountable when all is said and done [wink] - then that'd be a good first step toward stemming the trump-trend tide. Throwing up our hands and saying "I guess we're Italy now!" is both untrue and counter-productive.
2
Italian protest, top half only? Berlusconi, seriously awful and dangerous old groper, looks away? Well, he never talked about heroically running in to save kids cowering amid a hail of bullets. If he doesn't like someone, he can get rid of them without tweets. Maybe they disappear? And it's Italy. Chaos and drama and corruption for decades. With opera. We are never gonna achieve that level of sublime and crazy.
2
Rome: Republic to dictatorship: Lessons from history.
1. Roman inequality skyrocketed when overseas conquest resulted in too much wealth for equitable distribution throughout society. Greed for profits from war led to abuses and illegal behavior conspicuous consumption by Senators.
2. Frustrated small farmers migrated to the capital in search of employment, even though living conditions remained squalid for all but the wealthiest elements. There was economic stagnation by the 130s BC, but now Rome had a large surplus population that could not return to the land because of the radical agricultural changes.
4. Changes in the military. Conquest required maintenance of a permanent military establishment in the provinces to cope with rebellions. Roman authorities continued to rely on conscription to man overseas armies. For Rome the result was a gradual rise in "draft-dodging" as small farmers evaded the draft by abandoning their farms and moving to the city.
In sum, the process of self-enrichment and heightened political importance rendered the Roman senatorial order chauvinistically arrogant and unaccountable for their actions. Many high-minded aristocrats perceived the need for institution of better means of redress and political reform, but their efforts were blocked by a majority unwilling to relinquish their privileged position in society.
6
Add the following too:
(1) huge number of slaves captured in wars and sold to aristocrats, leading to depression of local wages and sky-rocketing unemployment of it's citizens.
(2) Debasement of currency by adding base metal to gold giving false impression of greater wealth.
1
LOL!! ....terrific comment Borat.
Authoritarians and anarchists are appealing because people take the freedoms of democracy for granted. Maybe a dose of life as lived from 1914 to 1945 will foster an appreciation for alliances, treaties and trade unions. Easy answers and fear of change and outsiders, amplified by social media, are disrupting human relations and the connections that sustain societies in tough times.
Italy was under enormous stress in the 1970's, with inflation, unemployment and the Red Brigade. The corruption scandals (Mani Pulite) of the 1990's shattered much of the Italian political class and several political parties. But Italian society proved to be durable. The government was not as essential as people might have thought. Today, the stresses on people - their sense of belonging, security, trust - are more severe, making external threats seem menacing.
3
Excellent essay by David Brooks, but what he fails to identify is the historical aspect of the new authoritarianism in America; where and how it began to fester like a sore on the body politic. One can easily argue the new authoritarianism developed during President Obama’s tenure with his refusal to negotiate with the GOP on practically every major issue and his off-putting tendency to demonize those who opposed his views. Obama famously remarked after his re-election, “we won and you lost” and he drove his agenda with that sentiment that his opponents’ views didn’t matter. To be sure, Obama’s dismissive solipsism paved the way for a Trump presidency.
5
Not a well considered comment. The Republicans did not want to negotiate with Obama, they wanted Obama to comply with their agenda as it was and to please not run for a second term. Otherwise, they would obstruct in order to make his Presidency ineffectual. Obama had some authority to issue executive orders and since the Republicans would not compromise, he used it. That infuriated the Republicans.
10
Recall healthcare during Obama's first term when the Democrats held Congress. Obama met with GOP leaders to discuss areas of concern on proposed healthcare reform. Turned out to be a bad omen as President Obama showed little interest in GOP discussion points and was completely unwilling to make any concessions/modifications to ACA.
1
While i often disagree with Mr. Brooks conservative views ___most often that is___i believe he has explained very well that we have destroyed democracy and it will only get much worse.
Who contributed to this?
Who ? What was the role of the press right left or middle?
One reads the Times to see trends but one nearly always finds more facts in the Reader's comments
We destroy and destroy and divide and hate to what end?
During the war reporters were in the field.
In modern times pundits circle very high and judge from up high.
People become statistics.
2
The Italy comparison is poorly judged -- two very different countries. And to take the victory of the Five Star Movement as a sign that "Vladimir Putin's admirers are surging" reads as passably logical (rather than utterly devious and illogical, which it really is) only because we're in the midst of a moment where you have congressmen and Times's columnists (Thomas Friedman, notably) comparing the Russian investment of a few million dollars in the multi-billion dollars presidential elections industry to.... the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor!
I'm far less concerned about recovering the putatively vitiated norms of our democracy than I am with holding the line against the mass hysteria and truly outrageous idiocy that has overtaken the American commentariat. Cokie Roberts was on TV yesterday puzzling why Trump wasn't going hard after Russia, not on the substance, but because she thought it could only help him politically! (The implication of course is that his inaction is a sign of guilt, rather than a sign of prudent reserve.)
1
Of all the institutions flouted by Mr Trump perhaps the most ominous is his recent attempt to try on the “Potus-for-life” jacket in public. It’s not hard to imagine he’s tried it on in front of the mirror at home a few times. If a Rebublican Congress is wiling to look the other way on Russian meddling as long as it favors their party, why wouldn’t they acquiesce when Trump refuses to concede his office after finding evidence of a “rigged” election? Fasten your seatbelts America.
6
First, we need civics in the schools. We also used to be tested on current events.
Second, we need to stop acting like elite and politician are four-letter words.
As a country, we should all be striving to be elite. This is not blue/red or blue collar/white collar.
We should be wowed and amazed by a Master Carpenter, a mason, electrician or any trades. We should also be amazed by the most innovated and creative in the medical, engineering and technology industries.
And we should be amazed and thankful to some politicians. Politicians who know our history, our enemies' histories and our histories in relation to one another. Politicians with a handle and pulse on the current needs of the nation. Not a decade ago, definitely not 50 years ago. Change happens fast so we need politicians who are fast.
Lastly, we need manners. Manners were developed over time to make people feel more comfortable. This enables people to converse. Name calling isn't just childish and shows a lack of a sophisticated vocabulary, it shows poor manners.
Language and behavior that once was kept to certain areas is now on the 6 o'clock news.
Each state has different priorities. Some medical, some agriculture, some fuels so everyone will have their own angle but a skilled politician compromises to get a deal for their constituents as well as a deal for citizens in the other state.
America is already great. Let's make it good.
9
I can only wonder if —when we're referencing the chaos in the Trump presidency (and possibly afterward), that perhaps we might more appropriately use the term "coup," or even "revolution." Revolutions create chaos. Is that what we're experiencing, without our physically taking up arms against one another. If so, how does the revolution end? Peacefully? Or does it continue indefinitely? More importantly, can we stop it, short of overthrowing the American government as we have essentially known it since its inception? Is stability possible in the Trump world? Or does it not demand social upheaval until? Until the president and his supporters win and chaos becomes the permanent norm of our society?
One thing we should do is reconfigure the terms of some of our political debates.
Public employees are neither the last bastion of union strength for the left nor the butt of Reagan’s “I’m from the govt and I’m here to help” joke. They’re the people who teach kids, guard prisoners, keep the roads and sewers working, administer programs, and the like. They’re public servants with a duty to the taxpayer and their compensation should be fair to them and fair to the taxpayer.
Politically active people on both the left and the right have managed to conflate issues that should be separately considered in the abortion debates.
Regulation shouldn’t be considered a quantity, except for always bearing in mind the cumulative costs of compliance. Regulations can be good or bad but there should be plenty of input by people who will be affected by a regulation or its absence when deciding whether and how to regulate. You don’t set up something like the Title IX campus courts with their presumptions and procedures based on a Dear Colleague letter; you give notice, hold hearings, look at the data and the narratives with a critical eye, and thoroughly sort through publicly how to address the problem.
I’m less interested in the extent to which “socialism” is considered “good” or “bad” than I am in whether the public should own the roads, waterworks, and prisons and the extent to which the government should reinvigorate the way it ensures competition is fair.
4
America needs to redress the balance by a thorough impeachment process that detoxifies America of Trumpism; by an election that removes the Republican dead wood; by redressing the gerrymandering [replace it with a duty to vote] and by removing the electoral college.
7
Where did the 1 in 6 believe in military rule come from? I don't believe it.
4
"Drawing on data from the European and World Values Surveys, the researchers found that the share of Americans who say that army rule would be a “good” or “very good” thing had risen to 1 in 6 in 2014, compared with 1 in 16 in 1995."
https://nyti.ms/2jD1bGZ
3
APN: "... European and World Values Surveys ... army rule ..."
Those surveys are worthless unless they ask questions that gauge how well people understand the implications of "army rule". For example:
1. Do you believe that everyone should be required to serve in the military for a certain time?
2. Would you accept being stopped by military police while shopping or traveling?
3. Would you allow military police to enter your home and search it without any legal justification?
1
All those Christian Evangelicals that continue to turn a blind eye to Trump's immorality are leaving a world to their children much worse than they found it. They've most likely also pushed their children away from any meaningful spiritual relationships. And their children will never forgive them.
3
They don’t care
It's really not so surprising, Mr Brooks - when a party encourages hatred of things that are different, hatred grows.
5
David Brooks, you are wrong to compare conservatives and liberals. Totally different set of values! Neither is perfect, but I will side with the bleeding-heart-Liberals every time over the corporate-loving-conservatives!
And when you, speak about "lavish spending" how about Trump's military budget?!
Despicable.
8
Mr. Brooks - you have contributed to this. There was a time to stand up to your colleagues in the Republican party when we had a very decent man, a very polite man, a very intelligent man as our president. However, your racist friends - Mitch McConnell being the head of the pack - did not let him govern, did not give him credit or the support he deserved. They were partisan, they were racist and they were disgusting. Instead of calling them out, you nuanced there blatantly wrong positions. Whether or not you voted for him, you have contributed in a very significant way to the Trump presidency and the Trumpism that will be the culture for generations to come. I hope you remember this every night as you are trying to fall asleep.
13
read David Brooks column January 31 2017 The Republican Fausts
1
Why yes, let us blame Italy on Trump. Why not blame everything else on him? No wonder the rest of the world laughs at our liberal media.
1
Now they have someone new to laugh at.
6
I really zeroed in on " do nothing to address the sources of public anger, erase any restraints on the way it could be expressed". So true. The recent US tax bill is a frustrating document for working people and the behavior of most Republicans towards Trump also frustrates. But I think (hope) American people are so bored and dismayed with the lack of reason and lack of decency in the US that they will avoid the Italian debacle. Italy has long been a sad example of a dysfunctional western democracy. How many elections since WW2? But its problems are deep and complex. Its a warning for sure, but is it really comparable?
2
Correction, how many governments (not elections) since 1946? , 61
And you were doing so well this essay Mr. Brooks, until...
"The rising political tendencies combine lavish spending from the left".
No Mr. Brooks, whether it was Reagan, Bush the Younger, and now Trump, the right is the one that goes on the massive borrowing and spending spree. The left just tries to pick up a few crumbs to actually try and help people. Unfortunately the majority of the states and people who are suffering would rather have a massively bloated military and a boarder wall than help with food, healthcare, housing, and infrastructure.
13
Gilead for the masses...
1
The article says half of millennials want "a strongman leader" and that a sixth of Americans support military rule. When right-wingers question citizens' patriotism, they should start there, rather than with their typical targets:
Foreign policy doves, and proponents of multilateralism, diplomacy, and liberal immigration policies.
4
Patriotism in their view means being in lock-step with authority. I don’t know when the right became so trusting of government.
4
Republicans, even reformed republicans, appear to be hypocrites when they caution democrats to respect the sensitivities of conservatives. Why not write an editorial advising conservatives to refrain from demonizing their political opponents and value moderation? They need to hear that message far more.
9
From an observer living outside the United States, it is like watching a multiple car crash in slow motion. You can’t do anything about it while its happening except to hope those involved with come out of it unscathed, even if you know that isn’t possible. I am sorry for those who will feel the negative consequences of a government that seems to have solidly aligned with the wealthy while heaping punishment on the middle class, the poor, and minority groups.
6
I find it interesting what Brooks leaves out of his analysis. He says: "Silvio Berlusconi first came to power for the same reasons Trump and other populists have been coming to power around the world: Voters were disgusted by a governing elite that seemed corrupt and out of touch. They felt swamped by waves of immigrants, frustrated by economic stagnation and disgusted by the cultural values of the cosmopolitan urbanites." He leaves out the fact that Italians may have felt that way because Berlusconi owned the only national Italian broadcast network and used it to sway popular opinion against the government, like FOX does in the U.S.
Further on, Brooks blames social media for the deterioration of debate, again leaving out any mention of right wing television and talk radio which has for decades stoked the fires of polarization he describes.
I get that Brooks will not willingly point out the problems of the Republican Party in this country, which run way deeper than Donald Trump, but to write think pieces while leaving out the reasons behind what he decries is intellectually dishonest in the extreme.
13
The wise Times reader skips Mr. Brooks rose colored glasses columns . They know, as I do , that the truth and the red meat is in the brilliant comments (excluding my own poor efforts) and very often these excellent and well written comments are more informative than the article itself and in Mr. Brooks case always.
7
"The rising political tendencies combine lavish spending from the left with racially charged immigrant restrictions from the right."
Oh yes, let's distribute blame equally.
Those lavish spending Democrats making it difficult for Sheldon Adelson to keep up.
Does Brooks have any idea how inane his attribution of lavish = excessive spending to Democrats is?
Mitch McConnell is the guy who scuttled McCain-Feingold. And it was Newt Gingrich who was the driver of Citizens United.
The Democrats should stop their "lavish" spending in the expectation that an institutional consciousness will magically reinhabit the Republican genome?
10
"Disgusted by cultural values of cosmopolitan elites". . . stuff like tolerance and reason and compassion? Give it a rest Mr. Brooks. You are part of the elite class, because you are wealthy and for some reason you have been granted a platform that allows you to speak to millions of people (you have power). Look in the mirror and stop blaming "liberals." You have no special insight into the lives of those of us who struggle to make ends meet.
11
Well said!
1
Maybe we won't "snap back to normal" post-Trump but whatever happens, it can't be nearly as bad as what we're facing every day. In fact, America will have seen just what having a business man running the country like a business is not the panacea conservatives have always tried to convince citizens that it is.
3
you didn't need to go to Italy for an example: See W. Clinton and sequels.
1
Has Mr. Brooks admitted what we know to be true: that he voted for Mr. Trump?
3
Yes , Italians voted for nationalistic parties .
Italians are fed up with governing politicians , who are inept , corrupt, glued to their remunerative seat,doing very little for the country and to contain illegal migration.
Italians are fed up to see all those foreign flagged ships unloading economic migrants from Africa in the Italian Southern ports and spreading them throughout the country creating conflicts and uneasy cultural relations .
Italian youth has an extraordinarly high employment rate and is forced to emigrate. Many Italians holding PhD degrees are abandoning the country after having received a tuition free degree from Italian universities, but are unable to find employment.
Economy is later improving, but not fast enough.
After so many gloomy years Italy wants to turn page , no matter what ....
I am confident Italians will be able to change course, if and when Europe will be more cooperating and helpful in the economic development of the country and containment of the African exodus .
Italians must chop down bureaucracy, cut the number and benefits of all politicians ( from the smallest village to the capital) , make the magistrate pay for their frequent mistakes and ineptitude, reinforce the rule of law for all.
Italy is not kaput !
2
Lincoln said that 'you can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time'.
Trump has indeed, fooled a lot of the people, enough to become President and to continue to retain a loyal core of supporters. However, he has proven to be not only ignorant and unwise but base and stupid, and he will not be re-elected President. He probably will not even be nominated by the Republicans in 2020, because he is so clearly unfit and a cause of great embarrassment to most people who admire American ideals. But his corrosive influence has been observed by anyone who has any understanding of what normal has been in our political system. He tends to bring out the base and short sighted impulses of people around him.
5
I wish you are right. I hope you are right. But I fear that you underestimate the stupidity of our fellow citizens. The greatness of America has been more myth than fact. Yes right after the war we had a brief shining moment..perhaps...if you discount racial intolerance.
But in reality, America is the faded high school football star who relives his brief glory days at the end of bar and then goes home and beats his wife.
At least now the country has the President it deserves and one that reflects its true nature. Low class, violent and ignorant.
6
One of the more inane columns from Brooks. Okay, liberal democracies won’t fix themselves. We have to fix ours for future generations. Can we please start by NOT making equivalency arguments? It’s the rightwing ethno-nationalists that are surging not the “spendthrift” left. One is extremely dangerous and threatening to humanity the other is centrist, rational and committed to Enlightenment values. The choice is ours.
7
It’s absolutely hilarious that Trump enablers such as yourself, David, are still trying to make the fool look good. After this year’s pathetic performance in office, your only recourse is to embrace a world that has changed for the worse so in retrospect he doesn’t look so bad? Pure ideological insanity.
5
Lavish spending has never been a characteristic solely of the left, in this or any other country. The only factor of differentiation has been the objects of expense.
5
It seems to me that we are becoming splintered because we do not have a unifying activity. In the 1940's the unifying activity was fighting the Nazis and that unity lasted a long time after the war because so many people were involved. After that, and some may disagree, I don't see any unifying activity. Instead I see a lot of fighting for advantage and clearly some have won - they are now called the elites. This sets us up for factionalism, which social media exacerbates. Certainly we don't need a world war. But we do need some way to bring people together for a common cause. Some would probably suggest reinstating the draft. I would argue that a true national service requirement would be a good start. What should it do ? I don't know, but I am sure that if, for example, black urban kids worked on an equal basis with white rural kids it would cut down on, not eliminate, racism. If gun owner's kids worked on an equal basis with vegetarians, they might begin to understand each other's point of view. I saw this when my wife became an Episcopal priest. Once she worked in a church and the more conservative church members saw that she didn't actually destroy their religious experience, conversations started and being a female episcopal priest is now no big deal. Somehow we need to institutionalize mixing, not factionalism.
3
I have an idea. Why don't we unify around the statement that people should behave decently and policies should be humane?
Peter Tobias
"It seems to me that we are becoming splintered because we do not have a unifying activity. In the 1940's the unifying activity was fighting the Nazis and that unity lasted a long time after the war because so many people were involved. After that, and some may disagree, I don't see any unifying activity. Instead I see a lot of fighting for advantage and clearly some have won - they are now called the elites. This sets us up for factionalism, which social media exacerbates. Certainly we don't need a world war. But we do need some way to bring people together for a common cause. Some would probably suggest reinstating the draft. I would argue that a true national service requirement would be a good start. What should it do ? I don't know, but I am sure that if, for example, black urban kids worked on an equal basis with white rural kids it would cut down on, not eliminate, racism. If gun owner's kids worked on an equal basis with vegetarians, they might begin to understand each other's point of view. I saw this when my wife became an Episcopal priest. Once she worked in a church and the more conservative church members saw that she didn't actually destroy their religious experience, conversations started and being a female episcopal priest is now no big deal. Somehow we need to institutionalize mixing, not factionalism."
5
Well, I suspect that everyone would agree with your statement, but it's not enough. I'm guessing that the military does a good job of bringing African-Americans, Hispanics, and Caucasians together for a common cause. Some of them come out of the experience able to work together and see each other's points of view. Likewise sports teams. In each case different types of people have to depend on each other and work together for a common cause. Some of that hopefully rubs off into off the court or battlefield behavior. It seems that agreeing to be decent isn't enough.
Actually, sir, we do have a unifying "activity" (I call it a unifying force!): the growing resistance to Donald and Republicans!
Majority of Americans disapprove of Donald, the polls are worse for the congressional Republicans!
Yes, sir, there is a growing unity among those of us, who want sane gun laws, who want universal healthcare and want everyone to pay their fair share of taxes so we can have a solid economy!
5
Thoughts:
No one has ever proposed or said that democracy is of, by and for the intelligent or perceptive.
Edmund Burke actually said the opposite and is being proved more prescient every day:
Burke believed that government required a degree of uncommon intelligence and knowledge not possessed by most people.
Burke thought that most uneducated and unintelligent people, if they had the vote, could be influenced and easily lead by demagogues. He feared that then the authoritarian impulses unleashed by demagogues would undermine traditions and established religion, leading to violence and confiscation of property.
Burke warned that democracy could create a tyranny over unpopular minorities who needed the protection of the educated, intelligent and non-discriminatory.
Trump’s “victory” has proven Burke correct. Trump’s “working class” supporters will be very disappointed. And angrier...
Or, “As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” H.L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, 26 July 1920
5
I share the concerns in this article; look at the actions in the House Intelligence Committee and what Nunes is blatantly trying to do. Look at the deafening silence in the Congress from the majority Party. Look at the tax cuts that have been enacted and the voters who have been bought off with it. Did anyone call Trump out when he hinted that US should have a lifetime President? Anyone?
People say what we are seeing is not a new phenomenon; there has been a ratcheting up of "ugliness", for the want of a better word, since Reagan. The increasing trend aspect of this ratcheting is particularly worrisome. I hope it can come to an abrupt end in November.
8
The current primaries system, with winner take all, tends to favor mediocre and lie level wining candidates, who then win in Gerrymandered districts.
Unless the system is changed, we are on slippery slopes, heading towards the disappearance of democracy.
Garibaldi sought to unite the different parts of Italy and succeeded. He put a clamp on protests. After World War I, fascism became ever more popular in Italy and other parts of Europe. Mussolini began his march to power and ultimately became dictator in Italy. Hitler followed in Germany. Franco in Spain. Stalin in the Soviet Union.
Berlusconi can consider himself lucky, to date. In 1943 Italians seized Mussolini and his mistress and hung them upside down as Italy tried to escape the destruction of World War II. This is the flip side of populism. When things go terribly wrong, the people vent their anger on their leaders.
Brooks is right about one thing: our public discourse and civility have become victims of power-hungry individuals profiting off of popular anger. We have a leading party in Congress whose members are sheep. We have a presidency that has become corrupted. It is like Nixon all over again except that Congress opened an investigation and Nixon was forced to resign of face impeachment. In that case democracy worked.
Self government is difficult. For many it's easier to let a Strong Man lead. The trouble is that such men consume the governments they think they are leading. They destroy the governments and themselves and much of the society they think supports them.
6
Of course it won't go back to normal, we still have the likes of Pence, Ryan, McConnell et al and your head in the sand at brief times coming up for air.
8
Until November 6th, 2018. Paul Ryan is not running for re-election.
alas the chaos will be in the noise and dust from the flock of chicken little flappers whose sky has not fallen...what now?
we'll have a press adrift, j-skills atrophied, adversarial attacks, so much easier than cogent opposition.
embarrassing us worldwide with petty gripes and incessant blame gaming rather than shaping the president's ends, rough hew them as he will (the gop has the badges but parliamentary tools are still available to both sides)
...we've neglected to push for DACA, holding an already suspended population in further uncertainty, the same for the kind of border security that will keep us from immigration shambles.
though no one is suggesting that the north korean interest in talking has to be taken without verification, we might at least contribute support to all concerned , potus and the two koreas, for a degree of movement that beats what's be happening over past decades...positive pressure from all of us, including allies in europe and asia might influence, or at least call out, north korea's stated interest in "security"...let's offer some and see which way the cat jumps.
of course media, cable couches and t-bashers in print, know that dissonance sells...what happens to the monologues, panels and op eds if all the bickering ends?
let true progressives push potus along toward fixes in the flawed tax plan, past infrastructure inertia and health care grid lock, the people's business.
the gripers can still have the russians.
The King of false equivalence strikes again. The threat to democracy is coming from the right, and only from the right.
9
'As Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue in “How Democracies Die,” ...'
Their book is narrowly focused on the 20th century, yet their discussion of Weimar Germany is so shallow that "hyperinflation" isn't even mentioned.
Further, they don't discuss Ancient Greece or Rome. Indeed, "Greece" and "Rome" are not listed in the index.
However, they mention Trump repeatedly. There are 17 entries for Trump in the index. Ivanka even gets an entry.
Trump has been in office for about a year, yet the Trump-bashers are already writing books claiming he augurs the "death" of democracy.
2018-03-06 20:00:12 UTC
1
Political chaos is one thing. Social and educational chaos is another.
Americans spend an average of 3.75 hours watching TV daily. Add in social media and video games, and that number goes to 6 hours a day.
American parents spend 37 minutes a week in meaningful conversation with their children
54% of Americans cannot come up with $500
66% of Americans do not have a savings account
65% of Americans cannot place the Civil War in the correct century
71% of American men are overweight
62% of American women are overweight
36% of Americans are obese
42% of Americans believe in ghosts
7% of Americans believe the moon landing was faked
Americans throw out 4.4 pounds of trash per day, per person
American high school students rank 27th and 35th, out of 64 countries, in science and math comprehension. (PISA)
In a study of college seniors at 55 top-ranked universities:
-only 20% know that James Madison was the father of the Constitution
-more than 40% did not know the Constitution grants war power to Congress
-50% do not know the length of terms for Senators and House Reps
I'm only getting started. We are a failed nation state. Time to start admitting it in plain terms.
Cheers fellow Americans !!!!!!
7
David, More sedition and less erudition. Thanks, JP.
2
Until now, I never thought David Brooks to be an unhinged radical left sycophant. Until now. Can David be rehabilitated to normalcy? We wish him the best in his struggle to regain reality..
5
This article is complete balderdash. That's the nice version
4
Nothing degrades the norms of “acceptable behavior” more than seeing them selectively applied. That doesn’t even touch the obvious question of the extent to which these norms are produced and enforced by those who benefit from them. At every moment of flux, what some called “chaos,” others called freedom. Perhaps it’s instructive that the word was used to mean genuine and good.
1
Weimar Social Democrats began by saying "Wir sind ein"--we are one. By 1933, the truth emerged--Wir sind alein"--each is alone--the irrefragable broken, the irrefrangible disfranchised. 'N' Millennials have already embraced diktat...Consult the Germans, while there is time.
Well, yes, David. Americans have chosen to value entertainment above democracy. This orientation requires ever-increasing jolts of satisfaction: more shocking TV, more violent video games, increasingly polarized social media posts — and now, more polarizing “leaders.”
We have chosen a path of perpetual adolescence over the responsibilities of citizenship and adulthood. Trump and his ilk will never go away as long as the “customers” “demand” the “product” he is selling.
We The People have chosen — and choose every day by our clicks, likes, dollars and behavior — the kind of society and leadership we want. And we deserve every last bit of it.
6
I wonder if there will ever be a day when writers like Mr. Brooks ever come around to admitting that it is they and their party, the republicans, that began demonizing the media and splitting ideologically and throwing out the wedges that have brought us to this pass, with Trump really just capitalizing on their efforts and laying down in the bed they prepared over the past forty years. Both Clinton and Obama were cast as flame throwing radical rascals, while governing as centrist republicans, meanwhile each new republican gets ever the more insane and unacceptable, and they just stand by shrugging shoulders. History will remember this bunch and not fondly.
11
All of the people doing these horrible things in the name of populism, democracy, what have you, are men. Women could save this world, with the help of a few good men. That's what's missing; women in power, women as leaders. Simple, really, but the patriarchy won't give way easily or in the near term.
3
Trump is part of a trend that arises from the synergetic effects of economic hardships and the refugee crisis. The Left blames Middle Eastern chaos on the Iraq War, but the war was won. Obama, fulfilling a pledge, pulled our troops out, allowing Nouri al-Maliki to govern in a sectarian way, which led to Sunni outrage and ISIS. In Syria, we could, at little cost and less risk, have established a safe zone and staunched the flow of refugees. The anti-war Left aren't against war, merely American involvement in it, even when such involvement would be beneficial.
It so happens the Internet's rise to information-dominance coincided with a Western recession, international terrorism, and massive outflows of Muslim refugees. Right-wing populists were always going to thrive. Leftists, naturally, have been able to capitalize as well. As Roger Scruton writes, "A blind faith drags radical leftists from struggle to struggle, reassuring them that everything done in the name of equality is well done and that all destruction of existing power will lead towards the goal."
Republicans complain that their party is too much like Democrats; Democrats, the contrary. What neither sees is that the center has served this country, its people, and the world well. What comes after "elite consensus" will in all probability be much worse. For those who care about the future and don't wish to invest their hopes in chaotic revolution, we have to work to abate those grievances that fuel both Left and Right.
Newsflash! As resources dwindle, democracy becomes both more important and more difficult to manage. A situation, exaserbated by this thing called “population growth”. Grow an ignorant population (fake news anyone?), and the problems are furthered for the majority while the savvy and resource-rich profit from the divisieness. How many times does it have to be explained?
2
The only real distinction between Trump Republicanism and Brooks Republicanism is manners.
The GOP has enabled plutocracy, peddled the myth of free market virtue, encouraged self-interest, dog-whistled to racists, denied women's rights, and convinced several generations of low information voters to cast ballots against their own interests.
Trump is not an aberration. He is the logical consequence of 30 years of the paragraph above.
7
My family embodies the cultural values that Trump despises. They include such terrible things as honesty, decency, marital fidelity, paying our taxes, working hard, treating other human beings fairly, raising our children to be productive members of the community. Ironically, many of the people who voted for Trump may think they have chosen those values for themselves, but when they voted for Trump they chose a man who spit in the face of everything honest and decent. I don't feel sorry for them; I refuse to normalize them. As far as I am concerned they refused to act as citizens in the most basic way possible: they chose dishonesty over honesty, moral filth over decent behavior, a vulgar and ignorant demagogue over much better choices. Shame on every single one of you.
9
I couldn’t agree more the the analysis of where we are. Just don’t forget how we in the US got here and how the republicans and trump are steering us to the fascist system. Anything for money and power.
2
Mr. Brooks,
Until income inequality, which is wider than it's ever been, is addressed, until the Supreme Court becomes an actual Supreme Court and not a tool of the rich, until Wall St and the NRA stop running our government, we will be in danger of losing our democracy. People will blame immigrants for a while, will vent their spleens on Mexicans and Muslims, but eventually the day will come when someone who is watching, say, Ivanka Trump parading around in a gown that's worth a year's salary to most of our population, or earrings that cost as much as a new home, and Congress is passing more and more bills to shovel truckloads of money up to the rich who are screaming for even more; fat pigs drooling at the trough of the American grab fest, some bell will go off in that person's mind that says, "Enough!" I'm sorry - I know Democrats take money too and cow tow to their benefactors, but the Versailles-like atmosphere of the Trump administration has become such a parade of greed and vulgarity, it's no wonder people no longer believe in democracy. What democracy? Give everyone in the country $500,000. Give them decent health care, for God's sake. It's unspeakable that we don't have it. Let them enjoy a little of the good life, take a vacation, buy a home. Instead of always having their faces up against the glass, welcome them to the bounty. Of course that will never happen, and of course, we're probably headed for a revolution.
4
It's true that an informed and educated population is necessary for democracy to function. Having said that, there is one essential element that must be addressed, that is a fundamental reason for being. Why do people form a nation? The answer stated at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence is still valid today and remarkably crisp and concise. If there is no reason for being, there is no reason for our experiment in government. All the education and learning will be to no avail if it is not directed towards our reason for being a nation and how we make that nation work.
2
I appreciate Mr Brooks more when he is descriptive as he is in this piece than when he is prescriptive as he was when writing about
gun control. Discovery allows me to integrate
my conclusions; dictation leads me to react. I’m
informed rather than told what to do. I want
to learn more about the erosion of democratic institutions, especially in the United States because Mr Brooks wrote a great essay. I have no interest in ceding gun advocates equal moral
ground just because Mr Brooks thinks it’s a good idea as he argued a few weeks ago. Just an observation.
3
Want your democracy back? Reverse "Citizens United," abolish PACs, and get big money out of the political game. End partisan gerrymandering. Change election day from Tuesday to Sunday. Federalize voter registration and balloting procedures to enforce order & transparency in all elections. Increase the number of representatives to make the House reflect population growth over the past 40 years.
It won't look like 1860, 1960 or even 1980, but it's a start.
14
The polling of millenials is chilling, if a near-majority truly believe a strongman is the best leader of our country. I'm very curious about how the questions were worded, since I can't imagine anyone actually being OK with a dictator. Or this confirms that those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.
6
I'm deeply concerned that it may be the latter. If students are not taught about what happened in the 20th century, how many millions of people suffered and died when utopian authoritarian vanguards took power, abolished free speech and rights, and forced cultural and historical change on people on a mass level, then young people literally do not know what they are saying when they respond to these polls. If they are taught only one negative narrative of US and European history as a history of empire, colonialism, racism, slavery, and so on, and not also a competing history of the development of liberty and rights and democracy, then they will know of no real alternative. They will have no choice. The preservation of freedom requires a knowledge of freedom--and of the kinds of forces that destroy it. In many of our schools, in many of our colleges and universities, we are losing that knowledge.
2
We all need to participate in the upcoming midterm elections and find and support candidates that score high on the leadership skills of even temperament and management ability. These candidates need to have the political skills and to work hard to stay informed having the creativity to work well with others of both parties to turn their ideas into policy for the good of the country. Actively participating in finding ethical candidates and supporting them is an important step towards making sure our democracy can recover from this chaos and begin to flourish again.
8
Very important commentary. Giving voice to these problems should help spur the discussion of how to fix them, which is the major task for our time.
Step one may be recognizing that the underlying problem was not created, although it has been exacerbated, by the attacks from outside the borders. (We don't yet understand how much Putin has accomplished with his attack on our electoral process. This attack may ultimately prove to have been more damaging than any military attack on the U.S., given that modern wars are often won or lost by the economic ability of the participants to continue to engage.)
Step 2, in my view, is that if and when current elected leaders are replaced (whatever the "Russian investigation" turns up), the U.S. must address the distribution of wealth, and the opportunity for all residents of our nation to lead satisfying lives that enable economic achievement, religious freedom and status, which includes freedom from the variety of fears that people currently face. The extent of present inequalities within our society is destructive to the whole.
3
This for the trump voters: I read this somewhere a long time ago. "Sometimes, the worst thing that can happen, is to get what you want".
6
How in the world will we, the public, know when the "chaos" is over???? Most old-line Republicans cannot even spell the word, let alone know what it means...
3
Ah, chaos. Remember Othello? "and when I love thee not, / Chaos is come again-! We Americans once loved liberty and democracy and inviolable rights. We planted this love in our children, we passed it down in our writings and in our schools, and in our public rituals and celebrations. We wanted more of it and for more people. What do we love now?--if there is a "we" at all.
Timely op-ed. Democracy does die because of ... Democracy itself! The election of unqualified, incompetent, and just plain evil is baked into the “system.”
A possible answer: amend our constitution to have real requirements and qualifications . e.g. be a governor to qualify to run for president.
2
"by 2025 we’ll look back at Trump nostalgically as some sort of beacon of relative normalcy." Really?
One can only hope reason will prevail, eventually.
Donald Trump rose to power because he has something, an inscrutable attraction for the masses towards him, others don't have. At the same time, his irrationality, almost insanity, is becoming more & more evident. He still would not have won if Hillary Clinton weren't blatantly conceited & over-confident. She hasn't been an attractive candidate, very much like Bill Clinton (Many people say Bill Clinton has charisma. I didn't think so but he has been my hero. He was the best president since FDR)
3
Can we see the rest of the picture please? Thx.
4
You are probably right, Mr. Brooks.
Anybody with half a brain can see that one particular arm of the American political body has been on a binge of self-mutilation - and, to be crystal clear, it is not that party defined by the NYT general readership.
The Bush White House took us on a breakneck campaign of murder and treasury depletion in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama promised change and didn't deliver much, mainly because he was stonewalled at every instance by a Republican Congress who gleefully and baldly broke the unwritten rules of good governance. He essentially tried to provide some healthcare to Americans and they rewarded him with McConnell.
We have a huge media empire dedicated to stupid disinformation and propagation of tribal anger.
We have grossly disproportionate representation, almost always favoring "red" areas, where the majority of moderate, sane voices are drowned out by radical voting blocs.
We have massive systematic attempts at voter disenfranchisement.
I'm sorry, but "liberals" are not responsible for our American mess. As others have said, use your platform to do some good and denounce those responsible, with a bullhorn.
11
Lefties don't realize that they are just as much a threat to Democracy as the righties. It's the moderates like most of the nation that keep Democracy going.
2
The point is that there are very few
moderates left . Moderates tend to fold when faced by totalitarianism.
This you had better explain and provide evidence for. We have never had a president of either party like this one. Though Republicans have been taking us in this direction for decades. Many so-called Democratic notions, e.g., the EPA, were once Republican, meaning the present left is in fact very moderate and centrist.
Jacqueline wrote:
"Lefties don't realize that they are just as much a threat to Democracy as the righties. It's the moderates like most of the nation that keep Democracy going."
3
As much as?
Sorry, I'm calling false equivalency: both-sides-do-it, pox-on-both-their-houses, blah blah blah.
1
"Voters were disgusted by a governing elite that WAS and IS corrupt and out of touch. They WERE swamped by waves of immigrants, frustrated by economic stagnation and disgusted by the cultural values of the cosmopolitan urbanites."
There. Fixed it for you.
1
Nonsense. David is wrong and so is Concernicus. Trump's voters who were relatively well off were motivated primarily by racial resentment. Economics was not the issue. White Americans blamed their loss of status on people of other colors. In other words, under educated and incompetent white males can no longer sit behind the desk while women and brown people do the hard work and the thinking.
Concernicus wrote:
" 'Voters were disgusted by a governing elite that WAS and IS corrupt and out of touch. They WERE swamped by waves of immigrants, frustrated by economic stagnation and disgusted by the cultural values of the cosmopolitan urbanites.'
There. Fixed it for you."
1
"disgusted by the cultural values of the cosmopolitan urbanites."...Perhaps you could translate that?
1
David, sometime, I'd like you to talk about how your
bland responses, before Trump, to GOP rule, contributed
to this bland lament. Are you really this sadly amazed?
Trump learned from Cheney. I know you aren't naive,
but "Aw Gee" doesn't cut it anymore. Because you
quietly despise protest or the kind of revolution that
founded this nation, in violence. Not advocating, but
reminding. We are still fighting the Civil War, and Trump
loves "divide and conquer." What would you actually do
to join with those who believe that representative government
is not there to keep order for the few at the expense of
the Common Good. How about talking straight about
the NRA's control over politicians while propping the
proliferation of AR type guns. Don't we need to take them
from the public domain? Make them absolutely unavailable?
I rant against your constant mildness, sometime acuity.
1
"You treat your opponents like legitimate adversaries, not illegitimate enemies. You tell the truth as best you can. You don’t make naked appeals to bigotry."
Mr. Brooks, I believe that NY Times readers have received this message in error. Please forward to President Donald Trump, cc: Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Sean Hannity, Charles and David Koch, Karl Rove, and Lee Atwater.
And what are the cultural values of cosmopolitan urbanites that "voters" are "disgusted by"? Education, science and evidence-based policy, marriage, in-wedlock childbirth? By the way, us "cosmopolitan urbanites" also happen to be voters. Do you know what else we are? Real Americans.
9
Well said, thanks.
2
The US is not Italy and will never be unless it fragments. It is sort of like Louisiana. And if by 2025 we are looking at Donald Trump with nostalgia it will be because the USA has dissolved.
I disagree with Brooks. The Italian analogy is inappropriate. We have always been a democratic nation. Italy was one third of the Axis powers, a legacy that cannot be dismissed. Ours is a most resilient nation and history will regard Trump as a bad case of agita and move on. With 65 percent of us having no use for Trump, I like our odds for a successful future.
3
I have been waiting for this column / content for a year. After ten years of living and working in Italy (2006-2016), after countless headlines, the same story arc and political and social techniques used in bad faith and seen used there, I come home to find we are capable, to the nth degree, of following and falling for the same fate. Ridiculous Italy truly is the birthplace crucible, the laboratory, for all Western Democracies. At this point in the cycle, anticipation of a truly American ending can only be hoped for.
2
I’m floored by the Millennials and their lack of understanding of democracy and the implications of authoritarianism. Do they realize what authoritarian rule means? Do they understand that authoritarianism can mean books are banned, movies are censored and banned, guns will be taken away to avoid uprisings, Internet access will be restricted to government approved sites, you may be jailed for certain sexual behaviours, due process will be a thing of the past.
Personal freedom and choice ends under authoritarian rule and it usually happens slowly over a period of time until one day you wake up and you find yourself afraid to speak your opinions because someone might be watching. The same people who promised you security, jobs and ‘national purity’ will eventually come after the things you most cherish and you will have nothing to say about it because you sold your rights and freedoms the day you put a check mark beside their name at the ballot box. Oh, and you won’t have to visit the ballot box anymore either because there won’t be ‘choices’. The state will own you.
Does this sound like the kind of world millenials would prefer? They must not understand the meaning of authoritarianism which makes me wonder what they learned in school. They must take all of their freedoms for granted and not understand how much blood, sweat and tears has been shed to win those freedoms for all of us in the first place.
8
"which makes me wonder what they learned in school." American schools and colleges and universities are different in different places, but the movement has been not to teach about Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, their political ideas, their ideologies, what they did to millions of their fellow human beings. It is has also been not to teach the narrative of liberty and its expansion, of democracy, of inalienable rights. Instead, our history is taught as empire, colonialism, genocide, slavery, and continuing injustice and oppression.
Will the next president we elect swing harder to the Left or Right?
This is the logical larger issue beyond the good question David Brooks raises.
We may be in for rough waters way beyond Trump.
Trump is the perfect doppelganger for those who voted for him and the 77% of the GOP that still support him. No matter how hard we stretch, we remain beyond comparison as being the richest potential banana republic on the planet.
4
Republicans have been trashing informal norms for decades now; Newt Gingrich was a master at it. They made the filibuster an everyday occurrence, and have now played games with a Supreme Court nomination.
The democratic system was always weak in the South, obscured and damaged by race-based block voting; the South is now the basis for Republican power, and was welcomed with open arms and great glee by Republicans after the racial traitor LBJ and the Democrats abandoned it. Now gerrymandering and voter suppression are art forms.
Republicans have developed their own alternate realities, with budgets that do not add up, hating deficits while running large ones, denying climate change, and fighting both abortions and aid for mothers who are having trouble affording their children. Their standard answers to problems are policies that make the problems worse wherever they are tried.
12
Italy has always had a somewhat unstable parliamentary system. I don't believe that comparisons are valid.
3
Italy was, until Trump, an American protectorate. with America protecting its interests, through the limited democracy that is permitted Italy to have.
2
when did Trump abolish the protectorate? pity to miss the tweet
1
Major difference in the way the governments are run. Italy is a parliamentary system with multiple parties. The US is a representative republic with two major parties. Though there are other parties, they don't have the organizational clout to make a significant impact, other than perhaps taking some votes from one of the two majors. I know Brooks has called for a third party but Minnesota proved that the only viable thrid party is a party of personality. Once that personality leaves, so does any semblance of that third party influence.
3
Reading about the dependence of Democracy on informal codes and respectful behavior, it's impossible not to think of this moment: http://time.com/4866404/john-mccain-barack-obama-arab-cancer/. And, yet, this is the same man who unleashed Sarah Palin on America.
It's just a reminder how tenuous our grip on Democracy has always been. Part of the cure for the current illness is letting go of the quest for perfect people or parties. We need to recognize, revere, and reward good and decent behavior from all sectors of the political spectrum. We don't need perfect people; we need decency and courage from ordinary, somehow flawed men and women.
5
Mr. Brooks -
Tell us something we don't already know.
Tell us something that we haven't been warning against for years.
Tell us something that we've been begging Republicans to stop enabling and Democrats to start opposing for *decades.*
Tell us why you ignored what was in plain sight and all over radio, TV, and social media for so long.
Our voices are hoarse with begging anyone with influence in government, politics, and journalism to open their eyes and ears to the rising far right movement that has been throwing liberal democracy, its norms and ideals, under the bus for so long.
Now, when it's too late, you tell us what we knew would happen all along and tried to tell anyone who would listen and care.
But nobody did.
18
Again the emphasis here is Trump, while Trump really is the manifestation, the result, of decades of dysfunctional politics, particularly the Republican politics. Hence just removing Trump will not remove the root problems but simply the symptom, temporarily.
At its heart, our government, and also that of Italy, is rotten and corrupt because it is being hijack by "elites" who talk politely good games that don't come to fruition. In brief, "helping the people" is really "robbing the people" and "disenfranchising the people." But the people are too ignorant to see that, having been too brainwashed or too prejudiced themselves.
One would think that after the tax bill the Republicans just passed the people would wise up. But they do not, the Republican breed.
I really think we get the government we deserve. It is in the nature of scorpion to sting. But when the rabbits and squirrels choose to believe scorpions will not sting because the scorpions say so, what should the horses and deers do?
At the root, the problems are always our own selfishness and ignorance. Even the best systems will be contaminated and malfunction because of our own afflictions, the way criminals always find loopholes in the best written and well intention laws.
We need to triumph over own negative impulses, and we need the good guys to stand up and engage. Either we fight it out in the ballot box, or battle
with brute force and guns.
5
I believe that Mr. Brooks missed some important points:
Matteo Renzi's failed attempt to change the constitution.
The European Union did not do enough to mitigate the influx a refugees into Italy.
The number of parties vying for office.
The age of the majority of Italian voters...they didn't really learn the lessons of World War II.
2
Dear David,
As a cosmopolitan urbanite-or is it rootless cosmopolite?-I suggest there is only one way for you to regain your credibility and intellectual respectability:
You must admit that you were bamboozled by the Republican party for the last 40 years. You must denounce the Republican party in no uncertain terms. Dancing around the issue, hand wringing and pearl-clutching won't do it.
You have an exalted position as a pundit to help save this country from ruin. Use it.
27
So much for "The End of History."
1
Again and again Brooks writes about our current situation as though it simply popped into existence. The reality is that it was brought about by him and people like him that stood idly by while the once fringe elements used lies and tropes to gain the hearts and minds of people so they would vote against their own interests. His party stole an election, started an illegal war that lowered our standing in the world dramatically, brought us to the brink of financial collapse, stole a supreme court nomination from a democratically elected president and now has "elected" an out and out fascist who also happens to be a blithering idiot.
Now he wrings his hands as this disaster unfolds but simply can't bring himself to actually admit that he and others of his ilk are actually responsible for it.
Renounce your party and what it currently stands for. Admit that you had a hand in bringing this situation about. Then do something to fix it.
24
Sounds about right to me. Scoundrels elect scoundrels. Millenials don't like democracy? Hah! Hadn't considered that. Explains a lot. "He's a fascist...what can you do?" Indeed. Btw: Kristine, in this democracy, the popular vote does not win Presidential elections. One recent exception: Obama. Republicans and their minions not only colluded with criminals from a foreign nation, it gerrymandered votes and suppressed the voting rights of citizens. Genuflecting to conservatives' political will, the Electoral College then overturned the popular vote, in my view. Elsewhere, that would be recognized for what it is: a coup d'etat. Trump is not a Populist, he is an ignorant oligarch who knows how to market to the mostly white disgruntled masses of men AND women in this country. The disgrace belongs to those masses. The suffering won't be equally distributed, but it won't be contained either. Brace for it.
7
David -- You decry the rise of the authoritarian right, but in your columns over the past eight years you continually slammed President Obama, in barely disguised racial taunts. You are part of the problem, not part of the solution! The rise of Trump was fueled by rabid Republican partisans like you!
15
Will there even BE an "after Trump"?
Chaos will always reign supreme in any organization headed by an ignorant, incompetent doofus with the temperament of a baby.
It is very much an open question whether this country will continue to elect morons. One third of the country still see a Great White Hope with the current guy. Also, just look at what both houses of congress are populated with. Will the 40% who did not vote last time be scared into voting the next time around? This is truly a crapshoot.
Ps. gemli and Socrates have nailed it again as usual
4
Amid all the finger pointing let’s not forget the voting aged citizens of this country. Not all are registered to vote, and not all registered voters voted. Not all voters cast civic-minded votes.
Voting for Trump for lack of a better candidate, or as an anti-government gesture, is not civic-minded, it is lazy, or worse, inauthentic.
Politicians are also on the hook for who gets endorsed and why. I would argue that a plurality of citizens take for granted that any candidate who is empowered to run as a major-party candidate is also a qualified office-holder. Allowing Trump to run in the primaries as a Republican was a cynical, anti-civil maneuver.
- If only it were just the Republicans who suffered the consequences.
7
It is said, "Nothing is inevitable provided you are prepared to pay attention." Trump is now the GOP and the GOP is now Trump. Together they destroying democracy in America. The Trump-GOP party needs to be voted out if democracy is to survive in America. Time to pay attention David. Denounce your party once and for all.
10
Mr. Brooks mentions that "If America follows the Italian example, by 2025 we’ll look back at Trump nostalgically as some sort of beacon of relative normalcy." This is already happening as can be evidenced by examples like: 1) Jeff Sessions, considered a pariah with even highly conservative colleagues in the Senate is now viewed as the bulwark of our justice system, 2) G W Bush retroactively viewed as a moderate factor in international relations and defense alliances when his administration's incompetence failed to prevent 9/11 and put the Middle East in a state of chaos, and 3) Nixon - who with Trump's depredations on our natural heritage and contributions to worldwide environmental degeneration is now reminisced as something of a conservationist.
8
Thanks to a vigorous free press, American working people cannot escape the fact that this "populist" Trump regime is corrupt to the core, beginning with the campaign staff. His tax returns are being hidden because they would show, among other things, how he has worked the system to avoid paying the same percentage of tax on his profits and income as the steelworkers and coal miners he claims to "love." He has surrounded himself with people, including his own children, who have no genuine concerns for the public good, only enriching themselves more through their positions in our government. This realization could and should lead his "base" to turn to the left, but the left is too busy championing illegal immigrants and Muslim refugees. For that reason, disillusioned working people will have no choice but to turn even farther right. Progressives and liberals need to see the danger ahead in their continuing advocacy for illegal immigrants. They need to support enforcement of existing immigration law and border security while working for legislative reforms that reduce the wait times for legal entry. Uncontrolled immigration will never be accepted in this or any other democratic country.
6
Not to beat a dead horse, but we could ask our colleges and universities (and the schools) to teach more narratives of American history than they do now. The important history of American failures--with Native American sovereignty and well-being, with the curse of slavery and its aftermath, with political and economic inequalities--tend to make up most of the curriculum and leave contemporary students ignorant of the history of the development of liberty and democracy in America. It's no wonder that they don't care much about democracy and that they seem cavalier in giving up rights other generations have been willing to die for. We need a new Salzburg seminar for this generation.
3
Throughout his long career, Walter Lippmann continually asked one question; 'Can Democracy function in an increasingly pluralistic society" Sadly, the answer appears to be no.
All Americans value democracy and freedom- we are not Italy. This country has endured McCarthyism, the Kennedy(s), King and Malcom X assassinations along with Nixon's corruption. We have bailed Europe out twice in the past 100 years , rebuilt Japan and felled the Soviet Union(without really firing many shots). As much as I admire David Brooks- don't count America out just yet. Are we facing a new set of challenges in a new world order- sure. America will figure out what to do because our values are correct and have stood the test of time. C'mon now we've seen worse than this era's dictators, strongmen and women and we've had some Presidents worse than Trump(not many). Our system is designed to take a punch, but we are coming back up- just hold on a while. As for the level of civil discourse, Abe Lincoln was caricatured as a "baboon" in his day. Politics continues to be a blood sport. I personally think Trump is classless- but his genre has always been a part of politics. I believe John Adams may have floated a rumor that Jefferson was dead during a presidential election(did not have time to check this factoid)
1
This comment is not supported by the facts. For instance, Mr. Trump has repeatedly expressed the desire to do away with this or that fundamental aspect of our democracy, e.g., the independent judiciary or the free press. But this has not swayed Trump's base at all. Presidential historians have one and all, for instance, told us that Trump is one of a kind, that is, the worst president we have ever had.
Cavalier wrote:
"All Americans value democracy ... and we've had some Presidents worse than Trump(not many) ..."
1
Part of what happening begins in our school systems. Liberal arts schools were designed to support democracy.
When school became little more than a driving force for getting into the next best school to finally end up with the biggest, best paying job, all requiring relentless hours of homework, chronic sleep deprivation, no unstructured play, fear-driven parenting, liberal arts lost favor. People don't know how to think critically anymore.
The Dems may be far from perfect, but the GOP is largely responsible for fear mongering and supporting media outlets that make fear a fetish. Who couldn't see this coming?
5
In the US most of us are in some big swath of the center. However, the polarized right and left have control.
It seems obvious that the only way we will accomplish much is to have moderates in power. Polarized powerful leaders don’t get anything done because their polar opposite only wants to attain failure by the so-called adversary- who happens to be in power at the moment. For example, look at how Mitch McConnell treated Obama when he said his singular goal was for Obama to not get reelected. This was not a good thing for the country .
Please God give us a good moderate President in 2020. I don’t care if it’s a Republican moderate, a Democratic moderate or an independent moderate. But please just make sure it’s a moderate not beholden to a polarized side.
2
Would you recognize a moderate candidate if you saw one? There was one in 2016, but not enough people bothered to get out and vote for her, and too many voters were too willing to believe the lies that Republicans spread with Russian help.
5
To counter what is going on with the current president and plan for the future we need to have strong leadership, transparency, and accountability which will lead us out of this chaos. We must work hard to elect responsible, ethical candidates in the midterm elections, defend the DOJ and Mueller in their quest for the truth and accountability as well as defend them from obstruction of justice by the president, help the states stand up to Washington's over reach, and protect the press while they do their jobs in the face of many untruths and challenges. We need to continue to value deeply telling the truth, compassion for all our citizens including finding a path to citizenship for DACA participants, and protect the rule of law.
1
Big difference between US and Italy though: we are a "winner-take-all" government and not a coalition government. So if the left wins again in 2020, you get a big megaphone and a weakened opposition. Coalition governments muddy the waters and allow the shrillest voices to break thru.
I don't think a sample of one (Italy) is sufficient for making projections for the US. Moreover, though I'm no Italy expert, it seems Italy's baseline political climate was much more chaotic than America's. Finally, none of the leading Democratic candidates for US President in 2020 has been prone, so far, to the kinds of oddball behavior we see in Italy now.
2
At the heart of all this melee is the rampant dissemination of misinformation. We are living in the Wild West of information. I'm worried how this will play out. Either an enlightenment will emerge from it or a strongman(men) will seek to control it. I feel the latter will happen before the former.
2
It is not Trump's degrading of public discourse that is the cause of loss of democracy. There are structural reasons that far proceeded Trump. Congress has abdicated its duty. Congress has the sole power under the Constitution to declare war but has not declared war since World War II.
Aside from the relinquishing this power to the president, the presidents over the subsequent decades have assumed other powers such as "Executive Privilege". We have been hearing that the presidents cannot be indicted, so they are essentially above the law, strange in a democracy.
We have seen that Congress has lost the ability to follow rules of order, debate issues and bring them to a vote. The leader of the Senate recently said that he could not act on immigration until he knew what the precedent wanted. Congress has lost its ability to legislate.
We are also hearing that presidents are not subject to the emoluments clause in the constitution. This was meant so that persons who hold public office serve the people and not themselves. This is worrisome when the current president seems so inexplicitly beholden to Russia.
3
History is rife with examples to support this scenario. The most notable dates back to the Roman republic. The Bros. Gracci led to Marius, to Sulla, and eventually, the triumvirate, then, finally Octavian. The 500 yr old republic was gone in a time span of less than a modern lifetime.
1
The old saw, "like comparing apples to oranges" is apt. The Italians are famously mercurial people who, in response to hard economic times, voted for a fascist dictator in 1934. Even during the great depression, Americans never came close to allowing dictatorial powers to our presidents and none ever sought such powers—until today. Fondly do we hope that this mighty scourge may speedily pass away.
What is this magic "center" by the way? Do we want every single legislation to be in the middle between progressive and conservative proposals? Where progressive solutions are realistic and common sense and conservatives are way into wilderness? Compromise with conservatives on guns, taxes, health care? Have you seen their proposals? Complete and utter nonsense! In the middle "compromise" would not work, you just don't compromise with nonsense!
The common sense center which you and Douthat seem to praise so much is now occupied solely by Democrats. No need for compromise.
3
In the book mentioned, "How Democracies Die," the authors also discuss how political parties are the "gatekeepers" of democracy, and often erroneously allow a demagogue to enter their ranks thinking only of maintaining their political power.
That's exactly what the GOP did with Donald Trump. They've allowed him to represent their party and refuse to check his abuses on our democratic norms. They are ultimately responsible for him.
2
I'm thinking about "The Chaos After Trumpf", aka "The Decline of Our Civilization",
and remembering what these guys were saying:
Gen U. S. Grant:
Talked about the quality of public education as being of top importance for a democracy, ensuring that politics and religion are not 'taught' in school.
And with good public education one is taught to think intensively and to think critically.
Sir Ken Robinson:
The TED.com guy: 'Do schools kill creativity?'
Talking about the natural creativity of young children,
which begins its decline starting about the 1st grade.
( my all time favorite TED talk. )
( and one has to include the decline of 'critical thinking'. )
The guy, decades ago, talking about the new medium of 'tv news',
as being "all the 'news' that's not fit to print".
One might paraphrase that,
when talking about quality news being replaced,
by 5-10 sec of facebook and twitter junk news,
"all the 'news' that's not fit to waste time on",
generated by people that are only interested in selling books or ad clicks.
Where is your data showing that 50% of Millennials want to live under a strongman? This is false, and it undercuts the argument.
Trump is a bump in the river of historical trends The trends are clearly for more globalization, more diversity. The short-term spike in reactionary policies is indeed a reaction to all this diversity. A lot of people don't like the direction in which humanity is moving. Things were so much better for the elite few when white men could dominate the world. But that inequity is ending. Look at the data year over year, decade over decade. The waves of progress will wash over this reactionary sandbar
1
Brooks is absolutely correct that Trump is weakening institutions. There are, however, significant differences from Italy:
- "Path dependency" or "history". Italy had several decades of near-anarchical coalition governments often tainted by strong corruption (eg Craxi). Italian democratic institutions were challenged from the left, from the right, and from non-state actors eg the Church and the Mafia. US history is very different. Historically the challenge to US institutions has always been deep conservatism that was/is illiberal, vicious, and exclusionary. In that regard, Trump falls within the extremes of American conservatism but it is unclear if he is something new.
- Central government. In Italy, regional governments are nowhere near as independent and strong as states are here.
In thenUS, the real difference is not between red/blue states but between cities and rural areas. Unless something changes, conservatism seems doomed by demographics. Of course, that is far enough in the future that Trump/Trumpism could do us all in.
The real problem right now is not the WH but the enabling of the WH by congressional Republicans. Denouncing Trump is fun, but the proactive way is to press Ryan & McConnell and all the crazy congress-folk, and to vote in the next elections.
2
What I find particularly disgusting is that 'mainstream conservatives,' knowing what Trump is and what he would likely do to the country, still could not bring themselves to support the last person with a chance to defeat him: Hillary Clinton.
Even though, by most ideological measures, Hillary Clinton was quite conservative.
These people would rather sacrifice their country than support the other political party. I don't think we can define them as patriots.
5
Government of the people, by the people and for the people will soon vanish from the Earth. Now we have government of business, by business and for business. The ethic of excess.
The Bill of Rights is in the trash bin. They will destroy our system of justice. They will destroy freedom of the press. They will destroy our right to free assembly. They will take our right to health care and education. They may even destroy the planet.
RISE UP, Americans. March by the millions, soldiers of peace. Take back our stolen dream.
1
Brooks writes as if we had a democracy before Trump. We haven't had a democracy for years. Check out Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens."
And let us not forget the chaos engendered by Melania Trump. While I think it's fine for an adult woman to choose to do pornography (which she did, and that's what it was), I do not think it is O.K. for said person to be in the position of First Lady. Her behavior was her own business, but now it is all our business. The hypocrisy and absolute craven quality to most of the evangelical Republicans has at least finally been really revealed. Melania's fine, we gay people are evil. So was a president who was an American citizen but somehow they painted as an evil envoy from another country.
Melania Trump is a total disgrace. What are young women supposed to think? Michelle Obama taught gardening when she was not practicing law-Melania runs up security costs for her protection. What are we protecting? And what are we supposed to tell our kids. Maybe ask Pat Robertson, if you can pay for a consultation. Mr. Brooks, YOU enabled all of this, not the Democrats. And every one of your hand wringing columns over all this stuff is so fake and postured it's nauseating. The GOP has been the party of fraud since Reagan and probably can never return to any semblance of moral. Proud to be a 59 year old Democrat in light of what your generation of Republicans have dredged up from the sewer. Somehow I always felt it would get this bad......
5
"Vladimir Putin’s admirers are surging."
Oh, give that a rest. This is not about Putin. It is about those who for so long failed the voters, so the voters finally reacted in outrage. Even Brooks admits that -- "did nothing to address the sources of public anger," not the new guy, and not the old guys.
2
"after Donald Trump? Do we snap back to normal"
What was "normal?" Refusing to consider Obama's Supreme Court nomination? Refusing to hold confirmation hearings for so many more? Bush wiping out the budget and then the economy? Wars of choice for no good reason that are not paid for either?
We are so far from any acceptable normal that being rid of Trump does not even begin to fix things.
18
Yes, republicans kept on trying and trying and now have just turned our politics into an endless contest, the next more rhetorically irresponsible than the last, simply in order to keep winning with the wedges and awarding the corporate donors. Republican voters are a study in the absurdity of modern Americans.
1
KevinCF -- "to keep winning with the wedges and awarding the corporate donors"
That also describes quite well the corporate DNC DINOs.
The other threat to democracy are voters who think the government should be run like a business. What that entails are leaders who sell off the country's assets to the highest bidder. A small oligarchy then owns everything. Or insider trading deals where a new government policy helps one person amass more money. In theory it is illegal but who will prosecute Carl Ichan?
16
All this fulminating and no mention of the shocking income inequality, lack of enough decent jobs, lack of affordable housing, rising healthcare and college costs, politicians paid by corporations and the rich, with no fixes on the horizon? Here's hoping Mr. Brooks will turn his attention to the reasons behind what he describes in this column.
12
And once again readers and left to remind David Brooks that his party's strategy of misinformation and deliberate polarization of the electorate predate social media by almost 20 years.
11
While virulent right wing populism is indeed a global phenomenon, it's quite troubling how conservatives are reticent about how the GOP largely engendered this phenomenon in an American context. Needless to add, it's also disquieting how many conservatives are resigned to fatalism regarding this. Indeed, if future generations are worse than Trump, then the actions of the GOP are somehow absolved by means of a morbid predestination.
The tragedy of 2016 may well be that a more positive populism expressed by Bernie Sanders was nipped at the bud, before it could blossom and revitalize American democracy. Only time will tell, and I hope I'm proven wrong.
5
Populism gets rolling when the existing government is seen to be ignoring the needs and interests of voters. It is a reaction, a reaction to failure. The cause of populism is the failure that preceded it.
Who was that? It is those who were rejected. Don't just keep offering the same again, expecting voters to come back to it. That mistake is where populism came from.
1
I won't dispute that Hillary, even more so than Trump, was the candidate of the status-quo in the 2016 election. I think we both agree that it was asinine for her to consign blue collar workers adversely affected by globalization to oblivion. Even so, let's also remember that Hillary was the ideal candidate of the GOP establishment in terms of political philosophy. And it's even more ironic when you consider that the Democrats fielded her as their candidate largely in the name of identity politics as well.
As I've previously stated, I think we're experiencing the end of the Reagan era of American history. Even while Trump is an oligarch, and espouses a political philosophy, if you wish to call it that, which is generally in concert with that of the GOP establishment, he's is also somewhat the reaction against it. Given how the 2016 was pregnant with irony, Trump is perhaps likely to become the bearer of changes that he himself despises.
1
Arcticwolf -- I agree. I'd add that Trump seems to go with whatever works at the moment, without any real insight, or even attempting or valuing insight. He is therefore suited to bring on things he never saw nor intended. It is another iteration of Dubya's "creative destruction" that blows things up without much idea of where the fragments will land, or in what pattern.
2
It seems that In order to recognize just how good one has it they first have to experience something worse. I am of the generation that revolted in the 70's. Other than fighting a senseless war and hundreds of thousands dead or injured as a result, life in general was quite comfortable. Most everyone could be assured that with a little effort the future would provide more of the same. Our expectations were reasonable as was the path to realizing them.
A stark difference between then and now is apparent. The future for this new generation is not nearly as clearly defined as it was for me. I don't know that it is the result of liberalism or conservatism nearly as much as it is a work world evolving faster than humans can deal with the change.
All things considered it is probably safe to say that these young people are doing nothing more than trying to have a controlling hand in the fate of their future. It is called survival and if the moneyed powers at the top won't provide a clear path to security then they will do whatever necessary to achieve it. Even if that means demolishing the only political forces that represent them.
2
"Just how good they had it" was not that good lately. Just saying it was great does not make it so, nor convince those who were angry about it.
Despite the similarities between Trump and Berlusconi, the US still has sufficient institutional circuit breakers to prevent the post Trump chaos outlined by David Brooks. First, our judicial system remains a bright spot with even Jeff Sessions and Rob Rosenstein supporting Robert Mueller's investigation. Second, despite some setbacks, political parties in the US remain strong - witness the wins by Democrats at the state and local levels, a strong rebuke of the Trump Administration. Third, the US is more than five times the size of Italy in terms of population and land area. Unlike Italy, we have a dynamic economy which, even under trying circumstances, allows for social and geographic mobility. There is no doubt that Donald Trump and his largely incompetent administration is doing great harm to this country. But, we have seen it before with the red scare and the cold war of the 50s and 60s. But, to paraphrase Williams Faulkner, I believe that the United States "will not only survive, but will prevail."
5
I agree overall, and I share this hope. I am more worried, though, about the education of young people and their future. An entire generation has been deprived of knowledge of the historical development of liberty and rights and democracy. They know almost nothing of the history of mass death in the 20th century due to Stalin and Hitler and Mao and anti-democratic, anti-liberal rights ideologies and movements. They have no awareness or comprehension of positive narratives of American liberty. They know only the dim side of American history, which is certainly there, always there, but it is not the only story.
So, how did we end up with Trump at first place?
1
"the US still has sufficient institutional circuit breakers to prevent the post Trump chaos"
Unless Obama was the last circuit breaker left in a system that was shorting out and failing.
2
The U.S. has been lucky for a very long time, so lucky that it’s people don’t understand how much all of it’s good fortune has been based upon a mutual trust that is in turn based upon abundance. There really has been enough for all so survival can not justify depriving others of what each of us enjoys amply.
Italy is a different story, it’s s modern state with scarcity always looming. Fear is the fuel for intolerance, fear accompanies uncertainty.
Trump is bad news for all, and he will not be succeeded by anyone as unsuitable as himself. But he has shown more able politicians that being untrustworthy in our system can be accepted. That is something that must not be allowed to persist.
5
Trump already represents the after W Bush. Hard situation to fix indeed but not new.
2
Berlusconi and Trump may have a great deal in common. Both are illegitimately wealthy licentious hot air bags. But any comparison of the U.S.to Italy is questionable at best. Most everyone has lost count of the number of governments that Italy has had since WW II. Anyone who has been to Italy and stayed for more than one week has experienced a strike by one of the many civil services. The level of corruption in the Italian government is legendary. And then there is the lengthy history of the numerous warring Italian City States predating unification of the country in the late 19th century. These are just some of the obvious differences. Of course it is this chaos along with Italian culture and taste that makes the place so irresistibly charming.
2
Although the politics of Trump is scary we have faced far worse, the gravest example being the civil war in which brut force was used to bring our democracy back to sanity. From the time of birth of our nation there has been great shifts in power between left and right, slavery vs freedom, immigration and anti-immigration, Women’s suffrage vs anti-Women’s suffrage, voting rights vs discriminatory voting rights, equal pay for equal work, etc.. The building tide against Trump and his bigoted anti-immigration policies, his enrich the few tax policies, his anti-environment policies has re-stimulated moderates and liberals into a political frenzy which will drive Republicans in congress out of the majority this year and Trump out of the White House in 2012.
2
Well, first of all, we supposedly have a Republic not a Democracy and the difference is significant. Next, I agree with the contentions of David Brooks and would note that to the extent we as a country lack integrity and honesty in our dealing with each other, the fabric of our society tears apart. The people I interact with on a daily basis, regardless of political views, live their lives with a lot of integrity and honesty.
But those in Washington DC (especially the GOP these days) seem to lack integrity and honesty as those attributes are apparently subsumed by ideology. So sad!!!
1
Democracies aren"t a spectator's sport.
Millennials need to stop trying to be cool and become practical.
Investigate issues and candidates,and make an intelligent choice.
Think of the future and consequences of faulty judgment.
We the people are living now with the lack of judgement and critical thinking that has brought us to the brink of disaster with the present situation.
Godspeed Mueller and team to save democracy as we know it!
8
Dear Mr Brooks,
You make a feeble attempt at the end to link the left to this phenomena. But we both know that just isn't true. The right has been dangerous for a long time and Bush V Gore, WMD, "You lie!" Joe Wilson, and a stolen Supreme Court seat pre-date Trump.
In any event, democracy has utterly failed to prevent Oligarchy. Can you blame young people if they no longer see the point?
10
This kind of analysis does no good if "solutions" are not overtly expressed in addition to this doom and gloom. Even if is it all true. A resurgence of a "middle ground", moderates, a coming back from the extremes of both sides is what Brooks has been "implying" in many of his articles. The loss of mutual respect, the hollowing out of the middle. OK OK OK. Now what? How do we get it back? I wish you would share your ideas, expertise, and thinking in a more focused manner on what your view of a positive future is, or could be. Some people have commented on this, providing their assessments. What are your assessments? We need this every bit as much as the expert analysis of how we and the world are on path to destruction of democracy as we know it.
1
Far from continuing a Trump trend when Trump's gone, I think its more likely to spawn and anti-trend where anything associated with Trump will be disparaged as Trumpist. The loathing of Herbert Hoover - an infinitely smarter and more decent man that Trump- that led to naming hobo villages as "Hoovervilles", will have many analogies with regard to Trump. Hoover and his memory was a prime reason that the Democrats were the dominant congressional party for sixty years. Its likely that the Trumpist tag will hang around the Republicans' neck like an albatross for some time.
3
I hear so many of my friends and family who are disgusted and alarmed by Trump and the Republicans say that the country will survive Trump and the Republicans. To which I say, probably, but will we survive what comes after Trump? Meaning, most people including the media think Trump is a one-off, and that once he is gone the nation will moderate toward normalcy, and maybe even sanity. Count me as skeptical. I think Trump's supporters are just getting started and we are only in the first few innings. It is going to get worse even after Trump is gone...for a while anyway.
3
Trump has never frightened me as much as far too many of our fellow citizens with their anti-democratic attitudes. Do we as a country have to go through what Germany did after the Weimar Republic?
4
David Brooks writes: "Vladimir Putin’s admirers are surging."
And after reading Jane Mayer's article on Christopher Steele in this week's The New Yorker, you have to wonder how much Putin and his "admirers" have had to do with politics in Italy (and elsewhere).
3
Repairing our democracy would also require that faux intellectual and bogus "both sides" pundits, like David Brooks, be fired and not allowed anywhere near a publishing or broadcasting platform. Their consistent false equivalence pandering has damaged our collective understanding of reality.
3
RETURN KEY
The solution beneath all these symptoms is the desire for complexity and depth and openness rather than simplicity and trivia and narrowness. This is the bedrock of every education. With it, all the rest follows; without it, nothing else will ever matter. The political problem is really the human problem, and every generation seems to invent it again and learn it again and then forget it again. Decade after decade, century after century.
While the sky heats and the ocean rises.
3
This is why we write and teach history, and compile grand narratives, often competing, often complementary, to remind each generation of what has been learned. But history as it is taught in schools has instead become a battleground between competing groups, few of which recognize this important role, and few of which believe that there might be something else at stake in addition to contemporary power struggles in the writing of history. It's indoctrination all the way down for those folks, and they're standing at the head of the class.
Fascism and racism are nothing new in Italy. “In September 1920, Benito Mussolini stated:
When dealing with such a race as Slavic - inferior and barbarian - we must not pursue the carrot, but the stick policy.... We should not be afraid of new victims.... The Italian border should run across the Brenner Pass, Monte Nevoso and the Dinaric Alps.... I would say we can easily sacrifice 500,000 barbaric Slavs for 50,000 Italians....”
My Brazilian friend’s family immigrated to Brazil from Italy, the older members in the family are still unable to shed fascist views. They view mixed and Afro Brazilians with suspicion and definitely an attitude of inferiority. Sigh. Italians were once part of the huge Roman Empire that stretched all across Europe to Turkey...they had no problem colonizing others when it was convenient to them. Now in 2018 they are suddenly “Italian first”.
2
If you believe in border security.
If you believe that those who willfully flouted our immigration laws are criminals
Then, according to David Brooks, and Liberals of good standing everywhere - you're a bigot. Who knew?
2
"You treat your opponents like legitimate adversaries, not illegitimate enemies. You tell the truth as best you can. You don’t make naked appeals to bigotry."
Let's see; we have Nixon's southern strategy, Reagan's Philadelphia speech, Bush Sr's Willie Horton spectacle and Jeb Bush wiping out thousands of African American voters in Florida. Your party fails the first part of your democracy reboot, M.Brooks.
"Second, the loss of faith in the democratic system." Hmmmm, Ronald Reagan and "government is the problem, not the solution". 2nd part, same as the 1st part.
"Third, the deterioration of debate caused by social media." F(alse)ox News Network ring a bell? The 24/7 branch of the republican fascist party's propaganda machine is still telling your so called president what to think
and encouraging his bull in the china shop schtick.
You and your party really need to find a way to help America get back to an idea of democracy instead of fretting about what the Italians or any one else is doing.
8
It is either deeply misleading, or profoundly ignorant, to compare Italian politics with what's going on the the United States. Because Brooks wrote this, I'm assuming the source is profound ignorance. Italian anger against their political ruling class in long and deep, going back many years and beginning way before Trump. Political insurgents like 5 Star are fighting against habits of corruption and cronyism that have long been embedded in the Italian political system. Others like La Lega are fighting the last 6-7 years of ineptitude and complacency by the Partito Democratico (the former ruling party), toward a very large surge of jobless, illegal migrants into Italy. One of the quotes that Brooks offers against 5 Star comes from one of their political enemies, hardly an impartial observer. The other, re. the supposed "fascist" tendencies of La Lega, comes from some knucklehead on the street. There were actual fascist parties (CasaPound & Forza Nuova) running in this election; they received less than 1% of the vote. La Lega isn't fascist. It is enthusiastically committed to the democratic process, much more so, it seems, than Mr. Brooks.
1
I don't think Mr. Brooks should be using recent Italian history to make his point. After all, Italy's proclivities for this sort of politics also gave rise to Benito Mussolini and the fascist movement. Better to go back to the Roman Empire for some perspective. Some of the best Roman emperors (Constantine, Justinian) came after some of the worst (Caligula, Nero). It just took a while.
1
"...American politics after Donald Trump?" 2024 is long ways off...
It may have been worse if Hillary had been elected. The right would have attacked her at every corner. Republicans would have stopped anything she tried to accomplish. And the wave election of 2018 would have been flowing in the opposite direction, thanks to the mailable electorate, leading to even worse politicians in office.
But the Trump voting right don't just individually pull their ideas out of thin air. Fox and (their media) friends are the real traitors. Breaking apart these media giants may be the only hope for the US and for democries around the world.
3
Brooks is increasingly resembling Trump in that he has a completely different view depending on the day. Two months ago, Brooks wrote that the Trump White House wasn't so bad and that stuff's getting done by serious people and that the anti-Trumpers are going nuts:
"First, people who go into the White House to have a meeting with President Trump usually leave pleasantly surprised. They find that Trump is not the raving madman they expected from his tweetstorms or the media coverage. They generally say that he is affable, if repetitive. He runs a normal, good meeting and seems well-informed enough to get by. ... Third, the White House is getting more professional."
But today, we're going down the Italian political sewer? Listen, NYT, fire Brooks and hire me. I'll give you copy that's just as bad for half the price.
4
David has turned the page on Trump and asks: What’s next? He sees increasing polarization fed by social media: “polarization, alternative information universes and the rise of autocracy.”
The issue of propaganda is not just a Russian interference, but also interference by a cabal of billionaire nut jobs. Using social media like Facebook & Twitter, blogs, Talk Radio, evangelicals, TV networks, a good 1/3 of the populace is brainwashed. And correction is blocked by a stacked Congress of unprincipled lackeys. No repeal of Citizens United, no renewal of a modernized Fairness Doctrine. Instead, a Tower of Babel, a deluge of fakery.
2
It's really all up to the Republican party. All it would need to do is simply quit lying and play by the normal set of civilized rules. That would mean, for example, ending the ridiculous lying about "voter fraud," ending their ridiculous Gerry-mandering. Unfortunately, though, their despicable behavior (e. g. Mitch McConnell on President Obama and the Supreme Court) has already enthroned a very strong, anti-democratic (not the Party) group of know-nothings in our courts. It's very simple--Republicans begin to behave like civilized, truthful and honest, citizens, and we are home free.
4
That’s a very bleak expectation. And this is America, not Italy. And there are checks and balances in place, like the special counsel investigation, and a lively opposition in the Democratic Party. Let’s see what happens in Congress and the Senate this year. Americans are not asleep.
We continue to be outraged by Trump’s uncivilized ways and his Faustian values. We are not getting accustomed to Russia in our midst. And we will not tolerate this corrupt autocrat’s romance with Russian oligarchs.
The British still have the Queen, don’t they?
1
Democracy is doing fine and so is Trump.
Poor Mr. Brooks. America is in the toilet once again and this time it is President Trump who is the villain. Before that it was the Bushclan but never the Clinton bunch or, God forbid, saint Obama. Suck it up, Mr. Brooks, the Republic will endure.
David,
You describe the end of a civilization that has been advancing, by fits and starts of course, for some half of a millennium, long enough to seem stable and inevitable But do you think that Trump erupted de nova, from itself?
Any culture -- political, social, legal, or informal is a complex set of power structures that mostly go unevaluated. Trump is a revolutionary, meaning he is tearing down the existing society, see Jesus the Christ or Hitler the Nazi, as popularly known examples.
Those leaders of the preceding culture become heroes or villains, depending on what group writes the history. When the individual revolutionary passes from the scene, he will be sanitized. His insanity will be ignored or seen as a necessary violence to prepare for this "brave new world."
Never has the reason for the putative Chinese wish, "May you live in interesting times" been understood as a curse more than now.
Since Brooks, Dowd and Douthat and the rest of the GOP TP helped put this mess in motion, perhaps he should reflect on that and work on trying to remedy it.
3
Darkness is spreading over our experiment. Look back with nostalgia on trump: OUCH!
Yes, David Brooks.
What's happening here, or what has happened to degrade our civility, is serious.
Trump and his sad cronies will return in time to the alleys of Jersey and NYC, like a motorcycle gang that's been on a destructive binge, but the new peasantry of this surly new world, whose unlettered sensibilities define normalcy, make recovery unlikely.
The invasion of Iraq diminished US power in the Middle East. The Arab Spring and the disintegration of Syria, the vacuum caused by the US not wanting to interfere there caused millions to flee to Europe. The Europeans were swamped with desperate war refugees from a different religion and a difficult region.
Therefore, the Europeans, who for years lectured Israel to make accommodations and get along with enemies, suddenly decided that Europe itself was threatened by Islam. Their response: shut the doors, vote nationalism in, protect the bloodlines, the heritage, the Catholic traditions of Eastern and Southern Europe.
The US no longer cares about alliances built on shared democratic traditions. We only care about power. Our "friends"are changing daily, yearly, depending on who is in the Oval Office. And now we are seeing the fruits of all of our "wisdom".
"disgusted by the cultural values of cosmopolitan urbanites." I live in rural Ontario, Canada, I am unclear about which values of cosmopolitan urbanites I should feel disgusted by. Is it all of them or which ones in particular Me. Brooks? I'm a little slow and ask that you spell it out so that I don't have to just guess. I don't want to pick the wrong values to be disgusted at.
3
Trump is the result, not the cause, of the attacks on our institutions. Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingerich, Limbaugh, and Fox have demonstrated that there is an appetite in a class of Americans for resentment and fear and distortion and conspiracy and racism. If you live in certain states or districts you can get elected playing on those appetites. Sad and ironic that the party that insists on waving the flag has done this to us.
2
“You treat your opponents like legitimate adversaries, not illegitimate enemies. You tell the truth as best you can. You don’t make naked appeals to bigotry.” Like the GOP, McConnell and Cantor and Ryan did to Obama and like how Trump rose to prominence on the back of racism and hatred?
It would be refreshing if Brooks took the time to “flesh out” his prognostications.
Democrats, Liberals and Progressives may not be in a mood to let Trump go unpunished or let the Republicans like Pence step in unpunished either. Among his failures, Obama failed to hold Bush and Cheney and McConnell accountable. Some of the Obama voters who voted for Trump were angry about the perpetrators of the financial crisis and the beneficiaries of the crisis being bailed out and rewarded and not locked up. There must be some effort to reverse that dreadful error. It’s not likely that the “me too, Black lives matter, Dreamers, March for our lives” activists are in a forgiving mood.
Maybe there will be a genuine house cleaning and restoration of order will occur? Maybe all those who are in the pockets of oligarchs and the oligarchs themselves will be captured in the purge. Maybe the Russian oligarchs and Putin will spill the beans on the American oligarchs insider trading as has been leaked out post the tariff announcement? Maybe there are a few honest people at the top of our food chain who will stand up and help restore the “working order”.
2
"disgusted by the cultural values of the cosmopolitan urbanites."
You mean values things like low unemployment, rising real estate values and stable families? I guess we can't all be uneducated opioid addicts like those good folks in the "heartland".
3
We will get something worse than Donald Trump if voters don't stand up and throw Republicans out of office. In the United States, the Republican Party is the major anti-democratic force, leading us toward fascist totalitarianism.
2
The civics education cartoon “I'm just a bill” from Schoolhouse Rock should be resurrected and redone for the 21 century.
It will take a tremendous amount of work by extremely brilliant men and women to undo all the damage that person in the White House has behest upon us.
1
Strange, David, how your prescriptions for healthy democracy, via Levitsky and Ziblatt, read like the exact opposite of the GOP playbook over the past 50 years: "Treat your opponents as legitimate adversaries." Reagan turned "liberal" into a dirty word. "Tell the truth." Lying and hiding the truth has become an art form, with Paul Ryan as the exemplar of institutional GOP obfuscation. "No naked appeals to bigotry." Nixon's Southern Strategy and Reagan's Welfare Queen fairy tale got the bigotry thing rolling quite nicely.
Trump is the apotheosis of all these ugly trends, but there can be no doubt about their origins. The GOP has has been honing these democracy-killing weapons for generations.
5
I think David is right, and we can never get back to where we were. The reality is that democracy is failing. It’s failing because the uber wealthy, corporate interests and foreign adversaries have teamed up to create fascism with democratic trappings. At the same time, serious questions are being raised by a majority that has been gerrymandered, voter suppressed, and outspent by dark money legalized by an ignorant and corrupt judiciary. It’s time to take a serious second look at alternative structures that will return power, economically and socially, to the majority.
1
If democracy is failing, it is because the Republicans have worked very hard to make it fail.
We have a chance to reverse this. In Nov 2018, vote out of office every single Republican. This may be the last chance.
Brooks, how about the chaos BEFORE Trump, when McConnell refused to allow a vote for Obama’s (respected by everyone) pick for the Supreme Court.
5
We should try to remember that for more than 20 years David Brooks staunchly supported and defended conservative ideology and Republicanism as it brought our government ever further down into the gutter and did grave damage to our institutions and public discourse. Now he’s coping with his own emptiness by trying to spread despair and fear mongering. We should not accept it.
4
Indeed, you could almost suspect Brooks of being an evil mastermind (he clearly is not). He puts a soft spin on it and uses the nice big words, but what does he actually do in his columns? He normalizes and apologizes and spins the Republican rightward turn away from reason and compromise. When Republicanism is too extreme to normalize, he writes articles like this one, that encourage its opponents to feel numbness and despair. And all the while, he steadily paints Democrats as elite, or unpatriotic, or alien, or deluded. He consistently misrepresents liberal views or calls its fringes its center. And he throws in a little nibble of false equivalence, in every single column. It's not the insane banshee shriek of Fox News. It's an insidious drip, drip, drip of far-right normalization, courtesy of the Times.
2
1) In this political environment, political behavior of an outlying nature delivers diminishing returns among supporters, requiring even more extreme behavior to gain and shore up additional support. A vicious political cycle of extreme behavior is created. Reinforcement of past extreme behaviors drives the hurdle rate for the next behavior continuously upward to maintain the base's support, or meet ROIs.
2) Voters "felt swamped by waves of immigrants, frustrated by economic stagnation ...." The interrelationship between these two disruptive economic forces is key when parsing the election results, if Italy's electorate mirrors that of the US.
3) Per The Atlantic's digital edition, in: "The Liberal Millennial Revolution," by Derek Thompson (Feb 29, 2016), he states: "One study from the San Francisco Federal Reserve found that since 2009, wages for recent college graduates have grown 60 percent more slowly than those of the general population." Thompson concludes: "The youth job market appears to require ever more preparation to secure increasingly meager wages." Also, in a book review for Sunday's NY Times (3/4/18), Dr Angus Deaton, the economics Nobel winner in 2015, states in comparing international economic climates: "But it is not at all persuasive to relate this to what is happening in ...." the US today, "because ordinary people here, ...," "are not doing better." The theme here, and there too, seems to be: "It's the economy, stupid."
[Tu 3/6 Greenville NC]
I suspect we Americans have something Italy lacks -- smart, engaged, motivated women. This coming November American women will restore competence, honesty, and civility to our politics. I hope.
1
"You treat your opponents like legitimate adversaries, not illegitimate enemies. You tell the truth as best you can. You don’t make naked appeals to bigotry."
Thank you, David, for your perfect description of the modern republican party member...and Trump's base. As a member of the hollowing out center that voted for Hillary, I didn't hold those viewpoints, but since the election of Trump, that has changed. I still tell the truth, best I can. I do not appeal to bigotry. But, unfortunately, I am beginning to see my opponents as my enemies. All the lies. All the conspiracy theories. The support for Putin and Russia. The support for autocracy and/or oligarchy. All the threats from owners of assault weapons. BTW, if you believe they are bought for fun, or target practice, or self defense, or to come to the nations defense if ever invaded by foreigners...you are a fool.
I also agree that all the norms for running a modern democracy have been violated by Trump, with complicity by the republicans. How do we stuff that genie back in the bottle? Beats me. And it does look like the millennials are no brighter than Trump's base which means chaos for the future.
All the cheap talk from the right about our founding fathers...who were educated...and now, education is considered elitist. Reason is considered elitist. Truth is considered elitist. It's not just Trump having a nervous breakdown...it's the whole country.
4
A startling déjà vu moment occurred in me while reading this column’s statistical references—that many Italian and U.S. citizens think “democracy is a bad way to run a country,” that even more individuals “would like a strongman leader,” and that my fellow citizens “are no longer particularly bothered” if politicians display “dictatorial tendencies.”
All of a sudden, it was a bright, sunny day in the mid-1960s as i, about 19 years old, sat in the noisy Georgia Tech football stadium next to a “Ramblin’ Wreck.” As Yellow-Jacket fans around us cheered loudly, my Indonesian date, who knew almost nothing about football, enthusiastically brought up various topics to discuss with me. Then, out of the blue, he began to criticize the U. S. and its inhabitants for thinking that democracy was something good. According to him, he and his fellow Indonesians recognized clearly that people of every nation need our fathers and our political leaders to instruct us on how to live.
During his harangue on the absurdity of majority rule, i realized that the football game would be my one and only date with this young man whose political opinions alarmed me.
This vivid memory of over 50 years ago, along with the columnist’s persuasive arguments, suggests to me that Brooks’s assessment is, unfortunately, on target.
We are letting the least educated people in the country, the Republican "base" rule us...because the Republicans in power in Congress and the states are afraid of the voting power of single-issue voters from rural states. IF the Congressional leaders had any foresight, any integrity, they would call DT on the carpet for his endlessly egregious assaults on truth, if nothing else. But they don't. I blame them...they are getting what they have hoped ;for for 50 years: lower taxes, deregulation, a "white" agenda...and at what cost?
1
One could add Venezuela as an example of what happens. Hugo Chávez was elected in 1998 in spite of having led a failed and bloody military coup d'état in February 1992 (and one more from jail in November of that year). He was elected because the dual party system had become totally corrupt. He was a populist, like Trump, with no knowledge of government. He installed his pals, like Trump, who did nothing but stuff their own pockets. All the fancy projects failed because the people in charge were not just incompetent; they were criminals. Venezuela is today a criminal state, where you can only survive by also becoming a criminal. Case in point: A friend of mine was stopped at a traffic stop with the car stuffed of illegal weapons. Luckily the police took them for criminals and let them go. If they had known they were democracy activists in the resistance, they would have been thrown in jail and tortured. That is how upside-down the world has become for them, and it will become everywhere unless we fight back to defend honesty, noble values, righteousness, and all the other knightly ideals that seem so forgotten today.
1
Will America "snap back to normal" after Trump, David?
As if Trump is the problem and not the symptom? Your party has a festering sickness that has been nurtured by Republican leadership for decades: from the "Southern Strategy," to the lie of "trickle down economics" that has been splashing on the not-astronomically-rich like a leaky toilet in an upstairs apartment since Reagan, to voter suppression and twisted elections that deliver Republicans who lost the popular vote (Trump) or who lost outright (W).
You ask, will we go back to normal, and I ask you, will the Republicans stop fielding charlatans like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump? Will Republicans ever stop trying to crash the government into a brick wall and then say "see, I told you that car wouldn't run?" Will Republicans ever take a fraction of the interest in governing that they do in winning? In other words, if the REPBLICANS "snap back" to THEIR normal of recent decades ... we are doomed to more candidates like Palin or Trump and more government-crashing cabinet members like the present clown car of film-flam men and shamelessly, opportunistic, profiteering, unqualified liars.
5
It is the public, stupid....
The public must be informed and engaged. Otherwise you get the government you deserve. Ignorant people expect easy fixes and will vote for demagogues. This further erodes trust to the government and will bring more authoritarian characters.
How to restore civility and democratic norms? Start from schools teaching civil classes and importance of critical thinking in politics. Stop undermining the government. Public service should be as honorable as military service and should attract best people. Make truly representative government and eliminate electoral college. Make voting not only as easy as possible but maybe also mandatory. The more people vote the better the chance majority voice is represented in the government. Restore "Fairness doctrine" and find a way to limit spreading obvious falsehoods and lies.
Some of those changes may seem drastic but given the political reality AD 2018 we truly need drastic solutions.
3
At this chaotic period in our republic, C.S. Lewis' advice is sorely needed. “Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth 'thrown in': aim at Earth and you will get neither.”
Only a religious extremist would post something like this, right? Absolutely wrong! I am reminded every day when I read the NY Times and my local paper of all the damage inflicted upon us by this administration. Saving creation means believing in a power greater than ourselves and acting accordingly.
1
There are two significant and connected issues that justify concern
for the evolution of the country's governing institutions. The first is the marginalization of "good government" groups. This includes responding effectively to the citizens united horror, but extends to embedded corruption across all levels of government. Why is this of so little generalized concern?
The systemic paying to play schemes, etc. that seem endemic, reflect the inability to get money out of politics, as much as possible. Campaign finance reform and public financing of elections have disappeared as alternatives,
and there is very little appeal for them. Instead the internet has been
mobilized to generate networks of small contributors to counter the anonymous big spenders behind the PAC travesties. But this is a hit or miss type of alternative that also favors candidates who appeal to activists, a small percentage, not the broad "middle".
An evident explanation for this is the high level of cynicism towards
all things regulatory, as well as deep skepticism that no governing body is
immune to the siren songs of cash from private interests. This has neutered all efforts at reforming how government and private money interact in nature, in general.
The society has been unwilling to address this feedback loop sucking the life from its institutions. People either
don't care, don't feel "the system" can change, or get suckered
by false promises to drain the swamp.
1
David Brooks has said he doesn't read the comments on his op-eds. That much is apparent. The next question is, does he read any dissenting opinions whatsoever?
2
I think our current state of affairs starts with Newt Gingrich. He did all the things you say of Berlosconi in terms of not solving problems and degrading public discourse. Trump is a post-Gingrich creation.
2
David:
I hope you're wrong and we haven't devolved so far as to mirror Italy, yes we have our own Berlusconi for the moment, but it appears we have a strong, intelligent and talented bunch of youthful soon-to-be voters who will keep this democracy alive.
We've never seen the likes of Trump in the White House, but there was Jackson and others who were rough around the edges and we survived. I'm hoping this is just the far wacko swing to the right and we'll start swinging toward the center again, after all, it took 8 years of a thoughtful, intelligent and sophisticated man with character & integrity who fought McConnell's undemocratic means of achieving his goals to get to Trump. Now the lazy people who stayed home or the people who didn't think beyond their nose to vote for a fringe candidate will have the opportunity to start righting (or lefting) the harm they did in 2016.
Here's to hoping Trump is the kick in the pants that decent & intelligent people need to recognize what chaos & undemocratic values can do to a country.
2
DB probably, unhappily postulating the future.
Europe's alleged populistic trend is their d Brexit, the la Pen rise
en France, Austria, Italy, Hungary, yuk, yuk and yuk.
I shall read DB eventually soon, and his PBS dogma is a treat too.
So, nearly a quarter of U.S. millennials think democracy is a bad way to run a country.
Perhaps before having an opinion based on nothing, these enlightened bright sparks of 'All America can be' should go spend a year or two in the likes of Russia. Not just for a vacation, but to work alongside the many peoples of subjugation, where if they doest protest too much for something their enlightened breed might deem appropriate, they get shipped off to nowhere people much like to talk about anymore -- in fear of getting shipped off too. Or just plain whacked, like what just happened to a Russian spy at Sainsbury's.
Basically, how about Americans, more so the entitled youth obviously, but also, yes, the longtime uneducated bitter and old, educate themselves before spouting their blind ignorance and idiocy at the ballot box. Otherwise we shall indeed see ourselves back in 1933, and I still have parents who dread that era, which these fools would very likely call nostalgic.
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My one comfort here is that David Brooks has seldom been right about anything for as long as I can remember...
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This is one of my biggest fears with regard to Trump's legacy: That the norms of a democratic society will be lost forever, because young people will not know any better. I've had to tell my kids repeatedly, "This is not normal", to every new insult from this administration.
This administration started out with Kid Rock, Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin at the White House at Trump's invitation. These fine people used that privileged opportunity to give the finger (in brilliant unison) while posing under Hillary Clinton's painting.
There is too much to cover.
I'm certain that the stress levels and health levels of Americans are worse off because we have a sexual assaulting, trashy con man in office, who surrounds himself with the worst out there. Most of us steer way clear of transparent grifters. However, we are forced to monitor this administration's disgusting view points and behavior, if we want any chance of saving our country.
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Brooks identifies a source of decline, “the deterioration of debate caused by social media.”
No, deterioration of the media began long before that.
The deterioration of the media followed the rise the conservative media, e.g., W. F. Buckley’s intellectually dishonest “God and Man at Yale” and his National Review.
David, you and you allies in conservative media and politics led the assault resulting in the decline of the media. Social scientists and historians have long observed that the facts have a liberal bias. The conservative agenda in media and politics has been a war on facts, a war on science, a war on arithmetic, and a war on journalism. David, you have been part of that.
The whole populist revolt occurred because government provided by centrists has been dysfunction.
David, you don’t need elaborate philosophy to understand that. It is simple and obvious.
Two errors made modern democracy dysfunctional.
A key idea of conservatives that makes governance impossible is the laissez-fair or neoliberal agenda.
The other is an error in the progressive agenda. LBJ meant well, but took the progressive agenda in the wrong direction with his antipoverty programs. Economist Hyman Minsky was correct to criticize his programs. They promoted dependency, and did not provide the needed structural changes. The only antipoverty program viable in the long run is a job with health insurance. A good minimum wage. If you can’t find a job, a public works program paying $2 less.
Perhaps, the underlying issue is, as yet, not being discussed. Perhaps, it's the power of the multinationals that keep getting bigger and more powerful, to say noting of wealthier, but answerable to only a tiny fraction of the people anywhere.
I'm not sure that this is fixable through democracy as we've known it. It's gone on far too long. The last time capitalism became this dominant, it was reset by WW-II. A similar solution in a nuclear world is simply unimaginable. So how does it get fixed?
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Teddy Roosevelt warned us about large corporations earlier than that. He said if the government was not large enough to push back against the enormous power and wealth of corporations, then they would take over the government and run the country.
He broke up Standard Oil. The free press brought us "muckraker journalism" that kept the spotlight on dirty practices of corporations that hurt the public. We got regulatory agencies because we needed them, to protect the public with pure food and drug regulations. We got labor unions and child labor laws and other workplace protections.
Franklin D. Roosevelt pulled us out of the Great Depression, and gave us Social Security, so that the elderly who spent a lifetime working, would not starve in old age.
These were all prior to WWII.
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One of the three points made by David Brooks (Third, the deterioration of debate caused by social media. ) is only partially true. The vitriol of social media and the resulting diminishing of debate has an earlier starting point. The rise of right wing talk radio (Rush Limbaugh, Laura Ingram, etc), long heralded by the Republican Party, began this demanding of public discourse. Republican elites thought they could “use” these folks to stir up the troops, but did not envision that it was the Republican establishment who these groups would tear down.
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Judging by what shows up on my FB feed from my conservative 'friends', the Trump base and possibly most Republicans are ready for an authoritarian strong man with military rule. Sad and frightening.
Secondly, David correctly points out that social media is destroying us.
One thing to keep in mind while commenting, posting, arguing here, FB, Twitter, anywhere; While it's a great free speech platform to speak your mind it also provides a complete record that will never go away.
Now, who might want to go through all that with a targeted search algorithm someday?
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How does this landslide of derailed politics start with Trump, Mr. Brooks? Please see Newt Gingrich, George W. Bush, FOX News over the past two decades (and take some personal responsibility as an influential conservative for what's happened to your "side"), instead of balancing blame to leftist "elites" in a false equivalence. The contemporary political climate, I'm happy to point out, is closer to home than you ever admit.
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One part of the article I find compelling is how drawn people are now to authoritarianism and the refusal to keep faith with democratic process. As a liberal, I'm seeing this among progressives as well. They want a president who will force through single payer, force corporations to pay their fair share, etc. It's all about force. America used to be about freedom and the individual. Now we seem to think only a dictator can get things done.
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I wish Brooks provided citations for his statements: "In the U.S., nearly a quarter of millennials think democracy is a bad way to run a country. Nearly half would like a strongman leader. One in six Americans of all ages supports military rule."
I find it difficult to believe.
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First, I am amazed that Brooks views Italian politics as a parallel to US politics let alone any other serious democracy with a free press. What we may lack in terms of a more than two party system we well make up for in an open and free investigative press. There lies a huge difference and not just in America, but in many European countries where the press, while perhaps demonized, is free to report as its investigative journalism permits it too.
Aside from that dramatic differential, Trumps rise to the greatest position in American politics is most certainly a moment of pause. How did this person become the beacon of certainty for the entire Republican party? In a multi-party democracy, especially those that are based on parliamentary systems of governance where compromises and agreements are dealt with to promote an individual to power, our two-party system, like it or not, really puts handcuffs on the crazies with one exception, the elevation of Trump.
Chances are strong that the GOP will not let that happen again ever. They are now relegated to subservient promoters who at cabinet meetings have to stand up and admire the emperors new clothes. God that has got to hurt!
That said, the GOP was ambushed at their own game and yes, perhaps it may take a few elections to clear that level of American vs. American dust. That said, Lincoln was successful and so was FDR and even Johnson, who bet his presidency on both civil rights and Vietnam.
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What happens to American politics after Donald Trump? Do we snap back to normal...?
What Mr. Brooks and essentially the entire political and media establishment fail to acknowledge is that there can be no 'snapping back to normal' because "normal" had evolved into a nightmare before Trump. Normal came to mean anything that did not deviate from the comfort zone of the one percent, the corporations and the army of their employed supporters whom they so nicely reward.
Excellent observations and clearly stated, as always Mr. Brooks. Thank you.
I would add that Donald Trump was elected for a reason. Voters were fed up with representatives that, too often, are self serving rather than serving the country. Unbeknownst to many that he was the same; only less elegant and likely dangerous.
There is little benefit to return to the “good old days”, when self-dealing was carried out in a more genteel manner. We need the incentives for serving our country to change from money and power to honor and gratitude. We have lost our way; the path back is not easy.
Just when I think brooks and I agree he throws in a sentence that makes no sense: “The rising political tendencies combine lavish spending from the left with racially charged immigrant restrictions from the right”. Bad attempt to blame the left as well as the right; not that the left doesn’t deserve some blame but throwing money at the problem is more a right thing than a left thing – makes no sense.
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Maybe not a snapback, but a gradual return. Let's start with both houses of Congress in the mid-terms!
Wouldn’t both Republicans and Democrats delight in the idea, that after the Trump 8 years as President, they could once more revert back to the status quo they engineered during the Bush, Clinton, and Obama tenures, a total of 24 years, when together behind closed doors, they burnt the midnight oil in working with their corporate masters, and wealthiest donors, to deliberately, with great subtlety, and singular determination to disenfranchise the masses, cede government operations to corporate America, international affiliates, and foreign governments.
The Trump soirée is a very sophisticated ploy, in my opinion, one which conveys the appearance that Trump is anathema to American ideals, when in fact it is exemplifying the avaricious nature of America, creating a sense throughout the land that something must be done to rein in the authoritarian goals of this group of charlatans.
There will be a return to a less onerous type of governance, which regardless the persuasion of the front man or woman, will be once more a behind the scenes corporate controlled collection of Republican and Democrat lackeys, rolling back some inconsequential regulations of the Trump era, but mostly keeping in place the truly restrictive economic, and other policies which will have further disenfranchised the poor and the middle-class.
In summary, Democracy in its truest form is dead, was never intended to become normalized, and government of, by, and for the corporations was, and is the goal.
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Thanks for this piece, Mr Brooks. It is chilling to read that only a third of Americans think it’s essential to live in a democracy. That means , technically, two-thirds of this country are traitors. They do not support the constitution.
I wonder how that stat breaks down by region or state? Something tells me the Coasts have a much higher percentage supporting Democracy, while the red-blooded white center favors the “patriotic” fascism of dismantling democracy.
If Italy represents our future, perhaps we should take on the dictatorships now, while we still have a functioning army.
War with Russia sounds kind of sane in this context. They are attacking our way of life, and they are winning. War with China sounds pretty rational too. Better to fight them as a democracy than wait until we have to fight them plus our own dictator as well.
The exception is that American progressivism seems to be strengthening. Mr. Brooks thinks of progressivism as extremism, but if that is the case, then Trump is part of a long series of extreme behavior that started in the 1960s. Mr. Trump will likely be a blip in history as US voters learn the costs of voting for extreme candidates.
I dont blame Mr. Brooks for his pessimism. What we have is the result of the confluence of a number of factors. Chief among them is the erosion of the power of the mass communication outlets and the editorship they practiced; the power now lies in the hands of individuals who can leverage New Media to unsavory purposes. Also responsible is the fact that there has not been a true crisis for the country since Pearl Harbor; it was the politicians who fought shoulder to shoulder in WWII that for the 40 years afterward brokered the consensus we like to think of these days as healthy and normal. Finally, the New Economy which rewards to a greater and greater degree the fewer and fewer people with the skills to master it is feeding a wave of resentment.
What is required is, more or less, is leadership -an individual, or a few good man and women, who have the ability to rouse the passion that Trump does but who is at the same time is a patriot who understands the meaning if the word. Hope and Pray, and do what you can at home.
Just one thing, Mr Brooks: in Italy it isn't just the moderate centre-left that collapsed, it's also the moderate centre-right. Unlike, say, in the USA, when the moderate right-(Republican) party simply morphed into the extreme right itself.
It is not Democracy that is failing, but Representative Democracy, or the Republic, is failing. Our Republic is a compromise between an Aristocracy, and a Democracy. And both ends are failing. The Aristocracy has failed by way of corruption by Big Business, in the form of large, international corporations, which started in the Guilded Age, over 100 years ago. The Democracy has failed by way of corruption of the system of justice, which started with slavery, followed by Jim Crow laws and anti-labor movements.
I do not share Brooks thinking. We will come together post Trump. We know the high bar and will once again pursue that. Until then, let us all resist in any way we can. Doing nothing is no longer an option. Democracy is hard work. We must stay engaged or deal with the negative consequences of doing nothing.
Courtesy is the societal great that smiths the way and keeps us from killing each over in moments of stress and disagreement. Now that it’s avceptable to say what you want whenever you want, the true nature of Trump and the GOP is revealed: a continual grasping for power with a reluctance to use it for the common good; naked contempt for the poor and less fortunate coupled with an unwillingness to help them in any meaningful way ( and indeed to punish them for their situation); and a willingness to stand by a man who is the antithesis of the Christian and democratic values they profess to support. And, in this chsotic time, you have to admire the young people from Florida who are not afraid to call out both the Congress and the president by reminding them that the government works for us and we have the power to change it.
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I think we need to start pointing out - over and over again - that there is no Second Amendment in Russia or China. Citizens are not allowed to carry/own guns. There's no First Amendment either but I guess that's not so important to people turning away from democracies.
At age 66 and raised by a mother who was always politically aware and talkative about her love for America and her disdain for the Soviet Union - because they had no freedom - I have become quite frightened at the populist/right wingers rising across the world.
Without freedom, what is there? Without a Constitution that guarantees that freedom, what is there? Without the ability to write my views online and not be afraid that police/military will show up at my door to arrest me, what is there? Money? Money, though I have not much of it, is the least of my worries. I am worried, at this moment, sitting in my living room in Orono, Maine, that my freedoms will soon be gone.
Our Putin Puppet jokes all the time. For such an unfunny man, he keeps telling these 'jokes'. Jokes about all kinds of drastic things that would inhibit our freedoms and change America drastically. 'President For Life' kind of jokes he floats out there to gauge reaction from his fan base and broader electorate. Oh, the president is always joking, Sarah Huckabee Sanders says all the time, you press enemies should try it some time.
We must remove this man who is in bed with Putin and is not protecting us. Now.
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Berlusconi and Trump are comparable. But Italy and the United States are not. Italy's politics has always been chaotic. The United States has never experienced this type of chaos.
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You left out one critical piece of analysis: Trump wouldn't be where he is now without the ongoing support of the leaders of Republican party. They have made him possible every step of the way, and continue to let him flourish. This isn't a case of an isolated individual wreaking havoc; he has had a lot of inside help.
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Recently, I went back and reread Judge Learned Hand's famous 1944 Spirit of Liberty speech. This section was especially poignant:
"I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws, and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it."
Our former land of opportunity has become a zero sum game or worse. Growth goes to the few while the rest of the country stagnates. There are ways to better share what growth there is, and better ways to organize society so that the lot of the average person is much better while not limiting possibilities for exceptional people. It starts with the voters being educated in what democracy can and cannot do, and learning to ignore distraction and seek the facts. Participate. Know the candidates, the good and bad about them, the true and false about them. Get out of the bubble.Democracy can and will work if we choose to work hard and find a large center where we accept our opponent's legitimacy (though their ideas are mistaken).
I spent over half of my adult life living in Italy and you have absolutely no idea of the impossibility of comparing the political system there with that of the USA, due to the vast cultural differences. Their experience with government dates back more than 2000 years. Optimism about anything, let alone politics, is non-existent. You can't possibly even think about comparisons with an ancient culture until you've lived it.
I take a longer view, and one borne not of the immediate political landscape, but of the ebb and flow of both ideas and cultural manifestations. The Roman Empire fell -- ostensibly due to the combination of corruption from within and immigrants from without. But the ideas of democracy and the structure of the Roman Senate somehow survived.
I suspect (and hope) that some of the change that is needed will come in a less violent, nihilistic manner because more women will be partaking in the discourse. We lose faith in institutions because they fail to provide the succor and safety we are unable to produce ourselves. Women seem to know how to manage this better than men.
I was born in India and became a US citizen at the earliest point legally allowed. Why? Born in an (imperfect) democracy, I couldn’t imagine living in the oldest continuous one without voting. My child first went to a polling station at age 2 to watch the adults vote, and to feed the completed ballots into the counting machines. Today, he is an informed citizen who always votes.
Here’s what I have never understood. In India, all politicians promise the poor pretty much the same thing, never intending to keep most of those promises. That’s a given. So, when a poor farmer sells his vote (shocking, isn’t it?) to one, he gets something in return: grains that will feed his family for a month or a blanket that will keep them warm in winter. He turns up to vote, hoping that the politician who bought the vote will, maybe, possibly do some good (or at least, do no harm).
Now consider the US. Put aside those who are disenfranchised by legal but undemocratic tactics, intimidation, and the like. What excuse does the rest of the citizenry have for not voting? Far more educated than my farmer, if they vote, why do they vote against their interests? How is the illiterate farmer - who by the way, would be able to tell you the names of foreign leaders whose actions affect India - more thoughtful in his actions as a citizen than a typical educated (!) American?
We solve this problem, we solve all others.
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Lavish spending on the left... Hmm, what are we thinking of here?
Helping people get health insurance, because ordinary people are now priced out of the market? Economic stimulation by an infrastructure program, because we have neglected it for so long? More money for education, when citizens can't tell truth from falsehood and college is unaffordable? Raising the minimum wage, because people can no longer live on it?
Or are we thinking of more for an already bloated military, and more wars every time someone mouths off? More for the rich in tax cuts? Keeping the minimum wage so low, it makes more people dependent on government assistance?
"Spending" is not just "spending". When problems in other areas are allowed to get out of hand, the cost to repair them is high. Less spending would be needed if, say, medical costs were reined in, minimum wages were higher, and we didn't act like we'd never met a weapon or a war we couldn't afford.
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Nothing proves Mr. Brooks’ points better than the Readers’ Picks comments. The top of the list basically blames everything on republican electorate ignorance. Second on the list recipe to solve the crisis is for everybody to be more militant. Socrates, coming in third, not only puts exclusive blame again on the Republican Party, but also casts Mr. Brooks as an unpatriotic political crony. The list goes on and on.
I have been a social progressive all my adult life. I am pro choice, for gun control, support public health and public education, and believe that government can and must be a force of good for all. I am an European immigrant who lived 7 years in this country as an illegal. Many times I have disagreed with Mr. Brooks’ prescriptions for the problems of society; I think his approach is too moralistic. But he is dead on right here.
We need to somehow gain some awareness of our information bubbles. We need to look at people and politicians with different political views as concerned citizens, just as we are, even if we think they are wrong. We need to value our political institutions and the work they do. We need to regain our appreciation for the art of compromise, and stop making of every single issue (DACA, trade, health…even guns) a deal breaker. Us progressives, the left, we must first point out to the demons on our side. We cannot expect a compact to be born out demonizing the rest.
Yes, some well-reasoned fixes have been offered here, and I applaud that. Flood the polls in November, yes...but my fear is what happens between Election Day and a January inauguration, if a Democrat, Independent, or anyone not inclined to continue our current dystopia is the victor. The image of our gangsters-in-charge as cornered, wounded animals comes to mind.
My two nightmare fears: Trump and company fabricate a crisis, declare martial law and postpone the transfer of power — indefinitely, of course, until the “crisis” has passed. Or, a collection of well-armed Second-Amendment and Freedom “protectors” rise up to set things right. Perhaps the latter is the all-too-real crisis justifying the former, no fabrication needed.
It’s not Trump that worries me when I think about things like that.
It’s always been an uninformed electorate incapable of critical reasoning that precedes a decline in democracy. And I’m at a loss to imagine a fix for the ending that worries me the most. I welcome ideas here.
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There is a distressing tendency on this page to simply blame the Republican party for all of democracy's ills. First of all, the president and all those Republican senators, congressmen, governors, and state officials were elected by the citizenry, and the citizenry will still be there when Trump and the rest have all moved on. The package being presented by the left is uninspiring for voters, because they are unimpressed with what they have seen government achieve.
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It follows that given the distrust of government, political parties, and institutions, campaigning on a platform of a big expansion of government is likely to fail. To substantially change the government we have, we first must convince the public that government can be effective and efficient. The Democratic party needs to become the party of Good government, not More government. We need to consolidate programs and remove programs, focus on doing a few things well, send block grants to states, make the public want more. If you want universal healthcare, set up universal catastrophic care, and then let it grow from there. If Obama had started with John McCain's healthcare plan rather than Hilary's when he was designing Obamacare, we'd be much further along the path to universal healthcare now. Obamacare is a dead end; it will fail, and there's a good chance that Republicans will determine what follows it. To succeed politically, the Democrats must be the party to improve government, not just expand it.
I share the concerns of Mr. brooks that years from now, Trump would be viewed as some sort of normal. Similar to the politician who opened his presidential candidacy in Philadelphia, MS; with call for state right is viewed not only as normal but a beacon of democracy despite his support for apartheid in South Africa.
Recipes for fix are pouring in, "educate those who would listen." Isn't listening in deficit in our current democracy? If we listened to what is being said, we would know already.
Cheers!
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Terrifyingly plausible. In my opinion, the third trend mentioned by Mr. Brooks, the deterioration of debate caused by social media, is the root cause. The other two trends are simply effects of this cause. And this is why the future is so terrifying - the genie is out of the bottle. As with nuclear weapons, you cannot "un-invent" facebook, twitter and their ilk. Democracy only works if voters have a minimum of education, at least enough to understand that facts cannot be invented, and to know what respect for the norms of civilized discourse means. Without these prerequisites, democracy cannot survive in a world dominated by social media. I was born in 1952. Hardly a day goes by when I don't wish that I had been born in 1902. I would have been able to play a part in the downfall of Nazism and Communism, and would have not lived to see that those were empty and temporary victories.
America can no long call itself a democracy when the popular vote lost.
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I see the election of Donald Trump as a wake-up call. I've been dismayed and saddened, but I certainly haven't given up, nor will I become complacent.
What will destroy democracy in the long run, is for American citizens to give in to hatred for others, whoever they happen to be: Trump voters, Republicans, immigrants, poor people, women, African Americans, Hispanics, LGBTQ, the disabled, Democrats, men, whites, and so on.
When I read the statistic that five out six people favored a military style of government I flat out didn't believe it. Where? The article doesn't say. But it's not here in the US. To compare Italy to the USA is like comparing a fresco to modern art. Italy has an ancient culture, is a far smaller country, and is beset by different problems. The United States is a younger nation, with a different history, a different form of government, and different problems.
The ideas that there are Progressives and a Resistance gives rise to a long term optimism that we will get through this. Stop being so gloomy; show some hope in the future.
A great article David, but in the face of all that you've mentioned, you still forgot to give us a reasonable explain why 80% of those from your party continue to support Mr. Trump.
While I agree that the damage that Trump is doing will outlast his tenure, I'm more optimistic about the long term than Brooks is.
For starters, it's both simplistic and misleading to say, as Brooks does, that Berlusconi, Trump, and the Five Star Movement all won elections for the same reason, which Brooks boils down to voter disgust with "a governing elite that seemed corrupt and out of touch." We know that Trump's win had a lot to do with the racial and cultural anxiety of the declining white majority, and I suspect that Five Star's win also owed in large part to recent large-scale non-white immigration to Italy.
Whatever happens in Italy, the U.S. will, within just a couple of decades, be a very different country demographically. Today's young white population is growing up much more comfortable than their parents are with a diverse, multi-cultural society. The more resentful, fearful white population is aging out.
All around us, from Washington to Hollywood, we see the gradually expanding scope of shared social authority, and that trend is gaining speed despite Trump, or maybe even because of him.
Trump is a test of our faith in democracy. I have been critical of those who underestimate Trump's threat to democracy and the rule of law, but I am also critical of those who doubt the resiliency of democracy and our capacity to recover from even the quasi-fascist buffoonery of a Donald Trump.
politicsbyeccehomo.wordpress.com
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Reader’s comments are more meaningful and eloquent than Mr. Brook’s hopeless surrender to the worst in and of us. Thank you to those articulate readers here and everywhere who believe in democracy, justice, a free press, our future, and the power we are capable of. We must get the Russians out of our social media, and stop their meddling in our elections. VOTE and take a friend with you.
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Mr. Brooks, the election of Donald Trump is not the start of the nativist/nationalist movement and of course not the end of it. Putting it in context, Russia, Hungary, and Turkey had all fall to the cult of "strong men" before Trump. Today, the replay of Berlusconi, the next generation, in Italy and the election of Xi as emperor in China, are just a continuation of this anti-liberal democracy wave. While France and Germany have resisted in the last election cycle, they remain highly vulnerable. Sorry for being an alarmist but this dangerous autocratic nationalist wave are still rising and the survival of the world is greater danger than over half a century.
We already know that like Berlusconi, Trump will never go away. That much was clear when, in lieu of thinking he might actually win the election, he laid out plans for Trump TV so that he would always have a national platform on which he could rave and foment to his trivial heart's content. Of the endless horrors this administration has visited upon our lives, the inescapable, unthinkable fact that he will be with us until the day we die looms larger than the rest, long past the day when by one means or another he leaves office. I'm not a New Yorker, but I visit and do business there often, and I am now all too painfully aware of what my friends and colleagues who live and work in the city that I love and that is a second home to me have endured for decade upon decade: that ever-present sense of being held hostage to his uninvited and unwelcome presence, with his ceaseless, bombastic, insatiable self-promotion and need for attention somewhere in the foreground or background of their -- and now all of our -- daily lives. A return to normal? One can only hope. And vote.
As Churchill said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others." Most anyone who favors strong-arm, concentrated forms of governance has not lived them. Democracy and diffused authority is so far the only way to exercise some measure of control over leaders and their cronies.
The problem is human nature and not governance variants. As morality cannot be legislated, a governing system needs the legitimate outlet of voting out the bums that will always keep reappearing. Otherwise, the outlet is too traditional- bloodshed, storming the barricades and chopping off heads.
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In referring to "How Democracies Die," Brooks mentions considering your adversaries illegitimate. hat's exactly how I feel that many Republicans have viewed Democrats for at least a decade, namely, that only Republicans should govern. This, then, justifies extreme gerrymandering and voter suppression. The result is that Republicans control all three branches of government in Washington and two thirds of the states.
Let's just see this as an opportunity to fix the flaws in the system and make it better for everyone.
WHAT? There's more to come?
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TRUMP IS TO BERLUSCONI
Trump is to Berlusconi
As Pacino is to Guccione
Ceremony to sanctimony
Steamed mussels to minestrone
Stock split to Spumoni.
Parsimony to palimony
Trump steak to pepperoni
Straight talk to cheap baloney.
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Isn’t this supposed to be about Trump’s Twitter campaign?
“In Italy, as with Trump and his Facebook campaign”
Of course liberal democracy will not fix itself. Democracy is not self sustaining, in fact it cuts against the grain of human history. Ever wonder why the Motto of the US on the Great Seal is annuit coeptis novus ordo seclorum which means "favor our undertakings, a new order of the ages". Liberal democracy was and is a new order of the ages. Self-government is and has been since 1776 an experiment to be renewed with each succeeding generation.
My generation, the Baby Boomers, gave us Bill Clinton, George W., Barak Obama and now Donald Trump as our Presidents. Clinton was brilliant but a boundless hedonist and it was his sexual hedonism that overshadowed his brilliance. George W. acted before thinking getting us into wars in the wrong countries at the wrong times. Obama was cerebral, but he overthought issues, like the Syria War. His failure to act on August 31, 2013 was the original sin of the Syria War which started the refugee flows to Europe and the rise of the radical right which is shaking the EU to its foundations.
Trump is completing the destruction.
The only way back is for the sovereign authority of our system, the people themselves to repair and restore their government. It is, at the end of the day, our government, not big pharm, or the banks or the military industrial complex, but ours and we must fix it if it is to be repaired. But we have to believe and take our roles as heirs of the Founders seriously.
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Mr. Brooks forget about your usual ramblings and admit that conservatives (starting with your beloved Mr. Reagan and Mrs. Thatcher in 1980) started this anti-democratic slide into this despotic abyss. It's time you began to address the problem directly and strongly criticize your Republican party and their boy Trump and his capitulation to his idol Putin. Only then can you redeem yourself for writing apologies for your usually hidden conservative views which have started to ruin your country. Only then can you call yourself a thoughtful writer of true substance. Only then can you help stop this calamity from getting worse.
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“[L]iberal democracy clearly ain’t going to automatically fix itself” UNLESS it can generate a vision towards which the present generation can be attracted.
Such vision starts with the description of the present chaos and its permanence for the next couple of decades and develops a global governance system that is just in all its systemic and procedural dimensions and deals with the physical of reality of the changing climate.
Part of such comprehensive justice approach is to transform the unjust, unsustainable, therefore, unstable international monetary system. One way of pursuing monetary justice is to base it on a carbon standard of a specific tonnage of CO2 per person. A beginning was made with the 2015 Paris Accords. The conceptual, institutional, ethical and strategic dimensions of such proposed carbon-based international monetary system are presented in Verhagen 2012 "The Tierra Solution: Resolving the climate crisis through monetary transformation" and updated at www.timun.net.
One sophisticated world citizen with economic and ecological expertise stated: “The further into the global warming area we go, the more physics and politics narrows our possible paths of action. Here’s a very cogent and well-argued account of one of the remaining possibilities.” Bill McKibben, May 17, 2011
How did this happen? The GOP. Fox News. The NRA. All would be at home in Berlin in 1939. It’s beginning to look like that is where they want to take us.
3
Dear Sir,
Mr. David Brook’s article is scary at the same time prescient. However he was one of the original supporters of republican “conservative ideas” no matter how ignorant they were economically and culturally starting from Sarah Palin’s calves. Instead of calling a spade a spade, stupidity stupidity if you try to find reasons to support things unsupportable you are the part of the problem. By not condemning people and ideas that make no sense the so called conservative elites have abdicated their duty taking sides with false equivalence. With all due respect the loss of decency and behavioral norms in political discourse are caused by the acquiescence of the elite on the right, partly. Sincerely,
Vikram Jayanty
1
The United States is not Italy
1
I guess as far as Italy is concerned, the Benito Mussolini experience wasn't enough.
1
Why wait until after Trump? What about NOW?
Have we become a procrasti-nation?
What about imagi-nation and determi-nation.
Why not develop more creative media responses to Trump and his Trumpsters?
We just had the Oscars. Why not hold contests to find the best political ads?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
See: "The Left Shouldn't be too Proud to Meme"
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/05/opinion/democrats-memes-social-media....
2
Um, we are NOT Italy if you haven't noticed.
1
And YOU, Mr. Brooks gave license for this when you pulled that lever for Reagan. Reagan gave permission for Americans to go low. And no matter how much you might deny it, look at the things he said and did.
We wound up after a few years with "Greed Is Good" as the citizens mantra. I'm really sick of you pontificating on this issue. JImmy Carter would have NEVER allowed the gutter that we became. Remember Lee Atwater, David? What about all the others who would say ANYTHING to win? Think it's not connected? You could not be that stupid. Sure have a selective memory, typical of the GOP post 1980
1
Ironic, after 50 years of hearing from the Christian right --
Graham-to-Graham, etc. -- how it was "liberals," (with their beatnik, free-love, rock n' roll, anti-establishment, Godless fey intellectual tendencies) who would hollow-out America's great traditions, it turns out to be the right who is ushering in the cultural and political apocalypse with both their votes and their behaviors. It appears to be time (again?) for 'liberal thought' and philosophy to rescue America in the same way it gave birth and voice to the nation in 1776.
1
"Do we snap back to normal or do things spin ever more widely out of control?"
if normal looks anything like the republican party of the last 40 years? i hope not. honestly i do not see democrats acting out the way conservatives do. you had the perfect republican president for 8 years..... obama..... and you couldn't bring yourself to write a column supporting him. you don't like the extreme behavior now on display? you better because you own it.
2
My my - sounds like you have completely given up any hope for a better tomorrow. I, for one believe things can change, oh, wait wait, I have to check my Twitter feed. Oh, sorry - excuse me - my phone is pinging .....
Since 2008, American businesses have been closing faster than they are being created. That is the first time that has happened since the Census Bureau began keeping records on small business. By 2011, there were 70,000 more business deaths than business births. Over 50% of the working population (120 million individuals) works in a small business.
Washington, bought by Wall Street, abandoned Small Business and it has been devastating. The brass tacks are, Globalism and the transnational interests have NEVER coincided with General Interest of working America and this country has paid a bitter price, beginning with that giant sucking sound Perot predicted so many years ago.
Well, we vote so hello Trump. The Globalists may now own the media, this newspaper, Congress, and the 53,000 parasites on K Street right behind the Capitol . . . but they do not own the People who make this country work.
Bottom line - If the lopsided effects of Globalism were instead fairly distributed across the fruited plain there would be no Trump. We aren't happy so neither will you be (happy).
Deal with it.
2
@holman - you’re right. Liberals and conservatives alike want to try to make the trump issue into social issues, when it isn’t. By and large, it is economic rage, and it is well deserved. Until people start talking about this, it’s only going to get worse.
Trace the history of periods of wealth being diverted to the top, with token efforts on one side and no efforts on the other to stop it, and I’ll show you every period in history where democracy died and authoritarianism flourished. It’s the money, stupid. It’s always been money, and it always will be.
We want to make this cycle stop? Stop listening to the reagans and the clintons and the laffer curve people who spring up every fifty to a hundred years with their false gospel of more money to the rich serves everyone / competitiveness will die if we don’t pay exorbitantly for “talent.”
You show me a racist voter, a xenophobic voter, a misogynistic voter, and 9 times out of 10 I’ll show you someone who is financially desperate and grasping for any way to justify the hopelessness of their miserable lives.
It’s the money, stupid.
3
Trump has been converted to a right wing populist ( used to be a Democrat). He does not have any political experience or education or wisdom ( has stupidity like birther movement). The combination of right wing and populist (for white people) is very dangerous, we experienced in and around 1940 in Europe. The evil genius and the most dangerous man in the world is Putin. He hates democracy. He will do everything to destroy our democracy and also in Europe. He is more than successful in his goal.
2
Another pointless 'sky-is-falling' column from David Brooks. And this one comes with a real doozy: "In the U.S., nearly a quarter of millennials think democracy is a bad way to run a country. Nearly half would like a strongman leader. One in six Americans of all ages support military rule." Shows just how stupid Millennials and "Americans of all ages" really are.
Gosh! Is the use of “ain’t” now grammatically acceptable? What the covfefe is happening to our world?
This only goes to prove what disgusting, cowardly hypoctrits the GOP and Evangelicals are. They continue to stand shoulder and shoulder with a con man who admirers auhtoriatriansm and has potentially committed treasonous acts against our nation. They will sacrifice their own freedom and soul "to win". And what have they won?
3
Public discourse was much more civil in the 70 years leading up to the Civil War,
except maybe when one senator caned another nearly to death in the Senate chamber, aka the greatest deliberative body in the world.
The Civil War was itself an example of civility.
During Reconstruction the Klan murdered tens of thousands, with good manners, gentility, and ropes.
In the 1920s hundreds of Osage were murdered for their oil money. (The Osage sold the reservation they were allotted and bought land so barren they thought whites would never try to come take it from them. Then they discovered oil on it.)
You're worried about sex parties from Italy but the building that headquarters the greatest investigative agency in the world is named for the cross dressing, hard partying, criminal enterprise that was J. Edgar Hoover.
Jared Kushner is no longer privy to America's top secrets except his foreign policy with China, Mexico, Canada, Israel, and Russia, and his own crimes committed trying to borrow his way out of bankruptcy from those same countries. Bankruptcy is your president's silver lining playbook.
Trump's third wife is your "First Lady" (lending new meaning to both those terms). She's an immigrant whose life lessons were provided by Michelle Obama's mother.
Jefferson has a monument dedicated to him for creating hypocrisy.
The United States is the greatest country on earth and I kneel for its national anthem.
2
Mainstream media is once again off the mark. Life after Trump? Politics after Trump? America after Trump?
For the love of God you guys.....FOCUS!
Midterms are eight months away. Headlines and resisters should be screaming with white-hot urgency: OUR PRESIDENT SWORE TO DEFEND US FROM OUR ENEMIES AND REFUSES TO DO SO!
What is more horrifying then that lineup of our top intelligence and defense leaders testifying to Congress that Russia did hack emails, pollute social media via bots, breach voting systems and pierce voter registration database security in several states, but the President has thus far given them not a single instruction to fight it? On the contrary, he refuses to even acknowledge in any meaningful way that it happened and that it is his job to fight back.
Life after Trump will not happen if we don't survive him!
Mr. Brooks and every wordsmith in America should write about that, talk about that, scream about that!
A ticking American time bomb is in plain view. This is the most crucial thing out there. Forget your smarty-pants global geopolitical historical philosophical scholarly perspectives for now. I can't believe I am saying this, but in this case it actually applies: AMERICA FIRST!
1
The Barbarians are no longer at the gate; now they control the government from all the most powerful positions.
And the collection of stupid, lazy, under-educated, ill-informed voters who put them into power are happy! These people could not pass a basic civics test, nor would they pass the US citizenship test.
2
Brooks is overstating the problem. One of these yahoos will start a war which will not end well.
Beware, NYT columnists, one and all, before you take up analysis of Italian politics and apply it to anywhere else, especially the United States. It's too complicated.
After Trump? Putin is our leader. He'll just replace him with someone else.
Huh. I hear many millennials point to the two-party system as the main problem with American politics. Except that they emphasize the "two-party" part of it, and I emphasize the "system" part of it, I agree. I have long thought that the polarization of American politics was enabled by the closed primary that encourages Republicans to choose the Republican-est candidate, and Democrats to choose the Democrat-est, and pretty much shoves everyone else to the sidelines. If only we had open primaries closely followed by run-off elections, then all voices would have an equal chance to be heard, and candidates would be encouraged to seek votes from the middle ground from the beginning. The European examples may suggest otherwise, that the more radical voices, instead of taking over their party, may just strike out, and gain support, in a new party. Maybe that would be more transparent, to make people vote for a person carrying a Socialist flag instead of a Socialist in Democratic clothing, or vote for a person wearing a swastika armband instead of a Republican making excuses for Nazis.
Oh my, I certainly hope you are wrong, wrong, wrong!! But, I have to admit, a lot of what you say seems to ring true. God help us...
Oh stop, sure it will.
Your Republican party spun out of orbit decades ago, with your help, while Democrats have kept their bearings. Yet you act as though they don't exist. The problem with America is YOU.
2
Wow Mr. Brooks. Don’t be so negative!
America is not Italy; we did not have Benito Mussolini and the National Fascist Party that he created. We do have a present day Donald Trump with vulgar authoritarian tendencies and the once Grand Old Party of his colluders; but we also have a Special Counsel Robert Mueller that the US Dept of Justice appointed and Congress created. We the People are waiting for Mueller Time. In a few recent elections Democrats have won.
Italy now has Silvio Berlusconi, but US had Abraham Lincoln: "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."
We the People will focus on the upcoming midterms and throw the Trumpsters in Congress out.
1
"...the deterioration of debate caused by social media. At the dawn of the internet, people hoped free communication would lead to an epoch of peace, understanding and democratic communication. Instead, we’re seeing... the rise of autocracy...
So, where Friedman saw an Arab Spring - you see an Italian Fall...
Could make a lame joke about wining at the glass-being half-empty rather than half-full...
Actually, have a suggestion - am dead serious...
Go do one of those beyond-outstanding tersed-up NYT interviews with Sergio Marchionne - see what he thinks...
Every time I hear the man - think he must be Steve Jobs' mellow elder cousin...
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/24/business/detroits-chief-instigator.html
"...When in the United States, Mr. Marchionne, 62, works out of a tiny office in a wing of the sprawling Chrysler Technical Center...He prefers to spend time among engineers and product planners rather than in the lavish suite of executive offices in the nearby headquarters tower...as he settled in for an interview...he downed the first of several espressos and silenced his four cellphones. Though smoking is forbidden elsewhere in the building, in this sanctuary he lit up one Marlboro after another...
"...Mr. Marchionne doesn’t look like a typical car executive. His uniform is a black sweater over a button-down shirt with black pants...
1
ever since Ronald Reagan ran on hating the federal government we have all gotten to watch as the Republican party has diligently worked to destroy our democracy.
Constant attacks on media, the courts, labor, education, voting rights, racist doublespeak, and opting to be the party of the rich by the rich and for the rich have now brought us our very own would be 'LEADER'.
The cognoscente of the GOP knew as well as the most fanatic liberal that Donald Trump wasn't qualified to be mayor of the smallest dog pen in the country, much less the job he holds.
But he won (with collusion from parties ever more well known) and went on to spend his time punishing those he sees as enemies, wasting more on travel than the last any President I can recall, refusing to learn, staffing with incompetents who were security risks in in spite of warnings from the security agencies, treating foreign affairs like some zero sum game, all while trying to cover up his double dealing, both political and financial.
Were his actions in office the acts of a Democrat (like the one that actually won) the impeachment hearing would be over, but as the GOP is now in the sway of the neo-nazis, gun fanatics, and the general round of haters, who love the persecution of the educated, they do nothing.
And dear David, it's been your party right along, so please stop talking about us, and get to work cleaning out your own stables.
"If you want a vision of the future, picture a boot stamping on human face -- forever." George Orwell, "1984"
Today's Republican Party would not have been possible without the intellectual framework -- or intellectual acquiescence -- provided by Mr. Brooks and his Buckleyan-Reaganite ilk.
Italy’s populism is different than Sweden’s and it is different from Trumpism in the United States.
Sure, there are a few similarities in that rich guys like Trump and Berlosconi can attract mass movements with inclinations to attack the press and push toward authoritarian rule.
But the legal system here evolved differently and political institutions are unique for each country. while the U.S. flirted with fascism in the 1930’s, a president like FDR was like a safety valve letting out steam to Italy’s seduction by Benito Mussolini’s embrace of Hitler.
We don’t know how this story will end with Trump but keep in mind that populism in Europe will likely go after different pathways than those in the U.S.
Dear David,
You have been replaced by a regression to the abnormal. Trumpism
Remember your three Rs
Repealing and Replacing Regressives
Dave
Just more evidence that the "end of history" theory was the biggest piece of garbage ever peddled by serious intellectuals.
There is a major flaw in your premise. Trump did not come to power because people were disgusted by the governing elite. Trump came to power by appealing to the racist, misogynistic, homophobic, jingoistic voters in red states who were encouraged by Russian bots. Let's stop pretending he won the popular vote. He didn't.
469
It also didn't hurt that Hillary spent the intervening years between being Sec of State and running giving secret speeches to Goldman Sachs, a plutocrat was headed to the White House, which seems central to Mr Brooks argument. I certainly voted for Hillary, but I also felt she and Bill have treated their time in the White House like a winning lottery ticket.
4
Let's stop pretending Trump wasn't elected legitimately under our system of government by people who voted for him because they saw him as the best candidate, regardless of Russian bots.
Trump won the election legitimately. To claim otherwise is to turn a blind eye to the increasing grip that the *American* far right propaganda machine's narrative has had on the Republican Party, the hearts and minds of conservative voters, and even on the left.
Kristine's comment indicates she would be much happier as a resident of Italy and a member of an extreme party of her choice,
Brooks bemoans the demise of our democracy due to “the loss of faith in the democratic system.” But you can’t have faith in something that doesn’t exist – that’s the realm of religion.
Brooks clings desperately to a fantasy version of democracy that requires “faith” to believe in. But I think that the first step to change is to accept the reality of our situation rather than cling to a myth that leaves us tearing out our hair when it doesn’t work. One definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
The reality is we have a watered-down “democracy” at best. A more honest description is that we have an oligarchy. The founding fathers were leery of democracy and established a government in which the only people who could hold office, vote, or even attend town council meetings were elites i.e. property-owning white males. And some version of oligarchical power has dominated ever since. In theory we each have a vote, but by the time it runs the oligarchical gauntlet of gerrymandering, money, voter suppression, and the Electoral College, our vote has been stripped of its power. Look at the 3 M wasted votes in the 2016 presidential election.
We also need to jettison the illusion of Enlightenment democracy that assumes voters are rational. Studies show the typical voter enters the voting booth armed, not with rationality, but emotion. That’s the reality we need to deal with.
Dream on David, but change waits only for reality.
4
We must learn from history; even history in the making. Radical transformation sounds good in fantasies but reality exacts a much deeper price from those who are harmed.
Well said, @DavidBrooks
"In short, Berlusconi, like Trump, did nothing to address the sources of public anger, but he did erase any restraints on the way it could be expressed."
The new anti democratic political norm was legitimized by the DNC's massive and successful effort to steer the nomination to Hillary Clinton whose campaign memes included denigrating the qualities of working class. [Although she used the term "half of Trump's supporters" to negatively describe the class, just as the term "half drunk" colloquially denotes completely drunk, the slur was a blanket one.
Trump's presidency is essentially a study in the absurd. However, the left has yet to admit its socio/cultural responsibility for their part in his election much less, other than a spate of name calling, invective and moralizing taken pragmatic steps to reverse the result in future elections.
You'd think that after Brexit, the rise of European right wing sentiment and yesterday's Italian elections, the "intelligentsia" would be able to figure out how to win elections. …but that would require a doctrinal change embracing a broad inclusiveness which doesn't appear to be in the cards.
2
Consider also: who will make us laugh in horror and call him/her schoolyard names after this too-much-in-your-face public person is finally gone from our midst? Could another Donald Trump possibly ever exist again? For the sake of the millions of the future unborn, I profoundly hope not. I definitely prefer making merry of my own mindlessness, rather than feeling infinitely superior to people who've lost it entirely. My remarking about and smirking at our leaders' foibles or plain idiocies does nothing for them and gets me nowhere. However, if we can still believe in voting out the incompetent, I say go for it.
I suspect we're still gonna muddle through, despite some of the ignorances and nihilism on exhibit in a lot of these comments. Not to mention their happy hope the country collapses so they can play out their survivalist fantasies.
1
The GOP and its partner Fox News have been undermining democracy since the 90s:
- treating the other party like illegitimate enemies: check
- telling lies and pretending they're true: check
- making naked appeals to bigotry: check
- undermining faith in democratic government ("the government IS the problem"): check
- curtailing the right to vote: check
- diminishing evidence-based decision-making: check.
Trump is not the start of these things - he's their inheritor; their ultimate expression. The GOP is rotten and good people need to leave it. You can be for market-based solutions, reduced regulation a strong military and lower taxes without embracing the stupidity of trickle-down economics, climate-change denialism, anti-science/anti-knowledge platforms and the blatant racism/xenophobia exempted by the Party's leaders.
5
The most reliable kind of sociology takes historical events and tries to generalize carefully from them. A famous example is Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, in which Weber relates the protestant reformation to the rise of capitalism. He focuses on Europe and compares and contrasts the flowering of different protestant sects.
Without the benefit of hindsight and without Weber's deep knowledge of European society and history, Mr. Brooks attempts to make comparisons
between Italy's faltering attempts at democracy and America's 200-year mostly successful experience. There are many more dis-analogies than analogies between Italy and the United States. Italy was cobbled together in the mid-19th century by the forces of nationalism, but retained a king. After World War I, the Italians dispensed with the monarchy and installed the fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, who "made the trains run on time." Mussolini ruled for 20 years until he was removed by Italian partisans during World War II and then hanged without benefit of a trial.
Since then, Italy has formed more than 50 governments. Italians have made important contributions to civilization, including the scientific discoveries of Enrico Fermi, the films of Rossilini, Fellini, Visconti, the paintings of Modigliani, the operas of Verdi and Puccini; but they have failed at the craft of democracy.
It is not illuminating to make comparisons between the course of Italian democracy and American.
2
At this point the only possibility to "right the ship" is for " Democratic" politicians, once reelected back into office is to "DO SOMETHING". In order for the party on the Left to regain credibility is to correct the wrongs created by the Extremes of Tumpisms et all. Citizens of the State are craving for leaderships and not to be "Dictated" to. The rantings of the extremists will hopefully lose what is left of their credibility. The pendulum just continues to swings!
4
Those who want either a strongman leader or military rule always believe that such a government will be completely in line with their own ideology. They should consider other possibilities and be careful what they wish for!
"The rising political tendencies combine lavish spending from the left with racially charged immigrant restrictions from the right." Not in the U.S. The lavish spenders in the last 30 years have been Reagan, W Bush and now Trump, who with their congressional leaders ignored the simple math equation that you can't lavish funding on the military and wars at the same time that you decrease taxes.
3
Your argument about causes of the decline of Democracy are plausible, even if the American outcome is uncertain. But you lost with me with the image of Trump “as a beacon of normalcy.” He isn’t and will never be. He’s a beacon of chaos.
1
Reading David Brooks' column, I hear the frightening echoes of The Center Will Not Hold syndrome of the 20s and 30s in Germany, Italy and Japan that resulted in the rise of fascism and World War II.
While the reign of chaos will probable get much worse, and who knows what conspiracies Robert Mueller will uncover, we could get a backlash against Trumpism. Maybe we should look to what happened after Nixon & Watergate, and we may find that honesty, anti-corruption, and being honorable will be what we look for. Jimmy Carter, a plainspoken honest person became our leader. While some aspects of President Carter might seem lacking; we went back to integrity as an attribute. I just finished reading "How Democracies Die" and although a black picture was painted, I believe in the goodness in our nation and it's people. I don't know who that new leader will be, but I believe he/she will be honest, honorable, smart, hopeful, a uniter, and someone we will all want to believe in. I am not ready to believe our nation is in decline.
89
I certainly hope you're right. But at the time of Carter, mainstream media was THE source of information for the great majority of Americans. Today is much different with "news du jour" from cable, internet, etc. Decent human beings running for office become cannon fodder for the right wing character-assassination machine.
What gives me hope is seeing the youth of our nation, such as the survivors of the Florida shooting, step up to fill the breech left by the failures of my generation. I pray for them, because we've left them a mess in America.
5
Dream on, Marc.
1
Trump is changing this country to Pottersville, and we like George Bailey are horrified by what we see. Come November we will be running down the streets of this country shouting "Merry Christmas you old great states of America"!
Italy has gone the fascist route before. We haven't. And I want to see that poll that half of millennials don't want democracy. They don't want our current billionaire-bought fake "democracy," which is very different. And "liberals spending wildly"? No one can spend more wildly than the Republican Tax Scam bill. Brooks needs to get his facts straight.
1
Brooks' article casts a truly frightening prospect. Hopefully it can serve as a wake-up call for every concerned citizen to vote, and to urge others to do so.
2
It is past time to start thinking about the reconstruction of our country, but we must persevere. We need a movement that will put forward a program—no, a vision!—that will replace partisanship with citizenship and that will restore rational government to serve the common interests of our population—education, health, security. It will be a failure of our compromised political class if that movement turns out to be led by the students of Parkland, Florida. Our last hope?
Ah there it is: the eternal Brooks "both sides are at fault"
"The younger generations are more radical, on left and right. The rising political tendencies combine lavish spending from the left with racially charged immigrant restrictions from the right."
No, the American left seeks non-radical solutions like affordable healthcare for all, gun control, separation of religion from politics, bank regulation, and more. It's the right wing that has lost its mind if ever had one.
5
Your essay today presents the best, most keenly concise presentation of today’s calamitous social and political landscape. Thank you Mr. Brooks.
David, you’ve clearly changed your opinion of years ago that Trump should have been denounced immediately after his first step off that escalator. You didn’t do that, but now you are forceful and convincing in your column about the danger this President holds for our country and its political future.
As others have noted, his rise could and should have been stopped by the Republican Party itself and the GOP Congress. Incredibly, that Congress still refuses to confront the political, social, financial, and moral damage being done every day. When, David, will be your full-throated denunciation of this GOP Congress and the Republican Party for its continuing support of Trump?
2
What is most depressing about reading this article and reading the comments is that we have a tremendous battle ahead to reclaim Democracy after tRump's reign of incompetence and criminality ends. I think the clean up will be daunting if not impossible. The pendulum has moved so far to the right it might be stuck there for a while. After decades of lying politicians and corporations, reduced funding for education, a broken health care system, climate change and science deniers in Congress, the attack on the environment and worker protections, the growth of income inequality and racism, decimation of the unions, gerrymandered and rigging of the elections, allowing foreign countries to hack our elections, fake news abounds with little oversight, stacking the courts with radical conservatives who allowed citizens united, and having politicians not willing to work or talk with each other. These problems have all been brought to us by David Brooks' GOP. How can we possibly overcome all of this and survive as a Democracy? Sorry,
but the future looks bleak with the GOP in charge.
For once I tend to agree in principle with Brook's prognostications.
Likewise, I agree with one of the NYT Picks comments that our democracy will likely survive, like it did when FDR was elected following the disastrous mistakes of Hoover and Reagan following the disappointments of Carter. However, in those two examples, it is important to note, it took years, even decades to right the Ship of State to what is considered "normal."
In the meantime, this time around, Putin is laughingly playing his game to the hilt to weaken the inherent strenghths of our democratic Republic, the unity of We the People to a degree not seen since before the Civil War. And Trump is unwittingly aiding him by his own negligent conduct.
Putin's influence is the biggest unknown in our fiture after Trump. As such, he is far more dangerous than Trump and what he is doing to promote his own overblown ego.
Rest assured, David, we will be fine. The next generation is just waking up to the realities of 21st century American Democracy and beginning its path of influence. As before, we will reinvent ourselves as needed - we've done it before!
"You are as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fears; as young as your hope, as old as your despair." Samuel Ullman
The possible end of Democracy, as Mr. Brooks paints it is was born in the schools. The teaching of civics has gone the way of writing cursive. The children of today are taught nothing of our history, nothing of what being a citizen comprises. How can anyone believe that democracy is the foundation when no one is taught what it means?
Somewhere in my lifetime, American values have been lost.
Maybe when Representatives made their jobs a life's work
Maybe when the two parties became more and more polarized
Maybe when dialing for dollars became a real necessity
Maybe when K Street Lobbys took off and distributed monies for favorable laws
Maybe when the Supreme gutted the VRA and legalized Citizens United
Maybe when mygynomy and assault weapons became acceptable
Maybe when Unions were demonize
Maybe when compromise and Liberals became dirty words
Maybe when McConnell denied Obama a Supreme Court pick
Maybe when Ryan has no understanding of his real job or the Constitution
Maybe when Alternate Facts (LIES) become truth and real journalism is FAKE
The Maybes go on and on, but nothing will change the destruction of Trump, and Congress refuses to follow the Constitution. If Congress does not impeach Trump for very good cause, Russia. The American Democracy is lost.
I am one of the "clueless". I voted for Trump and would do so again. Does it help the country when an elite imagines that they are the only ones who can run the country? The coastal elites have done quite well for themselves . The rest of the country not so much. The Times would do well not to publish these insulting, name calling letters. They further divide the country.
Leaving aside the matter of "elites" for a moment, what do you make of the connections and associations the Trump administration has cultivated with Russia? Trump has met with the head of Russian foreign intelligence in the White House. What do you think that good gentleman was up to? That's not fake news; it's a fact. Russia is an enemy of the US, and for good reason. Why is this not a concern to you? Why has the US spent 0 dollars fighting Russia's infiltration of our elections, our democracy? How is this ok? These are facts, they are not subject for debate.
The answer to this problem is to have a media that will show self restraint, and won't put all of the most ridiculous statements and outrageous behavior on page 1.
These Trump like politicians are manipulating the media, and the media are enabling the manipulators. This used to go on mostly in Hollywood - the movie stars and tabloids agreeing to use each other for a common purpose.
If we actually had media that would be restrained, this would slow down, but sadly we don't. We have shameless media moguls like Rupert Murdoch and Jeff Zucker, and we have high competition for a diminishing dollar.
The media gave us Trump. He manipulated all of you, and you bought in, hook, line and sinker. Whether this improves or gets worse is dependent on the media as much as anything else.
Brooks writes: "The political center collapses, the normal left/right political categories cease to apply and you see the rise of strange new political groups that are crazier than anything you could have imagined before."
He, of course, fails to note that this describes American Republican politics since the deplorable rise of New Gingrich, which parallels his own 30 year career of scribbling for rightwing publications and putting a veneer of respectability on downward deviation.
It would do this country a great deal of good if the fed-up Trump voters adopted some "cultural cosmopolitan values", which are the last bastion of sanity where telling the truth and character are not cast aside when evaluating political candidates. Not all cosmopolitans abide by these values, of course, but a far greater number do as expressed in their disgust in our repugnant president.
Don't blame the voters, Mr. Brooks.
From all across this great nation and in spite of all the outside interference and noise from Russia, Comey and the email-obsessed news media, 65,844,610 of us Americans voted in good faith for Hillary Clinton in the naive and misguided belief that our votes were expressing the collective will of the nation as to our future direction and would be recognized as such.
Then that arcane, 18th century artifact known as the Electoral College conjured up its black magic once again, as it did in 2000, denying to us the popular choice of our national leader, once again with catastrophic consequences for our country. When you disregard the will of the people as flagrantly as this, you do so at your own peril
The fact that outdated political institutions and foreign actors distorted the pure expression of our collective national will as registered in the 2016 popular vote can not be blamed on the voters.
Our institutions failed us once again. How can we be expected to believe in democracy and our electoral process when our system doesn't even allow us to elect the person with the most votes as our leader?
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" You treat your opponents like legitimate adversaries, not illegitimate enemies. You tell the truth as best you can. You don’t make naked appeals to bigotry. "
Look to your own party. Treating Dems as illegitimate is exactly what the Repub Party has been doing since Clinton. Not to mention the cynical use of bigotry and lying...oh, sorry, alternative facts.
The rot began with the deification of Reagan and the consequent anger and disbelief that a Dem, a CLINTON, could be elected after him. (Bush senior didn't seem to count, because he dared to see reality and went against the lovely Mr Norquist and his no-taxes-ever Mafia.)
Otherwise, yes, you're right about all this.
Well Brooks it's ALWAYS easier to goose step than maintain a vibrant democracy.
But you know how that turns out; always has and always will.
I found this OpEd as chilling as any Trump speech. First, we are presented with a bleak future, that will last for decades, which was all a set up for the conclusion that:
“... but liberal democracy clearly ain’t going to automatically fix itself.”
So what atrocity on Democracy are you preparing us for? A new power grab, “for the common good”? How about we really make America great again and roll back the GOP assault on free elections. Democracy will fix this mess, if you let it.
Perhaps we should divide the world in two halves and let the right and left each have their own form of government.
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Shorter version: David Brooks continues his false equivalences argument and remains silent about the crimes of his favored GOP party----a party that has enabled, protected, and encouraged Donald Trump to destroy civility, dignity, honor, integrity, and the rule of law.
I don't know about Italy, but in the US most people young and old have no idea about history and what it tells them.
That's what really bothers me about all of this. People died so we could live in this world and no on cares. They pray to their little tin gods and grouse because their neighbors have a Hot Pot and they don't.
We are such an ungrateful ignorant society, it almost makes me think we should be wiped away for a new beginning.
The planet may take care of this for us.
As move beyond Trump to perhaps a strong man like Putin Xi Jinping or perhaps some form of military rule, it might be wise to reflect on the ancient Roman poet:
"Perhaps someday we will look back on these things with joy" - Virgil, Aeneid, Book One, Line 203
The real question underlying this column is, will Americans come to their senses and realize that the antidote to the perceived corruption of our elected politicians is not to elect a faux populist, authoritarian, know nothing?
Being a vulgarian is not the same thing as being an honest critic and if anything, Trump has proven himself to be the poster boy of corruption with an extremely tenuous and completely self serving relationship with the truth.
What to me is more baffling than his electoral win is the non-reciprocated loyalty he has received from the pols in his party. From my perspective, their surrender is more frightening than the reeling incompetent in the White House and his ship of fools cabinet. But then their own behavior has been ethically dubious for quite some time. This is hardly reassuring when it comes to finding a way back from this monumental blunder.
This line made sense to me: "You treat your opponents like legitimate adversaries, not illegitimate enemies. You tell the truth as best you can. You don’t make naked appeals to bigotry."
Yes, many opponents on the right treat us that way. However, when I read comments in the NYT, too often it seems like we treat them that way as well. Sometimes I think America looks like a trouble marriage where each party only sees the problems in the other and none in themselves.
Would it help if we took the first step in putting a more civil discourse in place. Except for the fringe on both sides, we can bring things back together and use compromise to solve problems. No? Or am I just being naive?
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What shocks me, along with the disappointing qualities of my fellow Americans, is learning how many of our checks and balances are just “norms”, not ironclad statutes. We have a lot of work ahead, to fix this, assuming we get the chance.
As always, Brooks fails to note the fact that his republican party has worked tirelessly for decades to bring America to this low point. Trump is not an outlier, but just another point on the downward-trending graph.
One light at the end of the tunnel might be what happened in Greece. Tsipras ran on a platform of no longer wanting to re-imburse its debt, yet once in power changed its ideals because they wanted to remain in Europe.
When Republicans chose Trump over Clinton (either by actively voting for him or failing to endorse or support her) they did not simply attack moderation in their own party, they undermined it in the Democratic party. Many ideologically-oriented Democrats dislike the Clintons because of their pragmatism and moderation (and in her case her hawkishness). When she lost the Electoral College, the ideologues said, "see! She wasn't viable. You should have gone for a leftist with a real message for the people." The majority of Democrats have supported pragmatic moderation for decades (even Obamacare is just ORomneycare), but it is getting even more difficult to stem the tide the Conservative Revolution of 1980 has unleashed.
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These are staggering and disheartening numbers. Is there substantiation? “Seventy-one percent of Europeans and North Americans born in the 1930s think it’s essential to live in a democracy, but only 29 percent of people born in the 1980s think that. In the U.S., nearly a quarter of millennials think democracy is a bad way to run a country. Nearly half would like a strongman leader. One in six Americans of all ages support military rule.“
One of the main reasons people are losing faith in democracy is that see much difference. If people keep getting elected because they have money or demographic advantage, then they are not going to take any risks.
We have that here when we see people in Congress forever. Some only are replaced when they die. We can't have someone like Judge Scalia in the office so long that they only way he left was by dying. That is unacceptable. We have a faux democracy that is easy to game. And people always gravitate to something they understand.
I would be interested to see the source of Mr Brooks' poll numbers. I doubt that only 29% of millennials support democracy. I don't doubt that only 29% support our corrupted form of capitalism....
The "immigration" issue in Europe is qualitatively different from what we have in the US, especially in the last few years. There, they have had a steady influx from Muslim countries which has been difficult for them to assimilate because of a relatively closed nature of their societies to begin with. This has been severely exacerbated with the collapse of Libya and Syria, which has added hundreds and hundreds of thousands of refugees into the mix. Italy and Greece have borne the brunt of this additional influx due to geography.
We have nothing like this in the US. The Mexican labor influx and the more recent Central American refugee issue pale in terms of numbers, and the assimilation issue is far less of a problem because of our long tradition of assimilation and the success of a Hispanic-oriented subculture within our borders.
I sure am glad I am at the end of my life. This doesn't look good at all. I hope our young people can look at a past in this country, that is not made of Trumpers, to discover a basically good system that mostly worked for us. It isn't perfect, but then what is? I pray for the future you will live. But, I fear those prayers will do little good.
I've been reading about the beginnings of the two World Wars lately and the politics of today sound a lot like the politics of that time. The extreme tendncies, that is... not exactly the same extremes, but the same tendencies.
Less than half of voting age citizens actually vote. Corporations pump unending dollars into elections that have become little more than beauty pageants, all appearance and no content. And people wonder why government is broken?
Your representatives represent their moneyed supporters, not you. If you didn't vote, you really don't have a right to voice your opinion on the outcome in any case. So if you aren't going to vote, at least be quiet.
You won't get the money out of politics, because that would require your representatives voting to cut off a significant portion of their funding. That would be against their own interests. Odd that many Americans vote against their own interests in every election cycle, expecting that the people they elect are going to vote (in the halls of congress) against their own interests.
I appreciate David's sense of alarm - I sometimes feel the same way - but offering constructive ideas to address the fissures in our society will do more to stem the slide toward chaos than doomsday scenarios. Trump, as all dictators have done before him, stirred up what became his base because he repeatedly said how terrible everything in America was, from crime to immigrants, to demeaning his opponents, Republicans as well as Democrats. This was demonstrably exaggerated and even false. Yet nobody stepped forward to discredit these claims. What Trump was saying was simply a more hysterical expression of what his Republican forbears (chiefly Nixon, with his paranoid complaints about the "elites," and Reagan, with his folksy diatribes against big government) had said before. The most obvious way out of this is for Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, independents and moderates, to atop vilifying one another, stop the name-calling, stop the government bashing, set aside past grievances and blame games, and work together to forge genuine, sustained bipartisanship. It must start with governors, state and local officials, candidates and, of course, whatever remains of moral, responsible leadership in Washington. I'm looking at you - Mitch, Nancy, Paul, Chuck, etc. Get going.
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This troubling essay reveals Mr. Brooks' pessimism and cynicism--it doesn't shed light on our current political situation. His statement that "Voters were disgusted by a governing elite that seemed corrupt and out of touch" is telling. The "governing elite" he refers to is the Republican Congress that foiled most of President Obama's efforts to pass legislation that would benefit all (not the billionaires supporting our current, feculent president).
Must Mr. Brooks be reminded, like other Republicans, that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, and Trump only skidded into home through the out-dated Electoral College, which is not, in fact, democratic.
Perhaps it's too optimistic to think that there are enough good men and women to do "something", and vote enough Democrats into Congress to turn this situation around. But I still have faith in our country. Please vote this fall!
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It is interesting to note that Brooks has been a defender of the Republican Party for many years, at least as long as I watched and listened to him every Friday night on PBS and in his columns, although that seems to have moderated somewhat with his antipathy towards Trump. But from at least the beginning of the Clinton administration, the Republican Parties go-to strategy has been the attempt the delegitimize Democratic presidents and, in general, any Democrat holding national office. As a supporter of the Republican Party, Brooks has been as much a force for the delegitimizing of democratic norms over time as anyone he complains about now.
David,
OK, economic inequality, consolidation of power by corporations, the co-opting of the political class by money...I get the frustration that engenders. I, as a "cosmopolitan urbanite" if I may so class myself, feel it too.
But can you please enumerate the, apparently, numerous cultural values that so disgust the populists? I can think of two, gay rights and abortion (though the consideration of the two as somehow morally equivalent has always irked me). What else...clean air and water; health care that doesn't bankrupt you; nutrition/food aid to vulnerable children; financial regulation that creates more transparency and stability; the ability of labor to organize in order to level the playing field with powerful employers? What other disgusting cultural values do I espouse?
I'm pretty tired of this abdication of responsibility to think by these so-called populists. In the indignant uproar over the Russian plot to destabilize our electoral process and, by extension, our nation hardly anyone discusses one of the essential elements contributing to its success...the failure of millions of people to do anything but merely accept at face value any bogus "facts" shoved at them.
What do you mean normal? Is normal high unemployment? Is it letting an opioid epidemic ravage middle America? Is it waving goodbye as companies move their factories to other countries? Is it charging middle/working class people a tax for not getting health insurance when they can’t afford it? Let’s not go back to “normal “. Normal was only good for some. Normal did not benefit the common man.
Fox, Limbaugh and the internet have moved the conversation so far to the right that the center no longer holds. I consider myself SLOC (slightly left of center). Right now, I am in e-mail conversation with my beloved niece, who has been reared conservative. After the Florida massacre, I decided to try and engage her. Things started well, but her last e-mail has left me stymied and depressed. She equates Planned Parenthood with the NRA, a false equivalency if ever there was. How to restart the conversation with love?
I swore that Trump would not cost me friends or family, but that may not be possible. As he says, 'We'll see' (because he knows nothing).
In the meantime
Trumpty Dumpty sits on a wall...
I am shocked that Mr. Brooks didn’t conclude with “both sides” or “republicans AND democrats”. It is people like Mr. Brooks who took seriously the candidacy of McCain/PALIN, supported lying us into war under Bush, stood by as Mitch McConnell undermined every single effort put forth by Obama, and did not call out the absurd notion of a President Trump. One party, and one party alone has weakened and perhaps destroyed the norms in this country. Can we recover? I fear Mr. Brooks is right on this one, recovery will take a long time if ever. But only one party is responsible for what has happened to America. If you don’t believe me, ask Supreme Court Justice Merrick Garland. He’ll set you straight.
Italian democracy has never been 'normal', and has been skewed since 1945 by (among other things) interference by the Western Powers to combat Communism- which led, indirectly, to the power of the Mafia. Since 1945 the Italian State has never been strong, and chaotic coalitions have been the norm - it is not a good fit at all for comparison with the strong 2-party system that the USA has.
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Amazing how David Brooks manages to forget Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Lee Atwater, Roger Ailes, Rush Limbaugh, the Arkansas Project, Birtherism and Death Panels, and Fox News in this little column about how "norms" having been breaking down in democracy. They have been breaking down for 40 years under unrelenting attack from the Right. Another fact left out of Mr. Brooks tale is that Berloscuni is, like Trump, a billionaire, and was owner of all three Italian commercial TV stations when he ran for office the first time in 1994. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvio_Berlusconi#1994_electoral_victory . Like Fox News and Right Wing talk radio, the discontent of a significant faction of the people, and directing their anger toward immigrants and the poor, was manufactured using techniques originally created by Edward Bernays for John J. Rockefeller and the Tobacco Industry.
Further, the rising inequality and economic struggles of austerity, both here and in Europe, cheered on by elites like Mr. Brooks creates a fertile ground for this angry, racialist, politics. And this politics is practiced in order to obtain tax cuts for the elite "producers" of society who then so "oh, my, the hoi polloi are so vulgar," but we will pocket our tax cuts just the same and blame immigrants and foreigners for cutting Social Security and Medicare.
One: We are spoiled and relatively ignorant of history (sore winners, an historical first).
Two: Propaganda works (Fox Half-News).
Three: Fear is a useful motivator. Humans are tribal, and are easily divided by fear-mongering styles of rhetoric, which then quickly morphs into anger.
When I talk to some fellow Texans back home I don't know how to position myself. There are obviously many Trump supporters and I find myself very alienated from them. In the spirit of Adams or Jefferson who believed in an educated population, I can't help feeling they have abrogated their responsibilities as thinking members of a democracy. Instead, they decry democratic values.
Then there are the others who provide some hope, who see through Trump as the abomination he is. They are angry and want to sweep away the sorry aspect Trump presents.
Then there are the many who inhabit the middle, who believe that this is politics as usual, as though this is democrat versus republican. They blithely expect America to continue on when Trump is gone. They are family members who think there is wisdom in compromising with the Trump voter, who presides over the table talk at dinner time.
And, when you talk with other family members they will tell you that they don't understand the hard core, inhumane, values of this family member who voted for Trump, wants to kick immigrants out, demeans other races, denies global warming, denies healthcare to those who can't afford it, dislikes the LGBTQ community, prefers to rid the country of this nuisance called government and likes guns. These complacent family members will tell you that 'our' Trump supporter is actually a good guy.
In plain speech, how is a Trump supporter a good person?
"Lavish spending on the left.... " Undermines democracy? How about the millions upon millions spent by the Republican donors -- Adelson Koch et al.?
When does the discourse of pundits like Mr. Brooks factor in this undermining of Democracy ? His worries about social media's influence seems to overlook the Conservative Media's rabid 24/7 rantings at its news outlets. Column after column Mr. Brooks avoids his own complicity in undermining the will of the people with column after column bemoaning the degradation of our nation's morals. After Trump the republicans won't have to worry-- their brand will be about as popular as a can of Spaghettios' at a fine Italian restaurant.
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"Seventy-one percent of Europeans and North Americans born in the 1930s think it’s essential to live in a democracy, but only 29 percent of people born in the 1980s think that. In the U.S., nearly a quarter of millennials think democracy is a bad way to run a country. Nearly half would like a strongman leader. One in six Americans of all ages support military rule." All this stems from someone named Yascha Mounk, who presumably drew it from some poll or other. I don't buy it, and I bet I could come up with poll questions that would produce answers to support me.
This is an example of a false equivalence, "The rising political tendencies combine lavish spending from the left with racially charged immigrant restrictions from the right." Let's face reality. The cancer that is destroying democracies is coming from the right. I don't hear Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders talking about "President for Life". There have always been big government liberals on the left. Nothing has changed there, the current problem is driven by the rise of hatred on the right.
According to Brooks, Trump and other populists were elected because "[v]oters were disgusted by a governing elite that seemed corrupt and out of touch." This is a facile (even ridiculous) summary of what happened in the U.S. in 2016. It's a lot more complicated and sinister than that. Fomenting racism, misogyny and xenophobia through outright lies and scapegoating played a major role.
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Italy, as an example of where we are headed? Surely you jest. Attempting to draw any conclusions from historically one of the most turbulent politically challenged countries on the planet, is a very weak way to make your point. Italy changes direction and leadership like most of us change shirts.
What is so maddening with Brooks is his inability to either see, or admit that his conservative ethos is the core problem. Republicans have convinced the electorate that greed is good, unions are horrible, guns are a solution, and corporations will show you the way. Just read the OpEds
coming out of Times columnists Stephens, Brooks and Douthat, who after trashing DJ, continue to embrace the conservative mantra espousing tax cuts for the wealthy, climate change denial, and anti-union sentiment. You and your ilk would be better served, Mr. Brooks, to follow the striking teachers in West Virginia, and the women who are attempting to lead us out of this dystopian future you fear. It is a fool's errand to appease these hard right zealots, as you have been proposing, in order to come to an accommodation. And it is becoming increasingly tiresome to hear you lecture us about "lowering the temperature". It makes out blood boil!
Sadly, things must often get much worse before getting better. As a cusp Boomer, I am really rooting for the Millinial Movement that has created a bit of a buzz after the Florida shootings, and pray that they press as a group and movement and flush out the current style of politics. As long as there is a “leader” in democracy, they will always be the puppet to the masses and will say what they need to keep on top. Putin, Berlusconi, Trump, are all perfect examples of how nothing good will happen globally and for the greatest good the world as a whole. I heard a lyric on a reggae song the other day that was calling for a “demilitarized democracy.” While this is totally a hippy/Rasta/Christian fantasy, it really does represent the only true path to peace on earth.
There is no relevant realistic comparison between the modern state of Italy and America.
Italy has had three periods of lasting historical relevance. Beginning with the Roman Republic/Empire morphing into the rise of the Roman Catholic faith into the birth of the Italian Renaissance. Against that background the legacy of fascism and organized crime is a minor pimple. Italy is an aging and shrinking nation with an unnatural below replacement level birthrate. Italy ranks 4th by GDP in Europe behind Germany, the United Kingdom and France. Italy is a parliamentary democracy.
First, America is a young divided limited power constitutional republic. Trump did not come to power via divine royally sanctioned rule nor armed uniformed military tyranny. Nearly 63 million Americans including 58% of white Americans (62% of white men and 54% of white women) voted for Trump. Trump is at the pinnacle of the Article II executive branch while Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are at the top of the Article I legislative branch and John Roberts is the leading judge atop the Article III judicial branch.
Second, after playing the key role in the election of Barack Obama African Americans full of hope and faith gave Hillary Clinton 95% of their votes including 92% of black men and 98% of black women.
Third, the rise of the debate via social media from many new perspectives including Black Lives Matter, # MeToo and Parkland is refreshing and renewing the republic.
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Democracy has been hijacked by economic elites & oligarchs for their own personal benefits. Technology and globalization have benefited the investor class while they leave behind the ordinary people whose main source of income is their labor. The benefits of rise in labor productivity has gone to the economic elites. Immigration creates competition for lower skilled citizens. H1B dampens the wages of professionals. Illegal immigration is like cancer with no cure. Evangelicals have proven to be spiritual charlatans. Koch Bros, Mercers & their ilk want to strip the vulnerable off their food stamps and healthcare. People are bombarded with faux news. Inequality is on the rise, and the economic elites like to maintain the status quo. No wonder that frauds like Trump & Berlusconi thrive in this murky environment.
David,
This is what happens when we let a Republican destroy the world's economy with no regulation on housing loans and repeal of Glass Steagall. It becomes apparent to everyone that Capitalism the old way does not work, and, since in this country the only way to change that is to vote (so far), then, we vote for newcomers who say what we want to hear.
While you were supporting Bush, and, his agenda of mass murder, corruption and world economic chaos, the rest of America was paying attention.
We saw corruption rewarded with bank bailouts, criminals getting bonuses, and the guilty walking free.
First, we voted for Obama, Yes We Did. And, his shovel ready projects vanished into 10 Trillion dollars of debt, over a mere 8 years, and no new infrastructure. where did all that money go?
So, now? We vote for Trump, and, we understand that the old ways won't work and did not work. And, we don't want them back David. What did all that fake civility while corruption reigned do for us??
You do. We don't.
Didn't Plato describe this very same cycle in 'The Republic'? He didn't have much use for democracy (understandable, since the Athenian democracy voted to condemn his mentor Socrates to death), and predicted it inevitably deteriorates into chaos, after which the populace calls for a strongman to restore order. (Unfortunately, his suggested best government - a benevolent dictator philosopher-king - is even more of a pipe dream than an orderly, functional democracy.)
The basis of democracy, that a rational, well-informed populace will elect the best leaders to make good decisions, is a fine idea, but it awaits the evolution of a higher being than this naked ape to implement it. Perhaps whatever species supersedes ours will manage it. Maybe the logical, dispassionate Vulcans could do it. But human nature as it stands, especially in the aggregate, lacks the necessary intellect and rationality to make a democratic nation work even internally, let alone interacting with other nations and cultures. It's the proposition that if you gather a whole lot of stupidity you can boil it down to a residuum of wisdom; that if you have enough sow's ears you can stitch together a silk purse.
Secession caused emancipation, Bull Conner’s brutality helped the civil rights movement, and the devastating success of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor ensured Japans defeat. History is not predictable and paradoxical effects common. Trump may end up being the best thing to happen to democracy in America in 50 years.
"Silvio Berlusconi first came to power for the same reasons Trump and other populists have been coming to power around the world: Voters were disgusted by a governing elite that seemed corrupt and out of touch. They felt swamped by waves of immigrants, frustrated by economic stagnation and disgusted by the cultural values of the cosmopolitan urbanites."
For the love of God, please STOP this madness of calling Trump a "populist." There is NOTHING about his policies that have done a darn thing for those who are upset with "corruptness" and "out of touchness." In fact, he's the most corrupt president we've ever had! Including Nixon! The problem is none of you will just say it. You continue to blather on about "populism."
And what exactly got the US electorate so wound up about "corruptness" after 8 years of a scandal free Obama presidency? Perhaps it was the relentless attacking by the likes of Mr. Brooks and other right wing pundits who just couldn't stand that a Democrat was getting things done. REAL populist things like Dodd Frank and the ACA and the saving of the auto industry.
The US electorate is poorly educated and in complete denial - just like POTUS. Corrupt is Honest. Honest is Corrupt. Trump voters are to blame for all of this.
Netanyahu in Israel, Putin in Russia, and Trump in the USA. The new Axis of Evil. The time of the Autocrats. And to think of the lives lost in World War, only to see such men rise to power in democracies.
Vote the current pretend-humans out. Then we'll get rid of the brain surgeon at HUD, and every other ill-placed crony of Trump and his minions.
Look at your senators and representatives. Do they represent YOU?
Let the thoughtful conservatives and progressives do their best to strike a balance and restore some imagination, manners and conscience.
1
Nonsense. This is a bad example of reductionist, linear thinking. Trees don’t grow to the moon. Italy has been a failed state with a good economy for about 1500 years. Ever since the Visigoths and the Vikings they can’t get it together. They’ve had 70 governments in 65 years or maybe 65 in 70. What’s the difference? A much better example would be Germany recovering after a mad man because it had deep reserves of respect for rule of law, transparency, education and communication. The US wouldn’t be in this position if it didn't
get help from Putin. Trump is almost done, the fat lady is clearing her throat. Then let the healing begin.
Some clarity of the data please. 18% want Military rule? So one out of six Americans want a uniformed Military Junta? How is it this new data? What is the basis please since should be on the front page every day.
I continue to think we must look back to post World War I Europe, and the rise of both Communism and Fascism to understand where we are today. We are clearly on that path, and clearly there are factions on each side that want to use this moment to gain power over nations.
What was the driving force during those times? It was the economy, stupid.
Too few people gained too much wealth and power over too many other people, and their greed drove revolutions. In Russia, the excesses of the Romanov's caused the populace to overthrown their government and establish communist control. In Germany, Italy and Spain, strongmen, with the backing of wealthy industrialists, rose to counter the communist threat...giving the our world a war to end all wars...really. That is where we are headed.
The cause is greed. Trump won his election because he promised to fight for the common man. Is he standing now with the West Virginia teachers in their fight for a living wage? Of course not, because we all know he wouldn't know a "common man" if he tripped over one. We need clear leadership that actually finds means to share the economic pie or we will fall into the same rabbit hole we experienced after World War I. Get the money out of elections. Control capitalist expansions. Share the spoils. Our democracy is dying. Simple.
David Brooks, as usual, has badly missed the mark, this time by using Italy as some sort of example. He needn't look any farther than our own economic and political circumstances and the Republican Party for all 3 of his points.
The 'erasure of normal forms of behavior'. Look no further than the heavily financed assertion of gerrymandering, primarily in states controlled by Republicans. Pennsylvania is the tip of the iceberg. When you have districts where candidates only have to appeal to one side, and often the crazies on that, normal legislative behavior goes out the window.
'Loss of faith in the Democratic system'. When everyone in the country knows that oligarchs and inherited wealth and their lobbyists control politicians and that popular policies which would benefit the middle class have no shot - healthcare, government control of drug prices, taxing the very wealthy, ending the cap on social security taxes, government infrastructure programs to protect our country and create good paying jobs - of course people seek populists. Trump is a liar and an idiot but he made the right noises on the campaign trail.
'The deterioration of debate caused by social media'. Look no farther than Fox news which panders to fear and ignorance. One of the major "news" outlets is a fact free zone of racism, misogyny and class warfare all bundled in a faux 'common man' appeal.
We don't need to look to Italy; the problems are here.
1
Just where is this "lavish spending from the left?" I don't think the Koch brothers, Mercers and Adelson count as "left."
I agree with David’s paper, but why is this happening? The impression I get when comparing Italy to the US is that all this is similar to sport; now a game that everyone can play. Before social media we had to trust our communities, politicians and leaders to do the right thing. We were bound by a group mentality that was dictated by these role models and leaders. Now, with social media, everyone can play, and everyone is able to find support for any position, no matter how crass or vile. There are no longer any universal ethical or moral standards; we can find support on the internet for any gut feeling. Unfortunately, this new freedom of thought is not just limited to the uneducated; the game exists for all to play. How do we fix it? We must call out all politicians who lie and cheat; we must only elect those who demonstrate and abide by a moral compass; a far cry from that which exists today.
75
I agree with Eugene. We must support, encourage and help the youth and those who are mobilizing. The youth just might be able to bring civility back.
My old High School teacher used to say if people are too comfortable, no change happens. Maybe we just need to feel a little more uncomfortable. Maybe the youth are feeling uncomfortable enough.
We share very little in common with the Italians. So, their political fortunes may be the worst indicator of what to expect in the US after Trump. For now we really have no reliable predictors of what may come but the upcoming mid-term elections will be revealing.
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I've developed a bad case of "Amercian Fraud Syndrome." Which is to say I know I am an Amercian citizen, Amercian veteran, taxpayer, father, property owner, and stakeholder in American Democracy. However, since Trump's election, I can't believe a thing he says or trust a thing the Republican do. It feels like I've become a fraud in my own country.
7
The main premise is certainly true and sobering: Democracy depends on a set of informal norms that bind citizens. This is also true for the rule of law, something we have recognized since HLA Hart's The Concept of Law.
What is missing from this analysis is that the watershed moment in American history was not the election of Donald Trump--it was the naked abuse of power by the Supreme Court in the Gore v. Bush case. That case more than any other revealed that the rule of law was a fiction and a proxy for political power and self-interest. Our shared faith in our nation's core institutions has never recovered since that fateful decision. Indeed, what the right learned is that it no longer had to play by shared norms of democratic society to achieve its goals.
10
It is not simply the “right” at fault here. The thinking conservative politician has been pushed aside and replaced by charlatans beholden to a few bonkers billionaires: the Mercers, the Kochs, the Wilks, Adelson, Uihlein and others. Their agenda is not just to get rich, but to cement in place an Oligarchy intent upon reducing the populace to serfdom.
1
Time for the "good men" (and women) to do something.
3
What we need right now is for women to take over control of the governments all around the World.....we need Grandmothers and Mothers running things. Men have made the biggest mess. It is time for a change. Let Women Rule and you will see huge improvements in America and around the world. Men are too vicious, too greedy, and too power hungry. Not all men, of course, but it seems that most of the ones in control of our govt. are.
8
YES! If there is a chance to save life on this planet we have to right now turn away from the masculine patriarchy and finally allow women to rise.
Not all women are wonderful, there is no question we are all individuals, good, bad or indifferent. But the System of Patriarchy has failed the human species in the last many thousands of years and we need to move away from it. Climate Change must be dealt with and with old white Republican men ruling, with FOX News propaganda, with corruption on the side, with racism/sexism, we are never going to get to it. I'm not sure if it's not too late already. The news out of the Arctic is not encouraging.
Women's potential has been squashed for so very long. Thousands of years and we've forgotten there used to be a time and some places where we did rule. I truly hope we can get there again.
2
Many Americans are just waking up to the fact that we elected an unprincipled, incompetent charlatan in 2016 to be our president. Many more Americans recognized that the Republican candidate was a charlatan during the campaign, although we did not think he would win.
Later, we discovered the involvement of the Russians in rigging the election in favor of the charlatan, and we are learning more about that extraordinary aggression every day.
There is absolutely no reason, given the circumstances and the short time period of these events, to throw up our hands and say all of this was inevitable. It is downright silly to predict that the unstable charlatan and his unhinged ideas will win the day in November 2018.
We are better than that. We should reject the pessimism of David Brooks and get to work.
7
Politics has become more dysfunctional because the politicians can play to the most extreme impulses of their constituencies with impunity. They must in fact do so or risk a challenge from somebody even more unhinged.
You have to be crazy to beat the crazy. It is painfully obvious that all those gerrymandered, supposedly safe electoral districts, instead of being a source of power and stability, have become the exact opposite. Those representatives have effectively become slaves to extremism.
The only ones who haven't figured that out are the Republicans from those districts who may think that the craziness is normal, and who cling to the belief that gerrymandering is the key to power.
3
I'd say working for Trump is a lifetime mistake, he has shown himself to be the most untrustworthy and selfish guy I've ever seen in my life.
It seems like everyone will be stuck holding the bag, paying huge legal fees and having their reputations ruined, but to Trump it's no more than like filing for another bankruptcy and he will retire to his golf course without any sense of guilt, Trump is truly the man with no conscience.
5
Trump has not been nearly as destructive of our democracy as has Congress. Congress's refusal perform even minimal oversights mandated in our Constitution on a President and his children actively and publicly profiting by his office, a liar, a man without ethics, knowledge or competence.
It is not an incompetent man elected to President, it is the spectacle of our Congress seizing their chance to ape the President and profit by their offices also. (Have we EVER had a bill voted in that a sizable number of Congressmen publicly stated they supported to pay back their donors?)
10
"... disgusted by the cultural values of the cosmopolitan urbanites ..."
Really, David? It may be that many Trump voters, especially those living in rural fly-over areas of the country, feel this way. At least some of these Trumpers are truly the deplorables: white-nationalists, for example. But Hillary Clinton got several million more votes than Trump, and she certainly cleaned up among cosmopolitan urbanites. And even the disgust may be fake-news, egged on by far-right media (and Putin, of course). As always, you take cheap shots at the left because you cannot admit that the people on the left actually have some ideas and even, despite everything, take some pleasure in life. People on the right have no ideas and not only appear to hate their lives but also hate the fact that many on the left do not hate theirs. If we had a political system that made sense (no Citizens United, no electoral college, no gerrymandering) Trump would not be president and congress would be a lot bluer. And then maybe we could address real problems. And maybe you could stop misrepresenting reality.
10
'bout sums it up.
The whole point of a free society is that it has the greatest likelihood of "fixing itself." If a free people can't fix its own society, what can? A dictator? Putin? Xi Jinping? A dictatorship doesn't sound like a fix for our problems. Why not include some criticisms of the ignorant fools who favor strongman or military rule in this country? I still believe that what people say and write--including Mr. Brooks--is utterly divorced from any facts. Yes, Mr. Trump should not be President, but the rest of this country is working great.
In consideration of how the "United" States was factually-created in the first place, it should surprise no one it has come to this. Fleeing various kingdoms only to rob, slaughter, confine and disdain both a "native" population and imported non-white slaves individually and collectively puts the lie to enshrined "democracy" as being just so much wallpaper. And never a "sound footing" in the first place.
2
Yes, by all means, let's continue to normalize Trump and foam the runway for those who can't wait to take many of his excesses and turn "them up a notch."
The Acela Villagers are absolutely dying to get back to business as usual.
I often feel like a guy standing in the middle of a big field. There are two big tents - one to my left and the other to my right. I hear a lot of yelling and screaming; much of it is vulgar and ugly sounding. Neither tent appeals to me. Neither is offering me what I'm looking for - a chance to have a respectful conversation where differences of opinion are accepted and even appreciated; not an opportunity to sling insults and ad hominem arguments. I'm afraid this is where we are in America today. Neither tent is capable of tending to the hopes and dreams of 325 million Americans.
2
The key to Trump's failure:
NO MORAL COMPASS
The lack of this most important internal guidance mechanism has put on display for all to see an immoral, disrespectful, display the world has ever seen. Ego does not govern, common sense, respect, and facts make the man, period.
3
Mr. Brooks you whiffed. It was painfully obvious that departure from civility should have disqualified at least one of the candidates in the recent US presidential election. But you stood by and watched Rome burn.
2
So DO something, Mr Brooks. Hand-wringing is as useful as thoughts and prayers. Speak! Get mad! Pound the table a little and tell the decent Republicans are left to join you. DO something!
3
David? Get passionately angry? You'll go to your grave without experiencing that, Nathaniel Brown.
Always with a little chuckle, millions of words have flowed from his pen and his mouth and always with a little chuckle. That little chuckle is so inappropriate. He thinks he's charming and 'truthful' but the little chuckle belays it all.
1
If our democratic public is to survive, the public will have to oust Republicans and their ugly cousins, the Conservatives. For it is this group that has taken us down this road. The seeds go back to Reagan. The roots really took hold with the tea party, Gingrich, the Koch brothers, Fox News etc.
The alarms really should have been sounded with the birther movement. There were no decent Republicans though, who shot it down, called it out and put an end to it. Instead they fed it by exploiting it or just as bad being complacent about it.
Democracy in the United States is not dying a natural death. It is being stomped, strangled and stabbed by a mean and soulless majority party. A majority party that no longer truly represents the majority of the people.
The Republican Congress, and here the blame falls squarely on Mitch McConnell and his boy wonder, Paul Ryan has the duty to stop this mad President. But they won't because they are #complicit.
The only good to come of this is that your party has been exposed for the rotten corpse that it is. This zombie party so emboldened that it barely pretends to care about this country or its people.
I don't write off our democracy. I have faith that millennials, post millennials and reawakened boomers will take our country back and say enough.
4
A general malaise has rolled in like a malodorous night and fog. Trump rolled in and rolled over +15 GOP contenders with his “Rage against the Machine” shtick. There was a deer in the headlights quality towards those debates.
The trump kleptocracy lurches from one drama scene to the next.
Comparisons with Silvio Berlusconi and trump are noteworthy. Stormy Daniels or Silvio and the Teenage Dancer Ruby, one limelight drama story after the next. They even share recipes on how to accomplish a combover. Use a cream, blend in with the hair and spread with silicone to create a volumizing effect.
If voters equate elected office holders to a stage show, when does the show end, and the responsibility begin?
The idea that character, experience and integrity are relevant factors appears transformed into mist.
Unhealthy to a democratic system of governance.
1
You cannot use an analogy of US politics with Italian politics without even considering the history of Italian politics. I never cease to be amazed at how many times people misuse analogies.
"You treat your opponents like legitimate adversaries, not illegitimate enemies. You tell the truth as best you can. You don’t make naked appeals to bigotry."
Mr. Brooks - violating those norms is not unique to Trump. Republicans and conservatives threw them out decades ago. FOX and talk radio hammer on them every day, 24/7.
The quickest way for America to restore itself is to thoroughly reject the Republican Party and the Conservative Movement.
3
There is one and only one thing that the right has going for it: the victims of the civil wars in the Middle East should not have been allowed to `immigrate' (sic) out of the middle east into Europe into cultures utterly unprepared to integrate and assimilate them. Instead, a massive refugee camp should have been created in a large swathe of Syria and Saudi Arabia. When the persecuted and disaffected has to stay in their midst, the leaders of the middle east would have had a much stronger incentive to resolve their conflicts and achieve peace and stability.
It is these immigrants that are provoking and creating the success of extreme right and neo fascist groups in Europe al la Trump here in the US.
Everything else is on the side of the Left in America and in Europe. Planned families and birth control, bans on assault weapons, a tax system that benefits the working and middle classes, and on and on, are all things that the masses want and need. The Left needs to with turning folks back to where they came from and forcing solutions for peoples in the middle east and Africa in their own countries of origin.
This takes away the only thing they have going for them with the masses. Pretty much everything else that is responsive to the needs the masses of America and the Europe are found in the policies of traditional Liberalism.
The child in the adult makes human beings vulnerable to appeals to the strong Uber Daddy that will fix it all for you. But that is a mirage.
The direction we take depends entirely on the character and integrity of the person who replaces the current occupant of the WH.
2
I don’t get it: so we’re supposed to get used to trump because… Silvio Berlusconi? That’s who I’m supposed to think of now, as I lament the decline and fall of American civilization?
How about this, Brooksy: why don’t you get used to the idea that America is, and always has been, a progressive country occasionally hampered by conservative cultural Luddites? You’re a history major; you should be able to figure that one out.
3
Mr. Brooks, and his conservative allies have spent decades creating this toxic environment that government is the problem and painted it as run by liberal elitists that take away our constitutional liberties. Right wing commentators, and I am counting you in the mix (although you are much more polished then many of your brethren), have set the stage for the debasing of our institutions. I am disgusted by the fact that you are now complaining now that things have deteriorated and have tried to distance yourself from the carnage that you helped create. Sorry David, too late, you own it.
3
If Italy and Europe had not just been overrun by illegal immigrants, none of these vile electoral results (in Germany, England, Italy, France) would be happening. Most Italians do not want refugees washing up on their shore, and they resent liberal leaders who, contrary to their wishes, have gone along with it and have not protected them from it. Because the voters did not to see their interests put secondary to non-voters, they voted against their leaders, even voting for persons they know to be jerks (like Trump and Berlusconi). People do not want to give up their country to others, and then be guilted by their leadership for feeling that way. It is not really complicated, and it is not Fascism,---it is Democracy, for better or worse. It is what the people want. If Democrats in the US had a clue about this, Donald Trump would not be president today.
Just like in America. Just like in Germany. Just like in Austria. Just like in France. Liberal leadership may feel like they have the power, and that they "ought to do what is right", but the voters disagree and have been correcting them.
I sincerely hope that fascism is not the final choice between an obtuse liberal leadership and what the voters, for better or worse, want.
I wouldn’t point a finger at young folks. I’d point it squarely at old, rural, frightened folks watching stuff like Fox News. Think rural Hungary, Poland, and PA.
4
First, Trump lost the popular vote by millions so sweeping statements about why he was elected are somewhat suspect. Second, Italy has always been somewhat of clown car as a democracy so there is nothing new here. What disgust the electorate does have concerns the rigged game that both Republicans and neo Liberals played while pretending to actually care about the citizenry. That is the center that Mr. Brooks so longs for and it was long due to be replaced. The Republicans have gone all in for plutocracy. Democrats and Independents have a chance to change the game and elect progressive Representatives and clear the scuppers of this sorry mess.
>And the main lesson there is that once the norms of acceptable behavior are violated and once the institutions of government are weakened, it is very hard to re-establish them.
Perhaps Obama should have thought twice before turning the DoJ, FBI and IRS into partisan attack dogs, don't you think?
I'm not seeing it. Complacency is replaced with activism. Conservatives and liberals vehemently agree on the importance of separation of powers, independent judiciary, religious liberty, freedom of speech, and due process. Some of us have gotten better at distinguishing mountains from molehills. We know the two flavors of the once-obscure Emoluments Clause.
Norms about the White House staying out of contact with the DOJ about a pending matter are common knowledge.
Everyone now knows the Saturday Night Massacre isn’t just the name of a deathcore band.
We've discovered the Office of Government Ethics and have rallied to save it. Ditto the CBO and its independent scoring of pending legislation.
We know our Congressmembers’ names, memorized their phone numbers, figured out where Town Hall is.
People have begun to love lawyers! And millennials! and teenagers!
We’ve begun to study regimes with authoritarian tendencies! As if we had something to learn from them!
We've learned that state Attorneys General exist! 50 of ‘em! And that the states provide a vertical form of checks and balances under our federalist system. Who knew?
We now know there’s no such thing as an “off-year” election anymore. People show up in droves.
We stick up for – and even pay for – real journalism.
We can detect both fake news and “fake news.” We know what to do about trolls, can spot a MAGAbot from a pixel away.
We have learned where the levers of our democracy are, and we're not afraid to use them.
2
The cycle of more extreme behavior Mr Brooks talks about is almost entirely limited to the GOP Republican right wing. There is no significant communist or socialist or social democratic wing in the Democratic Party to counterbalance the Christian Right, The NRA, The Libertarians, The Tea Party, The KKK., The Koch's
For the Left, the unions are finished and largely irrelevant, and the left is little more than Bernie Saunders. The modern Democratic Party is more akin to the 50's and 60's Republicans in its political views.
Having lived all over the world, the thing that strikes me most about America, is the constant talk about " Our Enemies" Nowhere else in the civilized world do elected politicians speak so much about Our Enemies. The GOP Republicans constantly talk about Our Enemies. That is why there is no civil discourse in American politics. To a Republican you are either a friend, or an enemy. Democracy is already dead - we are now in early stage Autocracy.
What happens when the people who voted for the strongman find out they got a phoney? Do they wise up or just get more embittered? That's why principled leadership must not die on the altar of populism because we have to hope that the tide will turn away from the Trumps and Berlusconis and we choose to return to good governance and order.
Depressingly, onlookers are now predicting Trump will get a second term. This outcome is intolerable as civilisation would get meaner, nastier and more uncharitable. The unknown with Trump is how long will the duped stay with the fraud? Humanity has to hope his season is cut very short.
Let's hope that there will be an after-Trump era.
It almost seems like Rome needs to burn before any semblance of reasoned debate, litigation, democracy can take place.
“The rising political tendencies combine lavish spending from the left...”
5-words - “1.5 Trillion Dollar Tax Cut”
You can seem so circumspect and reflective, but in the end you regress to old generalizations. Obviously, there has been a political shift, one which has left the Democrats scrambling for footing and a message, but bigotry and excessive spending are currently the central elements of the Republican platform.
This is the most depressing — and likely most accurate — prediction of the near future that I’ve read in a long time. The love of strongmen, the rise of fascism, and nationalistic fervor — it’s like the 1930’s all over again.
I'm not sure that surveys support the idea that the young in America are enamored of Fascists. They loathe Trump, and it might be the young who finally bring us to our senses about guns. If Trump represents the wave of the future, I don't see why his approval numbers would be stuck at historic lows.
1
Not really.
Democracies are not dying. They were never fully born. Instead we have had mutant governments: a little democracy, a little oligarchy, a little plutocracy, combined with ethnic hatreds, xenophobia, and lots of really nice people who were mostly uninvolved in national politics. Add to this a Middle East finally in total destruct mode and some really stupid recent elections and you have a mess.
Where do we go from here?
While there are still relatively open elections in the UK, US, France, Germany, Mexico, and on and on (not a bad list), it will take us all voting, getting our friends to vote, and voting for rational hard-working individuals willing to make all those hard gradual steps to fix the tax code, clean up our toxins, fund renewable energy, engage in diplomacy, and govern day by day, based on the best evidence we have and some reasonable theories about how things work. Italy is not the model; maybe Germany is?
We can actually come out with a hybrid of more democracy and less of the other junk. But it takes constant hard work and good will -- not a joke.
1
The good news is that in America we have "checks and balances" between the branches of government. (Just kidding!)
"A topless woman protested at a polling station in Milan on Sunday where Silvio Berlusconi, leader of a right-wing party, had come to vote."
That must have ruined Silvio's whole day.
The chaos started before President Trump was elected which is why he is now sitting in the White House. Obama did contribute to this chaos but people are reluctant to say this because they will be labeled as racist. He neglected people from the heartland and they ran from the Democrat party. They lost their trust and it may never come back because of their liberal policies and lack of concern for the average American. Many Americans are quite happy with the results from this administration and would vote again for Mr. Trump if given the opportunity. Does this sound like a presidency in chaos? Not at all.
1
Voters were disgusted by a governing elite [but not those of their own party] that seemed corrupt [provided services to the undeserving, i.e., “Them,”] and out of touch [did not share their rage.] They felt swamped by waves of immigrants [“Them,” again,] frustrated by economic stagnation [brought on by policies they demanded,] and disgusted by the cultural values of the cosmopolitan urbanites [education, secularity, and tolerance.]
One thing is certain - we'll be left with the massive environmental destruction, much of it permanent, of Trump and his henchmen.
1
Mr. Brooks...one thing continues to puzzle me about you, given the platform you have: why, when we had a deeply thoughtful, moral, wise, educated, elegant leader (the last president) did you not praise and support him more?
4
Turning and turning in widening gyre, falcon cannot hear the faconer. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood dimmed tide is loosed and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity. WB Yeats, written 100 years ago.
H.L. Mencken said it best: “Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
This will probably not be published. I don't care.
Trump has made another massive mistake. He imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum. From an economic point of view this makes no sense.
But as a symbolic move it is brilliant.
There is a beautiful new book by Jessica Bruder called Nomadland. It describes the downward mobility of Americans.
Having lost their jobs to outsourcing and their homes in Great Recession they move about the country in campers, taking up odd jobs here and there.
In my town there is no parking. An ordinance prevents parking a camper on public streets, a sign in the shopping center prohibits camper parking. We don't have a Walmart, the last bastion for the boondockers.
So they go off to die in the desert. But many have TV and will hear Frances McDermond suggesting that men have too many jobs when she received her academy award.
Funny. China puts its men to work. China has built 12,000 miles of high speed electric rail, the kind that liberals preach about when they talk about weaning us from oil. But in the Great Recession, very little was set aside for infrastructure, so our bridges are falling down. Instead Obama upped the EITC payments and provided more welfare for women who have children by four different fathers.
And who can forget Joe Biden's Violence Against Women Act? The US now has 2.2 million Americans in jail or prison, 93% of them men, and twice that number on probation or parole.
Liberals dont see the problem with this.
The Republicans have run on an essentially anti-government platform since Reagan, so it is not suprising that we have a basic loss of faith in political institutions in the US. The causes of the trend outside the US probably varied and we should be careful about overgeneralizing, but they seem connected with globalization. At root, it seems like populations feel unmoored and are grasping for security in a precarious world that they feel powerless to change.
4
"One in six Americans of all ages support military rule."
That is quite a statement... maybe that one needs a source?
This is the problem with democracy: the internet. We all have our own info and statistics. We all live in our own, little authoritarian worlds.
Intellectual discipline, brought on by competent education, that returns its focus to crafting intelligent civilians (rather than vocational automatons) is our only hope.
3
david brooks!! when you are worried i am worried.
David,
So what should we do?
Your Republican center is hollowing out with the Democrats are being fed the mothers milk of Corporate misbehavior.
2
Well written discourse David Brooks. You are a student of history.
However I do respectfully disagree.
While nobody can predict the future, you forget people like Washington, Lincoln, the Roosevelts and countless others in America plus examples around the world like Wilburforce in Great Britain and Ghandi in India to name a few.
These people with their tremendous wisdom and advancement in society established a fire wall against bringing back people like Hitler, Stalin and Mao.
The natives are restless. Yes they want change. They fear what is happening but listen to people like Lincoln and the country will be safe.
4
If the people manning the firewall welcome the fire the wall will be revealed for the human contrivance that is was. The firewall is only as good as those who hold it up.
Good. Let people be expressive and free thinking. The government systems surely need help. Chaos, as a theory, shows that it is a time for opportunity for change. As far as the breast exposure, another idiotic maneuver that demeans the intellectuality of women.
David Brooks, you have been and enabler of the current president. You use language to twist the facts and resist calling out the culprits. You find equivalencies where there are none. Occasionally you break out of this mould, but then fall back into this namby pamby spineless style that really leads nowhere. As things stand now, there is no "conservative" in a position of power in our federal government. Please explain what it means to call oneself a conservative. Be very specific and, with your superior knowledge, describe to us exactly what your viewpoint is and how it is expressed by the vast majority of the so-called conservative Republican Party. I am sure I speak for many who are weary and disgusted by what passes as political commentary these days. Comparing us to Italy is fruitless. Our issues are not Italy's. Take some time to read and digest the comments of your readers who are living this nightmare. Their comments are worth the time.
13
How ironic! Americans like to thump themselves in the chest about how the West defeated Communism in the Cold War. They still don't realize that the Cold War was never really about Capitalism versus Communism. It was Democracy versus Authoritarianism, and the war is by no means over. The Chinese communists are the best capitalists these days, while Western democracies are collapsing. Worse, Democracy is losing largely by voluntary submission to Ignorance, Stupidity, and Bigotry of the electorate! The greatest danger is and has always been the average voter. Putin knew this all along.
11
It is so disgusting to see Italians voting for fascists when so many Europeans, and Americans, died saving Italy from the fascists not so long ago. It is more disgusting to see Americans wishing for a dictator or military rule. It is clear that these people have no appreciation of the rights they enjoy in a strong democracy like ours. They don’t have an inkling of what a dictatorship or military rule would entail for their personal lives. Our wisest and greatest president once stood on ground that still bore the scars of a terrible battle and gave the greatest speech in American history. He implored that we resolve that “ government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth”. That call for action still stands. I think the most important words are “ by the people”. How can we heed Lincoln’s call if Americans start denigrating their own democracy? If he is watching from somewhere, I see his sad visage wet with tears.
6
Trump is simply the culmination of Republican rising authoritarianism in the last 30 or more years and Democratic stupidity and/or laziness. Look at Dubya and his cohorts, more recent versions of despots, who took us into wars which have displaced, maimed and killed literally millions of people, cost us so far $5 Trillion, and show no sign of slowing down.
My vote for the most deplorable politician ushering in Trump is Mitch McConnell. He blocked the Senate from approving anything that would help the American people because he figured rightly that racism beats integrity and governance. And when he unconstitutionally impeded a Supreme Court nomination, he tore the Constitution up and flushed it.
Now we're looking at a very possible end of our democracy. We are hanging by a thread, with the NRA pointing an AK at us.
12
The dye is cast.
America won’t snap back to being a normal country until the GOP is utterly demolished. Trump is a symptom of the disease caused by the Republican Party’s long descent into radicalism, nihilism, and hatred of democracy.
19
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
5
Really?
You expect Trump to last till 2024?
You still have faith in this crazy president?
You have a power with your pen to make aware American people of the Trump presidency’s disastrous policies .
7
Perhaps we will be saved by our exceptionalism, and I use that term as historians do, not as the religious right or non-centrist GOP does.
(Are there any centrist GOP remaining?). We are a much bigger nation than Italy and we have a much wider base to our culture. Some states, like California, have thriving economies and an electorate that still believes that health care and other social services should be enjoyed by all. I hope Trump is a one-off quirk. No, things will not be as they were, nor should they be. But our know-how and inventiveness will come through again. Just not sure what form that will take.
7
Enough with the false equivalence, David Brooks. The problem is all on the Republican side. The 2016 GOP primary season was a competition to see who could act like the most ignorant, insulting, offensive jerk. That's the only thing Trump excels at, so he got the nomination.
The Republicans need to clean up their act. If they lose enough elections, maybe they'll be motivated to make it happen. We'll be doing them a big favor by handing them crushing electoral defeats in 2018 and 2020.
12
I'm getting pretty tired of Brooks's pedantic punditry. He's either flat out wrong, as when he advocated an invasion of Iraq (he still hadn't apologized) or too late to the party as he is now. Berlusconi was there for all to see long before 2016, but where was Brooks? Did he call out his Republican brethren who were busy debasing American politics? No. But now, when the damage is done, we get this after-the-horse-is-stolen essay which only serves to remind us of the damage his party has wrought as it morphed into a sociopathic pestilence.
15
Until you acknowledge that you helped plow the ground for Trump by your idolatry of Rush Limbaugh ("a good Republican who just wants to win") and the Tea Party movement that paved the way for DJT. He has not really said anything that Rush wasn't saying on radio (did you ever actually listen to his program?) three hours a day, seven days a week and rerun on Sundays in almost all of the thousands of rural counties that carried Trump to the White House. What were you thinking when you endorsed that kind of rot? Just because it gave you a GOP Congress to frustrate Obama. Personally, I flat out don't believe that half of millenials want a Berlusconi. Nor do I believe one-sixth of American (that's 60+million) want Jim Mattis to shred the Constitution and take charge. Get out of your straw man mode and start helping to identify bthe potential leaders of the future - take a good look at Ben Sasse, Cory Booker, DeVal Patrick, John Kasich, Charlie Baker, Amy Klobuchar, Kamala Harris, Nikki Haley and a host of others trying to gain enough oxygen to lead while you wallow and whine -- give them some air time, and stop fretting the Italian crazies.
12
Ben Sasse? Really! He lives in one of those rural counties that are bombarded with Rush Limbaugh 3 hours a day, 7 days a week, and twice on Sunday. Since you listen to Rush, you know how insidious his brain washing is. Sasse? Haley?
What, or who, could be WORSE??? Make a list, I'll wait..............
Yeah, thought so.
3
Mr Brooks,
You wrote, "The underlying message is clear. As Mounk has argued, the populist wave is still rising. The younger generations are more radical, on left and right. The rising political tendencies combine lavish spending from the left with racially charged immigrant restrictions from the right."
Where exactly have you seen evidence of this "radical left"? Who are they? Who represents them in Congress? Why aren't they ever featured on the evening news or their words printed in this newspaper? What lavish spending? Where in the US?
In California, Jerry Brown will be term-limited out leaving a $6.1 billion surplus(with a supermajority of Democrats controlling the legislature). Last month, Republicans, in charge of both branches of Congress and the White House introduced an annual budget with a one-trillion-dollar deficit.
One year. $1,000,000,000,000.
You and whatever's left of the thinking Republican Party should give up this trope(tripe) of a fiscally responsible GOP and a radical, spendthrift Democratic party. It's a lie.
12
"...the erasure of the informal norms of behavior." LEADERSHIP
"...the loss of faith in the democratic system." SERVICE
"...the deterioration of debate caused by social media." OFF SWITCH
2
"liberal democracy clearly ain’t going to automatically fix itself"?
Um, no. Conservative Republicanism -- supposedly "populist", evangelical, xenophobic ignorant intolerance -- isn't going to automatically fix itself.
And Brooks has no suggestions, although his party IS the problem.
9
Ah yes, because this is David Brooks writing, at the very end he had to sneak in “on the left and the right.” Yes, David, what we’re witnessing in the U.S. and Italy is in equal parts bad behavior by liberals and conservatives. Keep telling yourself that.
6
The way out of this is to elect adults into office. Real adults who can argue, compromise, discuss, and at the end of the day take responsibility for the decisions they make. It means not listening to the NRA, the lobbyists, the Koch Brothers, and those whose livelihood depends upon lies or contradicting reality.
Mr. Brooks might understand this. He might not. He's shilled for the GOP for so long he's probably forgotten what a life based in reality is. For some of us it's a life with no security, no job, nothing. And it's not that way because we want it that way. It's like that because of things his favorite party has done to favor business, the economic elites, and to eliminated the social safety net. The GOP started the chaos. Trump is just the finishing touch.
9
When will Mr. Brooks finally accept the fact that america is dead? Once he does, the next step will be completely clear.
#calexit
"the deterioration of debate caused by social media" (e.g. Fox News and Rush Limbaugh).
5
David Brooks is still in denial. He makes you want to give up. "What happens to politics after Donald Trump." It has not sunk in to him yet that Trump is Obama's legacy, and Obama was every bit as bad or worse than Trump.
The case is easily made on any front: Lying, horrible policy, deceit as a matter of course, authoritarian/fascist unilateral moves, bullying, profanity, ugliness of all sorts.
A woman - untainted by a misogynistic man - might be able to accomplish for USA politics what Brooks hopes for.
And yet Brooks was so nonchalant in the early months of this administration. Cavalierly he admonished Liberals to stop acting like the sky was falling, Trump was just one man running just one branch of our government. Our democracy was sound, the Founding Fathers had seen to that. And, besides if liberals would just be more understanding of the frustrations of those on the right, if they would just listen and be more patient, all would be well.
As a columnist he is reflective of Trump himself as well as his white male base: out of touch, all over the place and incapable of acknowledging his putrid contribution via his column to the current state of affairs--and as such his rhetoric just feeds the mess that is amassing before our very eyes.
1
Immigration is destroying everything. Angela Merkel will be remembered for damaging Europe, perhaps beyond repair. Millions of migrants storming Europe without a plan has created the obvious backlash.
Stop the madness. Not one more.
Stay home! You are in no way welcome and you create disastrous consequences.
1
The Roman empire did not fall in a day. Why is Nero allowed to stay?
1
Just a few weeks after reviewing Patrick Deneen’s book “Why Liberalism Failed” and claiming that our liberal democracy can fix itself by returning to reading more John Stuart Mill and Walt Whitman, you now about face and say liberalism can’t fix itself. Well, at least you have come to the correct conclusion.
Following statement is true but incomplete.
'Voters were disgusted by a governing elite that seemed corrupt and out of touch."
Some percentage of voters that seemed also out of touch of this world in western countries and that is disgusting too.
1
Who's "we," Brooks? You're the GOP acolyte who moans and groans about the state of affairs, yet you remain loyal to the cult that gave us Nixon, Atwater, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, McConnell, two Bushes, Rove, Palin, Christie, Huckabee, Reagan and Trump. I could go on.
6
Where did you really think your party was headed all these years with the race baiting, crackpot economics, plutocratic tax policies, promotion of childlike religion, fake concern for the budget, flag-burning laws, and science denial? Youth wants to know. I'm 68, and I want to know.
6
Radical on the left and the right. Really?
On the left, universal health care, a basic minimum wage, college for all who merit it, voting rights for all, treating everyone the same regardless of sex, race, sexual orientation or parents' wealth. On the right, strongmen, more corporate power, trade restrictions, racial grievance and hatred, "states rights", gun rights, etc.
Hmmm .... which one sounds like a democracy and which one like a fascist corporate state.
7
GOP fever is conquering the globe; how proud you must be, Mr. Brooks!!
2
I always wonder if the op-ed authors read the readers' comments. I hope so. There are many excellent comments here. I would hope that Mr. Brooks would read these comments and then write a column or columns responding to the comments. That would be a worthwhile exercise. Does Mr. Brooks learn anything from the readers' comments? Does he change his mind or his opinions as a result of the comments? Does he learn?
3
And over the years, dear David, you've done your part by not properly condemning the Republican right, but always allowing for their steam to escape, out of your devotion to a principled, meaningless conservatism.
4
We are not Italy, but that doesn't mean we're not in a crisis of epic proportions. We have a Madman in Chief in the White House, and the ones responsible for protecting our nation against him have buried their heads in concrete.
Has anyone seen the GOP leadership's innards? Mitch, Paul and the entire lot of them seem to have been eviscerated like dressed, strung up deer after the hunt. Pathetically, they have left the American people for dead in the service of power and greed.
Shame on them all!
5
Is it the left or the right more guilty of using naked appeals to bigotry?
1
Don't worry about the chaos after Trump, David Brooks, We're stuck in the middle of his first term and our world has turned from Obama's brillliant presidency to Trump's inadequacies, ignorance, braggardry and all we find repulsive in a President. Comparing Berlusconi's Italy to Trump's America is silly. Berlusconi is 81, and America, not Italy, is the greatest country in the world - notwithstanding Americas' love affair with Italy and The Sopranos, which we were addicted to for ten years.
Silvio Berlusconi - (dotard? Maybe not) - can't be compared to Trump who is only 71 years old and full of 'bunga bunga' macho white male steam. "After Trump" is an oxymoron, as he's not going to disappear from our TVs, computers, videos, iphones, plastic "communicating" widgets any time soon, like his Cabinet appointees who have fled the sinking S.S.Trumptitanic. So let's deal with what's happening now - America's present rule by rich white men and Donald Trump, and the demented social media platform that informs America now and will for another few years. And no worries, Trump won't be "president for life" like his great pal, Mar-a-Lago chocolate-cake lover, Xi-Jingping.
Italy isn't comparable to America - though it has been around since pre-Christian days of the Roman Empire. We Americans love Italy and her people! The Roman Empire rose and fell. Our brief American empire is falling today with Trump as our 45th president. Let's not question our tomorrows. Today matters.
3
Mr. Brooks, You state that "Trump and other populists have been coming to power around the world: Voters were disgusted by a governing elite that seemed corrupt and out of touch."
This is somewhat true but only a piece of the puzzle.The real issue is that too many voters are completely OUT OF TOUCH:
- They have no civic education
- They have little or no understanding of the basic elements of a civil society
- They are self-absorbed, selfish and lack empathy
- They are dumb-down by screens, junk food, opioids and alcohol
- They are consumers of junk news (in the US aka as Fox News)
- They are, hence, easily manipulated by telegenic narcissists
The irony is that they vote out intelligent political elites who understand the makings a civil society and how to maintain its vitality -- the public interest, fairness, tough choices, real leadership, and sound policies -- and vote instead for the most corrupt, self-serving and vulgar con men who do nothing good for them -- men just like Trump and Berlusconi.
5
What happens after Republicans like David Brooks went Hillary bashing paving the way for the leader of their party, Donald Trump?
1
I'm tired of these plaintive "woe is us" columns by Brooks. Your party did this. Trump ran and won as a Republican. Your party continues to enable Trump, and in doing so have revealed themselves as the opportunistic and unprincipled charlatans that they are and have always been.
Maybe if your party actually stood for something, David, it wouldn't have been so easy for a conman like Trump to become your standard-bearer.
Own it.
6
Unfortunately, David Brooks picks up on one of the trendiest memes in the left-wing echo chamber today.
It consists in the lament that the informal norms of behavior that civilize our political system are eroding. To quote David, "Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argue in 'How Democracies Die,' democracies depend not just on formal constitutions but also on informal codes." Yascha Mounk seems to making the same argument in a forthcoming book.
What's the problem? Well, many of the hand-wringers are people have absolute no hesitation about trashing the FORMAL rules of our system. They have no compunction about thumbing their noses at the plain meaning of the Constitution. Is it any surprise that disrespect for our formal rules has, in its turn, led to a devaluation of our informal codes too? To see the true enemies of democracy, maybe they should look at their bathroom mirrors.
1
"In short, Berlusconi, like Trump, did nothing to address the sources of public anger, but he did erase any restraints on the way it could be expressed."
Hi Mr. Brooks. You seem put out that Trump does not speak to us like Barack. Very cosmopolitan, with an imitation of MLK, Jr.'s cadence to mark his sincerity. While Barack weakened our democratic center by executive fiat, pandering to the Dem Left wing on a range of important domestic and foreign issues, let alone demonstrating left wing cultural values like pardoning Chelsea Manning, he excelled in leaving us adrift in economic stagnation.
Now while Donald is far less an orator, he certainly has gone a long way in tamping down my "public anger" if not yours.
Full employment, rising wages, rising equity markets, less stifling business regulation, uptick in illegal immigration enforcement, proposing stellar judicial candidates to fill high and lower court vacancies, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capitol following on the heels of Barack's petulant final gesture of abandoning Israel at the UN, tax reform and extra money in the paycheck envelope, emphasizing positive change at the VA fro our veterans, modernizing our military, replying in kind to the North Korean nut job while the past few Presidents "elegantly" avoided the topic leaving the Republic vulnerable, etc.
So, David, I'm feeling "less anger." However, the Dems seem to be very angry, and looking for Ruskies all over the place.
Wait. I think I see one......
1
Who’s going to take the paintings from Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson...from the Capitol Hill? Sooner or later they’ll need to be replaced.
1
'Modernity', loaded with trinkets. trivia, 'entertainment', and extreme inequality, has helped create a cadre of ignorant voters who are easy to manipulate and, thus, are.
These are not the 'citizens' envisioned by the founders. Rather they are the rabble predicted by the Greeks who had little faith in 'Demos'.
Preventing further corruption and deterioration will require change at the fundamental level. And that requires, among other things, extraordinary leadership.
I'm not optimistic, as I watch the clowns prancing by in our political circus... Sad...
2
We are tired of debating Hillary Clinton but she was a liberal in sheep's clothing. The Clinton Foundation took in a mere 223 Million dollars since its conception. Contributions came to the foundation from all corners of the globe including every crook buying a piece of 'legitimate" humanitarianism. Hillary was sheered, naked before we the people. It wasn't her illegal emails that clipped her but her need for power and money in the name of doing us doing us Americans right. She bought the Democratic Party with her war chest and got rid of Bernie Sanders, our true choice for president. Chelsea, her daughter married a family friend from Goldman Sachs and purchased a 10 million dollar apartment in Manhattan where she resides. We don't know want to know what Bill was up to. Yes, the Trumps are vulgar and despicable but from the get go Donald was a known wolf.
Then somehow establish critical thinking among your Republican voters and eliminate the Electoral College.
2
Classic Brooks. Pithy, pompous, and pessimistic. Nothing to chew on here, just some sentimental longing for what? The "liberal democracy" of Reagan and the Bush's?
1
There are educated people that should know better, their is a part of media that should know better, there are educated Congress members that should know better and still the FOX propagandists, the Republican members of Congress, the Limbaugh’s , all people with an educational background pushed a complete inept, a con man into the highest office.
Trump is not the problem, these people are. They are malevolent and mean.
3
Apropos of nothing, I found it hilarious that Berlusconi would look away from a bare breasted woman. That just doesn't seem to fit with his personal history.
No matter what follows Trump, he will never be looked upon as normal. He will always raise the question, What were Americans thinking? He might be recorded as the beginning of the end.
If enough people don't wake up soon, we will find our country run by Russia or any hostile country that decides to buy our politicians. And bought they are. What else explains a Republican Party that twiddles its thumbs while Trump defames the presidency and spreads chaos because he likes to get a reaction out of people. A mentally sick president who take pleasure in the misfortune of others - schadenfreude on steroids.
But, Republicans are not concerned about having a president who belongs in a mental asylum where he can play a reality TV president. They are using him while they can, as best they can, to take advantage of the people, many of whom remain asleep. Or are the people so drugged by Republican FOX propaganda that they can't wake up, can't discern reality from nightmare?
Wake up America! Before America is no more.
3
The Democrats need to stand for some things positive and not just rant against potus stupidity.
The Democrats need to become the party dedicated to REFORM. We need to reform(re make) our democratic contract. We need to return to government by and for the “people” (the citizens of the country). We need to forcefully reject to oligarchs of Citizens United.
REFORM Is needed and can be presented proudly and successfully to the electorate. REFORM!!!
Please
Poor "Captain America" Brooks. He seems to have slept through the Reagan, Bush administrations. The GOP has made this possible, with their repeated rape of the norms of governance and decency, and a non-adherence to where we have moved to societally.
The GOP made it, and you enabled it, happily, heartily and gleefully.
Poor Brooks, it must all be so dystopian for him, now that the reality he and the rest of the punditry rooted for all these decades has come home to roost. Your phone must be burning, no? Business is brisk! With all those calls for more punditry?
2
This is why I read Jen Rubin instead.
He had done nothing compared to the Bush's who lied Weapons of mass destruction and brought us two wars, loss of treasure and life .Both had the CIA complicity in their lies and even General Powell at the UN.....It may turn out worse with a constitutional crisis proof of complicity(treason) in his relationship with Russian interests and his compromised financial obligations with Russian-Putin banks. But until that is established-he is a mere innocent compared to those CIA rockers. He has been enabled by republican majorities. It is they who must shoulder the blame for their oppunitistic greed based policies.
1
The snap back solution is for Special Prosecutor to indict and take to trial all those involved with the Russian involvement in our 2016 elections. Most of this aberrant behavior by the President and fringe politicians and media that support him can be traced to that illegal activity which put a charlatan and his crew at the head of our government. There must be clear and certain consequences.
1
I'm am hoping and praying that we can learn from this chaos...
As George Bush famously said,
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...uh...don't get fooled again."
1