Mr. Brooks says that according to Whitman "America's great foe was feudalism, the caste structure of Europe that ............having certain portions of the people set off from the rest by a line drawn-----they not privileged as others, but degraded, humiliated, made of no account."
I don't think that our problem in this country is feudalism or a class structure held over from the old countries of Europe. It is plain racial prejudice.
During the times of slavery, many people (and the country as a whole) benefited economically from slavery but the net effect of slavery and racism has had a tremendous negative effect on this country. For the past two hundred years at election time in the south and some other parts of the country, the main consideration in choosing candidates was not who had the best program for economic development, education, etc. but who was best on the race issue -- in other words -- who would be the strongest to maintain segregation. And it is still like that in many places although people might not admit I.
The comments of Look Ahead in the NYT picks addresses this issue.
Some of the old segregationist in the 1950's said that we were becoming a mongrel country. I think that would be great. I would like to see the country become more diverse and the races and nationalities all mixed up. Maybe race would become a non-issue.
18
Wow, the blow back from the readers is something else, e.g. Sweden and Canada better than USA, slavery repeated, and on and so on. Of course Trump the idiot.
The American (and Canadian) dream in my opinion is freedom. Coming from afar, from countries with true feudal systems, from terrible poverty, and persecution, and then to find blessed freedom in the USA. This my personal heritage and I honor it. This is the ideal I hang on to.
15
Everything that Whitman wrote about in David Brooks' condensed book review is the antithesis of what the party he belongs to and continually defends represents. Writers, musicians, and poets? Who needs them? Defund the NEA! But more preachers please. Brooks loves him some of that "spirituality."
23
America is coming apart at the seams and it is by design, not by accident. Trump may have been handed the title of president. But he is Not Our President. He was not chosen by a majority of the people. He was in fact greased into office by a right wing coup engineered by the GOP through gerrymandering and voter suppression aided and abetted by the Russians. This is not just a conspiracy theory. The theft of the election is supported by analysts like Nate Silver. Ergo Trump..an ignorant narcissist who is thrashing about to overturn any and all social and environmental progress made in this country in the past 100 years. He is a puppet not only of Putin but of the ultra-right wing Kochs, Mercers, Adelsons, Murdochs et al., who financed the successful Republican coup d'etat.
If we want to hold America together, we must first recognize and come to grips with the internal systematic attack on democracy launched by the Republican Party and then we must fight back in every way possible to save our nation. We are close to the abyss and far beyond any high school civics class portrayal of the United States.
35
It is such a sad and pessimistic thing to admit- but the USA, I country that I was born into an love, has been taken over by greed.
The old proverb, "Love of money is the root of all evil" is as true as it ever was.
Yes, some people have always been selfish, stupid and greedy- that is not new and there are many in history that prove that sad statement.
But what is missing now is the lack of morality in our leadership.
In other times, there has been moral leadership to balance and indeed correct rampant greed and capitalism gone amok.
Examples of TR, FDR, GOP leadership during WaterGate to stand up to Nixon- just to name a few.
We have not had morals in the GOP for decades.
The GOP has usurped power in spite of fewer votes, changing demographics due to gerrymandering and electoral cheating- just ask Putin, Cambridge Analytica, Bannon, Kushner, WikiLeaks/Assange, Ryan, Nunes and McConnell just how it's done.
There is no honor among thieves and cowards.
I fear there is not much that holds America together when I consider there were so many that voted for a racist liar and misogynist like Trump. Even though he lost the popular vote by 3 million- he never should have come close ad in fact he won.
I am a very easy going person and not one to ever hold a grudge- until now. I am sorry to say that I cannot foresee me forgiving Trump voters for the daily trauma. Maybe one day- but not now. Perhaps never.
20
So sad, Mr Brooks continues his year long avoidance of commenting on the nation's reality; and wanders off on any topic to avoid dealling with the total corruption and moral decadence of his Republican Party
34
nice try on the "happy talk"....
US Reached Last Stage Before Collapse
http://www.businessinsider.com/us-reached-last-stage-before-collapse-201...
2
The problem is, the muscular American diversity Mr. Brooks - and supposedly Walt Whitman - celebrates derives its nobility from the fact that it is so contrary to the prevailing human instinct of defining Self and Other, which is a deep part of all of us, including that of the people of the United States. It's a bit like enjoining abstinence for adolescents. When it works, that's fine. But usually it doesn't. Given deep economic equality, the entrenchment of moneyed interests, identity politics on both the left and the right and the overall (perceived) unfairness of life in this country right now, and the old instincts come out in full force.
3
When I was younger, I might have agreed with Brooks. But not now. America has lost its promise and potential. Who would want to be associated with a country that elected Trump? When I was a newly minted assistant professor, I thought that America's rise was inevitable, as our population became more educated. Rising college enrollments, I thought, would quickly extinguish racism, religion and Republicanism. In short, I was naive and utterly wrong. Many Trump voters are stereotypically ignorant and intellectual disabled--and proud of it. But a lot of votes for Trump were cast by people who did so vindictively, fueled by racism and the worst of other motives. I wish this were a temporary problem--just a random concatenation of unfortunate events that, like Bush's invasion of Iraq, happen now and again. But I know that's not true. Groucho Marx is credited with saying that he didn't want to be a member of a group that had such low standards as to accept someone like him as a member. I feel the same way about the contemporary US. I don't want to be a citizen of a country that would elect Donald J. Trump.
16
Please help me, here Mr. Brooks. Although my Mother drilled it into me that I am descended from a Jew, I am satisfied to be a Christian, as my parents taught me to be. I believe that Christ was crucified for the wickedness of the world--and at the instigation of a conspiracy of politicians and religious leaders. But his utter abandonment to this murder convinces me that there is no Hegelian absolute that rules history. There is no sweet spot in the American "experiment" that protects the American people from catastrophic politicians like Donald Trump. When he blew his romantic smoke, that's what Walt Whitman was blowing. You are a very smart man. Tell us the truth, Mr. Brooks.
2
Mr. Brooks seems to be grasping for the hope that America is not in the throes of disunion. Factions may not yet be chortling for secession, but the chorus will be deafening if Trump is indicted and removed. Mr. Brook's own Republican Party is largely to blame. Unlike the GOP at the time of Nixon's self-inflicted demise, today's Republican legislators, with too few exceptions, have allowed a thoroughly corrupt and autocratic president to act with impunity. His lies, his corrupt alliances, and his attacks on democratic institutions go largely unchallenged. Fox News, which has become the de facto voice of conservatism, is nothing more than a bullhorn for the ultra-right agenda, providing cover for Trump's every transgression. All the while, Ryan and McConnell remain silent. Only those GOP Senators and Congressman who are retiring seem to possess the courage to oppose Trump in public. Republican's refusal to condemn Trump's dictatorial behavior will lead to a truly devastating constitutional crisis that no call for unity will be able to avert.
9
Mr. Brooks:
Again with the spiritual vacuum?
I'll tell you what, I'll take cultural and moral feudalism over (our current) economic feudalism every time.
"Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than at present, and here in the United States" ... in 1871? So when was America great again?
What is your point, Mr. Brooks? What is your point and your POLICY PRESCRIPTION? What is it? I never hear it from you, week after week, just talk about groups and the value of moral virtue blah blah blah what is your POLICY?????
When will you admit economic inequality matters a lot. It matters to the extent of the entire lives of millions of our people
Please do better, please.
16
In the meantime masses of Americans of David Brooks' same political persuasion are saying screw that and purchasing assault rifles and voting for candidates deemed to support destruction of the other, or at least supporting the creation of serious obstacles to their civic participation and their ability to vote. It's these same masses that folks like David Brooks have been goading for some time now. So this airy piece so well written is difficult to digest given the context from which it is being employed today by Brooks, absent any acceptance of culpability for the tragedy unfolding in our country, from pundits who like to quote lofty words and ideals on the one hand while driving the shiv home with the other.
5
There is certainly something to be said for America, but this drivel is not it. The unsurpassed analysis is Tocqueville's. The idea of Amnerica, is to put justice and the legal equality of all its citizens above nobility, heroism, spiritual devotion and intellectual (not technical) excellence, to place utiliity above poetry and engineering above philosophy. Unfortunately, in practice this leads to a commercial, materialistic society in which the ultimate value is not freedom or "the epic heroism of democracy" but MONEY.
Beyond this, the country is simply too big and diverse and riddled with factions to be an ideal place to live. If you want a polity in which people are happy and flourishing, look to Norway or Denmark, not the U.S.
6
America is defined by individuals choosing their own purpose because, in America, the individual is the supreme power. To barrow from Pretty Woman – which I was forced to watch this weekend. “Welcome to America! What's your dream? Everybody comes here; this is America, land of dreams. Some dreams come true, some don't; but keep on dreaming' — this is America.” Can you imagine welcome to America, your dream is diversity, equality, and fairness? I can’t either.
5
As a gay man I probably would have felt out of place at that rodeo, wary of condescending looks and snide remarks. And I'm speculating that a trans woman going to an event like that would be taking her life into her hands. There are many places like that that feel unsafe to the LGBT community. Sadly most of them are filled with so called 'Christians.' We're not a young country anymore. We're old enough to have learned from our mistakes, although many prefer not to acknowledge those mistakes.
17
I'll have what he's having.
4
I'm torn as to whether this piece is fatuous or vacuous.
13
I'm not going to scan 700 plus letters, but I want to make sure that at least one letter points out that people are tired of being told that they must abase themselves and grovel because they come from a background of married parents, reasonably secure economic home life, did well in school, and never ended up in rehab. Send your child (not on scholarship, of course, you're too successful for that) to many colleges in this nation today, and no matter what their field of study, listen to them being berated because of their elitist, racist background. Many people who were not doing very well or being well treated in this country in the Great Depression nonetheless obeyed the law, joined the military, got an education, served their country. Their grandchildren are now wondering why this nation's elite doesn't seem to value them anymore.
7
What held this country together, despite racial tension and hate and resistance to equality, was an understanding that widespread education and literacy, confidence in science, an independent and assertive press, and a federal government capable not only of recognizing problems but solving them were essential to liberty and to a democratic society.
We have lost almost all of that. We have lost it over the past 35-odd years as Republican radicals have turned relentless fire on the hard-won trinkets of policy based on knowledge, commitment to justice for all, and baby steps to equality that came from a Civil War, multiple economic depressions, a baby boom or two, a Civil Rights movement, a Women's Suffrage movement, a tumultuous 1960s and 1970s, and the space age.
We have nearly lost it all in the face of
* widespread political apathy (only a quarter of eligible voters cast a ballot in 2016 and look what happened as a result),
* arrogance about our role in the world,
* massive and widespread corruption of Congress,
* termination of the idea that journalism is about news and not entertainment or propaganda,
* rejection of science,
* empowerment of dangerous religious cults (Evangelical "Christians"),
* persistent efforts by emboldened plutocrats to widen income inequality, reduce or eliminate economic protections and the safety net so essential to a strong middle class, and degrade public education, and
* backtracking from a hard-won commitment to voting rights for all.
14
What holds America together?
The velocity of Money, and the ability to access the opportunities it presents to the best of your ability.
3
While we have weathered corruption in high office before and come out on the other end relatively unscathed, this time the corruption is in the highest office, the presidency. We have a man who flouts all the conventions to avoid even the appearance of impropriety; rather, he makes it clear that he is still managing his businesses and passing executive orders and signing legislation that helps him make even more money--or keep it, as with the income tax reductions for the wealthy.
In demanding personal fealty from his cabinet members and others, he makes it clear that he believes America is his for the taking. He doesn't work for us; we work for him. If he were the Queen of Hearts, he would be shouting, "Off with their heads!" from the rooftops.
We've had other corrupt presidents, but I don't think we have ever had one like Trump before and I fervently pray that we never have one like him again.
9
For a couple of decades the Republicans have been tearing apart the great American community vision, encouraging alternate facts and attitudes of resentment. Now they follow Trump as the logical extension of the politics of division. and the Republican leadership in turn has decided to support and further enable the moral destruction because it has drunk its own Kool-Aid. It is surprising that even honorable Republicans are becoming complicit, trading in the American dream of equality and community and opportunity for a mean-spirited and selfish vision of narrow short-term self-interest - truly the spoils of the politics of division.
4
If the thing that holds America together is a common dedication to "create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind", then we should all be worried. What's wrong with being a "good" society for its own sake? The desire to be the "best society ever" makes me suspicious already -- it could have come out of Mr Trump's own mouth -- and the urge to intentionally be a model "for all humankind" drips with misplaced evangelism. It's typical American immature exceptionalism, of the kind that holds the nation back and that has triggered more than a few ill-conceived foreign wars. Stop trying to be a model for the world, start with being a decent enough place for its own sake.
10
I wonder what Mr. Brooks would have said if Trump had commented on an event he went to by describing the people as ranchers, hispanics, African immigrants, and Oh yeah, those "drunken suburban housewives out for a night on the town." Could Brooks be any more demeaning to women who raise their children, go to work to help support their family, and create a caring and loving home for their family.
7
It is not the mythos of America that matters, but its reality or lack thereof.
A country that was once pregnant with ideals and practical self-invention — the likes of which the world had never seen before! — is now a fading ghost and crumbling skeleton.
The temples of government — judicial, legislative and executive — have morphed into charnel houses occupied by executors of an immoral auction where everything is for sale: the flesh and the spirit of America.
Only a true revolution can purge the wasteland and with sweat and tears reclaim the promise and let the American Phoenix raise from the ashes.
8
Re: "What on earth holds this nation together? The answer can be only this: Despite our differences, we devote our lives to the same experiment, the American experiment to draw people from around the world and to create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind."
No, there can be many answers to this question. One that's always worked for me comes from Iggy Pop: "Man is the village animal, united by the glue of our loathsome qualities." You know -- like how slavery and racism held (holds) much of America together for much of its history.
4
Inertia holds this country together, as it does communities everywhere. But inertia also maintains age-old sources of conflict, such as racist beliefs of some that people of a particular skin color are superior and people of other skin colors are inferior and not entitled to the same opportunities. Some of the people who have white skins very much do not share in Brooks's take on what holds Americans together. That is a very big problem.
2
Cruelty to animals and disregard for the last remaining wildplaces.
1
"Hope for the best and prepare for the worse." Mr Brooks is big on equating hope with American idealism but what does he have to say about preparing for the worst? Makes me wonder if he sees both sides of the contemporary challenge?
1
What about de Tocqueville's prescient prediction that the American ideal would lead to ontological insecurities and invidious comparisons?
2
Wonderful, wonderful column. We need to read it over and over.
A large swath of America is not geared toward "the structure of Europe", reflecting an East Coast bias. This view reminds me of the 1950s.
2
Democracy is a living organism that has to be kept alive, and like those who came before them to populate America, our current wave of immigrants are the embodiment of the Whitman experiment in American democracy. These people see the 'epic heroism all around them that unites the American spirit'.
Democracy is tough work as America and all the other free countries of the world know. It is always under attack from within and from without. It is not won just once or twice in a world war, it is fought for and won every day. Our military and our U.S. intelligence are protecting our rights and freedoms daily and put their lives on the line, and so don't our journalists and reporters. They not only believe in America, they will die for America and their love for America drives their sacrifices on our behalf.
Citizens of democracy cannot be complacent or apathetic about these freedoms; our hard won belief that all men are created equal, and that there is a place in America for every race, color and creed, our right to vote, our right to free speech, our right to a fair trial, and our right to a Free Press.
We have to back up those out there fighting for American democracy by fighting right alongside with them and not letting their efforts on our behalf be in vain.
2
The trust in our commitment to a more perfect union and the hope of fairness and prosperity keeps us together.
American militia went to arms for those ideals. This was a novel concept in the world then. That those ideals are not yet perfect and may never be, makes us hopeful, not simply naive.
Our politicians and those of wealth and power, use the tools of modern society to manipulate us to keep them in power, to limit our troublesome interference with the path that they prefer. Martin Gilen's 2014 work shows us how unrepresentative our republic really is. Piketty's work shows the mechanisms undermining prosperity. Both are policies supported by our governing classes.
How far away from that path to a more perfect union, of fairness and prosperity, can we stray before that which allows us to pursue a birthing of a ‘full strength of American democracy’ has faded? Are we to be left to scramble for a meager subsistence that increasingly more in our society cannot attain?
The present incumbents do not respond to art, custom or culture in our society to improve their governance. They respond to power and money. They will not give up either willingly or easily. And in such case, if history is any guide, they will find that they and we will have lost.
4
Don't be foolish enough to believe that "America" (I hate calling the USA that - it's not accurate - America is a name given to two continents - we are the United States) is and will always be held together. It is being ripped apart by conservatives who intentionally pit race against race, social group against social group, "them" against "us." They spread fear to split us apart so that they can stay in power. If you don't see that, you are not looking closely enough at your conservative friends.
7
Think back to another type of society in our history. The Spanish colonizers of La Florida, which stretched from Nova Scotia to Texas, arrived well before the English colonists at Jamestown. Sure, they did some things we think are awful. But at the same time, over 20% of them were married to "Indians", whom they considered just regular people, not savages. Many learned to read and write. There were many free blacks who worked with, not for, the Spanish. The Spanish did have slaves, but they were considered humans with souls and had rights: to have an official marriage, to keep their family intact, to own property, to buy their freedom, to sue their owner in court, to petition the king. No surprise the first runaway slaves from the English colonies went South, where they were given their own land. At the end of the Seven Years (French & Indian) War, the Spanish gave up Florida to keep Cuba. In came English plantation owners & the Eng. slave system and superseded a system where multiple races and nationalities had done a much better job of getting along and thriving than the U.S. is doing today. Next, U.S. took over trying to destroy the lives of Indians, slaves, & free blacks. Think DT's hero, Andrew Jackson, the Seminole Wars, Southerners who couldn't stand the idea of blacks with guns, freedom, and hope.
No room to explain how successfully the Moors ruled medieval Spain with 3 religions & multiple cultures. I think U.S. started off on both wrong foot and road.
2
Also no room to explain how the Spanish colonizers of what is now Texas forcibly converted the native peoples & made them an enslaved work force in the missions (where almost all died. Indeed, the "failure" of Indians as a labor force was a driving force in Spanish importation of African slaves). And no room to discuss the Spanish conquistadores' behavior in Latin America (Pisarro's massacring of 5,000 Incans in return for their hospitality springs to mind.) As for those "marriages" to native people? The mestizos of Mexico occupied a lowly spot in the rigid castos system of the Spanish colonizers. Of note: of the 10.7 million enslaved Africans who survived the dreadful Middle Passage, 388,000 were sent to North America. The remainder were sent to the Caribbean and Latin America; where they, too, took their (lowly) spot in the Spanish "casta" system. Of late some historians have claimed that the Spaniards were, somehow, "better" colonizers than the English because they "intermixed" with the local people. True? Well, the Spaniards didn't bring women with them (many English did), so needed to "marry." And, yes, they were intent on saving souls (If the converted Indios died from disease and starvation? Oh, well.) As for Cuba: as occupiers, the English indeed added many slaves to those Spain had imported. Returning in 1764, the Spanish embraced the sugar plantation system: slavery wasn't abolished on the island until 1886. My point: there are no clean hands in history.
4
I live in Porta Plata D/R 5 years and Barbados 10 years since 9/11. I was in trouble with some teachers growing up because I refused to stand up for my country. I laid in the street in Harvard Sq. in 1971 because my friend who died in Vietnam (maybe Laos) said he killed anybody who was running from his gunship. Since Kenndys death when some of us from the people republic worked within the system found out your up against a wall of greed. There is hope in other countries but everyone worldwide wants to get to capitol of corruption. There is an asteroid headed towards earth by 2030 experiments to divert it may not work.
Why is it that the only mention of women is a description of them as “drunken suburban housewives?”
17
If you are lucky enough to leave the USA like I did, you can understand the American dream is dead. I enjoyed paid vacations, national health care, good wages, and aged pensions for all. I look back and see them waving the flag, constitution in their pockets and patriotism in their hearts. Work til you drop and pray you don't get sick doing it. I look at the billions spent on the military and see Americans camping out in the streets. I see Americans too poor to retire. I feel sad for them.
14
My mother refused to allow a television into our household when I was growing up in the 50s. She strongly believed it would "numb and dumb down" the family.
She was very wise. Television brought the U.S. Trump.
5
Often, David Brooks’s columns depress me, as he uses his column to yet again persuade us to accept a false equivalency between the Trump right and the vocal but ultimately powerless left. Many commenters take such columns apart with insightful responses or amusing wisecracks.
This time it’s the commenters that depress me. Brooks puts in an effort here, if an imperfect one,to put the words and vision of Whitman into a contemporary context. In response, we get comments that the Constitution says nothing about an experiment and nothing about accepting foreigners. Or those that recite the list of America’s many sins. There are even those decrying rodeos’ cruelty to animals; these comments being so beside the point that one wonders whether the commenters read past the first paragraph. Here’s an idea for an experiment: Transcendence of rigidity of thought
5
I grew up in the 50s and 60s, and much of what Mr. Brooks writes feels 'true' to me; however, I have come to see the United States as no different than the old USSR. Sure, the free market brought us untold wealth, where the USSR was a failing state... but the price was slaughter of native Americans; wars to take land from others; slavery and bigotry that limited rights/mobility for many. At this point, perhaps we need to consider that we may be doomed to fail for many of the same reasons the USSR did: Too big to 'manage' and too many wildly different ethnic 'tribes' who no longer feel that a "United" States is necessary. The current 'Russia' is an oligarchy, and the U.S. seems to be following in their footsteps. And that's separate from the bizarre relationship/love affair that Trump has with Putin. Meanwhile, we are squandering what we built with our often ill-gotten gains; and many of us are exhausted by the culture wars and banana republic politics. If it weren't for the fact that it ended the abhorrence of slavery, I'd say Lincoln wasted 50K lives trying to re-unite this nation. I doubt I can find common ground with roughly one-third of my countrymen. How sad is that?
5
Do you really think we'd be in this position if what holds us together is a common dedication to carrying on the experiment of nationhood? Come on.
5
Thank you Mr. Brooks. A heart-warming column. I detest what is happening in this country. I will refuse to give this president the satisfaction that he wants .... to "change" the American political system - to enhance his own system - and to take the republican party with him. I refuse this! I have greater people to honor, I have greater people that bring peace and hope to me. I am in awe of great thinkers, of good doers, and builders of not only buildings but humanity. I refuse to even think about the destroyers, the racists, the blow-hards. They do not deserve my thoughts.
4
"Despite our differences, we devote our lives to the same experiment, the American experiment to draw people from around the world and to create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind.
This is the problem, the bloated desire to be a model for everyone else.
Just be decent to one and all, and other societies will or won't see the U.S. as a model, but at least people living here will have good lives.
5
Walt Whitman celebrated both robust individualism and the common good. A contradiction? Not if you're optimistic, as he was. Thank you, David Brooks, for reminding us of this.
2
Dedication to our democracy takes time, diligence, and patience. But we want everything fast and furious; fair and intelligent discourse takes too much effort, requires too much thinking; we don't want to use the channels our government has set up to tackle complex problems--let's keep it simple and dumb it down. We don't want to read long documents.
Shortcuts now rule the day.
Evidence?
1. Use of guns to settle disputes and grievances (school shootings, office shootings, terrorist shootings). Why try to discuss things or use mediators?
2. Executive orders. Who needs Congress to get things done?
3. Facebook and other social media. Why read anything in depth when you can get your news quickly in a little post from someone you don't know?
4. Radio hosts. Again, why read? Just listen to Limbaugh and call it good.
5. Fox News. How much time do you need to spread lies and gossip, and forego evidence?
5. Twitter. Forget any protocols, manners, and courtesy. Who has time for that?
6. Stonewall opponents. Hate talking and showing respect? Of course, it's too much work and bother. Let's just ignore people.
7. Help a ravaged island? No quick fixes here, so why even try?
8. Even great newspapers have limits on discourse. Mayim Bialik couldn't please the feminist masses since she was allowed only 1500 words to do so.
We can give birth to a new Democracy if we don't curb what's destroying the first one. Time for civics lessons --- but can we get them in 20-minute Ted Talk?
Our President is a mess. We are too. Staring at the mess of a President is reminding us how weak we all have been for a long time, accepting the benevolence of tax cuts, so that the only pay raises Americans will ever see, are disguised in the shape of tax cuts; giving money away to bosses who skip far away to the other side, happy to bend our bodies and this planet to their inevitable greed and lies. It's strange how easy this notion has been. We are all modern American losers, leading indentured lives while the common good whistles on the wind.
4
I feel more at home at home at a Jazz club in Paris than at the rodeo. Right now the US is really about 4 different nations, split it up and lets stop the misery. If Texans want to play cowboy and shoot their children in schools so gun companies can rake it in, let them; I want no part of that fantasy.
56
If the U.S. is at least four different nations so Texas like many states is several different states. Here in Michigan the only thing that defines us as a state is the water that mostly surrounds us. My point is that no state is monochromatic, not Texas or Michigan or California. So no not everyone in Texas is interested in playing cowboy or aligned with the NRA. Nor is everyone in California at home in any Jazz club or a liberal. Remember that California gave us that last great con man Ronald Reagan & Trump found a ready audience during his visit.
3
As to your first sentence, So do I. But that isn't the point, is it?
How many of us have friends that we feel more of a kinship to than members of our own families? Yet, as strong as friendship's bonds are, the bonds of family are stronger, as estranged from us or as close to us as they may be.
Mr. Brooks reminds us that Americans have been estranged from one another before, yet our country managed to survive. It survived because enough of us, in spite of our many and deep differences, cared about our grand experiment in democracy and representative governance, our Constitution, our freedom to live and worship (or not) as we chose, and in rights - human rights, not just for some, but for all - to want to make it work.
And it will work, so long as we care about overcoming our differences, our flaws, and our prejudices, to hold strong to our commitment to one nation united in freedom, dedicated to the rule of law, and ready to do what it takes to build a future where we are working, not just four our own advancement, but for the advancement of all.
Do we really want our country to be crushed under the weight of apathy, greed, and despite? Do we really want to abandon democracy for autocracy, whim for rule of law, rights for privilege?
As troubled as our political system is now, we don't have to feel at home with each other's beliefs and lifestyles to make this country work. We just have to share one core commitment - to government of, by, and for *all* of the people.
2
Pretty words I guess but what’s the point? Who is this column aimed at? As far as I know the Democrats are largely engaged in the experiment as described. Is David finally admonishing the Right? Or just singing himself to sleep?
10
Our national motto needs to revert to "E Pluribus Unum" instead of the Cold War reactionary/divisive "In God We Trust".
5
Oh for crying out loud, David Pangloss. You go the rodeo or visit some holler in Appalachia, and it happens: That cheesy soundtrack starts playing in your head, vaguely but undeniably patriotic. A soft focus Stars and Stripes flutters over your head. You pick up your quill, dab it in your inkpot, unroll your parchment, and remind the rest of us what a great, unbreakable system we all share.
"The times may be discouraging?" I think most people who see things as they truly are, here in America and all over the world, would agree that Democracy has never been more threatened, at least in recent living memory. Whitman is one of our greatest poets, but you would be more on the mark quoting Orwell.
14
Right out of Candide: The answer can be only this: Despite our differences, we devote our lives to the same experiment, the American experiment to draw people from around the world and to create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind.
1
This is a country born in genocide, grown through slavery, apartheid, the cheap labor of immigrants and imperialism. Everyday I’m exposed to some version of “I’m not prejudiced but...”. I obey the laws, try not to step on anyone’s toes and I’ve even been known to vote from time to time. Spare me from a requirement to hang out the flag.
4
Mr Brooks: Why is it that only WOMEN are drunk and non-working?
13
'Drunken suburban housewives out for a night on the town'?
Wow, Mr. Brooks. Just wow.
14
How do I say this without sounding hostile?: Who cares about your rodeo? Huh? You know, the republicans and you are the problem.
5
The goodness and decency of average Americans has always been of a higher order than our politicians (at least in my lifetime.) But the old joke that we are not held together, but screwed together seems to be spot-on right now.
Perhaps since the times are so different, we SHOULD fear economic feudalism more than Whitman did.
Every time I read Brooks, I always sense him trying to dodge the problem of economic inequality. The object here, once again, seems to be to make us forget economic inequality, or at least not think about it, & try to find what we share with our more and less well-off neighbors.
And you can tell Brooks worries a lot about finding ANYTHING we share in common. Sometimes it seems like he's searching for it everywhere. He probably reads about the wheels coming off of societies all through world history, & hopes deeply that it won't happen to us as well.
But it might well be that there is an unbridgeable divide in our country between those who want freedom & individualism at all cost--no matter how unequal the society becomes, & those who believe that SOME government action is needed to mitigate inequality & help create a more secure society. I've talked (not argued) many times with a neighbor who is deeply libertarian, & I can't see any willingness there to attack economic inequality, even though he seems to realize its at the root of our difficulties. No compromise of his principles seems acceptable.
Maybe conversations (or arguments?) like this are why Brooks avoids the issue!
4
What holds us together is that most of us can't afford to leave, and wouldn't get permission to work and stay if we could.
3
Perhaps entirely besides the point, but why is it I always walk away from reading Whitman thinking that I need remedial reading help? I mean dude needs to shorten his sentences, and not endeavor to make three opposing points within the same parenthetical. O.K., I feel much better.
1
Mr Brooks:
I have enjoyed your commentary in the Times and on occasional television programs.
I find your ideas, and your presentation of them, to be refreshing, profound and, may I say, esoteric. Your “Walt Whitman” piece is in keeping with those high standards.
As a former high school English teacher who relished teaching Whitman’s poetry, I understand your view that all Americans have dignity and a place in our society. Democracy is an experiment in human nature, and it demands diversity in many ways and requires that all Americans endeavor to contribute to the common good. And, as Whitman repeatedly emphasized, the American Experiment is in its infancy and needs time to grow.
However, I am exceedingly troubled by our current cultural divide. The distrust, anger and vitriol that many Americans have toward institutions, leaders and shared beliefs is troublesome. We are a nation divided.
Cries of “fake news” and “alternative facts” almost make civil discourse impossible and trusting each other something from a previous, almost unrecognizable, time. We are unsure of what to think or what to believe in.
Your observation that Whitman was not a “pessimist” is encouraging. His approach to life: that everyone has worth and purpose is uplifting. It’s especially poignant in today’s world. Perhaps some American leader will emerge from the darkness to heal our wounds and lead us in “I Hear America Singing.”
We can only hope.
Don Leathers
Austin, Mn
3
I have to disagree. What holds all of US together is the American dream. If the dream dies so does our republic.
3
When the President of the United States praises dictators and tyrants while calling for his political opponent to be "locked up" to the cheers of millions........I'm afraid the "democratic experiment" is in trouble!
10
I doubt seriously hat there is a Trump supporter, red state citizen that would read Walt Whitman with any understanding or appreciation. That's just not in their DNA/
5
I suspect that Whitman would see much of what we have in today's plutocracy as feudalism. Our unity has often been more an ideal that a reality, as has been demonstrated from the Whiskey Rebellion, through the Missouri (non)Compromise, the Civil War, the Klan and the war on immigrants a hundred years ago, America First, Little Rock, and Vietnam. At times external existential threats have forced us to hang together, viz. WW II.
Now we do not have an existential threat like the Nazis or commies (as much as Trump would like to imitate the one and kowtow to the other), we have the formerly privileged class forced to accept the presence of minorities they used to ignore, and we have the proliferation and abuse of social media stirring up repressed prejudices. We also have a society that is skeptical, not only of government, but also of national mythologies. The plutocrats keep a lot of people stuck at the bottom. All this is not conducive to idealized and illusory unity.
So what can happen? Alternatives:
1. We get a real existential threat - not a made-up one like ISIS or the NRA. North Korea, a world-wide pandemic, a fast-moving climate crisis? These might work, at least for a while.
2. We come to our senses, and those who can't (mostly older) get replaced by those who can (mostly younger). This could be aided by a charismatic leader who is morally upright and altruistic, if our skepticism can allow such a person to exist.
3. We give up on the hopes of Lincoln and split up.
5
I wish Mr. Brooks would stop writing these painful articles, searching for some "greater America" or to addressing inner angst (if I'd indulged myself for decades with mythology about the Republican party, as David has, I'd have angst). They are self-indulgent and superficial puffery. The average American does not "devote" his/her life to an "experiment" or any abstraction, but to the meeting of day-to-day necessities. That average American has now been exploited by the biggest con artist and liar that has held the office of POTUS. Admit it and let's move on to solutions post this stain.
11
What an uplifting, inspiring piece, especially against the backdrop of current national events. Thank you, David, for this much needed message. You have made my day.
Mr. Brooks has become a romantic. A united America is a dream. We had our own civil war. Some of us thought our well being depended on the slavery of others. Some of us thought all people had the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They did not need slaves to help establish their income. Differences. Perspectives. There is greed. There is fear. And there is the ability to rise above those basic human responses. It is called empathy. And it doesn’t come automatically.
2
The E Pluribus Unum aspiration template may be laudable, admirable, but possible only when applied to similarly minded individuals. In the real world, similarly minded individuals exist within basically homogeneous cultures. Such a culture once existed in America. It no longer does. Throughout history a society comprised of devolved heterogeneous cultures has never existed/coexisted, succeeded. America would be the first. This is neither good nor bad. It's just the way nature operates. Keep me posted..
2
E pluribus unum with a question mark. An aspirational phrase, not a descriptive one. Unfortunately.
I would recommend to anyone who has the time and money, preferably when young, to travel the country.
5
Lincoln said that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
But he made no guarantees about government not of the people, not by the people, and not for the people.
1
Are we still a young country, groping for that "mythos" and the cultural skill to provide it? The will to pursue it?
I would say, No, the U.S. is one of the oldest governments in the world, and has surrendered its myth-making, myth-pursuing ability to commerce, finance, and the results of unfettered empowering of the sacred individual.
Walt Whitman reflected the contradictions of his era, and admitted it: He glorified the power and creativity of individuals, but the subtheme was community and common interest. Restraint of faction, restraint of greed, and the will and willingness to compromise (and he saw first-hand the social wreckage of their lack).
Are we a young country, with open fields of opportunity beckoning? Not at our age--when power and money have been concentrated in so few hands; when the structures and processes of governance have been twisted and rearranged for the benefit of those interests. This has developed such momentum that it's anachronistic to speak of governance as something that emanates from "the government"--democratic or no. The moneyed are so deeply burrowed into the crucial nodes and fulcrum-points of decision-making that restoring real, empowered governance, and building the foundational citizen knowledge on which it depends, is nearing impossibility. That makes the United States a very old, very corrupt, and unimaginative culture--one that is extremely unlikely to envision, much less effectively pursue, an enlightened mythos.
4
"The purpose of democracy is to allow the full flowering of the individual". This seems to exemplify the best of classical liberalism. Not to confused with progressivism where individuals need to be told what signs must be on local schools bathroom doors.
I wonder what Mr. Brooks would have said if Trump had commented on an event he went to by describing the people as ranchers, hispanics, African immigrants, and Oh yeah, those "drunken suburban housewives out for a night on the town." Could he be any more demeaning to women who raise their, children, go to work to help support their family, and create a caring and loving home for their family.
6
Doubtful the president knows who Walt Whitman was, let alone what he espoused. If it isn't presented to Trump in simple sentences on one page, he has no interest in reading it. Our president leads the nation through his daily Twitter feeds, most of it lies, dissembling and misdirection.
1
"America is a garden that grows the most horrific weeds and requires the most persistent and attentive gardeners." I thought after surviving the 60s and then Nixon, I could relax. Boy, was I wrong.
5
"Despite our differences, we devote our lives to the same experiment, the American experiment to draw people from around the world and to create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind."
Wrong. Rather "the experiment" had to do with self-government, independence, and "The Bill of Rights", concepts brought from Europe with the new settlers.
This notion Brooks promotes "to draw people from around the world" is a recent cultural Marxist thesis--open borders--has nothing to do with the "American experiment" but everything to do with the Sovietized narrative coming out of New York City's mass-media central and our public education system--to include the Maoist reeducation camps established in our universities over the last thirty years or so.
Nice try, Brooks.
3
I think that if I were “lost in that sea of varied humanity” at a rodeo, no matter what it’s size, I would wonder where the humanity is. Rodeos are entertainment based on a large dose of animal cruelty and abuse. Roping calves result in many broken bones and deaths; bulls are tormented by electric prods and other means to prepare them for the ring. I could go on.
Revellers of cruelty-based entertainments reveal the streak of cruelty that has characterized many Americans for most of American history as well as modern times: genocide, slavery, segregation, and decades-long indifference to the plight of those in poverty and without health care.
2
It is rather sad to juxtapose this tribute to the function of literature with the news that Trump is seeking to end all funding of the Endowment for the Humanities.
2
Brooks writes:
"Despite our differences, we devote our lives to the same experiment, the American experiment to draw people from around the world and to create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind."
The American experiment was never "to draw people from around the world." The American experiment was this:
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
There is nothing about people from around the world. In fact, there is a specific reference to the opposite: "our Posterity."
1
The unity that was maintained early in the history of this country was a result of nearly everyone being invested in the Judeo-Christian ethic. That led to people valuing others as deserving of being left alone, and life was not based in our big cities.
We had a government restricted to only its most essential duties until the 1900's. Loss that that proper relationship between the states and federal gov't cost us a lot and may end up doing away with our unity.
But the pre-eminence of the states in managing our freedoms and protections is both a unifying presence and a backup when the national unity comes into open question.
3
Thank you for your insight and wisdom, David Brooks.
American democracy is at a crisis point.
And in my long lifetime, I believe we have come to a crossing point:
We either defend Democracy with all our hearts, or we watch it crumble beneath our feet into a pile of deceit and deception.
Mr. Brooks has pointed to the very essence of what our experiment in government is about. We're not there and we haven't even begun to clearly identify where we're going. It's really still up to us. We can build and end all suffering or we can end humility. It's in our hands and there nothing guaranteed.
Thank you for an inspiring article. The flowering of individuals can be messy and unpleasant. I pray that we will learn to appreciate that messiness rather than trying to put everything into boxes that seem orderly, such as the box of making America great at the expense of the rest of the world, the box of making every man and woman heterosexual, the box of making every young person get a degree from a liberal arts college, etc., etc.
I am glad to see Mr. Brooks writing about faith in our nation, faith in ourselves as a people. I am more so pleased to see a conservative writer put away that trite old republican ditty; "Government is the Problem."
The greatest danger our country faces is over abiding cynicism. America continues to have the same challenges that grow out of our flawed human spirit. This country was born out of a dream of freedom and equality. We are destined to continue fighting for freedom and equality for longer than any one of us is going to be around. It has been and will continue to be a battle for the best of the human spirit. That is the complex, fraught gift of our Constitution. I continue to believe in it.
2
Wrong, Mr Brooks. Only someone with no solid concept of his/her self would get "lost in that sea of varied humanity" or think "What on earth holds this nation together?"
Someone who knows they are an individual with fundamental pre-government rights to life, liberty, property, and pursuit of happiness comes to that question. Funny, the declaration of those rights, the first incarnation of their exposition, is what created this nation. And they are what rational individuals - who refuse to be considered part of a "collective" - embrace and hold forth as the meaning and goal of this "experiment".
We are a REPUBLIC, not a democracy. The Founding Fathers knew the evils that democracies became: Rule of the Mob. And there is and should be no "common sense of mystical purpose" for that road is to religion or communism, both of which embraced a mystical purpose.
4
A republic - a representative democracy. Not an "aristocracy of wealth" as Thomas Jefferson said and shaped inheritance laws as Governer to avoid.
Communism and its sister progressivism deny the value of the individual, which explains Mr. Obama's insistence of ring together all the identity groups he could - basically, everyone who wasn't white, Christian, patriotic, or capitalist.
As far from communism as possible, Christianity values the individual above all and allows each person to have a reason to live a full life no matter how rich or poor they are.
3
What holds America together is television. Beyond that is just climbing rhetoric, which doesn't amount to a hill of beans. We have constitutional guarantees that are ignored. We The People have been put on perpetual ignore for years and years by our three branches of government. Would McConnell have held Senate hearings for a Supreme Court justice nominated by Clinton had she been elected when he refused to hold them for legitimately elected Obama? And then, people wonder why many Americans are reluctant to turn off their televisions and miss their favorite shows in order to vote for a bunch carnival barkers.
6
A perfect column to combat all of our time's darkness. Even better when read with this Wendell Berry poem in mind - maybe this is what the Civil War soldier fought to keep for future generations:
"The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."
2
Thank you for posting that, Sam
"Despite our differences, we devote our lives to the same experiment, the American experiment to draw people from around the world and to create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind."
Is that the model in which you have proportionately more people imprisoned than in any other democracy; in which racism is rampant; in which life expectancy is getting lower and poor people are dying or being bankrupted because they have no health insurance; in which infrastructure is decaying; the gap between rich and poor is widening; the education system turns out graduates with less knowledge than in many other democracies; in which religious bigotry allows discrimination against women and gays; in which gun violence and the murder rate are off the scale; in which politics is thoroughly corrupted by money and corporations buy and sell politicians of both parties.... I could go on but maybe you get my point that many people around the world do not see the USA as a model to aspire to.
5
All the more reason to build that wall - to protect people from coming by the millions to such a god-awful place. Surely you know better than they.
There is a difference between people who move because they want to go to a place and people who move because they want to leave a place.
1
Whitman lived through darker days than this and unlike the boring chorus of gloom we hear in these comments he kept alive and fresh his vital imagination of America. Why? Because he truly believed in liberty. He saw the endless resources of the individual talent let loose in this country. I too love rodeos because you can see glimpses of the vital frontier spirit there, which Whitman celebrates. I know when I mention the frontier there will be a further chorus of righteous descriptions of genocide, gunplay, environmental degradation, but try to get out of your cities every once in awhile and out of your infinitely repeated vocabulary of indignation. There would be no Broncos, quarterhorses, lassoed steers and other so-called abused animals if not for rodeos. I know liberals have endless wells of empathy, but maybe these animals actually like their lives. You never know, but Whitman might have appreciated Trump, although no lincoln, another fascinating American type. As mr. brooks points out, Whitman was not politically correct. It would go against his American grain.
3
.
It was right and good that America dismissed HRC and this Democratic party after they dismissed the blue collar workers and warriors of the country (coal miners, deplorables, etc). Like the Civil War soldiers Whitman cared for, they are the bedrock of the nation whose good works and good will the health of the nation depends. To turn power over to a group so lacking in understanding and humility … unthinkable.
Left-leaning readers, you may not be able to make it to a rodeo, but try watching a classic American western: “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” (1962). You may get a sense of the gratitude the new, civilized man (Jimmy Stewart) has for the hard-working, violence expert (John Wayne). This story is universal.
3
HRC actually campaigned on the only sensible plan for re-training workers who lost their jobs through automation and trade. Trump simply scapegoated immigrants and blamed it on Obama, neither of which has brought a single job back. In the future, consider what the snake oil salesman is selling before you vote for easy answers and slogans.
1
That is utterly inaccurate. Clinton and the Democratic party actually had solid plans that addressed blue collar workers. And by calling racist, xenophobic, and misogynists "warriors," you invalidate anything further you have to say.
3
Wow. This is magnificent piece by David Brooks. I am sorry that so many of the comments tear him apart, without addressing the brilliant ideas he brings forth from the genius and heart of Walt Whitman.
I hate to sound snobby, but the comments section doesn't seem to give this man a fair hearing, or to even understand the profundity of some his research and questioning. My father was a Lincoln scholar, who read Whitman, and it is a priviledge to hear some of Whitman's extraordinary essay, and to contemplate his faith in and admiration of common people.
I almost wish that the comments section had a 4th tab, after: All, Readers Picks and NYT Picks, there should be another, called Mostly in Praise, or, In Support. This 4th tab, would be especially usefull when reading quickly through the angry mob of comments for David Brooks, or for instance, Brett Stephens. I love Socrates the commentor, but he makes a fool of himself, when he suggests that Abe Lincoln would be shocked by the scoundrels that have taken charge of the government today. Lincoln was famous for so many things, joke telling, brilliance, humor, wrestling, and especially his humility and sadness over the behavior of his fellow citizens. I recommend all six volumns of the Carl Sandberg biography. Now, we should read Whitman.
x
David Lindsay Jr. is the author of "The Tay Son Rebellion, Historical Fiction of Eighteenth-century Vietnam," and blogs at TheTaySonRebellion.com and InconvenientNews.wordpress.com
2
NYT readers in general strike me as a highly informed, critical thinking bunch. That many find Brooks lacking in intellectual depth or find flaws with his arguments just perhaps reflects on the arguments themselves, and not on the readers.
3
First let me say that the "American experiment" is no longer young and until we quit living off our past "greatness" we will continue to drift away from any core principles we may once have had.
Secondly we need to finally turn and confront our darkest angels and admit to the worst of our crimes, starting with the theft of this continent from the ancient peoples who had held this land in trust for their own descendants for millennia. Next we need to prostrate ourselves before those from whom we have stolen their very lives and whose descendants we continue to treat in the most vile and inhuman ways. Christian missionaries are the righteous scourge of Earth and spread death and destruction wherever they go. We must confess to the crime of "manifest destiny" for the abject misery it brought to untold millions of innocent people.
Ultimately we will need to realize the humbling truth that we have embraced evil when we sold our national souls to the greed of predatory capitalism.
Come home America and let go of trying to own the world.
15
The full strength of American democracy is still waiting to be born? When will this pregnancy reach full term?
3
I very much like your comparison of our democracy to an ongoing experiment, but in my dealings with my friends on the right (and I do have friends on the right), I too often find that in their minds the experiment has concluded, the results are in, and any allusion to America's flaws or failures is inherently misguided.
The division is rather simple. Half of us gather facts and apply reason to solve problems. The other half listens to Fox News and rely upon their emotions.
8
United States is no more united. We are deeply divided and polarized. The word 'Tribal Politics' is very popular among the political pundits recently. The political leaders of one party do not talk to the leaders of another party. Bipartisan is a dirty word in politics. The toxic radio talk shows and some cable TV divided this nation so bitterly and now we are in a state of no return. The melting pot is melted. This division among ordinary people are not healthy and not good for our democracy. Why the country is divided into blue and red? It is like South Korea and North Korea.
Where does the power of art end? Walt Whitman's poetry, as discussed here, carries art's power forward when discussing "What Holds America Together." Nietzsche went further. He dismissed all limits when expressing the idea of "the world as a work of art giving birth to itself."
I remain unconvinced that we need a common mthos--but we do need to get better at tolerance for others. I am a bit unclear as to what "true democracy" might be.
Given Mr. Brooks' emphasis on "unity" and "unifying," one could perceive that these are not the same thing--the former is a state of being and the latter is a process.
I am not fond of definitional disputes, but there is a point to this. We have rarely displayed unity (maybe after Pearl Harbor, but that is not the usual state of affairs). The process of unifying can be remarkably bloody or politically tense, with substantive ups and downs, and no guarantee of success. That is what we continue to see in this nation, to include some uncomfortable and unfamiliar shocks from certain leaders.
3
David,
Yes, about Whitman. But he was no where near as comfortable with his vision of America's possibilities as you are. This is why he stressed a romantic vision, because he'd seen the worst. You may be looking, but you aren't seeing. Go for it. Enough with mild optimism. Walt had little of that, really. Re-read When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed. Trump would shoot Lincoln on 5th Ave because he thinks he could get away with it, and as for Jesus, were he to return....
No time for wimps, David.
2
I like Mr. Brooks, but he needs to name who the great divider is: President Trump. He sides with white nationalists, insults women, trashes the poor (though he says he's on their side, yeah, right), insults educated people, despises Latinos, has little regard for African Americans, and basically wakes up in the morning with a new Tweet to hate someone. I didn't feel this division with Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr., or Reagan. People certainly disagreed with each and every one of those presidents, but they didn't divide the country, and didn't make it their daily duty to divide the country. This all stems from one place and one person in America: The White House and Donald Trump.
3
Let's all pretend that Whitman has come back and been invited to watch and comment on a president who won the office (not the vote) by deft manipulation of the political process aided by criminals who colluded with a hostile foreign power and funded by depraved malefactors of great wealth. Can you iImagine his poems celebrating the prostration of the party of Lincoln as they attempt to win his favor by bootlicking praises and felonious legislation that enriches the wealthy while promising to savage assistance to the poor. Imagine!
4
Mr. Brooks-you are far, far more optimistic than I.
2
“...democracy is sometimes aided not by “the best men only, but sometimes more by those that provoke it — by the combats they arouse.”
Maybe Trump is doing democracy a favor. He’s like a viral infection that results in antibodies, protecting the body (democracy) from similar future infections.
You can’t catch the same cold virus twice. Assuming we survive Trump (we will), it will have been for the better, the furthering of “the experiment.”
1
I'm afraid this is just the usual blather from Brooks. Whatever it is that's supposed to be holding us together, whatever "experiment" it is we're supposed to be engaged in, is not working. The closest expression of that experiment I can think of is "Showbiz".
3
Nothing is holding America together any longer.
Progressives, liberals and other "Leftists" wanted to live in a pluralistic democracy.
"Conservatives" and other "Right-Wingers" demand a white supremacist corporate plutocracy.
The low information and disengaged civic sloths in the Muddled Middle have no ideology, no political values, and just want to be left alone to watch sports and "reality" shows.
The Founding Fathers feared democracy and carefully designed an elitist oligarchy. Madison, Hamilton et alia did not foresee that America's future plutocrats would be so selfishly greedy as to render themselves incapable of controlling their racists mobs, much less governing an entire nation.
The great experiment failed, largely due to racism, but also do to our morally debauched and treasonous modern Republican party.
7
What is dividing us is the self-regarding delusion that "leftists" are on the side of angels and "conservatives" are evil racists -
1
So beautifully written!
2
I can live with almost any assortment and combination of values, and we do, but I cannot live with one half of Congress and too many voters standing by while our flawed-but-awesome voting system gets pulled asunder by a hostile country and insiders. All for what? For power and profit. If we don't stand for that as a country, then we stand for nothing. We are in a wretched and dangerous moment. I hope we survive it.
4
Dear David, to begin, I must thank you profusely for enabling me to see the word "jeremiads" in your article before it appears in your Crossword, which I believe is your way of warning that it is coming. But really, isnt a "crossword" a suitable metaphor for your explanation of how so many can mix seemingly at random but in the end each line, each perspective, each race and gender actually come together to make sense, even when it seems impossible that it ever will? I believe that to keep that old "ennui" away the critical realization that nothing whatsoever is guaranteed, that we do not grow complacent in the face of longevity, and that it takes all of those crosses in the puzzle to insure that our Democratic social "experiment" succeeds and that our puzzle remains a living and dynamic one.
1
Mr. Brooks, for someone with your humanitarian stance to cavalierly reference going to a major rodeo wherein animals are known to be abused, mistreated and often not properly cared for is shameful. People are not the only creatures worthy of your humanitarian feelings.
United? You should see my feed from right-wing twitter. It's brutally ignorant, anti-scienct, anti-intellectual, and anti-anyone not just like them. They don't read Brooks, but they'd hate him too, with his Whitman references; and that's before we get to his efforts to ressurect that good old timey conservatism. I cannot count the times I've been asked to move to France or Canada, and I won't reprint the scabrous and obscene curses.
Brooks takes no responsibility; he barely recognizes this reality. He needs a good dose of right wing twitter to really understand what it is he and his power-crazed party have created.
4
Fair enough ... but don't expect the disenfranchised to be as sanguine as you and Whitman are
2
One way to combat our ills is to be more honest about our place in history, and our relative success as a society, than Mr. Brooks is able to be. American democracy has been a noble and productive experiment. But the jive about the "exceptionalism" of our national laboratory has to stop. The U.S. experiment left room (quite purposefully) for too much economic power to be held in too few hands . . . And our political democracy has inarguably suffered as a result. Several other nations' experiments have been more sophisticated, more moral -- they have taken what's good in American democracy and directly addressed it's economic oversights/brutality. (See Sweden, the Netherlands, Canada, Norway, etc.) Their populations flourish in ways that we should envy. You can spend as much time as you'd like identifying the problems and inadequacies of the experiments in those countries, and the demographic advantages they enjoy (if you're willing to ignore Canada); but you cannot deny one simple fact: they are just MORE DEMOCRATIC!
4
Nice try at nostalgia, Mr. Brooks.
What holds America together is being ripped to shreds by Steve Bannon and Robert Mercer.
3
A relatively small and modest column from Mr. Brooks, who normally over-reaches in his effort to divine an American spirit from the chaos and ignorance his Republican party has come to represent.
2
Well, congratulations David Brooks. You have made Walt Whitman see no evil, watching their pile of silver increase, a 21st century Republican. My hat is off to you.
2
If I understand the crux of your thesis -- that you've adopted from Whitman (to hide behind him, perhaps?) -- you're blaming the artistic and culture class for our current divide and NOT economic and social factors?
Are you completely detached from reality?
1
Free land , slave labor . The only people who suffered were the Blacks and the Indians . On such a foundation you reap what you sow (see comments).
And old Walt Whitman was too gay , poetic and intelligent to fit into today’s ramshackle America
3
How dare you write such tripe when our country is in a total state of distress. We have a POTUS who seems to not care one iota about the US government or 99% of it’s population.
Please, please, please Mr Brooks use your column to try to get our country going in the right direction.
3
Take your head out of the sand! Do you travel, and do you speak to individuals outside of your bubble? How can you not recognize the pervasive racism that has changed little in the past 60 years? Have you not heard the "n" word used frequently? Do you not witness massive community efforts to prevent the construction of mosques, or to deny the opportunity to construct an eruv? Wake up and begin working for change.
3
What cognitive dissonance I sense reading David Brooks' work. How can he write an article so apropos as this, yet in the next breath support the single greatest divisive operation in American history, the modern Republican Party--inheritors of the Confederacy, a tent full of racial and sexist aggressors?
2
To put it more simply than Brooks does, our unity requires shared values. Lately, for two decades at least, the trend line is not good, however optimistic as Brooks might be or Whitman might have been.
3
Nonsense. The days when America could enjoy the conceit that it is some kind of model for the rest of the world are long in the past. Now the US is exceptional for all the wrong reasons, in comparison to W Europe Americans have higher crime rates, poorer working conditions, worse health care and a less responsive government. The US constitution might once have been viewed as the forefront of political thought, but its flaws are now apparent and no new nation would copy it.
The challenge for the US is how to hit reset without a major catastrophe not looking back to tropes that are long outdated. The myth of American exceptionalism is truly dangerous both to the US and to the rest of the world.
6
Capitalism defines America today. Elections are totally controlled by by the billionaires of both parties. Media controlled by same billionaires. Democracy is dead replaced by crass economic Darwinism. Survival replaces optimism.
4
Our administration and a propaganda organization that pretends to be a news broadcaster both have as their main objective the destruction of the very concept of objective truth. A large portion of the electorate is open to manipulation with the result that Putin is effectively our president.
A nation gets the government it deserves and the United States as we knew it no longer exists.
“Democratic Vistas,” published in 1871. The purpose of democracy, Whitman wrote, is not wealth, or even equality; it is the full flowering of individuals. By dispersing responsibility to all adults, democracy “supplies a training school for making first class men.”
“Dispersing responsibility to ALL adults”. NOT to abdicate personal responsibility and surrender free will to a bureaucratic government. But exercising this responsibility and becoming “first class men” through diligence and persistence as a sovereign individual entity, living inter dependently, rather than as that of a subject to the whims of the mob.
2
Indeed, the fact that Americans such as you describe, Mr. Brooks, come together for a RODEO, where animals are routinely abused and tortured, says more about the "American experiment" than any platitude, and if Whitman was attuned to such ethical concerns back then, he should be spinning in his grave right now.
2
The Republican party has spent nigh on 50 years strategically destroying any institution, legislation or social movements that focus on our communal obligations as American citizens. They have exponentially done more harm to the ideals of America than any foreign despot or rival superpower ever could. We are now reaping what the right has sowed - deep divisions among groups that should have natural affinities, destruction of our most sacred public institutions, a black/white either/or way of looking at a world that is bathed in shades of grey. Yes, we need to rediscover all the facets of citizenship that Mr. Whitman opined about, but Republicans will fight any move in that direction using lies, racism, and any other wedges that they can exploit to divide us. Do you not realize what the agenda of your fellow "conservatives" is? Try reading Democracy in Chains and then tell me how your feel-good pablum about Mr. Whitman will ever be allowed to pass muster with the right.
3
AMEN. it takes a long time, hundreds of years, to iron out the wrinkles. thnx for the positive thought....
David; Your optimism is exhilarating. A 238 year gestation period that is currently defined by a nihilistic president, an ossified VP, a cynical, beholden Senate majority leader and a charlatan Speaker of the House. The Republican Congress is too petrified to challenge this tawdry leadership; students are killed and neither the President nor Congress even begin to challenge the vice in which they are ensnared by the NRA. This cast of characters and their enablers justifiably engenders deep pessimism. Yet you, like Whitman a century and a half back keep the torch of optimism. The fact that you had to travel to a Texas rodeo to capture the spark speaks volumes.
1
IMHO Mr. Brooks has finally lost it. The rise of Trump and the apparatchik filled Republican version of the communist party has tipped Brooks over the edge. Lately he has bemoaned the criticism of Trump supporters and chided the critics for honest appraisal of the believers in Trump. It appears Brooks is referring to them when he cautions against telling "groups that they are of no account". That maybe what Trump supporters hear, but that isn't what the rest of us are saying. We are saying wake up before you break the nation. Take responsibility for your bad decision. Make the Republican apparatchiks accountable. Trump supporters are making themselves to be "no account" by doubling down on the crazy. If you don't believe me listen to Joe diGenova, the latest Trump troll to surface from the swamp. Sorry, Mr. Brooks, but turning the other cheek doesn't work with Trump and the Trump crowd.
2
In my opinion, the first Amendment to our Constitution is what keeps democracy alive. As I grumble and groan at the ignorance and immature behavior of our current president, I remind myself that because I am a US citizen, I can complain - and loudly. Then, if we can protect the validity of our elections, I can vote.
2
What a fine piece you have written, brother David, very meaningful observations about our evolution. We are all experiments, physical, intellectual, spiritual. And you are a particularly remarkable endeavor, because you have learned how to reach us, transform us with your thoughts.
If you are ever in Montana, I'd be proud to buy you a beer.
"When there is no common sense of mystical purpose, you end up with alienation, division, distrust, “universal ennui,” a loss of faith in the American project."
It continues to amaze me how almost every single article Brooks writes manages to assert that a lack of shared spirituality or (in this case) "mystical purpose" is at the heart of our nation's problems. Really, it's just the opposite.
A "mystical purpose," by definition, is a one: (1) having a spiritual meaning or reality that is neither apparent to the senses NOR OBVIOUS TO THE INTELLIGENCE; or (2) involving or having the nature of an individual's direct SUBJECTIVE communion with God or ultimate reality. (Webster's). The only way for a nation to share such a "mystical purpose" or "spirituality" is if its entire population agrees to adopt a particular SUBJECTIVE reality instead of working to determine an agreed up OBJECTIVE system by which society should operate.
From DAY 1 of the Trump presidency, the subjective beliefs of Trump, his party and his base have been at absolute war with objective reality (from crowd size to weather to trade surpluses to conspiracy theories). But as Paul Ryan's hero (Ayn Rand) once wrote: "reality is the court of final appeal." Sharing in a "mystical" (synonymous with "mysterious" or "unintelligible") purpose means nothing except that we would all collectively suffer the same unpleasant fate in a universe that does not (and never will) care what we "believe."
2
An excellent response. Purpose in a democracy should be thoughtfully defined by secular needs arrived at by debate and discussion, not by the amorphous or ineffable concept called mysticism. Democracies and secularism are mutually reinforcing concepts, for they thrive in the soil of questioning minds ,not by affirming any belief based on unreason. Whatever comfort people want to derive from spirituality or mysticism should be left to them as individuals.
While we're waiting for the "full strength o American democracy to be born" why not bring sunlight and transparency into the system.
Skullduggery and democracy don't mix.
2
As Leonard Cohen sang: "Democracy is coming to the USA."
......and don't forget Langston Hughes's follow-up to Whitman with his poem:
I, too, Sing America.
2
America fought TWO wars (the Civil War and WWII) for BOTH survival and justice and yet hidden dark forces still lurk within itself.
1
OK, I'll bite. M. Brooks, it seems incongruous that you are now praising America's first hippie. His friend Waldo was our first transcendentalist.
And yet, you have spent your career carrying water for the feudalists who reign today. The republican party is probably history's greatest proponent of the feudal state. The kings of Britain and France have nothing on these autocrats.
When I read in your writings some push back against McConnell and Ryan and the sacred throne you and your ilk have put Reagan and reaganomics I will cease to hold your feet to the fire.
35 years after the New Deal America was humming right along; building a solid middle class with the government program know as the G.I. Bill, running a deficit to build American infrastructure and to rebuild Europe and Japan, and sending men to the moon.
35 years of reaganomics and we can't fill our potholes. While more wealth is hoarded by the enablers of the republican party than has ever existed on Earth before.
Sir, you have much to atone for.
3
David makes the common error of assuming American exceptionalism. Somehow we are a city on a hill for the rest of the world to admire. But as others have noted in these comments, America was built on the same greed, genocide, enslavement, manifest destiny, environmental rape, etc. that every other society was built on. We are all just humans after all.
5
The question is: can a unified country have as its components those who identify as Asian Americans, African Americans, Polish, Irish, Indigenous People, LGBTQ, etc? Can these ethnic/other subgroups participate without feeling like they will lose what makes their group special?
I think so. As a matter of fact i have an example that is very current:
Look at the various ethnicities represented by the USA Olympic team. Chloe Kim, Nathan Chen, Mikaela Shiffrin, M/A Shibutani, Mirai Nagasu, Adam Rippon etc. Am I cherry picking? Yes. But I challenge you to find another competing country that has this diversity.
I’m optimistic. We’re on the right track. We just need some course correcting. Look at our history. It’s full of course corrections.
1
As history in all lands unfolds, it is a land grab from indigenous peoples, along with exploitation, a country built on the backs of slaves. People flocked here from many places to homestead and make this a country of their dreams.
In the process, we have forgotten that our message is very mind bending. We hold out one hand to welcome the stranger, and the other in a fist to keep out those whose ethnicity, culture and hue of skin is not to our liking.
There are those who truly believe that we can be a stronger nation, a better nation when we are inclusive, that when we embrace the world it is to our advantage; let's face it, the world shrinks with each passing day. Jet travel started it, and how within a blink of an eye a conversation good or bad can be had with another nation anywhere in the world.
If we want to remain a leader in this world of many peoples, a Trump model is one to abhor and to get rid of, not to ever embrace again.
1
David - the great Democratization of our country is retreating behind gated communities. sky boxes, "executive" class and choice schools. The rodeo, the State Fair, the bleacher seats are too "déclassé". Entire generations are now being raised to avoid interaction with "the other" And we are not a better society for it.
A solution would be the establishment of a year of Community Service - for every graduating high school student - serving the elderly, helping in a school, driving an ambulance, cleaning the environment, building a park, serving in the military.
This was the life my parents knew - and the reason they were the "Greatest Generation". They built this great country - the one that our generation - the Baby Boomers - and our over coddled kids - is now looting.
3
Identity politics destroys us.
When in schools the concept of "melting pot" is dismissed as racist we see a political agenda whose object is odd, to say the least.
As many other nations have found, diversity is death.
1
We are an experiment that is not only young, but unprecedented. We cannot be discouraged; we must maintain hope.
1
The idea that we are all in this together and that, as Americans, we have a responsibility to each other is being crowded out by a near-religious faith in the wisdom and beneficence of the market. One major political party is dedicated to this creed, the other is far too influenced by it.
3
What you offer is mythology, which is important in keeping any nation or tribe together. However, we should not overlook the dangers of mythologizing. America has always been in conflict with itself. I challenge anyone to cite a time or place in which many groups were at odds with one another - often violently. It's been a great experiment in preserving the privileges of one group by convincing others that maintaining those privileges is a moral imperative. The current political and cultural know-nothingism is the fruit born from our history of genocide, slavery, and religious intolerance (puritanism, Calvinism, etc.) - which we have never truly grappled with.
1
There is terrible damage when groups are told they are of no account, and we need a unifying mythos to undo and prevent that damage. Part of that mythos needs to be cultural, but part of it has little to do with culture.
Through our culture, we can tell groups they are of no account or that they are not allowed to exist in public. But we also allow the market to tell individuals and groups that they are of no account because they are not needed by the economy or because they pose a loss for the economy. The culture then confirms the market's verdict; some people are makers, and some are takers with entitlements; the makers should be rewarded with tax cuts, and the resulting deficits should be dealt with by entitlement reform. But this cultural verdict merely confirms the real and underlying market one.
A robust and adequate safety net for the elderly, children, the sick and disabled, those with mental illness, and even for the feckless who cannot stop being their own worst enemy or just marching to a different drummer -- only such a safety net provides the real unifying mythos we seek. Without it, culture is empty and hypocritical, its grand sentiments riddled with excuses and nimbys and gestures that rescue a few but only the most attractively pitiable. To embrace everyone, our culture must support an economic reality that embraces everyone.
We can all aspire to being above average, but only half of us will make it, no matter how hard we all try.
4
Thanks for expanding beyond David's thoughts.
David;
Some history: In 1969 History Professor, C.K. Yearly, SUNY/Buffalo declared that the United States was two and maybe three countries. I was incredulous ...and naïve. The post 1969 GOP has sought to divide the United States every chance it got. "The Southern Strategy," The Religious and cultural wars including anti-abortion and anti-gay strategy, and the Anti-Obama strategy . In reality the GOP never believed it's own philosophies of pro-family, pro-morality and anti-deficit economics. Their only strategy was to oppose whatever the educated, technologically advanced, the open minded stood for.
Shameful.
7
O hope it is true, our democracy is still young and were are going through a growing pain. Although I appreciate the optimism of Mr. Brooks, I fear maybe the idea is fossilizing and dying, a senile democracy, where the political- wealthy powerful are using the tools of democracy to destroy it.
I do appreciate Mr. Brooks overall quest to articulate the social and cultural norms necessary for a just and prosperous democracy. Please keep on exploring and advancing the sort of virtues ethical leaders and citizens should adhere too. As I read your editorials, I think you are indeed making progress.
2
It is not what holds America together that should concern us, but what holds Americans apart. We have a democracy where voting is a wash because the parties are just versions of each other, and citizens have no involuntary contribution they must make that would earn them a seat at the national table to make demands. It may not be a popularly understood idea, in citizenship it's nutt'n for nutt'n, just like in every other endeavor.
Traditionally (from Roman times actually) citizens of modest income trade military participation for a social safety net, that relationship is currently lost because the wealthy buy rent a military. Traditionally the wealthy trade their wealth back to the citizenry as taxes (panem et circenses) so that the citizenry does not overthrow them, that too is a lost relationship.
There is a natural tension between the owners of a society and it's occupants, a low boil that is the energy of the polity. The owners keep the peace by giving the occupants a fair deal and in return they retain ownership. That's what holds a nation together, not some silly notion of marching hand in hand toward unity.
3
When all information is commoditized, more idealogical polarization results. We all become trapped in a constant feedback loop validating our most private hopes and fears. The "market" doesn't care whether Facebook is reasonably informative, just that it makes money. I think that's what happens when we put the profit motive before common sense and reason. See also: Health Care, Education, Guns, Justice System, Wars, and The Environment. And while I appreciate your optimism, I'm not currently seeing any light at the end of this tunnel.
1
Claptrap. And a sorry comment on the state of our so often praised preferred system of governance.
Soldiers fight, and die, David, for each other. Not for flags, not for lofty iideals, not for a cause, not for Freedom and Democracy, not for King and Country, but because they value one another, they are brothers (and susters) in arms. They share an experience all their own, even if they don't particularly like one another. The Esprit de corps the armed forces seek to promote so eagerly is nothing more than the remembrance of the sacrifices of the generations that preceded us.
Of yes, one other thing. The last word on the lips of any dying soldier, regardsles of country, origin or ideology is "Mother".
4
"Despite our differences, we devote our lives to the same experiment, the American experiment to draw people from around the world and to create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind."
This is typical of the unbelievable America arrogance and ignorance - the US has not been "a model for all humankind" for a long time. A case in point is argued in a parallel NYT editorial, "Fifteen Years Ago, America Destroyed My Country", which is just one of many, many example of how the US has been a destructive force around the world.
In the context of the Nuclear stand-off with North Korea, it is also worth remembering, that the US is the only country to have ever used Atomic Bombs, and against civilian populations at that.
And who could argue with a straight face that our current government, including not only the mad-man president Donald Trump, but also the feckless Congress, is a model of democratic governance, which other counties would want to emulate.
20
Brooks did not say that the US has been a model for all humankind. He said that should be our common goal.
An audacious, perhaps unrealistic goal, but this is not an example of American arrogance and ignorance.
1
The US nuked two cities to compare the effects of bombs made from uranium or plutonium.
Nice work David how you are able to see humanity in all things American.
I put rodeos in the same ballpark as bullfights. Maybe you can write something on Mark Twain, as they were both active about the same time.
4
Mr. Brooks is apparently so pained by the present state of political affairs in the USA that he avoids the subject entirely. That is understandable but, speaking for this reader, I find his essays strained in their attempt to avoid the present situation in our country. We are deeply divided as a nation as we were by the circumstances that led to the Civil War. That division is being shamefully exploited by a cunning demagogue who has not lifted a finger in 14 months in office to calm the passions that are boiling over but on the contrary to continue to feed the fear and hatred and ignorance that he exploited in the 2016 election.
Yes, we must come together again as Americans if our Grand Experiment is to continue. But we must come to our senses now and ask all leaders, including Mr. Brooks, to concentrate their energy and attention on meeting the clear and present danger that threatens us right now.
8
"Last week I went to Houston to see the rodeo." What a great opening line for a novel. Sort of like the first line in The Stranger by Camus, "My mother died today. Or was it yesterday."
2
Clearly, it's David's first rodeo. (hardly to be compared to camus)
If we are an experiment, then like any experiment, data should be the foundation for decision making. We have seen enough of data points from the current Republican demagogues, and should learn that this data does not fit the positive curve we want to create.
Drop the data.
QED
2
History is an uncontrolled experiment.
It's good to be reminded that an intelligent and patriotic observer almost 150 years ago saw some of the same failings and feared some of the same threats as many of us do today, and yet we are still here. If I had to name just one of the threats it would be attacks on the very concept of "the common good" and the unwillingness to sacrifice anything for it. Military service seems to be the only sacrificial service still honored, although often in words and monuments only. Business leaders will not sacrifice a percent of profits to raise wages that no one can support a family on. Middle- and high-income taxpayers demand to pay less to maintain public services, much less give a leg up to those struggling below them. Our governments are assailed for trying to level the playing field in any way. We have forgotten or chosen to ignore how much our own achievements, affluence and security depend on other people's support and sacrifice, including our government. We think we did it all ourselves and, therefore, anybody else can do the same. Unless we admit our interdependence and are truly grateful, nothing good will come.
5
If we're being held together mainly by a taste for cheap booze in excess, hay, dust, and animals being abused, we're in more trouble than the headlines show.
We haven't embraced the other. Walt Whitman led the life of a gifted gay poet, often heartbroken, with a legacy of magic words embraced by a country that doesn't embrace who he was in his most personal work.
We're waiting, too, Mr. Brooks. Waiting for the GOP and the religious right to share the values of inclusion, compassion, fair play, and responsibility for our brothers' and sisters' well-being. We don't mind getting a little dirty in the process, but it's been a long wait.
7
Whitman still inspires. Gov. makes mistakes ( forced busing, some regulations, etc.) but overall it helps (infrastructure, university research, Medicare, etc.). We need to see The good that brings us together especially in this dangerous moment of anger & division. Perhaps improved civic education in grade k-12 can help.
3
I believe that what unites us all as Americans is a shared belief in equality and in the future; anyone who wants to come here, work, and share that future together, should be welcome. Trump and his ilk want to change all that, and turn us into a state you can only belong to by dint of "blood or soil." Never mind that that would mean only Native Americans could qualify (which might be very belated justice), and all the Drumpfs, and Bannons, and Pences would have to go back where THEY came from -- but that would not be the country our founders envisioned. We are either a nation about the future, or about the past. I choose the future.
2
Judy, you seem to be unaware of Americans whom Hillary called "deplorables". These are our citizens and legal residents who have to compete with a continuing flood of undocumented workers and their families for jobs and affordable housing. (Over 40,000 were caught trying to cross the southern border just in January. No one knows how many were able to get across undetected.) Our economy has dramatically changed. We simply do not have enough jobs for our own citizens and legal residents, let alone for the excess populations of undereducated, unskilled people from elsewhere.
If it was your children whose classes were over-crowded with the undocumented and whose schools had to give an inordinate amount of time and resources to try to teach English to the undocumented and bring them up to grade level, I suspect you’d be singing a different tune.
If you or your partner had no more than a high school diploma (which describes 2/3’s of our population), and you had to compete with the undocumented to get one of the few jobs remaining, after many of the jobs you could have filled were either out-sourced or turned over to robots, then you would be wondering why our government was allowing the undocumented to remain here.
But you, Judy, seem to be disregarding the circumstances of a large number of our fellow Americans as if they are of “no account”. And, that is why they voted for Trump.
I am glad you are writing. I sometimes agree and sometimes disagree, but your columns are valuable and I'm always glad when there is a new one there to read. From what I've seen, most commenters on your columns want either to fight back or to redirect your column toward some other issue or person or party or point. No doubt there's value in that, and that's why the opportunity to commend exists, but I thought there might also be value in saying that I'm glad you're there and I'm glad you write.
4
Whitman's vision of America is rooted in Lincoln's vision of America, which is expressed so memorably in The Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural Address that they are inscribed in stone at the Lincoln Memorial. "Democratic Vistas" is a love-essay, as Whitman's threnody for Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd," is a love-poem. According to St. Augustine, "A society is a multitude of rational creatures associated in a common agreement over the objects of their love." The main objects of our love are articulated in the first sentence of The Gettysburg Address: "[ . . . ] a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." These are the ideals we love and that bind us together. Lincoln does not mention, although Whitman does, the objects of our lust, which are wealth and power, both objects democratically and freely available to any and all. The neo-feudalism created by devotion to the objects of our lust has brought us inevitably to our present situation of a satyr and Mammon-worshipper in the White House. The mythos of freedom and equality has been supplanted by the mythos of individualism, and Whitman's idealism has been supplanted by Ayn Rand's "objectivism." Rand's zealous opposition to the Soviet system of her birth led her to espouse its dialectical opposite: in place of radical collectivism she posed radical individualism. Her new mythos is what we suffer from now.
3
Yeah, but where is our credibility when we kill many thousands of people in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc.? So much for our noble experiment! (not to mention electing our unethical President!)
2
In column after column David Brooks laments and lays our mutual national woes on insufferable political 'elites' by which he means the so called, blue state elite and its divide with the red state maw of middle America. David Brooks is a Republican through and through. Pay close attention to this typical Brooks column and we find Brooks equating the new red state populism of Trumpism with a "...healthy rudeness, what we would call the politically incorrect." Brooks has never called out the GOP for its inherent Southern strategy and its institutional racism. Rather and more recently he masquerades the GOP as being merelythe party of the politically incorrect.
Trumpism is a breath of fresh air to David Brooks.
7
"Despite our differences, we devote our lives to the same experiment, the American experiment to draw people from around the world and to create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind."
David Brooks has been smokin' that funny stuff again. Or he's just on the verge of declaring he is no longer a Republican, and a "conservative" one at that.
Really.
3
Buongiorno David, all democracies are ever reaching. Ciao! Roberto
Nothing. To misquote the great Abraham Lincoln "The Rebels are no longer our country men." Please let the Confederacy leave.
5
FDR delivered a blow to out-of-control capitalism by cutting the robber barons to size by enormously increasing the progressive tax, which created four decades of widespread prosperity and egalitarianism. The robber barons moved from very large mansions to smaller houses.
Reagan dismantled the egalitarian regime. Plutocrats came thundering back. Most of the wealth and the means of production moved to the oligarchs or to large corporations, some so large as to become multinational.
The labor unions were decimated. College tuition rose enormously. Government, because of inadequate tax revenues, ran on borrowed money, creating massive national debt. Income and wealth inequality increased dramatically.
Now comes Trump who cuts taxes even further. The inevitable result will be an acceleration of already high income and wealth inequality, further rise of plutocracy, further addition to the national debt, further increase in unaffordability of college education -- for the pipe dream that tax cuts create more jobs. No, tax cuts just make rich people richer without creating any new jobs.
A new paradigm is needed. Capitalism needs to be managed in a way that it produces widespread prosperity, instead of immense wealth for a few.
The nation must expand prosperity to all. This can be done by raising the progressive tax by providing affordable healthcare and college education to all, by reducing executive compensation, and by raising wages of employees at the lower level.
10
You find out what a people are made-of Not during good times, but when the system is under pressure. Our history is replete with both signal successes and abject failures in that regard. The American Experiment is under real pressure right now.
This year's actions-by-all-of-us will determine what we're made-of. Our republic - can we keep it? Only if we act decisively to defend it.
6
These empty paeans to a lost America that Brooks is wont to write these days won't ever ring true until he acknowledges his place and his party's place in America's fall from grace under Trump and the Vichy republicans.
7
"drunken suburban housewives out for a night on the town."
Try again during deer season...!!!
1
Were Mr. Brooks to ask most Americans today what Leaves of Grass is all about, a majority probably would reply "pot". Getting a high to self-medicate away a growing national psychosis. To have fun while Rome burns again.
2
Eloquent.
2
Pathetic. The anti-Whitmanists are in control in large part because YOU, David Brooks, and your ilk have spoken out for decades against Whitman. And you continue to do so, this time avoiding the strong condemnation that is required in this day and age.
5
Isn’t David Brooks preaching to the choir here? Shouldn’t he be offering his services to Fox “News”? How receptive would that audience be to this sermon?
3
Well said.
O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
-- Langston Hughes, 1935.
4
"...rural ranchers, Latino families, African immigrants, drunken suburban housewives out for a night on the town." Is that supposed to be cute, taking a stupid swipe at 'drunken' housewives...how about just housewives as I'm sure there were plenty of drunken males. Diversity exists in many contexts. You could have picked one more closely representative to make your argument.
1
As if they were the only drunks at the rodeo.
1
David, David, you have abandoned the Oxford comma. And not to good effect.
3
I do believe in the fundamental goodness and honor and courage of the American people. However we have set ourselves a huge task to recover from a grave error: 60 million of us voted to make an obvious refractory liar, sociopath, racist, sex offender and appallingly ignorant man our President.
I hope and pray that we have the honor and courage to do so.
3
Yes, but then there's Trump and this:
“The American people, taking one with another, constitute the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages.”
--- H.L. Mencken, “On Being An American,” 1922.
5
It's good that Mr. Brooks can go somewhere where absolutely nobody recognizes him, so that he can think such deep thoughts.
2
Do we really need a pompous, sanctimonious bore like Walt Whitman to tell us what a great country we live in?
1
I wonder how many of the 100's of thousands who visit the Houston rodeo are able to deduct their costs as a "business expense" resulting from one sentence in the NYT.
2
the US is contaminated with superstitious religion that justifies naked greed. how do you fix that?
4
I see, Mr. Brooks, your sloppy sentimentality, your grandiosity continue unabated in pursuit of the ongoing myth that one can espouse the inequities you have so blithely championed throughout your career by pretending they constitute not only the morally right path, but the "American way." A rodeo indeed. That's rich.
2
Nice try Mr. Brooks. You should be sending this material to the Republican congress you so ardently support.
Sorry pal, but this seems like a cover job to me.
1
Mr. Brooks, why on earth couldn't you say, "drunken suburbanites" instead of "drunken suburban housewives"? The insidious anti-woman attitude strikes again. Shame. FYI, I have lived in suburban neighborhoods and did not perceive a gender difference in drunken inhabitants.
4
Let's not idealize the homoerotic genius Walt Whitman too unrealistically. Although he was egalitarian in his poetry he was racist in his prose. After the Civil War he feared that Black men would take the jobs of White men. Something which he considered to be wrong and a fear which still seems prevalent today. And which may have something to do with why, according to the NYT, a Black man today has as much chance of hearing back from a job interview as a White man who has just been released from prison. Unity indeed.
1
"...in order to form a more perfect Union."
...
I know that one word "Union" is most hated by the Conservative GOP...but realize that every person in America is a Union Member of the USA. And Union Members - that is "Buddies", a word unknown to the rich elite, and Buddies stick together through thick and thin. They laugh together and they cry together. And unlike the richbich Conservative GOP they do not hate the newcomer but rather try to draw him into the club and teach him the way of good membership.
....
We simply have too many people that do not think of themselves as "Buddies" but rather see themselves a "one apart and above"...."I own a Lexus and he drives a Chevy" and that to them makes all the difference until a calamity strikes and they find out they really do not have any real "Buddies"...just a few Sunshine Patriots ready to desert them at the first sound of the cannons.
...
So Sad, Too Bad...Bye-Bye Miss American Pie....Bye-Bye
You keep perpetuating the myths about the US. Do you know anything about the reality of this country's history?
4
It's coming through a hole in the air
From those nights in Tiananmen Square
It's coming from the feel
That this ain't exactly real
Or it's real, but it ain't exactly there
From the wars against disorder
From the sirens night and day
From the fires of the homeless
From the ashes of the gay
Democracy is coming to the USA.
You write, "And above all, he pointed out that the American experiment is young. It is just getting started." The word "experiment" is being replaced with "destruction." Trump is making a wasteland of America, its principals, its traditions and foremost, its honor. We are under the leadership of an ignorant and uncaring fool and nothing more.
;
1
Someone -- David Brooks, perhaps -- should follow up this piece with one about Melville.
Ahab's on the quarterdeck of this ship of state today.
Melville saw it coming.
Brooks once again writes like a toddler attempting to use a hammer to plunder a plastic triangle into a circle. America is under siege. The values of Americans are being suffocated. You can live in a mythical mist of "democracy" , but you are simply opening the gates for all the destructive societies that people fled and welcoming their philosophy to America. Environmental destruction and over population being the primary poison. Pollyanna was written over 100 years ago. That is not a young country.
I marvel that your long expositions of the obvious so often top the list of reader picks. Seems fishy to me, but in any case, why keep citing Trump's boo-boos day after day like the rest of the media?
Isn't any American journalist willing to note the cause, Citizens United?
20 days work accomplished in a week. Don't mess with Texas.
Once again, David Brooks sees America's past through rose-colored glasses. I think waxing poetic about the time of Whitman without a mention of the institutional racism driving our economy and forming the social principles of our society in the nineteenth century is at best irresponsible and at worst shamefully ignorant. What is wrong with you, NYTimes? It seems useless to honor Ida B. Wells posthumously with an obituary or a podcast if your opinion section is going to continue to lionize the same white men over and over.
2
Obfuscation divides America.
Where does "pursuit of happiness" fit in David Brook's priorities?
1
David Brooks now, year in and year out, churns out these inspirational pieces. Today he cites Walt Whitman. What would Walt have thought of Brooks three decades long rallying for the GOP, starting with Reagan?
The 1980's kind of tore this country apart for the long run. W Bush and his fraudulent war finished the job, along with his illegal "installation" by SCOTUS in 2000. Really David. as one gay Walter who might speak for the gay Walt you wax on about, you are full of duplicity and dishonor. A fraud, actually.
2
In 1871, America was still largely populated by the English, with their mores and politics. (See 'Democracy in America' by Tocqueville). Then came the Great Immigration from 1880 to 1918, during which millions of migrants, mostly from eastern and southern Europe, came to the United States. This cheap source of labor gave rise to the Guilded Age, which provided great impetus to "having certain portions of the people set off from the rest by a line drawn — they not privileged as others, but degraded, humiliated, made of no account.” The Guilded Age also provoked the 'Age of Reform' or the 'Progressive Movement' that split the Republican Party, between William Taft (Big Business) and Teddy Roosevelt (Progressive), and eventually led to the Progressive Republicans joining the Democratic Party, first under Woodrow Wilson, then under Franklin Roosevelt. Then under Harry Truman, who stood up for Civil RIghts, the Democratic Party split and the Sourthern Democrats eventually joined the Republican Party. And this is the alignment we have today. A split between the Progressives or Liberals and the Conservatives, consisting of a coalition of Big Business and Racists.
Whatever Walt Whitman had to say is ancient history
, and the great separation of Americans by income.
Always good to see Brooks's affirming comments about democracy and our American experiment, laced with his abiding optimism. Go Mr. Brooks!
1
I often wonder what certain figures from the past would think or say about America today? I feel that they'd cry out in unison that we have failed.
Humans are not allowed to reach their full potential or 'flowering' anymore.
Our fields are trampled and littered with dead and crippled bodies and minds.
I for one no longer believe in America or Democracy. This 'experiment' has ended, very badly for most.
2
Unfortunately, most people living in the USA are doing so by accident of birth. We were not 'drawn' to America, we were just born here. There is no nobility of thought within us by virtue of contemplation of the values of democracy. Too many of us, having been born on the third base of global peace and prosperity, think we hit a triple. And thus we hold up foam fingers to the world and shout 'We're number one!' like we had anything to do with it. American exceptionalism is a dying trope of the 20th century, and we certainly proved that in November of 2016.
12
I admire Mr. Brooks' ability to ignore the bloody obvious, but I don't really see how he feels this kind of reflection will help any of us survive the fact that our nation has been sold to the highest bidders, and is now fully controlled by those who value profits over democracy and civilized behavior.
5
What used to hold America together was respect for facts and truth. Other countries, we said, would blindly follow their monarchs into quagmires based on lies, but not us.
"Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe." - Thomas Jefferson.
Now that a substantial minority of American citizens are openly contemptuous of facts and truth, I don't know if anything holds America together.
6
A country that bases it's values on the rule of law, and the ideas of equality for all its citizens will not survive long when laws are seen to be broken with impunity by the ruling classes, minorities are denied due process and there is no proper redress for corruption in government and politicians who kowtow to the highest bidder thanks to Citizen's United. That is our country today. What unites many of us now is abhorrence at the state of the Republic...but not enough of us and not the "elected" officials responsible for good governance. The mid-term elections (if we can survive till then) offer some hope. If not, history is replete with the answers to such imbalance.
3
“Of all dangers to a nation, as things exist in our day, there can be no greater one than having certain portions of the people set off from the rest by a line drawn — they not privileged as others, but degraded, humiliated, made of no account.”
Most readers of this newspaper are unaware that 40% of American children are being born out-of-wedlock, and that the chances are that their parents will have “split up” by the time they turn 5 and start kindergarten. The educated and economically secure of this country have little idea of what it is like to grow up in a single-parent household in which your mother is always trying so hard to make “ends meet” that she has little time to nurture you.
The official unemployment figure is low because it does not count the tens of thousands who have been out-of-work for so long that they have become too discouraged to keep looking for a job. Nor does it count the under-employed who need to work more hours than they have been assigned or who are qualified for higher paying jobs. Most of the formerly well-paying jobs that used to employ much of our population have been out-sourced, turned over to hi-tech, or given to undocumented workers. There are so many undocumented workers for the few remaining jobs that wages are depressed.
Women will have children with unemployed, underemployed, and poorly paid men, but they will not marry them. Thus, 40% of our children are growing up without their fathers.
3
Interesting that the only female subcategory Mr. Brooks mentions - right out of the gate, as they say at the rodeo - are "drunken suburban housewives." Some of them may have been urban housewives. Some of them may have been suburbanites working double shifts. I bet at least a few were sober.
3
I see many of the most cherished principles of our experiment being trashed.
Rule of law and its equal application is being replaced by rule of sad stories. Here illegally? Wait- do you have a sad story? OK- ignore the law.
The basic rights and responsibilities of citizenship are being abandoned. Anyone with enough gumption to sneak into this country illegally now has an army of advocates prepared to fight tooth and nail to give them citizenship.
And an entire segment of our population is being vilified based solely on their race and gender. Instead of being viewed as individuals these people are just their race and gender- all assumed to be the undeserved recipients of 'privilege.' A destructive and hateful form of racism.
A meritorious society is slowly being turned into a quota society. Placement is no longer based on experience, skill and talent it is based on other criteria- gender, sexual orientation, race, socio-economic conditions, etc.
We spend ever greater proportions of our limited resources on the worst in our society. Criminals. The violent. 'Students' who care nothing about learning and who disrupt the chances for other students to learn.
What will hold America together? When citizens stop hurting each other and start working together. When we all agree that citizens count more than foreigners. When we all agree that we have got to start prioritizing our people.
2
See, the thing is, you think you and yours are the ONLY "our people". In fact, the human reality as enshrined in the Constitution, distinct from right-wing scapegoating, is that all human beings are "created equal, endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights".
You fail to see that in fact ALL humans are "our people". And that failure, that selfishness and myopia, that aggressive defensiveness, is itself the failure -- individual and collective -- that will end the experiment in self-goverance we have been struggling with for 241 years.
Whatever comes next won't be good for "our people".
1
WillT26 has a very selective notion of what 'the rule of law,' conveniently relying on it only when it is an instrument for the preservation of privilege; and rejecting it when it is an instrument for protection of the weak. 'Law' is much more than a document authorizing residence on this side of an artificial line in the sand.
He also seems to forget that every one of us is an immigrant, or an 'anchor baby' spawned by an immigrant; that most of our immigrant ancestors came here when 'legal' meant you showed up at a port of entry and put your name in a ledger book.
That's not ancient history... the vast waves of immigration to this country began just about 150 years ago. He also forgets that until quite recently, many towns in the Midwest were ethnic immigrant enclaves - towns where most residents were Swedes or Germans, and where the language most often heard and seen in the local newspaper was not English at all.
Nativism, nationalism and 'strong borders' are anachronisms... artifacts of a time when humans did not freely travel, trade and communicate as they do today. Race and racism also will become artifacts, assuming we do not destroy the planet before that day comes. 'Diversity' eventually fades away as diverse races and cultures mix. Not only will 'whites' cease to be a majority in America - the distinctions among races and nationalities will likely blur and become a distant memory because we are one species and we interbreed.
WillT26 is a dinosaur.
1
@TS,
My people are citizens of the United States. I do not support the idea that all human beings are American and subject to the rights attached to citizenship.
No country ever, in the history of our species, has operated the way you suggest. No country ever will.
We have plenty to do here- within our own borders. We have plenty of people to help- within our own borders.
We are not responsible for the world.
Demagogues and incompetents in government, business, and other sectors may foster this "full-flowering of individuals" by reminding citizens what it means to be "freedom's athletes." Look at the activism, the political and social involvement, and the citizen energy Trump's presidency has generated. As noted by Whitman, democracy may be aided by "those that provoke it." And let's be real, who has provoked us more recently than Donald Trump. Our reaction to him, his negative attitudes, and his destructive policies may be his true contribution America by re-energizing citizens and the country. How ironic, but also how American, because it is an American trait to rise up, to re-invent, and to create good from the bad.
Sometimes it is just hard to take Brooks seriously. Here is a guy who cheered for a war in Iraq that most of us now regard as a crime, not just a mistake. Yet when his own son had to take sides, he joined the Israeli army, not the American. I suppose that is better than sitting it all out in comfort, but still it gives pause to those who wonder whose side he is on.
Oh David.... the MYTH that groups were told "they are of no account"....
By whom ? The exaggerators, that's who !
Our crisis today is a moral one.... In spite of the flaws of most established religions, they provided a compass that unified us in the SEARCH FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS....
But no more.... And so the very concept of 'truth' is debased, along with the idea of a commonwealth. So, Fox, and a variety of debasing forms of entertainment fill the void. The result? We are dumber, more callous, more greedy, and more of us see ourselves as victims, which energizes our anti-social instincts even further....
It's a long road back.... and maybe the vulgarly heinous stumpy was just what we needed....
One can only hope.
2
You are right. The challenge before our nation today is to reject Traitor Trump, regardless of his wealth, regardless of his entertainment value, regardless of his party affiliation, and come together as a majority of individuals in that rejection.
2
Yes, and his love for that brown-faced western man, Abraham Lincoln, our first Martyr Chief, whose very being is the mythos we now need.
First, Walt Whitman would have been first to agree with our good friend John Locke -- that however much ecstasy and culture and creativity we wish for the American spirit, none of that can truly happen in any medium but one made of reasonable men. The Constitution -- along with the landscape of a healthy society -- depend upon it. That reason at the heart of our Democracy, beneath all the blackness of our politics in any era, is currently under assault. Trump and the anti-intellectual, neo-flatearthers that make up his base aren't just a fad -- they are the bane of democratic, civilized society. Walt Whitman would have torn these guys a set of new ones for the lasting damage they're doing in every direction, on every level.
3
And this is always worth remembering...(the greatest synopsis of the basic responsibility of being a citizen and of the things every citizen voter should be asking every politician, businessman, etc., everyday. This is applicable to almost every story in the news today.)
Five Questions for the Powerful:
"WHAT POWER HAVE YOU GOT?
WHERE DID YOU GET IT FROM?
IN WHOSE INTERESTS DO YOU EXERCISE IT?
TO WHOM ARE YOU ACCOUNTABLE?
HOW CAN WE GET RID OF YOU?"
Tony Benn
1
Such drivel. Brooks keeps avoiding seeing what really goes on in this country- a lack of true societal concern at so many levels-minorities, women, folks of the "wrong" religion. We are NOT new at this-we have been at this longer than any other country and we should be showing the way, not being behind in recognizing everything that is important.
I always enjoy David Brooks columns but I think the good democracy he speaks of is in the distant future. The government that the founding fathers tried to create as never materialized.
The history of the United States is one where evil has always prevailed, slavery, civil war,then withdrawal from world affairs, reluctantly entering ww1 and ww2.
Iraq, and then the election of evil people like Trump and Ryan and McConnell.
When Obama was elected the Republican party led by Ryan And MacConnell deliberately set out to destroy his presidency to ensure a black man would never be elected again.
You could never hold the USA as model for any country to follow.
1
Sometimes people like David Brooks write as if they lived on another planet. To many of us it seems like What's Holding America Together right now is having a fascist wannabe and shared enemy in the White House, and the fact that if we didn't do today what we did yesterday, we'd all be homeless by the end of the month. With most of us earning the same or less wages that we earned 40 years ago, and paying sky-high rents, health insurance costs, and commuting costs to wealthy people who enjoy nothing more than counting the money they take from average people each and every day, it's amazing America is holding together at all now (and I'm not sure it is, actually). With trains that run late more than 40% of the time, to bridges that collapse and kill people, school kids getting shot several times a year and being sexually molested by the religious people who are supposed to guide them, a President who boasts about lying on camera, anti-abortion politicians who advocate abortion to their mistresses, fiscal conservatives who pass legislation that guarantees we'll be a debtor nation until most of us pass away--Americans are just trying to survive right now. It's hard to stay together when you're just trying to catch your breath--and apparently this is the way the powers-that-be want it to be. David, get the first shuttle back to Earth so you can see what's really happening in the US.
1
From the stump of the arm, the amputated hand,
I undo the clotted lint, remove the slough, wash off the matter
and blood,
Back on his pillow the soldier bends with curv'd neck and side-
falling head,
His eyes are closed, his face is pale, he dares not look on the
bloody stump,
And has not yet look'd on it.
There’s a little Whitman for you, David.
Read it, and stop pontificating, because in fact glorious patriotic empty nonsense, like your column, was abhorrent to Walt Whitman.
Were all these boys in the Civil War glad to see their legs amputated for the sake of the great American democratic experiment? No. Remember: there were no effective anesthetics. The doctors who cut off rotting limbs on the outskirts of the battleground used saws. And plenty of these boys and men were forced to join the war. They weren’t marching for a cause.
Read harder, and don’t ever use Walt Whitman’s poetry again to decorate your cheery nationalistic sermons. Thank you.
1
Reading is an antidote to insomnia, and so I am here. Reading this article is soothing, having just finished thoughts on the opposite end of the continuum (cross-reference to the craven ... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/19/opinion/trump-cambridge-analytica-fac.... Thank you, David Brooks, for your thoughts.
What a noble piece of writing! It lifts us out of the mire of current events.
1
One thing that kept us immigrants or poor people together with the rich, was the idea that even if we had a tough life, our children would have a better life. As my dad said when I asked why he never fudged on his taxes, "If I don't pay them, who will?" Meaning to pay for schools, and the army, and roads etc. A far cry from those at the top boasting of their intelligence in not paying taxes, saying they'll fix loopholes that benefit them, and then not doing it. When I see that, I am against those kinds of rich people, the kind who take advantage so much.
1
"The fact is that the present tide of prosperity has risen so high that it has overflow'd all barriers, and has fill'd up the back-waters, and establish'd something like an approach to uniform success."
The Whitman essay is a nightmare of such self-serving, Panglossian hyperbole.
Perhaps. But perhaps Mr. Brooks and the rest of us, as another great American writer may have thought, are just beating on against the current, to be borne back ceaslessly into the past. Believing in this thing that, more than ever, seems to be receding before us, does not mean that our beliefs will bring it closer. Seeing the great promise of a country that, two decades ago, appeared much closer Madisonian ideals of balanced interests become undone by those who either have no conception of those ideals or do not share a common belief in the America that Brooks writes about gives me no confidence that this is any exhilarating adventure. Or, if it is, those who do not share that common belief need to be sent as far away from public life as they rest of us can send them.
What holds America together? Professional wrestling, cold beer, honkytonk music, and shameless characters who provide endless hours of entertainment as the swamp in Washington grows. Hey, ain’t America great!
1
Our current president, more than anyone else, needs to read this article.
I used to believe we were all bound together by a respect for, if not worship of, personal freedom. The tragedy of this country is that you can give a person as much freedom as they desire, but you can't always instill within them the wisdom, maturity, and compassion to exercise those freedoms responsibly.
We have failed in so many ways on that latter account that it should come as no surprise that we're in this predicament now. And yet we still cannot shake the shock of it.
How did our neighbors, in many cases our own family members, come to hold us in such contempt that they would write off the intervention of a foreign power over the concerns of their own friends and family? What did we do to them that could have merited this contempt? We did not shut down their factories or drive their children away. We did not flood their streets with drugs or take their jobs, however much they may wish to burden us with that onus. However much we fought with them over poltiics, at the end of the day we rarely stopped loving them, caring for them, or at the very least showing them the respect they merited as fellow citizens. That is one hard truth that I will never be able to reconcile in my heart; that people we knew and trusted since childhood could turn on us so quickly.
I'm beginning to understand now how my grandparents felt when they left Cuba.
5
It's not our artists, poets, and musicians who are detached from the "nitty-gritty American experience" nowadays. It is Wall Street and the multinational corporations that more and more look like they are running the show, to the detriment of the rest of us. And they hide behind the cover of 'individual freedom,' a meaningless concept when the economic deck is in reality stacked so very badly against most people in this country. Until we address issues like the problems created by Citizens United, our individual efforts will not be enough to cure this ailing country.
2
What once held us together was a shared vision of freedom and liberty. Those were the guiding principles of our exquisitely artful Constitution. Being a country of humans, we have never been the "perfect union" to which we aspired, but belief in our founding principles provided a unifying firmament.
Globalization has made this a much more difficult world. The global economy cannot grow fast enough to provide the desired level of prosperity for everyone who wants it, hence the competitive landscape we see today. The resulting "scarcity" challenges our belief in freedom and liberty. And for many of our citizens -- both rich and poor -- the solution is to use government to impose an artificial "fairness" suited to our needs or favorable to our desires.
Constitutionally, our government was never designed to perform that function, and when it attempts to do so conflict and controversy are inevitable. Instead of freedom and liberty, many of our citizens want government to invent new rights, to mandate norms they favor, to re-balance economic relationships and to redistribute wealth -- all driven by subjective and self-serving notions of fairness.
With government having assumed that unintended role, is it any wonder that we are at each other's throats about who controls it.
I was in India recently and saw an artwork depicting a Mogul procession. As I looked closer I saw the people were of all different colors. India is not a perfect society, but it has for over 500 years been learning how people of different races and cultures can live together harmoniously. And I struck me that, yes, our nation is very young and, hopefully, can rise to the occasion and embrace true democracy. Thanks, David!
Someone tell Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity.
1
The rest of the world continues to be amazed at the fetish of American exceptionalism...Brooks expounds this in nauseating fashion in this article. Do you really think the rest of us in far more egalitarian, peaceful and progressive democracies stand in awe of the United States as some sort of paragon of virtue. Uhhh...nope. Slavery? Atom bombs? Wars of aggression? No the rest of us are managing just fine without your "experiment".
4
You have to have to go back to 1871 to escape your personal guilt for being complicit in the ruination of the American experiment?
We lost the right to call ourselves a democracy when the popular vote lost. Walt Whitman was a wise man. If he was living today he would be appalled by how far our country has plummeted, the huge disparity between the greed top and the rest of us, the outright incompetent morons running the country, and breakdown of civility, moral, and ethics. My hope is in the younger generation who will not soon forget how the republican party, owned by the murderous NRA, and miscreants like the Koch brothers, and religious zealots have forced their malignant values on us all. Mr. Brooks attempt to excuse it all by saying we are still a young country, while still being a member of the republican party of un-American traitors, makes little or no sense.
5
Just because a nation is young doesn't mean it is vibrant, energetic, or healthy, David.
In fact, this nation seems to be suffering from sclerosis, or perhaps a pre-senile dementia.
2
I love the ideals of Walt Whitman and I love reading David Brooks. But I think our emphasis on liberty needs to be balanced with equality and fraternity. It is in rediscovering our connectedness and our commonality that we will begin to heal as a culture. Compassion is needed, even toward our political/cultural opponents.
1
After Trump won, i found myself in a Vegas sports bar talking to the nicest Trump people. They were giddy about his win, but went out of their way to let this black man and his black friend know that 'they weren't racists.' i had a blast with them. I told them that that progressives needed a Trump win to get organized in a way Clinton never would have forced us to, and that Obama had prevented us from doing. "You've crowned a fool for a king," I told them. "And people like ME are going to make money...not people like you!" Now the left is fundraising like hell. United? Heck, I owe the Trump people plenty already, and the 2018 elections aren't even here yet. What could be more uniting than that?
1
David, you're the reason I still subscribe to the 'NYT.'
Had Whitman been born in this era, he would have been branded as a perv by both the social reactionary and the extreme political correct crowd. Back in the days, Thoreau was left alone most of the time, even if some have considered him an anarchist. Had the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, not killed or maimed his fellow academics - he got a PhD for Harvard with significant contribution to topology after all - he might have considered a modern day transcendentalist!
But then, there was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who had spent quite some times living in Vermont in virtual seclusion. In a strange way, he could have been considered an archetypical American.
But being American means being human. When we lose our humanity, being American is just savagery and tribalism. If we have our humanity, we will have our variety of American experience
Tempting as it is, I think we have to resist the narrative that our past was one of unity and harmony. No. We are--and have been--a nation that is quarrelsome, divided along lines of economics, race, gender, and education and in some ways, we always have been. Troubling as these times are, they are not new. Look at the 1780s. The 1850s. The 1910s. The 1960s. Yes, we are a young country, but we have been here before. But every time, it seems a bit worse, because we both don't emotionally remember what we haven't lived through and because every time, we expect that we should have fixed this problem already.
But it's not all bleak. There are moments of unity; moments of hope; moments where we are exemplary, nay exceptional. Those moments are real, and we are rightly proud of them. They get us through the turbulent times. At an event last night at the National Archives, the question was posed as to why the Emancipation Proclamation still matters so much to us. For me, the answer is that this document and others like it (the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, the "I Have a Dream" speech, and others) stand as beacons of hope, tokens of faith that this ship of state will right itself in these choppy, uncharted waters.
Knowing that the discord has co-existed alongside our moments of greatness is essential to surviving this era of disillusionment. And believing that we will weather this, too, is our path to salvation.
insightful
The answer to the question Brooks poses might well lie in a turn on this phrase he cites from Whitman: "... democracy supplies a training school for making first class men." I submit that it is actually our training school[s] - i.e. our great but now assailed system of public education - which for generations has been the source of making first class men and women - and, as America's truest melting pot, is the essence and substance of democracy itself. Instead, in divide and conquer mode which is only exacerbating the divides Brooks points to, we have a top-down indictment of "government schools" and an education secretary who is hell (or in her estimate, heaven) bent on fragmenting and exploiting our great educational melting pot in the name of "school choice." Interested to hear what our Mr. Brooks might say about that.
1
David Brooks, have you never examined the history of the system used by the US Census Bureau, to see to it that we are kept apart? Time for you to read Professor Kenneth Prewitt's "What Is Your Race? The Census And Our Flawed Efforts To Classify Americans."
Prewitt was Director of the USCB and thought long and hard enough about the system to write a book proposing replacement of the system by a system similar, perhaps, to the Swedish system based on SES data and at least for medical researchers a system making vast bodies of medical data available.
That USCB system is the antithesis of your overly optimistic view of the country of my birth. Prewitt and in addition Professor Dorothy Roberts make clear that the Census uses 18th century inventions of certified racists that were first used to establish a firm racial order in the USA. It appears to me that Times columnists and even a large percentage of comment writers either embrace that system or find themselves unable to think without relying on its terminology.
I do not see my USA as being much dedicated to continuing the experiment. I am living in a country that is seen by many as carrying out a similar experiment, symbolized by taking in a greater number of asylum seekers per 100,000 population than any other "western" country in 2015.
I see this experiment close up at the Red Cross where I will spend this afternoon, also Kurdish Newroz.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
US SE citizen
Why, or why did you have to characterize the females in attendance as "drunken"? Seems demeaning, unnessessary, unflattering. Is that how you feel about groups of women when they are unaccompanied by men?
1
Yes, but . . . our personality is perhaps as much influenced by heredity as heritage. When one's father was a cold, authoritarian despot who taught that discrimination against people of color and shady business practices were acceptable, is it really possible to overcome that sort of heritage? Or do lying and cheating become a way of life, resulting in extramarital sex and extralegal business? And when one lies and cheats his way to the leadership of our country, does our national heritage change his behavior? Or are the habits of his lifetime so ingrained that he instead seeks to destroy our collective heritage and surround himself with sycophants to carry out his own authoritarian vision?
1
It's interesting that of all the groups listed at the start, only one group, a female group, has a perojative adjective in front of it - "drunken suburban housewives". It makes it difficult to read the rest of the column.Maybe this contemptuous view of women leads to some of our problems. What about just "suburbanites" to make this the equivalent of the other groups listed?
1
I see America as separate chunks of people striving for supremacy over others. Look at evangelical Christians who espouse our truly nasty President. White suburbanites in their SUVs could care less about the slums they speed past on their way to fancy malls and lunch dates. Social media divides and conquers us with lies and deception. Everyone has been taught to protect himself, to go for #1, to love and save their families and patrimony.
There are no common threads among us anymore. It is dog eat dog. We hate each other it seems.
1
Mr. Brooks talks a good game but it is a game none the less. The GOP is the party of racial feudalism. The racist feudalist joined the GOP after MLK, but their group has always been with us and is 400 years old. These GOP racist policies are a blood stain on "the American experiment." Mr. Brooks represents what's wrong with America. The genteel wing of the GOP, the Never Trumpers, created Trump. Ever since Martin Luther King, They have blown racist dog whistles and kept collecting the white racist vote. Yet now they are indignant at the man who threw away the pretense and feeds the base red meat. I really believe Mr. Brooks and his ilk lie to themselves. Racial inequality, America’s racist caste system that systematically denies opportunity to black people is clear and obvious to anyone who bothers to look. Whites like Mr. Brooks are great at gleaning obscure gems from white writers long dead pinning about a future America, but he is lousy when it comes to facing the plain ugly facts about this ugly present and how he had a major hand in creating it.
America has jazz, rock and roll, rap. Those are indeed democratic cultural traditions that celebrate ordinary people.
It appears that David Brooks, over the past year or more now, has chosen to cast himself as the detached holy man sitting high atop a mountain, pontificating to the rest of us about how to achieve the perfect Zen/Christian/loving society that has eluded our benighted selves.
I for one am really, really tired of it. To me at least it appears to be a mechanism for avoiding his own complicity in creating the moral disaster this society has descended into.
When he decides to write a column directly addressing his many past works in support of the forces that brought us so low - forces that many, many others recognized in real time - and when he takes humble responsibility for his former lack of a compass, then he can resign his position in peace, get his own head right, and figure out how best to serve humanity with what years he has left.
In the meantime, just clam up with your endless series of high-horse opinion pieces meant to guide the rest of us toward what makes the good society.
Unlike you, Mr. Brooks, we already knew.
And I can suggest at least one cleanup job at the rodeo you ought to consider for starters.
3
Feeling guilty Mr.Brooks, for all the lofty right-wing militancy you have proposed over the years? Bashing what you called the "elites" for like not attending rodeos. Indeed, you are a real American since your whole life, up till now, has blamed the northern elites, college professor for what, I believe to be, "progressive ideals like evolution, equality, human rights"--do you remember that you proposed evangelicals for professorships? Your sounding the horn now seems really hollow.
The corporate fascism that's coming down the pike now will make Whitman's feared feudalism look like a utopia!
1
Mr. Brooks--Did you even notice that in your opening paragraph listing the diversity of the 185,000 souls attending the rodeo at any given time the only people you pictured negatively were the "drunken suburban housewives"? Shame on you. Please try to check your misogyny in the future. I am a faithful reader of your column and viewer of you with Mark Shields on the Friday news hour, but in the future I'd be tempted to throw rotten eggs at my tv, were it not so expensive. You owe American women an apology.
1
David Brooks -- looks like you've finally come clean and endorsed Trump. You do it with such erudition and elegance -- it goes down like butter.
3
Whitman detested moral feudalism, citing preachers amongst others. Here it is a century later and these same preachers are still preaching the same moral feudalism.
La plus ca change...............
We have a massive division in this country, ostensibly between parties, but actually between the angles of our nature.
It is clear to me that the defining difference is the desire to inflict pain.
Conservatism has been the champion of massively increased use of prisons. Mandatory sentences. Punitive use of force at home and abroad to coerce uniformity of submission to power. Firings. Roundup's of people regardless of the effect on law abiding families. Lock her up. Witch hunts. Fake news.
Every person carries and subsumes their reservoir of anger and hatred, genetic predispositions that served the desire to survive. Until they don't. And when they band together they form fascist/totalitarian states, and impose their will on all who oppose them, even their own.
This Trump. This is modern conservatism.
1
At this point I have absolutely no idea what holds "Merica together. Not any glue with which I am familiar, including the animal cruelty rodeo.
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Well, David, you lost me at the "drunken Suburban housewives"-- only women were drunk? How do you know they are "housewives"? Most women work outside of the home now.
It is an unfortunate, so last century image.
2
Thank you for writing this.
What happened to the rodeo?
We as Americans share in so much together. But we are falling apart now, the seams of the garment are unraveling, and the unity we desperately need is disappearing.
Our POTUS attacks our institutions and those who lead them. He attacks decent humans calling them all rapists and murders. He divides us by insisting that "good Americans" all should be afraid of Muslims, ignoring the thousands of good Muslim American citizens.
We are divided as much now as we were during the worst of the Vietnam War. Families are dividing into 'my party' and 'your party' and tearing friendships apart. We call some 'rednecks' and disparaging names, they call us 'liberals' and 'unAmerican'.
We need leaders who care more about the Constitution and less about how they can twist it to fit their own agenda. If we don't get that soon, then the beat of divisiveness will continue and Groundhog Day will be our fate.
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Oh, pleeease. We are not all THAT divided, no more or less that before. We are just more individualistic, less religious, and economically diverse than before. What however does seem to be a problem is lack of common culture and even language. Illegal immigration is bigger issue than ever, it is what sets up economic inequality and strife, as well as erodes the commonality of our cause. We, the MAGA supporters, understand that. How is that you, the coastal mandarins, do not??!
I agree that we are divided. I can't talk to one of my siblings. The right looses a presidential election(popular vote) and thinks they can run the table with all their major wants; not a hint of compromise. The SC will be conservative for 30 years. Of course it is made much much worse by Trump. He is splitting America. The situation is bad.situation.
2
Mr. Brooks, you want a literary model that describes us? You may have to look further South than Whitman for an answer to America's current bitter mood. Whitman remained an optimist. His all-embracing vision was not America Postwar (and I mean The Civil War) or now.
Try Faulkner, who has taught generations of educated Southerners about our essential depravity. In particular I recommend his grasping patriarch Ab Snopes and son Flem. Something "soured" Ab, filling him with bile against all of humanity, especially the self-proclaimed gentry of his county, and he passed it on to his grasping, remorseless son who catapults himself from dirt-farmer to lord and master of the county seat, Jefferson.
It does not end well for Flem. Nor will it end well for those of us inhabiting the ruins of Jefferson's egalitarian dream, a dream depraved from its start by the original American sins of genocide of native folk and the enslavement of millions of Africans.
Ahh! The wonderful resources of history well written and well read. Do McConnell, Ryan and Trump read? Do they? I wonder and worry about that.
You quote Whitman: “Of all dangers to a nation, as things exist in our day, there can be no greater one than having certain portions of the people set off from the rest by a line drawn — they not privileged as others, but degraded, humiliated, made of no account.”
As a practical matter, then, is it not reasonable to put much more emphasis on using the English language as "glue" to hold the nation together?
Without words, we cannot think. We cannot communicate our thoughts. We cannot discuss our founding documents and ideas.
A person can learn English by watching television.
The rest of the world is learning English while we split apart linguistically.
Why not step back from accommodating languages other than English in our daily lives here so that we can speak to each other about this nation?
Some people are splitting themselves off, drawing their own lines of division, making themselves into victims.
When Brooks starts to atone for all the years of spreading GOP nonsense theories on everything from economics to science to medicine to sociology, I'll start to take this kind of writing seriously.
This piece is just an example of him laying low until the fortunes of the GOP turn around and trump stops embarrassing the GOP. If someone other than trump were President he'd be a full on GOP cheerleader.
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The challenge is to fill Whitman's spiritual vacuum and find mystical purpose without relying on organized religion, which exists to separate people and causes disunity.
I don't know what holds America together, Mr. Brooks.
And from this piece, I'd say you don't know what holds America together either, or whatever held America together. Or you want to pretend it's something poetic; poetry, like perfume, invented to cover the stench.
But I do know what holds most of your readers together, Mr. Brooks: A bi-weekly opportunity to practice critical reasoning by answering the bi-weekly question: What's wrong with the picture David Brooks is trying to paint today?
Whitman was a poet. And so we grant Whitman poetic license. You, however, are not a poet, Mr. Brooks. You take poetic license, bi-weekly, but not by common grant.
I like poetry, and poets. But I know I don't want them running the country, protecting the Constitution, managing the economy, or planning for the common defense. Nor do I look to them to comment on same. We already have too many anthems, and too many slogan writers, making far more money than they're worth.
The deep state holdovers and MSM are trying to overturn the 2016 election by any means necessary, starting with corrupting our justice system. We need to restore equal treatment under the law.
Joe DiGenova and his partner/wife Victoria Toensing know the deep state anti-Trump DOJ, FBI, and Intel cabal that politicized our legal infrastructure - and they know where the bodies are buried. Joe is perfect to lead Trump’s defense against these malefactors.
Victoria’s on a higher plane and would be ideal as the special prosecutor tasked to root out these mercenaries who put party and politics above country, and bring them before a grand jury to receive the equal justice they so corruptly have taken from American citizens.
Let’s see how many of these deep state bottom feeders are truly above the law, when the proceedings are conducted in the light of day…
1
Any evidence to go along with this unhinged rant?
There is a difference between being "equal before the law" and being equal in capability. That reality creates tensions that are the source the divsions in our society. I don't believe they can ever be resolved.
The cause of that "unequalness" is purely physical.
I know this is a pessimistic view, but the truth does not arrange itself to be pleasing to homsapiens.
I think Citizens United (a name that makes me SO ANGRY because it has nothing to do with me, a citizen) is the root of our current pain and frustration. We work for companies. Regardless of our political affiliation, our companies can have party affiliation of their own.
I can't afford to pay a lobbyist to represent my views. All I have is my one vote and my best efforts at showing and telling others. Ironically, my representatives are my lobbyists, but they forget about me when the first shiny object comes within reach. Corporations and PACs can pay people to go and hang out, like barflies, around the weak sycophants we have elected in ignorance. Worst Supreme Court decision ever for damaging the Experiment.
That said, I love Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is listening, writing, and reasoning.
1
America's holy of holies, the Constitution, with its lamentable emphasis on "the pursuit of happiness", is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world...this wanton pursuit of happiness (ironically personified by your president Donald Trump) is the rotten apple that has spoiled the bunch, as it appears to be all that remains of the "American spirit" your western allies now sadly see. America beware! Wake up! Your democratic experiment and world leadership are flirting with a perilous rendezvous with destiny.
1
What do you recommend the Constitution advise we pursue?
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"The times may be discouraging, but the full strength of American democracy is still waiting to be born." Or, more likely, still born.
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We're still a young country? Too bad we won't have the time to grow into an old country. Our denial of Climate Change is going to render this place unable to continue. Our political tribalism may cause fighting in the streets when resources grow low.
In truth, we have never stopped fighting the Civil War. Just one long battle that does, now, threaten to engulf us. We have an unfit leader, immoral and depraved, selfish beyond understanding. We have a Congress that refuses true oversight of this leader much less rein him in. At the exact time we need leadership of high excellence, we have a cartoon character with a mind that says, "You're the greatest" and nothing else.
Another school shooting. My cynical side says that it will make more people come out to March 24. March for children - and America. March to demand our leaders step up and break their slavish bonds of the NRA. March to demand this unfit man and his family be thrown out of our White House.
Walt Whitman was a much more optimistic person than myself. I'd like to be. But it's just not rational to think we can continue another half-century as we have been going.
2
Huh?
What exactly is America’s common spiritual cause? (Do we even differentiate between the U.S., our country, and “America,” which covers everyone from Canada to Tierra del Fuego?)
More specifically, let’s stop the nonsense about deaths of Southerners and Northeners in our Civil War. The first were duped by an elite landholding class to die on behalf of a doomed system of agrarian overspecialization and debt. The latter to further the interests of an industrial class (who bought their way out of the battlefields) in the name of “saving the Union.”
Let’s try to advance our society and culture based on real economic and social issues, and leave our poetic mythology where it belongs. In our salons.
Whitman was writing a 140 years ago. We were young. We were vibrant. But we were headed into the industrial revolution and the worst inequality in the nation’s history. It took nearly 50 years of struggle to create an opportunity society and the hard work Teddy Roosevelt and FDR. Unfortunately, it only lasted 30 years before the forces of regressive conservatism, led by Brooks’ hero, began dividing us in order to undo the work of the Roosevelts. So where are we today, after regressive conservatism’s dominance of our politics for nearly 40 years? Right back to where we were in the 1900’s. Unequal, divided, ruled by an arrogant immoral aristocracy that uses corruption to over throw the democratic will of the people. So reading Brooks, a prime player in the dismantling of the America he professes to love, moves beyond simple foolishness and deep into the realm of hypocrisy. Brooks still refuses to acknowledge his and his fellow regressive conservatives prime role in creating the divided, warring, unequal, immoral and deeply corrupt society we live in today. Redemption only comes with confession David. You need to face up to your role, Reagan’s role and the critical role of your fellow regressive conservatives in creating today’s America, which you continually decry.
1
1871 isn't 2018. Hello.
The charter Gordon Gekko proffered that "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good." It's been very good at poising our "young country."
Timothy 6:10 "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils,"
Follow the money Robert Swan Mueller III and free us from going deeper into this swirling vortex of destruction.
What holds us together in this unhappy country, Mr. Brooks, is fools such as yourself who fail to see that the Great American Experiment is over. A third of the country wants authoritarianism. It's time that decent people took humanist principles and left those subhumans to fend for themselves.
#calexit - we tried and tried again; now do something else.
1
Agree, the full strength is coming, and not from our generation of 40+ year olds....we saw it first in Parkland Florida. They will be our future leaders, and we will be better for it.
We have gone totally and utterly tribal. Maybe we always were? There is NOTHING uniting us these days. The only thing that came close is ... polling showed 50 states wanted the Eagles to win the Superbowl. Thats it! That is the only thing we collectively care about, a football. We deserve whatever happens to us.
At this point in our history, we need that spirit from the past to inoculate our democracy; the spirit best depicted by Walt Whitman in his poem “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry”.
“The impalpable sustenance of me from all things at all hours of the day,
The simple, compact, well-join’d scheme, myself disintegrated, every one disintegrated yet part of the scheme…”
Dear David Brooks,
I realize that you want to help by providing a moral compass. But from my vantage, you need to take a short break to deal with your mid-life re-organization. Your tenants of the past, are shifting rapidly and your purchase has become fragmented. The Brooklyn Ferry no longer runs, but the age old temporal concepts that unit us, though frayed, still remain.
Hold to your moral ground, but get strong my friend.
David Brooks' describes the suburban housewives in the audience as "drunken" and "out for a night on the town," whereas the other members are simply listed as being there. If he had removed his "drunken suburban housewives" reality filter prior to the rodeo, he might have noticed the large number of sober suburban housewives who attended to enjoy the entertainment.
American democracy, or any democracy for that matter , essentially is built on a lofty premise assumed by many but best articulated by John Stuart Mill: truth triumphs and become more scintillating from its clash with untruth. Hence the widest possible room should be given to each individual to join the market place of ideas and flourish in freedom.
That premise has been tested and found severely wanting in the current political discourse. Lies are presented as truth and truth as lies, and countless people buy " alternative facts." The crisis of American presidency now has metastasized into a crisis of the Congress and democracy itself. What new force can cleanse the country of this rot and bind its wounds now? I may be grasping at a straw but my hope now rests only on the awakened and energized 18-year-olds in the November election. Throw all the bums out, please!
Our "American Experiment" and its leaves of grass are wilting. If you are looking for a "Song of Myself," don't look to a rodeo in Houston, TX. Go to a hospital registration line or an ER. You'll find a "Song of Yourself and Yours Alone."
"Despite our differences, we devote our lives to the same experiment, the American experiment to draw people from around the world and to create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind."
This thought imparts devotion and purpose where, for many, if not most, no such thing exists. You are you misplacing their devotion. And we are no model today.
The wage worker, the temp worker, the independent contractor... the hordes of people pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps. They are not in it for an "American experiment" and they seriously doubt the "American Dream." They are hoping only to have enough to write the next rent check, bus fare, or be able to afford the next health care or insurance payment without falling through the paper-thin social safety net.
The dream is a myth as fleeting and ephemeral as an actual dream, used to rationalize and perpetuate the inequity that serves so few so well.
But, hey, there's a rodeo this weekend. And there's a guy in the White House who is a business man. Who knows something about riches (maybe) and little about himself. Which reminds me for another day: Is nationalist sentiment is really what we should be fanning right now?
"When you are lost in that sea of humanity, you wonder what on earth keeps this nation together". A good question, except that Mr. Brooks chose the wrong venue to ask himself that question. Houston is not the place to muse on spiritual thoughts. And if he had spent a little more time there, he maybe would have reached a different conclusion.
When I was living in Houston in the early 2000's, I found myself stranded one day in a dry cleaner by a violent thunderstorm. Only one other gentleman was there stranded with me and we naturally struck a conversation. Listening to my accented English, he asked where I was from, and I told him that I was an immigrant from the middle east. My tone must have given him the thought that I felt uncomfortable admitting my middle eastern origins, because he immediately replied in his good Texan accent. No need to worry, man, nobody here cares where you're from. We only care about your credit rating.
The glue that holds Houston - and America - together is money. When it is fairly distributed, that is when a strong middle class is here to hold it, the glue is solid. When it starts unraveling with unequal distribution as it is now, it falls apart. Everything else is just words.
Mr. Brooks. The “American Experiment” will end in failure if we do not remove the Trump crime family from the White House.
1
Perhaps the most famous Whitman quotes is "I am large - I contain multitudes." Whitman wasn't reducing America to a single idea. It's worth noting that Whitman was a gay man living at a time when revealing that identity would've caused him to be ostracized. I also think Brooks is being a little disingenuous by not naming the Republican Party in this piece. They elected a man who ran on demonizing Hispanics and banning Muslims.
"The terrible damage done when you tell groups that they are of no account" is perversely the caustic, daily poison of this nihilistic administration. The president himself holds no elevated, no "ennobled" view of America, and no standards for himself. Even the church throws its own teachings in the dirt for perceived shared power.
The Whitmanesque attitude right now about America is in the rising up of American youth- they have surprised everyone with their inclusive ferocity and articulate inspiration. They have captured the spirit of a much older America.
1
Ideals are wonderful, but the problem greed.
The United States was founded on two very important principles - that all people have INDIVIDUAL rights, and that the purpose of government is to protect those individual rights.
Government that does anything else - that tries to equalize, moralize, engineer or control - is oppressive and morally illegitimate.
The problem today is there are those on the left that want the government to oppress others. They want the government telling you what you can think, what you can say, what to believe. They want the government taking from one to give to another - a Marxist concept. They want the government centrally planning the economy, another Marxist concept which ends inevitably in hunger and poverty.
I've had so many conversations with leftists about this, and I've come to the conclusion that most are unreachable. They believe they hold the moral high ground (evidence of history and reason notwithstanding) and they work toward Utopia with all the fervor and religious devotion of a Jihadi on a suicide mission.
I don't know how this ends well unless we once again teach our children the precepts that made America, instead of the precepts of Karl Marx.
Not only are we a young country, but we are a young race as well, this human experiment being a latecomer on the cosmic plane. And the consciousness of those humans, unlike their technology, evolves with (often excruciating) slowness, two steps back and a sideways slide for each step forward. We'll keep evolving slowly, I think (I hope...), so long as our gadgets don't cause us to self-immolate or simply wither into the zombiehood of virtual reality bliss.
1
Once again even the venerable New York Times writes an opinion piece about the greatness of your democracy, the greatness of your multiculturalism etc. etc. as if only the United States of America can claim those realities and ideas. I lived and worked in New York City for eleven years and as much as I loved the Big Apple I did not like living in the USA. simply because it is perhaps the most ethnocentric nation in the world. Americans often believe that their country is unique in the world when in fact there are so many other democracies across the globe, some even older than yours and there are other countries( such as Canada ) that are equally as diverse.I always laughed hearing about the American Dream because of course that is what it is - a dream. America has many lofty ideals in common with other democracies but it seems to me the other countries strive to actualize those dreams whereas in the USA it is everybody for themselves - hence you have all your gun deaths, corruption at the state and federal level of government and among other deficiencies total lack of universal health care.As a citizen of your northern neighbour what I see as holding your country together is in fact the pursuit of the almighty dollar
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That you speak of America as some sort of monolithic entity in search of the mighty dollar illustrates the limits of your understanding and knowledge of the country. There are too many moving parts to make such bland pronouncements and that kind of simplistic thinking is exactly why we are at this point. The desire to make easy that which is complicated, nuanced, and multilayered is what is fueling much of the authoritarian movement in this country.
3
You lived in the USA for 11 years, and your chief takeaway is that here it's "everybody for themselves?" Clearly you didn't pay much attention.
Good luck in your perfect society up north.
2
Yes, our national problem is that we believe our own lies.
1
I don't think Walt Whitman nor our founding fathers ever dreamed that the US would one day accept bribing of elected officials as legal normal government business. Such activities are so utterly wrong and destructive to a society that they didn't think it needed to be addressed. To them, it was a no-brainer. Not to us.
1
Thanks for pointing out the obvious discrepancy between the American Dream and the American Reality. Travelers see it when we won't.
We have indulged the dream, making it an abstraction that obscures our reality and excuses it (so evident in Brooks' evasions and escapes, so often celebrating fantasy in order to avoid responsibility).
Two things: Mr. Brooks again cherry-picked something in order to get it to comport to a vision of the United States that is often at odds with reality.
Second: The United States is no longer a "young country", something Brooks likes to cite as an excuse for our shortcomings. We have been independent and functioning under the same government since the late 18th century.
1
I also subscribe to the belief that Democracy holds America together. We do have a brilliant political constitution. Our local, state and federal governments are (mostly) doing their jobs adequately, looking after our infrastructure, security, safety nets, regulatory protections, education, etc.
And the US regulated version of Capitalism currently seems to have the best chance, among the alternatives, to produce jobs for the many working Americans. That it succeeds is vital, because when people lack jobs and/or a way to care for themselves then any political system is at risk, hence the old saying “…… in the long run, all politics is economics.”
The beautiful thing is that “We the People” are the democracy. We have the ultimate control, but also the ultimate responsibility. And that is why it is so inspiring to see people participating in the political process more than ever. Many people with many different political beliefs are expressing those beliefs, including youngsters that aren’t even old enough to vote.
We must also must include a shout out to the “free press”. If this President is a scoundrel, it will be revealed. If the FBI and Justice Department colluded to “frame” the President, it will be revealed. If anyone tries to interfere with the investigative processes, that will be revealed. And Democracy will be stronger because of it.
2
Walt Whitman was a true visionary, a seer, as you suggest here, David. But I think it is unfair to accuse American artists of detachment from the American "true grit" experience, in either Walt's time or in the present. For one thing, you do not mention the Transcendentalists and their movement in New England, which includes such seers as Emerson, Thoreau, etc. Whitman was heavily influenced by these writer / artists. On the contrary, these Shelleyan "unacknowledged legislators of mankind" were and remain the heralds of what is true and good and creative in America, and they did not shirk their duty to protect the nation from despots, then or now.
2
Our nation is like our infrastructure, crumbling, bandaged together and in need of a major makeover. The groups that are of no account are our children subject to gun violence and death, an educational system straining from improper funding and management, college students drowning in debt. Immigrants don't matter unless they are well educated, white and christian. Working class people are expected to do the bidding of the oligarchs and in turn receive the crumbs. Our political leaders have no use for their constituents except at election time when they try to buy and influence them with the campaign contributions from their corporate and wealthy benefactors. We routinely do not provide basic health care to millions of our citizens and the aged amongst us are ignored and left to twist in the wind. I would agree that the American democracy is still waiting to be born, we Americans seem to be very slow learners.
3
I am not so sure there ever was a sense of togetherness as described. Different waves of immigrants were more driven by economic opportunity and preserving the institution that enabled this, might be interpreted as that sense. Unity and all the symbols that go with it were very intentionally promoted to create a sense of togetherness out of very diverse people and groups that came to this country. Perhaps the fact that this diverse and big of a country stayed intact for so long is testimony in itself.
Looking at different metrics, though the country seems further away from the goals as described in the article. Feudal structures are gaining strength, however they may be called. Wealth and political power are concentrating, allowing them to cement this power. Birth has a stronger correlation to future life success than it does in other Western Civilizations. It escapes me how a sense of unity will somehow overshadow these developments.
1
No more vulnerable "the cause of democracy" for fatal provocation than now. In what appears to have been a sad renewal of yet another greatest-ever POTUS sandwiched between a worst-ever and someone impeachable on mere incompleteness, that so much of what Walt Whitman wrote still rings true today is no reason to invoke youthful inexperience as an excuse why our order's still dysfunctional at perpetually forming a more perfect union. After all, if there are STILL "fine people on both sides" of what STILL hasn't precluded our Gettysburg from "having died in vain" seven score and 15yrs after the first "four score and seven years," our of/by&fors will no doubt perish from the earth! No time like the present to finally admit that we're no longer young, Mr Brooks.
Today's America differs from Whitman's in a way we have long forgotten. America of 150 years ago, even 60 years ago, was highly provincial. Localities were defined by common industries, homogeneous populations, with similar religious affiliation and local mores and shared pride. I think Brooks is alluding that when describing the Houston rodeo. But the fabric that held localities together have frayed over the last few decades and continue to deteriorate . Mass marketing and media technology has shrunk the country and brought distant communities much closer to each other. Thus opinions, values and endeavors which once unified a community in what it's vision of America was conflict with the attitudes of other communities. Folks living in parts of the country devastated by de-industrialization or loss of family farms are constantly reminded of the financial viability of certain urban centers. Those with limited religious and ethnic diversity see rivals that embrace "others".
A nation of 300 million is far less unified than local communities numbered in the hundreds or thousands.
Sadly our leaders chose to manipulate the populace as voters by exacerbating the differences and conflicts instead of seeking new unifying principles.
6
The United States has been as a large tent in which all manner of thought, belief, and behavior are allowed. Now, we are seeing our Great Land dotted with silos where each silo contains 'special' beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors unconnected to those found in the other silos. The silo mentality recognizes, albeit begrudgingly, that its inhabitants need to interact with those in other silos - say at a workplace - but only minimally. The tent allows inhabitants to move freely and express themselves in ways that combine, not separate. Finally, in the tent, there is a common ground upon which inhabitants stand, unlike the 'siloists' who stand on their own special ground. If ever there was a time for the people of the United States of America to rediscover its ’common ground,' the time is here.
2
I read many columnists use words similar to "...what is needed is..." but rarely, maybe never, have I read how to provide that which is needed. The three keys to change are knowledge (one must first recognize the problem), volition (or, as a very famous comedian once said, 'ya gotta wanna'), then action.
We have the knowledge and I am sure we have the volition (some of us, anyway), so now we need help taking the action. Columnists can help as they influence their highly-placed readers.
Tough? Sure. Necessary? Absolutely.
6
“What is needed...” is to return to the tradition of the public forum where opinions can be debated, where human interchange can lessen the “silo” effect. Bring back the cracker barrel by the hot stove and let people bounce opinions off each other.
The duality is, as always, at work here.
What holds us together is our human need for cooperation, security, a sense of belonging to something bigger than ourselves (rooting for our "team" but on a larger scale).
And what drives us apart is our human propensity for greed and power, which drives the fundamental move away from equality.
This is the tension--the push pull--that will be with us until some fundamental shift occurs, perhaps stimulated by some new barely imagined technology or overwhelming tragedy (think AI, climate catastrophe, or war.)
I like to think of this as the complicated imperfect playground that is the background for each or our personal journeys, the background and the grist for creating meaning (or not) in our lives.
6
Very well analysed.
1
Whitman was above all inclusive. The problem with America today is that it is trying to be exclusive with walls and celebrity and wealth. That line drawn is everywhere. Whitman would be profoundly disappointed with our culture today.
8
The soaring rhetoric that filled our once young hearts with a love for democracy and respect for the patriots who forged our freedom out of chaos and violence has been drowned out by the unrelenting cacophony of petty, ugly, hyper-partisanship that floods the media everyday. If truth were to be told, what has changed is our ability to transmit information in real time, drawing us all closer and closer to the vortex that is sucking us into the sewer. What has not changed is that feudalism has never left us. Our success as a nation is measured by our ability to serve well the lords of commerce, to whom we devote our lives. Education is a new profit center for those who want to privatize education; and education is a means for us to meet the needs of industry: STEM v. rejoicing in self-discovery. The reality of America today is that profit trumps (pun intended) respect for individual freedoms. Our responsibility is to "go along to get along." Standardized tests, surveillance cameras everywhere; lip-service to preserving lives while elected officials keep us the only industrialized country in the world without universal health coverage; a crumbling infrastructure that we cannot afford to repair because to do so we would have to tax the rich and under fund our war efforts; and a political system that is as mean-spirited and vicious as money can buy. My heart soars with Whitman; my intellect sinks as I read How Democracies Die, by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.
144
Very well stated. Today's U. S. democracy needs to look at our economic system adopted from Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" from 1776. That capitalistic model and its invisible hand of correction no longer serves the American citizens. It was not adopted in Europe and their citizens look onto our economic model with bewilderment and disbelief.
1
A “common sense of mystical purpose” is merely poetic bafflegab in the context of American history. The Revolutionary War pitted Patriots against Loyalists; the Civil War was fought among the States. Since then the USA has been consistently divided against itself - politically, economically, and regionally.
There has never been consensus on the USA on any issue - that fact illustrates the greatest strength and weakness of democracy.
2
We are now facing the same "structural" flaws that humans have always had to struggle with: fear, greed all the perverse, inhumane and destructive combinations and permutations -- the evil -- they manifest, especially a defensive aggressiveness that can overwhelm a culture. Though flaws, they are inherent, integral features in our nature. Their effects are in constant tension with the countering -- maybe call it "spiritual -- sensibility that sees through the inherent fear and intuits commonality of source and brotherhood in "the Other" that allows for the possibility of cultural tolerance and the civic union idealized in our Constitution and celebrated by such as Whitman as more "real" than the fear.
We have never reached that ideal. Fear and greed are always dragging us down. Our Constitutional experiment, however, tried to provide a way beyond them.
It has both succeeded and failed, in varying degrees, but the fear and greed and the ignorance of our commonality are threatening to end the experiment in failure.
Without a genuine spiritual awakening -- a quickening of individual consciousness that transcends the inherent fear and greed --our center will not hold. The Constitution provided, maybe above all else, a civic structure within which that spiritual enlivening could happen.
The question is: will it? Watch Fox for 5 minutes, or any news about Trump's daily assault on our culture and Constitution, the answer seems to be "no".
November is the tipping point.
5
Here's a statement that would fit perfectly in the dialogue between Candide and Dr. Pangloss: "What on earth holds this nation together? The answer can be only this: Despite our differences, we devote our lives to the same experiment, the American experiment to draw people from around the world and to create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind."
From the time shortly after the Spanish American War until recently, the free press was unquestioned in its desire to report the news with accuracy. Local papers and eventually, TV news, tried to get it right. There were journalistic standards that were rarely broken. If a viewer or reader had an opinion, it could be confronted by Walter Cronkite giving his assessment.
Today, a large percentage of this country obtains its news from Fox or through social media posts. The people who obtain their news this way never have to deal with the likes of Walter Cronkite telling them they are wrong. When 30-40% of the population gets their news from slick propagandists, the "American Experiment" is endangered.
11
Perhaps Mr. Brooks should consider that "a unifying American mythos" would be best fostered by a commitment to ensuring that in "life's gymnasium" nobody enjoys an insurmountable home court advantage.
4
One quick correction: Walt Whitman never served as a nurse. That's a widespread and false myth. Rather, he worked as a hospital volunteer (more like a one-man USO). I published a book about Whitman's decade in DC (1862 - 1873). Kudos to David Brooks for quoting from Whitman's largely forgotten "Democratic Vistas."
"the American experiment to draw people from around the world and to create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind."
That is fine but other countries do not have the resources to invade Iraq or to arrange for their drones to kill foreigners without trial.
So how can these other countries "catch up" to us?
We are safe! (smile).
3
Whitman was like many in his day, strangers to barbers but one of the great voices.
1
"What Holds America Together", you ponder.
My best guess would be wings, beer, sports and cheap hi-def tv's.
You probably think I'm joking.
7
Walt Whitman must be rolling in his grave.
The country is now being run not by Biblical ideas, but but goofy right wing religious groups that have NO idea how to interpret the Bible.
The country is run by a bunch of (for the most part) old white men who are interested in only two things: power and greed. And that also includes the people that are not old white men. In order to achieve that power and greet they need to instill fear and divisiveness in the country by inciting racism, sexism, homophobia, and every other kind of "ism"
And we currently have a "president" who is really only interested in himself and has not ethical or moral bearing at all.
I highly doubt that "the full strength of American democracy is still waiting to be born.
Somehow I am reminded of Nero and how he "fiddled as Rome burned".
6
If America is the "best society ever" then there is no need for change. Is the rise of Trump an indication excellence or the product of an institutional impediment in our democracy?
At what point does thinking we are always number one in everything we do impede our ability to learn from other successful countries? A little humility might temper the rise of nationalism and tribalism and open the door to social innovation.
Whitman would certainly be surprised at the pursuit and concentration of wealth in 21st Century America. With Americans reading less and being entertained more, has literature less impact?
8
The sad truth is that democracy will one day probably be dead. Look at history and the various cultures and nation states that have evolved over time. Democracy is not the norm, it is an aberration. We like to think that we are modern man, now civilized and refined. In reality, we posses essentially the same DNA that forged countless kings, dictatorships, wars and slaughters. We have been a fortunate country, having great wealth and fighting our wars (except our civil war) in other people's countries. In the coming decades, the hegemony of the USA will end. China will surpass us in both economic and military power. We will no longer call the shots in the world. The USA will become a white-minority country. Will we hold the country together under these stresses? Will our democracy survive? Will we even want it to? My outlook is considerably less sanguine than that of Mr. Brooks.
5
Mr. Brooks, you write of Whitman, and the poets flower in the comments section. I am grateful to all of you for speaking your truths.
1
Will Durant, the famous historian made a statement about equality that, unfortunately stands the test of time; "Inequality is not only natural and inborn, it grows with the complexity of civilization. Hereditary inequalities breed social and artificial inequalities; every invention or discovery is made or seized by the exceptional individual, and makes the strong stronger, and the weak relatively weaker than before."
Tragically, the great ones of history for the most part really do not care that much for their neighbor.
1
Perhaps.
But, if "the full strength of American democracy" is still in the womb, then "we the people" need understand the insidious powers that have sought, for now nearly a half-century, to stop its birth. And need understand how those powers first acted in stealth but now act with the full support of this president, his congressional supporters and his tribalist following.
It is not just money/capital that drives the Kochs, the Mercers and the other uber-wealthy members of the Radical RIght. It is an ideology approaching Social Darwinism, with capital as its currency. That it is anti-democratic should be clear from the fact that it is philosophically rooted in a radical individualism that is almost Hitlerian in its understanding of social nature as being endlessly competitive and oppositional. Or, you can just remember that its ultimate goal in our time is, as it is simply put, "to save capitalism from democracy."
170
I think if Whitman were to travel this country today, he'd never stop throwing up.
6
The Douglas DC-3 twin-propellor airplane, once the mainstay of aviation and which I once flew, was described by its detractors as "a loose collection of parts flying in formation." I think no better description of the current state of affirs can be made. The Three, rugged, well-built and over-designed, would take a lot of abuse and didn't mind a bullet hole or two, but it was not indestructible.
What we all feared was the "Golden BB," that one hit that would send the plane to the ground. Donald Trump may well be the Golden BB that sends America to the ground, too. It will take skilled piloing to bring us to safe skies, but right now there's a madman in the left seat. And a nut in the right. This is not looking good, Mr. Brooks. Whistling past the graveyard is not a stratehy.
7
Every American president should read Whitman's concise book on his Civil War experiences before taking office. Perhaps then they will think twice before going to war.
1
America is holding together now? Mr. Brooks, are you kidding me?
America will never be a unified country as long as one half of our nation vilifies the other, and believes the other is entitled only to second class citizenship. Republicans (the vast majority white Christians) vilify ethnic minorities, religious minorities, immigrants, and the LGBTQ community. According to Republicans, those of us in these groups have no place in their America. We may remain and live in this country, so long as they say so. They want to decide the civil rights we may have, and those we may not have.
And now Republicans have five votes on the Supreme Court that will agree with their racist, xenophobic, ignorant, homophobic vision of America.
Mr. Brooks, Americans were working toward that unified nation you write of, but those days are long gone. The destruction began under Reagan and it will be completed under Trump. After all, he has told his supporters that neo-Nazis and KKK are some very fine people.
This is the America we now live in, Mr. Brooks. The one of opportunity and privilege for whites. And the one where hate crimes have skyrocketed against ethnic and religious minorities, and the LGBTQ community. And under Republican "leadership", this is no coincidence.
Mr. Brooks, this column is particularly tone deaf. I suspect it is nothing but an apologia for your Republican colleagues. But don't lie to the rest of us about a "unified" nation.
5
"to create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind". Unbridled belief in American exceptionalism has propelled America forward, but if unchecked it could also spell its doom. Many empires believed that they would serve as the template of all mankind and that their model was "the end of history" before they collapsed. Americans feel that history started 250 years ago and ignore the previous few thousand years. It's like a start-up company. The spirit of the founder/entrepreneur has gotten it this far, but now it's time for seasoned management.
1
One characteristic that has been an enduring aspect of the American character is optimism - that in the long run, everything will turn out right. But the lesson of history is otherwise. This is especially true of hegemonic powers. They rise, and they ultimately fall, sometimes with a bang and sometimes with a whimper.
2
No matter how society is organized, there are always tensions between the people, and the economic elites. Given any opportunity, the very wealthy will always seek to create extractive economic systems, raise barriers to inclusion and concentrate political power at everyone else's expense, potentially transforming even a vibrant democracy into an authoritarian plutocracy that will serve their and their children's economic needs ("Why Nations Fail"; Acemoglu and Robinson). Democracy requires an enlightened people remain vigilant to internal threats and, when necessary, fight for their political rights. Do we really have "freedom's athletes" to stand against this encroaching feudalism?
1
Seems to me that the American experiment expired with the election of Trump. Clearly 1/2 of the population suspended fact and reality and elected a demagogue and risqué rascal. The decline of America is unstoppable because the GOP is the soul of the ordinary man and it is corrupt and rotting. As long as the GOP and the NRA rules the American experiment is off the rails and individuality matters none. Jean Jacques Rousseau is tossing and turning in the Pantheon.
4
The truth is that the song of America includes some very ugly strains. And even though Whitman romanticized them to no end, even carpenters, boatmen and farmers can be ugly, their honest and authentic professions notwithstanding. The truth of the matter is that many of these folks not only voted for Donald Trump but continue to support someone who is is racist, misogynistic, calls for violence against journalists and peaceful protesters, and is fully engaged in obstructing justice. Not even Whitman, I think, would have much sympathy for Americans--whether mechanics or hedge fund managers--so filled with hate.
150
You definitely sound like an optimist, instead of a realist, raising the U.S. as a model for all humankind, best society ever, at a time when Trump is trampling on it's principles, and destroying it's democratic institutions, under the 'watchful' eye of the coward republicans ( hypocrites?) in power, oblivious to the chaos around them. Whitman didn't mention we were the laughingstock of the world but close enough. Trump's reins by way of spewing fear, hate and division,a nation set apart by pettiness and resentment. What holds us together?
You have to be smart enough, educated enough, and cynical enough to value the traditions and sculptured base upon which this country stands and functions.
Without these understandings- which look to be increasingly rare- we are nothing but a desert of self-interest- the shared values having eroded away.
As has been said, we are not improving the average level of education among our citizenry, we are being dumbed-down.
Is it intentional or accidental ignorance?
Where to draw the line between the "economic and social" feudalism and the "cultural and moral" feudalism? The line has evaporated in the wake of Trump, because the former has reached new heights under the GOP sponsored tax law, which most Americans won't realize until their paltry benefits evaporate while the rich soar to even more padded bank accounts. The latter is in a state of severe disrepair - a lout for a President, defenders in the administration (and FOX type media) of neo-Nazis and racists, and a Justice Department bent on the destruction of immigrant families and people of colors.
We don't need the rhetoric and hopefulness of long dead writers who never lived through the Jim Crow era or experienced the Wall Street led crash of 1929 (or 2008) to instruct us now. What we need is honesty - plain and simple. A true accounting of what is going on now, as opposed to a romanticizing of the problems as perceived by someone 150 years ago is the real remedy.
2
Courtesy of the poet Shelley, from my perspective this is what the US or at least Trump seems to be heading for which is the fate of King Ozymandias:
"I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."
2
"I hear America singing...the varied carols I hear...." Yes indeed, DB, for more than a year I've been urging the Democratic Party to take Whitman as our oracle. He embodies America as we wish it to be.
1
Or we could simply try to be a little kinder to each other and the earth.
1
When all else fails, pray. This seems to be Mr. Brook's direction.
The fearful require "mysticism" to explain away their worries and fears. They hang on to status quo, preferring everything to be predictable, "understood", "explained", so that they could march in locked steps down a narrow path with identical thoughts and beliefs and purpose. Is that a "great experiment"?
If this is a great experiment, then the Scientific Process is the best approach. All of us will experiment each day and each moment with what is the best governance that serves the greatest good. We will utilize our votes and our constitutional rights to proactively participate in our process of electing representatives to serve us and the greater good.
Sometimes we will fail, and often people of greed and those lacking morale and ethical bearing would take advantage of the system for their personal profit. That too is an experiment that exposes human nature in order for us to learn, adapt, improvise, and then overcome.
This great experiment does not require any "mystical" divine intervention. This great experiment relies of trials and errors and the willingness to change. Those who will change for the greater good shall unite this democracy and render it robust and prosperous for centuries to come.
The meek who stubbornly cling and conform to a "mystical" past will destroy us from within.
How quaint....Brookes should know full well that his Republican party has spent the better part of 3 decades doing its best to divide and destroy the soul of Whitman's American to the benefit of the conglomerate class and he, Brooks, has played his role in his apologist role for the Republicans.
2
Sorry to be blunt, but the only thing that unites America is bloodthirst. Always has.
2
I fear that Brooks has left our present political pigpen for the greener pastures of utopian past of 19th century Acadian America.
One that maybe never existed.
Mr Brooks' column smacks of American exceptionalism, which is is precisely one of the problems. Get over it, we're not exceptional; let's move on and deal with the real problems at hand, rather than pontificating about how exceptional we are.
1
It is unity in diversity that holds us together or it is diversity in unity that attracts each of different cultures races towards each other.
1
Money is not culture. Neither are guns for that matter. And certainly cable television, Hollywood movies and Facebook are as far from culture as one dares tread. McDonalds is not culture, neither is Bud Lite nor Coca Cola nor Gatorade. The Super Bowl is more spectacle than culture. March Madness reeks of exploitation - not very cultural. And Our National Past Time has been soiled by PEDs.
So where is America’s culture?
A society with no culture is doomed.
1
Not that it's all that important in the grand scheme of things, but Whitman was gay. In today's climate, he would be attacked and derided by Trump and his followers, and likely a good number of Republicans. What's wrong with America David?
1
I am confused. Is this the same David Brooks who has written many columns castigating "expressive individualism" as the bane of American culture?
2
We will see what holds America together if Trump fires Mueller. All good men to up and to arms. You should quote Longfellow not Whitman.
2
David, from this article it appears the only tool left in the conservative toolbox is mysticism---I guess it is better than alcohol and binge watching Netflix.
4
May I ask, Mr. Brooks, why suburban housewives could not have been listed without the adjective "drunken?" I find it pejorative, to say the least. And I am not a suburban housewive.
3
Whatever might have brought America together in the past - which in itself is a feeble claim to make - for complexity is not to be compared to a rodeo feast, is blowing in the wind, take your pick.... Maybe passing wind and the miasma Trump and his supporters add to the tragedy America now lives is the non-lyrical reality, owed to the despicable character who usurped the office of the president and the ungodly forces and rackets that got him there!
Mr. Brooks begins his essay with reference to "the American experiment to draw people from around the world and to create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind."
Let's think about this. Before the Europeans landed in the Americas in their small sailing ships there were several million people already here with their own civilizations. The invaders began a genocide to eliminate the aboriginal population as much as possible and to herd the remainder into impoverished reservations so that the invaders could steal this land, and they did this with the distorted vision that they were building a shining city on the hill to illuminate the goodness of God.
Further, those colonists brought with them slaves imported in chains from Africa, and they mandated that children of those slaves would remain slaves in perpetuity, which ended only in the first great industrialized slaughter of the Civil War. So much for us being an experiment to draw people from around the world to create the best society ever.
Mr. Brooks's vision is delusional. Another op-ed essay today points out that the invasion of Iraq was not a blunder but a crime, and when we claim that we make only blunders rather than commit crimes we support the delusion of Mr. Brooks. The best society ever would not allow itself to confuse its crimes as blunders committed with the best of intentions. So long as we remain delusional, we have no hope to be decent, much less the best ever.
7
Like Whitman, Robert Frost, in The Gift Outright, looked beyond the present chaos to the opportunity ahead:
"Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding from our land of living,
And forthwith found salvation in surrender."
"we devote our lives ... to draw people from around the world and to create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind"
Really? Hubris or what? When you live in a country so busy pulling up the drawbridge and demonising immigrants, where privilege is becoming so ingrained, not to mention a society where so many of you are left in lack of basic healthcare then claiming to serve as a model for all mankind seems a bit of a stretch.
1
"True democracy is still in the future........the full strength of American democracy is still waiting to be born."
I fear the trend in America is toward the death true democracy. Witness the loss of "one man one vote" by means of gerrymandering. Two of the last three presidents have been elected by a minority of voters.
1
I think Langston Hughes' "Let America Be America Again" is the more apt poetic analogy to our sorry history, and possible future.
Listening to David's muzak version of Walt Whitman is a bit much to take.
1
The idea that the purpose of secular life is to become the best person you can -- to enlarge and develop your abilities as much and as far as possible -- has been perverted into equating personal wealth and power as the sole measures of that enlargement and development. Donald Trump is the epitome of this equation.
By the way, Whitman was not wholly idealistic in his nursing. His diary reveals that -- besides buying them little gifts -- he hugged and kissed his patients when they'd let him. Which they often did. They were frightened and lonely, and often willingly accepted affection from this sweet old man.
1
Whitman was a great poet. That was then, and it was long ago - nearly 150 years.
A few questions come to mind:
1) What is Honey Boo-boo's "mystical purpose"?
2) When you say, 'the cause of democracy is sometimes aided not by “the best men only, but sometimes more by those that provoke it — by the combats they arouse,”' are you saying DJT will ultimately benefit the US? Really? Really?
3) Does "no greater [danger] than having certain portions of the people set off from the rest by a line drawn" refer to the line between the 1% and the 99? I believe it does.
2
An honest discussion by Brooks of Whitman's dashed post-Civil War hopes would have at least mentioned the great promise of Reconstruction, expunged by the brutal terror of a politically organized Jim Crow. Instead, he uses the philosophical musings of the great poet to promote his usual squishy themes of religiosity, culture, morality, etc., etc. This is getting so tiring and vapid, but also angering when Brooks chooses in his rambling discourses to ignore the central role that the exercise of raw, discriminatory political power played in this tragic history. Enough already!
3
Whitman frames things in a beautiful, idealistic, uplifting way. However, I think this view is gone for good.
I think "what America is about" has become completely de-mythologized and trivialized. When the "American dream" is discussed now, it is all about economics. Its about being able to get a lot of money, buy a lot of stuff, and strut around in material splendor which validates your superiority. Thats pretty much it.
There are still some idealists, in both the progressive and conservative corners who hold a bigger vision. But this alternative view is fading fast. Its so old school . . .
1
Davod Brppls os basically re-statingObama's "arc of history" view, which has been around since the Enlightenment and more recently highlighted by Dr. Martin Luther King. One can argue whether there is a teleological path to progress. However, that path can be derailed. One wonders how Whitman would have reacted by Facebook (either as an accomplice or a victim) stealing data about ourselves and or "friends" and sing it to elect Donald Trump or to sell goods.
What America since its inception seems to lack is empathy for anything other than a dog eat dog world view of either their fellow citizens or others. America only rallies around self preservation when it feels under threat from outside otherwise it is in permanent internal conflict. This is the mantra of winner take all and everyone who doesn't win is discarded as a loser, there is no real belief in the collective responsibility to each other. America may have passed its "best before date"?
114
One could say the pursuit of freedom holds us together because essentially that was the spark that began most of the migration to America; but, now many Americans hold a less idealist view. The majority of us were born here and here we will die. So we invest in our county because we have ownership. It gives us the "proud to be American" feeling when we visit our National Parks and monuments. But it also makes some Americans angry if others try to immigrate, legally or illegally because that threatens their tribal sense of territory. Perhaps if we tone down the rugged individualism and focus on simply getting along we can share our America with pride.
3
I would make the case that what Whitman saw as our redeeming attribute is actually our major flaw.
Identity - we are blue or red; Christian or Muslim or Jewish or Hindu; we are white or of color; we are rich or poor; we are male or female.
The ego makes us want to identify to derive some value from an association.
The only identity that matters is that we are people.
Democracy can only work if we lose the need to identify with a group that makes us seem superior to others.
The common good is a quaint concept that seems to be lost to history.
The politics of division have become who we are.
Politics in the USA is now a zero sum game - winners and losers - each biding our time until we can get the upper hand.
2
I've always felt that the glue that held our society together was a common desire to seek "Truth," coupled with the belief that opportunity SHOULD be equal and open to all. Our society expects people to be forthcoming and honest in their dealings with others. Of course, this is the ideal, and reality differs. But, as long as we can justifiably hope for this ideal, we should be OK.
1
Mr Brooks, I agree with you that Whitman feared and detested fuedalism in all its forms. I am glad he is not alive today. We have a president who loves dictators and admires authortarianism, an insanely wealthy less than 1%, and a Republican party whose leadership has seen fit to turn it from a "political party" to a rarefied group of valets for the corporation or industry that owns them. And what about the serfs? We used to call them citizens. Now they go by other names. They are "voters" in gerrymandered districts, "consumers" urged to buy to the point of indebtedness (see credit card and student loan debt), "laborers" with the freedom to work constantly as many jobs as they can and still not make a living wage (see minimum wage and cost of living), "investors" without the money or skill to invest (see 401(k)s), and "retirees" without the savings to retire (see no pensions and the urgent need to kill or privatize social security). It sounds pretty feudal to me.
13
I would argue that America took Walt Whitman's exhortation too much to heart. America became the model for America. No one could do it better. No one else, certainly not Europe, could offer a better model to cope with any of society's ills. And thus we find ourselves in a situation where our social welfare systems (health, education, unemployment, old-age) are outdated and fraying but we refuse to learn from others who do it better. We face problems like guns where the solutions are obvious and have worked where they have been tried, but we claim we are exceptional and refuse to acknowledge even that there is a problem, let alone that there is a better solution elsewhere.
11
Exactly. Myths at first propel us then entrap us.
There are many strands in the American fabric, and Whitman's inclusive optimism is one of the strongest and most persistent. We would, in fact, all be the poorer without it. He foresaw a complex national future matching a complex present in the mid-19th century--and the many good-faith Americans who would still be trying to realize our national ideals. In "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" he reached across the decades to reassure us that he had us in mind: "I see you face to face," he wrote. Using a little imagination--and David Brooks' splendid NYT reminder--we can look back to reassure Whitman that we continue to have him, and his values, in mind as well.
1
It is a bit ironic that David Brooks would use Walt Whitman, the American poet who could think of nonwhites as contributors to the nation's destiny in poetry but who challenged their freedoms in everyday life, as the paragon of American virtue. As a member of the Free Soil party, he wrote editorials in local newspapers and gave public lectures demanding a limitation to the migration and unionization of African American labor because it threatened white labor. (Martin Klammer's book "Walt Whitman, Slavery, and the Emergence of Leaves of Grass" (1995) provides an excellent summary of this history.)
No, we do not need to recall Whitman's antiquated Americanism, which was multicultural in poetic voice only. Why choose someone who even has a hint of that old exclusive model of Anglo-American character--a la Emerson, Thoreau, and any other American Transcendentalist--when you can choose someone much more fitting for a multicultural American vision? If we have to be satisfied with literature, I'd suggest Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, June Jordan, or any other postwar American author that helped pluralize our vision of America. Cultural Pluralism should be our only national credo.
1
I went to that rodeo last year. I didn't see what 'binds us together'. I saw a huge number of older caucasians with short hair and similar clothing singing about God and country on the inside of the building (almost like a fort, complete with walls, gates and guards.
On the outside of the building were the masses of smiling and laughing mostly Hispanic and some African American and European American families with large numbers of childlren playing and riding and eating all the games, carousels and snacks.
The winds of division and change were clear.
The distinction was obvious. If Brooks opened his eyes he could have written an entirely different allegory about the rodeo. As another commentator noted, sometimes a rodeo is just a rodeo, and often times writers can just see what they want.
8
Some people, like your fellow columnist Ross Douthat, believe that the uniting factor which used to bind this country was religion. Many conservatives seem to think that American individualism and personal freedoms are what makes this country great. Unfortunately, I suspect that individual freedom, when taken to the extreme, is in conflict with societal cohesion. Let's illustrate with two examples.
Republicans desire to eliminate all gun restrictions with society's need for some control over who owns and uses guns. Guns represent freedom and safety to many republicans but that desire also means less freedom and safety for America as a whole. The need to buy any kind of gun at any age in any quantity is a uniquely American issue, driven by the belief that a gun will enhance one's freedom and safety. And yet, it's the ready availability of guns in America that with little or no restrictions, cause society to be less safe and therefore, less free.
Another sign of conflict between individual freedom and reduced societal freedom is religion. The case before the supreme court where the baker asserts his right to not sell his product (wedding cakes) to a gay couple because his personal beliefs view gay marriage as immoral, sacrifices society's freedom (equality) for individualism. I would argue that a society that allows individuals to flaunt the law based on personal belief will not stand for long.
8
I am often more struck by reader comments than the article itself. In this case, a comment receiving a huge number of 'Recommends' tends to have the most angry, or at least most critically negative tone and content. Not unusual. I write some myself.
So -- is America now held together by vituperative spirit, by rage against the opposition? Is it joined by its divisiveness? Is its individualistic streak so mean-spirited as to be articulated through cant and rant?
Whitman represented passion, freedom, lustiness, and an artistic vision of America -- we cling to a politicized sense of how right we are, whatever our position. We hate the opposition (I find myself tweeting anti-Trump pieces more often than I pet my cat anymore!) and revel in fear and anxiety.
If we're waiting to be born -- we're in a very lengthy gestation period, though I get the basic idea. I don't know if our grand vision will be stillborn or not. But right now, whether liberal or conservative, we seem to be stuck in a bad breach.
My wife, an Episcopal priest, says the answer is "proximity" -- being close to others, knowing neighbors, going out of one's way to meet-and-greet the stranger, welcoming those whose views aren't familiar, and the like. Makes sense. And maybe turning off the TV will help.
10
Yes I am angry. I am angry about the occupant of the White House who is a vulgar bigoted narcissist. I am angry because he is an embarrassment to the country who has made us the laughingstock of the world. I am angry about the members of Congress who know he is unqualified but still hunker and bow because they hope to get a handout; and I am most angry at my fellow countrymen who are so blind and limited in their vision that they still support him. And I am sick at heart to be forced to acknowledge that the experiment in democracy which was so nobly begun, cannot survive in the face of voters who are proud of being uneducated.
7
At a certain size, things do not hold together. The Sandinavian countries generally hold together well and feel that "they are all in it together." They are relatively small, with highly homogenous populations. So is New Zealand. The very size and compostion of the US makes that kind of cohesiveness highly unlikely if not impossible. With a smaller population, Great Britain finds itself in a similar position, so does China. World War II brought the whole country together for a short while on a specific goal, but that period stands out as the exception. Whitman's America no longer exists. There is no longer a unifying spirtuality. We must accept the fact that the size and composition of the coutry leads inevitably to discord and division and we must forge a new identity in those differences by accepting them and working with the truth, not with fantasies.
11
In the past I never wondered what held us together. Now for the first time, with
Trump and Fox I'm wondering what just Does. I never ever worried about national unity--now I do. I've always felt proud to be an American but now sometimes I don't. My great-grandparents came here in 1862 from Ireland ("two laborers can neither read nor write"). I have a Ph.D. and I wonder could that happen again.
6
David Brooks, you have done it again. Thank you for articulating such an elegant, timely and valuable perspective in our times of fear and chaos. Who else but Walt Whitman, one of our most brilliant and gifted American writers do you highlight at a time of wallowing in the mud. Your article inspired me more than most of what I read these days. Let us all hold our breath hoping that he is correct that American democracy is still waiting to be born. I, for one, am willing to step into the chaos in order to move our beloved country forward.
4
Try to remember President Obama grappling with his great task. Trying to remind us of what we can be, helping the sick obtain care, reasoning out loud, studying reports he received from hard-working public servants, reaching out to others around the globe.
Then remember the response from the Senate's majority leader, the snarkiness of pundits, the attitude of our neighbors to a black man in the oval office calmly struggling with the burdens of leading our government.
Then think of the attacks on anyone suggesting that capitalist greed should be tamed by visions of a better world. Think of Zuckerberg and Bezos, Bannon, and Cruz. Better yet, don't think of them.
Who was trying to hold America together? Who was tearing it apart?
Who shares the blame?
As our Whitman sang:
"You've got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend
When I was down you just stood there grinnin'
You've got a lotta nerve to say you got a helping hand to lend
You just want to be on the side that's winnin'"
Is it too late to stop playing this game and finally take a consistent stand? Supply-side? A woman's rights? Taming of corporations? Tax breaks? Medicare? Public education? Gerrymandering? Guns? Minimum wage? Public land?
Looks like the makings of a benevolent vision. It's here if you only open your eyes.
20
This piece is a shaky attempt at optimism while we Americans are in the midst of depravity and a corrupt government.
The surest way to stay centered on an ethical form of democracy is to concentrate on humanity, yours, mine, and everyone else's.
If we approach each day as an opportunity to greet our neighbors and offer support to those in need, the American democratic experience will stay on track.
Just don't allow anyone or anything like Trump and Trumpism from distorting our path to a better life!
11
I fear we take the word "serve" out of "serve as a model for all humankind." Doing so pushes us far down a slope of arrogance toward the rest of the world.
2
Nice sentiments and at one time may have been true, however when you have Fox News spouting unfounded political conspiracy theories and manipulating the news that their viewers see and hear, that vision of America is nearly dead. By this time next year, most likely it will be. Time to look for a change of scenery.
8
What holds America together is the Constitution, which starts with "We The People.......promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity". This was an experiment, to take 13 states and connect them with a federal government that works FOR "We The People" who elect them.
There is the legal aspect of that, the 3 branches of government that make laws, interpret laws, and leads the nation in a direction to always better itself. It should result in better opportunities for "We The People" who elect them. It should be promoting the general welfare.
The preamble is the beginning of a document that our legislators, president and supreme court justices swear an oath to uphold. I see very little of this happening at any level.
It's become "We The Corporations and money lenders of the United States.....promote OUR welfare and secure the blessing of MONEY to ourselves and our posterity".
The country that came together after 9/11 is no longer apparent. Citizens United decided a mere 8 years ago eliminated that country and turned our government over to the most vile, selfish, basest instincts.
We must work in every election to try to recapture a country that works for We The People.
218
Ghost Rider reference: Citizens United was "the contract of San Venganza"
When Americans can see their experiment in democracy honestly, critically, and clearly, perhaps it will heal. This nostalgia for a mythical past that was always just a myth is a thinking man's version of Make America Great Again.
I wish I could share your Nineteenth Century optimism.
4
Whitman's "Democratic Vistas" can be seen as a kind of companion piece to Lincoln's second inaugural address, composed six years earlier. Both documents, searing in their import, represent two great figures reaching beyond a present darkness towards an embrace of a nation, as Mr. Brooks writes, waiting to be born. The question for those, 150 years later, who have been forever disillusioned by this American Dream, is: how long must we wait? Whitman soberly recorded in "Vistas" the moral and political corruption of America in his time, while working through a hermetic, personal ethos of liberation; Lincoln challenged our nation to bind its wounds from a cataclysmic civil war, and paid for his courage with his life. How long must we all wait? The time, again, is now. The time for all good women and men to actively oppose this gangster and his minions whose collective vision burns with ignorance, greed, bigotry and cowardice. This, the country's undertow of evil that Whitman and Lincoln and many others within our borders so heroically challenged. As another writer simply put it: if not now, when?
5
Like every White American thinker, writer, speaker, academic, and Whitman himself, you posit only White American culture. One without a long, glorious Native American tradition and culture. It is as if this land of ours did not exist before the conquering mass, the White hoard, came to its borders and trash this beautiful country and its people.
It is true that many of the original people have been completely destroyed or decimated, but many of them still exist and struggle to reassert their cultures. The rise of the Native nations through the wealth they control in today's America may begin to redirect the country; the one Whites have created, and bring balance and moral, ethical lives back to this continent.
We need to live within the bounds of nature and to respect its laws. White domination has only brought wealth to the few. We need wealth for the many. We need to learn the Native way.
5
Yes, an inclusive melting pot does exist to some extent, and the New Deal and post-WWII economic boom did create a remarkably diverse, and large, middle class, especially after the civil rights laws came into being. Hurrah for us. Now, let's get rid of the Electoral College, GOP voter suppression and racist gerrymandering. And let's democratize the Democratic Party while we are at it.
7
The "corruption" after the civil war was that under reconstruction black men were voting and getting elected to positions of power in state, local, and national government. The idea that that era was particularly corrupt is a myth perpetrated by white supremacists who used lies and terrorism to restore a system that looked a lot like slavery throughout the South.
Mr. Brooks, please don't help entrench this racist myth any deeper than it already is.
4
Mr. Brooks: you assume what you are trying to prove about a problem that is more of a distraction. It seems these are impossible days for Republican intellectuals.
"This nation" is less "together" than any other first-world country and many second-world countries. And if this article is an expression of the democratic ideals that should bind us, it is no wonder.
Is this like the investment advisors who tell their many retail clients to hold stock for the long term, but sell, sell, sell for their best rich friends?
Pray tell Mr. Brooks: exactly what in this faith you espouse is relevant to what confronts us today? How does the "full flowering of individuals" or "freedom's athlete's" relate to our current institutional crises? Are you proposing "feudalism" as a model for our common foe? Wouldn't every party lay claim to such exalted prose? Do you really suggest we need a new literature of democracy when no one reads literature? Do you really think because the country is young, democracy cannot die here?
I understand you are in a difficult position, but please at least confront the problems at hand and I will join you in failing. Otherwise, you're just distracting. I dearly hope that's not intentional, because I had faith in you.
4
You asked, "Do you really suggest we need a new literature of democracy when no one reads literature?"
This is an important question in our time. What is literature but storytelling? Our stories are now distilled into short emotionally packed messages meant to mobilize targeted audiences. These stories are meant to sow fear, buildup a tribe, and divide and conquer opposing tribes. Technology has made it easy to manipulate us, and we're easily distracted.
That said, I don't think we're doomed. Mainstream media has a duty to help uncover the truth. I'm thankful for David Brooks. His essay on Whitman gives us another perspective (story) and brief ray of hope.
The truth will out, right?
Whitman feared economic and social feudalism. 100 years later Europeans have tried to decrease their economic and social feudalism, first with fascism and comminism; then with democratic socialism. They have created the European Union based on democratic socialism. How well do you think that European unifying experiment has been in decreasing economic and social feudalism compared to American move to corporate welfare in uniting our group of people?
1
There isn't a great experiment of diverse people coming together with a common dream to create the best society as a model for all humanity. That has never been true and is an impossible goal.
America was a place which accepted poor immigrants who came to make a better life for themselves and their families. They toiled and suffered, not to be a beacon for humanity, but to create a freer, richer, happier life for their children. The American dream was that all could rise by the honest application of their skill, energy, and creativity, to a better life than their parents had and their children could have a better life than they did. Inspiring other people around the world was never the objective.
This constant generational improvement and sense that we had the ability to at least partially shape our own destinies was the common thread binding those born in the United States and the newest immigrants. As refugees from the entire world, we had to learn to live together in harmony to build an effective society in which we all had a chance to prosper. That last part has been very difficult to achieve.
We've had successes: maintaining a democracy, winning WW II and rebuilding post-war societies. We've also had slavery, de jure/de facto segregation, demonization of immigrants, unequal rights for women and minorities, genocide of native Americans, excluding Hitler's Jews, and poor stewardship of America's natural environment. Some of our history inspires, some chastens.
4
Were it that the forces that corrupt us could overflow, and spill us on the ground.
Early in the 20th century, Aurobindo Ghose gave this speech to inspire his fellow Indians to realize "What Holds India Together":
“After all, what is an association? An association is not a thing
which cannot exist unless we have a Chairman and a Vice-Chairman
and a Secretary. An association is not a thing which cannot meet unless
it has a meeting-place… Association means unity, association
means brotherhood, association means binding together in
one common work. It is the whole country, to which every child of
India ought by the duty of his birth to belong— an association which no force can break up, the association of a unity which grows closer everyday, of an impulse that comes from on high and has drawn us together in order that the Indian nation may be united and united not merely in the European way, not merely by the common self-interest, but united by love for the common country, united by the ideal of brotherhood, united by the feeling that we are all sons of the common Mother, who is also the manifestation of God in a united humanity…This is the ideal that is abroad and is waking more and more consciously within us. It is not merely a common self-interest. It wakes God within us and says 'You are all one, you are all brothers. There is one place where you all meet and that is your common Mother. That is not merely the soil. That is not merely a division of land but it is a living thing. It is the Mother in
whom you live and move and have your being.
1
“If we are lost no victor has destroyed us, it is by ourselves that we go down to eternal night”. Walt Whitman 1855.
4
I personally wouldn't call a rodeo (blatant harming of animals for sport) a sea of varied humanity.
Other than that, great piece.
Want a unifying mythos that spiritualizes democratic life and reshapes the American imagination? Expand public support for education and the arts.
3
Our beautiful democracy that Whitman waxed on about is under siege by a mad man with nothing but hate, contempt and bitterness in his heart.
Yes, we will survive, but it will not be pleasant for a while.
1
A model for all humankind? I wish it were so. One must display integrity to even aspire to this lofty goal. The Trump presidency has shown that for a large part of the American population, including GOP in Congress, integrity and veracity don't really matter much any more. Through actions or silence, they support the Trump manifesto of preventing people from around the world from ever stepping foot on American soil, except white people from Norway. The Norwegians' reactions to moving here spoke volumes of the state of our country. Why, they asked, would they want to move to a place where healthcare is a privilege not a right, where higher education is a gateway to lifelong debt, where our government has given private industry carte blanche to destroy our environment with impunity, and where AR-15s in the hands of 18-year-olds mean more than loss of life in mass murders committed with AR-15s. Even tragedies pull us further apart than bring us together. American exceptionalism is a fraud.
4
The United States is not the world's greatest country. The Scandinavian countries are the most advanced and greatest. The 'American Experiment' is simply a gathering place for the world's most fanatical capitalists who value greed above all. It is certainly not a democracy. It will have to be 'corrected' by progressives who have been fighting tooth and nail for years to move it forward towards civilization.
4
I wonder if Mr Brooks would be okay with gay people not being able to attend the rodeo, or buy concessions there the way he is with cakes.
The problem is Mr Brooks has always had problems with public accommodation laws that are required for a diverse America to include everyone. His America includes him, and him first. Beware a man who wants your inclusion on his terms only. It won't be real and it won't be equal.
2
Very refreshing, Mr. Brooks. We could use more of this. Thanks.
David, I hope you are correct when you write: "The times may be discouraging, but the full strength of American democracy is still waiting to be born." I truly hope you are right.
Mr. Brooks. You are whistling past a graveyard of your own making. Your late dedication to humanism after your earlier championing of a religious belief in the market as a magical, mystical force for progress, without necessary consideration of the corrosive nature of money and power seems 'too little, too late.' You need to take the gnawing need in your heart and recent recognition of the corruption that has grown from what you once believed to be an American economic meritocracy and give it full voice instead of embracing some sad nostalgia and moral despair. Speak out with your full eloquence to analyze where you've been wrong and paved the way for just this administration. Teach, don't preach.
1
“Of all dangers to a nation...there can be no greater one than having certain portions of the people set off from the rest by a line drawn — they not privileged as others, but degraded, humiliated, made of no account.”--Welcome to Donald Trump's "American Carnage," also known as Make America Great (White) Again."
Mr. Brooks, you labor mightily and bring forth very little. We are, as nations go, "a young country," but we are governed by rich old white men. Where are the women? Where are the young?
Whitman's great abstractions about democracy do not find favor today, at least in the present America. We thrive on division and rancor. Our wealth disparity is a sin. We are burdened by "economic and social feudalism," and, our governing party works very hard to perpetuate this imbalance. They, Mr. Books, "look down on America's democratic mass."
America's running narrative is "the terrible damage done when you tell groups that they are of no account." Is that not the same as Make America Great Again? And, it might be argued, sir, given America's vast unfulfilled promise and the hypocrisy that has always underlain its showy colors, when was America ever great?
1
Leaves of Grass is Whitman’s great symbol of the American experiment. His poetry is a celebration of the diversity of individual expression that forms the fabric of democracy, a world view that is under attack by Trump and his loyalists. The irony is that while we have a great tolerance for corruption, corruption re-awakens us to Whitman’s vision.
"He didn’t mind a little healthy rudeness, what we would call the politically incorrect. ... the terrible damage done when you tell groups that they are of no account ..."
The term "politically incorrect" is a Trump Republican propaganda term intended to demonize their political adversaries. I don't recall that there were any Trump Republicans around during Whitman's time. Of course, Lincoln and Trump are peas in a pod.
On the other hand, the conspiracy theories of the Trump Republicans are the direct descendants of the anti-black conspiracy theories that were common during Whitman's era. Whitman would recognize those in a heat beat. Something tells me Whitman would not, David, have fallen for Trump's racist demagoguery.
Trump's mob believes the Democrats hold them in disregard. That is I suppose how we are compelled to read what you have written here, David. You believe the Democrats are causing terrible damage by speaking truth to them.
They are certainly behaving like people who have made a terrible mistake. Are they really of no account? Are they good people who have made a terrible mistake, but will come to their senses and rectify it?
It feels, David, as if you have done a terrible intellectual wrong here. My reading of this--I hope I am mistaken--is that you have pressed Whitman into service for Trump and his gang of relatively well-off white nationalists.
1
I liked this essay and where it points. To the vast majority of commenters who are sitting in their armchair wailing and gnashing their teeth - get up and do something positive!
We as a country have been through far worse and everyone forgets that in this information age, opinions and news are unfiltered and raw so everything seems terrible. While our fake president and his minions move as quickly as they can to ruin everything - it is us who must fight back, elect leaders, and get out the mops to clean up the mess. This is where we are, this is our hand to play. So stop whining already and get out there to make a difference!
The American experiment was founded on and has been sustained by the idea of working together for the common good. Despite many inequalities, that idea kept us more or less unified until the war in Vietnam showed us that what may once have been a “shining city on a hill” had been transformed into a self centered free for all in which our many sub groups all fiercely competed for their share of a pie that was no longer expanding. Today the core message of American history is no longer a central focus in our schools, neo nazis march in our streets, messages of hate and vitriol toward ethic minorities spew out from the Internet and a dark force called the alt right tells us that we would all be better with no government at all. Our history has always been marked by a background of chaos waiting In the wings. Today it is front and center. I love Walt Whitman’s optimistic message, but I’m not sure it speaks to where we find ours, as a nation, in 2018.
David Brooks, you have taken a lot of flack this past year from myself and many other readers. We are weary from this presidency and all the social chaos that has wrought amongst us. And our survivalist instincts has adrenalized our minds to prepare to fight. This makes it hard to be our normal selves. But intelligence needs to find answers beyond this fight-or-flight otherwise every day is a miserable experience. I am reading your article today with fresh eyes (as much as possible) and your message is clear and helpful ; made solid with the timeless words of Walt Whitman.
I think the answer is quite simple - we lack respect for other people's rights to think and live differently than us. We judge, shame, mock and disparage without any effort to understand. We no longer listen.
2
The underlying glue is a concept that one can not only survive but succeed, whatever that means, if one puts in the effort - that we have a fair shot at such an outcome.
This has never been completely or in some cases remotely true, but it is the underlying myth that we have held to.
The bedrock, for those who cared to learn about them, are the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Sadly, few people these days have read either or are interested in anything other than the brief excerpts that are used to justify certain political agendas;
And whether they understand who is really responsible, too many of us have come to the conclusion that the vast majority of the wealth we collectively create in this country has consistently been concentrated into the hands of those who know how to do so, by perverting the political institutions that were supposed to represent all of our interests. We've entered the New Plantation Economy.
So, we may still cling to our myth, but for too long we've forgotten why it's there or what we should do to hold ourselves accountable when the country heads off the rails.
I wish it was apparent what can be done to address this. My sense is that, even at the lower levels of society and economy, we've become too fat, dumb and lacking in the discipline to do justice to our own citizenship. And the pros who know how to work a crowd understand how to harness this inertia. Hence, for example, Trump.
1
I generally like what you write, am sometimes inspired. This piece, second para, borders on delusional. People outside America marvel at the hubris of these kinds of comments and scratch their heads at the so-called model that the rest of us are supposed to aspire to. I love my country but I don’t see it as superior to others in any way; I’m not qualified to make that judgement.
Anyway, anything you can do to get of that knucklehead Trump would be appreciated down under.
3
If you want to see what is both right and wrong with America, go see Hamilton.
I went in 2016, right before the election. Sitting outside, I felt euphoric, both about the country we lived in and the marvel I was about to see. I contemplated this moment in time. We had an admirable black President in the White House. We were about to elect an admirable woman for President. And I was going into the theater to visually see the birth of the ideals that had made it all come true, sung by a multi-ethnic cast. When the line "Immigrants: we get the job done!" was read, the place erupted.
Then Donald Trump and his merry band of traitors happened.
I have spent the past 18 months seeing everything I ever knew get reshaped.
Since then, I have thought a lot about Hamilton. It's a nearly perfect piece of art, but at $600/ticket, it's out of reach for most Americans. They don't hire white actors.
....and therein lies the problem.
We have a knowledge and income gap in this country and that has added fuel to the division. We divide ourselves by skin color.
The marriage equality push has been eye opening to me about the cultural value of good leadership. Prior to it's passing, blatant homophobia was still socially acceptable: no longer.
*If* we get the right kinds of leaders back into BOTH parties, we may be able to restore the true religion of this country.
What is our cult of belief? Democracy. Opportunity. Dignity. Equality.
Something our leaders need to promote.
1
America like the nations which birthed it, mostly the British and French rivalry, will always be nearly impossible to provide a unifying myth for because people are wise to every form of propaganda thanks to the past 241 years. I don't think we need one or should strive for one. Mass consumer culture, even in the form of gigantic rodeos, has obliterated the need for these types of myths. This capitalist culture has become our raison d'être thanks in no small part to our commercial propaganda from Hollywood and Madison Ave. For good or ill this is a global phenomenon as everybody already knows. Especially David Brooks which makes this oped seem somewhat ridiculous.
I love Whitman's muse, the writer of the poems. After reading a 700 page biography on him I found he had the same faults as most of us. His gift was his art. I would love for you to write an article about this quote:
Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?
~Jack Kerouac, 1957
America drove its "shiny car" into the night. It has been a brave and audacious journey but like any journey into darkness we have become lost. Maybe that "shiny car" was another of our illusions fueled by emotion more than reason.
1
This is a comment from today's article on Trump reshuffling his legal team - I thought it was so important it should be repeated:
Having been a NYC commercial real estate lawyer for 36 years, I can confirm that Donald Trump has always been notorious in the industry for capriciously and impulsively hiring and firing a motley pantheon of aggressive, rapacious, truculent and near-sociopathic NYC lawyers and law firms. This pattern continues as before, the only difference being that he now controls the USA's nuclear weapons arsenal.
1
There is a unifying mythos that can be summed up simply, “E pluribus unum”. The problem is that in glorifying individual responsibility today’s GOP has gone too far and now believes that the unifying mythos is Everyman for himself.
What was Texas’ GOP answer to a budget deficit? Cut funding for public education and lower taxes on the wealthy. What were the GOP’s main goals over the past 8 years, other than to cut taxes, take healthcare and the vote away from millions of Americans. The GOP cries about a non existent war on Christmas but wants to cut Medicare and social security while making certain to preserve the carried interest tax break and tax breaks for real estate pass through entities.
David it is time to stop pining for the good old days of Walt Whitman and recognize that the party of guns, godless leaders, demonization of gays, liberals, foreign born, educated people and science itself is what is tearing us apart. It is time for decent conservatives, like yourself, to recognize what has been done in your name and sat STOP.
2
David is down the rabbit hole again. Our nation is hardly together about anything. Pick any issue. There's usually a 50/50 divide depending on the questions asked.
Quoting Walt Whitman in this context is like reading a Hallmark card, or magically thinking that all will be well.
Reality demands that the Americans face possible failure, unless we rid ourselves of the Trump poison, which David and his pals helped create in 1981.
"For Whitman, America’s great foe was feudalism, the caste structure of Europe that Americans had rebelled against, but that always threatened to grow back"
What makes you think anything has changed? Since Reagan, the acceleration of the concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands has been non-stop. We have seen it so skewed that a few hundred hold wealth equal to the rest of us. We see every day that they push, and push hard for a return to feudalism, where no rules bind those at the top, and their whims and will become sacrosanct law for the rest of us.
Now, the ultimate feudalists rule the biggest and most powerful nations on Earth. Xi in China, Putin in Russia, Modi in India, and, of course, Trump in the USA. Trump is backed by feudalists here, like the Kochs, Mercers, Waltons, and others.
Democracy, or, more accurately, Democratic Republics, are a wonderful thing and a boon for the people who live under them, but the termites from below, and the thugs from above ceaselessly work to destroy it. Honest government isn't the human norm, corruption and dictatorship is, and has been since the first civilizations arose nearly 10,000 years ago.
Thousands of years ago, "strong men" declared their "divine right of kings", yet even today, televangelists preach that the super-rich are God's favored (despite the parable by Jesus of the camel and the needle's eye).
Yes, feudalism is what Krugman today calls "a zombie idea that won't die".
1
" Despite our differences, we devote our lives to the same experiment, the American experiment to draw people from around the world and to create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind."
Brooks' assertion is flatly wrong, and more wrong every day. The American experiment is failing miserably in ways too numerous to list, but a few are so egregious, so exceptional, they deserve to be highlighted. Opioids are available everywhere, but in America we're using them to kill ourselves at rates far beyond the rest of the world. Guns exist all over the world, but only in America are they available to virtually anyone with a pulse, and the resultant carnage is truly exceptional. Our insane gun policies are an experiment, one in which we're all participants, most of us against our will, and all in mortal danger. The American experiment is an experiment in market fundamentalism and supply side fantasies. In America it's increasingly survival of the fittest, every man for himself, and the open door to immigration, so demonstrably a source of our historic strength and diversity, is closing. America is devolving, a once great nation is committing suicide.
Unwittingly, Dave has contributed to TRump's (MAGA) concept hereby: the country has become too diversified for its own stability and good. This si precisely what I argue as well (and I feel, as an immigrant myself, I have a unique perspective). A nation divided will fall. A nation divided ten (hundred?)-old will fall faster/harder. My motherland - the USSR - is perfect example. My hubby is Yugoslavian - another example. IN other words, I know what I am talkin about, for I LIVED it. Once here, Indians continue to congregate w/ Indians, and Mexicans with their own kind. In many parts of the country, Spanish is lingua franca for the second and third generation. Do we really want Parisian suburbs in Dallas, Chicago, NYC? Well, we already have them; is it news to you? The country has ceased to be the melting stone it once was; it has become a coat of many colors which do not mix. SOme say it is the whole idea; I say it is race to the bottom, to disintegration and chaos. We are seeing it already. For the good of my and your children, let us promote assimilation, togetherness, and Americanism. Patriotism is NOT a dirty word, no matter what coastal elites say.
You don't see it, do you, David?
"The purpose of democracy, Whitman wrote, is not wealth, or even equality; it is the full flowering of individuals."
David, America cannot just fully flower its own citizens, by attacking other nations, and robbing them off their flowering. You cannot take away other people's lives, leave their countries war ridden, just because you are a military power.
As Americans we cannot pretend to be first class men and women forging freedom's athletes, when we use violent means to impose democracy on other nations. All the while we sleep in the bed with dictators of one stripe, while condemning dictator of another stripe, because of our motives of greed, power, agenda. NO, David. IT is against the laws of the universe.
2
These are noble sentiments, Mr. Brooks. If they are as applicable now as they were in the Civil War era of Lincoln and Whitman, then you tacitly acknowledge that the USA is again at war with itself. Indeed, one of its two major political parties, the GOP that you regularly support, is at war with Democracy, Fairness, Opportunity, and whatever other myths hold us Americans together.
We cannot heal the nation until we name the disease (bigotry, corruption, unchecked avarice, narcissism) along with its symptoms (ignorance, fear, voter suppression, disparities in educational and economic opportunities). The treatment, if we can administer it in time, is to VOTE AS IF YOUR CHILDREN'S LIVES DEPENDED ON IT, BECAUSE THEY DO.
1
I posted this on my Facebook site last Thursday morning as I was getting excited as a kid (I’m actually 70) about going to the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament later that day. Whether it’s rodeo or basketball, or other diversions, we desperately need these unifying forces within our society.
“We‘re a very divided country right now, and there’s little that seems to unify us. Except, something like both the women’s and men’s March Madness tournaments, as trivial as they may be, seem to be unifying events. Teams from schools of all sizes, affiliations and more than half of our fifty states, including small and disparate places, participate in “the big dance.” Whether you’re an avid basketball fan or not, the nation seems to be united at this brief moment, especially this first round of the men’s games where every team has a theoretical chance. Workforce productivity will stall the next few days. Absenteeism will soar, and those at their places of work will keep glancing at their devices, not focusing on their spreadsheets or conference calls. Now, maybe more than in a long time, we need things that unite us, even as we cheer on different teams. In a small way the events of the next few days, and then the next couple of weeks, will serve that unifying purpose. Go Zags, Buckeyes, Cats, Huskies, Griz, Aztecs, etc., etc.!!”
I think the kids who march on Saturday will not be swayed Mr. Brooks. They want gun control "NOW."And they do not want to wait for thr experiment to mature.
1
America is a lighted candle, easily snuffed out. And if Republicans continue to manipulate and abuse the Constitution, they will blow out the light of our republic.
Cultural and moral feudalism may be a relevant issue to those who have the luxury of pondering them, but economic feudalism is very real now, and is stealing the time and the spirit of the American people; making us peasants.
The economic disparity in America is frightening. Money is governing our country and only the one-percent has that power. The other ninety-nine percent are serfs too busy scraping together pennies to exist, to even realize what is happening to us and to America.
The lighted candle of America is flickering. The Republicans in Congress are blowing hard. If the light goes out it may never be lit again.
The choice is ours America. Vote in November to keep the candle burning bright, to keep America a democracy not a feudal kingdom. Vote Republicans out!
2
Mr. Brooks strikes a nerve but his blank awareness of the nature of our remaking of feudalism seems to elude him. Maybe he can't bring himself to say it because he can't but I think he alludes to the dark cloud that has shrouded the ray of light that guides the democratic purpose, Whitman championed. Here's the score, Brooks, Oligarchs and white collar criminals $24 trillion to none for the huddled masses. Once you wrap your head around the tragedy that everyone on the upside of your gilded facade has been complicit, maybe then you'll be able to pen the truth of now instead of look to a different era for hope. In the meantime, know that there are many of us you've never heard of fighting to redeem the soul of America.
Wow, Mr. Brooks, do you live and see a different America than I do. There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that holds America together except terrain. The rich have no responsibilities, they don't have to submit to a draft, get the best of everything including medical care and education, and when they need legal help they get the best.
The rich who live in New York are "Americans" even if they are Israeli or British. They get the best. The very poor in America, no matter if they come from families who have struggled for generations, get nothing as their right. They own nothing, but the rich own everything, including the politicians.
America died in the 60's. This thing called America is just an economic contract, not a constitutional one.
Hugh Massengill, Eugene Oregon
6
The dream of Walt Whitman seems to be fading fast only to be replaced with Orwell's "Animal Farm." We live in the reality of some pigs (was there ever a more apt metaphor?) being more equal than others. Dining room sets at $31,000. An in-office sound-proof phone booth with a price tag near $40,000. Private jet travel rivaling Middle East sheikdoms. Nepotism. All of this underpinned with empty promises to the masses of "Your day is coming soon, just be patient."
No soldier died for this. Working people didn't labor in sweat shops or in unsafe mines for this. People didn't go to the polls for this manifestation of their dreams. We aren't just getting started, David Brooks. We are at a crossroads. Democratic ideals are fast being pushed aside by unbridled capitalism fueled by manipulated and alternative facts.
"True democracy is still in the future" may be a true statement but the hurdles it faces have never been more formidable. And the trend towards its realization are not in its favor. I hate to rain on your optimism, David, but the pigs are already in the farmer's house and they appear to be settling in quite nicely.
4
David, this is noble, and altruistic, and idealistic, and what we all yearn for in a perfect world, but it's not what we need at this point in time. Trump has thrown down his ugly gauntlet, and the battle is joined. You need warriors - people who will fight for what they believe in. With words and protests if not by violence. People to hold the compromised rulers to account, and to throw tea into the harbor if necessary. The world is counting on them.
You are correct: "We devote our lives to...the American experiment to draw people from around the world...to create the best society..." All the same, I am sorry to introduce a note of realism into this promising dream. In 2016, we elected a president who does not share a commitment to this experiment and the values upon which it rests. Millions of voters were complicit in this rejection of what you so rightly praise as the experiment which ostensibly unites us. What explains this? Whatever the explanation, it is a shameful result.
It's only a great experiment if the participants all follow the scientific method and learn from the data that it produces. Our tribal identity culture has devolved into a cage match.
I have to say David when I read your articles I get flashbacks to the sixties.
Back then my friends and I would drive around getting high, pontificating on
World problems and how to fix them. Then we would come up with the solution
and high five one another on our brilliance. This would be followed by a nights sleep
And when I would wake the next day the answer was forgotten and everything was
still the same.
It’s all just a bad dream isn’t it?
1
The idea that America rebelled against feudalism to create "the best society ever" is absurd. The product of our war of independence was a society based on slavery, which is more brutal and historically more primitive than feudalism.
Maybe Whitman was a Marxist without knowing it. According to Marxism, history follows a necessary progression, so that you can't leap directly from a slave-basted society to capitalism. You have to go through feudalism. Maybe he feared that, having abolished slavery, feudalism was inevitable.
Interesting flashback. We are less young now. And so materialistic as a society. We deserve a materialist president - as a reflection of our shallow, empty yearnings. Whitman's world was real. Trump's world is not. Who is this vain wrecking ball in charge of our days? Not an American in the 19th century sense. No. For all our achievements, we are falling down - contaminating our planet, bankrupting our purse, offending practically everyone. American's hope is not in the today's ruling class - it is in the kids who watch it, and will someday rail against it.
1
So you think the American experiment is young? It’s not so young as the Italian experiment. Or the German. Or the Indian. Or the Turkish. Or the South African. Or the Ghanaian. All of these countries are much younger than the United States, and they too struggle with identity one way or another.
The US constitution predates *every* other written constitution bar San Marino’s. The US is not even the only country whose population mostly came from other countries in the past few centuries, replacing (i.e. massacring) aboriginals. That also describes Canada and Australia. IT’s not the only country that based its economy partly on slavery: that also describes Brazil.
This is just another trope of American exceptionalism. Every country, every state, has a unique history and personality. Get over yourselves.
1
In reference o your last sentence about our democracy still waiting to be born. Trump and his band of sycophants will delay the birth for at least another four years and maybe longer. The damage being done presently to our democratic institutions, especially the presidency and executive branch, not to mention the departments of justice, State and even the Judicial system, may take years if not a generation to recover. "When a fool throws a rock in the garden, it takes ten wise men to remove it."
Drunken suburban housewives?
Are these the white female voters that political consultants used to call soccer moms? Of course, among the others you cite, no one else was drunk?
You quote Walt Whitman on the "training school for first class men," and then you add the politically correct update "strong and equal women, courageous men."
But Whitman didn't mean women when he said men, and even all these years later after women finally got the vote through their own struggle and courage, women are still not considered equal by many, many men, including the Number One Alpha Male in the White House who gets a mulligan from evangelicals for hitting on women.
And although I know you are a modern liberated male, David Brooks, I do wonder why--as you looked over the crowd and mythologized the "ranchers" and "Latino families" and "African immigrants," what stood out to you was the fact of note that the housewives were drunk. Or that the women who were drunk were housewives. Deep down inside were you thinking, If they were "ladies," they wouldn't be drunken in public?
Our subtle biases do catch us out, no matter who pious and politically correct our parsing of humanity may be. Just pointing that out.
5
ok, we all need a little uplifting in this winter of our discontent!
1
Facebook’s original mission statement was very Whitmanesque: “To give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” But Republicans wanted to restore feudalism, caste structure, and aristocratic inequality and deliberately used hatred, division, racism, misogyny, and fear to acquire power. In fact, Republicans chose Donald Trump as their Presidential candidate and he hired Cambridge Analytica that downloaded Facebook “data” to identify the profiles of 50 million American and then CA created ads specific to those Americans to send them propaganda and get them to vote for him, or against Clinton. In the absence of the Russian theft of FB data to do the same thing, Trump’s cheating may have been enough to overthrow democracy. Combined with the Russian effort, that may be more likely.
Why? The CA FB story has been out for nearly a week but no connection to the Russian crimes has been made in the media or by the Congress, or by partisan Democrats. In other words, this dangerous crime has not been recognized publically. Instead we are hearing about the inept security at FB, but no relationship between Trump’s and Russia’s strangely similar use of high tech propaganda. Democracy is in grave danger and will remain in danger until this “coincidence” is exposed.
1
Here’s Whitman’s most famous poem. https://whitmanarchive.org/published/LG/1891/poems/27
It is about diversity of every kind and about Whitman’s unequivocal embrace of every human being of every human condition, of sinners and saints, of sex in every kind, of every religion, of every class while denying class, of life and death. It is what America can be when we recognize that “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” Race, Religion, gender, wealth and poverty, philosophy, native or immigrant are absolutely equal.
I embrace Whitman and America and declare that those who exploit, terrorize, who divide by race religion ethnicity are each and all anti American.
Maybe Brooks is choosing America over what has become of the Party of Lincoln. Whitman idolized Lincoln. Whitman’s poetry is and indictment of the Republican Party, Alt-right, Tea Party.
Somewhere, honesty and kindness and generosity have to be significant success factors in holding us together. Truth. It doesn't take a Nobel prize to see what's happening - we have a president, and his supporters, who have no respect for truth, no need for kindness, and an aversion to generosity. They are dragging the country back to something that only exists in their own minds. There is no regard for creativity, arts, science. Throw in the use of fear and manipulation and you have all that is needed to rip the country apart. It is time, Mr Brooks, to reflect upon the damage being inflicted by the party that, for whatever reason, you continue to hold dear. Open your eyes, and open your mind.
3
Except for the poor, right? They can be dumped on.
At the risk of being assigned to the world of perpetual optimism, I do believe the current circumstance under which we now find ourselves is not new, nor is it as fatal as some would hold.
The key to a healthy democracy is a majority of the population believing that tomorrow will be better than today. If, as we gaze into the next five or ten years, we see struggle, backward movement (economically or socially), moral degradation, etc. our inclination is to be (relatively) despondent. This may explain increased use of opioids, growth in suicides, etc.
If we see economic advancement, the achievement of social goals or some other reason to feel the pangs of optimism, life is not so bad after all.
Ultimately, the place from which you see the world determines your participation in a civilized society. The pessimists rarely engage in community building activities, and the optimists proceed with goals and a mission intact.
What we appear to lack today are enough optimists to make communities function as well as we might like.
1
I don't agree that the USA is a young country - with the implication that it can be excused its indiscretions. We are on a par with the great Western Democracies with regard to maturity. France is a similar age, Germany and Italy are younger than us. Even 'venerable' Britain had a vicious civil war and subsequently reconstituted itself only 100 years before us.
We are 'grown up' - and we should be doing better.
3
David,
Good column. In an interesting coincidence, in Krugman's column, a commenter surmised our economy is headed back to the 1850s. I thought of replying, satirically, 'What's wrong with the 1850s? That was age of clipper ships, nights where you could see the stars, Herman Melville, and WALT WHITMAN.'
"The purpose of democracy, Whitman wrote, is not wealth, or even equality; it is the full flowering of individuals."
I think this is a fundamental flaw in his logic. With out equality the individual can not fully partake of what democracy has to offer. Equality is the building block of a successful democracy. America is not the shinning example of democracy or even the best, but one of several examples across the world. There are countries that have much better track records with equal access to wealth and rights than America. We need to get it through out heads that we may not be the best but we can learn from other countries.
1
"That the cause of democracy, is sometimes aided not by the best men only, but by those that provoke it -- by the combats the are arousing". Well, if there is one thing that our "so-called" president has done well, it is to arouse all freedom loving people everywhere against his bullying, dictatorial, power abusing and fear inducing policies to join hands and resist for the sake of our democracy and democracies everywhere, as well as human rights around the world. Trump represents the ultimate combatant against freedom and justice for all! He has definitely aroused combatants in defense of what this country has been and desires to be for the common folk, although the good Congress folk in the Republican Party seemed more concerned with pleasing their wealthy donors and lining their own pockets, than public service to their fellow man. A day of reckoning is coming and justice will be served.
1
Whitman's quote: "The purpose of democracy is not wealth, or even equality; it is the full flowering of individuals" is incomplete. Perhaps he intended it to be implied, but even though we are "individuals" we exist in community. These cannot be separated in a civilized society. Unfortunately, the current administration is deceiving their constituents with false cries of attacks on their liberty and freedom. This deception is placing the individual need above all else, which in turn is sacrificing our society.
Whitman's use of "equality" is also not a complete thought. A more complete thought includes the concept of equity. Many in the current administration claim to be for equality, but the current policy-drives are eroding equity. Here again, in a "balanced" society where the populace thrives, equality and equity like liberty and community are intertwined and necessarily so.
1
"Are you willing to die for this country?" The Naturalization Officer asked me during the oath taking. I literally took a step back inside myself, if it is at all possible to do that. I wanted to "live for" this country, not to die for. But that is what American citizens have come to accept. Whether it is WWI or WWII or the Cold War, Korean war, or Vietnam war or Gulf WarI, Gulf WarII or Desert storm or War on Terror....we are constantly at war. What seems to unite Americans is the war against an "enemy". The enemy simply changes names, locations, but Americans want to have some external enemy they can unite against. Inside the country, Americans unite against their own citizens if they are divided by: race, north-south, religion, liberal-conservative, any kind of ideology that hardens each hour.
This kind of unity is just make belief. Temporary artificial superficial and not sustainable.
2
Well, it sure isn't politics that holds us together....no so much that their principles differ as much as they don't know how to do politics any longer.
We do know what's driving us apart, though. It's the media, print, electronic and social, that's caused the rend. After all, controversy, shouting, yelling and finger-pointing is how they make all that money.
What holds us together still is the document framed in the Smithsonian that starts with, "We the people...."
"Self-evident truths" are fast disappearing. Let's all hope the dreams Whitman and our founders bear us through.
1
David, I share your optimism, "the full strength of American democracy is still waiting to be born." I think the purpose of democracy is more than the flowering of individuals, as Walt Whitman stated. It is also Americans working together and realizing in many different ways our inalienable rights of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Michael Gerson ("We are not 'globalists'. We're Americans" WP 03/20/2018) imagined President Truman confronting 45 and his "extreme nationalism" with these words. "We are the nation that liberated death camps, rebuilt our enemies, inspires dissidents, welcomes refugees, secures peace on every contested frontier and seizes 'the burden and glory of freedom'." Americans are held together when we work together for the common good: in the factory, in the lab, on the athletic field, in an artistic venue, and in getting food planted, cultivated, harvested, and distributed, in civic participation in our governments from petitioning to voting to governing, and in communities that are either celebrating a memorable success or reconstructing after a disaster. All this makes us Americans.
3
The US hasn't even made its presidency a direct popular election. Its pretenses of democracy are as ludicrous as its claims to bask under the blessing of God.
Mr. Brooks writes "the terrible damage done when you tell groups they are of no account." The problem sir is that conservatives, and the Trump regime of the far right that claim the name but are actually extremist, have and do view groups as of no account...people of color, all women, and any white male not in the 1% or donor class. Slowly we are encountering the reaction to this ruling elite and may see it bloom in the mid-term elections if the blue wave predicted comes true.
2
I applaud David's attendence at the Houston Rodeo & further suggest his experience would have been enhanced had he driven up the road to attend Austin's SXSW festival. Both are examples of America and demonstrate the breadth of our nation's life in a TX-specific model.
I have spent my life...it is now a long one...working in the nonprofit sector. I have worked for arts organizations, with human service, educational, international, animal rights, every type of the wondrous panoply of idealistic causes and programs and community aspirations...most nonprofits are small, very constrained in their human and financial resources and sometimes naive about their impact and possibilities to make change, but they embody Whitman's hopes...people who believe they can and must make a difference in the lives of their fellow citizens...they don't avert their eyes from human suffering or injustice, they start a program with little money and big hearts to address it...they see merit in other people's dreams, choices and money! They travel by maps yet unmade...they call all of us whether we work for them or serve on a board or volunteer to be generous, responsible and hopeful...it's a privilege to be one of these people...after 9/11, I wrote to our nonprofit mailing list that I felt safer because I knew they were at work...as I daily confront the darkness of these current days, my heart lifts because each and every day, I hear the stories of my nonprofit partners and I know the bone-deep goodness of people...thousands and thousands of people all around us...
8
This comment frankly makes all other comment superfluous. Thank you!
Thank you David. This is a beautiful article. A great way to start the day. I notice that many of those who have written comments to your article seem to focus on how our country is far from perfect and, of course, the faults of others. It can be helpful to step back and see the bigger picture. This country needed Mr. Trump and his circle to remind us of what was slowly being drained from our political system. He is our country's dark teacher and represents the shadow that has been getting darker over the past decades. He is the principal actor in our generation's morality play. The disgust that so many feel towards the current administration is actually a wonderful sign of a decent and good people. When Walt Whitman worked as a nurse during the Civil War, he was surrounded by people in crisis facing death or permanent disability and it was from these people with their stinking wounds that he found beauty.
5
Well said. Thanks for your comments. I agree that these times are teaching moments.
1
Really interesting article. But I was surprised you did not tie Whitman's fear of feudalism back to our current unprecedented levels of inequality in all areas of life -- income, wealth, health, education, etc.
I think Whitman is correct that the enemy of democracy is feudalism and stratification -- and there is a lot that can be said about that in today's society. Aren't many of the current problems in our democracy, such as gerrymandering, control of politicians by monied lobbyists and uber-rich families, and corporations' increasing power in our gov't, directly traceable to inequality?
I hope there's a Part 2 to this interesting essay.
2
Feudalism follows from failure to apply negative feedback to extreme wealth-concentration. It's basic chaos theory.
What I hope holds us together is that we all want good lives for our children.
What I hope everyone is growing as weary of as i am is people telling me that what holds us together is our collective anger at somebody or something, because that is what is driving us apart.
2
"What on earth holds this nation together? The answer can be only this: Despite our differences, we devote our lives to the same experiment, the American experiment to draw people from around the world and to create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind."
The Trump administration has a different view as demonstrated in their changing the mission statement of the US Immigration Agency. The original statement was:
“USCIS secures America’s promise as a nation of immigrants by providing accurate and useful information to our customers, granting immigration and citizenship benefits, promoting an awareness and understanding of citizenship, and ensuring the integrity of our immigration system.”
The new mission statement reads:
“U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers the nation’s lawful immigration system, safeguarding its integrity and promise by efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland, and honoring our values.”
They clearly reject the idea that we are a nation of immigrants, and seek to emphasize the use of force to limit further immigration.
3
Even if the administration is trying to change our outlook towards immigrants, on the ground it looks a little different.
I recently went to a naturalization ceremony, attended by maybe 100 people from all around the world it seemed. As the judge told everyone, from that point on, the new Americans are identical in rights and responsibilities to any other American. There was a true spirit of welcome and acceptance in that ceremony. It made me very proud to be an American.
1
Twelve score and two years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men(and women) are created equal. (From wherever they came)
Now we are engaged in a great civil /cultural war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are now on a great battle field of that war.
It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us... that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
3
Much of Democratic Vistas is devoted to deploring the greed and mercantile spirit that had come to define America in the 1870's and 1880's. I don't think Whitman would be surprised at the sadness and alienation that have come to pervade our society. He saw it coming in DV, and his tone is one less of hope than of prophetic scorn.
1
"But it has not created a democratic culture that captures, celebrates and ennobles the way average Americans live day to day."
I disagree. We are absolutely swimming in the mythos of the brave American worker. Watch any truck commercial or untold action movies and you'll get a sense for what I mean. You should see the flag flying at the end of the street. There is definitely a culture seeking to ennoble the lives of average Americans. There's just two problems.
First, "ennoble" probably isn't the right word. I would have said something more like "There is a culture attempting to pacify the lives of average Americans." The teeming masses are only roused to action when their participation is needed by the American elite. An increasingly un-average elite, I might add. Otherwise, go watch the rodeo and drink beer.
And two, the mythos of the American worker has never been inclusive to the American population. The narrative is specifically dominated by white, male, blue-collar type workers with a varying emphasis on rural versus urban. Throw in some faith and spirituality for good measure and you have your fiction. The problem is that's not America.
You could just as easily replace "rodeo" with "music festival" and you'll find the same sort diversified congregation. However, you're not likely to find rodeo enthusiasts at the concerts I've attended. Rarely do the two cultures ever meet. However, the combined half-million plus attendees are all considered "average Americans."
4
When Mr Brooks asks what holds these people together it doesn't seem to have considered that it is more likely the love of rodeo than any devotion to the American experiment, especially in Texas.
I like optimism. I'm an optimist myself, or so I'd like to believe. But not blind optimism. Few things are more dangerous.
3
America was established on the proposition we can live our lives as we please so long as we do not harm others. Perfecting society was an totalitarian proposition imported by progressives around the turn of the last century. Our current divide is between these propositions.
5
Your simplistic categorization of two sets of people on either side of a divide is simplistic and reeks of Ayn Rand.
Does it "do no harm to others" when oil spills out of unregulated wells? When food is contaminated? When buildings (and bridges) fall because there are no inspections?
Really? We can "live our lives as we please so long as we do not harm others".
Does it do no harm to others when the 1 per cent of the people control 90 per cent of the capital and the working poor cannot have health care.
No-- society and American society in particular is more than that. We also have the common good, something progressives have always been concerned with.
2
This is a very simplistic statement about American ideals. Read Colin Woodard's book "American Nations", & you will learn that the different regions of the US had very different historical roots & established their colonies for very different reasons.
These unique historical roots & the conflicts between them shaped our past, & they still contribute to the divisions between us today.
1
The US was founded on the proposition that a vast empty continent to the west was there for the taking by all opportunistic buccaneers.
1
What holds America together is the simple fact that we are all here. And each of us, in our individual way, must try to make it work - our family, how it is we provide for ourselves, our local and broader community and this nation. For most of us, the thought we give to this enterprise is apportioned in pretty much that order.
We bring to this effort our life experience - what we have learned from our family, our schooling, our occupation, and the values, memes and conjured reality of whatever tribe, real or imagined, that we identify with.
Pool the collective efforts of 300 million plus people within that context and you have what holds America together.
60
Mr. Carter sounds like a clone of Mr. Brooks with his naive and optimistic view of America. Ignoring the fact that the anti-American republican party is wholly owned by the NRA, our home grown terrorist organization, billionaires, like the malicious Koch brothers, religious zealots, and racists who's mission is to divide rather than unite, leaves little hope today. Our country may be young but it doesn't have to be incredibly stupid at the same time. Democracy is lost when the popular vote loses.
Normal people like to experience happiness. Abnormal people feel bitter resentment at the sight of other people looking happy.
How is everyone selfishly only "doing his or her own thing" going to "hold us together"? Sixties Boomer libertarianism and narcissism have largely killed the America of George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life, in which self-sacrifice for the common good was the highest value of FDR's America, which had come through Depression and world war together, not "looking out for No. 1." I much prefer the Swedish values of community and the common good celebrated in a fine comment above. How odd that the Scandinavian countries which share this public ethic are always ranked at the top of happiest nations on earth, and somehow they are not all addicted to opioids as we increasingly seem to be to deal with our pains in "the land of the free."
I really enjoyed this piece. The day after the 2016 election a good friend called and asked me if we perhaps ignored a whole group of American citizens? We are both Democrats and voted for Secretary Clinton. I think just as we defend/speak up for minorities, members of the LBGTQ community, and the Dreamers, perhaps we need to pay closer attention to the crowds at Texas rodeos. Disenfranchised is disenfranchised. I'm not talking about the bigoted or hatemongers, just the unhappy, the disappointed, and the unheard. We need to take them along with us on this "exhilarating adventure!" And I agree with Whitman: the cause of democracy is sometimes aided not by “the best men only, but sometimes more by those that provoke it — by the combats they arouse.” And that's why I bought a ticket to see Kathy Griffin's upcoming show at Carnegie Hall!!!
1
Interesting point, thanks. Even though I’m believe I’m on the other end of the political spectrum..I agreed with your point. What bothers me about articles like these is that these opinion writers, politicians and their parties, actors are mostly responsible for the division in this country. The Democratic Party and their minions in the press divide people into victim groups who need the help of Dems for protection. The Republican Party and it minions make all minorities out to be criminals and need to be imprisoned and/or deported. I’ve realized now that it’s all done for money and power. The politicians don’t want to help...they just want to continue their own perks. The MSM, depending on their ideology on holds the “other” side accountable. They are just as guilty as anyone else and they do it for their own profit. Its sad that people fall for their game...instead of calling both sides out. God bless.
1
Mr. Brooks, I really enjoyed this column; it gives one some hope. I think, however, that main driver of the American dream is opportunity; opportunity that has now been lost due to Citizens United and the overwhelming influence of money in politics. In the recognition of our rising inequality, the anger and frustration of the average person have increased, and instead of directing them at the culprits, he/she is directing them at others who are presumably competing for a piece of the ever smaller pie. We must unite against the corruption that has become our government and lined the pockets of the wealthy, and which has driven us to see each other as enemies in an unwindable battle. Remember in November!
4
What will it take to convince Brooks that American democracy has been dead for quite awhile. The new order is far from democratic more like a kleptocracy, rule by the rich. This is not early days of American democracy, it's been gone since Bush stole the election from Gore. A coup occurred and we entered a new era.
9
I think what held our country together, albeit briefly, was a shared mythology causing us to unite in two world wars against, in the second one, enemies so vile they made us work together to defeat them. For the mostt part. Minorities in the military were still segregated and mistreated, despite the amazing heroism and combat excellence of groups like the 442nd and the Red Tails, and the Navajo code talkers, among many others. But between and after the wars, the divisions reasserted themselves, often in ugly and murderous ways.
We still taught, and in many parts of the country still teach, a literally white-washed version of history that minimizes the genocide of the indigenous peoples of the Americas by European colonizers, many little better than pirates or worse. And that does not own up to the reality that the massive wealth of this country, north and south, came from the free labor provided by slaves. There is more attention paid to the struggle of immigrants, as most of us are descended from them even if you buy the white argument that the Puritans, Pilgrims and other earlt white land grabbers were not. But in this past year, we see official efforts to belittle and lie about the role of immigrants, especially non-white ones, in building, preserving and sustaining this nation.
4
I've been reading Kerouac and Thomas Wolfe recently. Too later writers whose prose described the depth and breathe of America and the individuals whose daily struggles and joys define it. The people who went out and searched for something all the while creating America. An America not huddled in front of an assortment of electronic screens or one on an adventure vacation. Like Whitman's theirs was a more poetic America about a myriad of encounters. These are America's storiesoes anyone read about them anymore?
1
Experiment? Any oppression goes against the heartbeat of what we are organically. Before kids are taught to hate they don't know how. Hate would be the experiment. Chaos and rubble and genocide, war is an experiment. Fairness and synergy is what would be left without indoctrination. Let the planet alone and its true nature of healing begins.
2
I wish I shared your optimism, Mr. Brooks, but feudalism is growing stronger by the day in America and there is no sign of it abating. In fact, outright racism is on the rise like never before, encouraged and abetted by our President and the Republicans.
A neighbor of mine, an elderly college educated professional woman about ready to retire, with whom I had previously had a passing, but cordial relationship asked me a couple of weeks ago whether I didn't like America when it was "a lot whiter." I blushed when she told me that and was almost speechless, because I am white but my wife is Asian American and this woman clearly knew that. I looked straight in her eyes and just emphatically stated, "No, I like the melting pot that America is." She then went on and asked, "Well aren't you afraid of the day when whites are no longer the majority in this country?" Again, I replied, "Absolutely not. I never think about that and it wouldn't bother me in the least if whites became a minority." She then told me she was reading a lot of Alt Right literature and she believed that America was intended to be a white nation and we needed to stand up for keeping it that way. By then I am certain she could detect my anger and I said simply, "You do know my wife is Asian American. How can you be saying such things to me?" She replied, "Oh, I like her." She then walked away, hasn't spoken to me since and avoids me at all cost. That is my experience of present day America, Mr. Brooks.
10
Yes, racism exists across the board, but the formally educated are generally more likely to keep it hidden. It's unrealistic to think America is that much better about it than other countries, it just handles it in its own way, as does other countries.
While I always appreciate reading about Whitman, I'm not sure what Brooks is driving at with this piece. I believe he means the end of the column, in which he says, "the full strength of American democracy is still waiting to be born", to be optimistic. I don't see it so. To me, with the reign of Trump, we have never been closer to the European feudalism that Whitman so loathed.
And that the Republican Party, in thrall to its mega-donors (And perhaps to Russia.), sees that feudalism is desirable, with the Trumps, the Koch Brothers, and the like as lords, and the rest of us as serfs, makes the situation all the more intolerable.
6
Mr Brooks, it’s anazing that you can’t see the obvious. If you think 180000 getting on the same lawn is democracy then most third world countries will qualify. There are easily thousands people on the street any given time in the third world.
Just living together cannot America hold together. We are in perilous times.
4
Walt Whitman "didn’t mind a little healthy rudeness, what we would call the politically incorrect. He thought that the cause of democracy is sometimes aided not by “the best men only, but sometimes more by those that provoke it — by the combats they arouse.”
Mr. Brooks, it's hard to see how this president aids democracy when every day of his presidency is spent undermining the Constitution, rule of law and institutions that served the American people very well before he came along to find fault with every good and decent quality America has to offer.
In a very real sense, he has made America into the country he wants it to be. One third of America is a reflection of him, the ugly and intolerant American who is not the best or the brightest of our citizenry. Conflict and chaos are what this president has inflicted on America. Dissension and turmoil are the order of the day for our republic.
Diversity and the American spirit of optimism and faith in the country's traditional ideals are what hold America together, not the divisive and hateful bluster from this president. America has endured in spite of him.
2
Simply beautiful. Thank you David.
When millions of Americans (and their elected representatives) no longer feel that their first loyalty should be to our country’s hard-won Democratic institutions, but to a single “leader,” no matter how demonstrably corrupt and unfit for high office, we have truly descended to the level of politics as “personality cult,” and Whitman would be appalled.
1
" The answer can be only this: Despite our differences, we devote our lives to the same experiment, the American experiment to draw people from [around the world] and to create the best society ever, to serve as a model for all humankind."
I wish David Brooks lived in the real America and not a fabricated version that has never lived up to its fictionalized premise; and certainly not now.
FYI Mr. Brooks: Did you bother to acquaint yourself with the newest "mission statement" from the "United States Citizenship and Immigration Services" (USCIS)?
"USCIS secures America's promise as a nation of immigrants..." has been eliminated and replaced with:
"U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services administers the nation's lawful immigration system, safeguarding its integrity and promise by efficiently and fairly adjudicating requests for immigration benefits while protecting Americans, securing the homeland, and honoring our values."
So tell us again "What Holds America Together."
2
America has always been an arithmetic mean. What separates this time in America's history from others is perhaps that the components of the extremities are better able to join forces to attack each other to the detriment of the average. It is increasingly difficult to be "normal" in the United States.
1
"The answer can be only this..... to draw people from around the world and to create the best society ever"
Exactly right David Brooks. We're going through a difficult time, the media is full of negative news, Washington is dysfunctional, bombings in Austin, mass shooting in Parkland, another likely to happen somewhere else soon. But America moves on and on through the chaos. We always have. The 60's were horrendous, war, assassinations, riots, but we made it through.
We're not Brits or Irish or Chinese or Italian or Syrian or Ethiopian, but a blend of humankind all stuck together by a glue we call the Constitution. A nation of laws that state all are created equal.
And our democracy is why so many millions from around the world still try to make their way here. It's not because we're a great nation but a "free" nation that attracts the masses.
America is now held together by bigotry, hate, and xenophobia. Republican leaders are abetting Trump as he undermines the fundamental principles of our democracy. These same Republican leaders are staging a full-blown assault on the political independence of the judiciary and law enforcement, scuttling any attempt to address one of the most serious attacks on our country, and preventing defense against future attacks. Republicans enabling Trump is not surprising since Trump's worst tendencies reflect attitudes which Republicans have cultivated in the rank and file of their party for half a century. (Ever hear of the Southern Strategy?) Last July a poll showed 45 percent of Republicans approved of Trump shutting down any media he deemed unfair to him. An August poll showed over half of GOP voters support suspending democratic rights if Trump proposes it. A poll shows that half of Republican voters regard Vladimir Putin as our friend. A Pew Research Center poll shows that over one-third of Republicans favor authoritarianism over democracy. In the meantime Brooks retreats to an imaginary Trumpless America which exists only in his mind. Brooks pretends that the purpose of American "democracy, is not wealth, or even equality; it is the full flowering of individuals." Unfortunately Walt Whitman never met Trump or the Republican Tax Bill which crush democracy, individualism, exalt corruption, and make the wealthiest even wealthier by stealing from, and impoverishing, the rest of us.
2
Walt Whitman was first and foremost a revolutionary. He would no doubt be amused to find himself used rhetorically to defend the status quo by our oh-so-intellectual Mr. Brooks. In fact, our country was revolutionary once as well – and seen by the world as such – before it too became so profoundly conservative – also as seen by our western contemporaries. And I don’t mean in the partisan sense. Clearly, Mr. Brooks longs desperately for an America Idea/mythos that for many Americans never was, although clearly it worked well for privileged white middle-aged men. If only we would all just stop rocking the boat long enough to recognize, as per Mr. Brooks, that we are already living in “the best of all possible worlds”? Ain’t gonna happen. Whitman’s been dead for 125 years. He would have been the first to remind us of that fact and to say: surely there are poets of our own time that speak to our own realities in our own voices?
1
When democracy is challenged by unbridled avarice and massive wealth concentrated in the hands of the few, democracy loses every time.
5
Very interesting article. Sounds like David Brooks is finally going to become a progressive Democrat. Hopefully he will soon write an article explaining how the Republican party is responsible for trying to break down that which binds us together.
10
Sorry, David. What's holding most of America together at this point is the "quiet desperation" of the "mass of men" desperately trying to keep themselves and their families in food and shelter and health. Not a lot of time for philosophical discussion.
10
Brooks forgets that we have to feel we have a stake in what's happening. For at least 10 years the GOP has denied working Americans everything except cuts to programs that might help them, refused to improve the ACA, and undermined, as much as possible, any attempts we make to improve our lives. They've done this by cutting taxes when they shouldn't, refusing to work with a duly elected president because of his skin color, kowtowing to their rich puppet masters, and lying as much as possible.
There is no longer a place for working Americans at the table. We've been shown the floor and the door. When a nation as rich as ours defunds welfare programs for 99% while handing out monetary assistance to the richest, refusing to enforce regulations designed to protect consumers from predatory or deliberately negligent practices by industry, and worst of all, being deliberately obstructionist about health care, unemployment, hunger, education, etc., it's an alarming trend. Why? Because it shows that our elected officials care nothing about inequality and the consequences.
America, at this point, is not an experiment. It's the laughingstock of the developed world. China, Russia, North Korea all know that Trump is gullible to flattery. Our closest allies are disgusted with us. And we're fighting among ourselves in ways that are terribly destructive. It started long before Trump but his actions may be the final touch. Untied States of America.
16
Gosh. A lot of people are sure giving you a hard time about your article. I liked it and found it thought-provoking and inspirational. I'm going to do my very best and press on with the "experiment".
3
David, sometimes, as when I read your 2nd paragraph here, I conclude you just don't understand the deplorable conditions in our country. Far from the best country ever and serving as a model for others, we are at the bottom or close to it among advanced democracies in virtually every indicator of national well-being. And none of there challenges have been addressed with the seriousness they deserve, even under Obama. Carrying on about dear Walt is just another distraction, though minor compared with others. Gus Speth
30
In 1971-72 I traveled around the world for 10 months on a shoe string budget. The world was less connected then, no cell phones, no internet, etc. I was in East and South Asia, the Middle East and Europe, including the Soviet Union. In virtually every country I visited there were groups which, although having lived there for centuries, were not and would never be accepted as the majority group. My most vivid impression of the United States from the perspective of that trip was that, unlike those exclusionary societies, a person coming to the US is considered as American as a DAR member. Of course, I know this is not universally true here; but it is or was on of the bonds that unites. The possibility of living a full and productive life, free of the shackles of prejudice, has been the motivating factor driving the ambitious and energetic to immigrate here and contribute to the enrichment of the United States. Whitman was right.
10
Wow! This excellent piece says it all. I'll be discussing this with my friends this week and thinking about it in relation to my own life on the planet. You are the best.
1
How will the elimination of the inheritance tax and the SCOTUS decision on citizens United change Whittman's dream?
The current Republican Party seems to want to install a ruling class of the rich.
17
Hasn't Brooks noticed the economic and social feudalism is back? The top 1% of the country are now capturing about 21% of all income which is the same ratio as in the 1920's. Of course he has noticed because he's been relentlessly promoting this situation for over 30 years so instead of acknowledging it he has moved on to producing phony homilies like this. The hypocrisy is so breathtaking it's funny. The less funny side is that the levels of inequality that he's long worked to create are starting to undermine the entire relatively open market capitalist base upon which the entire edifice stands.
34
Whitman, a poet, saw literature as a force for good in the (then) young American experiment. Would his optimism withstand a president Trump? If an American literary giant represents the current American gestalt, I respectfully suggest it is H.L. Mencken.
6
Well said! And so sad that so few - as evidence by the comments thus far submitted - are able to wrap their hearts and minds around this idea. It would seem that the concept of spiritual unity is lost on many, that is, if they rely on their heads only.
Open up your hearts, people, and hear the deeper message here: Life is more than us vs. them; competition to be most eloquent or erudite; facts, figures, and infrastructure. There is a common thread connecting all of us, and in looking for it - and in finding it - we elevate ourselves, together. To that end, we truly are yet a young country.
8
David. Love your piece noting Whitman's philosophy on what became the American Dream. But that is not really what was the notion behind early America.
Yes, the earliest settlers were escaping their places of origin to establish a home free of persecution of some sort, mostly religious in nature. There were also others that sought adventure and perhaps fortune in a new frontier. And then of course there were nations, who at the time were the most modern and powerful in history, who sought enrichment and did so by exercising their power.
And in the end, the Declaration of Independence came down the failure of the political system of England which was about unfair taxation without proper representation. That was their version of "Make America Great Again".
The image of Whitman's America was born in the Constitution, an amazing document well credited as the bible for today's ideal democracies. It thought bigger than it needed to and placed it sites on moral issues that transcend nearly 250 years of incredible change. If the Constitution has flaws they lie in the inability of Jefferson and others to predict the future as well as industrial and technological advances. That imperfection means that if we truly wish to follow the Constitution as it was intended, we must be able to interpret the document vs. strict wording. America is not a religion with the Bible as its constitution. And the Constitution is not the Bible.
10
"One of my favorites of these lab reports is Walt Whitman’s essay “Democratic Vistas,” published in 1871. The purpose of democracy, Whitman wrote, is not wealth, or even equality; it is the full flowering of individuals." How does Brooks reconcile his devotion to this passage with his Republican roots? The party's ethos is to use government to enrich the rich, and to preserve the White Anglo Saxon/Christian dominance. There is no allowance for the flowering of individuals in a movement that sneers at a government. that tries to work toward the common good.
26
I'm glad that David Brooks is now reduced to writing stirring little book reports rather than indulging in the sociology-lite that he seems to favor. And I'm glad that he likes Whitman. But to talk about democracy and not talk about economics--or even to tease out the implications of the sections that he actually quotes--is weak reading and even weaker reasoning. America is not an "idea." It is a country whose constitution is a model of 18th-century assumptions and biases, whose promise of social mobility has stagnated, whose legacy of racism is still a visible scar and whose inequalities of wealth are unparalleled in the Western world. Add to that the fact that our democracy has been severely compromised by interference from foreign powers and corruption and you can see that Brooks is just whistling past the graveyard. We have a lot of work to do--and it's concrete work that involves hard-nosed analysis, not airy nostrums about "the American spirit."
79
... is still a visible [abscess]...
1
Maybe David should have cited Upton Sinclair in his sweet wanderings.
2
Economic feudalism, which is glossed over in this essay, prevents successfully addressing cultural and moral feudalism. Income and wealth inequality have to be reduced before the others can be addressed.
Is feudalism determined by the presence of those who are not as privileged as other, but degraded or is it determined by the the presence of those who have privileges, driven by their wealth, that are not attainable by others?
4
I love this piece by David Brooks. Some you might be interested in this reading of Whitman's work, "I Sing the Body Electric." Whitman's poem captures the spirit and flavor of America in his time, but something more too. It is a reminder of our own heritage and history in an artistic form that helps us to remember who we are as a people, within our common humanity. https://www.facebook.com/ron.starbuck/videos/10213601504946251/
5
Short question. How exactly does "the full flowering of individuals" thrive in the midst of massive state sponsored inequality?
95
Which enables a toxic, WE-THEY culture, at all levels and areas, which seeds, feeds and harvests, daily, violating of constructed, selected "the other." Individuals, whose identity and behaviors are muddled. Diverse groups who are dehumanized and homogenized.Values, ethics, and norms so necessary to underpin and anchor mutual trust. Respect, Caringness. Mutual help, when and if needed.Equitable sharing of limited human and nonhuman resources critical to the development of menschlich people and systems.Not violating ones!And in addition, consider rewriting the implication of the article's last sentence-"waiting to be born."Our US complex reality, as divided peoples, country, nation, tradition, and a historical process, is not a misleading either/or "waiting to be born," one. With innumerable, multidimensional, ongoing, daily, viable choices. To be made. Strengthened. Sustained, Changed as realities change. WE? THEY? US?
Mr. Brooks,
Now that you've completed this "lovely" mental exercise, please devote your next column in response to the question above so that we can get on with the business of how to move forward.
Thank you.
Hey, Richard! You're supposed to 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' and then you can have the 'full flowering of (the) individual'. No bootstraps? Too bad for you!
That is America.
1
A quick survey of our nation’s infrastructure — the visible and the institutional — tells a different story. It’s the house we should have maintained and invested in for decades, financed by our vast wealth. But it stands woefully neglected, too expensive now to replace. That we see such decay tells the whole story of how the country views its obligations to the common realm, the things we all share. By emphasizing individualization — by skewing our attention to focus primarily on the strengths or failures of the individual at the expense of community — our “experiment” is failing, in fact may have already failed. We are now a once great power in decline. It doesn’t take much research to see that the world’s new centers of energy and innovation lay elsewhere. Mr. Brooks is right, we still are a young country. So why do we behave like a toothless, tired old man?
37
If we compare America with the rest of the world, its special uniqueness is evident. Europe is more of a place or a thing. You can point to it and say that is it. As your realtor will tell you, no one is making more land (ignoring the Dutch for the moment). In this way, a place is fixed and unchanging. Who controls it and what lies on it might change but it does not.
In contrast, America is an idea. It is a striving, an attempt to make things better for individuals and communities. As such, just as Zeno's paradox, it is almost incapable of achievement but we keep trying.
Our biggest problem today is not an abandonment of America but an increasing channeling of aspiration for improvement limited to myself and my tribe. We can Make America Great Again (are you listening, Mr. Trump?) when we recognize the hand up I extend to the least among us makes me greater. And this is not just noblesse oblige but a sincere recognition each of us can contribute to a better society in our own way but only if we are pulling in the same direction.
18
Do you have any idea how deeply offensive that is to people in other countries - especially western democracies? Europe is just a "place or thing"? America has the global hammerlock on making things better for individuals and communities? Wow, talk about confirming for others what they already believe about us to be true.
I get your point but would flesh out this a bit more. The taproots of European history run much deeper than America's. Consider the Battle of Kosovo, June 15/28, 1389 which marked the fall of Serbia to the Ottoman Empire, the death of their leader King Lazar and the high water mark of Turkish advance into Europe. It is commemorated annually on Vidovdan [St. Vitus' Day] and celebrates a legend of sacrifice, marking the "Acampo Santo", the "Holy Field" of that conflict. That reverence for place has gone on almost 3 times longer than America existed as a country.
If you reread my original comment, you will see I said Europe was MORE a place or thing not JUST a place or thing.
Thank you for taking time to comment on my post.
There are a couple of levels to this argument. One is a pretty simple, we are in this all together. The other is a rejection of elitism in favor of populism. I find the first argument to be the typical banal argument that you hear from centrists regularly. The second argument is much more complex and yet it isn't treated as such by Mr. Brooks. He makes the argument without any definition of elitism. He does mention political correctness which only seems to orientate the writer to the right of the political perspective. So, what type of elitism does Mr. Brooks see as feudal? Intellectual elitism is what is mostly targeted by those that decry the advent of political correctness, but is intellectual elitism truly feudal? Both Mr. Brooks and Walt Whitman could be considered amongst the intellectual elite. The idea of an intellectual elite is ultimately a creation of the enlightenment and democratic ideals. I am just not sure where Mr. Brooks is going with the argument. It seems shallow. He seems to be stuck between saying "can't we all just get along" and attacking a particular ill-defined group of feudal counterrevolutionaries. I think he would have been better of just writing "democracy good" and calling it a day.
7
Dress it up in literary Americana, but the idea here is still unpersuasive if not dangerous: that what holds together Americans is one thing, and one thing only. Perhaps it is simply the authoritarianism of the conservative mind, that it can't think unity outside some monolith--God, Country, Corp.
As a liberal I prefer to see our unity arising out of a multiplicity. Class, occupation, region, gender, sports team, church, bowling league, movie franchise, bar--there are a hundred connections that bind me to my fellow Americans and my fellow Americans to one another, twisting, crisscrossing, and interweaving into a very complex and beautiful whole.
The monocultural dream of America you enjoy at the rodeo is only one vision, one big beautiful part of America, but not THE America. I like to think THAT is what Whitman taught us.
201
GM Chris,
I think David described the rodeo as multi-cultural. Please re-read the last sentence of the first paragraph.
Did you read what he wrote about the rodeo. He described the mind-boggling diversity of the crowd.
Democrats are the party of authoritarianism. Can you imagine Paul Ryan ordering House Republicans to vote for a bill without reading it with the exhortation "they have to pass it to find out what's in it?" Can you imagine what would happen if it were discovered that the IRS were refusing to approve or deny the application for non exempt status for Obama's OFA? Republicans would impeach Trump, although Democrats are pretending Obama's actions were justified. What would happen if Trump made recess appointments while Congress was in session, and then refused to even unseat them after SCOTUS ruled the appointments illegal?
Democrat voters are sheep, and will obey their autocratic leaders orders. Democracy is messy, and Republicans follow the law.
One of the strengths of America is that it is not a monoculture like Sweden is. the hostility reflected in the left wing media is overstated in an attempt to re-impose the Democrat autocracy. When you go to a rodeo or your next door neighbor's barbeque, you do not fight with your neighbors. [There are integrated neighborhoods in the South, less so in the North, so maybe your neighborhood is monoculture.]