No Venn overlap. So which side you on Brooks?
2
If “it’s the economy, stupid,” then Republicans should do very well: they’ve earned that.
2
Thanks Trump......
I Venn to differ. There is plenty of overlapping. Perhaps the frame of reference you view it from does not allow you to see those commonalities. Maybe you should try pulling a, Joel McCrea, as per "Sullivan's Travels". A little incognito might go a long way in helping you find the intersections you are missing.
So grab your swag and hit the road. Leave the the electronics behind. A #2 soft Ticonderoga and a notebook should do the trick.
3
".... and the radicalized mobs of educated elites (symbolized by the media). In rural America basic values like hard work, clear gender roles and the social fabric are dissolving before people’s eyes."
Radicalized mobs of educated elites? Nattering Nabobs of Negativism?
So... Trump supporters have been conned into believing that there is a "mob" of educated elites, that doesn't believe in hard work? So how did they get educated?
And they've got their knickers in a hissy-fit twist over perhaps 2% of the population?
But is "the social fabric dissolving before people's eyes?" Just what is this dog-whistling about?
Go and look at that piece by Tim Carney -- nothing about the dissolving social fabric in rural America is due to "educated urban and suburban elites."
2
Hmm. Welp, you obviously haven't been to South Florida then. Where my Demo neighbor has been going door to door to try to sign people and my electrician with the two Harleys can not shut up about Trump, without any provocation. Both are good and honest people. But one is urban and one is rural. This state will once again decide and it's really about older working class white men.
“I got a loaded .22 right by my door,” one man in rural Pennsylvania told Carney, “I don’t trust nobody in my apartment complex.” This right here explains everything about how malicious and insidious the toxic GOP/Trump Kool-Aid really is. They are so worked up and fearful of a non-existent threat that African-Americans can't even live their normal daily lives without getting the police called on them and refugees fleeing death threats and murderous gangs in Central American countries get labeled as secret Muslim terrorists financed by George Soros. I hope our country can turn around with this election and start heading back towards saner waters or we're in real trouble.
5
That Atlantic article is rubbish and classic bad journalism. The writer is attempting to say that progressive causes fulfill the role of religion to people who aren't religious. Do not assume that because I don't believe in God that I need something else to fill up some kind of mysterious void. This might be correlational, but it's not causal. It would be better to look at educational level and progressive activity - with good reason.
3
Interesting to note that In his description of himself on his campaign webpage, Josh Hawley only mentions he went to law school and college but not where and mentions nothing about his “erudition.” Add that to “Truly red” requirements Mr. Brooks: Anti-intellectualism.
5
"In rural America basic values like hard work, clear gender roles and the social fabric are dissolving before people’s eyes." Yet they vote for a proven serial lier, proven serial adulterer, proven tax cheater, proven racist, proven white nationalist, and proven incompetent administrator. I just don't get it.
3
I've always enjoyed David Brooks perspective but given what has transpired over the last 3 years his "both sidesism" has grown very tiresome.
There should really be no doubt by now by anyone paying attention which party has grown dangerously extreme. No less than the ling time conservative columnist George Will is recommending that voters vote for Democrats next week so that the Republican party goes back to the drawing board and rebuilds itself into something more honest and sane.
9
David Brooks thinks saying Trump’s name in rural America might get one called a racist?
That sounds less like reality and more like a throwaway line from an elitist coastal pundit talking about people he’s never met and wanting to exercise some “both sides are bad”.
6
Mr Brooks had been mellowing in some of his columns but this column says nothing about awakening the monster of discrimination in an era where so many fortunes can buy mis indormation and seed hate.
We are all afraid. We may be helpless to change this.
I don't think you quite get it, David (again). Too many cliched stereotypes of who is on the playing field, and how the game does not work. I do not buy it. We are not actually a nation composed of such stereotypes, but individuals. Your categories may make for a satisfying article explaining our stasis, on the face of it, but it's too pat in its categories. My lived life live, as a democratic urban liberal in DC, tells me this. It is in fact the media that would sell us this representation of who we are, whether liberal or conservative.
3
When will Brooks and for that matter any conservative or moderate address one of the real problems - the re education of America by the wealthy elites especially the libertarians and self serving whose goal in politics is to serve their profit margins. They have been propagandists for a generation.
This has been written about but their impact not studied except by the occasional journalist and political scientist.
2
If the nation is suffering a separation of urban vs. rural, educated vs. uneducated, elite vs. working man/woman, it just might be because that was an intentional outcome of certain people who feel they can benefit from a divided nation. Perhaps Mr. Brooks could dig a bit deeper to acknowledge who benefits, and who suffers from this sad situation. Ironically, those who voted for the separator-in-chief are suffering the most. Go figure....
3
The Venn diagram died when Mitch vowed to make President Obama a one term president out of pure racial hatred. I am voting democrat straight down the line, I really do not care what the candidate's qualifications are. And pundits like you and all the so called conservatives lost any right to criticize me when they chose Trump as their candidate and bowed down to him once elected as president. The wrath of the left I am hoping will be terrible, pugnacious and last forever.
7
Bring back the draft, and the Venn diagram begins to reconstitute. The absolute worst thing that ever happened to America was the end of the military draft in the early 1970s. It removed one of the great equalizers for men, and one of the great mixers. It removed the idea that service is a duty. It removed the possibility that a Kansas farmhand's life might depend on a boy from Compton, and vice-versa. It removed the values of grit, determination, and obligation. It made shirking more likely. Do the same thing for women this time. Make it age 19-21, and college will be a place for more mature students. 2.5 years military, 3 years non-military. Everyone goes, including my kid.
5
Thank you, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan.
You’ve had a majority in Congress for two years, and you haven’t repealed and replaced, you haven’t given the middle class a tax cut, you haven’t fixed our immigration policy, and you haven’t rebuilt America’s infrastructure.
You’ve divided, youve insulted, and you’ve hated. And blamed the Democrats, our allies, and immigrants. So thanks! Overlap and unity are so overrated.
6
Given David Brooks' tendencies toward binary thinking, I sense some confirmation bias at work.
Every opinion piece presents two diametrically opposed views, and a sad lament from David for some middle that his very statement of the case makes seem impossible. But for which he pines nonetheless.
The way you state the premises all but predetermine the conclusion.
And by the way, the 'rural' side, as you describe it, believes in things that are not true (i.e. lies and fabrications). That's a problem which is meant to be corrected by a free press.
See where there's a problem?
4
Dispiriting, discouraging, should I venture despondent view of the divide that is our country's chasm. However, as I watched you on the NewsHour this evening talk of "unraveling" and a President's "bigotry" I realized that your insight and probing questioning of our citizenry is vital to our understanding.
It is a depressing sentiment at present but with your probing commentary, the journey will be far less confusing and just maybe, we will come out the better.
Let us hope.
The Venn diagram still exists, but the overlapping area has been shrinking for many years. Empathy for others is based on shared experiences and seeing others as fellow human-beings.
How do we get urban, suburban, and rural voters to relate to each other? I don't know if an early solution exists, but the growing division of factions has already harmed the nation.
1
So we're going to have urban Democrats win a substantial majority of the popular vote and a dwindling minority, rural Republicans running our government? That should work out well.
3
Well, what are we supposed to do? The two sides are divided, but one side has ended all possibility of compromise.
One side doesn't believe in climate change and is willing to risk everyone's lives on that gamble. The other side encompasses a whole range of responses, from cap and trade and carbon capture, to hard regulatory action and geo-engineering. This is most people. This is big business. This is the Pentagon.
One side refuses any attempt to fix gun violence. The other side encompasses a whole range of responses, from modestly expanding background checks on through to mass confiscation.
One side blames immigrants for all of their troubles and supports building walls and deploying troops. The other side encompasses a range of ideas about immigration, from modest reforms to the existing system or switching to a skills-based system, on through to radically lowering all barriers to entry.
One side tolerates income inequality. The other side encompasses a range of ideas, from modestly higher taxes or more credits, to outright socialism.
One side thinks only Christians should be in charge. The other doesn't.
In other words, one side is absolutist (or at least willing to support absolutist politicians), while the other is a huge tent where the full range of normal policy debates is happening.
The Democratic party is now like three or four parties or more in one because the GOP has embraced nihilism. These two sides aren't equal.
9
The global capitalism-technology complex is such a stupendous force that it is far beyond the power of any nation state to ameliorate it's negative effects.
The c-t complex demands ever greater automation, and reduced labor costs--i.e., capital rules. It loves synergistic supply chains (e.g., China) and specialized local labor markets (e.g., Hollywood, Wall Street, Silicon Valley). The most highly productive labor markets require density, diversity, creativity, and high-education levels. Nearly everything must be done at high scale to reduce costs. Scale means that there is room for only a few winning companies at the top.
Any part of a nation's political economy that is out of step with the unstoppable momentum of the c-t complex will die a slow, painful death. The c-t complex has no moral compunction about this process.
Rural areas of the US do not have a dense, synergistic, specialized, educated labor force. They offer no economic efficiencies or leverage for scale.
Many large metros in the US do at least offer a synergistic, creative, educated labor force. Such metros are part of the c-t complex train and benefit from that.
Nation states have very few tools to ameliorate this mega force. Honest assessment and creative, collective action are required. Unfortunately, our political and cultural systems are far too rigid and slow.
We should not throw in the towel, but we should be honest about the enormous nature of the challenge.
2
Assuming that Mr. Brook’s non-overlapping Venn diagram analogy for the Democrat, Republican and Independent sectors of the American public is correct, what might the catalyst be that will produce a realignment and a wave election.
History suggests it will be an existential crisis. Whether it is war, accelerated global warming, domestic or international terrorism, rupture of the negotiated economic or political world order, it must be severe enough to disrupt the daily lives of the broad electorate.
For this election cycle, the social and economic security of the American public has not been stressed enough to prompt a new majority to reorder their priorities and vote for their self interest rather than against some imagined threat marketed by Trump and the Congressional and senate Republicans.
1
I think Mr Brooks has forgotten how Venn diagrams work. Venn diagrams (invented by the 19th century English mathematician, logician, and philosopher, John Venn) represent the relationship of subject and predicate terms expressed by a proposition and the classes they stand for by means of overlapping circles. When the proposition says there is no overlap between the classes of entities designated by the terms, no entities that belong to both classes, e.g. "No dogs are cats" or "No dogs are high school graduates", the area of overlap between the circle standing for the entities designated by the subject term and that for entities designated by the predicate term is shaded in to indicate that the set of things that belong to both classes is empty.
"In rural America basic values like hard work, clear gender roles and the social fabric are dissolving before people’s eyes."
Let's break this down shall we.
(1) Hard work: By what metric has rural America reached the conclusion that Americans aren't working hard when study after study shows that the American worker is more productive now than at any point in history, all without commensurate wage increases that should go hand in hand with that increased productivity. What this really means is those not toiling in fields or suffocating in coal mines aren't "real" workers.
Point 1 aside, points 2 and 3 or more easily diagnosed.
(2) Clear gender roles: I.e., women have a more powerful voice and are rapidly gaining footing in professional and political life. This threatens the status quo, and more specifically, rural white men that rely on their status as white men as a default to being "more important" than their female contemporaries.
(3) Social fabric: Again, this simply means that the "others", who could in yesteryear be looked down upon and opened discriminated against, have gained a voice and a modicum of power over the last 20 years, and in the eyes of the rural white man that power gain is a zero sum proposition which diminishes their own. This ties directly into fear of immigrants. Social fabric in this case means that the traditional white male patriarchy is dissolving, nothing more.
4
America is unravelling. The unravelling may look mainly political, but it's not. Nor is is mainly social. Mainly, it's economic. It's pretty simple. Capitalism likes capital. Which is to say that it values capital above all else. Under capitalism, those who invest their capital in a business enterprise that's designed to make a profit always get paid more than those who invest their labor. Under capitalism, the return on (capital) investment (i.e., ROI) is maximized. In contrast, labor is treat as an expense--and all expense are minimized. Thus the very rich get very much richer very much faster than those who do the work. Also, they leave their treasure to their heirs, so that they, in turn, can benefit accordingly. The rest of us may or may not eke out a living, working in the so-called trenches. It's a rigged system. That a good portion of us support a billionaire president and his billionaire (or wanna-be billionaire) cabinet just shows how little the economic roots of the unravelling are understood. It's looking like the level of ignorance is such that many Americans would rather play Mega Millions than work to change a rigged system.
4
"it’s a set of liturgies, rituals and moral doctrines for the secular unchurched".
OK Mr. Brooks, I am a white working class progressive, I read books on philosophy and theology, articles about scientific advancement, the Times, the Post and the Guardian, so i guess that is my liturgy. I have a cup of coffee in the morning before work, dinner at home around the dinner table with my family, watch a little tv, then go to bed so I guess that is my ritual. I believe in the golden rule, I do not prejudge people (although this is getting more difficult when I think about that person driving the car with the trump sticker) by the color of their skin or their hair cut, or their gender, or if their teeth are perfect, I do not lie to my family friends acquaintances or the IRS, I don`t cheat, nor cut in line.
So these are basically my morals, but I fail to see where I have gone off on any tangent, I have not veered off from my upbringing in a radical or even substantial way.
I am still willing to have a political discussion with Eisenhower or Reagan or now, even G.W. Bush republicans.
I will however insist our conversation be based on reality, with verifiable facts as the standard.
So that is why I will not engage with trumpublicans, because they have turned their backs on the liturgy, rituals, and morals that up until 2015 were considered main stream American. Un-churched though I may be, it is the trump loyalists that have fallen off the path not I.
14
“Nationalized politics forces local candidates to act mostly like Trump or Pelosi stand-ins and less like themselves.”
Wow. While many, many republican candidates openly embrace and channel trump I can not name one democrat who treats or views Pelosi in any way resembling this. This statement is worthy of the republican playbook, false equivalence and not true.
9
I recently heard a description of our political system as a duopoly -- like Coke and Pepsi, or Boeing and Airbus. Republicans and Democrats. They each have their own think thanks, lobbyists, media channels and, most importantly, voters. Elections are just a test of whether you can get your voters to vote. Very few people ever change -- they like Coke or they like Pepsi and that's it. And the duopoly does everything it can to eliminate any new parties with new ideas and new perspectives. And neither party really has any interest in We the People. Pretty sad, actually...
1
I see this as a past vs. future election.
Red state voters are dedicated to the vain hope that their secular Messiah can return them to the Promised Land of the 1950s, when jobs were stable and plentiful, father knew best and black folks mostly knew their place, elsewhere. It's a fantasy born of desperation - it is just not gonna happen, especially under this con-man, whose actual policies have trended obviously plutocratic.
It's unclear what they'll do when they tumble to the realization - it won't be pretty unless the Dems can come up with a positive, public policy-assisted path forward into a future where the reds participate. Not easy - how do we resurrect West Virginia? Solve That one, and America can come back together.
4
What bothers me most is that neither side is listening to the other, and frankly I don't think they sometimes really listen to their own side. You have the intellectual superiority of the left, pining for the country to be more like Norway, Denmark or Sweden...without understand how those countries are much smaller and more homogeneous then we are, and they have tax and revenue systems that are less progressive but in some cases dominated by something like oil revenues, that allow more social spending. The repubs have lost all sense of their core values imo (what happened to fiscal conservatism and personal freedoms?). They look more like the angry old white guy party wanting to turn back the clock to a simpler time. But you can't turn back the clock, and we aren't like Norway. As a moderate, more liberal on social issues and less so on fiscal and security ones, I feel totally abandoned by both parties. I naively cling to the hope that a third party will emerge, with someone like a Kasich (he's far from perfect) joining hands with a moderate democrat, then flipping a coin to see who is on top of the ticket. I'd vote for that.
1
David Brooks does tell us what percentage of Americans live in urban versus rural areas. The unfortunate is the American system of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries favours strongly rural America. So as long as the this unrepresentative system remains in place red America will control most if not all level powers.
5
Look at Trump's crowds. It's about race. And fear. A lot of white Americans afraid of the day, which they know is coming, when they will not be assured of power.
5
Just more moral equivalence from David Brooks. Someone must have yelled “play the hits!” Big yawn.
4
Wow. Many of David Brooks' essays are delusional, but this one takes the cake.
4
The Republicans weren't, as Brooks claims, "saddled with an unpopular president." They chose him as their nominee. He's an accurate reflection of what they are: dishonest, sexist, racist, nasty. Everyone who voted for that loathsome, ignorant thug needs to take a good, hard look in the mirror.
10
Evenhandedly equating the grievances of Nazi's and Jews. Good job David.
4
Pontificating David doesn't have the moral fortitude to identify the rural Republican base for what it is; white nationalist, rascist, xenophobic, mysigonist, did I mention white?
6
Regardless of the election outcome one thing can be assured. The nuts will continue to shoot Jews, children, Blacks....
America is a very sick society. It's hooked on violence. It loves violence. Look at TV shows, the news, and how we are responding to all of it. What gets the headlines? What the First Lady wore to yet another funeral.
2
Mr. Brooks, aren't you in the overlap? Isn't this series of editorials rooted in the fact that you lie in the overlap?
1
Here is a summary of David’s last two years of columns: Sure, Trump is a would-be Hitler and half the country is goosestepping behind. But the Democrats are elites (gasp!). So both are equally at fault. Why bother reading this guy?
9
Another David Brooks "both sides are bad" op-ed. Must be a day ending in "y". He even writes these things after news like the MAGAbomber and the synagogue massacre.
6
Another tribalism Narrative
3
I'd say a lot of this is driven by the Internet. Humans run in tribes unless they choose otherwise. But being a member is much more comfortable, easy. The Internet, Facebook et al, encourages, accelerates all this. Actually, Hitler's propaganda was similar - Mein Kampf. Basic stuff and the only inoculation is education. Cognitive therapy! Otherwise, humanity just repeats the same old same old. Check out Hungary, etc, etc. Democracy is what's unusual. So it goes.
More false equivalencies from the master.
5
"The Venn diagram is dead. There’s no overlapping area." Well said, David, and what is most charming about you is the fact that this makes you sad. I assume this is generational. One has to be old enough to remember when it wasn't so. My friends and I talk of this whenever we discuss politics. We are too old to spit at each other. None of us has a 2X4, a black hood, or Roman helmet. I wouldn't be caught dead at a demonstration. We remember when the evening news was delivered by a sober man or woman who never swore, never spoke ill of the dead, never revealed his or her political allegiance, never spoke of the US President with disrespect or scorn, not even LBJ or Richard Nixon. I listen to Cuomo, Lemon, and Cooper and I cringe. The crybaby insults and temper-tantrum insults belong in the nursery school. We all loved Walter Cronkite and still miss him. Clearly, you are personally suffering and I feel for you. Personally, I think there is too much bashing of the President even by persons such as yourself who mean well. The real culprits do not mean well, but it remains a mystery as to what they want. They make it sound as if they want the US to fail. They hope to see Americans fall into despair, jobless and hopeless, so utopia can be declared and they'll get prizes. The contradictions defy consideration. It is a quagmire of self-righteous indignation. You seem to be holding yourself above water. Best wishes.
30
@David- but who is the king of temper tantrum insults, and of crybaby insults?
19
Ahhh, the good old days of the 1950's. Good for a lot of white people...
15
@tired of belligerent Republicans
"Ahhh, the good old days of the 1950's. Good for a lot of white people..."
The 1950s were pretty good for my wife, too, growing up a young black girl in Brooklyn. She could leave her doors unlocked and walk safely through the city streets. Most of her neighbors' families were intact. People weren't nodding off from heroin in the stairwells. Schools were safe.
Sadly we couldn't seem to figure out how to create social justice for women and minorities without descending into familial, cultural and social chaos.
Flash forward and now that neighborhood is a war zone. But everyone is free to do their own thing. Hurray.
9
Possible election outcomes
1) Repubs hold Senate, Dems take House: 75% chance
2) Dems take both Senate and House: 15% chance
3) Repubs hold both Senate and House (status quo): 10% chance
4) Repubs hold House, Dems take Senate <1% chance
I have predicted Trump won't run in 2020.
If outcomes 1 or 2 happen, I'll double down on that.
1
True to his Republican Party first colors, Brooks ignores all reporting, even in the NYT, about Republicans abandoning their psychotic party in droves. Exactly what color of lens does Brooks have in his glasses that blocks all reality?
3
In terms of what David Brooks likely means by "progressivism," I'm probably a progressive. And I believe that all of my political and moral beliefs are reasonable. If Mr. Brooks thinks some are unreasonable, he should say what those beliefs are and why he thinks they are unreasonable. That would advance the discussion. That individuals disagree as to the truth of a given belief is not sufficient for the belief to be equally plausible for each person or for no one to know that the belief is true. For example, some people believe that the earth is billions of years old. Others believe it is about 6,000 years old. Some of the former know that the earth is billions of years old. None of the latter know that the earth is about 6,000 years old.
Also, is Emma Green right that, for many, progressivism is a set "of liturgies, rituals and moral doctrines for the secular unchurched?" I'm a progressive (in terms of what Brooks probably means by the term), an atheist and believe that it's very important that governments not promote implausible beliefs. But Brooks is not justified in believing that my political philosophy is a religion to me. Analogously, I think he would believe that stamp collecting is not a religion, at for most people; because stamp collecting does not include the belief there are one or transcendent beings, realms or states of consciousness. And my political philosophy also does not include the belief that there are one or more such things.
1
Dems will win when they have convinced rural America that they are turning away from globalism. That will not be easy because the dems' base is in the Acela corridor, the financial belt.
I see this election in very stark terms: Trump, like any insurgent candidate, has to be getting something right, for all that he gets wrong. Dems have to adopt whatever it is that he is getting right and move on. Otherwise, they are just one more reactionary unable to get out of its own way.
What is the dems position on the recent recall of pharmaceuticals made in China which were found contaminated by carcinogens?
https://health.usnews.com/health-care/articles/2018-07-19/affected-by-the-valsartan-heart-drug-recall-heres-what-to-do
Will they campaign on moving pharma production back to US or Puerto Rico, e.g.? Think of all the jobs. Think of the security.
1
@Excellency
So why Republicans are not moving factories back to US?
(Of course Trump is lying about that everyday)
2
Yes, maybe it has to come to this great dramatic division that Brooks sees as he gaily jets around the country, but that is not how it has to be. Right now it's low information voters v. high(er) information voters. It's important for reason and truth to win over bigotry and radicalism this time. This may be the first step in healing our divides, knocking down conservatism's nativism and WASP supremacy once and for all, could open a window to creating the government we can all see as being just and representative of our diversity, and not just doing the bidding of the oligarchy that fuels our divisions. We are beginning to see the real monsters behind the masks, and it's not each other.
2
so Brooks, are you happy with this? Looks like a balkanized country divided by an authoritarian maniac
. Keep traveling-- at some point you'll understand that Trump and his enablers in your party are wreaking this country .
3
Did Brooks accidentally submit his note-jotted paper napkin? All this from 23 states--I came, I saw, I commented? I've seen more life on headstones. Add to the Left's litany of ills: boring.
3
"Even if 80 percent of the locals support Trump, you never know how somebody will react if you mention his name — they might call you a racist — so it’s not a safe topic of conversation."
I like how "safety" for coddled bigots means never even being challenged. My only hope for this country is that the bigoted opposition, by and large, is composed of oversensitive wimps.
3
Another contorted effort to construct a false, in fact non-existent equivalency between Democrats and Republicans in the familiar voice of thoughtful superiority. The Dems have many faults, but they didn't nominate and fall in line behind an ignorant, white supremacist, misogynistic, un-empathic, rapacious grifter. Instead of opining about the "two electorates," Mr Brooks should investigate the financial dealings of the Republican rats about to depart the ship of democracy they have done their best to sink, and their cronies who remain to feed at the trough of the corporations they serve. The Grifter-in-Chief isn't the only one getting paid.
2
The fact that American democracy cannot resist and overcome Trump's lies reveals it to be fatally flawed. We are watching its death throes in real time.
RIP, shining city on a hill. It would be more accurate to describe America today as a nascent Fourth Reich.
2
And you’re just noticing this now? Brother, you need to get out more.
Me thinks you visited the wrong rural America. Did you go to Florida, Georgia, Arizona, Montana, Texas. We will know in a couple of days.
Yet more utterly disingenuous rambling by you, David?
Capped off by the jaw-dropper," The Republicans were saddled with an unpopular president...?
Trump is not "unpopular"!
He's *despised* by anyone with a shred of decency and humanity!
He's a blatant criminal, involved in so many crooked enterprises that the mind boggles!
He's feared by middle-of-the-road people who don;t like extremist policies, economic incompetency, and the assault on the quality of living for all but the .001%!
And anyone who's sane is terrified that the likes of Trump could even start a war to distract us from his other misdeeds.
Trump is destroying our nation, our economy, our legal system and moral compass, and of course the world environment!
Only some meretricious sophistry could pretend otherwise! Shame on you!
3
I cannot feign interest in what David Brooks writes any longer. He lectures from on high with no effect but is paid handsomely to travel and write. Good for him, but I’m not interested.
3
"In rural America, by contrast, all that stuff is like a thunderstorm in Inner Mongolia. It’s something happening very far away with no particular relevance here, and so no one’s paying much attention."
That frightens me to no end. I'm one of the city folks, but always pay attention to what's happening in the rural areas and want the best for them. This willful ignorance has no place in a democracy.
2
I am particularly interested in the commonality between the two extremes expressed as "unraveling". It seems that most of the unraveling is happening in the rural/red areas, and the rust-belt seems to define the border-lines between the two groups. If this is correct, then the issue really is the loss of manufacturing jobs overseas, i.e. Globalization, i.e. China. The issue of immigration is just a proxy. The despair caused by the decline of manufacturing in the rust belt also goes a long way towards explaining the drug problems in these areas. "It's the economy, stupid."
26
@Ron Bartlett - loss of manufacturing jobs doesn't explain the drug problem. Intentionally misrepresenting the potency and addictiveness of opioids does, though. A few companies (and families) got rich off the deaths of tens of thousands of people.
Of course, there is a good solution now - medical marijuana seems to alleviate the need for opioids. Now if the politicians can just come around.
2
Again, poor David. A decent human being who wants our country to be better. So he hates the extreme partisanship and the digging in. But this creates a problem for him: how to not be just another partisan? He must embody compromise and fairness, and so must wed himself to false equivalence. Yes, each side says awful things about the other. But one side's hatreds are almost entirely based on demonstrably false premises. The other's almost entirely on demonstrable facts. David, this is the point; this is what has driven us to this degree of tribalism. The GOP lies and cheats. Which side passes laws that curtail voting? Which side lies about being for the working man, for people with pre-existing conditions, and also says that Nazis include very fine people? Which side has more respect for our Constituion? Which side encourages physical hostility towards the other and the press? David: read the Gita...its your duty to fight for what's true and right. Today, this can only mean proudly being a Democrat.
4
Mr Brooks noted, "Democratic ideology is increasingly dominated by the educated upper-middle class."
For decades, the GOP and conservatives have made it a point not to use the word 'Democratic' as an adjective to describe the Democratic Party. They say, 'Democrat party', or 'Democrat ideology'; 'Democrat Senator'.
They want to remove any identification of democracy or democratic principles from people they don't only see as being opponents, but enemies.
It's been an important part of the post-1992 Republican party and so-called tea party's structure to demonize, ridicule and assault the Other -- liberals, women; minorities, LGBTQ Americans; the elderly... well, just about everyone. Hate casts a broad net.
Democracy and democratic principles are not part of the political Right in America. They haven't been for a long, long time. It was probably a proofreading error on Mr Brooks' part to have done so -- but using the term "Democratic" to describe that political party, at this juncture in America's history, is very accurate.
3
Critics of Trump should learn how Trump trumps.
1) Trump and Trumpster keep repeating themselves over and over. But Trump critics and Democrats analyze and ramble on.
2) Trump dominates with fear and threats, while Democrats seem aloof and detached.
I hope that Democrats hold "idea contests" to defeat Trump...
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2
As Paul Krugman writes today in his column: "Good people can't be republicans." Such it is with David Brooks. No matter how hard he tries to manufacture some pie-in-the-sky America that never truly existed, he still comes off as a nasty, self-serving conservative. It seems like there's a chuck of dead heart in every Republican I know and David is no different.
5
Hey, Mr. Brooks - how did your “I’m a nationalist” column age? Still feel good about it?
4
Only David Brooks could write his last column before the 2018 election and not mention the air raid siren loud racism, tsunami of lies and flagrant incitement to hate coming from the White House. From a President the Republican Party was not saddled with, but a leader who is overwhelmingly popular with the Republican Base, blindly supported as a Messiah sent by God.
6
Oh Lordy, out Priest-in-chief. David Brooks, always happens to destroy his own op-Eds with the weirdest assertions towards the end, this time quoting Green in The Atlantic about progressives being secular "unchurched".
Unchurched? What about progressive Jews. Do we also have a set of liturgy and doctrines for the secular "un-templed?"
2
It's been said a lot, but Mr. Brooks' column is another depressing example of middle-of-the-road fetishism. The democratic candidates are all channeling Nancy Pelosi? Really? (And I guess one should also ask, what is so bad about that.)
It's as if there are 10 people locked in an empty room with a pile a pooh on the floor. 4 people thing the pooh is just dandy, and the others are losing their minds in disgust. Well, I guess in Mr. Brooks' mind it's just those other 6 "hardening their positions." Give me a break. Get real. Please.
1
Vote against all Republicans. Every single one. Max Boot
Vote against the GOP this November. George F. Will
The only way to save the GOP is to defeat it. Michael Gerson
"The trash that Trump says as part of his bigoted, race-baiting campaign in America has effects around the world. The Nigerian army just pointed to Trump’s statement about considering shooting migrants to justify their own shootings of peaceful protesters." Brian Klaas
David Brooks VOTE DEMOCRATIC ACROSS THE BOARD!!!!
2
There are only two kinds of fools in America and they aren’t the Democrats and the Republicans.
The first group prays regularly that God solves all their problems.
The second one votes regularly so the politicians could solve all their problems...
Don’t those people have the faith in their personal capability to cope with life?
1
Out here in rural Texas border country were not
afraid of the immigrants...were afraid of Pres.Trump..
2
@LAGUNA
Correct on both fronts.
I am, however, afraid of increasing numbers of illegal immigrants. The economic strain on our social services in border regions is immense. My property taxes to support local schools are through the roof disproportionate to other costs, and I keep my fingers crossed that I do not need the emergency room.
This is what I think politicians and journalists often miss. There are plenty of decent people who want the best for our country and for all people, but the either/or partisanship forces us to support what we end up considering the "lesser evil", choosing either our individual best interests or our country's. I wish more often they were the same thing, for us all.
1
Oh, David.... so dramatic! especially for you, usually the least dire among your colleagues. You are either reading too much Twitter or finally succumbing to your owner's biddings. Stay strong, man!
You must be travelling to the wrong places.
Please don't give up hope on the idea of a moderately progressive, fiscally conservative "silent majority" that eschews the day-to-day madness that the NY Times editorial board and Trump propagate and perpetuate for ratings.
Relax, loyal stalwart, avoid joining the fray which is giving the nation (some of whom are your readers) a collective case of hypertension. Please be bolstered by the fact that I have done my civic duty and voted -- split ticket as usual, based on the qualifications of the individual candidates (including an emphatic if not nostalgic vote for Beto, who represents all the things I cherish from the late 80's: skateboarding, punk rock and hand-rolled jays) -- and encouraged others to do so.
Buck up, lad! The American people are savvier than you give them credit for. They are just voting Libertarian.
1
Trumps racist tweets, ads, have no particular relevance to rural "citizens".....well, that says it all. I suppose many will never travel more than a few hundred miles from home. So, "I'm afraid of and/or hate people not like me" and "America First" really means "me and mine first".
1
Yes, it's all just so symmetrical, isn't it? Not.
The cat's out of the bag. And sure, those salt-o'-the-earth flyover folks are lied to and manipulated, but at the end of the day, all those buttons being pressed are their (racist, misogynist, nationalist) buttons. So at some point the roads lead home. We are what we do.
I get how it is with them and Trump. It's a feeling. We had a feeling too, with President Obama, remember? And sometimes it wasn't even entirely rational. So I really do get it. But that President Obama feeling was our better angels talking, and we know our kids can be proud when they tell *their* grandkids about it. Trumpers ought to stop and think about that.
3
David, just stop it. Stop with the false equivalents between right and left here. You make it sound as though, for instance, people in rural areas want traditional gender roles, but people in urban areas don't, and that both stances are essentially equal. Wrong, wrong wrong. People in rural areas want traditional gender roles not only for themselves but for everybody else around them! People in urban areas might want traditional gender roles for themselves, or might not, but what they don't want to do is dictate to others what gender roles they should adopt. When you phrase it like that (aka, truthfully), it's pretty apparent, isn't it, that there is no equivalence between right and left. These are not just differences in culture. These are differences in wanting to dictate, or not, what religion OTHER PEOPLE should have, what gender roles OTHER PEOPLE should adhere to, what OTHER WOMEN should do with their bodies, etc.
Enough with the disingenuous twaddle, please, David.
4
David Brooks laments that American citizens have become so divided--so entrenched in their own world views--that they can't possibly come together.
He believes this is bad. Some of us--many of us--believe it's good.
What could be better than to stop pretending that you can compromise with those who express their contempt and hatred for you on a daily basis?
I'm not even a little bit interested in knowing, or understanding, people who believe that because I'm educated, I'm amoral; that because I don't till the soil, I'm decadent; that because I have black & brown friends, I'm a hypocrite; that because I decline to see the joke at a noose drawn on a dormitory door, I'm a politically correct coward; that because I'm skeptical about organized religion, I'm worthless; that because I live on the East Coast, I never get sick, I never get fired, I never have a horrific accident, I never go into debt, I never bury a loved one, I simply live a charmed life and look down my nose at my noble yeomen betters.
Why on earth would I have anything to with people who depict me this way? No. I have the same sympathy & respect for them as they have for me: none.
2
trump: 40% approve, 56% disapprove (49% strongly)
2
I think you finally figured it out, David. There is no compromise possible with bigotry and racism.
So there will be no compromise with the modern Republican party. There will only be victory or defeat.
2
" clinging to Bibles and guns,""deplorables".
Law abiding hard working rural every day citizens took those words to heart. Until recently no Democrat would have even have those thoughts.
Obama promised ' change'. We got it.
1
@Lane
Don't forget "flyover country". That's offensive to even us coastal elites who are former residents of the midwest. We really prefer "heartland", thank you very much!
Mr. Brooks, reading your column this morning while riding my local bus through the South End was distressing. But then I looked up and saw the United Nation of America riding along with me, in sweet urban harmony, courteous, offering seats to elders, speaking a dozen languages at least. Few "elites" (its a bus!), mostly immigrants, all hard workers in the pre-dawn hustle. A Morning in America that made me so proud to be American. I put it away your paper. So much more real to read faces. I wish my rural countrymen could ride a mile on my bus. We would all be a better nation if they would.
3
That means it is time to dissolve the union. The minority in the red states want a nation that is fundamentally and completely antithetical to the values of the majority of Americans. Since the U.S. Constitution is anti-democratic in significant ways, the majority of the American people are subjugated to what is for all intents and purposes a foreign power that lacks popular legitimacy and shared values with the people it rules.
One of the fundamental principles of the American experiment is consent of the governed. The United States no longer has that.
4
@Doug K Hear, hear!
". . . progressivism isn’t just a set of political beliefs; it’s a set of liturgies, rituals and moral doctrines for the secular unchurched."
Do you realize just how offensive that remark is, David? So our politics is just another religion? Wow.
As a Pol Sci prof I had once remarked: "If all you have is a hammer, then everything will look like a nail to you." I guess he had you in mind.
Mr Brooks, with all due regard, you need to go have a long think in a quiet place.
3
"Pelosi stand-ins"? Who exactly? This is absurd false equivalency.
2
Welcome to the America created by 20 plus years of non-stop propaganda spewing from the cesspools of hatred, and divisionism.
Fox and all the other media conglomerates
Want to know why Americans are so divided in 2018? Look back to the repeal of media ownership rules in the 1980's-1990's that allowed for the consolidation of media into 4-5 giant monopolies - that dump rivers of garbage and propaganda to Americans every day. It's only the older Americans who can still remember a media that gave Americans facts, not simply propaganda disguised by opinions. Throw in the advent of the internet, and here we are.
A blind man with shades could have seen this coming in 1993. And many did. All were belittled, shouted down, and ignored.
The sad ironic fact is - when Trump talks about "fake news", there is a lot of truth in what he says. Or so-called "news media" is just that - mostly fake. Profit-driven, sensationalist, dumbed-down junk passed off as "news" or "information".
But it's only seen for what it is, if one remembers what it used to be, circa 1946-1996.
Want to start to bring Americans back together? Turn off the propaganda.
3
I beg to differ. The Venn lives. This dyed in the wool Dem had to vote a second term for our Baltimore Sun - endorsed R. governor of MD, who epitomizes the kind of intelligent, moderate governance in short supply and needed more than ever today. Larry Hogan's bipartisan track record and refusal to be drawn into polarizing rhetoric even in the backyard of Trump's swamp is impressive. I don't have to agree with all his policy positions to vote for someone who brings sanity, civility and solid bipartisan experience to bear on tough issues. We all need to step away from the drama generator and vote with our brains not our outrage.
1
Actually, you got this one exactly right.
The inescapable conclusion: it's time for a national divorce. It was a great run, 229 years, but it is over. Nobody actually wants to stay "united".
They can have Yellowstone, so they can sell it. I'll take Yosemite and keep it.
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@Rufus No, we get to keep all of the National Parks. They can have the strip mines and the Gulf of Mexico. That seems fair. And, we keep all of the tech firms on the West Coast, but shut down Twitter and Facebook for good. We also get to keep all of the Welsh corgis and French bulldogs. When do we start the proceedings?
The majority of Americans live in urban areas and would control the national government if we lived in a democracy. Republicans have the power they have because they have gerrymandered the House so that they control the House even when they lose the election for it. In 2012 Democrats got a million and a half more votes than Republicans but when it was over there were 33 more Republicans in the House than Democrats. Political scientists say Democrats must win this year's election nationally by 6-8% to get a simple majority in the House.
The Senate does not represent people. It represents states. Wyoming with 600,000 people elects two senators and California with 40,000,000 elects two senators. The 25 states with the smallest populations have 17% of Americans but elect half the Senate. They have as much power as the 83% of Americans who live in the other 25 states. It's even worse than that. The ten states with the smallest populations have 3% of Americans but elect as many senators as the 55% of Americans who live in the ten most populous states. The only reason the Republicans control the Senate now is because they have ten more senators in those 25 small states than do Democrats.
And twice in this century the man who lost the democratic election, the only election that gives one the moral authority to govern, ended up in the White House. Our political problems today are structural. Until we get a new, democratic constitution, they will only get worse.
3
I know of one point on which we can overlap - thou shall not kill.. I fear we have now told a whole generation of children that yes, they can be shot in school, shot in a movie theater, shot in a mall, shot studying at church or praying in a synagogue. Is this the first generation of Americans who have to accept that. Can we as adult Americans agree that this happened during our watch and it is REALLY not such a good idea and maybe just maybe we can actually try to address it.. Even though it is complicated...
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Actually, Epicureanism distinguishes between higher and lower pleasures and pleasures are intellectual as well as bodily. Are you sure, David, that Hawley's piece is all that erudite?
1
“…so it’s not a safe topic of conversation.”
I would bet that people being forced into this (defensive) way of being cherish the chance to support Mr. Trump in secret – in the voting booth.
2
good stuff in this article. also a few things that Mr. Brooks has entirely wrong imho.
as a suburban moderate who talks with lots of friends in the same group: No one is sick of capitalism. One of the BIGGEST issues for democrats is ethics and honesty in business and government. The disgust we have is of investment/CEO/politicans who are lying and stealing and ruining everything. They are the ones taking advantage of the system to steal. Capitalism is the best system IF it is operating correctly: honesty, responsibility, pride instead of greed (greed takes money out of good companies), outlook to the future as well as present, service to the customer, reasonable regulations to keep an even steady economy. etc. It looks as though the Reps in power no longer believe in any of the above values and look how many are charged with economic crime!
As to relationships with other races/cultures/religions etc. those of living in cities and suburbs love and work with these people. We know that these people have the same dreams of success as we have. We know how important these people are to local businesses that can't find enough workers. What people in the rural areas don't understand is that IF these people were so horrible, then how come those of us who live near them don't vote to get 'rid' of them.
Mr. Brooks, I have always loved you and your columns and considered you as one of the moderate folks on both sides to help us find commonality, but lately you are misrepresenting.
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David - I feel bad for you. Will you stop equivocating? Will you? There is an overlapping area - it is the schism that overlaps. In my lifetime, this schism was created by Ronald Reagan - a cynical politician who successfully articulated that every American is potentially the "Other." So fearful, we now can't tell the difference. He declared in his 1981 inaugural address: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem" - the rallying cry of a generation of Republican politicians who have demonstrated they don't care about governing or policy. He turned Americans against themselves. Its subtlety gave rise to hardhearted corporate greed, the abandoning of the moral imperative to see each of us as intrinsically valuable, deeper slavery to success culture, & permission to treat each other as a problem, as the Other. Unlike our Founding Fathers, who declared in the Declaration that protest against systemic corruption is a form of respect, Reagan undermined the very way Democracy weathers change. We ARE Government. Governing is messy. It's the way we create the future. Sometimes we build together, sometimes we nourish each other, and our policies, our beliefs reflect individual agency and mutuality. You have helped a false choice become the schism and then declare no overlap? Let me just ask, have you said to people where ever you find them -We are all in this together. You are not a problem. We need you and good government. Vote.
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Well said and astute in the realization that the “Reagan Revolution” was the the beginning of the moral and ethical downfall of American politics and culture. An actor and salesman, he was the first con artist to scam half the nation. Now we are back with the TV reality star Trump, not as slick but certainly as skilled.
1
David Brooks,
Where is the factual world or objective reality in all this? I understand that feelings and perception trumps everything these days but if we leave in separate realities there is no possibility for reasonable communication.
If we can’t agree on science we don’t have any real platform left to talk about.
Fake reality will collapse eventually, regardless of how fond people are of it. Hopefully, it will happenen without destroying the real world.
1
"or Pelosi stand-ins" -- there is no such thing. come on David, there isnt a equal Democrat action. for every Republican action.
2
Brooks fails to mention that the “rural” Americans are being conned by fear-mongering, are uninformed, and voting totally against their interests.
A small detail.
1
3 old white guys, (Gates, Buffett and Bezos) possess more money than 16,000,000 Americans. Now, why would anyone have doubts about capitalism. 3 families (Waltons, Mars, Kochs) have seen wealth increase by 6,000% since 1982. The median family wealth has decreased by 3% since 1982. How could anyone question the brilliance of capitalism? And no one saddled republicans with trump. They are trump.
2
The things I love about Brooks are that I always learn something, I usually hear a measure of hope which is uplifting (a much-needed attribute today) plus his opinions are not always predictable like some columnists.
But this column is just depressing although I suspect he's right. It seems that the formula for making America great again is to embrace solipsism to the point of singing an aria in the tone of me, me, me... at least for the next 2 to 6 years. And who knows how entrenched this character flaw will be by then.
Just Great!
I find it amazing that when pollsters ask about issues they neglect what to me is the most important one: Truth. In a world of truth we can actually discuss issues. Without it, it's all just noise.
Perhaps they don't ask the question because they don't see it as an issue. It is and should be.
2
I travel too, and yes, people are reluctant to discuss Trump for obvious reasons. But Trump's divide America strategy, the same as Putin's, could be turned into something healthy if people realized who the enemy really is. It's not teachers or farmers or a thousand other Americans who would prefer to mind their own business.
Maybe you "don't trust nobody." What comes next? How will Trump lift this burden?
@JRMaybe they don't want to discuss Trump because they are ashamed they support him. People in the urban areas sure are not ashamed to oppose him.
1
You point out that the trends suggest a realignment towards a democratic house and a republican senate but you fail to point out that what this means is that the majority is shut out of decision making. Why? Because it is fundamentally undemocratic for California to have the same number of senators as Wyoming with a population roughly 80x its size. In short, your observations miss the simple fact that the structural flaws our state/federal system have gotten so far out of whack that our country cannot be governed for the benefit of the majority of its citizens.
3
Alas, David has described the essence of a land once known as America where E Pluribus Unum was intact. Indeed, America has come apart. I suppose this was inevitable. One need read history to understand homogeneous societies endure, diverse (divisive) societies do not. Perhaps homogeneous Japan, China, Korea already understand this obvious truism? Indeed, they do. Ironically, Americans do too, but politically correct radical left dogma, secular religion prevents people from speak truth. We have become censored, frightened, are too embarrassed to act..
1
@Screenwritethis
Methinks this is an analysis based on gross generalizations that does not stand up to the historical experience of this country. We must aspire to better than homogeneity, which is a holy grail.
In the early part of the the last century my immigrant grandparents, non English-speaking, unskilled farmers fleeing poverty, dwelt in a neighborhood more culturally, linguistically and racially diverse neighborhood than any I have seen or can imagine existing today. Everyone in that neighborhood was quite poor. With 7 children, my grandma raised chickens and took in laundry and boarders.
Yes, they were ghettoized, but in a relative Paradise with other immigrants and poor folks - most working in factories - joyfully reproducing like rabbits, but all in the same boat with regard to their satisfaction in having found food and freedoms in the land of opportunity. Their children worked hard and became Republicans. Their grandchildren (me) went to college and became Democrats.
The only homogeneity that counts in this country, I would argue, is primarily economic. When our basic needs are met, we are willing to share. When we feel like we are striving to climb a mountain, there is not enough oxygen on the way up to worry about others. I think it might really be THAT simple. And when we have more than our share of gold, we sometimes become gluttons. At this juncture, it might be good to reflect on the fact that while pigs get fat, hogs tend to get slaughtered.
Hey, I sit on my porch and make these comments, entrenched in liberal,NYC suburbia.
I haven’t been meeting the Trump base around the country. (surprise,Trump has many supporters here, but civility limits talk to the Jets, Giants and my great Army team.)
But somehow I believe a politician who can formulate healthcare, immigration,
economic , environmental and climate change and foreign relations policies, and who possesses the ability to communicate rationally can unite the rural Trumpistas and the urban latte-istas.
I really don’t understand their affinity for Trump, but I believe they are getting tired of his act and will eventually see that they have been his mark, not his constituency. He has laid quite a few eggs, that are hatching...and those chickens will come home to roost. Our national venn diagram will overlap when we all have to pay the price for Trumpism.
But I am convinced the current concerns of all Americans now overlap at this point in time: How to protect our health, create a sustainable economy, educate our kids without bankrupting them, seeking a peaceful world that survives climate change.There is a need for rational political leadership to unite the country to solve these universal problems.
3
No overlapping area? Separate conversations? What-about-it?
In reality, these circumstances could easily be due to a failure on just one side of the aspired conversation. Failure is likely, even when just one side perceives the attempt to see and understand the other side as a depraved betrayal of their tribe.
2
Until the votes are counted we have only polls and I don't have much faith in them. As for America unraveling, a little dose of calm, uplifting leadership would go a long way - followed by some policies that actually address how the benefits of the current "booming" economy leave too many Americans who work full time still struggling. Without some relatively modest but critical adjustments in our economic paradigm, the unease will continue to fester.
2
I disagree that there's a retrenchment going on, but that may be because I don't put any stock in any polling. Remember, David, the polling suggested, a week before the 2016 election, that Hillary had a 90% chance of winning. We all know how that turned out. But my skepticism of polls goes beyond that one glaring example. Polls rely on calling people. And most people -- no longer just young voters -- don't even have landlines. And those who do, myself included, don't answer them when we don't recognize the number. And even if there were a reliable directory of cell phone numbers (which there isn't), most people also don't answer those unless they recognize the number of the caller. So whom do these polls represent? Elderly people who have landlines and answer them. And if you think those are the people who are going to swing this election, I think you might want to check the date, and the events since 2016 that have motivated all age groups. Maybe I'm wrong. But the likelihood of that is no greater than the likelihood that the polls you rely on are wrong. So, I'm on the record with a blue wave, which results in both the house and the senate turning blue. The only thing we need for that to happen is for everyone to ignore the polls, and get out to vote. The GOP knows that. Which is why they're working so hard to suppress the vote. Because the real America, David, is the one that elected Obama, twice. You don't need to travel to 23 states to learn that!
3
What puzzles me most is how two next-door neighbors and two siblings raised by the same parents can be so "dug-in" politically when they live almost identical lives. Somehow, we're ignoring the fact that we share most cultural values and for the few we don't, we are still free to live according to ours and they, theirs. Somehow, our politics is distorting our perception of each other and our society and all our mass media play a role in that. In politics, I think, we have too few choices in a two-party, privately financed system. It's too easy for extremists to get elected, News media that depend on advertising revenue based on audience size is always pulled to the extremes, to the "crisis," the "threats," the "scandal," the weird and the inflammatory because humans seem to crave that drama. I don't know how to break free of dysfunctional political system and media feedback loop.
2
If the House gets a Democratic majority that reflects the will of the represented majority and probably also reflects a long term trend. But why in this one election year with only 10 GOP Senatorial seats up are you drawing long term conclusions about the Senate?
So where is the country headed, David? Are we going to get "whiter"? Are we going to become more religious? There is little indication that we are going to become either. That is the fear Trump is playing into. It will only work for his targeted audience. Meanwhile the country is changing. Eventually a real diversity will evolve that will include acceptance.
4
I agree with the analysis of an urban/rural split with little or no overlap, but I haven't seen any Democratic candidates who strive to be "Pelosi stand-ins." (Not that there's anything wrong with that!) In my Congressional district, Mikie Sherrill is running a very inclusive centrist campaign with a focus on solving problems and not vilifying her opponent. I believe that she is the kind of politician who can help us out of the partisan mess we're now in and get our government back to the job of governing.
3
When David Brooks is good, he is very, very good. He has so many insightful articles, very sociologically informed. Unlike a lot of other pundits, as he states, he travels and observes people, much like an anthropologist. This essay is one of his best and deepest. Echoes a bit of Peggy Noonan, my other favorite columnist, at the Wall Street Journal: gap between educated wealthy elites and the non-urban/suburban white working and middle classes. Elites are P.C. The masses are not. Could be some surprises Tuesday night. Otherwise, he is right: we're in trench warfare.
I won’t add to the many excellent comments that address the content of this article. Instead, I want to share my reaction to the tone: so dispassionate, so detached, as if the attitudes of Trump supporters exist in the same moral universe as the attitudes of those of us who are beyond horrified by Trump. Really, David Brooks, you want to be scrupulously “nonjudgmental” even after we saw last week what happens when hate of “the other” is encouraged and legitimized?
3
This is accurate.Mr. Brooks is starting to face the grim reality. The sheer number of small population Red states gives the GOP the better chance in the Senate. Outrage in the suburbs gives the Dems the better chance in the House
Presidential Elections will be toss-ups.
I doubt if the nation can stand too much more of this, quite frankly. That is especially so cause the 55 Blue Counties produce 72% of GDP. Patience is starting to wear thin about the fact that we are subsidizing Red-State-is tan.
2
It always amazes me the way Republicans pull egregious stunts to limit voting and outright lie to people and then complain that Democrats are unwilling to compromise. O.K., just give us back half the districts you gerrymandered, half the people you disenfranchised and half the money you plundered from the National Treasury and we'll all get along?
Too bad we couldn't compromise with Hitler: Then we only would have killed 3 million Jews and undesirables.
4
I was reading De Tocqueville recently, and in his book one he strongly makes the point that majority public opinion in the U.S. rules.
However, if you look at the polling- on a site like 538-you see that President Trump's popularity is at 42%,and those that don't like him make up 52%. And it has been that way for nearly all of his presidency. It may very well stay that way for another 2 years. So:majority public opinion doesn't rule at the moment
And the winner of the popular vote in 2000 and 2016 didn't rule either. Houston, we have a problem: popular sovereignty hasn't ruled for a while. And if this problem isn't rectified in a reasonable time, there will by hell to pay.
1
Why again are you still in the Republican party Mr. Brooks?
Mr.Krugman says all decent people have left the Republican party. I agree. Can't you see the brown shirts they all are wearing? Do you really want to be on the wrong side anymore? Deliberate mendacity and cruelty and inciting murder do not make you want to get the hell out? What is left to be saved pray tell?
3
David, this is all very discouraging and utterly stale. America is flummoxed and deeply frightened by the horrible condition of our politics — now at virtually every level.
Really now, what is the point of another round of reiterating what is now common coinage for how extraordinarily broken our political processes have become?
Plausible remedies, solutions, credible leadership — get laser focused on salvaging what is left of our crumbling democracy.
It sure a hell is not more of the same Red-Blue diametric, dogmatic, diatribe.
We will either find viable ways to substantially reinvent out politics or we will join the enormous trash heap of once great nations.
If rural America wants people who work hard, are clear about their gender roles, and care deeply about maintaining a social fabric, they should welcome the Immigrants!!!!!!!
137
@RickK
You're right. The fact that rural Americans illogically detest immigrants (and immigration, generally) suggest that Mr. Brooks left out one other rural characteristic: runaway fear/loathing of "the other."
13
@RickK
They do welcome immigrants. The legal ones. They vehemently oppose illegal immigration. As do many of us who live everywhere. Why is this so hard to comprehend?
1
Both sides can argue about "who started it." But there is a lot of evidence that the Left experienced a sea change around the time of Obama's second term. It started online and on campus.
But overnight, the Democrats had no hesitation to explicitly define their theory of Progress as taking White people (and particularly white men) down a couple pegs. They became triumphalist about how they had the votes to implement this program due to mass immigration of foreigners.
It would violate every rule of politics to expect the targets of this hostility to willingly embrace the Democrats. (Over-educated, self-loathing SJWs being an exception). So they reacted quite rationally by voting for the one candidate who would take this movement head-on and not be cowed by the usual charges of being a deplorable racist.
When every single columnist and reporter at the NYT is calling Trump a deplorable racist, fascist, liar on a daily basis it just proves they picked the right champion.
So there it is. The battle lines are drawn.
1
David has discovered that 2 years of Trump daily fanning the flames of divisiveness and mistrust has resulted in deeper divisions and lack of trust. Good call but I must admit I had been hoping for a bit more insight from The NY Times opinion page.
1
How about those of us in the "pox on both your houses" camp? Doesn't that round out your Venn diagram?
25
@Griff
Many of us feel that way, but it doesn't work very well on the ballot. There, you have to chose the lesser evil.
8
Even if the urban - rural divide is as internally consistent as you say, the truth is, 85% of us live in cities. And yet, the 15% rural population gets a very loud voice in our politics.
The problem is that the country cannot deal with the basics: health care, immigration, the budget, gun control and public safety, public education, filling potholes....
Fix politics. Make America Proud Again.
1
Glad you’re back, David. Only words I’ve heard from you lately are on PBS Fridays
Pelosi stand-ins? Whaaat?
I read that line and sighed—because it’s Brooks being Brooks. With a horrible racist liar as President, Brooks has to throw in his false equivalency—that there are Pelosi stand-ins running for office next week. To be honest, I can’t think of any Nancy Pelosi syncophants. Actually, many Dems have spoken out about replacing her. If you think there are Pelosi wannabes, please give me one example of a Congressperson running on being a Pelosi supporter.
Now think of the number of Republicans who either parrot Trumps bigotry and lies or who just keep their mouths shut.
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You don't need to cross 23 states to realize this country is more divided than ever, you just need to listen to Donald Trump at his rallies and read the news.
After all, this uprising of hatred, racism and anti-Semitism doesn't just come out of thin air.
These sentiments have been continuously stoked by a president who relishes the spotlight and will do and say anything to keep himself there, even if it results in Blacks being shot in broad daylight by a white supremacist in Kentucky, and Jews being gunned down in their Synagogue during prayer.
The divisions that define this country are now far more than political, racial or even geophysical; they've become ingrained and integral, which is also why everyone is so bunkered down in their own corner without budging.
There's nothing 'united' about the United States of America anymore -- and Americans aren't the only ones who realize that.
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Dave wanders about the country, talks to 10 or a 100 pilgrims and comes to conclusions that are the kinds of impressions one gets in dreams. People in the middle of the country have no interest in Trump's manipulation of events like the caravan...people in the Bronx are glued to their television sets (or 2 way wrist radios) blah, blah, blah. Is he still being paid to write this stuff...heck I could do it from my survivalist shelter in my basement while making my own antibiotics from local roots and berries.
Wow. For someone who has traveled to 23 states in three months, you'd expect a little more than stock phrases about how blue cities are and how red rural areas are. We've accepted that as "truth" for the last two years. What new insights do you have, Mr. Brooks? Did you bother to interview suburban women who are bucking the trend and voting for Democrats? (Clue: Read your New York Times colleagues.) How about the rural Democrats who keep their guns and yet think Trump is a nut job? (Again, read the Times story.)
If, after visiting 23 states, all you can do is cite "atmospherics" and online articles, how much have you learned?
This is a particularly shallow column, devoid of original reporting or even the suggestion that you left your hotel room. It's what we, in old-school journalism, called a "thumb-sucker": a thinly reported impression of what the writer perceives without doing much homework.
In other words, "elitist."
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Hey, David Brooks. In all your erudite travels through rural America, did it ever dawn on you to ask why all the farmers and slaughterhouse owners are dependent on illegal slave labor? Did it ever dawn on you to ask why the President they love vilifies the very people that put food on their tables? Did it never dawn on you that this is the America of Jim Crow and slavery, the America that for hundreds of years has spit on the people who made their very prosperity possible?
Shame on you. Shame.
(For penance, read Professor Eric Foner.)
2
"Nobody is moving, just settling into place".
They are also putting up defensive positions and arming themselves. Digging in and storing ammunition for a full fledged war of ideology. Truth no longer matters. Waving the red flags and chanting stupid slogans like "Lock her up" and "Jews will not replace us" as they rant and rave about imagined enemies from all corners of the globe.
I don't care if Hawley wrote a book or what school he went to. He is a bought and paid for Trumplican and just like all the rest of them he will bow before Trump and do what he is told.
I would not vote for Hawley in a million years.
1
I hope that David Brooks has awakened to the danger facing the U.S. and will vote democratic across the board. But I doubt he will, he still seems like a republican apparatchik.
Max Boot woke up, smelled the coffee and realized what he was smelling was fascism.
1
In the 2008, 2012 and 2016 Presidential elections 55%, 59 % and 58 % of the white American majority went white McCain/Palin, Romney / Ryan and Trump / Pence. White America was always buried deeply in their white socioeconomic political educational demographic historical supremacist trenches.
While two sons of Confederate Alabama aka Addison Mitchell McConnell, Jr. and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, III had to await the assistance of Julian Assange, James Comey, Benjamin Netanyahu and Vladimir Putin to occupy the White House. Instead of a violent secession and move to Richmond, the rebels are whistling Dixie and waving the Stars and Bars bent on reversing the outcomes of the Civil War, Reconstruction and Civil Rights eras from within.
See "Dog-Whistle Politics : How Coded Racial Appeals Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class " Ian Haney Lopez
2
Somehow accusatory without saying anything.
1
David the frame around everything is the the huge blinking neon sign that Trump is a liar. And his lies are becoming more dangerous to regular Americans. The MagaBomber domestic terrorist was right in the room in Trump’s Fake-Believe Festivals while trump was slurring the American press. Ugh.
Rural people want healthcare too BTW.
1
Both sides do feel the country is unravelling. However only one side's fear is valid. Democrats fear a fascist state emerging while Trump supporters fear a loss of their white privilege staus.
1
Republicans are backed into a corner and the only tactics they have in their arsenal revolve around fear and lies. Don't count on any reasonable electorate bowing to their ideology of lunacy. If you lay down with critters, prepare to wake up with fleas. Reverse ignorance, vote Democratic.
1
Ah, David Brooks. How would I end my week without his sanctimonious can't-we-all-just-get-along insight? Truly an inspiring and exemplary moralist.
1
David,
"As polls show, those Democrats are losing faith in capitalism itself, in the American dream itself. White liberals describe racism as a bigger problem precluding black advancement than do African-Americans."
Why do you think those two points about your upper class white counterparts are wrong?
Are you still a starry-eyed upper middle class right-wing Republican professional who thinks that American capitalism is so fair and balanced?? Go back and reread Michael Lewis's books, "Liars Poker" and "Flash Boys," to remind yourself that the financial marketplace is rigged for financial companies and billionaire clients.
Are you so far gone in your views to realize that any people exposed to the reality of having a foot on their neck have a more difficult time rising up???
So for all your sanctimonious hand-wring, David, how about coming down from your ivory tower and set out a way for this political illness to move to a more unified way of governing.
1
Mr Brooks, There are times when you seem to equate progressive Democrats & Trump supporters. What do progressives want? Generally, reforms that would make us more like Sweden, Norway & Denmark; schools like Finland's; diversity like neighborhoods of greater NYC, San Fran, LA & Toronto; family support like France; and the general prosperity of Germany. This vision of a liberal, empathetic, diverse America is an anathema to the Trump movement. They're not at all equal.
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@Tom O'Brien You do know that the countries you prefer to be in or look like are completely homogeneous and tiny. Right? It's not difficult to hold together when everyone shares the same history and culture. I'm always stunned to read how the progressives so love Europe. YIKES!
6
@Tom O'Brien All David is noting (not equating really), is that the Rural Trump electorate appear to not want any of that, and appear to hate those that do. He is also noting that Progressives appear not to want what the 'Rurals' want (white supremacy, no immigrants, supreme primacy of their specific brand of Christianity {must be the 'right kind' of Christianity, as one anti-Obama voter once noted}, no govt' handouts {except for them and their farms}, no 'govt schools', etc. etc. David is not saying they are equal, just that their apparent desires are so divergent as to now have no commonality.
16
@Tom O'Brien Tom, There's a difference between being liberal - equal rights for people of all races, ethnicities & genders & left wing alignment, which is basically economic, thought it can (& often does) include people of all races, ethnicities & genders. Unfortunately, what we call 'liberal' can partner quite well with corporatism & support for the military industrial complex.
2
Only the fools would vote in the coming elections.
Only the fools cannot learn from the previous mistakes.
Only the fools could trust the politicians that have been exploiting and using them for decades.
Only the fools believe the media outlets repeatedly betraying them because those are the privately owned businesses with the sole objective to maximize the owner’s profits.
Neither the free press nor the politicians have any guiding principles. They simultaneously claim that the people previously expelled from their homes don’t have the right to return while the refugees that never lived somewhere have every right to illegal cross the borders.
If you still cannot comprehend what I’ve just told you, please read again those first five paragraphs!
@Kenan Porobic
The only fools are those who don't VOTE.
To write about the troubling current state of American politics and not identify the country's problem with race and identity as the most damaging factor is to practice willful ignorance.
Another yawner....I hope in some future column you will discuss those of us, probably between 25% and 30% of the electorate, who are independent, decline-to-state moderates who will determine this (and all future) elections.
This, despite all the usual white privilege maunderings I see in the comments below. God, please put them out of their misery.
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@Kingston Cole
Yes. More so than you know.
October Gallup party affiliation poll:
28% Repub
39% Indy
30% Dem
1
I have considered myself an Independent for a long time. I grew up in a Republican household in Vermont. I can of age during the height of the Vietnam War. Nixon began my divorce from identifying with a political party. The Iran-Contra Affair moved this divorce along a little further. Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton both made the divorce a sure thing. George W. Bush and his Iraq War (a war crime in my opinion) was the final settlement in my divorce from party politics.
President Obama restored some of my faith in the American poltical system, and Mitch McConnell did his level best to kill whatever restored faith Obama gave me.
The current president, and my heart rebels against him every day, lost any support I might have had when he mocked the disabled man (a reporter) during the 2016 election.
I look for honesty, and leadership. I look for trust and I desperately look for someone to step out of the hyper partisanship and work to unite us. I see none of this. The few outliers in the Republican party are basically cowards in my book. I do not see any good Democrats fitting my definition of leadership either. I wish there was somebody that would rise up out of the crowd.
I voted for Bernie Sanders (wrote his name in). I could not bring myself to vote for either Trump or Clinton.
I would not even leave my kids or grandchildren with Trump for a second, so how can I trust him to be president of all of us and be a leader? I can't.
3
Democrats are not acting like Pelosi stand-ins. They are acting in many different ways, and Pelosi is not running from rally to rally. But Mr. Brooks needs to say that it is both sides so he can be in the middle and avoid taking sides. He works on a paper with a transgender columnist and some gay columnists, but seems to respect rural America's desire for clear gender roles.
In rural America, people hang onto the way that things always were, and the solution is to hang harder and try harder. In a dynamic free enterprise economy, where farms have to be ever larger to be economically viable and where Wal-Mart, gas station convenience stores, and fast food chains replace local business opportunities with minimum wage jobs and absentee decision-making, hard work is not enough to preserve the social fabric. Willingness to change and learn, American ingenuity and pragmatism, are what is needed to survive and succeed, not rage and resentment against the scapegoat of the day.
We are separating into two worlds, but one of them and only one is a world of unreality. The other is the ordinary world of reality and real problems (which are difficult enough). One of the circles in the Venn diagram is a circle on a page. The other is a soap bubble that has floated off the page.
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@sdavidc9 I always liked your comments. Unfortunately they are too smart and too long to get picked as either the best by the NYT or by the readers. I hope you will keep posting. You have at least one serious fan eager to read your non-slogan opinions.
5
@farmer marx
Thank you. I have been trying to develop some ideas here and not just comment, although this is perhaps not the best place to do that.
3
@sdavidc9 Excellent comment. This places you firmly in the uncategorizable camp which is what both sides can't stand. Don't change. From someone else who can be uncategorizable too.
3
Urban vs. rural? That's too facile IMO.
Couple things:
1. My wife worked for a midwest based footwear company. Owners and senior execs were all Trumpistas. Educated, white men who teased her (the Bay Area liberal) when she went to HQ for meetings that "Obamacare was going down!", etc. Get this: not one shoe was made in the USA. ALL were made in China. What's that about?
2. I worked with a sales colleague based in TX a few years back. He and I were the first to dial into a conference call. He started going off about Hillary's emails - before this was even a thing. This is a guy who makes maybe $250K a year. White. Educated. Male.
Not rural. Not working class.
Go figure.
David, while you did hit the nail "on the head" so to speak, you did not reach the most logical conclusion. I would like to see a future column after the mid-term election address the following statement and I would like to see others reply to this thought:
"The last time we were as divided in such a volatile fashion was right before the Civil War". Then, it was "North versus South" - now it's "Red versus Blue". If we continue along this trajectory, we will see blood in the streets until people come to recognize we are more filled with anger and hate to our fellow Americans who reside on the "other side" than of the Russians who are happy to hack into our democracy and destroy it piece by piece.
Write idea, but wrong reasoning. The divisions are separated by those who obsessively watch this garbage on tv or the internet and those who live in reality. The reality voters won in 2016 and will do the same in less than a week.
I dunno, Mr Brooks. Rural America should worry. Hospitals are disappearing like crops and cattle in a Dust Bowl. People have to drive long distance to get modern medical care. What good is a gun when all sort of ailments arise from runoffs and superbugs?
1
I spent three months this summer in a county that voted 78% for Trump. After eight years of "drive-by" lectures from the now "Trumpies" on Obama's corruption, this group studiously avoided talking politics this summer. They are embarrassed by the deal they've made with the devil - they voted for him, and they still support him, but his rhetoric makes them uncomfortable and they don't want to be challenged on their continued support. It is important to understand that to many supporters, Trump is the triumph of the D student, the person at the back of the class who didn't study, took no risks, and exhibited the same lack of risk and effort for the rest of their lives. They watched their siblings and friends move away and do quite well for themselves and now, they're middle aged and they have an uneasy feeling that they haven't accomplished much; heck, a black man made it to the White House and they can barely afford a new Ram truck. They wonder why they don't have more to show for their lives and Fox News and Trump told them why: immigrants. It is so simple, it can be communicated in a Fox News' minute. Add that to the GOP message that they are the "real Americans", the "makers" and the Democrats are the "takers" and their egos are stroked, their status rises, and they are no longer the D student stuck in a small town. Unfortunately, none of this is changing until Fox News is neutered. The messages are too self-serving for the GOP and too enticing to the audience.
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@Michelle I've read hundreds of articles and comments in the NY Times since the disaster that was 11/8/16 and nobody has described it so succinctly as this. A D student, indeed.
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@Michelle Sounds a lot like Germany in the 1930s, no?
11
I find it interesting that, when Democrats are in charge, we all feel freer to discuss politics. The reason, I would contend, is that Democratic presidents have been open to discussing ideas from both sides of the aisle.
Republicans, by contrast, vilify Democratic leaders and obstruct Democratic initiatives. No clearer example exists of that than McConnell's pledge to make Obama's presidency a failure.
I think also that there is one subject on which most voters agree--we need to take money out of politics. Trump ran, and won, with a pledge to 'drain the swamp,' the fact that he was lying notwithstanding. Bernie Sanders and every other progressive that's won an unexpected victory have also railed against the pernicious effect of money in politics.
The fact is that, since Citizens United, one of the most lucrative investments a billionaire can make is in a Congressperson or two. Their returns in tax benefits and weakened regulation have paid back multifold (while American workers languish with wages that don't even keep up with inflation).
Trump has kept us off-balance, as fascists do, with an atrocity of the week (often two a week), but at some point people are going to realize that they've been duped. I hope that realization doesn't come too late.
1
Even though I am a staunch Democrat, I have a foot in both camps. I'm bilingual. And honestly, I spend as much time being angry and frustrated by the Democrats as I do the Republicans.
Yesterday, I listened to a podcast featuring Rep. Steve King's opponent, Democrat J.D. Scholten. He talked about how Democrats have disappeared from rural areas. And he's right. Those of us in rural areas, and the Rust Belt, have become invisible to Democrat leadership and urban Democrats. Their only explanation for why we are angry and upset is because we must be under-educated and racist.
We need somebody to work on bringing good jobs back to flyover country and giving our young people some hope. And no, telling us to move to the city is not a solution. The path is open for Democrats to appeal to the voters they have lost in the last 20 years, if they would just wake up and grasp the opportunity.
3
The forcing of people to take sides by making opposing arguments so extreme is prelude to further conflict.
This is an unusually dark message, especially since the reality is that there is a significant middle ground supported by most Americans. Most Americans are concerned about their health insurance, getting quality care at an affordable price. According to polls, most are willing to consider common sense gun measures that allow Americans to keep handguns and rifles. Most Americans don't want either party to meddle with Social Security or Medicare. Most don't want to leave a large debt to their children. Most would like to see our infrastructure rebuilt. And there is a difference in attitudes and opinions between young and old - the newest generation is much more tolerant of diversity and understanding of change and technology. While there is significant hardening of opposing views, and some issues that polarize more than others, the most polarized Americans are those at the end of each spectrum -- according to one recent study about 7-8% of Americans are far left and far right (14-16% total). That leaves plenty of us in the middle . Much of the political polarization is due to how primaries are conducted in each state, to funding from the wealthy, etc. I hope that David Brooks will follow up this article (he never seems to follow up his ideas) with a more nuanced, empirical approach to where Americans are today -- and where they will be tomorrow.
If all of that were true, most Americans would vote Democrat in every election.
"White liberals describe racism as a bigger problem precluding black advancement than do African-Americans."
This is because middle class white people have seen how the system works from the inside. If you are disempowered and locked out of the white-collar labor market, you don't have any idea of how things actually work.
2
I watched the 1964 GOP convention with my father. My father read every newspaper he could lay his hand on but The Forward was his favourite. My father got sick whenever Ronald Reagan's face appeared on television. My father didn't like Nixon or Goldwater but my father really hated Reagan.
My father understood political and social philosophy and he loved the United States of America. My father said these men will destroy America. My father said they were a cult, politics require reason and compromise and when Rockefeller, Scranton and Javits were no longer Republicans he said America was doomed.
My father was a Canadian because when he was sent away from Europe his sister needed to be in NY more than him so she was given his visa. My father voted conservative, liberal and democratic because pragmatism demanded democracy move society adjust to the needs of the day.
My father thought Goldwater a fool, Nixon a shyster but considered Reagan an actor willing to play whatever role he could get.
My father was correct what you call conservatism has destroyed your country.
I listened to Reagan's speech at Philadelphia Mississippi the other day and the great communicator made clear in all the dog whistles that the GOP has used to destroy your country just as he had sold cigarettes when he was a devout non smoker.
1
Like a lot of liberals I used to tell myself that ordinary Republicans were too naive to recognize a dog whistle when they heard one. The race baiting and divisiveness of the Trump administration has characterized the Republican Party for decades, as witnessed by the Willie Horton ads among many other examples that fooled no one with the tiniest fragment of awareness. But because they were dog whistles white liberals could tell ourselves that our fellow Americans of the red persuasion weren’t actually evil but only misguided, Now that the the veil has been lifted on just how ugly the GOP IS willing to be to preserve their privilege on the wealthy red side, and cling to the idea of white supremacy on the middle and lower income side, it is impossible to rationalize the opposition as having any decency at all. We are all seeing, blinders off, what people of color and lgbtq folks have known and suffered from all along. I couldn’t be more ashamed of my country right now but staring its ugliness right in the face has shaken me out of my complacency. If the left coast could secede without a second civil war it would be the happiest day of my life. Until then if I never see another Republican it will be too soon for me. My godchildren are African refugees, my daughter is the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, my father is an immigrant, my dear friend is a queer person of color. My beloved community is under unapologetic attack. I wish no harm on anyone— but I want a divorce.
1
Nice article, but let us not forget that the chasm is a direct product of decades of Republican lies that this columnist conveniently omits. The author also doesn’t acknowledge the complex ecosystem of dishonest outrage created and promoted by Fox and Sinclair, along with their web troll colleagues in arms who peddle vile fantasies.
As I have recommended on more than a few occasions when responding to this columnist’s conservative ‘tut-tutting’ about how we ever got here, I would urge Mr Brooks to read Professor Krugman’s very relevant column in today’s Times.
4
Upper-middle class Democrats clearly are not losing faith in the American dream—many would argue that being an educated upper-middle class person is what the American dream is—they just want to extend that dream to more people who didn’t have the good fortune of being born as a white American.
2
News alert: things aren't unraveling. Look outside your window if you don't believe me.
2
This idea that “nothing matters but the win” is unique to Americans. Those who live this philosophy have no heart and are only using a small fraction of their brain.
1
Mr. Brooks, you have always struck me as a person very settled into his white male, well-educated, urbane, privileged, intellectual place, so concerned about the well-being of those outside your social sphere that you cringed at the embarrassment of ordering lunch meats. What's new here? Holier than I and Thou?
It’s blatantly false to say that “Republicans were saddled with an unpopular President...”. Republicans nominated and elected an unpopular and grossly immoral and incompetent President. This statement borders on malpractice, Brooks!
1
@John M Druke Actually, DJT's approval is over 50%, and he's very popular in my house.
A reader can get enough of your two-Americas pessimism, Mr Brooks. Yes, there are two Americas struggling for hegemony. What’s news? It’s the same struggle that’s been going on since before the Civil War.
Like most conservatives, you wallow in nostalgia for a past that never existed where we all got along and went to church and joined the Kiwanis club. Guess what, while all that was going on, the WWII vets of the “greatest generation” were getting bombed on martinis and emotionally abusing theit wives and children, women and blacks were systematically excluded from the centers of economic and political power and more than a few black people were cracked over the head with billy clubs and strung up in trees.
There has NEVER been a time when there were not two Americas forcefully at odds with one another. What you and those of your ilk seem unable to reckon with is that it has also always been the case that one side was right and the other deeply, deeply wrong.
Choose a side. There is no middle ground on questions of justice.
4
I would like to know if the phony pseudo intellectual will be a Democrat or Republican in his new alignment?
@Gary Cohen They're solidly democrat --and that won't change.
When one cannot endorse the current Death Star administration, a faithful GOP wonk must blather and equivocate instead. How should we interpret a journalist who brags about traveling to 23 states in 3 months, but bases a short OpEd on reporting by 4 other writers?
Some nice omission occurs as well. Brooks cites unnamed polls showing "White liberals describe racism as a bigger problem precluding black advancement than do African-Americans" without acknowledging the current administration has inspired murder with conspiracy theories about Jews funding caravans of brown people.
Brooks has picked a side in one of the most consequential elections of a lifetime, and it is, to be polite, nonsense.
2
With respect to the killings and violence today-the sites accessible thru the internet are to blame. That is where “nuts” get confirmation of their crazy beliefs. We would be much better off without the internet.
David Brooks just cannot help put his elitism on display when describing Josh Hawley of Missouri, who is running for the Senate.
Brooks states that Hawley went to Stanford and Yale and wrote a book on Theodore Roosevelt. Wow, that's great. Of course it doesn't mean a hill of beans when it comes to character.
Truth be told Hawley is lying his tail off about Obamacare. Hawley is now claiming he is trying to protect people with pre-existing conditions. Problem is: he's fronting a lawsuit trying to get rid of the pre-existing protections in Obamacare. No wonder Hawley became a Trumpster.
Character is destiny David Brooks -- no matter where someone went to college.
1
David Brooks is right about the schism of right and left. The problem is, few people can see both sides. I had a military (R) mom and a socialist (D) dad, and I've seen both sides. No one likes to hear it, but the other side is just as valid as your side. For most NY Times (D) readers, the question is, How can anyone vote for Trump? Then they start calling everyone misogynist, racist, nativist, etc. For other NY Times (R) readers, the question is, Who can lead us that hasn't been bought out? Trump is offensive but at least he has stood up to China, driven North Korea to the table, and crushed ISIS. Trump stinks on the environment but instead, Pelosi and Schumer will ally themselves with racists and sexists, who tell us that white men are terrorists. Dems and their friends are responsible for an increase of hate speech against white men, and it won't be long before we see hate attacks on people for being white and male.
1
Give me a break. The GOP has lost it's mind, and what's poor moderate Republican to do? Moan in a plaintive cow-like way that we've all gone CRAZY? Like that's convincing anybody?
We'll just have to see what the younger set does. Trump is a lunatic with the moral sense and fine-tuned judgement of an dried-up turnip, and the GOP Congress is helping him destroy the executive. That's the truth; and we are letting them. Wake up, Mr. Brooks. Why are you complicit, advancing vacuous distractions?
Grammar spotlight:
The headline is an error - retrenchment means cutting back or reducing - which I would vastly prefer to Brooks' column's assertion that Trump and his minions are entrenched, meaning firmly established and unlikely to change. The subhead is correct, according, to Brooks - "nobody is moving..."
Here's why I vote for the headline error "retrenchment" instead of Brooks' entrenchment just based on the past two weeks:
Trump praised a politician for body slamming a reporter - right after a reporter was savagely murdered by one of the few international allies he looks up to.
Trump bragged that he's a Nationalist right before a white Nationalist murdered eleven Jewish people.
Trump is maniacally throwing military at a bogeyman caravan of immigrants - and I'm afraid it's going to be horrific.
Retrenchment - yes, I'll take a baker's dozen of those - how sweet it would be to cut back Trump's GOP support in Congress!
1
David, you know better. Surely the Venn diagram, as you call it, is not dead. Why don’t you publish an editorial identifying what the American public has in common? Thanks, Amos.
Not sure I learned anything new from this piece. We already know Republicans are from Mars and Democrats are from Venus.
"The Republicans were saddled with an unpopular president, ... “
Laughing out loud. The Republicans begged to be saddled by Trump and tightened the cinches themselves, with their teeth, then went trotting around inside the pen, perfectly happy.
1
Yes David, but I'm right.
If the Venn diagram is dead, be sure to give Fox News plenty of credit for killing it.
Despite Mr Brooks apparent dislike of President Trump, and his acknowledgement of the harm that has been done, like all Republicans he cannot for the sake of the country come out and say vote Democrat to send Trump a message.
Trump has made every election about him at every level - so local issues do not matter at this mid term. Come on Mr Brooks, grow a spine and say "Vote Democrat"
Nah,......... I thought not.
"The Republicans were saddled with an unpopular president,..."
Ahhhh, NO! No David, they were 'saddled' they CHOOSE this man - he won the primaries - he's unpopular by the popular vote- but he represents in the truest sense, what the Republican has become and was inching towards for decades until the leap to Sarah Palin and then the jump to trump. Its their nature.
As for your shining example Josh Hawley - I invite you and the readers to google him, as I did yesterday after seeing him on TV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Hawley
His move towards trump is who he is - he was a trumpets before there was a trump - just better schooling and looks.
There's the rub for you David - your party or is it ex - party, have been extreme in their social issues ( Sasse is another of these seemingly 'normal' conservatives ) and how to implement them. They are not 'conservative' as one would imagine ( small government etc) , they just want their sort of government involved in the lives of Americans - a religious white America thats what guys like Hawley and Sasse want - and you can you add the silent Bushes who have sat out this presidents outrages against our democracy - because ? Judges?
The republicans sold out America, the fact that people in the middle dont agree, does not make them right - nor you.
The image I get of a Trump supporter is a gun toting racist that doesn’t trust a soul, and wants government agencies and Democrats upended because they blame these for their present predicament.
@bunyipi Let me givi you a mental picture of this Trump supporter.
I do in fact own firearms but I take people at face value (at first, anyway) and I do think the Administrative State needs (radical surgery). And, I'm very happy with my present circumstances.
I guess you love your visits to your local DMV.
I think this article needs to be read with Thomas Edsalls (also published earlier today).
What I don't understand is how Obama voters switched to voting for Trump.It can't just be that Hilary was the world's worst candidate.
@jetlagged I didn't vote or Obama but I was sitting on my hands the last couple of weeks before the '16 election. I knew I could never vote for HRC. Then Trump convinced me he would be a consequential president and won my vote.
Pathetic. I often applaud David Brooks for his decency, but this piece is just a paean to helplessness.
Is this the best Brooks can summon, days from a fateful election, is to throw up his hands?
Take a stand! Any stand. Help your followers take a stand! Instead he just shrugs. An abdication of responsibility.
Never, ever forget which side of the dead Venn diagram David Brooks is on. The Trump side.
1
And you have played your part Mr Brooks with your constant and consistent false equivalences between Democrats and Republicans. That demanding health care for the poor is the same as marching for guns for all, that fighting discrimination is the same as nationalist marches shouting 'Jews will not replace us". For you, fighting for good and fighting for evil have been the same fight.
2
One big reason the country is unraveling is Mr. Trump. It is troubling that you cannot see this, David. The soft power of a president is tremendous. He has campaigned and governed with lies, demonization, and fear. His one great skill is dividing us. Trump's rallies are not in urban and suburban America. Fox is not on the TV 24/7 in urban and suburban America. Can you support your assertion, David, that rural America is not paying attention to Trump? How are we supposed to take him, David? Seriously but not literally? Slavishly but not intelligently? Day in and day out you write as if we should consider him a normal president who is hardly worthy of mention. You are enabling a dangerously unfit president, and collaborating with a proto-fascist.
1
Two nations, under different G-ds, with liberty and justice for some, not all.
2
The United States has become a very unpleasant place in which to live. The violence, the vulgarity, the decadence, the bigotry, the xenophobia, the racism have no equivalents anywhere on earth. Young Americans, especially those who want to have children, should consider the possibility of moving to a less dangerous country.
1
Am I the only one with the feeling that the panic starts just as much in David Brooks' mind as it does in the country?
Good News/Bad News: none of this is sustainable.
Fragmentation before the flush. Cornucopia until the gauntlet of reckonings.
I think I read in the Times that the industrial Midwest is returning to Democrats. I wish David would read the news section
Change is inevitable. The most dramatic one lately is that the far left has become what it used to despise...the thought police. To disagree with their point of view just to invite an open exchange is to make you a racist or something equally vile. It doesn’t matter if your entire life and work makes you the opposite of the odeas person you’re being made out to be. Being called out like that usually stops all discussion. People on both sides are vested in their view and nothing will change it. Open dialogue among thoughtful, caring people is the foundation if America is to accomplish big things.
Sad - with all the evidence that this is the worst administration in history, his 'base' still supports this slob.
The US is a laughingstock overseas, and the longer it goes on the harder it will to repair the damage this orange walking disaster has done.
@Plennie Wingo Please tell us who "overseas" is laughing at DJT (and why you value their opinions). I certainly don't value yours).
Since there's no "overlap" anymore, it may be time to give up on the *United* states and start thinking in terms of the United Blue States (or something more appropriate) and the ignorant, bigoted, white nationalist rest, the Red States of White Nationalists. It's obvious which one will have the economic clout and prosperity.
“Democratic ideology is increasingly dominated by the educated upper-middle class.”
Folks, we are in cloud-cuckooland.
Read the piece to which this sentence is linked. The sentence, quite simply, is an insult to our intelligence. It’s a statistical impossibility. Will the Times let us say that? The Edsall piece to which the sentence is linked is itself deceptive. The data make clear that it’s mainstream Democratic voters who are fed up with the American right. If it’s 50% of Democratic voters, they could hardly all be “upper-middle class;“ statistically that’s impossible. There couldn’t be enough of them to constitute 50%. Think about it. Could 50% of Democratic voters be “upper-middle class” in a country that doesn’t have that large an upper-middle class? Are we supposed to believe that half of all Democrats are richer than everybody else? This is just stupid. Richer voters are Republicans. (See the 2016 election.)
Why would Brooks call attention to his own deceit? How did Edsall get away with it? Seriously, this is ridiculous. This is, in its purest form, crackpot Trumpist propaganda. Does anybody read this stuff before it’s published? By the way, Republican candidates may all embrace Trump, as Brooks suggests, but to simultaneously suggest that all Democrats are Nancy Pelosi is preposterous. Brooks is over the edge and his editors don’t seem to care.
As Jim Hightower said, "There's nothing left in the middle of the road in this country except for yellow stripes and dead armadillos".
Seems to me that all these comments prove David Brooks' point.
You can see this where I live: the gradual change from those political blue signs implanted on lawns in the town (and not a big town, at that) to red signs in the countryside. It's a racial and cultural gradient, from a wide mixture of races, cultures, and ethic origins to Anglo Saxon. Both sides are frightened. The urban fear a Hungary type political and racial oppression, the rise of black booted goons and their threat to life. The urban fear the encroachment of brown skinned people, diluting their precious white skin. I take some comfort in knowing that demographics favor the gradual decrease in the latter group, in numbers and in influence. In fact, this trend has been occurring for 200 years.
1
The America I see claims to be Christian, but isn't. Claims to value free speech, but doesn't. Claims to value diversity and CLEARLY doesn't.
I am a white American on her way to becoming a reverse racist. My faith in white Americans lining up to do the right thing dissipated with Trump's cheering, usually all white crowds..Chanting on command at his pep rallies instilled a true fear reminiscent of sitting in a movie theater in high school watching "Judgement at Nuremberg."
It is not okay to diminish people of color as "criminals, rapists, low IQ." To suggest to cheers from the crowd that our military will shoot children who throw rocks at them crosses real lines of decency.
I will NEVER accept children in cages, separated from their families, or giant tents put up to "detain" those who fled horrible violence and come here for safety.
I still believe that American dream belongs to us all... Those who do not, shame the legacy so many of us fought and died to preserve and protect.
Never ask me to say it okay to treat anyone different as my enemy.
108
Bravo! Margot, bravo. Well said.
7
@Tom O'Brien Thank you.....Blessings to all in Pittsburgh.....
7
@Margot LeRoy
Well said, thanks--
5
"Nobody is moving, just settling into place." We can't tell if Brooks wrote that or if it was added by the editors but's the best thing in the column today. Politics today (and not just the American brand) is the theater of Reality performed on the fantastical stage of virtual news, virtual dialogue, and the expectation that people will move without ever leaving the Internet. This could be a better country. We have the means to provide good healthcare, education, safe drinking water and food. Yet, we don't and won't. We just can't move from the paralysis of the humiliation that we've been conned, yet again. The dysfunctional marriage is a scene of domestic violence between so called Democrats and so called Republicans who are fenced in by a so-called president who thinks he's God. "And they do not move." Probably the most famous line in 20th Century theater (Waiting for Godot, of course!) But David, you're a conservative, a card carrying opponent to move. Tired of standing still? Get used to it. The nation and your readers are exactly as you expect them to be: stuck by their own love/hate relationship with the status quo. "Ils ne bougent pas."
1
Brooks, is a provocateur, who has a need to protect his main money source, speeches to conservative groups. The, “both sides,” presentation was inappropriate in pre-war Germany, and and it is now. Let’s not all not hold our breath for the Brooks column extolling the evils of Republicans, we all know where his bread is buttered. Upton Sinclair: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” In the U.S., it's only courageous when it actually hurts the wallet, so far Brooks has been lacking. Provocation, by itself, is just mindless, and yes, dangerous entertainment.
While this piece is one of the most disheartening I've read in a while, David AGAIN uses false equivalence to try and make his point. Trump backers have happily settled into place because he allows them to continue their existence of willful ignorance without having to make an effort to actually do a single iota of critical thinking. Democrats have settled into place because the country is now being run by those who have skillfully taken advantage of these qualities of Trump backers, i.e. conned them, for their own personal gain.
It is very hard to understand how 54% of white voters and 38% of college graduates can support a president who lies every single day. There was a time that truth had value in this country for most people and liars were exposed and sidelined. the truth is still important to some people and I hope that they go out and vote on Tuesday.
Mr. Brooks places too much reliance on polls, which have become increasingly unreliable over the years. Furthermore, the Venn diagram is alive and well in the world of potential voters who choose to stay home. Indeed, these potential voters by far represent the majority of American citizens.
The problem is party primaries which produce party partisans. But Americans are truly sick and tired of partisan hacks. Give them real people to vote for instead of party robots and we can change the world. In the meantime, war and hatred will continue to spread and intensify thanks to the constant barrage of political and religious partisanship that is so fully embraced by the media.
Josh Hawley may have flexed some intellectual muscle at Stanford and Yale Law School, as well as in his writing after, but that instinct clearly is in recession now that he's sold his soul to Trump to get elected. He is as craven as the rest of his party, perhaps even more so by mortgaging his intellectual capital.
Medieval author Walter Map wrote the treatise “Courtiers’ Trifles” in the 12th century (translated into English and published by Oxford University in 1923). Therein, he described the actions of a man who was a promoter of an upside-down morality. In his words:
"He put the worst of men to command the bad, he gave additional authority and power to those who were wickedest in their attacks on the innocent, and promoted over all others those to whom pity was unknown. He left no good deed unpunished, no bad one unrewarded; and when he could find no rival and no rebel on earth, he challenged opposition from heaven. He spoiled everything he touched and desisted neither for fear of the living nor respect for the dead.
Pretty much sums it up for Trump and Republicans, yes?
1
Dear David,
It is time for you to move off the right of center idealism and preach some belief in government that can be trusted and works for the citizenry. You over use false equivalency and avoid opining on whether prograessivism as found for example in Denmark or the Netherlands delivers on issues - such as medical care and infrastructure. Yes this might mean that you would have to give up some lucrative gigs as the go to thoughtful conservative. But you would sleep better and do "Tikkun Olum" - repair the world rather than thinly disguise the right's overreach.
2
"The Republicans were saddled with an unpopular president, ..."
Unpopularity is the least of our problems with this president. The causes of his unpopularity are the big issue. And the causes are his total bankruptcy in the areas of truth, regard for important institutions of government, personal morals, unifying rhetoric and policy (there is none.) These cross party boundaries and that a significant portion of the public accepts this is alarming.
How is it a "realignment election" if no one is realigning, but just digging their trenches deeper? And the headline writers don't seem to know what "retrenchment" means. Perhaps they were going for "entrenchment." Very different meaning.
We took a road trip and many of the motels in smaller towns only had Fox News in their cable package, not even CNN much less MSNBC. Brooks should read his colleague Paul Krugman today, who lays out the case that the opposition party is now given over completely to lies. And in the rural areas are people fed only these lies, often proud of their ignorance and generally resentful of any "book learning."
MG
NEPA
“The Republicans have been saddled with an unpopular president.”
Poor souls, if only they could have stood firm for say, Ted Cruz or even Carly Fiorina. Things would be so different.
There is an argument to be made for opposing flagrant violation of rules written and unwritten in the name of preserving our system and you should consider that that possibility is at work here. You stretch reason to its limits, retrenchment was forced on the country by Trump’s excesses and Republican complicity.
I find your anaysis today overburdened by the attempt to assign the electorate into neat pigeonholes that might allow the losers on Tuesday (Trump and his subjects)to explain why it happened.
I’m not trying to predict a result here, it seems like your side is anticipating the shellacking they so richly deserve.
Red State America would sing a different tune if they weren't protected from the global capitalist system by crop subsidies, price supports, subsidized crop insurance, and a tsunami of federal spending on fake forts.
1
There are indeed two camps in America at this time: (1) one camp consists of liberal media elites, celebrities, labor organizers, academics, and urban & suburban members of the Democratic Party; (2) the second camp consists of nearly everyone else who does not belong to the Never Trump Resistance. The first camp constantly upbraids the second camp for its temerity in not joining the anti-Trump constituency and for believing in ideas contrary to their own.
For example, the columns of Paul Krugman continually criticizes all Republicans for not repudiating Trump. You cannot be a good person and still support Trump. Nor can you espouse positions that are not considered liberal orthodoxy. If you have concerns about open borders, diversity mandates or affirmative action, you must be motivated by racism and white supremacy. If you have qualms about trans-gender bath rooms in public places, you are an anti-gay bigot. If you are a practicing Christian, you have values antithetical to religious diversity. If you believe in a strong America, both economically and militarily, and respect our Flag, you are at best old fashioned and heedless of the cultural evolution that has occurred in the last 50 years.
Some of us have concerns about some of the cultural and political changes that have occurred. That should not however mean that we are engaging in "hate speech" contrary to the liberal dogma we see all around us. Or that we do not have a rational basis for our positions.
1
The Venn diagram of American politics has been replaced by the Venal diagram of American politics.
1
Brooks' latest iteration of the false equivalence. And equating "clear gender roles" with "basic values" is one for the ages. One who equates their values with someone else's gender is , well, a Republican like Brooks.....Trump and Pence.
1
In this essay Brooks seems to be trying to paint progressivism into a corner, a label: upper, middle class privileged people living in a bubble of white glove shock at all things Trump. This is the Fox News spin too. The idea of a privileged class triggered by the working class is appealing to many voters, and it’s a great stump pitch. Pit the rich against the poor. But, it’s not the truth. The urban left is working class. “Educated” progressives are real people struggling paycheck-to-paycheck, contrary to what Brooks is selling. The lefty "liturgies" Brooks alludes to are not pie in the sky weirdo rich people chanting in velvet roped prayer. No, these “liturgies” are basic human values: Don’t lie. Don’t bully. Don’t cheat. Don’t degrade people. These values are American values, no divide. Talk to the people in the red states – they agree with the people in the blue states.
3
Wow...how sad is this statement.
"In rural America, by contrast, all that stuff is like a thunderstorm in Inner Mongolia. It’s something happening very far away with no particular relevance here, and so no one’s paying much attention."
Compared to urban populations who do seem to care about how our President behaves. Why is this?
1
To say that the Republicans were 'saddled with an unpopular candidate' may be the single most disingenuous thing I've read in a week filled with disingenuous arguments.
I have got to believe that, of all the writers on the Right side of the spectrum, you are better than this.
From the 'birther' nonsense onward, the Republicans EMBRACED Donald Trump at every opportunity...because, as repugnant as he was, he helped them disempower a popular president.
In every respect we have reaped what they so wrecklessly have sown.
Mr. Brooks, I live in a lively democratic stronghold in the heart of Texas and I also work seasonally on a south Texas farm and have seen up close the rural heartland and learned to love both. You ended your editorial absurdly when you said, "The venn diagram is dead. There is not overlapping area." Plainly ridiculous as there is far more overlapping than not. We are neighbors all and face different problems. We need more discussions of commonalities and where and how to build both better urban areas and better and stronger rural areas.
1
Whenever a Republican complains about the "educated elite" i suggest we do what Mao and the Chinese did: close the schools and kill all the teachers.
It seems part of our division today is precisely one of education. Those who are in the successful middle-class almost always have benefitted from a university education, and those at the bottom have not. So it seems to them logical to blame the educated. What they don't see is how rigged the system is to benefit the few at the very top. And the is why the uni grads and professional classes are questioning capitalism and our version of democracy.
As Mr. Brooks states "America is unraveling," so the question becomes why don't we let it? Citizens of states on the west coast share perspectives closer to those of France than of Alabama. California, in particular, is sorely underrepresented in the American political system, a system where there is no route to righting the injustices that have become ingrained via modernization and growth since its 18th century design. Wouldn't an amicable breakup, similar to those occurring in Europe over the past few decades, be the logical way to destress North America?
3
@backfill Yes I agree that secession is likely. We’re not quite there yet
1
John Ralston Saul saw in 1992 Trump in your future when he wrote Voltaire's Bastards (The Dictatorship of Reason in the West) in 1992. Conservatism has become an unreasoning cult that does not understand that politics requires understanding that sometimes taxes need to be raised and sometimes they need to be lowered sometimes government needs to grow and sometimes it needs to shrink. it is the story of Joseph coming to interpret the Pharaohs dreams.
The utter insanity of American conservatism that there exists a single answer to all economic and social problems has given us the king of snake oil salesmen. Reagan learned as chief spokesman for American tobacco to sell a product he would never use and learned to sell his GOP poison of voodoo economics.
America is 83% urban and suburban and the real problems have been neglected for 40 years. The constitution written for an agrarian 18th century economy instead of evolving has been perverted by Sophists like Antonin Scalia and a society that calls itself Federalist which is antiFederalist.
Men like Cruz, Grassley, McConnell, Ryan and Graham feign empathy to obtain power and men of integrity are smeared by a system where honour means very little.
Where were the Republicans and Christians when Trump said Obama was a Muslim from Kenya and John Kerry was not a war hero.
John Ralston Saul said cynicism is the greatest threat to democracy and you consider Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court a victory.
Shame, Shame Shame.
1
I voted for mostly Democrats and a few Republicans here in Colorado. I dont know anyone else who split their ticket. Also liberals haven't scared me yet, I still am proud of my vote for Jill Stein in 2016 and I'll vote third party again if the Democrats run another horrible candidate. As an Independent, I've learned the best solution is to not talk about politics. The Republicans call me a libtard and the Democrats call me a racist Nazi. You just cant win unless you are a believer. The party is the new religion, and that's truly scary.
1
Hey David... I overlap!
I work 4 10s in the city, and live in the outskirts in a rental apt. 4 nights a week. Then, over the river and through the woods, I travel to the rural land of 2-lane roads for 3 days a week, where hunting season is coming...
I like it, living in both worlds.
I vote independently too, but you are right: in this election, most of us are pretty much forced to be pulling for one side or the other. The issues are being ignored, but something surely will give soon... either we address immigration and then "entitlement" programs (which we legals are "entitled" to pay into, wondering if we too will collect checks like our rapidly retiring older bros. and sisters...), or we continue fluffing in the faces of the coming generations.
Damn the environment -- somebody save today!
1
Brooks lost me at the "mini-versions" statement. I had a problem with my congressional representative long before Trump came to town. Trump didn't nationalize anything in my neck of the woods. His one visit to Utah was widely protested across Salt Lake County. Most Utahans, even Republicans, would prefer he kept his distance. The man is not well liked.
That's Utah though. I happen to agree with Amy Walter. We've been talking about this issue for about two years now and we're exactly where we started. I'm not sure about the entrenchment but I suspect it's real. I don't feel more entrenched. However, I do feel the GOP government is going out of their way to misrepresent me. With one or two exceptions, that feeling travels pretty far down the ballot.
The problem with Trump is he's always trying to stick a finger in your eye. He's playing kickboxing while I'm trying to eat a meal. You don't score points for kicking someone who isn't playing. Trump doesn't seem to understand that principle and neither does Mitch McConnell. Their attitudes give someone like myself a general distaste for anyone associated with them. That's about as much nationalizing as they've accomplished.
In any event, I've already voted so I've said my piece. No matter your political stripe, you should your ask your representatives for at-home voting. It's amazing.
2
David, on the issue of whether anyone in the country is moving in outlook and political philosophy, you may want to read your paper’s article on young evangelicals today. Perhaps the movement is too slow, subtle, and quiet to be registering in polls and headlines, but it appears to be movement nonetheless.
I try really hard to remain objective as I read Mr. Brooks' opinion pieces. I try very hard to see the point of view of uncomfortable Trump apologists, hoping I can find an argument that doesn't end in accusing them of insanity or evil, but rather appeals to their better angels. However, I came to a full stop when I read, "The Republicans were saddled with an unpopular president..." as if they had no culpability in the political abomination they have inflicted on us all and, in fact, continue to abet. The problem we are dealing with here, friends, is self-deception. IMO, traditional Republicans who maintain their party affiliation are engaging in self-deception to immunize themselves against the reality that they have unleashed a dangerous and destructive force on the body politic. Part of the self-deception in Mr. Brooks' case is his penchant for blaming the victim, namely, Democrats, for not putting the Boggart back in the box; the Boggart that emerged from *his own* fears.
So whether it is intentional self-deception or deep-seated delusion at work in the GOP, I'm done trying to reason with crazy. Democrats once again find themselves in the historical position of having to fix what the opposition broke. I only hope this time it isn't too late.
2
This is a very cynical assessment of the state of the country. Yes, the extreme voices on either side have gotten louder, have a hard time listening to each other. But our democracy was built on values, which I believe will ultimately prevail. At one extreme we have Trump supporters ready to lock up anyone who opposes Trump (bombing them if need be). On the other we have Antifa types, ready to launch a revolution. But I believe there is a strong moral middle ground that will ultimately prevail (one that one columnist pecking at a few flowers like a hummingbird cannot fully assess). That moral core sees that separating children and housing them in tents is wrong, sees through the fear-mongering around a caravan of families fleeing violence as a national security threat. Add to this the women of all color and party stripes who see the debasing of women by the current leadership and I am confident that voters will right our ship.
2
Brooks basic argument is anti intellectual. He says Blue urban voters are paying attention to every utterance, Presidential statement, executive order, or outrage Trump does as if that is wrong to do when Trump is undermining Democratic institutions and core American values. The Red rural voters are not fazed and that is seen as a virtue and anti hysterical.
Right you are, David. So what's the outcome? Will the election accurately reflect the position of the majority? If that's the case, then so be it. But might it reflect instead the combined effects of gerrymandering and voter suppression, putting in power the minority over the majority? Either way, we seem to end up with the losers feeling beaten down and hopelessly subject to the whims of the winners, who might or might not be legitimate, but who are viewed by the losers as being simply and irredeemably wrong about everything. Not a recipe for long-term fairness and consideration in governing. See another article today regarding analysis of long-term trends toward a natural decline of democracy. What you portray in your piece today might be another piece of supporting evidence.
1
David Brooks,
You're views do nothing but further the divide. There is more that unite us than divides us.The simple answer is to ignite the power of the left of center through to the right of center. We need to quiet the vocal minority.
Why must we always take it as sacrosanct that we have to remain one nation? It would be messy and complicated, but we could consider a different kind of revolution, the velvet kind.
I would still visit my relatives in red America, vacation there, still want my government to trade with them, share security responsibilities, cooperate in peace. But my government would reflect my values, that is, the value I place on the environment, education, tolerance and inclusivity for all kinds of people. I wish we could at least talk about this possibility before we get so heated that we end up in another civil war over our irreconcilable differences.
That may sound hyperbolic, but I am sick and angry about the daily steps backward to this ridiculous time that the GOP seems to think was "great" - when transgender friends were in the closet, when white supremacists were "fine people", and a woman's appearance was used to smear her intellect. (Among so many other insults that the right wing under Trump has re-introduced into our society.) Those are not the values I live by, nor do I believe are in the best interest of an evolving, diverse democracy in this century.
Enough already.
3
Sad, isn't it?
The right, including the rural right, is driven impulsively to try to control what other people do -- for example, wanting to block abortion, gay marriage, etc. -- and then feeling their "way of life" is threatened when they cannot. It isn't.
They think they're not allowed to pray in school, by which they mean they're not allowed to make everybody pray exactly as they do.
They make immigrants scapegoats for their own problems. (I say this as an anti-immigration but not anti-immigrant and certainly not anti-refugee lefty who happens to think our population is too large.)
Healthy conservatism is a natural and sociologically useful impulse to counterbalance the other extreme, but so much of conservatism today is pathological.
Figuring out what's going on is the challenge of our time. I submit that a core problem is so many of us don't know how to determine what is real. We don't understand what are authoritative sources of information and what are not. We weren't taught, or have forgotten, how to think critically. Rationality is dying.
The rural yokel is the stereotypical emblem of such ignorance and irrationality. Is this a fair prejudice? I don't know.
The social structures to correct these deficits might not exist in the required abundance. The ability to think clearly involves a process of cultural and social bootstrapping and transmission (parent to child, for example) that depends on much else -- much else that appears to be missing or broken.
Clinton had a 3.2 million popular vote majority that failed to put her in the White House. That's the most significant fact about the '16 election. The rest, including this column and all the irrelevant miles traveled by Mr. Brooks for its sake, are simply a manifestation of that anomalous event. Until the Electoral College is put to rest once and for all, we face a dreary future.
1
Rural America, to its great disadvantage, has been encouraged by the Republican Party to cling to an airbrushed picture of the past, where the Wells Fargo wagon is acomin' into town and the corn is as high as an elephant's eye. That is retrenchment. The urban and coastal areas of this country continue to move forward into the 21st century.
2
We really do have two Americas. One is degreed, digitally current, easily employable, comfortable with racial and gender diversity, living in a large metro area connected to other metros.
The other America is undegreed, suspicious of social change, gets by on lower paying service jobs, lower income and living in rural areas formerly blessed with long gone manufacturing jobs and having difficult connections to metro areas.
Our nation never really figured out how to include rural America in the new economy that emerged after NAFTA and other multilateral trade agreements. We wanted the benefits of globalization but saw the programs that could have ameliorated the impact on rural America as too expensive or socialistic in nature. So we did little or nothing.
The resulting gulf between the two Americas leaves the nation divided economically and culturally. Distrust of institutions and "the other" on one hand and condescension and hubris on the other hand are the harvest reaped by all of America.
It should be seen as the most important task at hand for government and business to close the gap by connecting the thriving metros and visa versa. It would take a huge investment in physical and digital infrastructure, large outlays of funds to spur location mobility and a great deal of empathy and mutual understanding of the task at hand. It would be an effort of decades but the result would finally deny that capitalism must result in creative destruction.
1
This is all true – thanks to a Machiavellian Republican Party, and to moderate conservatives who have stood by while visions of a romanticized Grand Old Party danced in their heads.
There was a decades-long radicalization of the Right that began in the 1970s with a long-term strategy take over the court system.
In the 1980s the Republicans, led by Newt Gingrich, embraced extremism as their chief tactic. They declared war and rejected bipartisanship. No moral compromise was too dark for them to make. They inflamed tribalism and spewed demagoguery. They exposed us to toxic “alternative reality” in which they sabotaged the very language we use and the standards by which we interpret reality.
Make no mistake: Brooks warned us about the Republican take-no-prisoners tactics, and Gingrich’s extremism and unsuitable character. But – he did it (his words) “in a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible." That tone represents for him the honorable, intellectual high-ground tradition of moderate Republicans.
Here’s the problem. Clinging to a halcyon code of Boy Scout honor, of measured prudence, while the barbarians are smashing in the gates and torching the village is just a tad bit ineffective. “That’s not my Republican Party” doesn’t cut it.
I want Brooks and other moderates to get angry and to quit living in a nostalgic, intellectual bubble that is no match for today’s revolutionary realty. I want them – and the Democratic Party – to grow a spine.
4
My thoughts: Have lived, worked and traveled all over the U.S. and think David Brooks has made the same mistakes as other political commentators. Rural areas are not same in different parts of the country. Rural Mississippi is primarily poor, black with a long history of racism. Rural Wisconsin is primarily white with reasonably prosperous family farms and large blue collar work force in logging, mining and shipping. And I could go and on. Rural America is not monolithic.
Second, if you engage rural people in conversations about specific issues and not political talking points you will find they have a lot of the same concerns as urban/suburban folks. They are warm, kind people and will do almost anything for friends and family. But they don't like being lectured and the reason Trump's behavior doesn't bother them is because they are too busy just trying to make ends meet.
Just an FYI, I grew up in the western U.S. My father's family was involved with the United Mine Workers union in Pennsylvania and my mother's family were hard scrabble people from West Texas. Both families were from rural areas but had rather different political outlooks. But when it came to me they didn't care. I was just family.
My 2 cents
2
Our nation's "rural voters" have been on a fascinating rightward journey since the Reagan revolution of 1980. The result has been an ever increasing dominance of state governments, as well as the federal government, by the G.O.P. What is fascinating about this history is that the more they have voted Republican the unhappier rural voters have grown. And the unhappier they are, the more they vote Republican. Trump and his party have controlled the federal government for almost two years. Yet this purported savior of the white rural voters has nothing to offer but still more fear and resentment. No matter how much Trump betrays them, rural voters will never turn against him because to do so would be to admit that the people they hate - liberals, the media, elites - were right about Trump all along. They would sooner go to their graves than do that.
1
In the 20th century, politics and mass media was a profession practiced by members of an educated elite, but directed at a population that was largely not university educated, did not have white color jobs, and on a nationwide level was not primarily urban. In this century, the Democratic party appeals to university graduates and urban residents, together with loyalists from some disadvantaged minorities that it retains from earlier civil rights campaigns. This is a very risky strategy, demographically. As university has become more mass market and oriented towards job training, not every graduate emerges with the values taught at elite schools, so there is leakage of university grads to the Republicans. More importantly, the slow pace of demographic change means that there are huge numbers of older, less educated white people.
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Now you may say that Democratic policies would be materially better for older, less educated people. But most people don't vote in a materialist way. In 2018, people vote based on their identity and trust. The Democratic party identity is college grads, black people, non-heterosexuals and immigrants. Both Hilary and Obama, and most Democrats, made it pretty clear they regard non-grads and many white males with fear, pity and disdain (deplorables, bitter people clinging to guns and religion). The Republican enemy is a small elite plus some minorities. The Democratic enemy is almost half the population. Winning that way is hard.
1
How did the occupants of each side of the David's Grand Canyon get on their respective sides? The sieve is "fear tolerance," IMHO. Fear is the forever tool of tyrants. (Non-history buffs surely learned this from "Game of Thrones.")
Two leaders: One promises a fair and prosperous life to followers; the other promises flaying and torture for non-followers. Who wins? Depends on the citizen. In these days when neither promise is truly credible, some can overcome their instinctual (fearful) response with their rational powers; some can not.
Negative advertising, conspiracy theorizing and the science of propaganda aim directly at the fear-sensitive. There is not a well defined anti-fear tactic. We really, really need one.
2
@will duff ...And I answer my own demand with:
OK, PR/Ad/Pundit pros, here’s a plan. Use your talent and skills to “sell” the truth that one of America’s great strengths is its diversity. Or, in your mode, “ONE OF AMERICA’S GREAT STRENGTHS IS ITS DIVERSITY!!”
Use a thousand truthful anecdotes, all supporting the message. The super hard working first generation immigrant; the super successful technical team with a technicolor staff; the history of super inventors from all races; the super hero minorities of American battles… etc, etc. Note “super,” all part of the unique super powers of America.
You can do it. Sell, sell, sell the actual, truthful, helpful, peaceful benefits of diversity, the very same diversity that fear mongers sell, sell, sell as terrifying and supportive of racism, nativism and xenophobia. You can do it!
It is not often I disagree with Mr. Brooks. As I sit in Iowa I do see the pendulum swinging back left. We are a state that voted for Obama twice, and for Trump. Steve King is in a fight for his seat, and my own first district is looking to vote for the Democrat Finkenauer. I see a swing in midwest states that are remaining open minded to the other parties ideas. I don't see a retrenchment, rather further open to different ideas.
2
The folks in rural American have borne the brunt of many of the social and economic changes that have roiled the country. They are the ones who have felt some of the greatest pain of increasing economic inequality, stagnant wages and the eroding industrial base. They are the ones having to decide whether to let fracking and its attendant health problems into the neighborhood when all other good jobs have left. And at one time they knew that they were the heart of America but now they see the large cities and the coasts dominate the values discussion. In spite of these problems, that would make anyone resentful, our legislators have managed to avoid addressing any of this. Until we are able to bring these folks back into the fold by addressing their issues, their resentment will continue to bubble up as social resistance to other groups who seemed to be getting all the favors while they are ignored.
1
Stalemate. I think the polarization in politics, the echo chambers of cable news that allow both sides to solidify and reinforce their views, and the handful of social justice warriors and right-wing antagonists, will drive the end of the dead Venn diagram and usher in a new age of political moderation in this country. When? I don't know. But something will give and we will turn to middle ground and moderation.
1
Vintage Brooks insight. A spot-on read of increasing tribalism in America based on race, gender, and geography. Isn't there be a shared American Ideal that defeats parochialism? We must find it fast!
1
As destabilizing as the Trump presidency is, Brook's comment about the "retrenchment of positions" on both sides portends much more serious events to come. I think Trump is a centrist but so was Obama. But as we learned, every President staffs his government with his advocates who implement his broader sympathies. Fanned by his constituencies. Obama and Trump have divergent sympathies. It feels strange to utter these words in my USA. But opposing sympathies are the the raw material of the history lessons we are taught as children. Democracy gives us a means to argue our differences before they escalate. It's the only thing that prevents breakdown of civil order and war. I hope the our Democratic center holds.
Non overlapping Ven diagrams. Powerful and accurate image. the goal is to bring back the overlap of the circles, the common goal. For the good of how. How can we do that? We need some suggestions, as silly as that sounds.
1
Thank you for your observations. As a lifelong Dem, I really, really can't understand where Trump supporters are coming from. I get it that they listen to Conservative outlets who spin or lie the truth, but don't they have any critical thinking skills? Perhaps their fear that has been stoked by Trump has over-ruled their capacity for independent thought.
2
Perhaps it is time to consider dividing the country? To put an end to the enmity that divides us, let’s separate. The more Liberal Progressive states can join with Canada and the Rural West and South can form Trumpistan.
1
I'm all for conversation with the other "tribe", and there's no doubt that liberals (I'm a Democrat) are far from perfect. But show me where to find a liberal media outlet with monopoly power and a highly distorted view of reality that matches that of Fox News' evening line-up. You can't.
For the record, my parents are long-time Republicans who joined the Tea Party in 2010 and switched over to supporting Trump in late 2015. I go out of my way not to disagree with them on politics, because I have found that no amount of respectful reasoning or pushing back gently around the edges of the Fox worldview makes a dent in their opinions. I will grant you that they are now in their early 80s, but the psychologists have shown that isn't just older people who screen out facts that don't match the way they want the world to be.
Again, I am all for civility and dialogue, but there's a limit to how far I am willing to take "both-sides-are equally-at-fault" tropes. By all means, call out the excesses of the left, but please don't pretend that they are at the same level as the excesses of the right. Tell me how to approach the right in a way that is respectful but doesn't involve subscribing to their divorce from reality and compassion.
1
well, if college degrees matter they have to be (given the state of higher "education") taken as a measure of privilege rather than acuity.
Of COURSE there is overlapping area. There is PLENTY of overlapping area. The Republicans don't want you to think about it because to do so takes away their power and the Democrats are reluctant to make it the centerpiece of their discussion for fear of alienating some voters, but there is more overlap than not. It's not rocket science. It's common sense.
1
David, again you get it wrong. The differences between the parties is simply who wants to expand opportunity and rights, and which one doesn't
Rural people seem to hold onto an America that worked for them, but not others. An america that let them be their authentic selves, but didn't allow others that same opportunity. Rural Americans think giving someone else power and rights deprives them of those things. Gay marriage. Equal opportunity. Real religious freedom to not be a Christian.
5
In Washington State, Seattle between 2010 and 2017 has grown more than 31 of the 39 counties combined. The Metro is two thirds of the growth and add the Portland suburbs in Washington and Spokane and you have most of the new population. The 2020 census will have a major impact on rural and urban politics. The citizenship question will also impact rural areas where many of the Hispanics live. Politics will be Impacted by the declining white population as well as rural. Many of the Seattle metro immigrants are educated and from Asia.
2
What is missing in this analysis is that there is a center, both on the left and the right. It is not being heard and is not exerting its political strength (yet).
Trump is a stain that we will need to clean up. But we will clean this up.
2
"Democratic ideology is increasingly dominated by the educated upper-middle class. As polls show, those Democrats are losing faith in capitalism itself, in the American dream itself..."
Yup. They sure have. In spite of the somewhat relevant fact that a capitalist system in America was key to their success.
1
My current events concern: that the people who need the most from their government (health care, choice, access to education,financial security, etc.) will deliver a mandate on Tuesday calling on Goldilocks to give them the least.
2
On the issues, there are Venn examples. But that doesn't win you a primary much anymore.
25
Once again David puts himself squarely into political limbo while describing the obvious - the ever widening gulch between Trumpettes and those able to think critically. He continues to downplay the complicity of his own party and its willingness to compromise the core principles of our democracy for its own need for power and control. There is not a moral equivalency between Trump and Pelosi, or even between current Republicans and Democrats, and it feeds the tribal fires to imply there is. Policy differences can always be debated and occasionally decent compromises can be achieved. Tribalism is not open for debate. Tribalism morphs into nationalism which morphs in fascism. If pundits like David continue to go tsk tsk at the Republican drive toward fascism then he’s part of the problem. Perhaps when his straddling puts him personally into the category of an enemy of the people he’ll decide to get off the fence.
11
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One truth college-educated suburban women have not faced up to: the disagreeable feminist-types are being replaced through mate selection by more agreeable and capable women (harmonizing is a social skill, after all). Maybe in a generation or two this divisive element in society will be negligible – with proper youth education, of course.
#longlivethepatriarchy
You are not right on this one. Yes, I can’t stand Trump or McConnell. They both hate democracy, and it is what we are supposed to have in this country. And Trump is just an unbalanced hater. But I think there are many left who are in the center. And I think if we can say goodbye to him, we will be better.
3
There is no overlapping between the parties. Either you believe the Declaration of Independence is correct in stating all men are created equal or you do not. If you do you are a Democrat. if not, you are a Republican. Republicans exclude, immigrants, African Americans, the poor, non Christians, and the LGBT community from their definition of equal.That divide will not change.
7
While I can understand the intellectual reasoning behind Mr. Brooks' claim that there is no overlap between the polarized sectors the American electorate, I believe that it is an over-simplification that ignores the huge swath of Americans who reside philosophically in between the louder, polar extremes of the Right and Left.
Unfortunately, it is those at either end who make the most noise and get the most attention. No, they may not be moving, and yes, they may be solidifying their positions, but they are not and never have been the majority, and they are certainly not silent.
That said, the vast middle of Americans who believe in reason rather than emotion are still there, albeit largely ignored in the din of Trumpism. Trump is an anomaly, and while the noise of his presidency is shockingly clear, the historical pendulum swing of American politics may yet return to something more normal, particularly when Trump fails to deliver on his many, over-hyped and manipulative promises.
3
"White liberals describe racism as a bigger problem precluding black advancement than do African-Americans."
How could Mr Brooks possibly have evidence for such an enormous and ill-defined generalization? His recent travels to 23 states? Please. And what is the point he is trying to support by making such a ridiculously unsupportable statement?
8
Trump inflamed the tribalist fears of his voter base with lies and hatred, and the GOP leadership has followed. There are no checks and balances from Congress, and there is no rational discourse in GOP politics anymore, only the pursuit of power for minority rule. Open lies and overt voter suppression and gerrymandering are honed into weapons and used to dismantle the Constitution. Anyone with any sense of history or basic American values will VOTE DEMOCRATIC TO INSTALL CHECKS ON THE MAD MAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE.
2
Living in an apartment complex and not knowing your neighbors is "rural America"? Not the rural America I grew up in. I would take Mr. Brooks' assessment with a large grain of salt.
2
The American Dream is hard to believe in, when America ranks among the lowest in upward mobility in the developed world, in part because a few multi billionaires possess most of the wealth, and pay low or no taxes for it.
5
The problem with this argument of two opposing camps dug in is that it falsely equates racism, in the guise of nationalism -- a term which sounds vaguely patriotic to some ears -- with the party of 'diversity' -- a term which sounds to other ears like chaos. But those on the side of diversity, with all the attendant flaws and downsides attendant to that cultural mind-set, also represent the true tenor of democracy. Those in the other camp do not. These are no longer two American political parties but one party now faced with a movement dedicated to undermining the basic tenets of democracy itself. How the one remaining party handles itself in the face of this calamitous attack remains to be seen. But identifying the opposition as a valid and equally meretricious group is to ignore the fact that the Republican party has for all intents and purposes, vanished. There is only one party at this time that represents what remains of our laws, rights, and mores -- and it is fighting for the survival of the country.
184
@seaheather "There is only one party at this time that represents what remains of our laws, rights, and mores -- and it is fighting for the survival of the country."
And that would be the Republican party.
1
@seaheather Except that "racism" is now defined simply as not toeing the line of orthodoxy established by the liberal "true believers." "Racism" is thinking that our immigration laws should be enforced as they are in every other developed nation in the world. "Racism" is daring to merely question the value of affirmative action. "Racism" is thinking law enforcement is right to use modern tools to fight increasingly sophisticated criminal organizations with tools like gang databases.
The sad part is that the "diversity" tends to hold pretty implicitly racist ideas about minorities. According to the liberal true believers, minorities are incapable of following our laws (and should thus by excused from following them), and can never advance in the realms of education or business without special treatment predicated on their race/gender/sexual identity.
Valuing diversity shouldn't mean holding different population groups to different standards.
1
@JP
Nonsense. Racism and xenophobia are, for instance, Mr. Trump saying, "Mexicans are racists."
JP wrote:
"@seaheather Except that 'racism' is now defined simply as not toeing the line of orthodoxy established by the liberal 'true believers.' ..."
4
Brooks's rural/urban divide is facile. Vermont is rural by most definitions. It was the most Republican state in the country from the civil war through 1988. It has been the "bluest" state since 1992. Southwestern PA, where some guy sleeps with his 22 caliber rifle, is NOT rural by most definitions.
It should be added that the proportion of the US population that is "rural" is vanishingly small -- arguable 0% in the internet age.
3
The Venn diagram isn’t dead, it’s just that the two extremes have become so loud and overbearing that those in the middle have stopped talking. So much self-righteous anger, so much condescension. Looking forward to escaping into a quiet booth so I can vote.
53
@Michael James, rest assured. When people go to the doctor to be treated the doctor does not treat them differently, Democrat or Republican. The mailman does not deliver less mail to democrats than to republicans. Nor to restaurants treat their customers differently. Nor do teachers treat their students with partisan partiality. Everyone is doing their jobs dutifully. Except for the President, who is behaving as a president of only half the country, not as an elected leader for the whole country united in service and duty.
13
Well said!!
1
As usual, Mr. Brooks, you're way off and you employ the intellectually dishonest elixir of false equivalence to seed your threadbare essay.
The Republican president and the Republican Congress have distorted our politics and our discussions. It's that simple; they cater to nativism and pander to xenophobia.
Who on The Hill today fought back against a Donald Trump candidacy? And please don't give me Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, both of whom melted before the interloper like snow in July. He told them to get out of the way as they were getting out of the way.
Mitch McConnell, in stealing a Supreme Court that was not his to take, plowed the ground for Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh before anyone knew who they were. McConnell was against President Obama's going public with the Russian infiltration of our elections. Where was the moral majority when the Hollywood Access scandal broke?
And how about Paul Ryan, the House Speaker, solemnly intoning the coming Armageddon of deficits accrued by increasing the safety net to include school lunches to poor children? The solution: cut taxes for corporations to 20% so the CEO's could buy back their stock so the 10 percent could avoid taxes and offshore more of their obscene profits? Where was the break for the middle class? The Republicans shrugged, said "it's Obama's fault" and a clueless, beguiled America agreed.
How will you react if Robert Mueller blows up No. 45 with an indictment of the president?
Answer please, Mr. Brooks.
9
@Soxared, '04, '07, '13 Oh what a breath of fresh and free air your comment is. Thanks for the uplift!
1
Mr Brooks, the more I read your columns, the more I feel that you are a religious man yearning for heaven on earth. When I first saw you on the PBS NewsHour, I was still naive enough to figure you just didn't like Hillary Clinton because she was a woman, not because you were a Republican. I remember how angry I got at you for my perception that you were being unfair to her. I wasn't so naive to see that Trump was a flaming liar, no matter what his politics were.
But that was then. Anyone paying attention, and there were plenty of us out here, have gotten quite the education. The scales have fallen from our eyes, and that's where you miss the boat in your own perceptions. You seem to be a political denier vs a climate change denier. Things have changed. The Republicans have actually sold their souls to a person lacking utterly in empathy and dominated by self-interest. I have read pieces, and heard people talk about how the GOP is frightened of Trump. I keep wondering, frightened of what? Being called a nasty name? It's pathetic. The Republicans have turned into sycophants. It's really all about money. You can keep your eyes closed, Mr Brooks, but deny reality won't change it.
17
By 2020 we will have three political parties. The Republican Party will gone and it will be reformed into the Trump Party.
@David shulman What will be the third party?
@Robert James
Doesn’t it seem like the GOP will become the far right fringe party; the Democrats become the center right party; and a new party arises on the left?
Could it be more productive to shine a light on unifying sectors?
1
While the Democrats have much to answer for due to their failure to address the needs of working-class Americans, any argument that obscures the substantive differences between the two parties lacks intellectual rigor. Whatever the attitude of the electorate, it matters that the GOP treats climate change as a myth and indeed tends to dismiss a wide range of policy proposals rooted in scientific investigations. In like manner, the tax law rammed through Congress by Republicans will, without any question, worsen economic inequality, hurting the very people Trump claimed he wanted to help.
Nor can any serious person examine the behavior of Trump in office without concluding that he has debased the presidency and intentionally spread the lie that the news media and his critics qualify as traitors. His loathsome personality has poisoned American politics, and the most urgent challenge facing Americans of all political persuasions should be to defeat his bid for reelection in 2020.
Americans may differ over foreign policy and domestic issues, but in the past we always insisted that the individual who occupied the Oval Office would have to satisfy certain minimal standards of decency. Trump has violated all those norms, indeed, he scorns them. Any party which continues to support him, therefore, shares complicity in his offenses against American democracy. The same judgment applies to voters who continue to support him.
13
´... forces local candidates to act mostly like Trump or Pelosi stand-ins and less like themselves ‘
Shows how little political knowledge and erudition you have or proves how electorates like yourselves have dug into a dogma.
1
"As Emma Green noted in The Atlantic, for many, progressivism isn’t just a set of political beliefs; it’s a set of liturgies, rituals and moral doctrines for the secular unchurched."
What "secular unchurched"? I voted straight Democrat in early voting, and I'm a church librarian. Emma Green sounds like the sort of out-of-touch intellectual that the Republicans poke fun at.
1
@Charlesbalpha, thank you!!
I am a lefty Liberal and Progressive, but not unchurched.
Coming of age in the post Vatican Two era, I was taught to actually "live" the words of Jesus, especially the Beatitudes.
I am an unapologetic lefty Liberal and Progressive, but not unchurched. And I also worked most of my life in institutional investing!!!
I have been condemned for being anti-capitalist because I seek ways to make the lives of the poor and abused working class, and for being Catholic, by certain other Christians who consider my church the anti-Christ.
There has never been any form of Jesus-thought in Trump's life (other than the so-called ridiculous Gospel of Wealth) and sense no connection to the tenets of Jesus from Trumpkin Evangelicals."
"If Jesus came back and saw what was being done in his name, he'd never stop throwing up.” Frederick the Artist (Hannah and Her Sisters).
2
@Bi-Coastaleer in the Heartland
When religious issues are concerned, the NYTimes never gets beyond stereotypes. They think that all Christians are either evangelicals or Catholics, and either way, that they're in the Republicans' pockets. The local paper in my city is far less sophisticated than the NYTimes, but its writers do understand religious diversity.
1
@Charlesbalpha
Thank you! I am a proud liberal BECAUSE of my Christian beliefs and the practice of my faith. There are millions of people like me, a fact that is very distressing to conservative religionists.
What is left out of your fine essay is the liberal reaction to the megalomaniac and the rightist reaction to perceived threats.
As a generalization, Liberals have decried the lack of a policy objective from the Trump camp, the utter lack of civility, the disregard of diplomatic norms, the constant lies, and so on. I need not dwell on this. Liberals are pretty clear that Trump is a disaster.
Trump may have some objective in mind, but he has not communicated it to the people. Instead, the schoolyard-bully in chief has used the office to belittle opponents, allies abroad, the intelligence services, and so on.
David, you are correct: there is no Venn diagram. The Irish poet, WBYeats, is a bit more poetic:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
But, don’t you think that it is Trump who will not work with Democrats? In other words, Trump has no desire to discuss anything with anyone. Hence, there cannot be a Venn diagram.
4
I believe Mr Brooks you are trying to convey that Trump support is the same as it was in 2016. I also believe this is what you really want
2
Robert Brooks makes the following statement towards the end of his essay:
"for many, progressivism isn’t just a set of political beliefs; it’s a set of liturgies, rituals and moral doctrines for the secular unchurched."
And that encapsulates almost perfectly my criticism of the NY Times. The editors do seem to believe in a given set of political views with an almost religious fervor.
And this religious fervor can come across as sanctimony. Who exactly gives one group of people, say the progressives or NY Times editors, the right to lecture the rest of us on what is morally right?
However, on further reflection, I would like to propose a new form of morality for an overpopulated world.
In this moral order, people regard it as wrong to have more than two children.
Maybe this morality is enforced by a state that gives free access to all forms of birth control, but imposes a requirement that no woman can have more than two children.
China tried a one child version after the Great Famine under Chairman Mao killed perhaps 40 million Chinese.
Characterized as "repugnant" by liberals like Joe Biden, it nevertheless got China's population to grow more slowly. Unlike India in which poverty is still oppressive, China has witnessed an economic miracle that has raised living standards for many of its people.
The morality I propose has the advantage that it may save planet Earth from a Malthusian future in which we descend into a new dark ages as we fight over scarce resources.
1
@Jake Wagner — Finally! Someone with the courage and eloquence to mention the elephant in the room. Allow me take it one step further by proposing the anger, hate, and vitriol that is appearing worldwide represents a descent, already underway, into a Malthusian future.
David will you please address the question of why the people who fear immigration live in rural places where immigrants never go, and therefore one sides main issue is one that doesn’t exist.
4
One can see why rural America is angry. There are no industrial high-wage jobs created in rural America that don't require a college-education.
The more Republicans ignore rural poverty and doctor-phamaceutical industry-fueled opiod addiction (while bulking up their bank accounts with tax loopholes) the angrier the rural folks will get. Rural ire has been masterfully directed against minorities, gays, and immigrants.
Too bad their real target is right in front of them - selling fake college degrees and MAGA hats.
6
I see rural America as a society plagued by poverty,opioids crisis,ignorance and submission to various Christian religions.
I wish young Americans will finally vote in droves to stop the demolition of their future by the GOP .
If Americans will keep the political status quo without rebelling it would a sign to total demise of the society, of apathy and despair.
Let’s try not to categorize American voters so strictly, we might be in for a pleasant surprise.
1
No, no no every election is different from the one before. Different issues arise-health insurance and the tax cut- and different candidates ariive to challenge incumbents who may stumble.
You may have traveled over 23 states Brooks but I have lived in WI a purple state for over 40 years and I can tell you with absolute certainty you know less than I do about what may happen in WI on 1/6.
And that is no deep sociological,umbilical gazing pundit has a clue.
It as always is the nature of the candidates and the enthusiasm of the voters.
WI will be Blue on 11/7.
Trump totally descends party lines. He is clearly destroying both the moderate GOP, which believed in generally "conservative" values, while, at the same time pushing the Democrats to the extremes, as their way of capturing votes. The Democratic Socialists are function of this trend.
The GOP Congress, anxious to do nothing substantive other than retain power, has thrown its support behind a madman.
We have reached a point where reality TV has taken over and where well-reasoned, thoughtful discourse has given way to a ratings book. God help us!
1
Here's the Venn diagram of Watergate and Collusion. Had Nixon known he was going to win, he'd have never started the 'Plumbers'. Had Trump known he was going to win, he'd have never colluded with the Russians. Both Presidencies were made toxic by those failures of leadership before the election. Like doping before the 100 meter dash, the shame of losing the prize after winning it is greater than the shame of having lost to begin with.
1
If people in rural America don't have the time or interest in understanding just how corrosive Trump is to all that America represents then shame on them.
I travel more than you do, Mr. Brooks, and rural American flies more American flags and features more patriotic bumper stickers than urban or suburban America combined.
So it's one of two things. They think Trump represents the best of America and that is why they support him. If that is so, they are just plain wrong.
Or, if they really don't think about it all that deeply or all that much and just support him because he is a Republican, then that is just lazy.
These are dire times. This is no joke. So you better pay attention folks out there in the "heartland."
2
The attitudes and fears of the 'heartland' that Brooks enumerates are mostly driven by ignorance. If you grew up in a cosmopolitan area, living with people of color and immigrants, you realize that they are much like you - good people trying to live the American dream. The real tragedy is how the Republican party is stoking the ignorance of their base for gain with no thought as to what it is doing to our democracy. I confess to being surprised, though, how the boogy woman Pelosi crept into Brooks' argument. I thought him better than that.
2
I have done a bit of cross-country traveling myself over the last two weeks, by train from California to Virginia and back. One of the unintended consequences of our “dug-in” and “unraveling” state of affairs is that we are afraid of exercising our freedom of speech in mixed company for fear that we are in the presence of the “other side”. Even families of several generations find themselves divided, and communicating with one or the other faction secretly—or not at all. Perhaps the two most important foundations of our country, individual freedom of expression and freedom of the press have been under assault like never before, and remain, I feel, the two greatest and saddest victims of Trumpism.
Riding on the train, a fellow passenger was sporting a black t-shirt emblazoned with a large white image of Donald Trump, complete with the phrase “repeal and replace”. I wasn’t sure if this was a statement about Obamacare or voting out or impeaching Trump, so I never spoke with the man, much less made eye-contact with him. My wife assured me it was the latter, but then I said, why would an opponent of his be wearing an image of a man he so despised, as I recalled returning Bob Woodward’s “Fear” to the library without reading it because I couldn’t stand having Trump’s back-of-book picture in our house. Perhaps it’s only fitting then, Mr. Brooks, that you characterize our current “dug-in” and “unraveling” climate with mixed metaphors, and that I throw in one of my own.
1
Fear and loathing in rural areas also comes from looking close to home and seeing opioid addicts. That, and an aversion to higher education.
Easier to blame others for their woes.
The inclination to classify the two parties as having no 'overlap' is totally incorrect for the hatred that each conveys for the other and portrays in the day to day of life is now a surly robust wheel of evil feeling. One that fills the Venn in deep 'overlap' not easily undone!
So the question, Mr Brooks, after seeing the hyperbolic histrionics - LIES - ENDLESS LIES - and fear mongering of Trump - and republicans in general - what keeps you in the party? We are being driven off the cliff by fear and hatred and every -ogony in the book. Please - don't do false equivalence. One party stands for empathy, understanding, facts and progress. Sadly, yours does not.
If you want to know what republicans - and trump - think, just listen to republican ads and messages and trump's words. ALL THEY CAN DO IS PROJECT. If a republican accuses a Democrat of doing or thinking it, it is because it is exactly what the republican thinks.
2
I am glad to say I disagree. Living in relatively Blue Maine, I spend time in the purple middle of the state, where people are simultaneously polite and surly, but usually thoughtful. The white working class Trump supporters really are wavering, recognizing ruefully that he is not a good man.
If many Democrats in Portland are militant and shrill antifa, anti-racist and 'woke' [sic], the somewhat less Blue part of the state is thoughtful, recognizes the grievances of the Trump supporters and talks to their neighbors. A lot of people up here overlap and this will be reflected in the Tuesday vote.
Dan Kravitz
1
I you may have missed the pulse of America Mr. Brooks. The tide appears to be turning away from xenophobia, racism, and nationalism, a more inclusive, egalitarian spirit. Even in rural areas, this trend appears to be rising. And just in time.
1
I am a leftie from Seattle who spends a lot of time in rural (conservative) southern Oregon. I really like the people I am meeting--many decent, hard working people who are open and a lot of fun. But, rural America is falling apart. Drug addiction is commonplace--"tweakers" on crystal meth. Hospitals are closing. It is difficult for young people who want a decent life to stay in the area. The local grocery store depends on people using food stamps. There is a complete disconnect between the Republican "On Your Ownership" ideology, and what rural areas need to remain viable. The Republican Party is completely failing its rural base. Urban areas are thriving economically. Crime is at all time lows. Acceptance of diversity is blossoming. Of course there are problems in urban areas too, but they are thriving and developing, and driving the future. Our rural areas are too often stuck in the past. The Republican Party is exploiting xenophobia, racism and playing on cultural stereotypes of rural and urban values to wield power for the benefit of the ultra wealthy and corporations, using the outsize political power that the US Constitution gives to rural states and areas. The big losers will be the rural areas that are dependent on the economic vitality of our progressive urban areas. If the political power of the rural minority is pushed further, the urban majority will rebel and will cut off the large subsidies to rural America.
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"54 percent of white voters supported Trump, and the exact same percentage of those voters support him today"
That is his base who believe anything he says -- facts do not matter to these voters.
1
So where do you fit David? There is no overlap you say- so on what side of that great divide do you reside when you go to vote or not vote?
Let me guess - the GOP side right? Any why do you fall an this side? Why?
Because the GOP:
produces the most intellectually honest rigorously scientific assessed, tested, and best of breed policies and models?
upholds the principles and objectives of modern egalitarian for the People secular (religion neutral) society?
protects good people that are just different - usually a minority - from the slings and arrows of a narrow-minded majority?
operates at all levels to purposely and not just happenstantially lift up all - especially the less fortunate among us?
will protect and foster the very human rights and dignities of self of minorities, gays, women, etc.?
will position humankind better to handle and better mitigate the environmental crises that will happen?
is most committed to truth and justice and fair play?
This divide is not necessary it is manufactured! Are we really as divided on important issues and objectives as people? Implementations yes - essence NO! We are being played!
Be intellectually honest - what Party has stoked the visceral passions to irrational levels to divide the UNITED States? has vilified races, religions, sexual orientations, and honest science? politically thrives on this psychological debasing of us? cares MORE about winning than humankind and American civil fair democracy?
2
The underlying pessimism suggests that leaders have forgotten how to "reach across the aisle" and try to heal the great divide. Newt Gingrich, when he was House Speaker, urged the scorched earth strategy that his party effectively embraced. He actually urged Republicans to use words like traitors to describe any Democrat.
Granted, Democrats were caught off guard as they began to lose elections. Then, Fox News emerged as nothing more that a propaganda machine for the Republicans. Trump became the perfect candidate for the so-called disaffected, forgotten Americans.
History shows that political parties in this country undergo realignment and when they do, the earth can tremble. The split in the Democratic party in 1860 was a prelude for the Civil War and occurred almost simultaneous with the victory of the Republican Party and its leader Abraham Lincoln.
Trump, in the safety of his Nuremberg-style rallies, tosses out the red meat that feeds racism and extremism. If the Democrats are worth anything today, they will meet this challenge head on and defeat the forces of evil next Tuesday. Get the majority of American to vote and the so-called great divide will begin to recede and the process of sane governing can begin to function somewhat normally again.
1
The divide Brooks identifies is not new, it is a divide that was consciously created and willfully (almost gleefully) expanded by people of bad faith who had discovered there was tremendous profit to be derived by sowing division and hatred among Americans.
As a young man in the early- to mid-90s, I drove across the country for a few months. In this pre-internet, pre-satellite radio era I frequently found I could only receive one radio station as I traversed the most rural Midwestern and Western states and more often than not it would be carrying the Rush Limbaugh show. His message was the same then as it is today: liberals are evil people who want to destroy our country. Rush has never relied on facts to back up his rhetoric; he simply told his listeners to listen to him and distrust everything from the lying mainstream media.
Sound familiar?
Of course it does: with an annual income that Forbes estimated at $84 million this year, Rush has inspired an entire industry of cynical copycats who have followed the same playbook and have become very wealthy in the process.
My larger point is this: the far right has spent decades working rural America, preparing the land and seeding it with its non-stop messaging of unthinking distrust and hatred of anything liberal, progressive, or just plain different from themselves. Trump is the product of the far right's rural victory garden.
1
“The Republicans have been saddled with an unpopular president.”
Poor souls, if only they could have stood firm for say, Ted Cruz or even Carly Fiorina. Things would be so different.
There is an argument to be made for opposing flagrant violation of rules written and unwritten in the name of preserving our system and you should consider that that possibility is at work here. You stretch reason to its limits, retrenchment was forced on the country by Trump’s excesses and Republican complicity.
I find your anaysis today overburdened by the attempt to assign the electorate into neat pigeonholes that might allow the losers on Tuesday (Trump and his subjects)to explain why it happened.
I’m not trying to predict a result here, it seems like your side is anticipating the shellacking they so richly deserve.
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Educated, prosperous places, that pay more into the Federal government than they get back in entitlements-- Democratic. These are the innovator areas. Those that are desperate, who only get to tune into FoxNews and David Brooks for their hate and justification sermon respectively, vote with the well crafted crowd on FoxNews and the Sinclair Group and the politicians in place with Chinese money and with money for mountain top removal and pig farm lagoons, paid prisons, and now public schools where minimum wage single parents keep their kids in a "virtual school" on TV and on line. Yup, America at its greatest.
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Brooks tries here to be dispassionate and analytical. But that's not his job as an intellectual who wants America to succeed. His job is clearly to push back against Trump, Republicans, Conservatives, purveyors of dark money, and red-state citizens who want to return us to the 1950's when women and people of color knew their place. Reading data that states that white men have a preponderance to support Trump means that something is terribly wrong in this country. Writers like Brooks should be working to fix this state of affairs, and neutrality is terribly wrong.
1
This is typical right-leaning fare these days among the more civilized of that ilk. It describes the problem, the situation, while managing to skirt the underlying causes and processes that brought the situation about. It is as if Mr. Brooks never heard of the Southern Strategy or Lee Atwater or Newt Gingrich. Please.
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It is hard to read “Democratic ideology is increasingly dominated by the educated upper-middle class” as anything other than a deliberate evasion. The content of the ideology calls for a reduction of income inequality, some degree of equity in health care and education: all steps benefiting Americans generally no matter what “meritocrat” is delivering the message. The Republican ideology is its mirror image.
1
I see rural America as a society plagued by poverty,opioids crisis,ignorance and submission to various Christian religions.
I wish young Americans will finally vote in droves to stop the demolition of their future by the GOP .
If Americans will keep the political status quo without rebelling it would a sign to total demise of the society, of apathy and despair.
Let’s try not to categorize American voters so strictly, we might be in for a pleasant surprise next Tuesday.
Ultimately, this article is a rehash / restatement of the tribalism phenomenon which is shaping our political dynamics. I appreciate the insight and perspective, but I'm desperately searching for an article that has ideas about how we can move forward...?
Is there nothing in history, political science/theory (or any other field) which can shed light on how to redress national tribalism???
1
David, I share your thoughts here. My personal experience is that what you describe is relatively recent. I don't know the way out of the dilemma.
I wonder how many people share what I did in earlier years...more an attraction by personality than ideology, appearance than thoughtful understanding. To wit: Nixon was evil...evil looking and evil dealing. Carter was true-blue, honest, forthcoming and a victim of the power sharks then in Washington. Kennedy was inspiring, articulate, educated, and with personal peccadilloes forgiven. GWB was the golden boy with the silver spoon...inarticulate, incapable, simple. Obama, a symbol of correctness, fairness and impecable manners. Trump of course, the incarnation of coarseness, inhumanity, and anti-intellectualism (to name a few). I am not proud to have omitted mention of the political issues of their days. Somehow, even when I disagreed with policy I thought that compromise was possible and that American institutions would right things in time to avoid disaster. Now, I'm not so sure.
Thanks, David, for another tone deaf column full of unhelpful musings, a world based in your thoughts instead of reality, and never stating any kind of truth that you don't want to admit.
The Republicans are not "saddled with an unpopular president" - all polling shows most Republicans love him and think he is doing a great job. They believe the falsehoods he bleats every day which upsets Democrats and just about anyone else who was taught that America didn't allow that.
Democrats are upset with the fact that democracy is being trashed and Republicans seem fine with that. A president is not supposed to lie, a congress is supposed to place checks on abuses of power, a congress is supposed to seek bipartisan solutions instead of ramming a minority ideology through the system.
Yes, we as a country are divided as anyone can see but it's not for the simple reasons you want to hold on to. There are not naturally two sides where neither are entirely right but that they are equal in their beliefs. The right is entrenched in their beliefs and many revel in the despair expressed by the left. The right has been fed resentment and lies for decades now and believe the left is finally getting their comeuppance.
You talk of elites as if they are ideologically leftist thinkers which perpetuates a key lie sold to the right. The true elites are those with money who spend it freely to sway thought and enact an agenda that keeps them in power.
Do your job and print the truth.
1
Well, the GOP has all the tools necessary to build overlap. They could stand up to DJT and denounce his divisive, hate-filled, dishonest rhetoric. They could stop vilifying people who disagree with them. They could admit that liberals and progressives are real Americans; lead respectable, responsible, decent lives; and have a deep, patriotic love for their country. Republicans could stop trying to hide or suppress facts that undermine their agenda. They could work together with Democrats to find solutions to the problems facing the country right now. Or they can continue their pursuit of grievance, power, and vengeance against everyone who disagrees with them.
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Sorry David , but no.
Your argument about separate political beliefs is false equivalence.
Keeping a loaded gun by your door is not a political belief. It is fear and ignorance.
Being concerned about social and cultural issues is part of political beliefs.
Progressives, Democrats, whatever you want to call them, want justice, peace, and do not live in fear. That is not a "tribe" or a group off in their own world. It is the real world. Gun by the door is not.
Ok. Let’s assume your piece is dead on accurate.
Which side is going to figure out a way to stop global warming?
Which side will develop medical breakthroughs to get people healthier in a more affordable way?
Which side is going to pay all the taxes?
When red America refuses or cannot engage in facts either by choice or design, they can continue to exist in their own bubble. It is not just that one can have a tribe, they structurally receive an entirely different reinforcing narrative.
1
Hilarious whataboutism. The right's fear of the "caravan" is presented as equal to and as valid as the left's fear of Trump and the GOP's mission to destroy democracy. Yet again it is left to Democrats to save the country from the disastrous mess of the propaganda and sabotage operation known as the Republican Party. What Brooks is missing -- and what everyone is going to be talking about next week -- is the number of women and minorities the Democrats are going to elect. The GOP is going to be stunned and wondering how it will ever catch up to the party of tolerance and decency.
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Brooks keeps pretending that it's sill 1981 so he can say that the difference between Democrats and Republicans are basically the same, just hardened, when in reality his Republican Party no longer exists, or rather it exists but only as an authoritarian entity destroying American democracy.
If you want to see where Trumpian/GOP America is heading ignore the false equivalency and read the great (and terrifying) article in the Times by Pamela Druckerman about Hungary under Viktor Orban. Orban exploits nationalism, nativism, and fear: Anti-immigrant fear, Islamophobia, and an enormous amount of Antisemitism. Just like Trump, Orban's favorite target for any conspiracy theory is George Soros). Orban vilified the free press as biased against him, as being an enemy of the people, and of creating fake news.
Druckerman states, "I knew I was entering a waning democracy that's become increasingly authoritarian," and that Orban won a third term via a conspiracy theory that a group of migrants, backed by a wealthy Hungarian born Jew (George Soros), and elite internationalists (like Democrats), were coming to destroy Hungarians. It’s right out of a Trump rally.
However, Orban succeeded because he created such distrust in the free press that he and allies were able to take it over (over 500 outlets) prior to the election and switch to running propaganda promoting Orban and his party, Fidesz.
"Nobody is moving"? Nonsense. The Republicans are moving directly towards authoritarianism.
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No dialog. Two separate universes.
I see a couple of differences today from 2016. The two years of Trump. Anti-Trumpian people are more disgusted because the President became more corrosive and a threat to democracy.
Another difference is that there are more diverse candidates, there is Obama campaigning and there is no Hillary. The voter turn-out for Democrats will have an impact.
1
If there are stunning upsets in Tuesday’s election and an unusually large number of Republicans are voted out of office by huge turnouts at the polls, does that make this column irrelevant?
1
Examples of gratuitous statements that mislead, to say the least.
"In rural America basic values like hard work, clear gender roles and the social fabric are dissolving before people’s eyes." While others seek education to improve themselves, requiring delayed gratification, many rural Americans stay in place (while the world changes). And the clear gender roles placed women in subordinate and at times victimized positions.
"Nationalized politics forces local candidates to act mostly like Trump or Pelosi stand-ins and less like themselves."
Being a Trump stand-in means being racist, lying, anti-Semitic, misogynist, and crude. Being a Pelosi stand-in means standing up for the poor and disadvantaged. Bo equivalence here.
Why make such false or misleading statements? Is the underlying argument so weak it needs these misleading and irrelevant statements?
1
David, I have to wonder why you wrote this piece without taking even a moment to deduce where these two worlds draw their information from.
On one side, it is a vast array of media outlets that like the NY Times and Washington Post (NPR and PBS to boot) that are flawed but try each day to present the world as it is and to do so with honesty and fairness.
The other side calls these sources of fact-based information enemies of the people and they turn to Rush and Fox News, or worse. For them and their information sources to be right, everyone in the world has to be wrong on everything.
There simply is no equivalency in what is driving the concern and fear of each side. One is based on facts and the other propaganda. Until this changes, we will have our divide, but rather than based on geography it is based on source of information.
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"In rural America, ...all that stuff is like a thunderstorm in Inner Mongolia. It’s something happening very far away with no particular relevance here, and so no one’s paying much attention."
"In 2016, 54 percent of white voters supported Trump, and the exact same percentage of those voters support him today."
Maybe they should start listening to what's going on because it is relevant to them, it's their country too. And if they did that 54% support would likely evaporate.
Ignorance is not a reason, it's and excuse.
1
The difference between red & rural America and blue & urban America is that the urban blue actually believes in science, facts, journalism, human rights & health care rights while the rural red seems fine with white nationalism, false fear-mongering about immigrants, and a president who breaks the law by ignoring the Emoluments clause, constantly lies, and praises dictators while insulting our allies, as well as being a malignant narcissist incapable of kindness, empathy or courtesy.
Quite frankly, it's hard to have a decent country when so many of its citizens don't seem to be able to separate fact from fiction. It's also hard to have a decent country when one of its two major political parties has worked for decades to get their followers to believe that the other political party is out to destroy the country and they must be obstructed whenever possible - even if you have to go against the Constitution to do it. (Merrick Garland)
3
The circles of the partisan Venn diagram may not intersect, but there are plenty of people who don't fit into either circle.
Libertarians vehemently object to Trump's authoritarianism and the left's collectivism. Devout Catholics are appalled by Trump's lack of morality, but also have no place in the Democratic Party if they oppose abortion rights and same-sex marriage.
I'm sure there are other groups as well, including some centrists who just shake their heads at both parties.
1
And yet...Brooks will still vote Republican. A recent study showed how all the so-called 'Never Trumpers" consistentlu fall in line and vote down party lines. The pathetic performances of so-called moderates like Susan Collins, or Jeff Flake who had nothing at stake in his confirmation voting on Kavannah are striking examples. For all the seeming self-examination Brooks (and Douthat) will do on these pages, they will still pull the level for R come next week. It might take a few weeks, but eventually they'll show their hand, as they always do, and it will be bright red.
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Cheer up David - it could be worse! I am sure that most Americans would prefer to just get on with their lives free from the constant barrage of fearmongering and guilt tripping that pours in daily from the two opposite ends of the spectrum.
This might be termed The Responsibility Election. Americans are big on demanding rights but a little weak on upholding their responsibilities. At least until they feel they feel their rights are being threatened. Americans don’t vote; they can’t be bothered and Democrats are the worst finding all kinds of reasons to sit on their precious duty. After being slapped in the face, having their lunch money stolen and watching generations of social gains evaporate daily, they might fulfill their duties as citizens. This election won’t realign America politically, many don’t concern themselves with the subject. Once this election is over many will retire their responsibilities until the next threat to their rights. After all, American politics is really local, as in how is this politician going to help/protect/save me.
This is the thing, at least in my circle of suburbanism. We don’t hate rural america nor uneducated white men. We don’t. We are a driving force that supports our local farms, and every season we drive to such farms by the thousands of thousands, with our children, to show them that without farmers, we wouldn’t have the luxury to have fresh apples, peaches, produce, berries, christmas trees and even poultry. No, we don’t do the hard work of farming. But we do understand the importance of rural America. We want rural America to be rural. But we believe that without health you cannot work whether is rural or urban. We also believe that we are worth a spot at the table when our lives are also impacted. We not hate uneducated white men. What we cannot take is their leaders, those leaders in their majority white educated men whose masculinity is tender and fragile.
2
Take health care as an example of the core approach of the Republican Party. They spent eight years eviscerating obama. Endless votes to repeal obama care, Fox News had 24-hour non-stop reports on the absolute evils of obama care. The message was relentless. Republicans get into office, control all branches of government to repeal and replace obama care. Turns out they had no plan. Turns out trump voters actually like health care reform. Republicans are an empty vessel. But they do have a very well orchestrated propaganda machine. Fox News is not a news organization. It’s principal job is conversion, a job it does very well. I live in a very safe suburban community. My Fox News watching neighbor bought a gun because he was afraid and needed protection. He took a vacation in California but truly worried about going to San Francisco because it was a sanctuary city. Yes we do live in our own information bubbles but they are not equivalent. One truly is poisoning the well. And Putin and the Republican Party know what they are doing.
David you need to get your head out of the mystic ether of intellectual conservatism and see what damage has actually been done to America. Republicans have been lying for decades. Trump found a home.
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In the America where most of us older people were raised, Republicans and Democrats had different views on most domestic issues – particularly economic issues. There were fewer differences in foreign affairs – with virtually the same opinions on matters of national security.
We got along.
Today, the chasm about which David Brooks writes is a stark difference in personality between Republicans and Democrats.
Democrats belong to the old coalition. They are white, college-educated men and women who champion the minorities, the poor and working-class Americans. They are the minorities themselves, comprised of black Americans – both well-educated and less so, Latinos whose families are recent arrivals or from generations ago, and immigrants from all over the world.
In recent years, white Americans of lower education levels who work with their hands – some part of a dwindling union membership – became Republicans and now vote against their own economic interest.
Republicans tend to be white. They may be from modest backgrounds and often from rural areas in the South and Plains States, but they have a view that America is under threat by non-Christians and free-loading people of color, as well as by immigrants who want American jobs.
Democrats avoid the company of Republicans, who they consider dishonest, violent and selfish.
Republicans see Democrats as elitist snobs and do-gooders, insistent on over-regulated, highly-taxed businesses.
The two groups detest each other
Did the right questions get asked?
Ho do people across the “divide” feel about universal access to health care, corporate lobbying and power, investment in infrastructure, the rising deficit, even universal background checks for gun purchases?
1
It's astonishing how little is said in this column, sentence by sentence, beyond that which is obvious to all. You had to travel to 23 states to learn that there is a division in his country as wide as the -- yes you actually used the least fresh term anybody on earth could possibly think of -- Grand Canyon? Shaking my head.
1
Are we citizens or partisans? It is time to return to measuring politicians' success by their contributions to society.
Trump's caravan outrage led directly to the Pittsburgh murders of 11 innocent people in their temple. A crazed Trump supporter mailed 14 Pipe bombs to leading Democrats, including two former Presidents. That is what Trump has contributed to society.
No, things have changed since 2016. They are worse. And it is crystal clear who to thank for the divisions in our country. The President and his propaganda network spew lies to keep us divided in a classic divide and conquer strategy.
There is an overlapping area on the Venn diagram and it is filled with all the needs of Americans -- education, healthcare, the environment, scientific advancement, defense and security. There is a realization dawning in America that we have common needs, they cost money, and we can't always use our national credit card. Those who want good schools, adequate healthcare and a secure future must insist on the politics of success not the language of division and discord. This is not about red or blue. It is not about measuring percentages in polls. This is about how many citizens are left in American, and how many of them will work together to grow the future. We need to start measuring facts and results not conjecture and rhetoric.
1
I see the unraveling as the inability to compromise. There is no middle ground, partly because we've entrenched, but more because we have created unwinnable wedges meant to keep us divided.
No Democrat can support abortion limits, and no Republican can support any type of abortion at all, not even medical.
No Republican can admit we need taxes and social programs and no Democrat can admit that we can't afford everything.
And out in voter land there's a person who can't tell the difference between the position that regulates guns, registers them, and a position that would not allow a black man to own a gun for protection in a liberal city.
We allowed ourselves to get sold snake oil, and now we can't find our way back. Real leaders? They'd be trying to get us there.
We need to get the immigration issue off the table, for America's sake. Let's create a social security program for foreign workers. Give them an extra three dollars an hour, paid by their employers, into their individual retirement accounts which they access when they return to their countries of origin. It's a win for them and a win for us. And who pays? The fat cats like Trump do. Win! Win!
Now let's talk about something else.
I suspect it will be up to Father Time to end Republican control of the Senate. Based on actuarial life expectancies from the US Social Security Life tables, the current term for these 5 Republican octogenarians in the Senate may well be their last:
Chuck Grassley, age = 85.12 years, expectancy = 5.50 years
Richard Shelby, age = 84.49 years, expectancy = 6.08 years
Jim Inhofe, age = 83.96 years, expectancy = 6.73 years
Pat Roberts, age = 82.53 years, expectancy = 7.00 years
Thad Cochran, age = 80.90 years, expectancy = 8.19 years
Interesting, especially the data on White support for Trump. Obviously something is broken in the operating system of many non-college educated Whites. (This is a good reason to support some form of "free college). But the most interesting line was this: "As polls show, those Democrats are losing faith in capitalism itself, in the American dream itself." As any good atheist knows, faith is belief without evidence. And it is pretty clear that there is no evidence that capitalism has been able to solve the big problems. Economic growth is destroying the ecosphere with climate change. Automation and artificial intelligence is destroying the culture of work (so beloved by rural whites). And Greed is destroying the government's ability to raise taxes it needs to begin to meet these problems.
So yes, it is a retrenchment election, as the runaway train continues to run toward the cliff.
2
I was with you until you threw in Pelosi's name. Is it supposed to stand in for some equivalent set of awful characteristics as Trump's name does? Much of your piece relies un-nuanced stereotypes. Urban Americans? Of course you end up with a Venn diagram with no overlap if you have already assigned everyone in the universe to one of two classes.
This "Urban American" is a highly educated white woman living in a highly conservative Indiana county. Trump hasn't just broken norms; he is corrupt in the usual sense of using his office for self-dealing, as are many of his appointees. He lies, he acknowledges to journalists that his personal "winning" is more important than adherence to his oath of office and doing the job for which he was elected. (Does he even take the idea of an oath seriously?) The Republican Congress refuses to exercise oversight, and Republicans in control of state elections refuse to take election security seriously, while making it harder for non-whites and poor people to vote.
So don't assume I really don't like Trump only because of his stand on certain issues. And don't discuss our current political climate as two sides balanced in integrity but antithetical in world view. And don't accuse me of hypocrisy because there are corrupt Democrats also. I would not have supported Menendez in New Jersey or Blagojevich in Illinois.
1
David, we are not an Israel-Palestine situation. We are one country, undivided. President Trump has to realize that although half the country did not vote for him, once in office, he is a President of all Americans and he better start behaving that way. That he really cares about all citizens and the country and respects the Constitution. He seems not to understand what patriotism truly means, it is not all about fighting, it is about protecting dignity honor respect of and for all citizens, one and all, with all their blisters and warts.
1
The republicans elected a would be King for president, and an almost irrelevant in his own state, religious zealot for vice president. If liberal democrats are unsure of capitalisms relevance, conservative republicans surely forgot what America is not supposed to support at any cost.
1
I shake my head. Having helped create the current condition of politics the author now wishes to lament his nations situation.
Man, it’s your bed you made, war, grifting, mendacity, lieing, bullying. Mr. Brooks lives under the illusion that the U. S. Is virtuous when one look into Yemen, Central America, and assorted stupidities would leave a human disgusted.
Mr. Brooks needs to read less and SEE more.
1
What’s going to happen on November 6 is neither a realignment nor a retrenchment. It’s going to be a restoration. Those level-headed people who normally voted Democratic, but bought the Russian smear of Hillary and were conned by a tough-talking failed businessman will return to the fold and give the House to the Democrats. Their numbers and enthusiasm will be greater than in past elections because Trump has gone out of his way to offend everyone but his base. It just so happens that this time around, Democrats had more Senate seats to defend. But next time, they’ll take that body too and then you’ll see the present cartoon version of the GOP, the most dangerous organization on the planet, go away. When that happens, order will be restored to the universe.
David, can't wait to read your new book; "The Committed Life: When You Give Yourself Away" as I'm sure it will be equally, if not more revealing than your columns, about how we can escape this era where fear, hatred, anger and bigotry seem to be tearing us apart.
Thanks for your boldness in addressing those existentially important issues.
More both-sides-do-it prose from Mr. Brooks. I fundamentally disagree. One side in this contest is doing everything it can to drive wedges between different groups of people. It's cynically calculated that if it airs racist and xenophobic ads, it will attract more votes than it repels. The other side talks of policy, healthcare, and yes occasionally how horrible the leader of the first side is.
1
Brooks is wrong on this one. One of the parties, the GOP, is lying and cheating to an historic degree to acquire and maintain power. Republicans from Trump on down are now claiming that they are the ones working to save preexisting conditions in our health insurance policies and that the Democrats want to eliminate that clause. Their compulsive lying has reached the level of madness. Those "entrenched" against them are simply trying to glean a glimmer of truth from the morass of lies.
Yes, urban America is very blue and rural America is very red. The problem is that the sparsely populated rural America’s ruby red votes count for many times more than the urban voters. And that rural voters don’t know about Trump’s latest outrage is just willful ignorance.
It’s galling that the blue states have to subsidize the red states while the red states insist on calling the shots.
Does the devotion to Trump really indicate that government is boring so his simpleton rallies excite a generation raised on reality TV, beer, and drugs? Fox is a reality news channel owned by an immigrant! These are not inner city and poor people but bored middle aged and old white people stuck in rural America. The kids moved to the coasts - 80% of the population is governed by the 20% in the depressed states. Sure I have compassion but the rest of us are working - even in retirement. And too busy and disinterested in the mind numbing rubbish out of Fox ( or Fix) News and the White House (or maybe the grey Gloom and Doom House).
When attitudes harden it becomes impossible to hear and listen to those on 'the other side'. Just thinking of political conversation as competitive, and that there are 'sides' makes discussion very very difficult. The point of discussion is not to win, but to learn. If one already knows, there is nothing to learn.
I find this hardening of attitudes on both sides. Comments like 'the deplorables' shows a basic lack of respect. Identity politics - as Brooks noted recently - makes it conceptually impossible to appeal to 'we' - politics centers around protecting 'us' from you 'bigots, racists and rapists'. How can one have a civil conversation with a 'rapist'.
Liberals feel they are protected from this sort of criticism because at least they are 'right' and don't just lie through their teeth. They have no gurus quite like Hannity and Limbaugh and Coulter - vicious bullshitters all. Maybe, given the (social) liberal commitment to the good of all, they would even be open to genuinely respectful conversation were so many of those on the right not so brainwashed.
Regardless, in the current moment the most important thing for those leaning left to do is take stock of the very difficult situations of many in wide swaths of this post-industrialized landscape and work really really hard to think through innovative solutions to the problems confronting them. Drop identity politics and return to 'the people' - talk with them about their problems. That can begin to close the divide.
It's true that politics has nationalized, which is unlikely to change. It's also true that politics is no longer about disagreeing about issues. It's a correct analysis, but then what?
Ways need to be found to take the temperature down. Perhaps it's useless to talk about that during the heat of the election, and even more so given who is currently in the White House. But instead of being dejected about it, we ought to talk about solutions.
Since we can't do much about the supply of outrage produced by the political apparatuses and the media, I think we need to instead look at the demand. Voters who have at least a little understanding of the issues will not tolerate the outrageous statements being made in public. https://arcdigital.media/can-we-solve-our-polarization-problem-42cbc4524746?source=friends_link&sk=9185fd44266e146946e09419978c8fe7
1
Republicans have made it impossible to have rational, or even ANY, discussions on real issues. We have Trump and other Republicans drumming up fears that the brown hordes are coming in and taking over the land. Complete and utter nonsense, of course, but people tend to vote conservative when they are afraid so, hey, if it works, then why not? Meanwhile, we have an unbelievable amount of gun and drug deaths in this country that have nothing to do with immigrants. And one could go on and on with other real issues. So please, Mr. Brooks, don't try to preach that it is coming from both sides. The Democrats would love to work on real solutions to real problems but the party of fear (i.e., the GOP, or rather, the Trump-Cult) doesn't want any of that. They would much rather just increase their grip on power using whatever deceptive tool that they can employ. You know, voter suppression laws, gerrymandering, limitless funding from billionaires, etc., etc. etc.
Chrissy Houlihan. JD Sholten. Amy McGrath. Randy Bryce. So many more.
"Nationalized politics forces local candidates to act mostly like Trump or Pelosi stand-ins and less like themselves."
These aren't Pelosi stand-ins. They are committed, earnest, widely experienced, and independent-minded. They will add to the national dialog. They will represent their constituents.
I'm blown away by the quality of the people running for office in this cycle.
Please stop generalizing. Do your homework. Come to the table with an open mind. Because your analysis is tired and wrong.
Dear Mr. Brooks: I'm happy to say you are finally hitting the nail on the head with this editorial column. Most people will agree on this fact, our country is polarized with no signs of abetting. I ask this question of you: when you pledged your allegiance to the GOP as a young and idealistic person, did you think your stalwartness would lead to this predicament our society is facing? The Democrats have their faults but they have at least evolved with modern science, truth, reason, education and the belief in our Constitution and the social safety nets for a free and democratic society. Your minority party has genuflected to the boot of big business with the ideology of winning at any cost. Specifically by gerrymandering, suppression of voting rules, igniting violence in residents believing in old world colonial ideology and by stacking the courts with right wing ideologs.. For Democrats, voting for the GOP would be like poking their eyes out. Don't expect any olive branches in this war from either side of the aisle.
David, I keep waiting for you to come out and plainly state what seems obvious to me, to wit, the Republican party has become a soul-less machine determined to seize power with little or no regard for the hopes and dreams and lives of us normal people.
This is done in concert with the Fox propaganda machine and in cahoots with the most dishonest politician in my 70+ years.
Please join George Will (and others) in denouncing these people and the party they have hijacked from you. It's time. No, it's long past time. Please step up to it.
"Politics is no longer mainly about disagreeing on issues. It’s about being in entirely separate conversations."
Hard to have a conversation when one party openly believes that facts do not matter, that has gone all in on voter suppression, and supports a corrupt racist President who does not believe in democracy.
What issues can Democrats talk to Trump's party about? Optimal marginal tax rates? Education policy? Health care? Who would they talk to? About what?
There is no conversation to be had as long as Trump is President. He's not interested in an honest conversation. Authoritarians, and their supporters, never are.
2
“He (Josh Hawley) wrote a fine book on Theodore Roosevelt...”
“But he’s embraced Trump and run as a pretty standard Trumpkin Republican.”
Gee, I wonder what the great conservationist Theodore Roosevelt, who was so instrumental in creating our national parks, national forests and wildlife reserves, would have thought of the environmental policies of Ryan Zinke, Scott Pruitt, and now Scott Wheeler, and Mr. Hawley’s “embrace” of our slash and burn president. Clearly, he’s turning in his grave.
I would have used a word other than entrenchment, since it does not indicate that one side is lying.
Again, David, you seem to equate both sides and despair ove the lack of civil discourse as if nothing has changed. Yes, strong supporters of the Don are likely to be racist, or at least agree with his racist policies, are you suggesting we should give them a pass?
I just can't figure out if your stance is more similar to Neville Chamberlain or Edward III relative to the threat they faced.
Our threat is no less severe, the death of reason, truth and compassion and the rise of ignorance, lies and fear. I think the choice is as clear as in 1939.
Darn it David, the administration is building concentration (internment) camps in the desert in our name.
"Democratic ideology is increasingly dominated by the educated upper-middle class." Maybe so, but the antidote to being Wallace's pointy-heads or Safire's nattering nabobs of negativism is surely not the current crowd' in power's war against education, reading, and science. Perhaps urbanites can be a little less pretentious while studying issues instead of mouthing slogans in a war of attitudes. That will help some of us, if not the multitudes.
I've been reading you for years. Until the shock of Trump forced you to reevaluate your values and move more moderate and bipartisan, you were right there, Mr. Brooks, pouring gasoline on the fire. You helped burn the Venn Diagram.
Speaking about a divided country, particularly one divided by divided by urban v. rural, Brooks writes:
"In rural America, by contrast, all that stuff is like a thunderstorm in Inner Mongolia. It’s something happening very far away with no particular relevance here, and so no one’s paying much attention."
The question I ask is this: Are you not paying attention because you are apathetic?
Just a couple paragraphs later, Brooks writes:
"In urban America people talk about Trump constantly. In rural America people generally avoid the subject. Even if 80 percent of the locals support Trump, you never know how somebody will react if you mention his name — they might call you a racist — so it’s not a safe topic of conversation."
The question I ask is this: Are you afraid that your deep down racism will be exposed?
What I take away from these two positions is that either rural America doesn't care about the state of our country or is silently complicit in advancing racism ans misogyny. And IMHO neither is something to be proud of.
1
This column seems to expose Brooks' 'whataboutism' and his refusal to make value judgments about our national unraveling.
Health care affects many peoples lives in so oftentimes catastrophic ways; a real political issue. Immigration, well, not so much, as it is used by Republicans only as a racist dog whistle.
I read the article once, looking for evidence that Brooks the oped writer could, would, make reference to the fact that the two sides here are not equivalent. Nothing stood out. He seems to want to maintain his place as the go-to conservative rather than a man with a conscience who is horrified at where we have been brought to.
I did not read the article a second time, will not sacrifice the time for a careful analysis which my criticism would warrant. Brooks is disappointing and just not worth the effort.
What a strange and unexplained reversal from what usually happens in history! Here we are, with educated elites and urban dwellers caring so deeply about the ethics and character of their leader, while rural people are totally turning a blind eye to this.
I suspect the reason many rural dwellers don’t talk about Trump is because deep down they are actually ethical people, and as such are ashamed to be supporting such a vile man.
They should be.
This column is truly bothersome.
First, is it a problem that educated people don't like Trump? What is it that they think that you disagree with? What is the wisdom of the uneducated that you want to support?
Second, why would you disparage Nancy Pelosi to make whatever point you are trying to make? Why not disagree or agree with any policy you could ascribe to her?
Third, can you support one side or another on the issues that matter most, as you say, health care or immigration? Seems like you're just implying that health care is a dividing issue, but what is it that we disagree on, to lead us to vote for one party or the other? Is it pre-existing conditions? Is it expanded Medicaid? Is it Medicare for the elderly? And on immigration, what position are you personally espousing? Just lay it out; don't just say it's a divisive issue.
Fourth, why is it that a rural Pennsylvanian with a loaded .22 represents some legitimate opinion, just because he's completely uninformed?
David, you are a real problem, because you are trying to justify so much political nonsense. Could we just get back to evaluating facts?
Did anyone click the link to Josh Hawley's essay on epicurean liberalism? It's a genuinely interesting and thought-provoking excursion. I find it unspeakably sad that a person who can write such a piece in 2010 must dumb himself down in 2018 to the current bumper-sticker banality. Yes this phenomenon is at its worst on the Republican side, but I suggest that the Twitterization of communication has demolished capacity for thought. And that is happening to all sides.
Pick up a book, or a long form magazine. Delete your Twitter account. Seriously consider deleting your other online political and social accounts.
No, I do not believe that the Venn Diagram is dead, in fact the very essence of living is in the convergence of Venn Diagrams; the leadership of the American principles cannot be transferred to those who want to bury them in the pillage that cost lives of millions.
Brooks is sadly wrong, he is living in the misjudgment of the founding principles that made America; from those principles that will outlive all this divide and hatred, we can take solace that America will always revert to the mean.
He went to Stanford and Yale Law School. He wrote a fine book on Theodore Roosevelt, and several excellent essays for the journal National Affairs." Elitism. Elitism. Elitism. David Brooks travels to rural counties, but hangs out with Elites.
Your perspective highlights the flaws you see in progressives - but you fail to also chastise conservatives. You seem to be saying only progressives have established "as set of liturgies, rituals and doctrines" -how about the doctrines of greed, racism and hate being spewed by Mr. Trump and apparently bought into by 54% of white Americans? There is a reason many educated progressives are questioning capitalism - we have seen how it has been perverted to mainly benefit a very small minority of the population. I agree we are extremely divided. The Republican Party has spent 40 years working on this project, with apparent great success.
One thing you fail to mention: one side is significantly larger than the other. And yet the larger side, the clear majority, a diverse group of Americans who live in metropolitan areas all over the country, are beholden to the regressive agenda of the minority. The irony is that the minority is used and abused by its own representatives in the interests of accumulating more wealth and power. So, the majority are stuck with an increasingly non-representative government while the minority appears to be content to be entertained by its feckless leaders. Quite a pickle.
Not so true in a place like Arizona where there could very likely be the first woman Democrat senator in history. She is not running as anything remotely like Pelosi and often agrees with Trump on immigrant and gun control issues. Purple states are the last bastion of the Venn diagram.
What Brooks and most of the media consistently miss is that the canyon is deepening not because both parties are digging. It because one party not only digs but is sinking fast while the other clings desperately to the edge. The failure of the press to identify the right radicalizing of rural America is part of the problem. You have allowed Trump to manipulate not only them but you. And through you (worst of all) the rest of the country. Shameful.
This has gone to absurd stretches, such as Democrat candidate for Congress Lizzie Fletcher trying to appeal to right-leaning voters by lampooning incumbent Republican John Culberson’s support of NASA’s exploration of the solar system. This cynical ploy is amazing, given that Republicans are the party generally accused of eschewing science.
Call me skeptical, but I really wonder what David Brooks means when he says he's been to "rural" America. I have the feeling he means, Kansas City, Jackson Hole, or even Aspen. I sincerely doubt he's aware of placed people from his "rural" America consider rural.
1
I would have thought that people who live in Red states would have issues around heath care, their children coming out of the closet, retirement and so on, that Democrats could appeal to for votes, but apparently not.
"The Venn diagram is dead. There’s no overlapping area."
This passively-voiced conclusion exemplifies the error of this entire piece -- a steadfast refusal to acknowledge the reality of the active and VERY intentional role the GOP has played in creating the deep divisions that now separate us. Mr. Brooks would do well to read the much more appropriate piece by his colleague, Paul Krugman, in today's paper.
"progressivism [is] a set of liturgies, rituals and moral doctrines for the secular unchurched."
WHAT? Mr. Brooks contributes to and enables the lies of the GOP by repeating, without comment or clarification, the ugly racist lies of "rural" (which really means "white") America that he apparently has so much affection for. He cites their racist fears of "immigrants (symbolized by the caravan)" without mentioning the reality of how few people are involved in the caravan or why they are so desperate to find asylum. He speaks of "radicalized mobs of educated elites" without clarifying the appalling ignorance, superstition, and magical thinking that so often accompany the anti-intellectual lies he repeats. Dictatorships ALWAYS start by attacking intellectuals.
Finally, the whopper about Democrats "losing faith in capitalism itself, in the American dream itself" is just another right-wing lie.
Democrats seek justice, truth, fairness, and freedom for every American -- the foundations of the American dream.
"On the one hand. . . on the other hand." More insight from David Brooks, who dares not say whether one side is, just maybe, dealing with reality while the other traffics in xenophobic nonsense. The GOP is just somehow "saddled" with an authoritarian hatemonger—they didn't choose this guy or support him for two years—while urban liberals are simply members of a secular religion, which allows our distinguished commentator to remain blissfully above the fray.
"A lot has been said, but few minds have been changed." Pretty much.
But the most important thing is that "all the king's horses and all the king's men" from New York City's mass-media central, CNN, ABC, SNL, NBC et al. have not been able to move the needle since November 2016 even one point, which suggests perhaps a different approach -- i.e., Trump, the Sovietized piñata is not working -- neither are Maxie's restaurant assaults.
1
As I've mentioned before, I'm a progressive liberal living in a rurally isolated, generationally impoverished region in southern Oregon, and there are very few of us. Sure the state is blue, but when you look at how Josephine County voted, it's monolithically Trump and anti tax.
The number of people in rural areas is always smaller than the suburban and urban areas, 85% of people live in the latter two areas. The rural people resent the greater populations in the denser areas winning voting decisions by sheer brute force, and so over time the rural people have had to define themselves by what they are not, and so they complain about their rights, their freedom and liberty.
The rural people are of the opinion that the further away government is from them, the worse it is, hence state government is bad, the federal government is horrible, and the UN is sheer evil. To be fair, the colonialists of the late 1700s didnt like King George III one bit. Hence the tea party.
There is no cure for the divide, the people around me are not the mobile types, they stick around in one place, and what they've noticed is that the ground has shifted out from underneath them and it's been unnerving to them. They didn't go anywhere, yet the world changed nonetheless. Usually you have to physically change geographic locations for a change in the social scenery, and the people around me have had it happen to them against their will and their hoppin mad. And scared. And armed to the teeth.
82
@Chris - I thought you stated this very well. Rural areas do resent the suburban areas for sure. Many of my relatives in the rural south feel this way. They don't like change and things like diversity are change. But I must admit, I have grown up and lived in suburban centers most of my life. I have looked at rural areas as very backward and too traditional for my tastes. So a lot of this tends I think to be how you grew up and what you were used to. I could be wrong but you seemed to hit a nerve that strikes true.
10
@Chris What are they all so scared of, exactly? What change exactly is so unnerving to them that they have to be "armed to the teeth"? Nobody has been able to really get underneath this, for my satisfaction. I really want to understand.
10
@Lisa Merullo-Boaz -- We live in a time when the media has not only reported on the real objective world, but they also have created a fabricated dramatic subjective world that runs parallel.
So there are 2 spaces, the real and virtual. Just like an artist creates a dramatic space in a theatre, the media has taken Shakespeare's "all the world's a stage" and made a second dramatic reality to parallel the real one we have facts and evidence for.
Trump and his side of the media know this which is why they call the traditional fact based media fake to deflect from the fabrications they stage. The angry armed people are following fictional dramatic stories that have become horror stories, tragedies that are scaring them.
The caravan lies, the Muslim lies, the immigration lies, the healthcare lies, the gun are taken from you lies, the America is invaded lies, the taxes makes you poor lies, it goes on and on, and all of it is virtual reality.
People don't sufficiently distinguish between objective and subjective reality because so much comes to them on screens, and there is a belief in most folks to listen and watch the media that confirms their biases, and so no effort is made to question the virtual reality.
My neighbors believe falsehoods that are scaring them, they think any other fact to the contrary is fake, they have no idea that they are the people who are being lied to. Yes, because the information they consume is fake, they think it's real facts that are fake.
17
In the life boat people get real tense. When people perceive an existential threat, war breaks out against those who they imagine threaten them. There is a profound unease that the human population as it grows and as it attempts to satisfies it wants is about to destroy the human habitat. Educated people want to rely on science and thoughtful policy choices that set goals out 10 to 50 years to find the right way forward. Uneducated people want to rely on religion, prayer, and ignorant charismatic leaders who will maintain and bring back the "old order." Each side is aghast at the policies choices of the other. Each side feels very threatened and very unsafe. One side believes that if global warming is occurring at the rate it seems to be, the human race is running out of time to fix that existential threat. The other side fears that the elites will deprive them of their jobs, their homes, their cars, everything that matters to them. They vow not to let that happen. They will kill the "mofo's" first. If the U.S. political leadership does not find a way forward that each side accepts and agrees with, both here in the U.S. and around the world, civil war and/or world war will likely result in the decades ahead.
Yes, we are in entirely different conversations as well as differing and disagreeing on issues. But you know what, Mr. Brooks, I don’t care. I am not budging from my beliefs in universal health care, gun control/safety, justice for the Black, Brown, Gay, Muslim, immigrant and refugee, as well as my concern re global warming. The way I see it is I really do not want to converse with the bigot, racist, gun totin’ dude, or evangelical who wants to take my rights as a woman, an individual, away from me. And it has absolutely nothing to do with being college educated, which I am. It has nothing to do with being uncivil, because I aspire to be civil to everyone even people I do not like and prefer not crossing paths with. When I “converse” about politics it is with those who share my philosophy. And when we “converse” it is not about impugning the other side but rather on how we can change this unsustainable mess Trump has gotten us into.
2
Interesting": "In urban America people talk about Trump constantly. In rural America people generally avoid the subject."
I live in very liberal rural America (Vermont) across the river from very conservative rural America (New Hampshire): two miles are like the distance from Earth to another galaxy.
My very unsophisticated, ground-level sense, is that Trump's supporters are keeping quiet because they don't want to disclose the real reason of their preference, namely their racist inclinations or at least a very high tolerance for Uncle Fred's racism. It just turns out that today's prominent Uncle Fred happens to be the president (I get the chills just writing these words.)
1
I think you have been talking to the wrong people. I agree that it is noisy out there. However, in my travels I see kids who are motivated to participate at levels that we haven't seen in years. I see people writing postcards everywhere encouraging others to vote. I see people engaged and in conversation about the things that matter the most to them. Is it scary out there? Yes. Are we talking at each other more than listening? Yes. But I think you've got your fingers in your ears Mr. Brooks and your eyes closed.
Another example of increasingly frequent columns by Mr. Brooks where, in an attempt to make his point, he tries to ignore logic (and hopes that you won't notice).
He describes how Josh Hawley, an otherwise conventional GOP candidate, has "embraced Trump and run as a pretty standard Trumpkin Republican."
But in the next paragraph he asserts that "nationalized politics act more like Trump or Pelosi stand-ins and less like themselves."
What "Pelosi stand-ins"? He doesn't identify any of them. Brooks' usual mission to make a point once again ignores facts and evidence. Many Democratic candidates, in fact, have asserted their independence - not allegiance to Pelosi - while Republicans are slavish to Trump.
The both-sides-ism won't work, Mr. Brooks: your generalizations ignore what's really going on in the country.
3
I used to be a centrist. But seeing government agents rip children from their parents' arms to further a patently racist immigration policy finally convinced me that Molly Ivans was right: the only things in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead armadillos. Because I am capable of of empathy for those who are not part of my tribe, I will vote for every Democrat I can.
I have lost my capacity to sing Kumbaya. If David Brooks finds this distressing, then he needs to work to evict the racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, and xenophobic elements from his party. Then we can talk about Venn diagrams.
252
Pointing fingers only contributes to the problem. So long as it's 'us' and 'them', our issues will only propagate.
@kjb
Well said: "Molly Ivans was right: the only things in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead armadillos." David who has been on a nonstop both-sides-do-it bender is looking more and more like the dead armadillos.
14
@Tom
You call it pointing fingers, I call it speaking up. We have to call out hate, ignorance and anti-democratic policies and speech. The left has been squishy soft for too long. And I think that's because we're better educated intellectually and socially...and therefore, more compassionate. (A gross generalization I know....but seems to be born out by statistics).
12
"Politics is no longer mainly about disagreeing on issues. It’s about being in entirely separate conversations."
That's because the parties are indeed operating with different sets of facts, Democrats having those grounded in truth. Trump has taken lying to such a degree that it is now the norm for him to make stuff up all the time, no matter how outrageous. Trump supporters treat his nonsense as the gospel truth.
People can't overlap when they have different realities. It's no coincidence that Trump has taken this approach, either; the basic cynical strategy is to divide and conquer.
5
On one side of the trench are nativists who seem to be entirely okay with overturning the Posse Comitatus Act and the 14th amendment in the name of protecting the country from brown people, or anybody who is insufficiently "American" to get human rights. (The category of "not American" gets broader each day, but the "American" category always includes white landowning men.) They seem to favor a collapsed government in which no public square exists at all so that private enterprise may be free of all regulation or oversight.
On the other side of the trench are people who would like something to be done about the state of healthcare and to broaden economic opportunities. They would prefer it if people in the upper 15% of incomes paid taxes to contribute to the common weal, and would like some regulation of the financial sector. I imagine some manner of reform to the criminal justice system would be on their agenda. Many of them would also like to do something about climate change.
Equating both sides of this divide as having equal moral standing is part of the problem. But perhaps I am unfair in my assessment. Mr. Brooks can clearly articulate the origin of modern Democratic ideology. Where is the intellectual basis of Republican ideology? Who sets the agenda? I for one would find it valuable if you spent column inches on an honest discussion of the ideological construction of the right in America rather than pretending it arises organically from rural whites.
4
Has anyone thought to break the country up? Being in the northeast and a minority, the red states don't represent my values. I am a citizen, served in the US Army and like black people, has been politely reminded often when I'm in the red states that I am not an "AMERICAN". Maybe West Coast and Northeast should break into BLUE countries and let the RED country live their own concept of "AMERICA".
3
Brooks gets it wrong in an interesting way.
Not so much on the descriptive as on the normative level.
Leadership makes all the difference.
If Donald Trump were not on the scene cynically stoking fears and political careerism, we would be looking at an entirely different picture.
Republicans might actually be talking about issues rather than fantasies of invasion and contagion.
Brooks's effectively makes this point with his examples. But only on the fly and not deliberately. He never actually uses the L word.
Is he assuming that Republicans in rural states would be as polarized as they are were, say, Eisenhower president?
Or even Brooks's own great white hope of a few years ago, Mitch Daniels from Indiana?
On the eve of this election David Brooks should be following Paul Krugman's monition, from his own column today:
"It is now impossible to have intellectual integrity and a conscience while remaining a Republican in good standing."
Brooks should be writing about how he is taking this opportunity to publicly quit the Republican Party unless and until it ousts the leadership of Donald Trump.
Why is Brooks not doing this? Is he afraid that The Times will find him redundant if he switches parties, goes into exile on MSNBC like Bret Stephens (who still has plenty of problems however) and George Will, who at least had the courage to do this.
C'mon, David, at this time in history you become culpable for the aftermath if you think this is a time to simply hunker down.
2
David if our upcoming election cycle used a popular vote (one person one vote) and not one based on gerrymandered districts, there would NOT be camps of differing voters holding the line.
America is mostly progressive and mostly still a liberal democratic nation. A popular vote would turn both houses blue in a matter of two voting cycles.
1
No, it's not about hardening. This election is about the slow but consistent exodus of suburban and women voters from the GOP to the Democratic party.
That is largely due to the abhorently dishonest, racist, sexist and base behavior of tRump.
2
If you are living in an apartment complex and don't know or trust your neighbors, are you really in the country?
I don't think the geographical framework is quite so tidy.
1
“I got a loaded .22 right by my door,” one man in rural Pennsylvania told Carney, “I don’t trust nobody in my apartment complex.”
How does a man who lives in an apartment complex come to typify rural America?
2
Judging by what's highlighted in the column, progressive or urban-ish Americans fear real things (erosion of american dream, racism, inadequate justice for the marginalized, cost of college education), while conservative or rural-ish Americans fear fake things (radicalized mobs of educated elites, runaway immigration, Jewish financiers, liberal judges). And that's how both parties are running their respective campaigns.
Fortunately, both sides of the electorate agree on healthcare.
Lastly, suggesting that Democratic candidates act like Pelosi stand-ins is ridiculous. First of all, there's nothing "bad" about Nancy Pelosi. The smears she gets from the right of the same ilk as what George Soros gets (minus the antisemitism and bombs of course.)
2
This is a (mostly) ridiculous and *seriously* misleading column that suggests that Brooks has not been reading the Congressional campaign coverage in the NYT. One of the key elements is that the Dems have been politically diverse candidates, from folks who in the old days would have been Blue Dogs to neo-Social Dems. Think of the female combat vets and CIA operatives running in conservative districts. And Pelosi herself is hardly some left-liberal figure, in case Brooks paid any attention to her positions over the years (she who saved TARP, e.g.) Why a rural apartment dweller thinks he needs a .22 -- well, if you had a President telling you the Enemy was coming through the TV set and was marching on of the border, maybe you have to put your paranoia somewhere. But fear can fade.
Two comments:
1. Why are people in rural areas afraid of being called racist if they invoke Trump? Perhaps because they know he's a racist? Multiple academic studies have shown that racial fears, not economic distress, was the main driver for Trump voters in 2016.
2. Those rural voters are fed a constant beat of fear from Republicans and their propaganda outlets, Fox and Sinclair. Now it's 4,000 Hispanic families that are coming to take over the most powerful nation on earth. When you live in those areas, you're only exposed to people who look like you, think like you. You're naturally going to fear anything or anyone that's different. The GOP knows that and stokes those fears.
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@Dario Bernardini
We were with a group of friends last night who were, maybe still are, Trump supporters. The talk turned to the fact that employers are struggling to find employees. One person noted that a new dollar store was having trouble finding employees because of criminal records and that no one wants to work for minimum wage or on weekends.
I had all I could do to not say that you have 5000 people heade for America who would be glad for those jobs.
22
There is one issue where there is no possible danger of claiming a false equivalency. The one side with it's infamous publicity hound has sent 15,000 U.S. army soldiers to the border to fight off an imaginary invasion by brown hordes of supposed terrorists. The only problem is these are mothers, fathers and children fleeing for their lives from violence at home. They are no bad, mean, tough, hardened military soldiers.
So what we have is a president sending army troops like a boy would play with his toy soldiers fighting imaginary, purely fantasized threats.
This reminds me of one of their favorite chants, "lock him up"! Only in this case it wouldn't be in jail but on a locked ward of a mental hospital. Trump is delusional and paranoid if it's not not just a con to get voters minds off the the domestic terrorists he has managed to foster in his time with a national megaphone. He has us killing each other so he doesn't even need his imaginary invaders from the south. But lest someone notice that he has made us less safe by his toxic hostility he has invented his invasion that has no basis in reality.
David, when a man is fighting imaginary demons of his own creation but is sending real soldiers and spending real money to do so on imaginary fantasms, he shows us that he is mentally ill.
David you are ignoring the elephant in the room, we have a delusional president, the victim of his own tormented fantasies that he believes are real. He needs to be removed.
2
Who cares about rural America? They are a small part of the electorate, with Trump they’ve shown themselves to be intellectually backwards, and other than some giant farms, they do little for the economy. The blue states will move ahead without these areas.
1
Personally, I think it’s a choice between people who want to contract my rights in order to conserve an outdated and dysfunctional system dominated by white males,or an expansive system that wants to increase choice and opportunity for the majority of the population. It’s between people who keep a loaded rifle in their hall because they don’t trust “nobody” and people who want to expand Medicaid, raise the minimum wage , give kids good schools and operate with a decent moral compass.
2
There is an objective reality out there in blue and red America- call it white, like light. Nobody has a monopoly on truth however the so called Red America is thinking with emotions. They got lied to and used by the Republican establishment and yes the capitalist system and they are doubling down. They are like abused children who grow violent and beg for more abuse.
They saw red and are going ballistic and making life worse for the whole world. They need therapy but they jam the power joystick down hard and are not dealing with the real world. It is their fault as much as Trump's and they are not evil and they do have real problems that nobody addressed but you don't cut off your head if you have a headache.
Maybe they will see the light and see what is right under everybody's noses, but they are still being used big time and they are not dealing with the real world and the real problems we face, just symbolic issues
"In rural America basic values like hard work, clear gender roles and the social fabric are dissolving before people’s eyes."
Would you drop the ridiculous trope about the only people who value "hard work" are ruralites in Middle America! Urban folks work plenty hard too!
Don't tell me that a single mom in the Bronx doesn't work hard to feed her kids!
Don't tell me that a couple in Queens who both work two jobs so that their kids can afford to go to college aren't working hard!
Don't tell me that someone in Boston or Philly or DC who has taken in their aging parent because they can't afford a nursing home isn't working hard!
Working as a janitor for minimum wage in San Francisco is just as hard as growing soybeans in Iowa!
Stocking shelves at Walmart in Dallas is working just as hard as stocking shelves at Kroeger's in Paducah!
Driving a bus in Chicago is just as hard as driving an 18-wheeler across Kansas.
Teaching 4th grade in Seattle is just as hard as teaching 4th grade in Branson MO.
Being an emergency room nurse in Atlanta is just as hard as being an emergency room nurse in Decorah IA.
So the whole meme of rural folks valuing hard work more is just a lie! Drop it already.
(And I pity the guy in rural PA who keeps a loaded .22 by the door because he "don't trust nobody." Most urbanites I know don't have such a fearful, paranoid view of their neighbors!)
388
@Paul-A
Right on. However, in fairness to Mr. Brooks, he possibly saved this piece for the last 15 minutes of his waking night of working day and night on a multitude of other assignments.
9
@Paul-A The folks in fly-counter maintain this sense of themselves in large part because they don't interact with many other folks. In urban environments, we often come into contact with folks who look different from us, but have the same struggles. Those rural folks only see folks like themselves, so their lack of experience can be easily translated into fear of others.
29
@Paul-A
I agree. Add to that list the low wage immigrants, illegal and legal, in rural areas who harvest the food we put on America's tables.
20
False equivalency strikes again David! You really haven’t come to terms with the fact that there is right and wrong, true and false.
I know you fight against the idea (fact) that trump and the Republican Party is corrupt, and supporting them corrupts their supporters (see Krugman today). You want to find excuses for the rot. You point to rural people, the simple folk with traditional values. My observation is that many of their values are not so great.
Haven’t people throughout human history living in dynamic environments developed sophisticated value systems, driving the world towards progress? How long do we have to excuse ignorance and regression?
Want more false equivalency?
“Nationalized politics forces local candidates to act mostly like Trump or Pelosi stand-ins and less like themselves.”
Are you seriously equating Trump and Pelosi? C’mon. As if they are like two equal bad guys, indistinguishable from the other. Nancy Pelosi does not deserve to be compared to vile Donald Trump. Shame on you David.
2
David Brooks starts with a false premise. "The Republicans were saddled with an unpopular president, ..." which makes everything else he wrote irrelevant.
The Republicans have spent over 30 years working towards their true goal of gaining irreversible conservative power. Rather than diminish their chances of achieving their goal, the Republicans embraced a racist narcissist to pack his cabinet with greedy, ill-prepared (for governing) businessmen with an insatiable desire to make the rich richer, corporations more powerful and everyone else disenfranchised. President Trump has served the Republican agenda well at the expense of our constitutional rights.
Most Republican politicians are thrilled regardless of the damage done to our democracy.
6
But what does David Brooks himself think? He keeps writing columns in which he observes from some sort of Olympian perch the divisions in the electorate. As a quondam Republican and conservative (National Review) essayist, he can't resist the odd sarcasm about progressives as a "set of liturgies, rituals and moral doctrines for the secular unchurched." Where is an evocation with similar sarcasm of the Trump adoring masses one sees at these grotesque "rallies"? Where do you stand, Mr. Brooks? Of course politics is still about "disagreeing on issues"; but the Trumpians have simplified those issues in line with the mindless and mendacious pronouncements of Trump. So people of minimal decency and intelligence are of course in what Brooks calls "a separate conversation." How can you have dialogue with a liar and a demagogue and his mindless folowers?
3
It's funny how you travel so much and claim to be covering the campaign and yet all the people you quote in your column are fellow journalists (one of them quoting a non journalist). Nary an urban, suburban, or rural voter is represented as an individual voice in your column.
2
This column is pure David Brooks. Always portraying equivalence between democrats and republicans and wanting to be the honest conservative republican broker even though working as a columnist for the NYT with readers having a slightly more leftward view of things.
But Brooks has not come to terms with how Trump made so many republicans leave the party. Conservatives like Max Boot, Steve Schmidt, Chuck Hegel, Bret Stephens, even Bill Kristof just to name a few.
The Republican Party is gone and pretending it’s not the Trump Party should make Brooks become more critical of this new political phenomenon in the U.S.
But in column after column, the false equivalence takes precedence over coming to the realization of what Trumpism is all about.
2
"Democratic ideology is increasingly dominated by the [poorly] educated upper-middle class."
I corrected the quote.
1
@Norman Rogers. And therein lies your problem. I was not poorly educated - I was broadly educated, to understand and evaluate everything I learn, to see if it is good for my country or not. You, on the other hand, have just assumed that I am poorly educated because you want to believe uneducated and less intelligent people have some sort of magical connection (without doing the hard work of learning and evaluating) to some moral right and wrong that includes things like white supremacy as right for the country.
1
@Brookhawk I guess "broadly" is different than "well" in your estimation. Those who are well educated (and don't have their noses pointed upwards) understand how consequential the presidency of Donald Trump is proving to be.
What I truly don't understand is why folks like you imagine you're SO MUCH SMARTER than DJT. I think he's at least as smart as I (and as well educated -- he was graduated by Wharton undergrad).
Do you really imagine you're smarter (or better educated) than me?
Brooks, it's not a both sides do it problem. Trump and the GOP have become an awful unreasonalbe party, and simply opposing almost everything they do and say is a good first start to getting a real decent agenda back on track.
2
Goodness, David, you've managed to once again turn a situation created by 40 years of Republican efforts to do evil, culminating in engineering the election of of arguably the worst person on this planet, into yet another opportunity to trash-talk Democrats and wallow in both-sides-do-it. I just don't buy it. How do you construct a Venn diagram of Trump and anything else?
4
I think Brooks has touched on an issue that screams for greater exploration. Instead of focusing on the geographic divide, we should be looking at how this country is dividing on the basis of education. I suspect there is a higher percentage of higher educated people residing in metropolitan areas than in rural areas. And, if not higher educated, then at least better informed.
It is an established fact that rural voters are significantly behind their urban peers with respect to high speed internet access. That access provides urban residents with a far greater array of news and information sources. Conversely, those in rural areas are left to rely on their local TV news (and, in many instances, that skews heavily conservative in bias thanks to corporations such as the Sinclair Broadcasting Group).
This urban/rural divide may be symptomatic of a greater divide driven more by access to information than anything else.
@Tom Q. The urban/rural divide we see now looks very much like the industrial (Northern)/agricultural (Southern) divide this country saw prior to and during the Civil War. In fact, it is its descendant - we are still divided very much over those same differences and issues, especially race. The Civil War never ended because the Southern viewpoint never gave it up.
1
Maybe people need to come out of their tents, smoke a peace pipee and talk with one another. Without insults, name-calling, etc.
PS Pelosi is not my standard bearer. You may want that image, but I think it is out-dated. The Old Guard is being replaced by the newer leaders.
2
"Nationalized politics forces local candidates to act mostly like Trump or Pelosi stand-ins and less like themselves."
David, what democrat says that some Democratic candidate is a stand-in for Nancy Pelosi. Who actually has said that? Give us some examples. Or identify the source of the idea that those candidates are stand-ins for Pelosi.
Which Republicans say that Republican candidates are stand-ins for Trump?
How is the truth of this situation lost on citizens of this country? Your sentence just added to the obfuscation.
1
Both sides need that Bloc of Voters most powerful. Those that don't show up. I expect to see the results of their learned and careful analysis providing the leaders we truly deserve.
My small example is, I recently met with a group of high school graduates, who continue to hang together, even though were from the very small silent generation born, in the late thirties. This generation has been described as never having had any influence, as the numbers were small, because of WW 2. We then were kids of the Greatest Generation. To the point at our get together, and the period we devote to simply conversing, it was very clear those who support Trump and those who had supported Clinton, have no discussion they just have their position and don't wan't to talk to the other side. Could be co-incidence, but 90% were Trump supporters, for the issues he is doing something about, and for issue he pursues. Our generation had a lot of opportunity, passed on by the greatest generation and their depression era scarifies as well as WW 2. Again we have zero influence at the polls. Key position of Trump supporters is they overlook the personality . The Clinton side wan't impeachment, or enforcement of the 2nd Amendment.
From the way we treat each other it seems that we have come to believe we don’t need each other anymore. Urban/Rural. Citizens/Non. Humans/Natural World. Our relationships are mediated by Corporations and Insitutions. Human relationships are fractured, at best, in too many aspects of our lives.
I suppose the choice is ours. We can open our hearts to each other, or we can choose not too. We can remain passive in the face of hate, or we can reach out and stand with the “hated”.
I voted yesterday, so that work is done. Now I’ve got other work to do, because I know that winter is coming.
2
Look to Mr. Brooks for the only NYT pundit unallied with either major party, and the singular, best source of truth. For a good example, read his column today.
"The Venn diagram is dead." The two parties of circular reasoning no longer intersect. They have nothing in common, and can't. There's no semi-permeable membrane through which resolution can pass.
It's true that we are politically land-locked. As comic strip character, Pogo, told us, "We have met the enemy and the enemy is us." That won't change and the Venn circles won't move until the enemy becomes our neighbor who may disagree with us, but still helps us out when we need it. And vice-versa.
Therein good politics is found.
4
@Lake Woebegoner
Agree. I often hark back to Tip Oneil meeting with Regan to settle issues. I fear this non discussion era, started when Obama was in office. Neither side had any use for the other side, and Obama had to use Presidential executive orders, to manage. Trump has used the same procedures as Congress is always frozen .
@Lake Woebegoner - You are mistaken. Brooks is a firm republican, he just doesn't like Trump all that much. I'll lay odds he voted for him, though.
@Lake Woebegoner
Actually Pogo said, "We have met the enemy and HE is us."
1
Since the early 1970’s income increased consistently in the highest quintile. It has been generally flat in the middle three and declining in the lowest quintile. This has happened through all Democratic and Republican administrations. This will be significantly exacerbated by the recent tax law changes. Seems to me this is a significant component of our current malaise and neither party is even talking about the issue.
4
Oh, ye of little faith!
I'm a liberal. I know a variety of Republicans in my daily life.
A couple of them of them accept all of the right-wing conspiracy theories as unimpeachable fact.
Several of them believe a lot of media false equivalency, but now that much of the media is doing less of that, they are getting a more solid picture of the world.
Some of them are old-school, and quite uncomfortable with the Trump riptide.
One friend of mine has Tea Party leanings, but last I knew he was just as in favor of a well-executed universal healthcare plan as I am.
One thing I know about all of the Republicans I know in my life, and they know about me, is this: no matter how we may disagree about policy, we all share our chief political concern, which is the health of the country.
I know that there are people across the political divide who, if they learned my politics, would think I want to undermine them or their way of life. When I talk with them, I tell them that nothing could be further from the truth.
Sometimes, they even believe me.
It's a wide divide, I agree--but it can still be bridged, and the Venn diagram is still alive and kicking.
2
@Jacob Sommer
Health of the country is a key statement, that is at the root of the polarity. One side fears the neo Liberals as much as the other side fears Trumps supporters, as those who will ruin the country. So both sides and the media promote throw the bums out.
We face a moral decision, should government continue to represent the people or should corporations be the benefactor?
We as a nation have faced this moral dilemma before. The corporations were in complete control, striking and protesting workers were faced with a government acting at the behest of big business that turned both the State military and law enforcement against the people, resulting in the slaughter of people trying to stand up for common decency, respect and a livable wage. Some examples the Colorado labor war, Ludlow massacre, 1912 textile strike the list goes on.
Much of this changed in 1935 under the moral leader ship of FDR. The passage of the Wagner act, the legalization of unions, the middle class was born, in direct correlation wages increased. As unions declined so has the middle class. As far as our so-called capitalist society goes that ship sailed long ago. Adam Smith's vision of competition as a means of executing capitalist mentality died when we stopped enforcing monopoly, antitrust laws.
Government agencies are not there to serve customers, but rather have a moral mission to protect and empower the public, to preserve the environment, to protect the health and safety of workers, to make sure food and drugs are safe, to create an educated populace, to advance science, to build and maintain a public infrastructure help people with natural disasters, to support a social infrastructure where our weak, disabled, and elderly are not cast as burdens.
8
@Bill T
Good point. The so called elites who have a firm grip are, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and Wall Street. They are as they say, in the cat bird seat, with their influence and vast wealth. Yet the government depends on the fading middle class, taxed at source, to pay the bills or should I say, support the deficit. Other corporations who have always been greedy and corrupt, don't have to be supported by consumers, but they are. Example, if you don't like what Wal Mart is all about, don't shop there, however all people are interested in is price. Globalization was a fine model however side effects were never considered. Out two tier society is firmly in place.
We're all feeling the chasm. Even within families, there's upsetting conversational civil war, those who support Trump versus those who do not, and fancy linguistic maneuvers to avoid vitriol. And, the adoption of a complex calculus of 'unfollowing' and 'unfriending' to keep the peace. Many are monitoring the polls like hawks in hopes the midterms turn their way because, but after the last general election, no one fully trusts the polls. I expect, then, that viewership of the midterm election night coverage will rival the Super Bowl. Better get a jump on ordering those wings.
@Lynda
Good point Lynda. In my large extended family, it has reached the point, that conversation about either side is simply avoided , as in, don't go there. Rule is don't bring it up. Most of the very young are Bernie Sanders advocates.
Watch Ken Burns' series on Prohibition and you will see the same divides cleaving the country in post-Civil War and early twentieth America as you do today: urban versus rural, and anti-immigrant/people of color. Nothing has fundamentally changed. Perhaps we went through a period where it was papered over.
But I disagree that there is no middle in the Venn diagram. There were swing voters in the last election that made a difference, and in previous elections. Both parties know that to win the presidency they must 1) turn out their base, and 2) win the swing voters. Nothing has changed here either.
2
David Brooks totally overlooks the broad range of moderates, ranging from fleeing former Republicans on the right, through a large number of moderate independents, to conservative nontrumpkin and moderate Democrats who reject both extremes. The largest proportion feel obligated to vote for Democrats this time, but have no home in either party in the long term. They are the best hope for the future.
5
@NRoad
Good point, with that said, be leery of the Robo call instrument managing the polls. Be also leery of folks who won't declare their preference. Remember, that is how Trump won over slam dunk HRC.
David, you’re really good at despair. But it’s time to quit complaining, roll up our sleeves and get to work saving this democracy one community at a time, on region at a time until where one nation, united in in our diversity within the ideas of our founding documents. It will be hard work but we know in our hearts it will be worthwhile. So let’s get started and stop our bellyaching - we’ve got to keep in mind, that this is what we do when all else fails.
10
@Mike Wilson
I agree Mike. I always liked reading Brooks, but have decided, he is a paid NYT journalist. If you read the Washington Post , watch CNN, or Fox, you know exactly what to expect. Check Pew Research data, of what people think of the media in general. Lowest % approval since this data was begun being recorded.
What polls are showing Democrats are losing faith in capitalism itself? This is a typical Brooks un-sourced vague generalization of the sort which this column like most of his columns is peppered. He dismisses Democratic ideology as increasingly dominated by the upper middle class without addressing that ideology and why it might appeal to the class of which he himself is a member. And he thinks of himself as an intellectual.
36
@John Right on, John. David Brooks has an uncanny capacity to not wrote about issues. Obscure and obscure. Simply he keep saying that Democrats are elites; they have no feelings or compassion for rural, working class whites. Boy, what got my political believes was just that--a society that recognizes everyone's worth, "rich man, poor man" alike. Woody Guthrie is turning in his grave.
@John
The Democrats are proponents of, The Social Democratic Welfare State Model. A fine written model, offers something for everyone. Trouble is they can't make it work.
@John Yes, that and "white liberals see racism as a bigger problem...than African-Americans." Really? I thought African-Americans were protesting getting shot by cops and arrested for drinking coffee. I guess that doesn't bother them as much as we thought.
We are indeed entrenched almost to the point of becoming a Confederacy and a Union again. I spend a great deal of time trying to figure out how this divide came to be. History is supposed to teach us and guide us. The main difference seems to be that "liberals" learn from history, they find cause and effect and try to find answers. They're not always the right answers, but they search to find them.
The same can't be said for today's version of "conservatives". They deny facts, they deny their failures and keep repeating them. They always blame someone or something else for their own mistakes and ignorance. They won't change.
We're still a few generations away from becoming what we're supposed to be as a country. The Old Confederacy is taking longer to die away than anyone ever thought it would.
10
@Nick Adams pathetic. First, it is the Left that has sought to divide us for decades. Which party asserts diversity is our greatest strength (Democrats)? It is not, it has never been our greatest strength, unity has. Our national motto is E Pluribus Unium not E Pluribus Divis. The emphasis on our differences (i.e. diversity) as opposed to what makes us one is what divides the U.S. The Left continues to seek to change the greatest country on the face of the earth while the Right seeks to preserve that which made us great in the first place.
Before Law School and Grad School I was a History major all of my formal education (J.D./M.B.A.) and life experiences teach me that great powers fall because they move away from the core principles which made them great to begin with. The Left decries individualism, personal responsibility, hard work and capitalism. They are too weak to survive on their own. Allowing these core American values to be replaced with socialism (more government safety nets) is destroying what makes us unique. Look at Europe, socialism does not work. Allowing the government the power to redefine terms preceding our country gives the very government the Founders were concerned about to much power. Please wake up and learn about and experience the greatness of America.
@Nick Adams
Quite a few good books out there, Why Liberalism failed. Both parties, in our two party system are proponents, of the promised Social Democratic Welfare State Model, but it isn't working, and is deficit prone. Now we have a two class society, haves and have nots. Weave in the side effects of Globalization, and you have the answers. I personally know people whose livelihood was transferred to India or China. Conversely I know people who have become exceptionally wealthy.
I think Beto O'Rourke's campaign proves that a politician can still engage voters across the spectrum. I'm also encouraged because he seems to have inspired young and first-time voters to come to the polls.
In general I like Brooks' columns, but his analysis seems too stark in this instance.
11
Assuming his description of the social division within the country and the depth of it is correct, there's no causal analysis, nothing sociological, in the column. Which makes it superficial and empiricist. Not to mention relativist and slapdash.
Residents of both red states and blue ones have to make an argument. There isn't one here.
8
"The Venn diagram is dead. There’s no overlapping area."
Come now. Our common humanity has not really blown apart just because some blowhard uses hostile overreaction as his political cudgel, even if he is president.
I'm from Philadelphia but lived and worked in Montana for some years in the 1970s. Even then, the goings on in DC were seen as distant, their echos hollow and indistinct. We coastal elites, including me had I not had that experience, would have a hard time fathoming their "conservatism."
It's connected fully to their lives, unlike the abstract set of "convictions" that comprises coastal conservative orientation. People really do try to solve their own problems. The community is the center, and if you're running for governor you better show up at the local September barbecue and get some of that red sauce on you face.
They are patriotic, hand over heart. The anthem is sung loud and clear at every high school game (I was a high school principal). But make no mistake: they were Montanans through and through.
They're not liberals, no, but, David, they're not conservative as you might envision, either. Yes, everyone has a gun, but I never felt safer in my life (except when driving 100 miles to a January basketball game in a near blizzard).
They don't like Trump's punk-ness, but I bet they love it when he tweaks our liberal noses and we bray in frustrated agony. Not taking Washington too seriously allows that.
That's DC, not the state!
7
This is Trump's greatest disservice to this country. As leader of the United States of America, is sworn duty, is to unite this country. He did have an opportunity to do that: he could have patched up Obamacare; he could have passed a much needed infrastructure bill; he could have passed a tax cut for the middle class; he could have passed a sane gun control bill, and he even could have passed an immigration bill that would have modernized the way we treat immigrants. But no, all of these possibilities for uniting the country were thrown away for cheap shot politics--really cheap shot. We have so many problems, with so many good solutions, but, instead we spend day after day wrapped up in the Trump bubble.
18
Mr. Brooks has written an erudite article on the stark differences in outlook and worldview between Democrat and Republican, urban and rural, right and left. However, he presents this issue in a value free way; some people like coffee with sugar and some don't. As Paul Krugman has so ably pointed out in his editorial today, the Republican plank is built on a foundation of lies, and Trump has appealed to the basest instincts and dark corners of people's psyche. To attempt to discuss and understand the great divide in this country without dealing with these facts is to miss the larger and critically important foundations of this divide.
46
If America is to be governed effectively, the polarization process (which has affected both Republicans and Democrats) must stop.
On the one hand, the Republicans have crafted an unholy alliance between the monied interests and the nativist fringe (who despite all objective evidence to the contrary) define their unhappiness with life as the simple product of illegal immigration, caravans and the risk to owning assault weapons. I don’t see this unholy alliance fracturing for so long as Trump remains in office, inciting the worst angels of people’s nature.
On the other hand, Democrats are now splintering into several strains of far left liberal causes, that (while commendable in their own right) either a) do not address the mainstream concerns of the electorate, or b) are unwinnable in the current climate (single payer healthcare for all).
Things must change here or we run the risk of six more years of the status quo. To avoid sinking further into this maelstrom, Democrats must coalesce around important issues of broader interest.
Issues like protection of the ACA and jobs (e.g.-worker retraining for higher wage opportunities). And ultimately, some relief on the deficit front, which (given a continued Republican majority), WILL translate into future cuts to programs like Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.
The point here is to restore some semblance of the Venn diagram and to begin the process of putting America on a better path.
5
@Garrison1
Good point however Ronald Reagan and Tip Oneil are dead.
As someone who lives in Ohio, I see nothing new here. This is the way Ohio has been aligned for decades. There is urban Ohio, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Dayton, Toledo, and Youngstown and the suburbs of these cities; and there is the rest of Ohio from the Ohio River to Lake Erie of dying small cities and struggling rural areas. This is why Ohio is a "swing" state but has gotten increasingly red with a series of moderate Republicans for Governor, and a rural Republican tilt in the Legislature. They don't like each other and it tells. This divide is nothing knew to Ohio.
2
The GOP “autopsy” pointed out the demographic time bomb awaiting the GOP. Rather than adapting, they chose to make one last stand and grab all they could. This included packing the courts and a totally unsustainable tax code. It would have included health coverage too, if not for John McCain’s conscience. The political gap we see is exists because no one from the GOP is reaching across the aisle. Obamacare (Heritage foundation Romneycare) was a major Democratic attempt to bridge that chasm and that was repulsed. The GOP has chosen its fate, and the beginning of the end is here. Good riddance.
16
The real story of this election is whether Democrats can successfully turn out a coalition to rebuild their electoral strength. While Obama was a highly skilled and inspirational leader, his presidency saw a hollowing out of Democratic strength in both Congress and state government. But Democrats have recruited an especially strong batch of candidates this year. In Sharice Davids, Richard Ojeda, Andrew Gillum you see the kinds of dynamic figures who could give Democrats a deep bench of electoral strength. But they have to win. Nationwide Democratic victories would be a clear repudiation of Trump's nationalism and a sign to the GOP that there are clear limits to the electoral viability of that nationalism. But those victories only happen if Dems turn out and vote as they didn't in 2016 and 2014.
4
This view of the American electorate is too static to be accurate. Even though the structure of Congress and the existence of the Electoral College as required by our Constitution favor a rural constituency, the majority is clearly urban and suburban and moving in that direction. The population as a whole is also increasingly more diverse. While I would argue that there is little evidence that people work harder in small towns and rural areas than in cities, it is probably true that rural areas favor more rigid concepts of gender roles and identity. That does not mean that there is a different reality there for actual humans. The country is changing. Change may actually accelerate in response to Trumpism with it’s ugliness. The small town that I taught school in for more than twenty years may still be majority Republican, but narrowly so. It is changing.
4
Rapid changes in technology and communications have unsettled people. Global warming has changed our outlook on safety and health. Population growth and migration are making some feel threatened. Dems and Republicans see the future differently. Dems acknowledge what's happening and want to work with it. Republicans want it to deny it and make it go away.
5
There are many who would like to see the big picture if for no other reason than to understand the conditions that need to be considered for living in and into. The broad declarations in this piece by Brooks would be useful to go by insofar as they’re actually the case. However, these aren’t documented at all. Traveling in 23 States is one thing; categorizing them with accuracy based on impressions is another. Free press allows for this. And that may be a problem when it comes to what is real vs. what may become real through mistaken or misunderstood observations. The way of expression here is the issue. But not to put too fine a point on this in the dis-service sense: Trump does this stuff all the time ... rumors to con his way through.
1
A superb column in the content and thoughtfullness which were the hallmark of Brooks until recently with his ability to plumb the sociological trends which were shaping America. He was becoming a bland bore, but perhaps the current reshaping of our country has revitalized him.
In true while the Venn diagrams might not overlap as much as they did, the pocketbooks do.
Try farming feed or food grains without futures or forward markets designed and run by the “elites” or commodity price support programs provided by government; as well as the current financial relief caused by trade actions by this administration. Good luck with that Farmers Almamac versus weather forecasts and satellites. For us city dwellers, we are aware of where our food comes from, who raises it and the costs involved and our inability to grow or raise enough within the city limits.
While lifestyles differ dramatically in urban versus non-urban and the interactions more intertwined within the cities and work places therein, rural America needs to better appreciate they, as well as the urban citizens, are dependent upon each other. We all need however to demand that racism, fears of differences in color, language, gender, education, etc are not to be tolerated...these are the essences of your very self and to whom you are dependent upon.
I see only one party that is closer to recognizing these dependencies and one other party which exploits these differences.
6
Good article. We have lived in that rural mid america for almost 40 years. However, what is missing from the article is the why. "In rural America, the sources of unraveling are the immigrants (symbolized by the caravan) and the radicalized mobs of educated elites (symbolized by the media). In rural America basic values like hard work, clear gender roles and the social fabric are dissolving before people’s eyes." All of those are the false perceptions of my fellow rural Americans, lies being fed and nurtured daily by the Republican party and right wing media. If I ask my fellow rural americans to give me data or actual facts about all of those perceptions, there is either silence or parroting whatever they last read or listened to. What is uncomfortable for them is what happens to their children, a majority of which move away for education or jobs. Once exposed to something other than conservative thought, the children start to think on their own and that is the scariest thing for rural america.
37
No, not yet. We aren't done for as a functioning democracy where people can have intersecting interests. And the two sides are not the parodies that Mr. Brooks makes them out to be. There are still a great many people in this country who just want things to work. They don't want to be screeched at when, in their lives, the major concerns are making a decent life for themselves and their families. These are folks who want the politicians, and the "news" organizations who carry their message to the detriment of fact, to just stop. As to the "elites", like David Brooks, and like many readers of the NY Times (including me), America has never had a huge affection for our brand of thinking, whether from the Left or Right. They see us as high-browed airheads who don't have to worry about day to day concerns.
5
I appreciate the perspective of wide travel. However, that must not blind us to what we already knew.
Both parties had internal problems, and the behavior since 2016 has been motivated in significant part by their need to deal with their own internal problems.
The Republican establishment found their party base captured by an outsider who was not really even one of them. They had to rein him in, and keep contact with their wayward base. On and off loyalty to him, combined with flames of fear and revulsion, was the chosen method.
The Democratic establishment in the first days after the election faced a very public rebellion from their donor elite. The donors were enraged, at the party, not Trump. Their money had been wasted, and their hopes dashed. Donations disappeared, and many were saying they'd wait a long time before considering more. The reaction inside the Democratic establishment was to blame anyone but themselves and light fires of fear and revulsion.
In both parties, they were preaching to the choir because they were losing even their choirs.
Such monomaniacal preaching to the choir produces what we see today, and ever more stimulated choir on each side.
The establishment like to think they've saved themselves, or mostly so. We'll see. I hope not, in both cases.
7
I agree that there is entrenchment, but the Grand Canyon theory of a divided country is incomplete because it doesn't take into account the vast number of people who don't even vote. What this makes evident more than anything else, is that much deeper change is needed. What could that be? How about getting the money out of politics? People feel as if their vote doesn't matter because only the money matters. What allows for all the lies and disinformation and incomplete information (economy is doing great...low unemployment... never mind the stagnant wages and the automation and the many people on disability) Money in politics which buys political ads and talking heads, the only thing most citizens unfortunately pay attention to. Another big change that is needed in how representation comes about, the long terms, the fact that states with low populations are given so much power in the Senate and in the electoral college. We need to find a way to change what really matters. Big money stands in the way. Is the will of all of the people ever going to prevail?
5
"The other big impression I get is that grand canyons now separate different sectors of American society and these canyons are harder and harder to cross." –– David Brooks
Some of this might have to do with the FACT that the top 20% of the wealthy in this country own and control over 85% of all the wealth. On the other side of the Grand Canyon is the bottom 40% who own nothing. The mythical Middle Class in America (the middle 40%) hovers precariously over the chasm with about 15 of the wealth to keep them in moderately decent circumstances.
Given these facts, Mr. Brooks, why do you insist that what divides us in opinions, theories, ideologies, beliefs, attitudes, cultural peculiarities, social norms, or whatever sociological insights that are popular this week? This is sort of like saying that the Feudal classes in the Middle Ages decided to "retrench" into their castles, suits of armor, and hovels.
15
We could straighten a lot out in the U.S. if we demanded a constitutional convention. Let's quit arguing over the same old issues (small-vs-big states, guns, abortion, citizenship) and revise it so that it reflects the current will of the people. This us-and-them mentality exists due to a number of structural problems currently existing in the American playbook that no longer serve us. This might also give voice to the vast majority of Americans whose voices have been squelched by Citizens United, the gun lobby and the electoral college.
10
@mrfreeze6
Be careful what you wish for. A constitutional convention could bring you everything you don't want, then you'd really need a revolution or a separation of Red and Blue states.
1
@pablo, In the end, we are living under the tyranny of a defacto oligarchy. We should at least try to change things and if Americans want to sink the ship, that's their right, isn't it?
1
I FERVENTLY DISAGREE With David Brooks's remarks. So did Mark Shields on last week's Friday News Hour on PBS. It's hard to get perspective when you're on the ground. I also do not believe that a single set of statistics without statements about the range of the conclusions as compared with other surveys is reliable. Still, I'm holding my breath. Truly, I fear that a red tide next Tuesday would well mean that all is lost in the US, defeated utterly by Trump's dictatorship.
16
David nothing really has changed. People hear what they want to hear and politicians tell them what they want to hear. It is a great study in sociology where we are able to clearly see how so many people are emotional reasoners and Republican mouthpieces such as Fox and Friends, Rush, Hannity, et al. are taking full advantage.
Turn our plutocracy back into a democracy by reversing Citizens United before it's too late.
34
Maybe so. But one reaction to this comment from Brooks: "In rural America basic values like hard work, clear gender roles and the social fabric are dissolving before people’s eyes." When their children don't conform, their children come to the urban areas, confused, bewildered, alone and without familial support, which is itself a cause for the dissolving of the social fabric!
14
While I respect Mr. Brooks's observations, let's not forget that the economy is doing pretty well right now, at least in conventional terms. That gives people the luxury, if you will, to focus on issues other than the ones related to the pocketbook. Given the GOP's tendency to crash the economy, and given the red lights that are already starting to flash on the national dashboard, that probably won't last. The Republicans are banking (pun intended) on the low unemployment numbers and slowly rising salaries to maintain them in power, even as they demolish democratic norms and indulge the right wing fringe. That could all change very quickly. Obama won in 2008 in no small part because of the financial crisis. With a soaring deficit, rising interest rates, a cooling housing market, and a mounting trade war, and Trump only halfway through his first term, things could go south right quick. Nothing like an economic calamity to really bring people together. Sad but true.
6
David, let’s explore the capitalism angle just a bit more. If there is a loss of faith in capitalism, which you equate with the American dream, it stems from the capitalists not sharing the benefits created through labor with the people doing the actual work. In addition to decades of stagnant wages and moving jobs overseas, and the concentration of the country’s wealth in fewer and fewer hands, Republicans have been undermining the American dream with their repeated tax cuts for those already wealthy. If the fabulously rich weren’t so endlessly greedy and shared enough of the fruits of labor with the average working person, maybe the American dream wouldn’t feel so out of reach for so many people.
63
@AJS
Abraham Lincoln's remarks about capitalism were true then and true now.
Labor is necessary for wealth or products to be produced, therefore I give the nod to labor . A. Lincoln
Paraphrasing.
11
@AJS
Capitalism never envisages the owners of capital sharing their spoils with the labor that was employed in creating it. At best labor only gets the minimum payment above the next alternative - which in most cases is unemployment. Capital will never distribute its return to labor - that is the reason some people believe in a progressive tax system. Capitalism is all about the rich get richer and the poor are kept in their place. Occasionally a poor person gets elevated to being rich, by discovering or inventing something or playing sport or entertaining. But by and large the roles of rich and poor are fixed in a capitalist model.
5
@AJS Don't forget Democrats have also been feeding at the same trough, especially with the Clintons' cozying up to Wall Street. It took two political parties selling out to financial elites to get the country where we are today.
1
While the research says that there hasn’t been much change in the support of those who voted for trump, the change in this election will prove to be the mobilization of those who didn’t engage and vote in the last election. These voters will prove the difference in this election. If there is one thing trump has done that actually benefits democracy it is to wake up citizens to stand up and vote. Let’s just hope it’s BLUE!
24
Once again, this country is at war with itself. And once again, it must decide whether to unite or divide. This time, hopefully, with ballots rather than bullets or bombs. True and effective governance in a democracy must rely on mutual respect, civil discourse and the willingness to achieve goals for the greater good through compromise.
The rest is just noise.
Vote.
7
Thank you, Mr. Brooks, this is one of your finest clarifications on our current state of affairs: The deepening political and social divide, between the rich and the poor, those living in our state capitals, those living in our rural regions, leading to an unraveling of our nation's well-being.
Let this American citizen take you to Russia one hundred years ago: 'My earliest recollections was the summer of 1918 when I was a little over four years of age. It was at the family breakfast table, my father came down to breakfast, took up his newspaper and expressed horror and shock at the news that Czar Nicholas had been shot along with his whole family at least it was then reported'. (Edmund T. Delaney addressing the dawn of the Bolshevik Revolution)
His relation, now living on property belonging to his ancestors in our rural land, wonders if the spirit of America could be broken. With an impoverished middle-class, the gap between the rich and the poor has never been so visible to some Americans in the times we are living.
Those in the most dire straits in our land, empowered by the reign of a rich populist president, is one way to lead to a revolution, keeping in mind the word revolution evolves in a variety of ways.
Whether the G.O.P. and The Rights of Our Constitution can place a brake on this unraveling remains to be seen. Trump is no longer mentioned in these parts.
3
One would hope that as a people we could revitalize the Venn Diagram by willfully and skillfully opening up and engaging thoughtfully. However, a "we are all in this together" culture rests upon common experiences that evoke empathy. Last century those common experiences were two world wars and a great depression. It may be that only broad and serious national trauma can engender this sense of America and force us to shed our mistrust and fear.
3
@Horsepower Sorry, but if you were a black person "last century" you would have had a way different "common experience". But to the present : We have a serious trauma going on right now, or haven't you noticed? Brooks has a facile explanation that erases reality: For instance, New York one might think is "solid blue", but then explain why there are so many Republican legislators in the state government. Apply that to most every state in the Union, whether so- called solid X or solid Y. This Red/Blue Urban/Rural binary thinking is silly.
@Here we go The Wars and the Depression were broad and deep experiences. Suffering, hardship, death and pain were extensive, though not every demographic experienced uniformly the same reality. From those traumatic national trauma's emerged a national identity that promoted advancement and compromise. Not without all kinds of turmoil, but when push came to shove, civility, respect for a loyal opposition, and our common good held. We will see if that is true in the future.
I have a radical idea: offer funding to all candidates, limit the dollar amount that can be spent on political advertising, and...abolish political parties. Without a party platform, candidates would have to choose key issues to run on and form their own proposals for dealing with those issues.
Without political parties, elections would be about issues, proposed solutions, and the candidates themselves. This could turn America purple. Hopefully it would also make government more responsive to everyday people.
14
@Mary M I disagree. We don't need NO political parties. We need MORE political parties. In a country of well over 300 million people, we have only two major parties. More parties means less hegemony, more debate, more coalitions, and a sense on the part of voters that they can actually vote FOR someone rather than just AGAINST. Unfortunately, everything in our system works against the formation of new parties, and it goes without saying that the Democrats and the Republicans will do everything in their power to keep the status quo.
6
@ProSkeptic: I’m not voting for a third party candidate, ever. Good luck with that!
@ProSkeptic
A 3rd political party will hurt one of the existing 2 parties and allow the remaining one of the 2 parties to benefit. That's why I'm against 3rd, 4th, or 5th parties. Jill Stein anyone?
While I often appreciate Mr. Brook's ability to think large, I don't think we have the luxury of detachment any more. Lamenting the great divide in the US distracts from the reality that democracy is imperiled, that the laws that bind us together are under attack, that journalism has become a high risk occupation, that the United States is no longer the land of opportunity, and that it will no longer stand up for liberal ideals of freedom of conscience against authoritarian encroachment. The time for moral equivalence is over. Choose one side and at least there is hope - choose the other and America closes the door on a century of astonishing accomplishment.
31
Agree in general with Brooks on this piece, but lest we forget, many of the ties that bind people who disagree politically still exist. Whether in a red, blue, or toss up states, people still rally for their team in their sports stadiums, basketball courts, and ice rinks. We still get behind our local schools, state universities, and hospitals. We are still giving big time to charity, which has increased by 5% to a record $410B in 2017. Also, American families are reconnecting because we have all learned by now, sensibly, not to bring up the President’s name at Thanksgiving dinner.
6
@Maura3 In our R run state of NC we do NOT support public education. Per pupil costs are at 2007 levels with not enough textbooks, supplies and adequate teacher pay for experienced teacher. Next on their agenda, our public university system that has endured budget cuts for the past 8 years. Meanwhile, state income tax cuts for the wealthy!
6
You nailed it Mr. Brooks. As someone who works in the blue machine (university setting) but as a first-gen faculty member has red-state attitudes I can see the divide clearly. And you capture it perfectly. Unfortunately, this one is much larger and more impregnable than the fence the president wants on our border (or the border the "caravan" expects to wander through). I don't think ours is crossable any more.
5
The now-standard answer of my college-educated white friends as to how they can still support Trump is this: I don't like his style, but I like what he's doing. It means a big tax cut and de-regulation of business. It means the right to pollute air and water. It means keeping immigrants out without acknowledging your own not-so-distant forbears who came to this country for work and a decent life. It means keeping wages low and ignoring worker/consumer safety. It means no more affirmative action or other civil rights initiatives. It means less welfare and more warfare. It's all about self-entitlement and sequestration of the successful. While keeping lower-class white Americans happy with the promise that they'll be "great" again.
111
@Richard,
Some lower-class white Americans are beginning to sense promises have been broken. They go about their daily business, with a growing unease of securing a viable livelihood, and some of the exhausted majority show courage.
Not all Americans aspire to be "great", but to be able to feed their children and send them to school, while feeling compensated by the Law of our Land. Hope is slowly diminishing in the autumn rain.
@Richard
well said!
@Richard
Very nice insight, sir.
While it may be true many republican and many democratic conversations have separate assumptions , separate subplots, and separate messages, that hardly means venn diagrams are dead or there are no longer overlapping goals. For most people most important goals are the same : good jobs, good education, and a good quality of lie. Get out of Washington and Washington pundits, most American overlap in societal desires. .
6
@cover-story,
While this sounds right, a Freudian slip on your part where 'lie' should be substituted for 'life', and where 'good health' has been omitted.
The despair. The Republican machine is at its core designed to undermine and if possible eliminate all barriers to the top one tenth of one percent's pursuit of of wealth and power. This goal mainly centers on the elimination of worker protections (i.e. unions) and the benefits those protections offer working people.
And yet rural America, which needs those protection the most, march willingly to their master's drummer.
Is it perhaps explained as a national Stockholm Syndrome situation?
16
@Will.
OK.
Look at Hillary Clinton donations in 2016. Via OpenSecrets.org, Paloma Partners donated $21 million to her campaign. Paloma Partners received $200 million in US taxpayer funds as part of the AIG bailout. Pritzker group donated $16 million. Renaissance Technologies donated $16 million too. Hedge funds, notorious for helping the working class. Is this the Democratic machine? Did they donate this money because they wanted more help and protection for working people or maybe they had other interests in mind? And donating to Senators Schumer or Gillibrand, looks like Lockheed and Pfizer. What a drumbeat you're following.
´... forces local candidates to act mostly like Trump or Pelosi stand-ins and less like themselves.
I have yet to read a Republican-leaning columnist in these or other pages who doesn't throw in a false equivalence somewhere in his article.
Nobody is running as a mini-Pelosi. In fact, some Democrats try not to be associated with the most succesful Speaker in recent memory, thanks to the vilification she has faced from the Republicans, who fear her effectiveness.
The president, as you say, makes everything about himself, Pelosi concentrates on the party. How can you even mention the two in the same breath? Because as a Republican, you can't help it.
Trump really does make it all about himself - it's the way of the autocrat. Democrats on the other hand, have the luxury of focusing on bread-and butter issues on which your party, Mr Brooks, has sold people down the river. Trump wants to make this election about fearing poor Latinos, which just demonstrates the void in the Republican Party. They can only campaign on fear.
95
Mr. Brooks. You have chosen to describe what appears to be a potentially fatal disease without distinguishing between the invasive virus and the potential antibodies. The antibodies we need are: adherence to facts, evidence, reason, and science. The hospital environment in which the body politic might begin to heal is one in which the doctors embody compassion and generosity. What you fail to do is to describe the invasive virus as lethal. Instead, you treat the virus and antibodies as somehow equal and neutral players. A cure requires an accurate and candid diagnosis, not hands off observation.
42
Brooks is the master of false equivalences. ‘Each side is to blame’. But those rural values are based on the falsehoods promoted by Fox News and the likes. Yesterday NPR profiled Newt and his efforts to undermine civil discourse, which lead to Mitch and Trump.
2
If it is true that all political views are entrenched, then there will be stagnation. Mexico had the same party ruling for some 75 years or so.
7
The electorate is not binary. Pew Research does a pretty good job of segmenting voters into quite a few different groups. You can take a quick quiz to find out which best fits you.
http://www.people-press.org/quiz/political-typology/
The real issue for 2018 is not simplistically Red vs Blue tribalism, it is about who shows up to vote in Nov 2018. It appears that women and diverse and younger people are far more motivated than older white guys, and especially around specific policies that concern them.
Whatever happens, and we won't know next week with some races given the legal challenges to GOP vote suppression efforts, it will surely mark a turning point. Both 2018 and 2020 will be critical, at state and Federal levels, especially because of redistricting based on the 2020 Census.
But the best possible outcome next week will be far greater voter participation so that Congress begins to better reflect the diversity of the country, not only in gender and ethnicity, but also economic, regional and every other way.
With the Trump tax cuts, it is clear who is currently pulling the strings in DC. Lets start to get rid of the candidates that serve the money rather than the people.
20
We just had our gubernatorial debate. I say this as a true blue Democrat / liberal / progressive. If the Republicans ever come to their senses, they would have a landslide win by running Charlies Baker. I prefer Democrats, particularly for a slightly more knowledge-based understanding of climate change/global warming, as well as a desire to help everyone, not just the wealthy and successful. And religion, honestly! How can anyone following Trump excuse his multiple hypocrisies, his unjustified arrogance, his lies, his cheating, his contempt for anyone who gets in his way. Victim blaming, hatemongering, cowardly bullying, the list goes on and on.
On climate, Charlie Baker, asked about the best thing to do for our economy, said we need to work on climate change and shift to clean renewable energy. I know, because I've studied the record and positions, that his opponent is better on climate. But to hear this from a Republican, and he used his considerable honest charm and intelligence to present it, was a welcome surprise.
There is only one path to survival, let alone returning to our American ideals, and that is to pay attention and stop trying to find more victims to blame and people to hurt.
If we work together to solve problems, we just might make it.
22
@Susan Anderson,
There is something self-serving and selfish about some of these 'White Evangelical Christians', causing this American with a strong believer in the power of faith to wonder if they understand the true meaning of a camel passing through the eye of a needle, and the struggle of a rich man to reach the Gates of Heaven.
Suffer on Earth, while believing that one's manor is waiting in Heaven, is one refrain, and it would be of interest if some of these self-proclaimed Christians would listen to former President Carter.
2
@Miss Ley
I enjoy your comments very much. I gave up on religion but not on spirituality, but it distresses me that so many people on my "side" are ignorant of the very Christian arguments against these hypocrites!
All the best to you!
3
I've read and thought about your piece, David. And the more I think about the points you make, the more I believe they are true and reflect current life in the United States.
It is difficult to put ourselves in others shoes. People who live in rural America do not have the exact same struggles, challenges, social experiences, or lifestyle as people who live in urban America.
But simply because we do not live the same lives does not mean we cannot respect, listen to and like one another. Nor does it mean we do not share many of the same type of life experiences.
People live hectic lives in both urban and rural America. And when I visit rural parts of America, I see much to like. Beautiful natural landscapes, interesting homes nestled between hills, hard working shopkeepers with kind eyes and a ready laugh, outdoorsy kids having fun on playgrounds, and a warm feel to the neighborhoods. And surprisingly, when I think of my life living in urban areas (well, mostly suburban life), I see pretty much of the same attributes as what I see in rural America.....except the homes are alot closer to each other.
Maybe we all need to get out and visit the other's habitat more often. We need to experience the fun that is happening in parts of the country that we're not familiar with.
By realizing we are part of one nation, that we can laugh at the same jokes and can see good and fun things where others live, we may realize we are not as far apart as you depict.
That's my hope....
11
@Ed,
'Hard working shopkeepers with kind eyes and a ready laugh, outdoorsy kids having fun on playgrounds, and a warm feel to the neighborhoods' are becoming a precious commodity in many parts of rural America these days, and we are going to need more than hope, in order to share more enlightened laughter, as one nation under this presidency and its administration.
I think you may have missed the pulse of America Mr. Brooks. The tide appears to be turning away from xenophobia, racism, and nationalism, toward a more inclusive, egalitarian spirit. Even in rural areas, this trend appears to be rising. And just in time.
12
The problem, David, is those people with loaded rifles by their doors have more say in who becomes president, who rules Congress. who gets nominated for the Supreme Court. They can hate anybody with an education, but their vote has an oversized influence. Does anybody think it's fair that a state with 500,000 people should have equal representation in the Senate with a state with 40 million?
95
Interesting that Mister I've-Been-Everywhere had to rely on a Times reporter to get that quote. Our Mr. Brooks sticks with the Costco-and-country-club subset of RealAmerica™, where he feels safe.
3
Trump has not created these divisions, but he has ruthlessly exploited them. All citizens of this country should ask themselves whether that is the sort of a leader that they want to have. The only people who benefit from these divisions are Trump and his cronies in the economic elite.
16
"In urban America people talk about Trump constantly & in rural America people generally avoid the subject."
Trump is now the unspoken "truth" in rural America, especially around people like Mr. Brooks. The upscale rural Republican, increasingly self identifying as "independent" knows the enemy when he sees one & will not wear his MAGA hat any more than express his wonderment over why the term "colored" is no longer in vogue.
Careful though Brooks in using your intuition in determining political preference out in the country. Masked intention is almost becoming a perpetual Halloween here in the sticks. In that sense, civility is on the rise.
9
if this election was held after many, many Americans found out when they do their income taxes, that the great "tax cut" doesn't apply to them, but mostly to only a group of folks at the top of the food chain, they might react in a very different way.
9
Brooks should pay attention to the Senate race in Montana, my home state. Here, the incumbent, a moderate Democrat, is running against a fanatically Trumpian Republican, Matt Rosendale. Trump has turned up repeatedly in the state to stump for Rosendale, as has VP Mike Pence. Polls show Tester with a slight lead. If Tester wins, it will be proof that a well-liked, hard-working, centrist Democrat can win in a Red State that's Trump country.
24
@uncanny
As I have said before:
Jon Tester is the perfect Democrat for Montana. He is also most likely to represent the entire state with his ability to understand the farmer, rancher, Great Plains and Rocky Mountain folks.
Montana is only 65 miles from the Washington Border so it's common to see Big Sky folks in the Evergreen State. I've never heard any of them say a bad word about Tester in over a decade. The state is far more contrary than WA but I'm hoping that Treasure State folks remember who has done a fine job for them in DC all these years.
9
@uncanny There is a history in Montana of voters choosing Republicans for president and Democrats for the House and Senate. Tester is a great representative for Montanans. Williams, a Democrat who is running against the Republicans incumbent who assaulted a reporter, is another person who would represent Montanans well. I grew up in Montana, and I wish I could vote for both.
1
The circles may not overlap much in the Venn diagram, but the urban and educated circles are larger, I think. However, they are kept from dominating political outcomes by gerrymandering, an outdated and dysfunctional political representation system (as exemplified by the U.S. Senate), and various forms of voter suppression and disenfranchisement implemented by the GOP.
22
Come across the river to New Jersey and talk with campaign volunteers who are canvassing this weekend. We all remember when Leonard Lance (R-NJ07) was a moderate on climate change, health care, and gun control. But now he is so ineffective that many of the folks who voted for Lance in past elections are now volunteers for Tom Malinowski. Moderate Independents are becoming activist Democrats!
10
We are one country- there is something in the Venn
diagram intersection.
I know how difficult it is to talk with those who get their news from other sources. Yes- it feels like someone is from another universe. I either show my agitation and speak too “shrilly” because I am outraged, or a walk away and develop a headache. Or both. I know it seems impossible to find common ground.
Maybe someday we will have a candidate that can remind us that we really are one country. Our current president doesn’t understand this apparently. The history and constitution can be celebrated by both sides. Truly, peace and prosperity in our land benefit both sides. We are still one country.
When both “sides” get that we all win. There is a lot in the center of the Venn but somehow, led by divisive folks, we don’t recognize it. If we have financial collapse, we basically all suffer. When we are attacked we all suffer. We are still one country with our longings for freedom, peace, and prosperity in the center, but we have forgotten that. We have been led astray.
.
5
I have come to despise political parties. I blame them for most of the dysfunction of our state and national governments and the poor choices we often have in general elections. Even elections for local offices are skewed by party labels when the party's platform or prevailing ideology has little or nothing to do with local government, school boards, district attorneys and sheriffs. Our elected representatives should have no loyalty to anyone but the voters they made campaign promises to, and even then, they should listen to constituents who did not vote for them and modify their original positions if enough of them speak out for or against specific legislation being debated. As it is, party "unity" and loyalty is considered a greater virtue than "doing the will of the people."
4
@abigail49 I, on the other hand, am a great believer in parties. In their best form, they gather a set of beliefs and principles together and give the voter something to consider. They furnish some kind of discipline for the candidate and the voter. And remember the candidate can always add his or her own twists and recommendations. Without this discipline elections become what they are now that Donald Trump has emerged. They become all about a personality, and, in this case the personality is very stunted and poisonous and anti democratic, not conservative at all as he would throw out the accumulated accomplishments of 200 plus years of democratic government achievement.
11
This is unhelpful commentary. Even in the 1860s there were significant segments of the Confederate states that disagreed with the Confederacy and slavery. Just as now some 40% of
"deep red" and rural states vote Democratic. It's a matter of degree, not total cultural difference. Just in the last 15 years of so, e.g. Virginia has gone from red to purple to blue. North Carolina from red to purple. Arizona and, Colorado, and Nevada are definitely a blend of Western urban and Western rural. Georgia, as well, seems on the cusp.
The only places dialogue no longer exists are Fox News and right wing radio. Everywhere else in everyday life, people talk to each other, do business and get along as best they can.
This isn't to say the two main parties haven't bought into this dichotomy. If the GOP had nominated almost any one of their candidates except Trump, a mainstream Republican would have been Eisenhower II. But the Fox/Gingrich model dominated the debate and now they/we have the chaos we have.
24
We will need to break this pattern to address global warming. Unfortunately, a (by definition regressive) carbon tax will only amplify division and further limit competition, so there will need to be some other policy prescription both parties can stick with.
3
What has happened to American democracy is epitomized by this sentence: "In Missouri, for example, the Republicans are running Josh Hawley for Senate." It's not that Hawley is running as a Republican; rather, Hawley is the horse the Republican Party has put its money on, hoping for a winning payoff.
Nothing about Hawley the man matters except that he will vote as directed by McConnell, who takes his direction from Trump, who takes his direction from his personal likes and hates. Heaven help us!
14
What in the world happens when we have a recession in 2020 with the stock market down by 50 per cent. or more --and a huge amount of unemployment . What happens to the rural Trump supporters then in what will be a rather different country then the place we are living in now?!
6
"The Venn diagram is dead. There’s no overlapping area."
Good.
1
Hopefully the difference is that the anti-Rump majority will actually vote D down the line in 2018 as compared to starting home or voting third party in 2016. Hopefully the complacency is there less. Rump voters are a lost cause, the non voters are the real news, Mr Brooks- which way they are going to vote, if at all, will determine what happens with 2018 and 2020.
2
Meanwhile, of course, life goes on not really much different than before, whatever one's particular political views. Everyone I know is still more interested in making money, providing for their families, guiding their children, and with the usual range of activities that concern normal Americans instead of being consumed unduly with what some politician says or does, same as they were under Eisenhower or Johnson or Reagan or Clinton or any of the others. Politicians come and go, thankfully, and the issues that seem so imminent and divisive at one moment always give way to new problems or new variations on the old ones. I've never met any American in a reasonably long life, whatever their social class, ethnic background, religion, race, or political inclination that I have ever had the slightest difficulty speaking with in a civil manner about current affairs or anything else for that matter. It really shouldn't be all that complicated find plenty of intersections.
6
@Frunobulax This an illusory peace and may be even a distraction from vital issues.The contrast between the parties and the stakes are much greater than any other time in the last 50 years. For example: the impact of climate change will be catastrophic if not addressed. One party endorses the consensus hammered out by scientists around the world over several decades of research. The other party refuses to accept this and actively undermines remedies. I’m sorry, I am angry and I do not apologize for refusing to smile at anyone who supports the madness of the modern Republican party and its president.
7
What Mr. Brooks is doing in his travels is what was asked of the Times after missing Trump's appeal. That is, for the Times to listen more broadly. That's good. What is not good is to come away assuming that the Venn diagrams don't intersect.
In our hybrid form of republic and democracy, both circles in the diagram can threaten to take control, and one faction "win." Madison pointed this out in Federalist 10, which is worth reconsideration by all. The design of the system to combat that tendency is brilliant. The people often follow the Constitution's basic dynamics, no matter what some individual may say about what she or he may think about the "other" side. Although it was good of Mr. Brooks to reach out and travel to hear more, Mr. Brooks might now spend a little less time on the road, and a little more time reviewing the Federalist Papers.
If we end up with a split Congress, then, somewhere on an angel's wing, Madison will be smiling.
2
@Dave Oedel I would say that generally and historically you and Madison are correct. But we are in a unique crisis. Right now, it really matters that one party defeat the other and rapidly moves the country forward. It is the party that accepts scientific consensus, seeks positive relations with our allies, advocates for human rights, and nurtures our democratic institutions. The Democratic party needs to be in control of Congress until we escape the current insanity and a worthy contending party arises.
5
This is an excellent essay. There is a great divide in the US. I'm not sure which side I stand on.
That's because I was raised in a red state by parents and grandparents who believe in traditional family values. In fact, I was schooled in Christianity of the Seventh-day Adventist variety.
But even in high school I questioned the beliefs I was taught. If the earth is only 6000 years old, how was the Grand Canyon formed? By the flood you say? But how does a flood cause all of those switchbacks and canyons that look like earlier beds of the Colorado River?
Although I came to reject my faith I could never quite reject the people who had raised me. Therefore I have a somewhat mixed view on politics.
In the university the prevailing opinion was that all evil in the US is caused by racism or a suppression of this or that minority.
But i had learned to abandon what I could not confirm, and I rejected this view. The impact of population growth seemed more important. The book Limits to Growth which appeared in 1972 seemed like a key to understanding many world problems.
Unfortunately, it was China that took the message of Limits to Growth to heart, not the US. The Chinese introduced a one-child policy in 1979.
Now 40 years later, it seems that population growth is finally hitting the US with a vengeance. The migrant caravan from Honduras is a message: Many in the third world are facing desperate conditions.
But it seems we need to limit births not open our borders.
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@Jake Wagner Birth rates are plummeting nearly everwhere in the world.
I was raised Adventist in similar environs. Interesting you landed on the issue of overpopulation. Remember how the book of Jonah ends?
"In urban America people talk about Trump constantly. In rural America people generally avoid the subject."
Mr. B., the second half of that statement is quite telling, and gives away a crack in your argument. One would not expect enthusiastic supporters to be so reticent. Could it be be that a good many of them have misgivings but are afraid to express them openly in front of their trump-loving peers, who themselves may not be as trump-loving as they appear; or that they are just embarrassed to admit that they have been victims of a big-time scam?
In that case, while the Venn diagram may still be dead, there could have seen a significant population transfer from one side to the other.
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@mancuroc There was an interesting approximately 10-minute video vignette on NPR earlier this week. They visited Poplar Bluff, Missouri and spoke to maybe half a dozen or more employees of a local nail-manufacturing plant, including the plant manager. They were all nominally Trump supporters, and even in the face of his tariffs holding the Sword of Damocles over all of them literally every day, all but one professed to still support him. However--their faces, eyes and the way they spoke betrayed them. They all know, somewhere deep down, that they've been conned.
I can't predict how this will affect their midterm vote. Most of them will probably stay with them (and to be fair I doubt their lot will improve much even if the Dems win, or if they'd won in 2016). However, when you're living hand-to-mouth in rural Missouri and you have to tell yourself that even if the guy you voted for costs you your job, but it's worth it because he's doing "what's best for America" then maybe you'll understand one day what happened.
Shame on Donald Trump for conning these desperate people.
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@Kip
Good point. I've also noticed in the last week or two in clips of his rallies that the fans arrayed behind him are less boisterous and some of them look quite sullen.
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@mancuroc,
There is a great dislike for the word 'Liberal' in the rural regions, and it might help voters if David Brooks centered on this point and offered further clarification on this term.
In the meantime, this American wishes to thank him for having done his home travel these last few months, while remembering the exchange he had with a downtrodden man in Idaho who told him that Trump would be elected to the presidency.
If the Democrats had not been oblivious while the Republicans methodically captured the levers of voter suppression and voter minimization (gerrymandering), and if Obama had not discouraged Joe Biden from challenging Hillary, Trump would be a reality TV sideshow and David would have written a different column.
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Mr. Brooks,
"Nobody is moving just settling in place."
I can see from your perspective that you hold this to be true and I ask how do you feel about that? For the last several years you have worked hard to create a vision for bring both sides together. Your tone is frustration and disappointment.
I remember as a bright and budding psychologist realizing I had lost my first married couple to divorce AND I was the last to know.
I have no idea if the two political parties can ever be friends again or whether Republican old men and their liberal Democratic children can ever be close again. I do know that if that ever does happens its going to take a lot more speaking truth to power. It's going to take perhaps the equivalent of the South African Trials, Truth and Reconciliation process. Its going to get worse before.
Sometimes the patient needs to hit the wall.
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Mr. Brooks desperately clings to the belief that his Republican party reluctantly embraced Mr. Trump, and his ideas, after he was elected president. Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth. The Republicans have been embracing Mr. Trump and his fellow travelers since at least Newt Gingrich, and arguably since Regan.
Now comes the time to reap what has been sown. And all that is heard is the rending of clothing and great wailing about "How did we get to this point?" Spare us the platitudes - there is no question about how it happened. The only real question is what, if anything, Republicans will do about it. Judging from the last two years, the obvious answer is nothing.
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@ECGAI
Right. The Republicans were the trump party-in-waiting. It will be their undoing - if not next week, then all the more in 2020.
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@ECGAI Brooks was the trail-blazer of today's Republicans rationalization: I may not like his rhetoric but I like the results.
In over 30 years as a NYT reader and PBS watcher I can't recall Republican Brooks ever objecting in principle or in ideology to any of the Republicans' achievement. He toed the line carefully and diligently, like the quacking goose he is expected to be.
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@ECGAI
Many Republican politicians must have experienced Trump as a great relief: no more need to conceal your racism, misogyny, xenophobia, your contempt for democracy, your worship of wealth, etc., etc. Throw away the dog whistle!
2
This column nails it. Trump isn't the problem. It's the 62 million people who voted for him. No matter what happens on Tuesday they are not going to see the light & magically morph into progressives. If anything they will become more dedicated in winning the cultural war that has divided this country. The GOP may hate the way Trump is governing but they will never do anything to advance the liberal agenda. If you're wondering what it would take for the GOP to break with Trump the answer is nothing. Repubs are playing the long game. Trump will be gone soon. They will still be here. The GOP can wait him out & achieve all of their objectives. They have their eyes on a bigger prize. Their goal is to nominate 3-4 very conservative Supreme Court justices. Trump has gotten two SCOTUS appointments, he may get more. He’s moved faster on lower-court appointments than Obama did. The legal arm of the conservative movement is probably the best organized, most far-reaching & far-seeing sector of the Right. They truly are in it — and have been in it — for the long term goals. Control the Supreme Court, stack the judiciary, and you can stop the progressive movement, no matter how popular it is, no matter how much legislative power it has. Nothing will get in the way of that goal. For now Trump serves their agenda. The Democrats are going to lose the Senate. That means the GOP will control the most important lever of power in government: the judiciary. The shift to the right will continue.
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@Bill Brown
This is what Jill Stein voters voted for: a cemented ultra-conservative judiciary for the rest of my life. They were told, warned, and begged to think beyond the emotional arrogance of their purity demands to protect the progressive accomplishments of the last one hundred years. They chose to destroy them by indirectly electing Trump. They knew exactly what they were doing. Thanks a lot, Stein voters. I’ll hold you responsible to my grave.
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@Bill Brown There is a reason the stars and bars are still venerated by millions, and not just south of the Mason-Dixon Line. The Confederacy seceded for a single reason. Lincoln was murdered for a single reason. Andrew Johnson set the stage for another century of Jim Crow, and the beneficiaries of white supremacy will not relinquish power easily. George Wallace and Strom Thurmond weren’t kidding. David Duke is not kidding. Donald Trump is not kidding.
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I’m increasingly convinced that we need to peacefully separate into blue and red America, each with their own government. Each side would get what they want and as Americans we could peacefully compete to see which side really has the best ideas. Nothing ever gets accomplished under our current system. It’s time for a drastic change.
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@M. Gorun: That could have worked in 1861, when the two sides were in clearly defined geographical areas.
Today, every state without exception has both blue and red areas, usually blue cities, purple suburbs, and red rural areas.
If we, God forbid, had another civil war, it would be like Bosnia or Rwanda.
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@M. Gorun I could not agree more. I believe that the average Trump voter, and I know several of them, and I have profound and fundamental differences in worldview, moral and spiritual principles and family values. I respect their right to believe what they believe and expect them to respect my right to my beliefs. But no one wants to be oppressed by another group's religious dogma or family values. It goes way beyond politics and it will not be solved by politics. We have crossed the Rubicon, the die has been cast. We need to peacefully dissolve our political bands with each other. This is the only way to avoid another bloody American Civil War.
@M. Gorun We are paying the price of the political myopia of those Funding Fathers. Slavery should have never been the object of a compromise. Never. The South would have collapsed under the weight of its own abominations, after a popular revolution duly supported by the North. Instead...
We're in separate conversations? More like separate planets. Trump supporters are no longer interested in traditional American and/or Judeo-Christian-Islamic values, given that they've chosen to embrace a leader who has demonstrated over and over again that he's a racist, a xenophobe, a misogynist and a homophobe. And a cheat, a narcissist, a bully, and a pathological liar. And a man who's willing to abandon (let alone chastise) our nation's allies while catering to its sworn enemies. And a man who freely attacks the media (mostly for the "crime" of quoting him) as well as the nation's justice department. And a man who has suddenly decided that he's bigger than the Constitution, willing to subvert it in order to declare that children who were born here aren't necessarily American citizens. Any one of these attributes should be sufficient reason for turning away from this man- never mind the consequences of his absurd and often inhumane policy decisions. Are those who live in rural America really so embittered and/or so willfully ignorant that they're ready to dismiss all of the above in favor of the toxicity that our feckless leader has brought to every aspect of our public life? Perhaps the rest of us should avoid American produce for a while. Who's to say where its been?
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A comment that proves Mr. Brooks’ point. I’m a middle-aged, highly-educated white guy who donated money to Obama and Bill Nelson twice. The second time despite Obama’s complete surrender to the Wall Street thieves posturing as bankers.
Now, the same Democrats who unabashedly praised my wisdom and decency when I supported Obama, now feel free to call me the most vile names imaginable because I voted for someone other than the anointed one (Hillary). How dare I reject the candidate they selected for me to support!
When Trump is re-elected, it’ll be because Democrats have become the party of politically correct fascism.
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@John
Well, sorry. The democrats are not going to come up with a racist, anti-immigrant, sexist, anti-healthcare, illegal platform to bring you back.
This is what I tell my independant friends (former, mostly) when they blame the democrats for Trump. They wanted to vote for him and have to blame somebody. Remind you of anyone.
Also, the bully angle is always, "Look at what you made me do".
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@John
They don't care that you rejected Hillary. She is irrelevant at this point to everyone except Trump and his supporters. They care because Trump is incompetent and a menace to our democracy, who is playing on people's fears and worst impulses and dragging down the country with him. Please don't vote out of resentment. That is what got us into this mess.
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Sounds like you're arguing for national partition, David.
We tried that once before, and it didn't work out too well--but maybe we had the wrong idea then, and should have just let those states that wanted to go, go.
Perhaps it is time to decide just how much longer this house divided against itself can be propped up, and if the patches and occasional dabs of spackle are worth it.
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@Glenn Ribotsky We had the chance twice: when "we" compromised on slavery to form one country instead of two, and with the South's secession.
Had the South seceded, the Confederation would have collapsed in a few years, demolished by an internal revolution helped by a navy blockade.
Instead we choose to keep the monster inside our own body and we have been paying the price ever since.
@Glenn Ribotsky
Lincoln made a mistake. He should have let them go. The South would now be like Mexico or Bolivia, and the North would be like California.
1
Took me awhile to respond to David. Because if the message is that we’re divided red-blue by geography, and increasingly more so by the day … well, then, there’s not much to say to an observation that handkerchiefs are usually white.
But, actually, I think more is at stake than mere retrenchment. If Dems indeed flip the House, then one of two things will happen. Either forward movement of any kind that requires legislation will grind to a halt, and the frozen political state that existed 2011-2017 characterized by continuing resolutions and a basically useless Congress will be re-imposed; or, Trump will get to work to cobble together a different coalition that includes moderate and more conservative Democrats (won’t need a lot) – and I believe that he’s quite capable of doing that if he must – and legislation will pass that is less conservatively extreme. Then, of course, Trump and the Senate will proceed one way or another to redefine the federal bench basically unopposed.
I could live with the second outcome but I’d be very angry at the first. Yet that’s the message that Trump is broadcasting to energize the base as well as right-leaning independents: frozen politics AGAIN if Democrats win the House. That message could keep the House Republican – and that’s not retrenchment but ENtrenchment.
3
@Richard Luettgen: It certainly wouldn't constitute ENrichment. Give me "frozen politics" anytime if the only alternative is the rule of the right-wing, the rich and the greedy.
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@Richard Luettgen
"or, Trump will get to work to cobble together a different coalition that includes moderate and more conservative Democrats (won’t need a lot) – and I believe that he’s quite capable of doing that if he must"
Can you adduce any evidence in support of that belief? Because Trump can barely work with a legislative branch that's totally GOP-controlled. I've yet to see the slightest indication that he possesses anything resembling coalition-building skills. He's much better at tweeting insults at people he doesn't like.
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@Richard Luettgen: "Either forward movement of any kind that requires legislation will grind to a halt, and the frozen political state that existed 2011-2017 characterized by continuing resolutions and a basically useless Congress will be re-imposed."
Follow the logic. When a Democrat was in the White House and Republicans controlled the House, political gridlock was the Democratic president's fault, since the GOP had no choice but to block his "far-left agenda." But when a Republican is in the White House and Democrats control the House, "frozen politics" will then be...Democrats' fault, since they'll be preventing the GOP's "forward movement."
Right.
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"The Venn diagram is dead. There’s no overlapping area."
This would seem to be correct.
It is doubtful, however, that the Venn diagram was ever relevant or correct in American society.
Mr. Trump has simply opened the existing Pandora's box of division and fragmentation.
The last time the United States of America was really united, more or less, was probably World War II.
So the only unraveling that is really going on is the sham of some sort of existing unity.
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What Mr. Brooks fails to mention is how the GOP and Donald Trump are encouraging the divide as much as they possibly can. I've listened to a lot of presidents and until now I never heard any president praise someone for doing a body slam on a reporter. I never heard a president call the media or its reporters enemies of the people. I never heard a president encourage violence the way I've heard this one encourage it. Trump admires violent people: look who his heroes are, Putin, Duterte, and any other strongman who catches his eye. Look at what he's willing to accept from Saudi Arabia about the butchering of Kashoggi.
You can go on all you want about rural and suburban, Democrat and Republican, gender, and the idea that one group is clearer on the unraveling of America than another. You're missing the point. We don't have good choices in our elections any longer. We haven't for a long time. The people who might be able to make a difference have been unwilling to run or, if they are in office, to run again. It's the money that's tainting things, the dark money from the uber rich who, thanks to the Citizens United decision, are turning America into their own private kingdom. The real divide here now is the richest versus the rest of us. The ending for the rest of us, unless things change, isn't going to be good.
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@hen3ry Ignoring that division is their strategy. Ignoring that those ‘rural’ views are formed by near complete lying on every subject. Ignoring that the President of the United States of America, after ridiculing a prisoner of war, threatening the free press, threatening to imprison political opponents cannot, cannot unequivocally denounce racists and their language.
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@hen3ry
Brava, Times one thousand. Seriously.
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@hen3ry
Trump may admire violent, strong people but if you notice he always has someone else do the dirty work for him. He is a bully and a coward who runs his mouth and then peeks through the coat tails of an army of lawyers and security people
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C'mon, Mr. Brooks, start being honest about Trump and the Republicans. I laughed out loud when I read this passage, written by you:
"The Republicans were saddled with an unpopular president, and the normal thing to do would have been to try to get House races to turn on local issues. But Trump makes everything about himself, and so has nationalized all the races."
That is seriously one of the funniest things you've ever written.
Republicans were not "saddled" with Donald Trump.
Trump started denigrating President Obama years ago, delegitimizing him and his presidency.
I remember how Republicans stood up to Trump, called him out on his libel and slander.
Oh, that's right. Republicans smirked and went along with the birther lie.
They went along with everything Trump said during his presidential campaign, except for an occasional weak protest. They could have stopped him at one point, but went along with this orange-haired Frankenstein.
Then they went all in when they saw - in their world - that the ends justified the means.
Republicans control all branches of government and not once - not once - have they stood up and not gone along with his noxious statements and actions.
Republicans are feckless cowards and conservative columnists who continue to argue whatabioutism are as pitiful as the Republican Congress, who allows the Trump kleptocracy to flourish, without any investigations in two years.
Vote out these noxious Republicans.
Vote Democrats in November 6th.
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@V
If I remember correctly, all they wanted was any Republican in the White House to sign the bills they would send him.
Well, they got "any".
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@JKile yes, they did. One can only hope that they choke on it soon. Quality didn't matter. Competence didn't matter. Integrity was of no concern. What they wanted was a man, preferably white and bigoted, who would allow them to do what they have wanted to do for decades: destroy the social safety net under the guise of saving the country.
16
David Brooks tries to sum up the differences between rural and urban Americas' fears, contrasting:
"In rural America, the sources of unraveling are the immigrants (symbolized by the caravan) and the radicalized mobs of educated elites (symbolized by the media)."
with
"Urban Americans see the unraveling coming from the rising tide of nativism, the way Trump eviscerates social norms, the underground army of alt-right extremists with guns."
Although those quotes can speak for themselves, let me emphasiye that the first one is basically paranoid fantasy and the second established fact. Point being, here in incredibly diverse Queens, I pretty much trust everyone in my apartment complex.
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@gwr Right. And it's not only about Trump 'eviscerating social norms', it's about Trump and the Republicans undermining the institutios of the Republic and the international order that has served America so well for the past 70 years.
10
False equivalence, elevated and expanded to a column.
2
It's head in the sand time for some
In payment for hatred to come
Being PC's a sin
Non-hater's can't win,
They've a POTUS conveniently dumb.
15
David says that in rural America basic values such as hard work and the social fabric are unraveling. That may be true, but if so it's *not* the fault of blue states, at least not California. I often take Uber pool late at night in San Francisco - sharing a car with extremely hard working and very diverse people. Many also put energy into block parties, volunteer activities, soccer and little league coaching. If rural America is falling apart please do NOT blame these people. As for traditional gender roles, most are boringly hetero. That they support their transgender peers does not seem to tear apart their home lives or identities. I am truly empathetic to the social and economic crisis in poor rural areas. But blaming it on my fellow west coast citizens is a non-starter. We want to help; but it's not our fault.
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Trump is a vulgar bigoted narcissist who has disgraced the office of President. When someone supports a vulgar bigoted narcissist it says a lot about who they are.
455
The true definition of the American Character perhaps?
2
@W.A. Spitzer
So true and so sad that I agree with your statement. My wife has a good female friend, perhaps one of her three closest female friends who voted for the Grifter-in-Chief. I have come to the conclusion that she is one of those who like my grandmother always said: "would vote for the Devil as long as there is an ' R ' behind his name." I am unable to understand how this has happened. Were you not paying attention? I actually discuss this conundrum with my therapist. We, the therapist and I, have not come up with a satisfactory explanation as to how I should handle this relationship going forward. I am between a rock and a hard place.
4
Totally agree!,,
2
I agree that this is probably a realignment. But the realignment is happening because a chunk of ancestral Republicans are abandoning the party altogether. These are not only college-educated suburban women, but also men who hail from what was once called "The Establishment". They are partners in law firms, businessmen and other well-educated elites who once put up with the GOP's positions with which they disagreed in the interest of GOP economic policies which favored them. Their numbers may not be large, but they wield enormous influence. Their ideology is what is prudent and sound. Trump has proven himself to be capable of neither.
For these groups, Trump has proven to be a bridge too far and his protectionism is an economic policy that is not in their interest. The economic world in which they operate is a global one and, as employers, they recognize the value immigrants bring to the US economy. They operate organizations in which diversity is valued; it, too, is essential to success in the world today.
At the same time, the indications are that in states like Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Democrats are poised to have a very good night. It was posited after 2016 that Trump's wins in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were a realignment. That now seems to be erroneous; Trump's hold on those electorates seems now to not have been very durable. What's happening is that Trump is shrinking the Republican Party while Democrats are holding on to their voters.
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I think David suspended his better judgement to come up with a snappy, neat summary of our situation. It is a misleading summary however. More discriminating, detailed and carefully researched summaries find that there are many overlapping Ven diagrams depending on the issue and population. The extremes of both parties are larger than they were 20 years ago, but the middle exists and still offers hope for rational, measured politics. Thomas Edsall's piece today summarizes some of that research. I don't think it is helpful to overstate our political polarization and suggest it is absolute.
41
David's wrong. It's a wave and a sharp swing back to the Democrats, not just a realignment. Sherrod Brown's going to win Ohio by double digits in a state that 45 won by 8 points. Same story across the Rust Belt, where all the Democratic senators will hold on and many if not all of the governor's races will flip blue. Trump won Missouri by 20 points but McCaskill and her Trumpkin opponent are tied. The Democrats also appear poised to pick up an equal number of seats in downscale Obama-Trump districts as they are upscale Clinton-Romney seats. Your party will lose the country-club suburbs, David, but the restless blue-collar areas are swinging back from the GOP, too.
45
I agree that we don't talk Trump much here. A few do, but the majority just don't talk politics. People are afraid of it. I'm afraid of it. But, nobody wants to support the Democratic Party because it is seen as the party of abortion. Until the Democrats learn to declare a more nuanced message about personal responsibility and abortion, red Kansas will not change much. This is especially true given the voter ID law here that disenfranchises thousands of Democrats.
7
@Anthony
I don't know what a "more nuanced message about personal responsibility and abortion" means. Democrats have never advocated for abortion for all: they have simply said that the decision should be in the hands of women and their doctors. That's a good conservative position that supports individual responsibility and opposes government interference.
It's the so called conservative right wing that has opposed individual choice and responsibility. They want abortion outlawed; mostly with no exceptions.
That's the big divide: individuals decide or government decides. On this issue, so called conservatives want government to decide.
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@Anthony
Kansas? Didn't Brownback just about destroy your state?
I'm sorry, sir, but Democrats are about far more than abortion. In fact, we're not "about" abortion at all. We just want women to have the right to choose. It's only a minor portion of our position that people should run their own lives and determine their own futures. We make up our own minds; our pastors don't do it for us.
Mr. Brooks paints Democrats as perhaps more upset about the 'unraveling.' He might be right, but I know I'm becoming less upset as time goes by. I have no intention of altering my progressive values one iota. I'm just accepting the sad state of affairs and voting Democratic every time I can. It is what it is--I can't change you and you will never change me.
You can keep your state exactly the way it is, I don't care. The rest of us are moving into the future.
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@Anthony The Republicans didn’t used to politicize abortion. In fact, at the time Roe was decided, the Southern Baptist Convention didn’t much fuss. But Republicans will always find something to politicize: communists, mobs, abortion, taxes, deficits, prayer in schools, guns, gays, immigrants, transgenders. Right wingers always stir up some issue they actually couldn’t care less about (Trump: hardly a Christian, likely to have procured at least one abortion) to deflect from their expropriation of economic output to the wealthy elite.
6