Many of David Brooks’ fellow Trump critics are expressing outrage, depression, bewilderment or disgust:
They’re marching or writing essays: Should we normalize Trump or fight the normalizers?
It all seems so useless during this transition moment. It’s all a series of narcissistic displays and discussions about our own emotional states.
It seems like the first thing to do is really learn what this election is teaching us. Second, this seems like a moment for some low-passion wonkery. It’s stupid to react to every Trump tweet outrage with your own predictable howls. It’s silly to treat politics and governance purely on cultural grounds, as a high school popularity contest, where my sort of people denigrates your sort of people.
I just read that column and some of the comments.
The usual guff, with commenters bemoaning once again the failure of the proles to follow the lead of the educated classes, how the GOP destroyed education with a “decades long campaign” against intellectual curiosity, and so forth.
Basically, the sort of people who think seeing “Hamilton” constitutes knowing something about history.
I have two OK degrees in history related topics and those aren’t my people.
Inevitably, the comments section was closed.
Brooks starts by musing that some Trump voters are motivated by bigotry and racism.
Thanks, David. So sorry your fellow countrymen are letting you down.
He states that Pat Buchanan is the “most influential public intellectual in America today.” ???
D. Brooks makes some good points, such as policy wonks need to come up with some policies that make things better for the country as a whole.