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My Response to David Brooks
In his Saturday column, David Brooks states, “Donald Trump says he is a nationalist, but you can’t be a nationalist if you despise half the nation.” Nationalism is a love of your country, its laws, its political and legal system, and its traditions. Trump loves America and all it stands for. That is why the whole movement started with, “Make America Great Again.” You may not like Trump’s methods or personality, but it is obvious that he has sacrificed everything he had–wealth, business, and family–to run for and be elected president.
Recently the New York Times, not known to be a Trump fan, fretted that “for the first time in memory, Democrats are seen as more out of touch with ordinary Americans than the party’s political opponents.” I think David Brooks is wrong: the truth is that half of the nation despises the USA not that Trump despises half the nation.
Published in General
David Brooks is…? Missing something. It’s his pals at the Former Newspaper who hate half the country.
Klavan is going to make that one stick.
Ah, David Brooks.
I wrote awhile back about My Afternoon with David Brooks.
(Good post. I don’t think half of America hates our country. I think most Americans are kind of ignorant about politics, and tend to believe what they hear spoken most loudly. What they hear tilts left, and and so they vote Democrat. I think most Americans love America, even if they don’t quite understand it.)
Is it really even love if you understand it?
A really really wealthy 70 year old guy gave up his TV show for a chance to be President. In the annals of sacrifice, that’s pretty far down the list.
Not to say there aren’t disadvantages. He’s been exposed to extreme public ridicule. His family has been threatened. No doubt he had to forgoe some business opportunities. And there is the chance he will wind up in the history books alongside Jimmy Carter as a failed one term President.
But he clearly enjoys what he’s doing. And he’s done some good things.
I was thinking of buying an LCD projector, but maybe I could just use David Brooks for all my projection needs.
My impression of Trump is of someone who was tired of seeing this country disparaged by the “hate America first” crowd, and decided to do something about it. Knowing he couldn’t run as a Democrat, he entered the Republican party primaries and won it all.
Trump could have continued to live his life of luxury without the hassles of being President. I’m glad he didn’t.
In April of 2015, David Brooks was interviewed by Robert Reich for the City Arts and Lectures program broadcast on KQED. I don’t think Brooks is stupid, but he is a fool. He struggled for almost an hour to say something interesting and worth hearing. That wasn’t entirely his fault because he was being interview by an incompetent who was described as a “political economist”.
There isn’t some single definition of nationalism. I followed twitter feed the drives me absolutely crazy. She comes off like Bill Kristol et. al. She’s absolutely freaked about nationalism. She keeps tweeting this guy who’s making a great big deal about nationalism. I can’t remember his name, but then I looked up his LinkedIn. Two Ivy league degrees and he works at Bain capital. I think I’m going to explore multiple definitions of that word, instead of relying on the Hitler version, or whatever you want to call it.
The question is why is populism a problem now, not riding people to behave better.
I seem to recall this president frequently stating that he loves even the people who don’t like him and didn’t vote for him.
He attacks the press and the Democrats (essentially the same thing), but I don’t recall him going after the citizenry the way the press and the Democrats do.
But . . . is Brooks saying that the President isn’t a nationalist? They’ve been declaring him a Nationalist for two years, and then suddenly he embraces the term and his enemies now say “no, he’s not!
My goodness, what a neat trick the President just played.
I do not follow the “Trump is dividing the country” theme that has been prevalent for 2 years. The reaction to Trump is divisive. But there is little to no evidence that Trump’s own words or actions encourage division. And there certainly is no basis for the claim that Trump “hates” half the country.
The only significant group of Americans Trump has referred to using “hateful” language is people of media. But they constitute only a small number of Americans. Trump has spoken derogatorily of illegal immigrants. But they’re not (yet) half the country, and many would argue that because their presence is based on violating our laws, they aren’t really part of America anyway.
The division in the country centered on Trump is almost entirely due to the divisive reactions of people, not to what Trump says or does.
As referenced in the comment #1 by @katebraestrup (aka GrannyDude) and discussed on a separate post on those “trash” posters, most of the time people of the “right” attack the power brokers, the politicians, the media stars, the elite. To a far greater extent people of the “left” attack the regular folks (“bitter clingers” “deplorables” “rednecks”).
When I have heard Trump speak, he’s been very inclusive in his language talking about “Americans.” Except for media people. Since David Brooks is a media person, and media people seem to have a distorted view of their significance and the extent to which they “represent” Americans, that may be the source of his delusion.
Excellent comment, cat person. Well said. I do think you’ve hit upon a crucial distinction: the class to which the right objects is largely elitist; the class to which the left objects is largely middle-American.
So David Brooks thinks half the nation works for CNN?
The number of Americans who act or speak as if they do not like their own country would be vastly reduced if more actual, factual HISTORY were taught in the schools.
My daughter is in her mid-30s now. She attended a highly rated private school through 8th grade, then graduated after 4 years in an “award-winning” public high school. Her classes never seemed to cover much American history outside of how badly the Indians were treated, massive time spent through the entire month of January studying Martin Luther King with assignments and assemblies year after year, and other trendy sorts of things.
The Louisiana Purchase? Nope. Mexican war? Never heard of it. Civil war? Yeah, but not sure when it was or which side won. Presidents Day, a day off but nothing about the original days commemorating Lincoln or Washington’s births. Columbus? Nope, it’s Indigenous Peoples Day now. And what about industry as polluters, and man-made global warming? Oh, loads of that tripe.
Now, of course, being bright she has learned on her own a great deal of what she had not been taught, but her experience illustrates the consequence of drivel pushed on the public schools, being taught by newer generations of teachers who themselves never learned much US history either. We are producing an ever greater segment of our citizenry which remain ignorant of why our governmental institutions, while never without flaws, remain truly exceptional in a world of tribal, ethnic, and religious strife. It is as if some Big Brother somewhere decreed that no history but Howard Zinn’s Peoples’ History shall be used.
So Brooks is saying that Obama and Hillary can’t be nationalists, either.
OK. I wonder what Brooks would say if the guy with his arm up his, um, back, stopped working the mouth articulating levers, etc.
Our collective response to David Brooks should always be:
Who?
This is just an epic thread. Yoram Hazony.
I’m confused. Although she doesn’t call herself a nationalist (nor would anyone suggest it), wasn’t HILLARY CLINTON the one who dismissed 1/2 of something as deplorable? Surely you can’t love deplorables. Even if it was just 1/2 of Trump voters, that’s close to 1/4 of the country and we don’t have a parallel quote from Trump. Why doesn’t Brooks refer to her as a contender for biggest despiser?
Trump never wrote off any group of voters. Who did he, does he, criticize and mock? Democrat politicians, hoity toity elitists and his media critics. Brooks is demonstrably wrong.
Well tonight Brooks plainly and blatently said on t.v. that Trump’s emphasis on the immigration issue is…..(after a short choke) BIGOTRY. There, he explained it all to us, now we know.
The liberal counterpart guy, to his credit, said that democrats need to come to the middle and realize there is an issue about this and open borders are not the answer. If he can see something there, why can’t Brooks?
Brooks just needs to admit that he’s a Democrat and be done with it.
He didn’t leave the conservative movement. The conservative movement left him.
Puzzling that so many Democrats have this same excuse.
Speaking of nationalism, meet my new favorite person: Dr. Yoram Hazony
Time Magazine article
Mises Weekends interview.
If someone that actually knows how to write can make a post about this, I would love it so I don’t have to do it. LOL