{"id":6575,"date":"2016-03-19T06:58:44","date_gmt":"2016-03-19T06:58:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/03\/19\/david-brooks-on-trump\/"},"modified":"2016-03-19T06:58:44","modified_gmt":"2016-03-19T06:58:44","slug":"david-brooks-on-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/03\/19\/david-brooks-on-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"David Brooks on Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

I have on occasion praised Ross Douthat and David Brooks as worth reading among the contributors to the reliably piss-poor Op Ed pages of The New York Times<\/em>.  But my estimation of Brooks has dropped a notch after reading his No, Not Trump, Not Ever<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Donald Trump is a deeply flawed candidate as any half-way objective observer would have to admit, and most of what Brooks says against him is on target.  But Brooks does not understand the factors responsible for Trump's spectacular rise.  (The explanandum<\/a> is not that Trump is in the race, but that he is still<\/em> in the race with a very good shot at the nomination.)<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Trump voters are a coalition of the dispossessed. They have suffered lost jobs, lost wages, lost dreams. The American system is not working for them, so naturally they are looking for something else.<\/span><\/p>\n

Moreover, many in the media, especially me, did not understand how they would express their alienation.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This is only part of the explanation.  Brooks ignores both the role of the ultra-divisive Obama with his project of a "fundamental transformation of America" and the role of the do-nothing, go-along-to-get-along 'establishment' Republicans  who refused to oppose the pernicious and often extra-legal Obama initiatives.  These factors are at least equal in explanatory relevance to the rage of the dispossessed and alienated.  In a cute slogan of mine:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Trump's traction is mainly due to Obaminable action and conservative inaction.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Think of all those who support Trump who are not dispossessed or alienated.  I am neither and I support Trump in the following weak sense: Should he get the Republican nod, I will vote for him.  For Hillary is worse, for reasons I have sketched elsewhere<\/a>. 
<\/span><\/p>\n

Brooks comes across as a blind anti-Trump partisan.  He writes,<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Trump is perhaps the most dishonest person to run for high office in our lifetimes. All politicians stretch the truth, but Trump has a steady obliviousness to accuracy.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That is true, but it is also true of Obama and Hillary as every half-way objective observer of the  passing scene knows.  Trump exaggerates, bullshits, lies, refuses to admit his lies when they are exposed, and so on.  Not a pretty sight.  In no way presidential. But the Obama-Hillary tag team is just as bad if not worse.  Why does Brooks omit to point out the obvious?  What's he going to do?  Sit out the election?  Vote for Hillary?
<\/span><\/p>\n

So I say Brooks is as bad as the blind pro-Trump partisans who would refuse to admit any of Brooks' positive points about Trump's negatives.<\/span><\/p>\n

UPDATE<\/strong>:<\/span><\/p>\n

Jonathan V. Last understands<\/a> and documents Obama's role in begetting Trump.  Excerpts:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

When no one on the left was asking for it, Obama pursued the narrowest-possible reading of religious liberty, resulting in Supreme Court showdowns with a Lutheran school, which wanted to be free to hire its own ministers without government interference, and with the Little Sisters of the Poor, who didn't want to be forced to pay for abortifacients. There was no reason for Obama to pursue these policies except as an exercise in premeditated divisiveness. On the question of religious liberty, Obama has sought to undo<\/em> a national consensus and foment conflict. In doing so, he set in motion a slow-rolling constitutional and cultural collision that is likely to end badly. The only reason this chaos isn't apparent to the general public is because Lutherans and nuns don't riot.<\/span><\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/span><\/p>\n

Then came Obama's penchant for wading into every racial police controversy that reached the front page of the New York Times.<\/em> He took sides against the Cambridge cops in their arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. The police in this case were almost certainly in the wrong; but no one needed the president of the United States preening about it. He did the same with the death of Trayvon Martin, showing up unscheduled at a press availability to talk about the case the week after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting. Did Obama come before the cameras to reassure the public and vouch for the rule of law? No. He stoked the fires, telling America, "Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago." This was a ridiculous exaggeration. Martin was (to put it charitably) a troubled teen with a history of problematic behavior; 35 years before, Barack Obama had been a promising student at an elite private school. By likening himself to Martin, Obama was viewing the episode through the most reductive and demagogic lens possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

When the Michael Brown shooting turned Ferguson into a powder keg, Obama was ready for the cameras, calling it "heartbreaking" and sending his Justice Department in to ferret out wrongdoing. (They found none.) In a world full of real police abuses \u2014 such as the killing of Eric Garner in New York and the shooting of Walter Scott in Charleston \u2014 Obama seems to have a knack for tying himself to the cases where the police were actually in the right. It's enough to make one wonder if Obama can't tell the difference between proper and improper police conduct \u2014 or if he just doesn't care.<\/span><\/p>\n

All of which lead to Obama's semi-embrace of the Black Lives Matter movement. As Heather Mac Donald has documented, Black Lives Matter is not an innocent college protest movement. It is an ugly strain of anarchic racialism that has led not just to the defense of looting but to the killing of police officers. Obama does not merely refuse to condemn Black Lives Matter \u2014 he attempts to rationalize it, explaining, "There is a specific problem that is happening in the African-American community that's not happening in other communities."<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>Ross Douthat<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>The Central Axiom of Partisan Politics<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Politics, Part 4<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>The Shrinking of the Friend Zone in a Sex-Saturated Society<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have on occasion praised Ross Douthat and David Brooks as worth reading among the contributors to the reliably piss-poor Op Ed pages of The New York Times.  But my estimation of Brooks has dropped a notch after reading his No, Not Trump, Not Ever. Donald Trump is a deeply flawed candidate as any half-way … Continue reading “David Brooks on Donald Trump”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}