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Jim Lane
Jim Lane's Journal
Jim Lane's Journal
April 30, 2016
It's easy to make fun of Brooks, but perhaps he actually has learned something and will take it to heart in his future writing. We'll see how often he goes where he's uncomfortable.
David Brooks discovers that columnists live in a bubble.
OK, to most of us this is not exactly a startling revelation, but it's always easier to see other people's biases. I give Brooks some credit for coming to a bit of self-awareness.
The context, in his April 29 column titled "If Not Trump, What?", is that Brooks is bemoaning the looming nomination of Trump. He rejects the course of going along with Trump. (He doesn't come right out and say he wouldn't vote for Trump, but he implies it.) He continues:
The better course for all of us Republican, Democrat and independent is to step back and take the long view, and to begin building for that. This election not only the Trump phenomenon but the rise of Bernie Sanders, also has reminded us how much pain there is in this country. According to a Pew Research poll, 75 percent of Trump voters say that life has gotten worse for people like them over the last half century.
{snip some other statistics about the increasing suicide rate, people believing the American dream is out of reach, and low levels of social trust among millennials}
Trumps success grew out of that pain, but he is not the right response to it. The job for the rest of us is to figure out the right response.
That means first its necessary to go out into the pain. I was surprised by Trumps success because Ive slipped into a bad pattern, spending large chunks of my life in the bourgeois strata in professional circles with people with similar status and demographics to my own. It takes an act of will to rip yourself out of that and go where you feel least comfortable. But this column is going to try to do that over the next months and years. We all have some responsibility to do one activity that leaps across the chasms of segmentation that afflict this country. {emphasis added}
{snip some other statistics about the increasing suicide rate, people believing the American dream is out of reach, and low levels of social trust among millennials}
Trumps success grew out of that pain, but he is not the right response to it. The job for the rest of us is to figure out the right response.
That means first its necessary to go out into the pain. I was surprised by Trumps success because Ive slipped into a bad pattern, spending large chunks of my life in the bourgeois strata in professional circles with people with similar status and demographics to my own. It takes an act of will to rip yourself out of that and go where you feel least comfortable. But this column is going to try to do that over the next months and years. We all have some responsibility to do one activity that leaps across the chasms of segmentation that afflict this country. {emphasis added}
It's easy to make fun of Brooks, but perhaps he actually has learned something and will take it to heart in his future writing. We'll see how often he goes where he's uncomfortable.
Profile Information
Name: Jim LaneGender: Male
Hometown: Jersey City
Member since: Fri Nov 12, 2004, 11:22 AM
Number of posts: 11,175