The View From Trump Tower by David Brooks , NY Times 11 November 2016 ( unedited)
Protesters marching to Trump Tower in Manhattan the night after the election.CreditYana Paskova for The New York Times
If your social circles are like mine, you spent Tuesday night swapping miserable texts. Not all, but many of my friends and family members were outraged, stunned, disgusted and devastated. This is victory for white supremacy, people wrote, for misogyny, nativism and authoritarianism. Fascism is descending.
I was on PBS trying to make sense of what was happening while trying to text various people off the ledge. At one point I was opining about the results while a disbelieving text flashed across my phone: “Change It! Change It! CHAAAANGE IT!”
Those emotional reactions were a fitting first-night response to the greatest political shock of our lifetimes. Still, this is probably not the best mentality for the coming era.
In the first place, emotions like disgust don’t do justice to the complexity of Donald Trump’s supporters. The disgusted posture risks turning politics into a Manichaean civil war between the alleged children of light and the alleged children of darkness — between us enlightened, college-educated tolerant people and the supposed primitive horde driven by dark fears and prejudices. That crude and ignorant condescension is what feeds the Trump phenomenon in the first place.
Second, we simply don’t yet know how much racism or misogyny motivated Trump voters. It is true that those voters are willing to tolerate a lot more bigotry in their candidate than I’d be willing to tolerate. But if you were stuck in a jobless town, watching your friends OD on opiates, scrambling every month to pay the electric bill, and then along came a guy who seemed able to fix your problems and hear your voice, maybe you would stomach some ugliness, too.
Third, outrage and disgust impede learning. This century is still being formed and none of us understand it yet. The century really began on 9/11, and so far it has been marked by strong reactions against globalism and cosmopolitanism — by terrorism, tribalism and authoritarianism.
Populism of the Trump/Le Pen/Brexit variety has always been a warning sign, a warning sign that there is some deeper dysfunction in our economic, social and cultural systems. If you want to take that warning sign and dismiss it as simple bigotry, you’re never going to pause to understand what’s going on and you will never know how to constructively respond.
Finally, it seems important to be humbled and taught by this horrific election result. Trump’s main problem in governing is not going to be some fascistic ideology; his main problem is going to be his own attention span, ignorance and incompetence. If he’s left to bloviate while others are left to run the country and push through infrastructure plans, maybe things won’t be disastrous.
The job for the rest of us is to rebind the fabric of society, community by community, and to construct a political movement for the post-Trump era. I suspect the coming political movements will be identified on two axes: open and closed and individual and social.
Those who believe in open trade, relatively open immigration, an active foreign policy and racial integration. Those who believe in closed believe in protective trade, closed borders, a withdrawn foreign policy and ethnic separatism.
Those who favor individual believe in individual initiative, designing programs to incentivize enterprise and removing regulatory barriers. Those who believe in social believe that social mobility happens within rich communities — that people can undertake daring adventures when they have a secure social and emotional base.
Donald Trump is probably going to make the G.O.P. the party of individual/closed. He’s going to start with the traditional Republican agenda of getting government out of the way, and he’s going to add walls, protectionism and xenophobia. That will leave people isolated in the face of the challenges of the information age economy, and it will close off the dynamism and diversity that always marked this crossroads of the nation.
The Democrats are probably going to be the party of social/closed. The coming Sanders-Warren party will advocate proposals that help communities with early education programs and the like, but that party will close off trade, withdraw from the world, close off integration with hyper-race-conscious categories and close off debate with political correctness.
Which is why I’ve been thinking we need a third party that is social/open. This compassionate globalist party would support the free trade and skilled immigration that fuel growth. But it would also flood the zone for those challenged in the high-skill global economy — offering programs to rebuild community, foster economic security and boost mobility. It would integrate the white working class and minority groups by emphasizing that we are all part of a single American idea.
Trump’s bigotry, dishonesty and promise-breaking will have to be denounced. We can’t go morally numb. But he needs to be replaced with a program that addresses the problems that fueled his ascent.
After all, the guy will probably resign or be impeached within a year. The future is closer than you think.
and below is how David Brooks co-opt was reported by the "alt right news reporters and bloggers " .... Hillary Clinton lost the election because of FBI Director Comey interference in the electoral process but equally Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook generosity in permitting the posting of fake news reports of alt right bloggers and websites .87.8% of those who voted in the last election used Facebook as their primary source of information.
And the question needs to be asked again and again why Facebook sledge hammers fake accounts but not fake news reports .Google once or twice gave inadvertently prominence to fake news reports wen that news report got on top of the google ranking system.Like reporting that Donald Trump also got a majority of votes nationally.
Republished from Spinzon Conservative News ( lead article)without permission of course. The views expressed in the article printed in red are definitely and absolutely not my own or even close .
NYT David Brooks: “Trump Needs To Decide If He Prefers To Resign, Be Impeached Or Get Assassinated” (of course he did not say that in his article)
In his Friday column, New York Times columnist David Brooks speculates about a new political dichotomy and writes that President-elect Donald Trump will “resign or be impeached within a year.” From Brooks’ column: “Finally, it seems important to be humbled and taught by this horrific election result…Trump’s bigotry, dishonesty and promise-breaking will have to be denounced. We can’t go morally numb. But he needs to be replaced with a program that addresses the problems that fueled his assent. After all, the guy will probably resign or be impeached within a year.”
However, while commenting on his column in a subsequent interview with KYRQ Radio in New York City, Brooks said, “Oh, and by the way – I forgot to mention ‘assassinated.’” The columnist then went on to say that “the whole ‘pen is mightier than the sword’ philosophy might have worked if we were talking about Hillary Clinton, but when it comes to Donald Trump, you don’t really need a pen, because he’ll bury himself soon enough.” “At the rate he’s going, I’m starting to wonder if he’ll make it through the first six months, let alone an entire year,” Brooks said.
He continued, “Here’s the thing about people like Donald Trump: they’re used to being able to use their money and their power to cover up things that they don’t like or that could damage whatever objective they’re trying to realize. Now, that works just fine when you’re a real estate billionaire who has a couple hundred eyes watching his every move; you can hide whatever you want from a crowd that tiny. However, the President of the United States not only has to answer and be scrutinized by 300 million Americans, but will likely be under the magnifying glass of all 7 billion people on the planet. Good luck trying to hide from that.”
“At some point very soon, he’s going to mess something up big time,” Brooks argued. “And when he does, he’s going to have to choose his next step carefully. It’s either going to be resigning, impeachment, or what I forgot to put in my column earlier this morning – assassination. And I don’t mean like, someone’s going to go after him with a sniper rifle or car bomb or something – I mean, he’s going to have the option of hiring someone to take him out. After all, he’s a businessman and it’s a character trait of most businessmen to spot opportunity where others see nothing. The man was always strived for martyrdom, and this is the perfect opportunity to get it. Heck, that’s the way I’d choose to go,” he said.
“And even if I’m wrong and there is someone out there getting ready to take him out, all I can say is – please dude, hurry up. This country can’t afford to wait and have laws brought forth that are going to make women throughout the country wear tight skirts and thongs as mandatory wardrobe just so us men could enjoy the view, or some other sexist, pointless piece of legislation. Please, deliver this country from the hands of an idiot with Labrador hair who thinks he’s God’s gift to mankind, and do it quick before any more damage is done,” Brooks concluded his message to potential Donald Trump assassinators.
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