Brooks seems to be conflating moral relativism with a loss of shared culture. We haven't lost sight of some "objective" moral standard because such a thing has never existed; if it had, we would...
Exemplary
Brooks seems to be conflating moral relativism with a loss of shared culture. We haven't lost sight of some "objective" moral standard because such a thing has never existed; if it had, we would still be practicing slavery and stoning gay people. Even his own examples don't past muster with a little more scrutiny: Did serfs really tend to the fields from a sense of moral duty, or did they do it because they were literally the property of their feudal lords?
Focusing on moral frameworks misses the larger picture. Yes, people have different opinions on diversity and trans rights, but virtually everyone agrees that corruption, theft, and murder are wrong. Trump's enablers do not argue that Trump's conflicts of interest are moral; they argue that he's too rich to have conflicts. More to the point, liberals and conservatives have not lost a shared sense of morality so much as we've lost a shared sense of reality. We read different newspapers and occupy different spaces on the internet. It's not just that we don't agree on the same facts; we don't even know what the other side considers important. How many people on the left would have recognized the name Ashli Babbitt if Trump hadn't repeated it so many times?
So I don't know how Brooks managed to write this essay without addressing the elephant in the room. Every issue Brooks describes has been exacerbated by platforms such as Facebook, X, and Truth Social. We were filtered into different content bubbles, we went along willingly, and to be frank, I don't even think we were wrong for wanting it. (Why should I regret limiting my exposure to bigotry?) Unfortunately for us, the new fourth estate has become social media. We no longer rely on journalists to do our fact finding, thereby establishing a foundation for which ideas can compete; instead we start with the theory we like and follow the blogger or influencer who spouts it.
Our failure is not moral but epistemological. In today's media landscape, there are no facts. There is no debate. There are only unchallenged, unsubstantiated theories.
I agree with this. There are information deserts just like there are food deserts. But also I don't want to let his supporters completely off the hook. It seems that most of them are in the...
I agree with this. There are information deserts just like there are food deserts. But also I don't want to let his supporters completely off the hook. It seems that most of them are in the conservative disinformation bubble because it appeals to them. They like being upset about "the war on Christmas" or "illegal immigrants are out of control" or "reverse racism" or "Christians are the most persecuted group" or "empathy is a sin".
What kind of person is drawn to that kind of topic and then gets sucked in? I think it's mostly frightened hateful people who want to punish anyone different from them and blame others for their own problems.
And some, I assume, are good people.
I lean liberal, so take the rest of what I’m about to say with a grain of salt. And a lot of this may not even apply to you specifically, so if it doesn’t, feel free to ignore it. I think it’s a...
It seems that most of them are in the conservative disinformation bubble because it appeals to them. They like being upset about "the war on Christmas" or "illegal immigrants are out of control" or "reverse racism" or "Christians are the most persecuted group" or "empathy is a sin".
What kind of person is drawn to that kind of topic and then gets sucked in? I think it's mostly frightened hateful people who want to punish anyone different from them and blame others for their own problems.
I lean liberal, so take the rest of what I’m about to say with a grain of salt. And a lot of this may not even apply to you specifically, so if it doesn’t, feel free to ignore it. I think it’s a huge mistake to impute different motivations to conservatives/Trump supporters than we would impute to anybody else. What I mean is that conservatives live in a conservative media bubble because it is comfortable for them, just like liberals live in a liberal media bubble because it is comfortable for them. (Just as a random example to substantiate that a liberal media bubble exists, a huge number of liberals believed that the “Hunter Biden’s laptop” story was Russian disinformation until it was borne out to be true.)
So I think a better model is to recognize that the vast majority of us - not “of Trump supporters,” but of us, of humans, mostly inherited our political beliefs based on a combination of genetics and upbringing and then either sought out or gradually fell into media environments that conformed with our beliefs. We did this because we would all go insane if we consumed media every day that produced cognitive dissonance.
This matters because, as @psi put it, we all pretty much agree that murder, theft, corruption are wrong. We all want a better future for our children. Viewing supporters of the other political party as humans flawed in the exact same ways that we are is better - and more productive - than assuming that they live in a biased media environment because of some sort of moral deficit but we live in a biased media environment for noble reasons. (It’s a classic example of the fundamental attribution error.)
I’ve seen a lot of takes in this vein, and I could stomach them a little more in the pre-Trump Republican years when there was still some vaguely plausible veneer of disagreement on policy, false...
Exemplary
I’ve seen a lot of takes in this vein, and I could stomach them a little more in the pre-Trump Republican years when there was still some vaguely plausible veneer of disagreement on policy, false though it was.
But I don’t see how we can be expected to accept that outright reality denial on major issues, incredibly heavily skewed to one side of the political spectrum, can just be bridged with a smile and an understanding that we’re all alike in our failings really. I don’t see how we can look at people buying fucking merchandise for prison camps and pretend they’re justified in their behaviour. I don’t see how knowingly supporting a party that tears the rule of law to shreds while kidnapping people in the street can be forgiven.
Because you know what, fuck it: the people supporting those things are worse than the people opposing them. And I feel like I’m going crazy reading the whole “oh, but you might have been one of them if your life played out differently, it’s not productive to just write them off” narrative.
It’s a counterfactual, there’s no way to know for sure how I’d act if x or y or z had been different - but what am “I” but the product of my biology and my experiences? The “I” that exists wouldn’t have supported slavery, wouldn’t have supported the nazis, and won’t support the growing fascist movements that we’re dealing with now. So why are we tiptoeing around the fact that those who do are choosing to do harm?
I’m flawed in a million ways, sure, but I do not and will not accept that I’m flawed “in the exact same ways” as someone who can watch what ICE are doing right now and feel anything but disgust. Call me arrogant or misguided or whatever else for this whole rant if you like, but acting as if we’re all fundamentally the same really just feels disingenuous and performative to me.
I don't think you're being arrogant, but I do think your premise rests on a fundamental flaw, which is the assumption that when you write "what ICE is doing right now," we all are thinking of the...
I don't think you're being arrogant, but I do think your premise rests on a fundamental flaw, which is the assumption that when you write "what ICE is doing right now," we all are thinking of the same thing.
You're thinking of
a party that tears the rule of law to shreds while kidnapping people in the street...
Here is a Fox News headline and subheadline from today:
South Korean, Vietnamese nationals among ICE's latest 'worst of the worst' roundup in Los Angeles: DHS; Detained illegal immigrants include gang members, murderers and child predators, according to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem
...
But I don’t see how we can be expected to accept that outright reality denial on major issues, incredibly heavily skewed to one side of the political spectrum, can just be bridged with a smile and an understanding that we’re all alike in our failings really.
That's fair. When I write that we're all human and it's an information problem, not a moral problem, I don't mean that we should just shake our heads and laugh about "gee, what a difference!" or passively accept that some people support Trump. I write it because approaching things from this lens is the only way to change minds.
There are multiple stories of people whose family members and loved ones have been detained and/or deported and they still explicitly say they support the president. The comment sections of Tiktok...
There are multiple stories of people whose family members and loved ones have been detained and/or deported and they still explicitly say they support the president.
The comment sections of Tiktok lives of protests, news articles about "good people" getting detained, etc, are full of people cheering ICE on, and hoping for more. They're seeing the news from the "other" side because they're in the comments complaining about it.
Hell, I just saw a comment section of an article about an 11 year old fatally shot for playing ding dong ditch and while some commenters bothered to create an elaborate story of how the child might have mule kicked the door frame until the door was hanging off the hinges and if so, that meant he deserved to be shot in the back and killed while running away. Others didn't even bother and just said things like " bet his friends won't make the same mistake." Zero empathy. Zero care. And sometimes a disturbing desire to use their own guns in the same way. It's the same demographic.
I can understand how "they" may have gotten to this point, but the fact remains they're at this point.
David Brooks argues: ... It isn't an evidence-based article. He makes a lot of assertions about "people" without backing them up.
David Brooks argues:
[T]he moral relativism of the 1980s and ’90s looks like a golden age of peace and tranquility compared with today. Over the past 30 years, people have tried to fill the hole in their soul by seeking to derive a sense of righteousness through their political identities. And when you do that, politics begins to permeate everything and turns into a holy war in which compromise begins to seem like betrayal.
Worse, people are unschooled in the virtues that are practical tools for leading a good life: honesty, fidelity, compassion, other-centeredness. People are rendered anxious and fragile.
...
So of course many people don’t find Trump morally repellent. He’s just an exaggerated version of the kind of person modern society was designed to create.
It isn't an evidence-based article. He makes a lot of assertions about "people" without backing them up.
Correct conclusion, wrong evidence. Here's my take. Empathy was put on life support in the 70s with the backlash to civil rights and Roe v Wade. It caused a rift and was when the Republican party...
He’s just an exaggerated version of the kind of person modern society was designed to create.
Correct conclusion, wrong evidence. Here's my take.
Empathy was put on life support in the 70s with the backlash to civil rights and Roe v Wade. It caused a rift and was when the Republican party positioned itself as the pro-life God party and thinly veiled rascist policy.
The nail in the coffin was austerity politics in the 80s, with Reagan and the like. Capitalism was thrust into overdrive "by their bootstraps" and they began dismantling what social safety nets there were.
The masks started coming off in the 90s with Newt Gingrich weaponizing government shutdowns, and the rise of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.
9/11 murdered nuance and compromise with the largest swell of nationalism in my lifetime (born 1984).
Obama was the last reprieve of a quality president, whom faced a stonewall Congress determined to undermine every bit of progeess, ramping up overt homophobia (gay marriage) and racism.
So then in 2016 we saw the culmination of all that buildup: Two narcissistic friends of Epstein to vote for president. One a self-grandizing war hawk who's primary message was that she was a woman and she deserved her spot on the throne. The other a self-grandizing thinly-veiled liar supposedly standing against the establishment, but whom was a litteral joke and standin for "evil rich guy."
To fight against blatantly evil rich guy winning again, the Democrats doubled down on Obama nostalgia and gave us a geriatric president who should have stepped down in 2022.
And thus we have reached an end state: 40+ years of dismantling social safety nets and important regulations, paired with rewarding and worshipping psychopaths, and here we are. Poor masses fighting for breadcrumbs in a post-coup oligarchy, complete with surveillance dragnets, concentration camps, and secret police disappearing dissidents and abusing hournalists whom would try to educate masses instead of propagandize them.
My unstated premise is that assuming that everyone who supports Trump must be doing it because they're racist is both intellectually unrigorous and a fast track to losing the election again in...
My unstated premise is that assuming that everyone who supports Trump must be doing it because they're racist is both intellectually unrigorous and a fast track to losing the election again in 2028. Is a racist more likely to have voted for Trump than Harris? Obviously. But that's a red herring.
Oh, Trump supporters can be, and often are, very sexist too. They contain multitudes. Am I being reductive? Maybe, but I certainly don't think so. Trump is a fascist, everything he's said and done...
Oh, Trump supporters can be, and often are, very sexist too. They contain multitudes.
Am I being reductive? Maybe, but I certainly don't think so. Trump is a fascist, everything he's said and done indicates he's a fascist, he's openly calling himself a dictator, and people still voted for him. He's been openly bigoted for decades, and at least pedophile adjacent for that long as well.
What does that say, other than that his supporters actually support him and what he says and does?
EDIT TO ADD: I should also add, pointing to the 15ish percent of Black Americans that voted for Trump as some sort of sign that Trump voters aren't racist, ignores the fact that he won the majority of white votes by a significant margin.
Again, combine that fact with his rhetoric, and tell me that race being a significant factor (in my opinion, THE significant factor) isn't accurate.
Trump’s biggest scapegoat is not black people. Although I’m sure Trump is personally racist against any non white people. So then why do Hispanic people vote for Trump? I suppose a combination of...
Trump’s biggest scapegoat is not black people. Although I’m sure Trump is personally racist against any non white people.
So then why do Hispanic people vote for Trump? I suppose a combination of conservative values and “Fuck you, I got mine”.
I don't think that can be it. We only know how Hispanic Americans vote because of exit polls. So for what you're suggesting to be the case, Hispanic Americans would need to identify as Hispanic...
I don't think that can be it. We only know how Hispanic Americans vote because of exit polls. So for what you're suggesting to be the case, Hispanic Americans would need to identify as Hispanic enough to tell pollsters that, but then also think themselves as purely white such that they would vote in a racist way.
There's no one single answer, but the main issue is that when Trump talks about getting rid of X, nobody thinks that X means them, just the "Bad Xes". And native-born Hispanic Americans often put...
There's no one single answer, but the main issue is that when Trump talks about getting rid of X, nobody thinks that X means them, just the "Bad Xes".
And native-born Hispanic Americans often put themselves in a different category to recent Mexican immigrants. They naturally assume that Trump will only go after the latter category, because obviously the former is a perfectly respectable category, in their minds, and Trump has no reason to go after members of it.
While not literally true, saying " Hispanics think they're white and Trump won't come after them" is a 99% correct answer - just, not literally white.
White is a spectrum. You're not white until you are. Greek immigrants weren't considered white, until they were. Same with Italian, same with Irish, same with any other myriad ethnic groups. Hell,...
White is a spectrum. You're not white until you are.
Greek immigrants weren't considered white, until they were. Same with Italian, same with Irish, same with any other myriad ethnic groups.
Hell, most census forms I've seen ask you, separately, if you are white and if you are Hispanic - because according to our government, you can be Hispanic AND white.
Brooks seems to be conflating moral relativism with a loss of shared culture. We haven't lost sight of some "objective" moral standard because such a thing has never existed; if it had, we would still be practicing slavery and stoning gay people. Even his own examples don't past muster with a little more scrutiny: Did serfs really tend to the fields from a sense of moral duty, or did they do it because they were literally the property of their feudal lords?
Focusing on moral frameworks misses the larger picture. Yes, people have different opinions on diversity and trans rights, but virtually everyone agrees that corruption, theft, and murder are wrong. Trump's enablers do not argue that Trump's conflicts of interest are moral; they argue that he's too rich to have conflicts. More to the point, liberals and conservatives have not lost a shared sense of morality so much as we've lost a shared sense of reality. We read different newspapers and occupy different spaces on the internet. It's not just that we don't agree on the same facts; we don't even know what the other side considers important. How many people on the left would have recognized the name Ashli Babbitt if Trump hadn't repeated it so many times?
So I don't know how Brooks managed to write this essay without addressing the elephant in the room. Every issue Brooks describes has been exacerbated by platforms such as Facebook, X, and Truth Social. We were filtered into different content bubbles, we went along willingly, and to be frank, I don't even think we were wrong for wanting it. (Why should I regret limiting my exposure to bigotry?) Unfortunately for us, the new fourth estate has become social media. We no longer rely on journalists to do our fact finding, thereby establishing a foundation for which ideas can compete; instead we start with the theory we like and follow the blogger or influencer who spouts it.
Our failure is not moral but epistemological. In today's media landscape, there are no facts. There is no debate. There are only unchallenged, unsubstantiated theories.
I agree with this. There are information deserts just like there are food deserts. But also I don't want to let his supporters completely off the hook. It seems that most of them are in the conservative disinformation bubble because it appeals to them. They like being upset about "the war on Christmas" or "illegal immigrants are out of control" or "reverse racism" or "Christians are the most persecuted group" or "empathy is a sin".
What kind of person is drawn to that kind of topic and then gets sucked in? I think it's mostly frightened hateful people who want to punish anyone different from them and blame others for their own problems.
And some, I assume, are good people.
I lean liberal, so take the rest of what I’m about to say with a grain of salt. And a lot of this may not even apply to you specifically, so if it doesn’t, feel free to ignore it. I think it’s a huge mistake to impute different motivations to conservatives/Trump supporters than we would impute to anybody else. What I mean is that conservatives live in a conservative media bubble because it is comfortable for them, just like liberals live in a liberal media bubble because it is comfortable for them. (Just as a random example to substantiate that a liberal media bubble exists, a huge number of liberals believed that the “Hunter Biden’s laptop” story was Russian disinformation until it was borne out to be true.)
And your political beliefs are very heritable.
So I think a better model is to recognize that the vast majority of us - not “of Trump supporters,” but of us, of humans, mostly inherited our political beliefs based on a combination of genetics and upbringing and then either sought out or gradually fell into media environments that conformed with our beliefs. We did this because we would all go insane if we consumed media every day that produced cognitive dissonance.
This matters because, as @psi put it, we all pretty much agree that murder, theft, corruption are wrong. We all want a better future for our children. Viewing supporters of the other political party as humans flawed in the exact same ways that we are is better - and more productive - than assuming that they live in a biased media environment because of some sort of moral deficit but we live in a biased media environment for noble reasons. (It’s a classic example of the fundamental attribution error.)
I’ve seen a lot of takes in this vein, and I could stomach them a little more in the pre-Trump Republican years when there was still some vaguely plausible veneer of disagreement on policy, false though it was.
But I don’t see how we can be expected to accept that outright reality denial on major issues, incredibly heavily skewed to one side of the political spectrum, can just be bridged with a smile and an understanding that we’re all alike in our failings really. I don’t see how we can look at people buying fucking merchandise for prison camps and pretend they’re justified in their behaviour. I don’t see how knowingly supporting a party that tears the rule of law to shreds while kidnapping people in the street can be forgiven.
Because you know what, fuck it: the people supporting those things are worse than the people opposing them. And I feel like I’m going crazy reading the whole “oh, but you might have been one of them if your life played out differently, it’s not productive to just write them off” narrative.
It’s a counterfactual, there’s no way to know for sure how I’d act if x or y or z had been different - but what am “I” but the product of my biology and my experiences? The “I” that exists wouldn’t have supported slavery, wouldn’t have supported the nazis, and won’t support the growing fascist movements that we’re dealing with now. So why are we tiptoeing around the fact that those who do are choosing to do harm?
I’m flawed in a million ways, sure, but I do not and will not accept that I’m flawed “in the exact same ways” as someone who can watch what ICE are doing right now and feel anything but disgust. Call me arrogant or misguided or whatever else for this whole rant if you like, but acting as if we’re all fundamentally the same really just feels disingenuous and performative to me.
I don't think you're being arrogant, but I do think your premise rests on a fundamental flaw, which is the assumption that when you write "what ICE is doing right now," we all are thinking of the same thing.
You're thinking of
Here is a Fox News headline and subheadline from today:
...
That's fair. When I write that we're all human and it's an information problem, not a moral problem, I don't mean that we should just shake our heads and laugh about "gee, what a difference!" or passively accept that some people support Trump. I write it because approaching things from this lens is the only way to change minds.
There are multiple stories of people whose family members and loved ones have been detained and/or deported and they still explicitly say they support the president.
The comment sections of Tiktok lives of protests, news articles about "good people" getting detained, etc, are full of people cheering ICE on, and hoping for more. They're seeing the news from the "other" side because they're in the comments complaining about it.
Hell, I just saw a comment section of an article about an 11 year old fatally shot for playing ding dong ditch and while some commenters bothered to create an elaborate story of how the child might have mule kicked the door frame until the door was hanging off the hinges and if so, that meant he deserved to be shot in the back and killed while running away. Others didn't even bother and just said things like " bet his friends won't make the same mistake." Zero empathy. Zero care. And sometimes a disturbing desire to use their own guns in the same way. It's the same demographic.
I can understand how "they" may have gotten to this point, but the fact remains they're at this point.
David Brooks argues:
...
It isn't an evidence-based article. He makes a lot of assertions about "people" without backing them up.
Correct conclusion, wrong evidence. Here's my take.
Empathy was put on life support in the 70s with the backlash to civil rights and Roe v Wade. It caused a rift and was when the Republican party positioned itself as the pro-life God party and thinly veiled rascist policy.
The nail in the coffin was austerity politics in the 80s, with Reagan and the like. Capitalism was thrust into overdrive "by their bootstraps" and they began dismantling what social safety nets there were.
The masks started coming off in the 90s with Newt Gingrich weaponizing government shutdowns, and the rise of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh.
9/11 murdered nuance and compromise with the largest swell of nationalism in my lifetime (born 1984).
Obama was the last reprieve of a quality president, whom faced a stonewall Congress determined to undermine every bit of progeess, ramping up overt homophobia (gay marriage) and racism.
So then in 2016 we saw the culmination of all that buildup: Two narcissistic friends of Epstein to vote for president. One a self-grandizing war hawk who's primary message was that she was a woman and she deserved her spot on the throne. The other a self-grandizing thinly-veiled liar supposedly standing against the establishment, but whom was a litteral joke and standin for "evil rich guy."
To fight against blatantly evil rich guy winning again, the Democrats doubled down on Obama nostalgia and gave us a geriatric president who should have stepped down in 2022.
And thus we have reached an end state: 40+ years of dismantling social safety nets and important regulations, paired with rewarding and worshipping psychopaths, and here we are. Poor masses fighting for breadcrumbs in a post-coup oligarchy, complete with surveillance dragnets, concentration camps, and secret police disappearing dissidents and abusing hournalists whom would try to educate masses instead of propagandize them.
gift link
Potentially relevant Tildes post: Trump supporters report higher levels of psychopathy, manipulativeness, callousness, and narcissism
Because there's a lot of racists in this country, whether they know it or not.
And the 15-20% of black Americans who voted for Trump?
Is your unstated premise that black people can't be racist?
My unstated premise is that assuming that everyone who supports Trump must be doing it because they're racist is both intellectually unrigorous and a fast track to losing the election again in 2028. Is a racist more likely to have voted for Trump than Harris? Obviously. But that's a red herring.
Oh, Trump supporters can be, and often are, very sexist too. They contain multitudes.
Am I being reductive? Maybe, but I certainly don't think so. Trump is a fascist, everything he's said and done indicates he's a fascist, he's openly calling himself a dictator, and people still voted for him. He's been openly bigoted for decades, and at least pedophile adjacent for that long as well.
What does that say, other than that his supporters actually support him and what he says and does?
EDIT TO ADD: I should also add, pointing to the 15ish percent of Black Americans that voted for Trump as some sort of sign that Trump voters aren't racist, ignores the fact that he won the majority of white votes by a significant margin.
Again, combine that fact with his rhetoric, and tell me that race being a significant factor (in my opinion, THE significant factor) isn't accurate.
We're approaching this from very different angles so let's just drop it here.
Trump’s biggest scapegoat is not black people. Although I’m sure Trump is personally racist against any non white people.
So then why do Hispanic people vote for Trump? I suppose a combination of conservative values and “Fuck you, I got mine”.
Many Hispanic Americans see themselves as purely white. They don't think of themselves as minorities.
I don't think that can be it. We only know how Hispanic Americans vote because of exit polls. So for what you're suggesting to be the case, Hispanic Americans would need to identify as Hispanic enough to tell pollsters that, but then also think themselves as purely white such that they would vote in a racist way.
There's no one single answer, but the main issue is that when Trump talks about getting rid of X, nobody thinks that X means them, just the "Bad Xes".
And native-born Hispanic Americans often put themselves in a different category to recent Mexican immigrants. They naturally assume that Trump will only go after the latter category, because obviously the former is a perfectly respectable category, in their minds, and Trump has no reason to go after members of it.
While not literally true, saying " Hispanics think they're white and Trump won't come after them" is a 99% correct answer - just, not literally white.
White is a spectrum. You're not white until you are.
Greek immigrants weren't considered white, until they were. Same with Italian, same with Irish, same with any other myriad ethnic groups.
Hell, most census forms I've seen ask you, separately, if you are white and if you are Hispanic - because according to our government, you can be Hispanic AND white.