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...
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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.
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.
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 firms I've seen all 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.
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.
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 firms I've seen all you, separately, if you are white and if you are Hispanic - because according to our government, you can be Hispanic AND white.