October 4, 2017
by David Brooks@www.nytimes.com
Establishment Republicans have tried five ways to defeat or control Donald Trump, and they have all failed. Jeb Bush tried to outlast Trump, and let him destroy himself. That failed. Marco Rubio and others tried to denounce Trump by attacking his character. That failed. Reince Priebus tried to co-opt Trump to make him a more normal Republican. That failed.
Paul Ryan tried to use Trump; Congress would pass Republican legislation and Trump would just sign it. That failed. Mitch McConnell tried to outmaneuver Trump and Trumpism by containing his power and reach. In the Senate race in Alabama last week and everywhere else, that has failed.
The Forebears of Trumpism–read http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/160552
Trumpist populist nationalism is still a rising force within the G.O.P., not a falling one. The Bob Corkers of the party are leaving while the Roy Moores are ascending. Trump himself is unhindered while everyone else is frozen and scared.
As a result, the Republican Party is becoming a party permanently associated with bigotry. It is becoming the party that can’t govern. And as a bonus, Trumpish recklessness could slide us into a war with North Korea that could leave millions dead.
The only way to beat Trump is to beat him philosophically. Right now the populists have a story to tell the country about what’s gone wrong. It’s a coherent story, which they tell with great conviction. The regular Republicans have no story, no conviction and no argument. They just hem and haw and get run over.
The Trump story is that good honest Americans are being screwed by aliens. Regular Americans are being oppressed by a snobbish elite that rigs the game in its favor. White Americans are being invaded by immigrants who take their wealth and divide their culture. Normal Americans are threatened by an Islamic radicalism that murders their children.
This is a tribal story. The tribe needs a strong warrior in a hostile world. We need to build walls to keep out illegals, erect barriers to hold off foreign threats, wage endless war on the globalist elites.
Somebody is going to have to arise to point out that this is a deeply wrong and un-American story. The whole point of America is that we are not a tribe. We are a universal nation, founded on universal principles, attracting talented people from across the globe, active across the world on behalf of all people who seek democracy and dignity.
The core American idea is not the fortress, it’s the frontier. First, we thrived by exploring a physical frontier during the migration west, and now we explore technological, scientific, social and human frontiers. The core American attitude has been looking hopefully to the future, not looking resentfully toward some receding greatness.
The hardship of the frontier calls forth energy, youthfulness and labor, and these have always been the nation’s defining traits. The frontier demands a certain sort of individual, a venturesome, hard-working, disciplined individual who goes off in search of personal transformation. From Jonathan Edwards to Benjamin Franklin, Abraham Lincoln to Frederick Douglass, Americans have always admired those who made themselves anew. They have generally welcomed immigrants who live this script and fortify this dynamism.
The Republican Party was founded as a free labor party. It believed in economic diversity, cultural cohesion and national greatness. The entrepreneurial economic philosophy was highly individualistic, but strong local communities built a web of nurturing relationships and shared biblical morality helped define common standards of character.
This American vision champions social mobility. The original Republicans were not for or against government, they were for government that sparked mobility; they were against government that enervated ambition. These Americans heavily invested in schools at a time when other nations were investing heavily in welfare states. These Americans built railroads and roads to increase mobility. They tore down social, racial and legal barriers to give poor boys and girls an open field and a fair chance.
Today, the main enemy is not aliens; it’s division — between rich and poor, white and black, educated and less educated, right and left. Where there is division there are fences. Mobility is retarded and the frontier is destroyed. Trumpist populists want to widen the divisions and rearrange the fences. They want to turn us into an old, settled and fearful nation.
The Republican Party is supposed to be the party that stokes dynamism by giving everybody the chance to venture out into the frontier of their own choosing — with education reform that encourages lifelong learning, with entitlement reform that spends less on the affluent elderly and more on the enterprising young families, with regulatory reform that breaks monopolies and rules that hamper start-ups, with tax reform that creates a fair playing field, with immigration reform that welcomes the skilled and the hungry.
It may be dormant, but this striving American dream is still lurking in every heart. It’s waiting for somebody who has the guts to say no to tribe, yes to universal nation, no to fences, yes to the frontier, no to closed, and yes to the open future, no to the fear-driven homogeneity of the old continent and yes to the diverse hopefulness of the new one.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on October 3, 2017, on Page A29 of the New York edition with the headline: A Philosophical Assault on Trumpism.
Din Merican: the Malaysian DJ Blogger 
LaMoy,
Good piece by David Brooks. All I can say is that Trump may not have heard of historians, Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles and Mary Beard. I studied American History at The University of Malaya in 1960 under the late Yale historian Robin Winks. –Din Merican
Yes, even as a conservative, David Brooks just endorsed Jill Stein with this article.
I have mentioned the need of Getstalt pyschology on Malaysia’s instance. The same would probably make sense for America also.
Click to access GestaltwithGroups-ACross-CulturalPerspective.pdf
As I sometimes say to my students, 1.3 billion Chinese can’t be wrong—a culture
with a recognizable history of some 4,000 years and a Confucian social psychology
since 600 BCE. With the re-emergence of the Eastern European cultures, increased access
to and exchanges with Asian cultures and the Indian sub-continent, as well as the
post-colonial tragedies in much of Africa and the Middle East, it is no longer possible
to confine or even limit our understanding of groups and teams to the ethnocentric
models of one region. We have a lot to learn from others—and an opportunity to use
our existing knowledge and experience more appropriately than to simply add it to the
colonial burden we impose on others. Living and working cross-culturally as I do, I
have found that my Gestalt training, knowledge and experience have been invaluable
supports both personally and professionally.
A great piece by a fellow Republican. I’ve thought about and reread this article all day. It’s a breazy little piece on the face of it. But, it asks a profound question. With so many tens of millions of Americans so disaffected, how do you give them back a sense of counting, of believing the American dream is still there. That they and their families have a valuable place in this country.
David Brooks makes a strong philosophical appeal, one well grounded in the history of the Republican Party and in the history of America itself. But all those Republican principles he described existed during Lincoln’s time and no longer existed in the Republican Party. All those attributes he attributed to the halcyon past of the Republican Party are now encouraged, embraced, and embolden by the Democratic Party and its progressive ideals. There may one day be a rebirth of a true conservative voice in the US but that will never again exist in the Republican Party for a long, long time.
We thrived by “exploring” a physical frontier during the migration west, Brooks writes. Yet in the process we managed to destroy the communities of people who lived there. Native Americans didn’t thrive, to put it mildly. Yes, ours is a nation of immigrants. Part of our strength is that we’ve a richness of cultures that we all benefit from. We can be proud of where we came from and yet feel totally American. But our agricultural success depended on African slavery, and the railroads were built by Chinese immigrants who lived lives of serfdom and abuse. I’m not trying to tear America down. We can focus on what’s good about this country and be honest at the same time. We can love America without subscribing to the fantasy that we succeeded by dint of sheer talent, boldness, and hard work. By ignoring the darker parts of our history, we ignore the history that contributed to our current divisions, to the panic of white Christian people who feel their world is slipping away; the alienation of African Americans whose history of slavery and institutionalized racism is discounted. What is missing from the defining traits Brooks lists here is honesty. In this era of division, fake news, blatant lying by our leaders, it is crucial to privilege honesty. Otherwise this lovely vision of America rings false.
Mr. Brooks has pretty much nailed it when he says: “.. the Republican Party is becoming a party permanently associated with bigotry. It is becoming the party that can’t govern. And as a bonus, Trumpish recklessness could slide us into a war with North Korea that could leave millions dead.” But “becoming”? Where have you been the last fifty years? The GOP has been the party of bigotry since it took in the Dixiecrats in 1964. Trump is merely the logical conclusion to all of this. A frontier mentality when it’s not called for is ridiculous. So are the politics and statements being made by the GOP and Trump. Instead of dividing us they should be focusing on helping all of us to be productive citizens. Their preference however is for Pottervilles, speeches that reek of Soviet style propaganda, and outright lies and attacks on anyone who contradicts them.
At the end of his column, much of which I agree with, Mr. Brooks calls for a savior to rescue the American dream that’s been superseded by Trumpian fear and negativity. And where pray tell is that someone with the courage to say no to the tribe and yes to a rich frontier of possibilities? I don’t see him or her. Yet. Perhaps out of the ashes of America’s rotting culture, ugly conversations, rising ignorance, mounting inequality, and increasing sense that democracy is dead, there’ll come some bright knight or damsel. If you believe anything is possible – the American dream so to speak – then someone will emerge to re-introduce hope and optimism to an America locked in fear and resentment. But it’s going to take an army of people to support such a savior and combat all the fake news and money the vested interests will throw at such novel ideas that used to be driving forces.
But America is no longer the home of the free and the brave. Not when we’ve popinjays like Trump as president and incompetents like McConnell and Ryan running Congress for their party’s enrichment. There’s been nothing done for working Americans since Trump took office. No improvements to the Affordable Care Act, no money allocated to improve or fix our infrastructure, and now with the disasters of hurricanes hitting Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands only a stunning lack of results for the latter two. The “warm condolences” to the families of those murdered in Las Vegas is a cruel joke. The GOP has become the party of cowards and scoundrels. There’s no reason to expect anything better from this administration than lies, hypocrisy, and extreme incompetence.
I don’t know where all the moderate Republicans have been hiding. The radical fringe, backed by ultra-right wing billionaires and the propaganda rage machine are the voice of the Republican Party today. If these forces are not defeated, and soon, America is over.
Perhaps, it’s time for David Brooks and I should start thinking of changing party.
LaMoy, you already write and sound like a Democrat.
From a white Southern-born American historian :
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-racist-made
Hail to the Chief :
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/7-most-unhinged-moments-trumps-puerto-rico-trip
No, aitze, David Brooks and I are the real Republicans. We keep to the principles and values of the true Republican Party. Our party has been hijacked. You’re not believing the mental patient Shiou who called me a leftist and Antifa sympathizer, are you? All Trump’s supporters like to fabricate outright lies and attacks on anyone who contradicts them.
it is now a movement.
Another side of story on how Democrats and Sandernista move so far left that they are almost falling off the cliff – by Wall Street Journal’s column:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/obama-too-conservative-for-democrats-1507070466?shareToken=stb0c34ae490d4497697c6b1017e801abc&reflink=article_email_share
Trump is a dealer that “play to the people’s fantasies” in exaggerations and the awsome power he now hold to sustain his position, with nationism and populism in keeping its people interests filled with promises and hopes,that in reality, often unachievable.
He is also an entertainer -tweeter- dealer- president– promoving himself.
The Republicans and Demoperates have yet to find any effective way to contain his excesses and deal with him.