David Brooks discovers that columnists live in a bubble.

[Jim Lane]

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}

Trump’s 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 it’s necessary to go out into the pain. I was surprised by Trump’s success because I’ve 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.

[wcast]

1. Good find! Unfortunately David Brooks, and his ilk, will have vastly different solutions.

Brooks is upset that for years he never peered down from the rarefied circles in which he runs. Now, after decades of policies and positions endorsed by Brooks and others like him(the whole Republican Party) which have failed to produce the utopia they envisioned, they see the light?! The only reason some of them are questioning the results is that what used to be reserved for the minority and marginalized underclass is now trickling down(pun intended) to the white middle class.

When Brooks mentions suicide rates, what he means is White suicide rates which have almost doubled. (See chart below) When others like him mention the heroin epidemic, what they mean is the White heroin epidemic. When he talks about not being able to achieve the American Dream, he is again talking about the White middle class as minorities have almost exclusively been shut out since the founding of our country. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/science/drug-overdoses-propel-rise-in-mortality-rates-of-young-whites.html

I give Brooks some credit for at least recognizing there is a problem as many others of his peer group have merely doubled down, treating poor and middle class whites as a minority group and using the same language usually reserved for Blacks and Latinos. Check out this link to an article I posted about almost two months ago. http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511535745

While I am sure that the republican ruling class will never recognize the real issues seen by all Americans, I am more hopeful that our Democratic Party will recognize the same discontent demonstrated by the rise of Bernie Sanders, lest the follow the republicans down the same rabbit hole.

[Brickbat]

2. "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."

In which he'll see what he wants to see, and draw conclusions that already fit his worldview. Bank on it.

[Hortensis]

4. Uhuh. "As a journalist, my probity and high ethical standards

require me to I to admit when I am wrong" -- the usual verbal career punctuation meant to tell readers to forget past analyses. Who hasn't seen a dozen talking heads spout them every election, followed immediately by new opinions delivered in the same voices of complete certitude?

"Chasms of segmentation that afflict this country" - not his special failure as a national journalist but just his share as one of 300 million Americans?

"Some responsibility" instead of "responsibility?"

The man's weasling on his own mea culpa before the show's even gone to commercial.

Btw, I went looking for that term and only found comments on him, like this one:

"Chasms of segmentation! Can't help imagining him somewhere out in the Heartland anxiously searching an Applebee's for the salad bar. "What did they do with it? Is this some of that downsizing?"

[Bucky]

3. "As a reporter it takes an extraordinary act of will for me to do my job"

How lame. He makes it sound like a sacrifice that he has to go out and talk to, you know, people.

Ew. People!

[CTyankee]

5. I suspect that having his wife demand a divorce after many years of marriage has

had a sobering effect on him. I hear a sense of sadness.

[librechik]

6. Brooks=Douche n/t