David Brooks: Donald Trump is a Black Hole

Donald Trump is an avalanche.

Donald Trump is the Tunguska meteor.

Donald Trump is some freakish, unpredictable, destructive natural phenomena which human beings had no part in creating.

At least according to Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times:

We’re living in a moment when norms are in maximum flux. Donald Trump has smashed through hundreds of our established norms and given people permission to say things that were unsayable just a decade ago. Especially in politics, the old rules of decorous behavior no longer apply.

And according to Mr. David Brooks, the only way to combat this freakish, unpredictable, destructive natural phenomena is for small groups of people ... out there ... somewhere ... to flap their arms and create ... microclimates!

But we all have the power to create cultural microclimates around us, through the way we act and communicate. When a small group of people shift the way they show approval and disapproval, it can shift the social cures among wider and wider circles...

The whole column is redolent with the distinctive, Brooksian detached weirdness of an alien who has never actually interacted with human beings trying awkwardly to make cocktail party small talk:

Brooks:  You are a human female.

Human female:  Yes?

Brooks:  I have just read a book by well-known human Cass Sunstein about how humans do social change!

Human female:  Yes?

Brooks:  I have decided there are five categories of humans who do social change.  I will name them now!

Human female walks away...

Brooks: Note to self for future column.  Human females resist doing social change.

So a couple of things.

First, Donald Trump is not a black hole or a meteor or an avalanche.

Donald Trump is a Golden Calf created by the Republican party, in the image of the Republican party, and raise up as an object of worship by the Republican party to Bellow In The Very Loudest Voice Possible what the Republican party has always believed and has already been saying very loudly for a very long time.

Donald Trump is, in fact, the deranged, racist end product of exactly the sort of political climate change that we stupid Liberals have been warning about for decades.  From the L.A. Times, more than a quarter of a century ago:

Some Diners Get a Rush With Limbaugh Piped In : Politics: Several restaurants offer the conservative talk show as a lunchtime treat for his devotees. One eatery even has fax machines for patrons who want to send off their opinions.

Lunch is served two ways at Blackie's House of Beef--with Rush Limbaugh or without.

The meat-and-potatoes restaurant about a mile from the White House is one of a growing number nationwide to feature a "Rush Room," where the faithful can dine without missing the blustery conservative talk show host's midday radio show.

They're listening to Rush over ribs at Barbecue Shack in Florence, Ky., and over bratwurst at Bernkastel Festhaus in Daytona Beach, Fla.

At Taste of Texas, a Houston steak joint, he's piped in to diners on individual speakers at each table.

At Blackie's, as Limbaugh rails loudly over the sound system, customers sit in a room decorated with red-white-and-blue bunting and listen quietly, munching on burgers and steak.

There are fax machines set up for them to send their views to the show, although on this day the machines sat dormant.

Limbaugh isn't for everyone.

Many find his remarks about "environmentalist wackos," "feminazis" and "commie libs" more than a little offensive. That's why Blackie's only seats people in the Rush Room if they request it.

Those who do are die-hard fans--or, in Limbaugh lingo, dittoheads. Most find it a heady experience to be around others who talk the Rush talk.

Bill Bates of Olney, Md., loves the guy. So when his friends threw him a 60th birthday party recently, they knew just where to hold it.

Bates, who sat at a table covered with wrapping paper and presents, beamed as he talked about the experience.

"I think it's wonderful, because I am a great Rush admirer," said Bates. "It's so comforting to think that somebody in the public eye like Rush believes in what we do."
...

Rush Rooms aren't always in restaurants, Carson says. He has heard about ones in hardware stores, even a dentist's office.

Three offensive linemen for the Green Bay Packers--Rich Marin, Ken Ruettgers and Harry Galbreath--have an unofficial Rush Room in their locker room, where they listen to him regularly on a boom box.

"It's nice to know there are so many people out there who know the truth," said Joan Schnabel, a Bethesda, Md., homemaker who listens to Rush every day.

She and her friend Nilda Beaumont persuaded their husbands to take them to Blackie's Rush Room.

Schnabel, Beaumont and other Rush Roomers share Rush's disdain for--among other things--President Clinton, environmentalists, multiculturalists, avid feminists, Congress and "the liberal media."

"It's not what the newspapers say," Schnabel warns. "It's what they're leaving out."
...

And for as long as we stupid Liberals have been warning that something extraordinarily dangerous was growing and metastasizing in plain sight on the Right, the Very Serious Conservative Brain Wizards like Mr. David Brooks of The New York Times have been airily dismissing such warnings as the product of our feverish, stupid Liberal imaginations.

Oops.

And second, we're going now to that place in my head where I seriously wonder if I am losing my mind.  Wonder if I am the only person on Earth who remembers when Mr. Brooks took exactly the opposite position of the one he is championing today.  Wondering what terrible and invisible power Mr. Brooks exerts over his peers that not one of them ever dares to bring shit like this up.

This time I won't wear you out by winding the clock back to the 1990s or the Bush Administration or the late Devonian anything that exhausting.  This time we're just going to take a short hop to two years ago; back when small groups of people came together from every walk of life to organize and lead the Women's March and set in motion all the political and social changes that have followed in its wake.

A movement which also happens to meet every one of the criteria for successful, social change Mr. Brooks' lays out in his column.

For example. those involved in the Women's March -- from the top, right down to the grassroots level -- definitely fell into one or more of Mr. Brooks' categories of "norm-shifters":

Namers. These are people who describe the context in some new way...

Confrontationalists. Social movements move forward by declaring disgraceful things that had formerly been acceptable: segregation, littering, sexual harassment, etc. They wake people up to the ways an old norm is disgraceful by actively and visibly confronting it. The civil rights movement had a strategy aimed at creating a soap opera every day: Do something every day that forces the segregationists to display their own hatefulness and the unjustness of their norms. This is how you rouse people.

Illuminators. If confrontationalists tear down old norms, illuminators lift up new ones...

Conveners. These are people who organize gatherings for those who want to shift the same norm...

Celebrities. When famous, good-looking or cool people embrace a norm-shift, you get a mass cascade.

The march was made possible by a broad coalition of small groups across the country working collaboratively to push back hard against the Trump, norm-smashing killdozer.

And the march has led directly to tangible political and social change which the country is desperately in need of.

And so, given all of that, how did Woke David Brooks view this real-life example of ordinary people coming together to save their nation and reclaim civilized social norms from the Republican vandals and lunatics who were giddily smashing everything they could lay their hands on?

By scolding the ladies for doing it all wrong and offending his delicate Beltway sensibilities.

From The Washintonian:

David Brooks: Women’s March Needed Patriotism and Biblical Morality

Middle-aged white man David Brooks loves to use his New York Times column to tell protesters how they’re doing something wrong. He did it with Occupy Wall Street. He did it with Colin Kaepernick. And the Women’s March is no different.

In his column Tuesday, Brooks writes that these various women’s marches “can never be an effective opposition to Donald Trump.” He dismisses the issues championed in the march—reproductive rights, equal pay, climate change—as “voting issues for many upper-middle-class voters in university towns and coastal cities.” Despite the fact that he refuses to even consider the role of women of color and issues of race and immigration in this succinct description, he still managed to claim that these weren’t important enough to march on. According to Brooks, they are all the wrong issues. As for his geography, referencing Niles, Michigan as a small town that barely heard of this march, Brooks might want to take a look at this map, courtesy of his own news organization. Hint: they weren’t all in big, coastal cities or college towns.

Brooks also argues that identity politics would not be effective–that the marches should’ve been more patriotic, to counter the strong nationalist rhetoric from the inauguration the day before. “Instead, the marches offered the pink hats, an anti-Trump movement built, oddly, around Planned Parenthood, and lots of signs with the word ‘pussy’ in them. The definition of America is up for grabs.” (Emphasis mine.)

Tasteful as ever.

To conclude his lecture, Brooks writes that though he “loathed” the inauguration, he recognized Trump’s message and lauded Trump’s “coherent vision” as a President who is “rallying a true and fervent love of our home.” On the other hand, the Women’s March didn’t meet the Brooks Patriotic Standard. Women, Brooks argues, need a mission “building a nation that balances the dynamism of capitalism with biblical morality.”...

Donald Trump is not a black hole.

Or a meteor.

Or an avalanche.

Donald Trump is the result of the unholy, codependent relationship between the braying Hate Radio/Fox News Republicans who straight-up adore him, and the sniveling, accommodationist David Brooks Republicans who can always be found on the sidelines carping about the incivility on Both Sides and swearing that while they may support civil rights for Negroes in theory, in practice, snarling traffic on the Edmund Pettus Bridge is very rude and no way to balance the dynamism of capitalism with biblical morality.

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