If Not Trump, What?
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/29/opinion/if-not-trump-what.html
Donald Trump now looks set to be the Republican presidential nominee. So for those of us appalled by this prospect what are we supposed to do?
Well, not what the leaders of the Republican Party are doing. Theyre going down meekly and hoping for a quiet convention. They seem blithely unaware that this is a Joe McCarthy moment. People will be judged by where they stood at this time. Those who walked with Trump will be tainted forever after for the degradation of standards and the general election slaughter....
That means first its necessary to go out into the pain. I was surprised by Trumps success because Ive 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.
Well probably need a new national story. Up until now, Americas story has been some version of the rags-to-riches story, the lone individual who rises from the bottom through pluck and work. But that story isnt working for people anymore, especially for people who think the system is rigged.
Yes, it
has come down to me posting David Brooks columns. These are indeed the times that try wo/men's souls.