Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: "And Democrats, don’t feel too self-righteous here. If he was on your team, most of you would like him too. You may deny it, but you’re lying to yourself."

This line is just plain wrong. The Democrats threw out Al Franken because he pretended to do something lewd. No, David Brooks, your side has fallen for a con man because the republican world view is fundamentally insular and xenophobic.

They threw out Al Franken because he made it inconvenient to go after Trump.

They threw him out because they care about having ethical leaders. Republicans don't care about having ethical leaders. You may deny it, but you’re lying to yourself.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP. I despise the man, and think he is extremely harmful to the good of the nation, but correctly predicted his wins in spring of 2016 and again in 2024, so you know where I am coming from.

This is my take: Trump is popular because Trump gives room and structure for many people to reject quasi-religious beliefs that have been presented as fact, but are not fact, by the dominant new faith-based groups in our society (political groups). He allows space for heresy, and he does not apologize for his own heresies. In a world where the wrong words (e.g. heresies to the newly dominant religions) can and have caused people to lose jobs, friends, etc., this is enormously appealing. Trump says wrong words all the time.

The background of this is that with the decline in organized religions, we as a society have replaced organized religions with allegiance to political parties and ideologies. And with that religious fervor comes a religious fundamentalism that freely mixes fact with belief but presents that to the world as fact.

I actually believe that the sharp rise in mental health issues in young people is related to this dissonance. They have been presented with what are essentially faith-based beliefs as though those are fact, but not with the structures to deal with apostasy. The religions of old do the same (present faith as fact), of course, but they accompany those religious tenets with a structure to enable faith and manage heresy. So, a Christian child raised in a Christian household might reach teenhood and declare there is no God, but when that happens, churches have structures for managing that apostasy. A Catholic child might be sent towards the sacrament of Confirmation, a fundamentalist child might be encouraged to talk to a pastor who does a baptism, etc. I’m not saying that it’s not rife with abuse, of course, but just that there are organized structures for dealing with apostasy and a failure to believe what is faith as fact.

The religion of political movements doesn’t have any such structures, however. You’re just a heretic if you disbelieve, and cast out of the tribe. And both parties are asking people to believe a lot that’s effectively religious in nature as fact, without any organized mechanism for addressing doubts and skepticism.

Trump walked into this and what’s remarkable is that he’s such a liar, but he lives his own truths and gives space for others while doing that. That’s an extremely unusual political quality right now: both Democrats and Republicans demand belief allegiance from their leaders. Trump is perceived as rejecting orthodoxies, in contrast. And he never apologizes, never backs down from a perceived heresy, never gives an inch to the party monitors tasked with keeping political heretics strictly inline.

That’s what is appealing: he allows people to reject beliefs that the party priest classes have declared untouchable tenets. And that is a freedom of religious thought that Americans on all sides of the political spectrum crave. Hence, his popularity.

You talk about Trump as if he’s a refreshing antidote to the “religions” of the “party priests”, and yet the MAGA movement is one of the most cult-like, stubborn, impervious to facts, worshipping-of-Dear-Leader groups this country has ever seen. Some of them literally believe he is the second coming of Jesus. A PP in this very thread posted that he’s the “savior of Western Civilization”.

All he’s done is replace one form of orthodoxy with an even stricter authoritarian model. People who question Trump get excommunicated. There is no model within MAGA for dealing with apostasy.

Anyway, it’s hyperbolic and misleading to talk about political beliefs as religions. Religions are systems that relate humanity to spiritual or supernatural elements. Wokeness doesn’t fall under that umbrella, and neither does conservatism. It would be fairer to say “unfalsifiable belief system”, but all morality is unfalsifiable (the inverse of David Hume’s “no IS implies an OUGHT”). The difference is that people today are less accepting of the old justifications for hierarchy. The left wants to dismantle it, and the right wants to return to it.

The left wants no such dismantling of hierarchy. It wants to create a new hierarchy, one as oppressive but with different power structures in place.

I haven’t heard anyone talk about a different and equally oppressive power structure.

There are plenty of people online out there right now celebrating the drowning of little children because they are white. What do you think that means, fun times?

Correction: they are celebrating the deaths because the dead kids were possibly the children of Trump voters. There have been a few racists but it’s more about the politics.

Lots of Texans are more afraid of their kids getting a book read to them by a drag queen than being in the path of a deadly flood. When push comes to above, they’ll take on water.

Exhibit 95030138 of celebrating leftists.

Pointing out how we got here isn’t the same as celebrating.

Since you want to play that game, there are legions of examples of right wingers ghoulishly mocking/celebrating/fantasizing about the deaths of immigrants, children in Gaza, Pope Francis, black people brutalized by the police, Halnya Hutchins, the Sandy Hook children, the two Minnesota politicians who were brutally assassinated, and on and on and on.

This attempt to demand the empathy that right wingers have never shown to the victims of their policies is intellectually dishonest at best, and utterly depraved at worst.

I agree that there are horrific people on the right doing exactly what you said. But the left is as bad. The far left and far right are united in their depraved sociopathy.

This is like saying a birthday candle and the sun are the same because they both give off light.

I genuinely wish this were true. I’m a lifelong Democrat who used to believe this. But I don’t any more, and I consider the far left as sociopathic as the far right. The Democrats are just deluding themselves because it’s important for their self-perception and ego to ignore the deep harms in the party.

+1 You can't question the left about anything without being called racist.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP. I despise the man, and think he is extremely harmful to the good of the nation, but correctly predicted his wins in spring of 2016 and again in 2024, so you know where I am coming from.

This is my take: Trump is popular because Trump gives room and structure for many people to reject quasi-religious beliefs that have been presented as fact, but are not fact, by the dominant new faith-based groups in our society (political groups). He allows space for heresy, and he does not apologize for his own heresies. In a world where the wrong words (e.g. heresies to the newly dominant religions) can and have caused people to lose jobs, friends, etc., this is enormously appealing. Trump says wrong words all the time.

The background of this is that with the decline in organized religions, we as a society have replaced organized religions with allegiance to political parties and ideologies. And with that religious fervor comes a religious fundamentalism that freely mixes fact with belief but presents that to the world as fact.

I actually believe that the sharp rise in mental health issues in young people is related to this dissonance. They have been presented with what are essentially faith-based beliefs as though those are fact, but not with the structures to deal with apostasy. The religions of old do the same (present faith as fact), of course, but they accompany those religious tenets with a structure to enable faith and manage heresy. So, a Christian child raised in a Christian household might reach teenhood and declare there is no God, but when that happens, churches have structures for managing that apostasy. A Catholic child might be sent towards the sacrament of Confirmation, a fundamentalist child might be encouraged to talk to a pastor who does a baptism, etc. I’m not saying that it’s not rife with abuse, of course, but just that there are organized structures for dealing with apostasy and a failure to believe what is faith as fact.

The religion of political movements doesn’t have any such structures, however. You’re just a heretic if you disbelieve, and cast out of the tribe. And both parties are asking people to believe a lot that’s effectively religious in nature as fact, without any organized mechanism for addressing doubts and skepticism.

Trump walked into this and what’s remarkable is that he’s such a liar, but he lives his own truths and gives space for others while doing that. That’s an extremely unusual political quality right now: both Democrats and Republicans demand belief allegiance from their leaders. Trump is perceived as rejecting orthodoxies, in contrast. And he never apologizes, never backs down from a perceived heresy, never gives an inch to the party monitors tasked with keeping political heretics strictly inline.

That’s what is appealing: he allows people to reject beliefs that the party priest classes have declared untouchable tenets. And that is a freedom of religious thought that Americans on all sides of the political spectrum crave. Hence, his popularity.

You talk about Trump as if he’s a refreshing antidote to the “religions” of the “party priests”, and yet the MAGA movement is one of the most cult-like, stubborn, impervious to facts, worshipping-of-Dear-Leader groups this country has ever seen. Some of them literally believe he is the second coming of Jesus. A PP in this very thread posted that he’s the “savior of Western Civilization”.

All he’s done is replace one form of orthodoxy with an even stricter authoritarian model. People who question Trump get excommunicated. There is no model within MAGA for dealing with apostasy.

Anyway, it’s hyperbolic and misleading to talk about political beliefs as religions. Religions are systems that relate humanity to spiritual or supernatural elements. Wokeness doesn’t fall under that umbrella, and neither does conservatism. It would be fairer to say “unfalsifiable belief system”, but all morality is unfalsifiable (the inverse of David Hume’s “no IS implies an OUGHT”). The difference is that people today are less accepting of the old justifications for hierarchy. The left wants to dismantle it, and the right wants to return to it.

The left wants no such dismantling of hierarchy. It wants to create a new hierarchy, one as oppressive but with different power structures in place.

I haven’t heard anyone talk about a different and equally oppressive power structure.

There are plenty of people online out there right now celebrating the drowning of little children because they are white. What do you think that means, fun times?

Correction: they are celebrating the deaths because the dead kids were possibly the children of Trump voters. There have been a few racists but it’s more about the politics.

Lots of Texans are more afraid of their kids getting a book read to them by a drag queen than being in the path of a deadly flood. When push comes to above, they’ll take on water.

Exhibit 95030138 of celebrating leftists.

Pointing out how we got here isn’t the same as celebrating.

Since you want to play that game, there are legions of examples of right wingers ghoulishly mocking/celebrating/fantasizing about the deaths of immigrants, children in Gaza, Pope Francis, black people brutalized by the police, Halnya Hutchins, the Sandy Hook children, the two Minnesota politicians who were brutally assassinated, and on and on and on.

This attempt to demand the empathy that right wingers have never shown to the victims of their policies is intellectually dishonest at best, and utterly depraved at worst.

I agree that there are horrific people on the right doing exactly what you said. But the left is as bad. The far left and far right are united in their depraved sociopathy.

This is like saying a birthday candle and the sun are the same because they both give off light.

I genuinely wish this were true. I’m a lifelong Democrat who used to believe this. But I don’t any more, and I consider the far left as sociopathic as the far right. The Democrats are just deluding themselves because it’s important for their self-perception and ego to ignore the deep harms in the party.

Anonymous wrote:I like Trump and I’m happy to have to voted for him. He is (largely, with a few exceptions) making good on his promises he made as a candidate, and I’m generally pleased so far.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP. I despise the man, and think he is extremely harmful to the good of the nation, but correctly predicted his wins in spring of 2016 and again in 2024, so you know where I am coming from.

This is my take: Trump is popular because Trump gives room and structure for many people to reject quasi-religious beliefs that have been presented as fact, but are not fact, by the dominant new faith-based groups in our society (political groups). He allows space for heresy, and he does not apologize for his own heresies. In a world where the wrong words (e.g. heresies to the newly dominant religions) can and have caused people to lose jobs, friends, etc., this is enormously appealing. Trump says wrong words all the time.

The background of this is that with the decline in organized religions, we as a society have replaced organized religions with allegiance to political parties and ideologies. And with that religious fervor comes a religious fundamentalism that freely mixes fact with belief but presents that to the world as fact.

I actually believe that the sharp rise in mental health issues in young people is related to this dissonance. They have been presented with what are essentially faith-based beliefs as though those are fact, but not with the structures to deal with apostasy. The religions of old do the same (present faith as fact), of course, but they accompany those religious tenets with a structure to enable faith and manage heresy. So, a Christian child raised in a Christian household might reach teenhood and declare there is no God, but when that happens, churches have structures for managing that apostasy. A Catholic child might be sent towards the sacrament of Confirmation, a fundamentalist child might be encouraged to talk to a pastor who does a baptism, etc. I’m not saying that it’s not rife with abuse, of course, but just that there are organized structures for dealing with apostasy and a failure to believe what is faith as fact.

The religion of political movements doesn’t have any such structures, however. You’re just a heretic if you disbelieve, and cast out of the tribe. And both parties are asking people to believe a lot that’s effectively religious in nature as fact, without any organized mechanism for addressing doubts and skepticism.

Trump walked into this and what’s remarkable is that he’s such a liar, but he lives his own truths and gives space for others while doing that. That’s an extremely unusual political quality right now: both Democrats and Republicans demand belief allegiance from their leaders. Trump is perceived as rejecting orthodoxies, in contrast. And he never apologizes, never backs down from a perceived heresy, never gives an inch to the party monitors tasked with keeping political heretics strictly inline.

That’s what is appealing: he allows people to reject beliefs that the party priest classes have declared untouchable tenets. And that is a freedom of religious thought that Americans on all sides of the political spectrum crave. Hence, his popularity.

You talk about Trump as if he’s a refreshing antidote to the “religions” of the “party priests”, and yet the MAGA movement is one of the most cult-like, stubborn, impervious to facts, worshipping-of-Dear-Leader groups this country has ever seen. Some of them literally believe he is the second coming of Jesus. A PP in this very thread posted that he’s the “savior of Western Civilization”.

All he’s done is replace one form of orthodoxy with an even stricter authoritarian model. People who question Trump get excommunicated. There is no model within MAGA for dealing with apostasy.

Anyway, it’s hyperbolic and misleading to talk about political beliefs as religions. Religions are systems that relate humanity to spiritual or supernatural elements. Wokeness doesn’t fall under that umbrella, and neither does conservatism. It would be fairer to say “unfalsifiable belief system”, but all morality is unfalsifiable (the inverse of David Hume’s “no IS implies an OUGHT”). The difference is that people today are less accepting of the old justifications for hierarchy. The left wants to dismantle it, and the right wants to return to it.

The left wants no such dismantling of hierarchy. It wants to create a new hierarchy, one as oppressive but with different power structures in place.

I haven’t heard anyone talk about a different and equally oppressive power structure.

There are plenty of people online out there right now celebrating the drowning of little children because they are white. What do you think that means, fun times?

Correction: they are celebrating the deaths because the dead kids were possibly the children of Trump voters. There have been a few racists but it’s more about the politics.

Lots of Texans are more afraid of their kids getting a book read to them by a drag queen than being in the path of a deadly flood. When push comes to above, they’ll take on water.

Exhibit 95030138 of celebrating leftists.

Pointing out how we got here isn’t the same as celebrating.

Since you want to play that game, there are legions of examples of right wingers ghoulishly mocking/celebrating/fantasizing about the deaths of immigrants, children in Gaza, Pope Francis, black people brutalized by the police, Halnya Hutchins, the Sandy Hook children, the two Minnesota politicians who were brutally assassinated, and on and on and on.

This attempt to demand the empathy that right wingers have never shown to the victims of their policies is intellectually dishonest at best, and utterly depraved at worst.

I agree that there are horrific people on the right doing exactly what you said. But the left is as bad. The far left and far right are united in their depraved sociopathy.

This is like saying a birthday candle and the sun are the same because they both give off light.

I genuinely wish this were true. I’m a lifelong Democrat who used to believe this. But I don’t any more, and I consider the far left as sociopathic as the far right. The Democrats are just deluding themselves because it’s important for their self-perception and ego to ignore the deep harms in the party.

Anonymous wrote:It’s very simple. There are many terrible people who support Trump. Trump is bad but his followers are worse.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:NP. I despise the man, and think he is extremely harmful to the good of the nation, but correctly predicted his wins in spring of 2016 and again in 2024, so you know where I am coming from.

This is my take: Trump is popular because Trump gives room and structure for many people to reject quasi-religious beliefs that have been presented as fact, but are not fact, by the dominant new faith-based groups in our society (political groups). He allows space for heresy, and he does not apologize for his own heresies. In a world where the wrong words (e.g. heresies to the newly dominant religions) can and have caused people to lose jobs, friends, etc., this is enormously appealing. Trump says wrong words all the time.

The background of this is that with the decline in organized religions, we as a society have replaced organized religions with allegiance to political parties and ideologies. And with that religious fervor comes a religious fundamentalism that freely mixes fact with belief but presents that to the world as fact.

I actually believe that the sharp rise in mental health issues in young people is related to this dissonance. They have been presented with what are essentially faith-based beliefs as though those are fact, but not with the structures to deal with apostasy. The religions of old do the same (present faith as fact), of course, but they accompany those religious tenets with a structure to enable faith and manage heresy. So, a Christian child raised in a Christian household might reach teenhood and declare there is no God, but when that happens, churches have structures for managing that apostasy. A Catholic child might be sent towards the sacrament of Confirmation, a fundamentalist child might be encouraged to talk to a pastor who does a baptism, etc. I’m not saying that it’s not rife with abuse, of course, but just that there are organized structures for dealing with apostasy and a failure to believe what is faith as fact.

The religion of political movements doesn’t have any such structures, however. You’re just a heretic if you disbelieve, and cast out of the tribe. And both parties are asking people to believe a lot that’s effectively religious in nature as fact, without any organized mechanism for addressing doubts and skepticism.

Trump walked into this and what’s remarkable is that he’s such a liar, but he lives his own truths and gives space for others while doing that. That’s an extremely unusual political quality right now: both Democrats and Republicans demand belief allegiance from their leaders. Trump is perceived as rejecting orthodoxies, in contrast. And he never apologizes, never backs down from a perceived heresy, never gives an inch to the party monitors tasked with keeping political heretics strictly inline.

That’s what is appealing: he allows people to reject beliefs that the party priest classes have declared untouchable tenets. And that is a freedom of religious thought that Americans on all sides of the political spectrum crave. Hence, his popularity.

You talk about Trump as if he’s a refreshing antidote to the “religions” of the “party priests”, and yet the MAGA movement is one of the most cult-like, stubborn, impervious to facts, worshipping-of-Dear-Leader groups this country has ever seen. Some of them literally believe he is the second coming of Jesus. A PP in this very thread posted that he’s the “savior of Western Civilization”.

All he’s done is replace one form of orthodoxy with an even stricter authoritarian model. People who question Trump get excommunicated. There is no model within MAGA for dealing with apostasy.

Anyway, it’s hyperbolic and misleading to talk about political beliefs as religions. Religions are systems that relate humanity to spiritual or supernatural elements. Wokeness doesn’t fall under that umbrella, and neither does conservatism. It would be fairer to say “unfalsifiable belief system”, but all morality is unfalsifiable (the inverse of David Hume’s “no IS implies an OUGHT”). The difference is that people today are less accepting of the old justifications for hierarchy. The left wants to dismantle it, and the right wants to return to it.

The left wants no such dismantling of hierarchy. It wants to create a new hierarchy, one as oppressive but with different power structures in place.

I haven’t heard anyone talk about a different and equally oppressive power structure.

There are plenty of people online out there right now celebrating the drowning of little children because they are white. What do you think that means, fun times?

Correction: they are celebrating the deaths because the dead kids were possibly the children of Trump voters. There have been a few racists but it’s more about the politics.

Lots of Texans are more afraid of their kids getting a book read to them by a drag queen than being in the path of a deadly flood. When push comes to above, they’ll take on water.

Exhibit 95030138 of celebrating leftists.

Pointing out how we got here isn’t the same as celebrating.

Since you want to play that game, there are legions of examples of right wingers ghoulishly mocking/celebrating/fantasizing about the deaths of immigrants, children in Gaza, Pope Francis, black people brutalized by the police, Halnya Hutchins, the Sandy Hook children, the two Minnesota politicians who were brutally assassinated, and on and on and on.

This attempt to demand the empathy that right wingers have never shown to the victims of their policies is intellectually dishonest at best, and utterly depraved at worst.

I agree that there are horrific people on the right doing exactly what you said. But the left is as bad. The far left and far right are united in their depraved sociopathy.

This is like saying a birthday candle and the sun are the same because they both give off light.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: "And Democrats, don’t feel too self-righteous here. If he was on your team, most of you would like him too. You may deny it, but you’re lying to yourself."

This line is just plain wrong. The Democrats threw out Al Franken because he pretended to do something lewd. No, David Brooks, your side has fallen for a con man because the republican world view is fundamentally insular and xenophobic.

They threw out Al Franken because he made it inconvenient to go after Trump.

Anonymous wrote: "And Democrats, don’t feel too self-righteous here. If he was on your team, most of you would like him too. You may deny it, but you’re lying to yourself."

This line is just plain wrong. The Democrats threw out Al Franken because he pretended to do something lewd. No, David Brooks, your side has fallen for a con man because the republican world view is fundamentally insular and xenophobic.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because MAGA is locked inside a media ecosystem that is devoid of facts or reason.

Boo Hoo libs have lost narrative control.

Anonymous wrote:All you need is trust which religion offers.
So does liberal ideology until it finds itself in a crisis mode.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gift link: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/trump-administration-supporters-good/683441/?gift=hIzDAuJOJsprB-h5XG3wQIhL8IgABi1khqcl8BzqM0w&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

I don't know why I even try with David Brooks anymore. He has two arguments, both of which he trots out here in some respect:

1) All you need is religion. He's not saying it explicitly here, but that's the underlying theme. I find it fascinating that he's trotting out all these examples of the past with rigid social codes but totally glosses over how those social codes were enforced. And he completely glosses over, you know, LAWS. There are a lot of things that are intrinsically right and wrong, and the most wrong are punishable by law.

2) Both sides are bad. Despite the fact that the Republican party and conservatives have overwhelmingly thrown their support behind Trump, Brooks doesn't really take them to task. He just says if he was a Democrat then Democrats would have done the same! It's such a lazy argument that denies the reality right in front of him.

Give me some more Anne Applebaum and let Brooks retire. Maybe he can make a speech like his baseball hero.