David Brooks has written a couple of good columns (for my taste) lately:
His reference to cultural savagery in the first really hit home, and his Kindness column contains some good tips for getting past that. I'll keep it handy.
The Kamala Harris article (review of her memoir) provides good information and an intelligent take on unfolding 2020 presidential election campaign.
There are some ironic juxtapositions at play. Brooks writes approvingly of Harris as ruthless and as someone with the ability to spot the villain in any situation. That would seem to be at odds with his calls in the kindness article to fight the culture of savagery. But Brooks puts it well in saying, "The immediate problem of Democratic voters is Donald Trump, and the culture of shamelessness he has instigated... Harris’s fearless, cut-the-crap rhetorical style will probably serve her well in this pugilistic political moment".
It's a fine line, and one that I'd also like to walk -- How to combat cultural savagery on the one hand, while speaking clearly and forcefully against Trump on the other? From my perspective, this has been one of Bernie Sanders' strong points. He has embraced many of Trump's constituents by legitimizing their grievances. But he has been quite clear in his statements regarding Trump. While Brooks says,
Democrats will want unity. They won’t want somebody who essentially runs against the Democratic establishment (Bernie Sanders); they’ll want somebody who embodies it (Harris). They’ll want somebody who seems able to pulverize Trump in a debate (Harris).
This is not the Sanders I know. From the NY Times on 9/5/2016,
Outside Senator Bernie Sanders’s first general-election rally for Hillary Clinton on Monday, a small group of Clinton supporters and former Sanders backers glared at one another... The division is exactly the kind Mr. Sanders hopes to avoid in November. It is also why he spent 36 minutes at Lebanon High School here urging people to vote for Mrs. Clinton and laying out why he believes that Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, is a “pathological liar.”
So I guess I still disagree with Brooks with regard to Bernie Sanders and the composition of the Democratic party / left wing. But we're moving closer together in outlook.
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