Disrupted: The politics of belonging

Brooks-Trump. Andrew Russeth, Creative Commons Licensed.

David Brooks, in the New York Times this morning – October 31st, 2018: “What you see is good people desperately trying to connect in an America where bonds are attenuated — without stable families, tight communities, stable careers, ethnic roots or an enveloping moral culture. There’s just a whirl of changing stepfathers, changing homes, changing phone distractions, changing pop-culture references, financial stress and chronic drinking, which make it harder to sink down roots into something, or to even have a spiritual narrative that gives meaning to life”.

There are certainly many ways to describe and define the roots of Trump support in the USA of today, but increasingly – David Brooks (centrist, if not conservative) is hitting home a cultural critique that is worth reading. This is one of those. 

Leave a Reply