We should have seen it

David Brooks in The Atlantic starts by echoing what I quoted of his last month, then moves on to history lesson and how we eventually rebuild after Trump. A long, good read:

Humility, prudence, and honesty are not just nice virtues to have—they are practical tools that produce good outcomes. When you replace them with greed, lust, hypocrisy, and dishonesty, terrible things happen.

And:

When the time comes to build a new paradigm, progressives talk about economic redistribution; conservatives talk about cultural and civic repair. History shows that you need both: Recovery from national crisis demands comprehensive reinvention at all levels of society.

Frank McPherson

Ever since I read Cory Doctorow’s post about Schismogenesis pluralistic.net/2021/12/1… the topic has been stuck in my mind. I think it describes our problem well, we are stuck in a zero sum game war.

I don’t think we find our way out until opposing leaders actually agree on certain actions because help obtain a desired outcome.

In other words, I as a politically left leaning person has to get beyond everything the knee jerk reacton that everything Trump and Republicans do is bad and be willing to say I agree with this one or two items.

At the same time, when I do that, other politically left leaning people have to be willing to not condemn me by saying I support 100% Trump or am ant-American.

Mark Stoneman

I gave up reading David Brooks’ insufferable pontificating long ago, but if you’re still able to get something out of him these days, more power to you.

Manton Reece

@frankm Yes, exactly. Cory’s post is great, I hadn’t seen it. Tribalism often seems to override reason or actual ideology. This unfortunately has a silencing effect where we hesitate to write about topics that don’t neatly align with what “everyone” on our side believes.

Manton Reece

@markstoneman I haven’t exactly been a fan of his, but I’ve become interested in what actual conservatives think we should do, the people who see Trump for what he is. Unfortunately there don’t seem to be many of them.

Manton Reece @manton
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