September 28, 2017--Donald Trump's Buffoonery

David Brooks is not among my favorite columnists. For me he is often more intellectually pretentious than either insightful or trenchant. But occasionally, he gets it right. On Tuesday, for example, in his New York Times column, "The Abbie Hoffman Of the Right." 

He wrote about how Trump was not elected to be a legislative president (noting correctly that he never showed much interest in policy) but rather to be a "cultural president." He was "elected to shred the dominant American culture and to give voice to those who felt voiceless in that culture."

Thus his comparison to intentionally buffoon-like Abbie Hoffman who did a version of the same thing during the 1960s when he took on the WASPy high-culture establishment of post World War II America.

We can take a pass on the comparison to the Yippie culture warrior (it's a tenuous comparison at best) but can learn a great deal about the Trump phenomenon by paying attention to what Brooks has to say about Trump. I like his argument in part because I have been attempting for nearly two years now to press a version of the same perception. But, admittedly, not quite as well and not nearly as skillfully written. 

So in case you didn't see it, here are some quotes from Brooks' excellent piece--

In 2016, members of the outraged working class elected their own Abbie Hoffman as president. Trump is not good at much, but he is wickedly good at sticking his thumb in the eye of the educated elites. He doesn't have to build a new culture, or even attract a majority. He just has to tear down the old one. 

That's exactly what he's doing. Donald Trump came into a segmenting culture and he is further tearing apart every fissure. He has a nose for every wound in the body politic and day after day he sticks a red hot poker in one wound or another and rips it open. . . . 

The members of the educated class saw this past weekend's NFL fracas as a fight over racism. They felt mobilized and unified in that fight and full of righteous energy. Members of the working class saw the fracas as a fight about American identity. . . . 

He continually goes after racial matters in part because he's a bigot but also in part because multiculturalism is the theology of the educated class and it's the leverage point he can most effectively use to isolate the educated class from everyone else. [My italics]

He is so destructive because his enemies help him. He ramps up the aggression. His enemies ramp it up more, to preserve their own dignity. But the ensuing cultural violence only serves Trump's long-term destructive purpose. . . . 

It's possible that after four years of this Trump will have effectively destroyed the prevailing culture. The reign of the meritocratic establishment will be just as over as the reign of the Protestant establishment now is.  

Of course Donald Trump is a buffoon. Buffoonery is his most effective weapon. Because of him a new culture will have to be built, new values promulgated and a new social fabric will have to be woven, one that brings the different planets back into relation with one another.

Hate this or not, hate Trump or not, this is what is happening and we ignore this reality at our peril.