FRIDAY, MARCH 7, 2025
Ever so slowly, we turn: Just this once, we're going to let you ask us about our awareness.
We've often said that we ourselves were physically present when the problem began. We refer to "The Problem We All Live With."
We refer to the problem we all live with today, not the one Normal Rockwell laid out in his famous illustration for the cover of the Saturday Evening Post.
That famous illustration appeared in 1964—but that was the problem we all lived with back them. As we've noted at least once in the past, the current problem we all live with actually started like this:
It started during our freshman year at Harvard College—1965-1966. Two years later, we'd start getting schooled in the ways the later Wittgenstein. For the record, the country was much smaller then.
The population was roughly 190 million. In terms of geographic ancestry and cultural diversity, the nation was much less complex.
It was easier, at that time, to get into "the finest schools." Also, a certain dress code was still in existence.
In order to eat at the freshman dining hall at the well-known college in question, you had to wear a jacket, shirt and tie! Rules like that would soon be gone, but that rule was still in effect that year.
Also, you had to check in with a cafeteria lady as you trooped in to eat. That's where The Problem We All Live With (Today) actually got its start.
On the day in question, we stood in line behind a fellow freshman who was engaged in a peculiar debate. The shirt he was wearing was a tee shirt—and he had tied a shoe string around his neck.
Theoretically, that served as his "tie." Completing the look, his "jacket" was a windbreaker of some kind. He was questioning the cafeteria lady, who was admirably standing her ground:
How do you know that isn't a tie? our fellow freshman skillfully said
How did she know that wasn't a tie? She knew because she spoke the (American) English language! As Sam Ervin later said, it was her native tongue.
We stood in line behind this kid as he pseudo-debated this working-class woman who most likely lived somewhere in working-class Cambridge, Mass.
This kid was a freshman at one of the finest schools. The cafeteria lady, displaying unerring good sense, told him he wasn't wearing a tie, or even a shirt or a jacket.
That's when The Problem started! Rather, it started when the woman in question went home that day and told her family about the unfortunate conduct of this particular kid.
In fairness, let's be fair! The kid was just a freshman in college. Most likely, he was 17 or 18 years old.
Later in life, he may have become much wiser. The wisdom may have loaded in a bit further down the road—but on that day, he was the person whose disrespectful, hectoring conduct initiated The Problem We All Live With (Today).
In large part thanks to The Problem We All Live With, Donald J. Trump is back in the Oval Office. Many of us in Blue America still don't understand the way we helped create that state of affairs.
In Red America, many people are glad that he's back in the White House. In Blue America, most people don't feel that way.
We'll suggest our own view of the matter below. For now, let's jump to the new column by the New York Times' David Brooks.
We regard David Brooks as a good, decent person. Especially in the new incarnation he created at least a dozen years back, we think he's been a force for sanity and a force for the good.
On balance, we also think he's never quite broken free from a certain inclination. Today, his column starts in the manner shown below.
For the record, we don't like the tone of the headline it carries:
An Angry Little Boy on a Great White Horse
I have a friend who worked in the first Trump administration who really admired the ancient virtue magnanimity (which is different than the modern definition, generosity). I thought that was odd since she is a devout Catholic whereas through most of the past 2,400 years magnanimity has been seen as a pagan virtue that directly contradicts the Christian ones. But especially after Tuesday night’s presidential address I could understand her interest. I walked away thinking that ancient magnanimity is the organizing principle of Donald Trump’s life—or at least a third rate, schoolboy version of magnanimity.
What is classical magnanimity? The magnanimous man is a certain social type who down through the centuries has fascinated people like Aristotle, Cicero, Aquinas and Nietzsche. The magnanimous man accurately believes he is great and seeks to win triumphs that will bring glory and greatness to his country. Noble versions of magnanimity include Pericles, who led Athens through some of the Peloponnesian War, and more recently Charles de Gaulle, who reclaimed France from the Nazis. Third-rate versions include Trump, who dreams of conquest over Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal.
The magnanimous man does not believe in equality. In his view, some people are great-souled; they lead, live in splendor and strive for eternal fame. Other people are small-souled; they follow and are grateful to be led. The great-souled man displays courage and seeks honor and power. He has contempt for the small-souled man, whose humility, charity and compassion seem to him forms of weakness.
The quintessential magnanimous man is aloof. He doesn’t really have friends. Historically, he has rivals from whom he extracts tribute (like trying to seize Ukraine’s mineral wealth), and he has acolytes on whom he bestows gifts. He gives gifts to others not out of generosity but to display his own superiority. On Tuesday night, Trump told a grieving mother he was naming a wildlife preserve after her murdered daughter. He gave a student the gift of admission to West Point. Trump glowed at the sight of his own noblesse oblige.
That's how the column starts. For the record, we think the insult lodged in that headline is a fairly obvious part of "The Problem We All (Currently) Live With."
The headline refers to Donald J. Trump as "an angry little boy." We think that comes across as snide. To our ear, it too comes across as angry—as too angry by at least half.
Also, we think that attitude tends to take "The Problem We All Live With" and harden it in place.
In the text of his column, Brooks never refers to President Trump as "an angry little boy," but there the term sits, in that headline. Brooks didn't vote for Candidate Trump, and we didn't vote for him either.
David Brooks, a good, decent person, doesn't admire the ongoing work of President Trump. In his column, he says the commander is currently offering "a third rate, schoolboy version of magnanimity."
We think Brooks is possibly overthinking this matter a bit. We think he's inclined to do that. There's nothing that's morally wrong with overthinking a state of affairs, but we'll guess that it doesn't much help.
Have we mentioned the fact that we believe that Brooks' work, on balance, has served as a force for good? That said, it often seems to us that there's something Brooks is withholding—for example, as he ends today's lengthy examination of that ancient virtue:
How does a nation overcome the seductions of the magnanimous leader? Abraham Lincoln offers a model. When he was 28, he gave a speech in which he warned that if the American system toppled, it would be because of homegrown men of overweening ambition. Historians have surmised that Lincoln was conscious of his own unchecked ambition as a political threat.
Lincoln argued that we can counter this kind of ambitious tyrant by cultivating a “political religion” based on reverence for law. He also confronted and regulated his own personal ambition by cultivating the virtues that stand in contrast to it—humility, kindness, respect for the equal dignity of all human beings. Lincoln emerged, by his 50s, as a man who reconciled power and humility.
It’s worth noting that our civilization has mostly rejected the pagan virtues and embraced the Abrahamic virtues. These virtues enable diverse people to live in friendship with one another, not amid permanent dominance games.
Friendship stands as a powerful rebuke to the magnanimous man, a better way to live. Lincoln ended up practicing a different and superior form of politics to the one Trump aspires to. Lincoln believed that you succeed in a democracy when you treat others as friends and not as enemies: “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, is the great high road to his reason.”
There was very little of that spirit out of Trump’s mouth on Tuesday night.
That's the way the column ends. He starts that passage with an excellent question. After speaking in favor of friendship, he ends with an insulting tone.
To our ear, he's also overthinking—over intellectualizing—by many times more than half.
It's clear that Brooks didn't approve of Trump's joint address. That said, it seems to us, as we read the entire column, that there's something Brooks is withholding today, and it's making his column weak.
We're referring to Frost, of course:
The Gift Outright
[...]
Something we were withholding made us weak
Until we found out that it was ourselves
We were withholding...
What is David Brooks withholding? We'll guess that he is withholding what he must surely believe or suspect about Trump.
There's a certain rule in modern journalism—a rule which says that the modern journalist can't reveal what he actually thinks. In this case, he can't reveal what he thinks about President Trump—about the reason why he constantly says and does the peculiar things he constantly says and does.
This refusal to speak keeps Brooks from expressing pity for Donald J. Trump. It stops him from behaving like a friend to the tens of millions of people who don't share his overall view of this president.
Why does Trump do the peculiar things he does? Surely, David Brooks must think that this possibly involves a possible "mental health" issue.
(We emphasize the word "possible.")
Surely, David Brooks, and his many colleagues, must discuss that possibility when they speak among themselves. That said, they're all familiar with the rule of their own peculiar guild which forbids them from saying what they believe or suspect.
They aren't allowed to say what the think. This leaves them working under headlines which traffic in "third-rate, schoolboy" insults. Isn't that the very thing they say they don't like about Trump?
There's much, much more to be said about "The Problem We All (Currently) Live With." There's much more to be said about the difficulty Blue America's elites display as they attempt to respond to this problem—as we Blues keep refusing to come to terms with the role we ourselves played in enabling the commander's return to the Oval.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but we Blues are quite limited too. We thought those limitations were on display as we watch a fascinating discussion, this very morning, during Morning Joe's initial half hour.
"I Pity the Poor Immigrant," Bob Dylan once wrote. (The word "immigrant" was used metaphorically.)
He wrote the song in 1968, when he was still at the top of his game. To our eye and to our ear, he was coming very close to saying that he pitied Donald J. Trump.
Why do some people do and say the destructive things they constantly say and do? Is it because they're "angry little boys," or could it be because they're afflicted by a syndrome—by a "mental disorder"—which sits right there, for all to ponder, in the DSM?
How does a person behave like a friend within the political realm? As we've often said, the best example of which we're aware was President Clinton's effusive praise "the Arkansas Pentecostals" in his 2004 autobiography, My Life.
They had never tended to vote for Governor Clinton, but he said he admired the way they acted in accord with their own moral beliefs.
Clinton knew how to behave around people with whom, on balance, he didn't agree. He knew how to respect members of the planet's oldest community—the community known as The Others.
The kid behind whom we stood that day may have been just 17 years old. Hank Williams described him well in one of the greatest performances:
The Lost Highway
[...]
I was just a lad, nearly twenty-two.
Neither good nor bad, just a kid like you...
As for our college classmate, he was still just a cocky freshman. That said, he broadcast an unfortunate attitude that day.
When the woman to whom he was talking down went home and spoke with her family that day, The Problem We All (Currently) Live With got its unfortunate start.
That kid was only 17. Over here in Blue America, what's our current excuse? In fairness, no one else is as smart as we self-impressed Blues—except when it comes to this!
We'll have more on this topic next week. At long last, it seems to us that the time has finally come to "talk pork to the [Blue American] people" about what we'd be inclined to describe as "A Citizen's Duty."
To our ear, David Brooks is a bit angry himself at the close of this morning's column. By the prevailing rules of the game, he's allowed to talk about what Cicero antiquely said, but not about the "disorders" which get outlined in the modern-day DSM.
Is there something Brooks and others are withholding? Could it be making us weak?
Lincoln said we must be friends. But within this fraught political realm, how can a person do that?
Badly delaying a college lunch line, we Blues helped create The Current Problem. It started that day with one of Us.
Will we ever be able to see that?
