{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"What's Happening in America?, with David Brooks","description":"As we come to the 250th celebration of America\u2019s founding, what is happening in our country? Pundits, writers, historians, political scientists, and average citizens are all trying to take stock of where we are as a nation. In this episode, we seek perspective by returning to the conversation between Mark Labberton and David Brooks immediately following the 2024 election, before the beginning of Trump's second term and all the events that have unfolded since. Whether you come to the 250th celebrating our national life, or questioning our national life; whether you're in support of what's happening currently in America, or whether you're overwhelmed by so much that you wish was different, may we give thanks. Thanks be to God for the place that we get to live, even as it's a place that is struggling to reach its ideals, and may we continue to pray and seek its welfare, its justice, its purpose, its fairness, and its equity. In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes David Brooks (The Atlantic, formerly of The New York Times) for reflections about the 2024 General Election, the state of American politics, and how we got here. Together they discuss the multi-generational class divide; sources of alienation and distrust; how loss of faith and meaning influences political life; intellectual virtues of courage, firmness, humility, and flexibility; what it means to be a Republican in exile; the capacity for self-awareness and self-critique; and much more. Episode Highlights \u201cIn my opinion, Donald Trump is the wrong answer to the right question.\u201d \u201dThe flow of status and respect in this country has gone to people with elite credentials.\u201d \u201dIf you tell 51% of the country \u2018Your voices don't matter,\u2019 people are going to get upset.\u201d \u201dJesus was more a badass revolutionary than an Oxford don.\u201d \u201dThe world just loves a human being that's trying to act like Jesus.\u201d Helpful Links and Resources "Confessions of a Republican Exile" (The Atlantic): https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/ideas\/archive\/2024\/10\/trumpism-republican-party-exile-david-brooks\/680243\/ How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen, by David Brooks: https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/How-Know-Person-Seeing-Others\/dp\/059323006X My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer, by Christian Wiman: https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/My-Bright-Abyss-Meditation-Believer\/dp\/0374534373 David Brooks's current writing at The Atlantic: https:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/author\/david-brooks\/ Brooks and Capehart, PBS NewsHour: https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/tag\/brooks-and-capehart About David Brooks David Brooks is staff writer for The Atlantic and is Presidential Senior Fellow at Yale Jackson School of Global Affairs. Prior to that he wrote for The New York Times for 22 years*.* He is author of How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen; The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life; Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There; The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, and is founder of Weave: The Social Fabric Project. Show Notes A spiritual or emotional crisis we\u2019re working out in American politics Should we blame inflation and economic factors? (Biden\u2019s Covid-19 overstimulation) Class divide is a generational thing High-school-educated voters are increasingly alienated from the Democratic Party Alienation and distrust is a multi-decade process Loss of Faith, Loss of Meaning, and the \u201cDeath of God\u201d An exiled Republican \u201cConfessions of a Republican Exile\u201d (via The Atlantic): \u201dA longtime conservative, alienated by Trumpism, tries to come to terms with life on the moderate edge of the Democratic Party.\u201d \u201cI\u2019m a Whig.\u201d (\u201dAbraham Lincoln was a Whig.\u201d) Edmund Burke and epistemological modesty\u2014\u201ddon\u2019t revolutionize something you don\u2019t understand.\u201d You should operate on society in the way you operate on your father, with care. Alexander Hamilton Whig tradition is unrepresented in contemporary American politics How David Brooks waffles between Democrat and Republican Isaiah Berlin: \u201cAt the rightward edge of the leftward tendency.\u201d \u201cThe capacity for self-critique\u201d Matt Yglesias Humble, introspective, and \u201chow did we get so out of touch?\u201d Racism and sexism are not what\u2019s driving Trump voters \u201cIn my opinion, Donald Trump is the wrong answer to the right question.\u201d Mark Noll and America\u2019s use of the Bible: un-self-aware and un-self-critical Why is there more capacity for self-critique on the Democratic side? Jonathan Rauch and \u201cEpistemic Regime\u201d: includes media, universities, scientific research, review process, etc. \u201cThere\u2019s still a core of people who believe \u2018if the evidence says x, you should say y.\u2019\u201d \u201cThe greatest victory in the history of the world.\u201d Intellectual Virtues: Courage, Firmness, Flexibility \u201cReality is constantly going to surprise you.\u201d 1980s Republicanism was more intellectually sophisticated Conservative book publishing *Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change* by Jonah Goldberg How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen by David Brooks \u201cThe Stacking Stereotype\u201d \u201cA redistribution of respect\u201d (away from large swaths of America and to elites) \u201cThe flow of status and respect in this country has gone to people with elite credentials.\u201d \u201c\u2026 almost no Trump supporters.\u201d \u201cIf you tell 51% of the country \u2018Your voices don\u2019t matter,\u2019 people are going to get upset.\u201d America changing beneath us High level of spiritual and moral authority and low level of intellectual confidence The moral teaching of the New Testament \u201cPeople are unitary wholes.\u201d \u201cI became a Christian around 2013.\u201d \u201cJesus was more a badass revolutionary than an Oxford don.\u201d C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien\u2019s Christianity \u201cWhat it\u2019s like to be in the claustrophobic mind of a narcissist.\u201d Aggression: a joyless way to see the faith What is needed? \u201cI was a 50-year-old atheist.\u201d Christian Wiman (My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer): materialistic categories couldn\u2019t explain the world \u201cIf they made me pope of the evangelicals, which is a job that makes me shudder\u2026\u201d \u201cBe not afraid.\u201d \u201cThe world just loves a human being that\u2019s trying to act like Jesus.\u201d David Brooks\u2019s teaching at Yale The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist by Dorothy Day #Conversing #DavidBrooks #MarkLabberton #FaithAndPolitics #AmericanPolitics #HowToKnowAPerson #ChristianHumanism #Election2024 Production Credits Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary. ","author_name":"Conversing with Mark Labberton","author_url":"https:\/\/comment.org\/shows\/conversing\/","html":"