November 2, 2020 • 30 mins
It's election week! And in this special bonus issue of Turnout, Katie Couric talks with New York Times columnist David Brooks about the moment when we fell through the floor of decency and what America has lost these last four years. David also shares what's at stake on Nov. 3, why this is another moment of moral convulsion for the country and how we can mend our extreme political divides.
Read more about this episode:
Op-Ed: Trump's presidency Smashed the 'Decency Floor'
The New York Times' opinion collection, ‘What Have We Lost'
Weave, the Social Fabric Project from the Aspen Institute
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone, I'm Katie Curic, and welcome to Election Week
and a special bonus episode of Turnout. This past weekend,
on the cusp of the presidential election, the New York
Times published an unprecedented collection by the paper's opinion writers
called What Have We Lost? Fifteen essays on what the
(00:23):
past four years have cost America from innocence, conservatism, allies, pride,
and for my guests today, David Brooks, Faith, you talk
about the floor of decency in your column. Explain what
you mean by that. Yeah. My view is that most
(00:44):
at least modern presidents or politicians, they understood their certain
standards of behavior. You don't sink below. And even they
may not let George Bush or Barack Obama, but they
tried to be decent and civil and not be you know,
about their hand size. And to me, the crucial moment
I write about in that column was the Second Republican Debate,
(01:04):
which was all the way back in the primaries. Dick Tapper,
We're live at the Ronald Reagan Library in Ciddy Valley,
California for the main event, and Donald Trump had gone
after Carly Fiorina for the way she looks, and then
he turned to Rand Paul the Center from Kentucky, and
he said, I never attacked him on his look and
believe me, there's plenty of subject matter right there. But
(01:27):
I can tell you I want to I want to
give r. Trump Mr Trump. And right now that doesn't
seem so shocking that Trump has done way worse. But
at the moment, I was like, what is going on
here that we have a presidential candidate who talks makes
fun of people's looks. Uh? And it got worse. But
once you fall through the floor, there's no bottom, and
(01:50):
as a society, we're trying to find a bottom. Well.
I thought it was interesting you write that people didn't
seem to be morally repulsed by this, and there was
no rise up against this kind of behavior. Peter Baker
and I talked about how fragile these norms are and
they really require the key players in the system to
(02:12):
adhere to them. And why do you think that that
became acceptable and even praised in some quarters that kind
of language, that kind of derision. I think, first, there
we've gotten used to a certain chen of reality TV.
We get certain get used to a certain level of crassness. Second,
(02:32):
people have such low expectations of their politicians that they
don't expect anything. And Third, a lot of people feel
the elites of society are trying to control their thoughts
and speech with political correctness codes, and if somebody's going
to break through those codes, they're like, yeah, I'm for that.
And so I'd say those three things to the main drivers.
(02:53):
Let's talk about elites versus everyone else. You know. Um,
you talk about these two armies, and one is sort
of college educated, you know, think of themselves as worldly
and sophisticated. The other people are less perhaps educated, have
(03:15):
been left out of the American dream in many ways.
And there are two sides in polarization. Um, how did
we bring them together? And what could each side do better? Yeah? Well, first, UM,
we have a way to do this. It's called contact. There,
you just bring people into contact with each other. And
(03:36):
I got the election way wrong. And so I spent
the next four years up until COVID, going about thirty
five or forty states a year just really traveling and
being with UH. Other people would call it going to
a bar. I call it recording. So I'd said to
talk to people and and or reckfast diner. UH, And
(03:57):
I learned so much. I learned that people who voted Trump,
they're not all racists. There's a lot of complicated reasons
people voted that guy and still vote for that guy.
I ran into a guy in South Dakota who said,
the best day of my life. He was like seventy
was three or five years ago. I got laid off
of my job because I didn't have the skills, and
I thought I would just slip out. And I opened
(04:18):
my office door and there were two rows of people,
thirty people, the whole plants Um workforce with a double rows.
And he walked between them from his office door to
his car door in the parking lot as they applauded
and cheered him as he went, and he said, that
was my best job. That was the best day of
my life. Every job I've had since his worst. And
(04:39):
so I need to change. And so he was gonna
vote for Donald Trump, and everybody knew was going to
vote for Donald Trump. The communities are crumbling. I would
say that two things that each side can do. First,
the supporters of Trump can insist on honesty. You know
that we just gotta have rules of honesty. Second, those
of us in the more college educated class. We have
to persist in our efforts to get to know those people.
(05:01):
Four years ago we all read Jade Vance's book and
I'm gonna try to get to know them. Let me
sort of stopped, and we often condescend. And I'll say
this as a media person, thank you. Obviously you know,
of the mainstream media organizations, of the five thousand people
in them, how many of them are Trump supporters? Very
(05:23):
very few. And if you tell forty of the country
your voice isn't worth hearing, They're going to react badly.
And so we needed to do a better job of
integration and content. How do you do that? Though? When
you say that he's busted through the floor of decency,
I mean it's a real conundrum I think for people
because they want to be fair and yet someone who
(05:45):
repeatedly lies and it seems to have crashed through that floor.
How do you stand up to that? So that's a
very difficult and trick you can to navigate, is it not? Yeah?
And even you know, I've been on shows where we've
had Trumps quarters and they haven't behaved in a professional matter.
So I mean, we do have standards of professional our profession.
So that is a challenge of eventually you find some.
(06:08):
But um, if breaking the norm is part of being
a Trump supporter, then how do you how do you
work and collaborate? That that is a genuine problem. But
hopefully if Trump loses, we can have Trump is m
without Trump, that the the ideas that couldn't that he
could have created an administration out of of how to
(06:28):
help rural America, how to help industrial America. We can
have people who champion those ideas without the norm breaking
behavior of Donald Trump. Do you think if if elected,
Joe Biden will champion those ideas and reach out to
those communities because it seems that they feel and I
think legitimately that they're not being heard or value and
(06:51):
I think, I mean unfortunously, He's I think the right
man for this moment because he comes from scripton. He
he condescension is not a no I've ever seen him hit.
He doesn't do condescension, and so he just I think
he fits in naturally and has a natural report with
people in working class communities that even Barack Obama did
(07:11):
not have. And so I think he's well fit for
this moment. Somebody just sent me a new ad he's
done that. Bruce Springsteen narrates to his song My Hometown
and it's about a guy from Scranton, and I do
think he's rooted in that these kind of small city
rural America and has an agenda, which if he's smart,
(07:34):
if he focused as an agenda that addresses the industrialization
all the places that have hurt because mills closed, then
you particularly hit two communities and hit them at the
same time with the same program, African Americans and rural whites.
And to have a program that unites those two groups
and helps them would be I think a great thing
for this country. I also think if he could focus
(07:57):
on retraining. You know, we heard a lot about the
transition from fossil fuels to uh, you know, green energy,
and I think that terrifies people who think it means
they're going to lose their job. And I have never
understood why such a small percentage of GDP is really
focused on retraining individuals for the jobs of the future,
(08:20):
or at least getting us out of the model where
you have to go to college to have a good job.
Like community college or apprenticeship programs are just a more
effective way to give people the skills they need to
succeed that. You know, we send so many people to
college and like percent of them get through, and so
we have a system that's failing the people. How can't
(08:41):
we stick with that? Not to mention the exorbitant cost
of college, which just does not seem to be sustainable
to me, right, that's for sure, and colleges are now suffering.
I don't know what's going to happen to higre Ed.
In the year's let's talk about the crisis of legitimacy.
You cite a survey that says in nineteen nine seven,
(09:01):
sixty four percent of Americans had a good or great
deal of trust in the wisdom of their fellow Americans.
Today it's only a third. What happened, people took a
look at each other's voting behaviors and they said, oh,
those people are not only wrong, they're crazy or they're evil,
and so they lost faith in each other. To me,
(09:23):
the scariest statistic is trust in each other. Two generations ago,
if you ask people out of the neighbors, are your
neighbor's trustworthy? Say yes? Now it's only and only ent
of millennial in gen z younger. You go them where
this trusting people are because they've been betrayed by experience.
And so when you lose. When a church loses faith
(09:45):
in God, the church collapses. When a nation loses faith
in each other, the nation collapses. And somehow restoring trust
in each other is like the elemental tasks. Joe Biden
can win. But if we don't trust in our society,
if we can't work together, wherea in Detroit. We'll be
back right after the short break. Let's return to this
(10:20):
special bonus episode of Turnout with my guest New York
Times columnists David Brooks. Why is this election such a
pivotal moment in our nation's history. I think we're at
one of those moral convulsion moments that happens about every
sixty years. From seventeen seventies we had one, the eighteen thirties,
Andrew Jackson, the nineties progressive era. In nineteen sixties holcol
(10:42):
culture just suddenly shifts. You get a moment where you
get a lot of indignation. People are disgusted with the
state of society. A new generation comes down the scene,
new communications technology, and suddenly the whole country just shifts
ideas and it shifts culture. And I think we're at
one of those inflection points where we either decide to
be a diverse society or not. We either decided to
(11:05):
be in equal society or not. And so these elemental
questions are on the table. You have said this is
the result of fifty years of social decay. How so, Well,
if you look at society in the nineteen fifties, we
had a lot of problems. We had racism, we had sexism,
we had a lot of anti semitism, but we did
(11:25):
have a lot of cohesion. We had very low income inequality,
we had very low political polarization, we had a lot
of people really active in their communities, a lot of
people with a stable emotional basis. And over the last
fifty years we've had a culture of me, of culture
of I want to be free to be myself. And
that's been great, and we've made a lot of progress,
especially on race and gender and other issues. But we've
(11:48):
torn apart this the connections between people, and so now
you have more loneliness, more distrust, more isolation, more suicide
rates a third, more depression, and so people, when you
make them feel lonely and alienated, they're gonna do what
their evolutionary which tell them to do. They're going to
revert to tribe, and they've reverted to political tribes. And
(12:10):
now we don't really see issues. We just say what
what army am I part of? And that's just been
a horrible thing for our country. And let's talk about
that some more, David. So, our our basic sense of
belonging has now translated into our political ideology and identity,
and and why is that so damaging for our society?
(12:33):
Because it's asking more of politics and politics can bear politics.
That's best is a competition between partial truths. Republicans believe
in freedom, Democrats believe in equality, and we need to
somehow find balance between those two things. Uh. And it's
about policies, it's about designing a health care system that
will actually work for people. But we've turned it into
(12:54):
our ethnicity. My ethnicity is being a Republican or a Democrat.
It's not being Polish American or Italian American or somebody
from ballast or a member of this church. It's politics.
And when you turn politics into your ethnicity, than any
compromises dishonor you're dishonoring your ethnicity. And so when you
(13:15):
ask so much of politics. You turn politics into this
war of all against wall where there's no compromise. I mean,
it's not really that satisfying. If you devote yourself to
your community and your faith in your family, these are
actually emotionally satisfying things. The things that are bringing us
together are the things that we hate, not the things
(13:36):
that we love. Yeah, and it's important to make the
distinction between tribalism and community, and community is mutual love
of a thing. Tribalism is mutual hate of another, and
so it feels first like community, but it's more like
an addiction than an actual relationship. What can be done
about this loneliness and isolation that has prompted people goal
(14:00):
to take these sides or join these armies. Yeah, well,
in my view, it would help if we weren't being
ripped a part on a data bay basis from the
top of our society, so that that answer is political.
But to me, this kind of isolation and loneliness can
only be helped by at local level, at relationships, and
by forming groups and getting active in groups, active in
(14:22):
community organizations, active in neighborhood organizations. You know, I was
became a member of an extended group about six years
ago forty kids from d C who were like twenty
and about eight of us were older, and we had
dinner every Thursday night for five years and we really
got into each other's business and we learned to trust
one another and we became sort of a chosen family,
(14:44):
a forged family. And that's that's how I found community,
and I think everybody tries to find something like that.
Do you think that the pandemic in some ways has
added fuel to this partisan fire because people don't have
enough to do you and enough places to go in,
enough activities to participate in. If we become it's increased
(15:06):
the polarization. Yeah, I've super felt that we underestimate the
emotional toll this has taken on us, Like just the
pleasure of going to the club and watching music. It's
a lot of pleasures have suddenly denied us. And then
we're we're stuck looking at each other, the Twitter version
of each other, not the real version of each other.
And so you've seen the shocking rising depression. There was
(15:28):
a poll out about the middle of this year where
they asked people, have you young adults, have you contemplated
suicide in the last thirty days like a third hat.
And so we're just living at a time of tremendous
just emotional stress, and it's showing up in all sorts
of ways, especially in politics. Can we talk about identity
politics and how that has prohibited both a conversation about
(15:52):
policy that allows for nuance and an environment that also
allows for compromise. Yeah, I mean, if your identity is
it stay, is its stake at your policy positions, then
if you feel your identity threatened at every moment and
you can't compromise, and so if your identity is based
(16:12):
somewhere else, then you're not at stake, You're not at
risk of annihilation. Uh. The other thing that I think
has been worrying recently well being not very cheerful but
will be tful um, is just the idea that we
can't really communicate with each other. I can never really
understand your experience, and you can never really understand mine.
(16:32):
We can't understand each other across difference. And I have
great faith in retriprocal dialogue and conversation, in what you've
spent your career doing interviewing people like that. When I
was on this trip to understand the world and Trump voters.
I really became convinced the interview. It's such a blessing
in our profession. The interview is what helps us make
(16:52):
contact with each other and learn about each other. And
if we don't do that, and a lot of people don't,
then you just don't know. You just now, and you
can do on the academics sociological data you want, but
if you don't do the interview, you don't know. And
it's all punditry now, it's all uh, commentary and punditry.
And it distresses me that people aren't going out and
(17:15):
talking to regular people. I mean, when is the last
time you saw that except for the pro forma you know,
diner conversation during the primaries. Right now, I agree that
don't not pundetrate it to a living uh um, yeah, no,
I I you know, I wrote sixteen columns saying, don't worry,
(17:35):
don't worry, Donald Trump will never get the Republican nomination.
And at the time I was working for the New
York Times, living in Washington and teaching it. Yeah. So
I was in the cell in my whole life. So like,
how can I get out of touch with America? With
those three things. So so I had to break out
and spend time with people. And and now I I
have a fair number of friends and even close family
(17:56):
members who were supporting Donald Trump. And it's been useful
because so many of them are super Confident's gonna sure,
and but it's just been useful to hear the arguments here,
the points of view which are not not the simple
obvious ones that we assigned to the most people. When
we come back, what are we going to do with
(18:17):
all this anger we have? Let's talk about wokeeness because
I like this quote and you say, it's partly about
fighting oppression, but it's also become a status symbol. It's
(18:40):
showing people that you are so intellectually involved that you
can use words like intersectionality, decolonizing, and cultural appropriation. Political
correctness is not just a means for the less privilege
to set standards of behavior. It is sometimes the way
people with cultural power push others around. How can the
(19:01):
left listen to the silent majority rather than patronize them.
How do we find a national discourse? Yeah, I mean
it's people take advantage of the power they have. And
wokenness is a movement that emerged at the universities, and
it comes thick with university jargon. It comes thick with
the belief that all words are power and you can't
(19:21):
have a conversation. I'm just asserting my power with my words,
and therefore my words need to be controlled. And that's
me is wrong. Words are not power. Words are mutual
explorations to find, you know, ways to live together and
be friends. Uh. And so the impulse to sensor words
and use the power of your cultural position to silence
(19:42):
others is not only in the universities, not only in
the media. It's widespread. There was a study Americans say
they're afraid to state their political opinions for fear that
other people will shout them down. That's a lot of people,
that's the majority of Americans who are afraid to be honest.
And so I my friends, and I obviously I'm a
New York Times columnists. I'm in the precincts of cultural power.
(20:06):
And a lot of people in those precincts don't appreciate
how much power they have and how like all power,
it can corrupt you and you can abuse it, and
we abuse it when we try to use it to
shout down and silence others. But don't you think the
right wing is just as guilty. I mean, uh, you know,
(20:26):
I don't see many people going on Fox feeling comfortable
expressing a different point of view. Oh no, they're super
right wing wokeness just as well. Let people get canceled
on the right for not totally being with Donald Trump,
for having some opinion, or you know, for being for
gay marriage. I mean, there's um there wherever these days,
(20:47):
there's um wokenness, or whether there's political extremism, there's intolerance
of difference. And I do think there's woken us on
the right just as much as on the left. I also,
I'm concerned that people can have a nuanced position that
they can't support Black Lives Matter and want to get
(21:07):
to the root of systemic racism, but also appreciate what
good police officers do and yet also see the need
for police reform. It seems to me you have to
pick one side or the other when you know all
things may be true. Yeah, and I've admired Joe Biden
for this, for saying, yes, we have systemic racism, but
(21:29):
America is still a very lovely country. Yes we want
to black lives matter, but we also need some law
and orders. So these are false binaries, and I think
he's done a good job. There was a student group
at University of Wisconsin this week who I think they
took down the statue of Abraham Lincoln or they did
something to cancel Abraham Lincoln. Like, you can take two
(21:50):
things at once about Lincoln. One, by our standards, his
views on race work not evolved, not correct. But you
can also realize that guy gave his life to end Slaver,
so he just tremendous good over the course of his life.
And you should be able to have both those things
in your mind at the same time. And the same
thing is happening to Thomas Jefferson, who established my alma mater,
(22:13):
the University of Virginia. There's a culture war of sorts
erupting there, with people feeling like he should not be
sort of the patron saint of the university, somebody to
be idolized. And there are those who say, you know,
don't mess with Jefferson, right, Yeah, My role on that
(22:33):
is we should cancel somebody if the main thing they're
known for is disgraceful. So yeah, there was a Calhoun College,
right I did a whole thing on this, and that
was the determination what is the primary accomplishment of that individual?
And for John C. Calhoun, it really was perpetuating slavery, right,
(22:55):
and Jefferson's writing the Decoration of Independence being president. And
the difficult is um Washington and Lee University. Uh really yeah, well,
very fine school. I love love I've been there many times.
I love that place. My view is Lee Washington. Lee
became Washington League because Roberty Lee became president of the
(23:17):
college after the Civil War. So maybe they're celebrating him
for that, but other things like it Virginia Military Institute
right next door, they just took down the statue of
Stonewall Jackson, and maybe that's legit. It's it's tough for
them because he was the great hero and he led
the students of b M I out to battle. But
maybe that's that stuff is a little shit. I I um.
(23:40):
My view is the statues, the Confederate statues, some of
them should come down, but mostly we should just prep
other statues. Statues that Memora Memora memorialize those who are
victims of lynching, who led the fight for reconstruction, for abolition,
for civil rights, that I love to see them contextualized
a little more than towards Now I know that's one option.
I sort of feel that they should be taken down
(24:01):
if they're in a prominent position, because to me, statues
in public spaces telegraph the values of that community. So
I think it's kind of hard to have both. But
I I take your point because I know some people
feel that way. I think they should belong in museums
and be explained as a really critical part of our history,
(24:22):
but not necessarily as the centerpiece of the community. Yeah,
I see that where I live in Washington. See, I'm
right near a thing called Lincoln Park, and there's a
statue which was put up by former slaves of Lincoln
towards Lincoln in homage of them. But it's him standing
over a kneeling African American slave who's breaking free. The
first time I saw that, I thought, what is that doing?
(24:44):
They're like, why is the African Raican guy kneeling in
Lincoln's feet? But it was it was put up by
uh and I've had long debates with people in the
park about that statue, and at first I thought, well,
it was an historical moment. Frederick Douglas did a very
famous speech right there, um, but I think it's probably
going to museum. Maybe. Your colleague Morning Down wrote about
(25:06):
how it's exhausting to be this outraged all the time,
and we do seem to be in a permanent state
of anger and outrage, lashing out at people who probably
have much more in common with us than we realize.
And you say, permanent indignation is not a healthy emotional state.
How do we deescalate this anger and how do we
(25:27):
prevent this from being our default emotion because it seems
like it's been this way for quite a while now. Yeah, well,
I mean, if Biden wins, he's just less outrageous than
Donald Trump, whatever you think of his views. And he's
what really struck me, as remember that a couple of
weeks ago they both had town halls at the same time,
(25:49):
and you knew going in that Biden's was going to
be more boring than Trump's, and indeed it was. But
more people watch Bidens than watch Trump's. And that said
to me that people are ready for a little born
in the portum, a little normal political discussion. And I
do think a if Fine wins, we wanted to think
about the presidency all the time and be frankly, for
(26:11):
a lot of us, it's easy clickbait to just outrage
about Trump all the time, and maybe politics will be
less central and we can go I like, I prefer
writing about culture than I do to politics, but I
can't do that now because people only read one subject,
which is politics. So I'd love to be able to
go back and write about cultural stuff and moral stuff
and emotional stuff. And I think we were all just
(26:32):
blood pressure would just go down. I thought we could
talk a little bit about weavers and what you're doing
with that. Yeah, weavers are people who are at the
local level building community that one of them, for example,
is a gay Ponchoguilas who uh he takes undocumented immigrants
who have broken their backs, have been paralyzed by construction accidents,
(26:55):
and he gives them wheelchairs and diapers and catheters so
they can lead lives with dignity. And then he organized
and they all become a social workers. So you'll be
in a neighborhood and fifty Latino guys and wheelchairs were
roll in your neighborhood to do good work for you. Uh.
And so those people are everywhere we go, you know,
at the We've project, we go around the country. We
land in a little town McCook, Nebraska, Wilkes, North Carolina,
(27:19):
and we say who's trusted here? And immediately we find
seventy people, five people who are just loved their town
and they want to serve it and they do. And
what we we've do is we try to lift them up,
maybe give them some resources, connecting with each other, make
them more powerful figures in our society, so we can
all sort of copy them a little, David, how can
Trump supporters and Biden supporters learn to respect one another? Yeah,
(27:44):
repeating back to each other what we believe, Like here's
why I tell me if I'm right, Here's why I
think you believe what you believe, And and just having
a conversation that way I have people basically want respect,
and a lot of people feel invisible. When I would
go to the West years ago, once a week I'd
hear are you guys regardless? As fly over country, and
(28:05):
then two years ago that I heard that eight times
a day. People just don't feel seen. They feel they're
ignored and look down upon. And if you you know,
by I think you show respect to Trump voters and
who follow you. And that's the first step, is showing
basic respect. And of course we're going to disagree. That
that's called democracy, but we disagreeing with a show of
(28:29):
affection and respect and with a sense that we all
do love the same country. H And I think a
lot of people are voting for Trump are afraid that
we don't all love the same country. We don't all
love our country, and some people just want to run
it down and change it. Uh. And I think imbined again,
it's done a good job of saying, hey, I love America,
(28:50):
this is the America, this is my country, and if
we have that mutual affection, then we have some income. Hey, listeners,
I'll be back in just a few days with my
post election episode of Turnout. In the meantime, i'd love
to hear your voting story, whether you voted early in person,
sent in your mail in ballot, or are planning to
(29:11):
vote on election day. Tell me what your experience was
like and how it felt good or bad. You can
call eight four four or seven nine seven eight eight
three and leave your name in a short thirty second
message and we may share it on an upcoming episode. Again.
That number is eight four four for seven nine seven
(29:33):
eight eight three Happy Voting Everyone. Turnout is a production
of I Heart Media and Katie Couric Media. The executive
producers are Katie Curic and Courtney Litz. Supervising producers Lauren Hansen.
Associate producers Derek Clements, Eliza Costas and Emily Pento. Editing
(29:53):
by Derrick Clements and Lauren Hansen, Mixing by Derrick Clements.
Our researcher is Gabe Real Loser and Special thanks to
my right hand woman, Adriana Fasio. You can follow me
in all my election coverage at Katie Curry. Meanwhile, yes,
I'm Katie Curry. Thanks so much for listening everyone. We'll
(30:14):
see you next time.
Hi everyone, I'm Katie Curic, and welcome to Election Week
and a special bonus episode of Turnout. This past weekend,
on the cusp of the presidential election, the New York
Times published an unprecedented collection by the paper's opinion writers
called What Have We Lost? Fifteen essays on what the
(00:23):
past four years have cost America from innocence, conservatism, allies, pride,
and for my guests today, David Brooks, Faith, you talk
about the floor of decency in your column. Explain what
you mean by that. Yeah. My view is that most
(00:44):
at least modern presidents or politicians, they understood their certain
standards of behavior. You don't sink below. And even they
may not let George Bush or Barack Obama, but they
tried to be decent and civil and not be you know,
about their hand size. And to me, the crucial moment
I write about in that column was the Second Republican Debate,
(01:04):
which was all the way back in the primaries. Dick Tapper,
We're live at the Ronald Reagan Library in Ciddy Valley,
California for the main event, and Donald Trump had gone
after Carly Fiorina for the way she looks, and then
he turned to Rand Paul the Center from Kentucky, and
he said, I never attacked him on his look and
believe me, there's plenty of subject matter right there. But
(01:27):
I can tell you I want to I want to
give r. Trump Mr Trump. And right now that doesn't
seem so shocking that Trump has done way worse. But
at the moment, I was like, what is going on
here that we have a presidential candidate who talks makes
fun of people's looks. Uh? And it got worse. But
once you fall through the floor, there's no bottom, and
(01:50):
as a society, we're trying to find a bottom. Well.
I thought it was interesting you write that people didn't
seem to be morally repulsed by this, and there was
no rise up against this kind of behavior. Peter Baker
and I talked about how fragile these norms are and
they really require the key players in the system to
(02:12):
adhere to them. And why do you think that that
became acceptable and even praised in some quarters that kind
of language, that kind of derision. I think, first, there
we've gotten used to a certain chen of reality TV.
We get certain get used to a certain level of crassness. Second,
(02:32):
people have such low expectations of their politicians that they
don't expect anything. And Third, a lot of people feel
the elites of society are trying to control their thoughts
and speech with political correctness codes, and if somebody's going
to break through those codes, they're like, yeah, I'm for that.
And so I'd say those three things to the main drivers.
(02:53):
Let's talk about elites versus everyone else. You know. Um,
you talk about these two armies, and one is sort
of college educated, you know, think of themselves as worldly
and sophisticated. The other people are less perhaps educated, have
(03:15):
been left out of the American dream in many ways.
And there are two sides in polarization. Um, how did
we bring them together? And what could each side do better? Yeah? Well, first, UM,
we have a way to do this. It's called contact. There,
you just bring people into contact with each other. And
(03:36):
I got the election way wrong. And so I spent
the next four years up until COVID, going about thirty
five or forty states a year just really traveling and
being with UH. Other people would call it going to
a bar. I call it recording. So I'd said to
talk to people and and or reckfast diner. UH, And
(03:57):
I learned so much. I learned that people who voted Trump,
they're not all racists. There's a lot of complicated reasons
people voted that guy and still vote for that guy.
I ran into a guy in South Dakota who said,
the best day of my life. He was like seventy
was three or five years ago. I got laid off
of my job because I didn't have the skills, and
I thought I would just slip out. And I opened
(04:18):
my office door and there were two rows of people,
thirty people, the whole plants Um workforce with a double rows.
And he walked between them from his office door to
his car door in the parking lot as they applauded
and cheered him as he went, and he said, that
was my best job. That was the best day of
my life. Every job I've had since his worst. And
(04:39):
so I need to change. And so he was gonna
vote for Donald Trump, and everybody knew was going to
vote for Donald Trump. The communities are crumbling. I would
say that two things that each side can do. First,
the supporters of Trump can insist on honesty. You know
that we just gotta have rules of honesty. Second, those
of us in the more college educated class. We have
to persist in our efforts to get to know those people.
(05:01):
Four years ago we all read Jade Vance's book and
I'm gonna try to get to know them. Let me
sort of stopped, and we often condescend. And I'll say
this as a media person, thank you. Obviously you know,
of the mainstream media organizations, of the five thousand people
in them, how many of them are Trump supporters? Very
(05:23):
very few. And if you tell forty of the country
your voice isn't worth hearing, They're going to react badly.
And so we needed to do a better job of
integration and content. How do you do that? Though? When
you say that he's busted through the floor of decency,
I mean it's a real conundrum I think for people
because they want to be fair and yet someone who
(05:45):
repeatedly lies and it seems to have crashed through that floor.
How do you stand up to that? So that's a
very difficult and trick you can to navigate, is it not? Yeah?
And even you know, I've been on shows where we've
had Trumps quarters and they haven't behaved in a professional matter.
So I mean, we do have standards of professional our profession.
So that is a challenge of eventually you find some.
(06:08):
But um, if breaking the norm is part of being
a Trump supporter, then how do you how do you
work and collaborate? That that is a genuine problem. But
hopefully if Trump loses, we can have Trump is m
without Trump, that the the ideas that couldn't that he
could have created an administration out of of how to
(06:28):
help rural America, how to help industrial America. We can
have people who champion those ideas without the norm breaking
behavior of Donald Trump. Do you think if if elected,
Joe Biden will champion those ideas and reach out to
those communities because it seems that they feel and I
think legitimately that they're not being heard or value and
(06:51):
I think, I mean unfortunously, He's I think the right
man for this moment because he comes from scripton. He
he condescension is not a no I've ever seen him hit.
He doesn't do condescension, and so he just I think
he fits in naturally and has a natural report with
people in working class communities that even Barack Obama did
(07:11):
not have. And so I think he's well fit for
this moment. Somebody just sent me a new ad he's
done that. Bruce Springsteen narrates to his song My Hometown
and it's about a guy from Scranton, and I do
think he's rooted in that these kind of small city
rural America and has an agenda, which if he's smart,
(07:34):
if he focused as an agenda that addresses the industrialization
all the places that have hurt because mills closed, then
you particularly hit two communities and hit them at the
same time with the same program, African Americans and rural whites.
And to have a program that unites those two groups
and helps them would be I think a great thing
for this country. I also think if he could focus
(07:57):
on retraining. You know, we heard a lot about the
transition from fossil fuels to uh, you know, green energy,
and I think that terrifies people who think it means
they're going to lose their job. And I have never
understood why such a small percentage of GDP is really
focused on retraining individuals for the jobs of the future,
(08:20):
or at least getting us out of the model where
you have to go to college to have a good job.
Like community college or apprenticeship programs are just a more
effective way to give people the skills they need to
succeed that. You know, we send so many people to
college and like percent of them get through, and so
we have a system that's failing the people. How can't
(08:41):
we stick with that? Not to mention the exorbitant cost
of college, which just does not seem to be sustainable
to me, right, that's for sure, and colleges are now suffering.
I don't know what's going to happen to higre Ed.
In the year's let's talk about the crisis of legitimacy.
You cite a survey that says in nineteen nine seven,
(09:01):
sixty four percent of Americans had a good or great
deal of trust in the wisdom of their fellow Americans.
Today it's only a third. What happened, people took a
look at each other's voting behaviors and they said, oh,
those people are not only wrong, they're crazy or they're evil,
and so they lost faith in each other. To me,
(09:23):
the scariest statistic is trust in each other. Two generations ago,
if you ask people out of the neighbors, are your
neighbor's trustworthy? Say yes? Now it's only and only ent
of millennial in gen z younger. You go them where
this trusting people are because they've been betrayed by experience.
And so when you lose. When a church loses faith
(09:45):
in God, the church collapses. When a nation loses faith
in each other, the nation collapses. And somehow restoring trust
in each other is like the elemental tasks. Joe Biden
can win. But if we don't trust in our society,
if we can't work together, wherea in Detroit. We'll be
back right after the short break. Let's return to this
(10:20):
special bonus episode of Turnout with my guest New York
Times columnists David Brooks. Why is this election such a
pivotal moment in our nation's history. I think we're at
one of those moral convulsion moments that happens about every
sixty years. From seventeen seventies we had one, the eighteen thirties,
Andrew Jackson, the nineties progressive era. In nineteen sixties holcol
(10:42):
culture just suddenly shifts. You get a moment where you
get a lot of indignation. People are disgusted with the
state of society. A new generation comes down the scene,
new communications technology, and suddenly the whole country just shifts
ideas and it shifts culture. And I think we're at
one of those inflection points where we either decide to
be a diverse society or not. We either decided to
(11:05):
be in equal society or not. And so these elemental
questions are on the table. You have said this is
the result of fifty years of social decay. How so, Well,
if you look at society in the nineteen fifties, we
had a lot of problems. We had racism, we had sexism,
we had a lot of anti semitism, but we did
(11:25):
have a lot of cohesion. We had very low income inequality,
we had very low political polarization, we had a lot
of people really active in their communities, a lot of
people with a stable emotional basis. And over the last
fifty years we've had a culture of me, of culture
of I want to be free to be myself. And
that's been great, and we've made a lot of progress,
especially on race and gender and other issues. But we've
(11:48):
torn apart this the connections between people, and so now
you have more loneliness, more distrust, more isolation, more suicide
rates a third, more depression, and so people, when you
make them feel lonely and alienated, they're gonna do what
their evolutionary which tell them to do. They're going to
revert to tribe, and they've reverted to political tribes. And
(12:10):
now we don't really see issues. We just say what
what army am I part of? And that's just been
a horrible thing for our country. And let's talk about
that some more, David. So, our our basic sense of
belonging has now translated into our political ideology and identity,
and and why is that so damaging for our society?
(12:33):
Because it's asking more of politics and politics can bear politics.
That's best is a competition between partial truths. Republicans believe
in freedom, Democrats believe in equality, and we need to
somehow find balance between those two things. Uh. And it's
about policies, it's about designing a health care system that
will actually work for people. But we've turned it into
(12:54):
our ethnicity. My ethnicity is being a Republican or a Democrat.
It's not being Polish American or Italian American or somebody
from ballast or a member of this church. It's politics.
And when you turn politics into your ethnicity, than any
compromises dishonor you're dishonoring your ethnicity. And so when you
(13:15):
ask so much of politics. You turn politics into this
war of all against wall where there's no compromise. I mean,
it's not really that satisfying. If you devote yourself to
your community and your faith in your family, these are
actually emotionally satisfying things. The things that are bringing us
together are the things that we hate, not the things
(13:36):
that we love. Yeah, and it's important to make the
distinction between tribalism and community, and community is mutual love
of a thing. Tribalism is mutual hate of another, and
so it feels first like community, but it's more like
an addiction than an actual relationship. What can be done
about this loneliness and isolation that has prompted people goal
(14:00):
to take these sides or join these armies. Yeah, well,
in my view, it would help if we weren't being
ripped a part on a data bay basis from the
top of our society, so that that answer is political.
But to me, this kind of isolation and loneliness can
only be helped by at local level, at relationships, and
by forming groups and getting active in groups, active in
(14:22):
community organizations, active in neighborhood organizations. You know, I was
became a member of an extended group about six years
ago forty kids from d C who were like twenty
and about eight of us were older, and we had
dinner every Thursday night for five years and we really
got into each other's business and we learned to trust
one another and we became sort of a chosen family,
(14:44):
a forged family. And that's that's how I found community,
and I think everybody tries to find something like that.
Do you think that the pandemic in some ways has
added fuel to this partisan fire because people don't have
enough to do you and enough places to go in,
enough activities to participate in. If we become it's increased
(15:06):
the polarization. Yeah, I've super felt that we underestimate the
emotional toll this has taken on us, Like just the
pleasure of going to the club and watching music. It's
a lot of pleasures have suddenly denied us. And then
we're we're stuck looking at each other, the Twitter version
of each other, not the real version of each other.
And so you've seen the shocking rising depression. There was
(15:28):
a poll out about the middle of this year where
they asked people, have you young adults, have you contemplated
suicide in the last thirty days like a third hat.
And so we're just living at a time of tremendous
just emotional stress, and it's showing up in all sorts
of ways, especially in politics. Can we talk about identity
politics and how that has prohibited both a conversation about
(15:52):
policy that allows for nuance and an environment that also
allows for compromise. Yeah, I mean, if your identity is
it stay, is its stake at your policy positions, then
if you feel your identity threatened at every moment and
you can't compromise, and so if your identity is based
(16:12):
somewhere else, then you're not at stake, You're not at
risk of annihilation. Uh. The other thing that I think
has been worrying recently well being not very cheerful but
will be tful um, is just the idea that we
can't really communicate with each other. I can never really
understand your experience, and you can never really understand mine.
(16:32):
We can't understand each other across difference. And I have
great faith in retriprocal dialogue and conversation, in what you've
spent your career doing interviewing people like that. When I
was on this trip to understand the world and Trump voters.
I really became convinced the interview. It's such a blessing
in our profession. The interview is what helps us make
(16:52):
contact with each other and learn about each other. And
if we don't do that, and a lot of people don't,
then you just don't know. You just now, and you
can do on the academics sociological data you want, but
if you don't do the interview, you don't know. And
it's all punditry now, it's all uh, commentary and punditry.
And it distresses me that people aren't going out and
(17:15):
talking to regular people. I mean, when is the last
time you saw that except for the pro forma you know,
diner conversation during the primaries. Right now, I agree that
don't not pundetrate it to a living uh um, yeah, no,
I I you know, I wrote sixteen columns saying, don't worry,
(17:35):
don't worry, Donald Trump will never get the Republican nomination.
And at the time I was working for the New
York Times, living in Washington and teaching it. Yeah. So
I was in the cell in my whole life. So like,
how can I get out of touch with America? With
those three things. So so I had to break out
and spend time with people. And and now I I
have a fair number of friends and even close family
(17:56):
members who were supporting Donald Trump. And it's been useful
because so many of them are super Confident's gonna sure,
and but it's just been useful to hear the arguments here,
the points of view which are not not the simple
obvious ones that we assigned to the most people. When
we come back, what are we going to do with
(18:17):
all this anger we have? Let's talk about wokeeness because
I like this quote and you say, it's partly about
fighting oppression, but it's also become a status symbol. It's
(18:40):
showing people that you are so intellectually involved that you
can use words like intersectionality, decolonizing, and cultural appropriation. Political
correctness is not just a means for the less privilege
to set standards of behavior. It is sometimes the way
people with cultural power push others around. How can the
(19:01):
left listen to the silent majority rather than patronize them.
How do we find a national discourse? Yeah, I mean
it's people take advantage of the power they have. And
wokenness is a movement that emerged at the universities, and
it comes thick with university jargon. It comes thick with
the belief that all words are power and you can't
(19:21):
have a conversation. I'm just asserting my power with my words,
and therefore my words need to be controlled. And that's
me is wrong. Words are not power. Words are mutual
explorations to find, you know, ways to live together and
be friends. Uh. And so the impulse to sensor words
and use the power of your cultural position to silence
(19:42):
others is not only in the universities, not only in
the media. It's widespread. There was a study Americans say
they're afraid to state their political opinions for fear that
other people will shout them down. That's a lot of people,
that's the majority of Americans who are afraid to be honest.
And so I my friends, and I obviously I'm a
New York Times columnists. I'm in the precincts of cultural power.
(20:06):
And a lot of people in those precincts don't appreciate
how much power they have and how like all power,
it can corrupt you and you can abuse it, and
we abuse it when we try to use it to
shout down and silence others. But don't you think the
right wing is just as guilty. I mean, uh, you know,
(20:26):
I don't see many people going on Fox feeling comfortable
expressing a different point of view. Oh no, they're super
right wing wokeness just as well. Let people get canceled
on the right for not totally being with Donald Trump,
for having some opinion, or you know, for being for
gay marriage. I mean, there's um there wherever these days,
(20:47):
there's um wokenness, or whether there's political extremism, there's intolerance
of difference. And I do think there's woken us on
the right just as much as on the left. I also,
I'm concerned that people can have a nuanced position that
they can't support Black Lives Matter and want to get
(21:07):
to the root of systemic racism, but also appreciate what
good police officers do and yet also see the need
for police reform. It seems to me you have to
pick one side or the other when you know all
things may be true. Yeah, and I've admired Joe Biden
for this, for saying, yes, we have systemic racism, but
(21:29):
America is still a very lovely country. Yes we want
to black lives matter, but we also need some law
and orders. So these are false binaries, and I think
he's done a good job. There was a student group
at University of Wisconsin this week who I think they
took down the statue of Abraham Lincoln or they did
something to cancel Abraham Lincoln. Like, you can take two
(21:50):
things at once about Lincoln. One, by our standards, his
views on race work not evolved, not correct. But you
can also realize that guy gave his life to end Slaver,
so he just tremendous good over the course of his life.
And you should be able to have both those things
in your mind at the same time. And the same
thing is happening to Thomas Jefferson, who established my alma mater,
(22:13):
the University of Virginia. There's a culture war of sorts
erupting there, with people feeling like he should not be
sort of the patron saint of the university, somebody to
be idolized. And there are those who say, you know,
don't mess with Jefferson, right, Yeah, My role on that
(22:33):
is we should cancel somebody if the main thing they're
known for is disgraceful. So yeah, there was a Calhoun College,
right I did a whole thing on this, and that
was the determination what is the primary accomplishment of that individual?
And for John C. Calhoun, it really was perpetuating slavery, right,
(22:55):
and Jefferson's writing the Decoration of Independence being president. And
the difficult is um Washington and Lee University. Uh really yeah, well,
very fine school. I love love I've been there many times.
I love that place. My view is Lee Washington. Lee
became Washington League because Roberty Lee became president of the
(23:17):
college after the Civil War. So maybe they're celebrating him
for that, but other things like it Virginia Military Institute
right next door, they just took down the statue of
Stonewall Jackson, and maybe that's legit. It's it's tough for
them because he was the great hero and he led
the students of b M I out to battle. But
maybe that's that stuff is a little shit. I I um.
(23:40):
My view is the statues, the Confederate statues, some of
them should come down, but mostly we should just prep
other statues. Statues that Memora Memora memorialize those who are
victims of lynching, who led the fight for reconstruction, for abolition,
for civil rights, that I love to see them contextualized
a little more than towards Now I know that's one option.
I sort of feel that they should be taken down
(24:01):
if they're in a prominent position, because to me, statues
in public spaces telegraph the values of that community. So
I think it's kind of hard to have both. But
I I take your point because I know some people
feel that way. I think they should belong in museums
and be explained as a really critical part of our history,
(24:22):
but not necessarily as the centerpiece of the community. Yeah,
I see that where I live in Washington. See, I'm
right near a thing called Lincoln Park, and there's a
statue which was put up by former slaves of Lincoln
towards Lincoln in homage of them. But it's him standing
over a kneeling African American slave who's breaking free. The
first time I saw that, I thought, what is that doing?
(24:44):
They're like, why is the African Raican guy kneeling in
Lincoln's feet? But it was it was put up by
uh and I've had long debates with people in the
park about that statue, and at first I thought, well,
it was an historical moment. Frederick Douglas did a very
famous speech right there, um, but I think it's probably
going to museum. Maybe. Your colleague Morning Down wrote about
(25:06):
how it's exhausting to be this outraged all the time,
and we do seem to be in a permanent state
of anger and outrage, lashing out at people who probably
have much more in common with us than we realize.
And you say, permanent indignation is not a healthy emotional state.
How do we deescalate this anger and how do we
(25:27):
prevent this from being our default emotion because it seems
like it's been this way for quite a while now. Yeah, well,
I mean, if Biden wins, he's just less outrageous than
Donald Trump, whatever you think of his views. And he's
what really struck me, as remember that a couple of
weeks ago they both had town halls at the same time,
(25:49):
and you knew going in that Biden's was going to
be more boring than Trump's, and indeed it was. But
more people watch Bidens than watch Trump's. And that said
to me that people are ready for a little born
in the portum, a little normal political discussion. And I
do think a if Fine wins, we wanted to think
about the presidency all the time and be frankly, for
(26:11):
a lot of us, it's easy clickbait to just outrage
about Trump all the time, and maybe politics will be
less central and we can go I like, I prefer
writing about culture than I do to politics, but I
can't do that now because people only read one subject,
which is politics. So I'd love to be able to
go back and write about cultural stuff and moral stuff
and emotional stuff. And I think we were all just
(26:32):
blood pressure would just go down. I thought we could
talk a little bit about weavers and what you're doing
with that. Yeah, weavers are people who are at the
local level building community that one of them, for example,
is a gay Ponchoguilas who uh he takes undocumented immigrants
who have broken their backs, have been paralyzed by construction accidents,
(26:55):
and he gives them wheelchairs and diapers and catheters so
they can lead lives with dignity. And then he organized
and they all become a social workers. So you'll be
in a neighborhood and fifty Latino guys and wheelchairs were
roll in your neighborhood to do good work for you. Uh.
And so those people are everywhere we go, you know,
at the We've project, we go around the country. We
land in a little town McCook, Nebraska, Wilkes, North Carolina,
(27:19):
and we say who's trusted here? And immediately we find
seventy people, five people who are just loved their town
and they want to serve it and they do. And
what we we've do is we try to lift them up,
maybe give them some resources, connecting with each other, make
them more powerful figures in our society, so we can
all sort of copy them a little, David, how can
Trump supporters and Biden supporters learn to respect one another? Yeah,
(27:44):
repeating back to each other what we believe, Like here's
why I tell me if I'm right, Here's why I
think you believe what you believe, And and just having
a conversation that way I have people basically want respect,
and a lot of people feel invisible. When I would
go to the West years ago, once a week I'd
hear are you guys regardless? As fly over country, and
(28:05):
then two years ago that I heard that eight times
a day. People just don't feel seen. They feel they're
ignored and look down upon. And if you you know,
by I think you show respect to Trump voters and
who follow you. And that's the first step, is showing
basic respect. And of course we're going to disagree. That
that's called democracy, but we disagreeing with a show of
(28:29):
affection and respect and with a sense that we all
do love the same country. H And I think a
lot of people are voting for Trump are afraid that
we don't all love the same country. We don't all
love our country, and some people just want to run
it down and change it. Uh. And I think imbined again,
it's done a good job of saying, hey, I love America,
(28:50):
this is the America, this is my country, and if
we have that mutual affection, then we have some income. Hey, listeners,
I'll be back in just a few days with my
post election episode of Turnout. In the meantime, i'd love
to hear your voting story, whether you voted early in person,
sent in your mail in ballot, or are planning to
(29:11):
vote on election day. Tell me what your experience was
like and how it felt good or bad. You can
call eight four four or seven nine seven eight eight
three and leave your name in a short thirty second
message and we may share it on an upcoming episode. Again.
That number is eight four four for seven nine seven
(29:33):
eight eight three Happy Voting Everyone. Turnout is a production
of I Heart Media and Katie Couric Media. The executive
producers are Katie Curic and Courtney Litz. Supervising producers Lauren Hansen.
Associate producers Derek Clements, Eliza Costas and Emily Pento. Editing
(29:53):
by Derrick Clements and Lauren Hansen, Mixing by Derrick Clements.
Our researcher is Gabe Real Loser and Special thanks to
my right hand woman, Adriana Fasio. You can follow me
in all my election coverage at Katie Curry. Meanwhile, yes,
I'm Katie Curry. Thanks so much for listening everyone. We'll
(30:14):
see you next time.
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!