Columnist David Brooks has addressed the idea that Trumpism isn’t exactly “morally challenged” but rather “represents an alternative moral system.” Which actually valorizes people and behaviors others might condemn. The key to the dichotomy is that while some of us, Brooks says (my emphasis), “have an institutional mindset . . . the MAGA mindset is anti-institutional.“
Institutions — “families, schools, professions, the structures of government” — one can add the media, religions, legal systems, the economy, medicine, science and technology — Brooks deems the foundation of societies — and functioning within such institutions, stewardship of them, is how we manifest as good people. But MAGA folks regard such institutions as “fundamentally corrupt and illegitimate,” having “led the nation to ruin.”
And, in their alternative moral system, he says, the virtuous man “is self-assertive, combative, transgressive and vengeful,” actually relishing “elite scorn.” Even sexual impropriety is not merely excused but held the earmark of a manly man. All making for perfect warriors to shake up a system needing it.
Brooks writes that between conventional morality and this new and very different moral ethos, the “battle is on for the hearts and souls of the coming generations.”
It’s clear which side he’s on, giving us a paean to George C. Marshall, a monument to selfless institutionalism. And, he says, however much you might think our institutions are messed up and needing reform, that can really come only “from people who have developed a loving devotion to those institutions over years of experience, not people who despise them — the modern day George Marshalls rather than the Pete Hegseths, Tulsi Gabbards and Robert F. Kennedy Jrs.”
Yet Brooks is wrong to describe this as a battle between two alternative moral visions. It’s morality versus its lack, simpliciter. By casting things as Brooks does, even while condemning the Trumpist ethos he legitimizes it as being an ethos.
Instead it’s nihilism, just lashing out blindly. Not embracing some bizarro contrarian morality honoring what others consider creepy criminality, but instead not caring one way or the other.
Discussing this with my wife, she suggested a different operative precept: loyalty. MAGA people holding loyal to what and who they see as fundamentally on their side, regardless of any details. Arguably at least a moral idea; ends justifying means. Though that’s not what Brooks was talking about. We’re still left with the conundrum of sanctioning what’s always been considered iniquity.
Trump himself does sacralize loyalty, but not as a moral precept; rather to feed his deranged ego. And he is not acting either from some considered agenda to invert society’s traditional moral schema. The whole notion of morality being alien to him — terra incognita. He just does what he feels like, that’s all. Make Charles Kushner Ambassador to France? Why not? If there’s any guiding principle, it’s to show he can do anything he wants.
That’s not an alternative morality. It’s amorality. The locution “alternative morality” smacks of “alternative facts” — which are not facts.
Brooks’s column fits with a huge phenomenon of trying to come to grips with what’s happened to America, and how we can live with it. Viewing Trump voters in terms that make them seem reasonable, fellow citizens with a legitimate point of view, that we must strive to honor and accommodate. While of course Republican officialdom’s gaslighting machine tells us it’s all perfectly fine, like a Kash Patel is just the right sort to straighten out the FBI; et cetera. Not even trying to whitewash Trumpian transgressions, instead simply pretending them away.
And people write columns, and talking heads talk, without those heads exploding, or their hair on fire, as though this is all just one more turn of the political wheel, just another administration come to Washington.
I’m not buying it. Voters were fools to elect a government of the worst, and no good can come of it. Our civic culture has fallen in the toilet. An epic tragedy.