Thread by @herandrews

I am begging Atlantic writers to consider another explanation for populism besides that the 21st century has had winners & losers and the winners pulled too far ahead. Trump voters don't resent your success. They resent the ways you actively harm them. theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…

Believe me, populists aren't bothered by how bobos feel about them. It's what bobos do to them.

Brooks cites Robert Wuthnow’s “The Left Behind: Decline & Rage in Small Town America,” mainly to show that small towns are “not diverse” and don’t share bobos’ values of openness. But is that really the biggest takeaway from Wuthnow’s book? amazon.com/Left-Behind-De…

I guess you could say this woman is showing a lack of openness toward pornography. Or you could say that small towns used to be able to go after XXX shops and other social blights and then social liberals threw out centuries of obscenity law by judicial fiat, and now they can’t.

You could say these people show a lack of openness toward public housing. Or you could say the federal govt plopped a housing project on their town, with all its social ills, and despite living in a democracy there was nothing they could do to stop it or even register dissent.

Blue America sets whatever immigration policy it wants, red America has to live with it. Blue state experts swore opioids were safe, red state patients got addicted & died. On and on and on. Wuthnow's subjects have much bigger worries than David Brooks's concept of social status.

It’s always nice to think our enemies hate us for our virtues. David Brooks and George Packer both fall into that trap. But that’s not what’s happening. Everyone should read Wuthnow’s book—and maybe Brooks should re-read it. /END amazon.com/Left-Behind-De…

I did not expect the obscenity law part of this thread to be the most controversial but for the record I have a whole rant on the legal treatment of pornography in the book I wrote (p. 106–113): amazon.com/Boomers-Promis…