What's Happening!!

This is Real...
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This is Not.

David Brooks, NYT:

I’ve spent much of this election season away from the campaign rallies and interviewing voters embedded in their normal lives. This week, for example, I was in Compton and Watts in and around Los Angeles. The reality I encounter every day has little to do with the us vs. them stories Trump and Sanders are telling.

Everywhere I go I see systems that are struggling — school systems, housing systems, family structures, neighborhoods trying to bridge diversity. These problems aren’t caused by some group of intentionally evil people. They exist because living through a time of economic, technological, demographic and cultural transition is hard. Creating social trust across diversity is hard.

Everywhere I go I see a process that is the opposite of group vs. group war. It is gathering. It is people becoming extra active on the local level to repair the systems in their lives. I see a great yearning for solidarity, an eagerness to come together and make practical change.

I see a strong yearning for the economic status quo that has left establishment men like David Brooks quite comfortably rewarded under the current system, not struggling at all. And truly? I think men like him fear President Trump and socialist Bernie Sanders because say what you will... those men really are working to change status quo America exemplified by a comfortable Washington DC and celebrity elite.

Change comes fast, and if you're not equipped to move quickly -- both mentally and physically -- you likely don't want much change in your world. That's where David Brooks is writing from today.