In The Times, David Brooks reacted to the confirmation hearing for Pete Hegseth, Trump’s choice for secretary of defense: “I went through high school trying to bluff my way through class after doing none of the reading, and in Hegseth, I recognize a master of the craft.” Of the debased nature of our political and cultural discourse, David added: “In the 19th century we had the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Today it would be the Lincoln-Douglas TikTok wars, followed by ‘Three Takeaways From the Lincoln-Douglas Debates,’ followed by a panel of pundits (like me) analyzing whether Douglas had helped himself with swing voters in DuPage County.” (Thanks to Gabriel Baum of Sonoma, Calif., and Nancy McGill of Seattle, among many others, for spotlighting David’s article.)
Also in The Times, Ezekiel Kweku pondered the shift in American expectations that helped set the stage for Trump: “Earning more than your parents was once a given in America, but by 2016 it had turned into a coin flip. And the lower your family’s station, the less likely you are to win that toss. Politicians and commentators tend to refer to this as the fading of the American dream, but I think ordinary Americans see it as something more fundamental. Nobody is owed a dream. The loss of this promise is a breach of contract, the theft of an inheritance. And now Americans are looking for the thieves.” (Peggy Sweeney, Oviedo, Spain)
Greg Grandin parsed Trump’s talk about global tensions and conflicts. “In treating international politics as if it were a game of Risk,” he wrote, “he’s signaling that the world is governed by new rules, which are really old rules: The powerful do what they will; the weak suffer what they must.” (Grayson Privette, Chapel Hill, N.C.)
And Maureen Dowd acknowledged the completion of Trump’s journey from aspiration to domination: “His nose is no longer pressed against the glass. And he relishes rubbing our noses in it.” Maureen also wrote that in remarks he made right after his Inaugural Address, during “a very long exegesis about building the border wall,” he “sounded like a beat poet of concrete.” (Alec Chester, Washington, D.C., and Mark Van Loon, Hamilton, Mont.)
In The New Yorker, David Remnick charted the new migratory pattern of American oligarchs: “Certain titans of Silicon Valley, Wall Street and (God forgive us) the media have hustled off to Mar-a-Lago, a scene of such flagrant self-abnegation, ring-kissing and genuflection that it would embarrass a medieval pope.” (Kathy Spicer, Fort Worth, Texas, and Nancy Loving, Minneapolis, among others)
