President Trump has drawn the ire of many in the media world, particularly in conservative circles. However, New York Times Columnist David Brooks has maintained his relevancy in the Trump era by remaining highly critical of Trump and his administration, even going so far as to say that Trump is a child who has poisoned the world.
However, in Brooks’ latest column titled, “The Decline of Anti-Trumpism,” the foundation seems to be crumbling. He acknowledges that opponents of Trump are becoming more insular and dumber.
The anti-Trump movement, of which I’m a proud member, seems to be getting dumber. It seems to be settling into a smug, fairy tale version of reality that filters out discordant information. More anti-Trumpers seem to be telling themselves a “Madness of King George” narrative: Trump is a semiliterate madman surrounded by sycophants who are morally, intellectually and psychologically inferior to people like us.
Brooks went on to say that they’ve engaged in the type of “lowbrowism,” during Trump’s presidency, “but anti-Trump lowbrowism burst into full bloom” with Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury book, and it’s done anti-Trumpers no favors.
The modern lowbrow (think Sean Hannity or Dinesh D’Souza) ignores normal journalistic or intellectual standards. He creates a style of communication that doesn’t make you think more; it makes you think and notice less. He offers a steady diet of affirmation, focuses on simple topics that require little background information, and gets viewers addicted to daily doses of righteous contempt and delicious vindication.
We anti-Trumpers have our lowbrowism, too, mostly on late-night TV. But anti-Trump lowbrowism burst into full bloom with the Wolff book.
Brooks does have a point.
No matter what Trump does or says, there will be someone from the anti-Trump movement who will be there calling him a fascist or even worse. It’s not that Trump doesn’t deserve criticism, he certainly does. But every move Trump makes — even if it’s a policy that liberals and progressives are in favor of (i.e. defeating the Islamic State, renegotiating trade deals, expand rural access to broadband internet etc.) — is met with hair-on-fire “boy who cried wolf” alarmism. Everything that he and the Republican-controlled Congress are doing will “literally” kill people.
Brooks has been wrong on many, many things in the past, but he might be right about this. Wolff’s book has brought out another wave of revelations that paint the Trump White House in an objectively negative light, but that’s only if you believe every word in the book, hate the Trump administration, and need a third-party opinion to confirm your biases. The rest is all fake news.
Journalism is at a crossroads in the age of Trump. There are still many good journalists left who cross their t’s and dot their i’s and produce verifiably exceptional pieces from their reporting. At least Brooks acknowledges that Wolff’s book is chock-full of inaccuracies, even for modern journalistic standards — and he’ll likely lose his anti-Trump membership for it.
Siraj Hashmi is a commentary video editor and writer for the Washington Examiner.
