Not without reason, David Brooks thinks America is coming apart at the seams. He blames in more or less equal parts the right, for exalting money, the markets, and the interests of wealthy people over the community as a whole, and the left, for emphasizing freedom and group victimhood over responsibility and national solidarity.
There’s a lot of truth in that, but he rarely has anything meaningful to say about what needs to be done to get back to Point A from Point B. On its face, the logical contenders are:
1. A charismatic politician who seeks to bring the nation back together. We tried that, and it didn’t work.
2. A religious revival. You can’t make people believe in things that don’t make sense to them. In any event, conservative Catholics are more interested in the “Benedict Option” than community outreach, and the evangelicals voted for Trump. Good luck bringing the country together with that.
The closest American analogy I can think of is the 1920’s, when technological change, unequal economic growth, scientific advances, and opposition to Prohibition probably created something of a similar environment (think the public reaction to Al Smith’s presidential campaign). How did that end up? With two disasters that brought the country together: the Great Depression and World War II. That’s what it might take today, and Trump is certainly capable of providing the disaster.