David Brooks wonders why liberal white Americans have become much more woke. That’s easy. I’ll be happy to enlighten him.
Barack Obama did everything he reasonably could to be a unifying figure. There was nothing about him that was remotely threatening to white people. The reactionary right basically responded by calling him a Black Panther who hated whites. Brooks and the rest of the respectable right pretended that it wasn’t happening, and that the GOP was still a principled party espousing limited government. The left noticed all of this, and reacted accordingly.
America then elected a man who had first made his mark in the political world by being a birther. He doesn’t even try to hide his racism anymore. Exacerbating racial divisions on a daily basis is part of his plan. The more woke people he creates, the more support he gets from his base. That part of his plan is working. Whether that will be enough to get him re-elected is the big question for 2020.