The "People" Pundit Speaks Again ...

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The Politics of Exhaustion: Voters pick whichever candidate exhausts them less. By David Brooks, Opinion Columnist, The New York Times, Dec. 12, 2019 [Excerpt; see also, among several entries on this blog re Brooks's infatuation with the meaningless word "people" (with apologies to "We, the people"]:

Haunted by economic insecurity, they will tolerate any sin in their leader — racism, anti-Semitism, dishonesty — so long as that person is willing to fight and be on their side. They both support massive, unrealistic policy proposals, because they reject the idea that politics is simply the muddled way we settle differences with people we disagree with.

These two power blocs are driving the debate and setting the agenda. But there’s another group of people, who have become the most interesting part of the electorate, both here and in Britain. It’s the exhausted 75 percent, people who are defined not by any common ideology but by an affective state — they are simply worn out by the endless war between these two armies. Exhaustion has become an independent force in modern politics. Many people are voting for whatever candidate will exhaust them less. ...

People in the exhausted camp are tired of having politics thrust in their face every hour. As Ryan Streeter of the American Enterprise Institute has found, young people who are “lonely at least once in a while” are more than seven times more likely to be active in politics than those who are socially active. Those who are exhausted have other things to do. They want to restore politics to its rightful place, and find meaning, attachment, entertainment and morality in something else besides Twitter wars and election campaigns.

Years and years of exhaustion have also made these people weary, cynical and disgusted. Exhaustion, as always, induces a sort of pessimism, a feeling that we are living in terrible times, a sort of weariness of the soul. As Peter Stockland of the think tank Cardus put it, “The combined effect of fear and exhaustion” is “producing a cynicism so deep and murky and toxic that it verges on the sin of bearing false witness against reality.” ...

On campuses 10 percent of students are able to intimidate the other 90 percent, who don’t want to say the wrong thing and get canceled. In Congress, the Trumpians are able to intimidate the members who realize what a problem he is. The people in the two big power blocs are not good at winning the war against each other, but they are really good at intimidating the moderates on their own side. ...