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Andrew Tobias
Andrew Tobias

Money and Other Subjects

David Brooks: MUST READ

April 19, 2025April 19, 2025

What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal.


In the beginning there was agony. Under the empires of old, the strong did what they willed and the weak suffered what they must.

But over the centuries, people built the sinews of civilization: Constitutions to restrain power, international alliances to promote peace, legal systems to peacefully settle disputes, scientific institutions to cure disease, news outlets to advance public understanding, charitable organizations to ease suffering, businesses to build wealth and spread prosperity, and universities to preserve, transmit and advance the glories of our way of life. These institutions make our lives sweet, loving and creative, rather than nasty, brutish and short.

Trumpism is threatening all of that. It is primarily about the acquisition of power — power for its own sake. It is a multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men, so of course any institutions that might restrain power must be weakened or destroyed. Trumpism is about ego, appetite and acquisitiveness and is driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, scientific wonder, the pursuit of justice.

. . . We’re seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to — Democrat, independent or Republican.

It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.


So worth reading in full.

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