The Bulwark Podcast - Frank Bruni: The Age of Grievance

Episode Date: April 23, 2024

Tocqueville noted that Americans forever brood over advantages they do not possess, but now our grievance culture has run amok. From the aggrieved-in-chief, Trump, who just can't catch a break, to the social justice warriors who apply the same lens to every situation, we're losing the line between what is righteous and what is bratty. Frank Bruni joins Tim Miller today. show notes: Frank's book, "The Age of Grievance."

Hello and welcome to the Bullard podcast. Today's topic, grievance culture. And let me tell you, nobody this morning is more grieved than Los Angeles Lakers fans after Jamal Murray and Nikola Jokic sucked the salt from their bodies around 1137 central time last night. I'm still riding high. I'm a little tired. And so our guest, Frank Bruni, is going to be carrying me. He's a contributing opinion writer and author for the New York Times. He's got a weekly newsletter. He joined the faculty of Duke, where he's professor of the practice of journalism and public policy. His latest book, The Age of Grievance, will be released next Tuesday. Frank Bruni, welcome to the Bulldog Podcast. Good to be here. How are you doing?

I am good. I am good. I'm not as distressed about matters basketball as you are, but I'm more a football watcher. Yeah, I know. I'm not distressed at all. I'm riding high. I'm in my Nuggets hat. It was just a memorable, heartwarming, uplifting victory last night, but between that and a

2 a.m. interruption from my six-year-old i'm riding on coffee right now okay we're gonna spend most of the time on your book which has some high quality blurbs on note and you know really affirmed all my priors and i also want to get us up to speed on the trump trial but like i want to start us with a little palate cleanser okay we got some archival audio four years ago on this day, April 23rd. Let's take a listen. And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Almost a cleaning. Does that take you back, Frank frank what kind of emotions does that

bring up in you fresh wonder at this man's prominence in public life you know that was four years ago and here he is the presumptive republican nominee it's it's it's an interesting arc it is quite the world almost a cleaning that was always understood people focus on the injection of the bleach but but I always liked almost a cleaning. One thing I'd forgotten rewatching it was just the mortified Deborah Birx. Like I almost need a super zoom cam just on her face sitting over on the side. Another thing that will provide you some wonder about his prominence is what's happening today in New York.

Right now, as we record, there's a hearing on whether he has violated his gag order by attacking Michael Cohen on his social media account and in a press conference. And then later, we're gonna have testimony from David Pecker, former publisher of the National Enquirer. How's this our life, Frank Bruni? Talk to us about your impressions of the ongoing Donald Trump trial in Manhattan. I know there are many conversations to be had about that trial in terms of, you know, in terms of matters of justice, rulings, etc. I, and I think you're in the same camp, Tim Miller, I kind of see everything through the lens of, is this going to prevent us from another Trump term? Or is this going to lead us toward one? Because I think that's, that's the whole game for America. And this trial leaves me with mixed feelings. On

the one hand, I think he's never seemed so small. This is a person whose, whose brand rests on a projection of faux superpotency. And now I don't even think he can do faux superpotency. I mean, he looks... He's sleep farting. He's sleep farting in class. Well, I want to come back to the, I don't want to come back to the farting, but I do want to say something about that. But so I do think this has punctured a lot of the myth of Donald Trump. And I think it's hard to say, gee, Joe Biden looks too old to be president when Trump is doing a narcoleptic act at the defendant's table, right? On the other hand, I am, and this is not a fresh observation, but I'm in the camp of

people who wish this wasn't the first trial that was coming to the fore. I think for a lot of Americans, for a lot of people, this seems like some infractions for sure, but stretched to the limit of accountability. And so I just can't figure out as we sit here, how this is going to play for Donald Trump's political future. And to me, that's the biggest question for America. Yeah, I share that mixed view. I mean, I keep going back to the fact that on balance, it has to be a net plus. And I do think there's some countervailing elements to it. But I just the amount of money, there was a new report yesterday about the insane outlays that he's put to lawyers that could have been going to campaign offices or ads. He's an untraditional candidate anyway, but still, you'd rather have the money be in TV ads

than be going to lawyers. You'd rather be having rallies than sitting in court dozing off. I mean, I think that is kind of really where I come down on this. I do worry that some of the commentary and coverage of this could redound to his benefit. You mentioned the farting. I woke up this morning. I've been dying to hear what you're going to think about the farting. As soon as you told me you had an opinion, I was like, what is Frank Bruni's farting take going to be? I need to know. Yeah, Frank Bruni can't believe Frank Bruni is wondering what his farting take is going to be. But you know, he began this podcast with an oldie but goodie, which is, you know, should we be injecting bleach? And just when you think our public conversations can't get weirder than that, I wake up to various articles on maybe Trump is flatulent,inged, you know. But I also worried if that becomes the conversation that plays so strongly into the hands of his defenders and supporters, it feels so over the top, mean and cruel, which, yes, is his modus operandi.

But this has never been a fair, even match or whatever. I don't want those of us who have, you know, very principled reasons why we don't want Trump back in the White House, very patriotic reasons why we don't want Trump back in the White House. I don't want us projecting such a sense of schadenfreude and glee that we actually serve as political cause and undermine our aims. We're fallen. We have strengths and weaknesses. And I'm torn on this topic because on the one hand, I agree with you. I don't think that turning people off is helpful. I don't think that smugness is necessarily helpful. He deserves to be mocked, though. He does. And does mocking contribute to the diminishment that you were talking about at the start? That's where I sometimes, I don't know, I think it cuts both ways for me a little bit. Well, deserves to be mocked. You're making a moral judgment and I was making a purely tactical one. But tactically, doesn't it help to mock him? Doesn't it diminish him? Many of us have been, I mean, I hope personally not me more than a fair share, but

many of us have been mocking him for what, eight years? And here we are. 40, that's probably why he's here. He was mocked in the 80s. Yeah, he was spy magazine's short-fingered vulgarian. We've been mocking Donald Trump almost since Donald Trump drew breath. And here we are with him as the presumptive nominee. Now, in terms of the trial, maybe making him look smaller, I think the first big poll I've seen since there were several days of trial and him nodding off at the defendant's table was the Marist poll from the other day, but correct me if I'm wrong. It finally showed Biden three points up on Trump nationally. And I think that lead expanded to five points when you took RFK Jr. out of the equation. So Marist is the only one so far. Yeah. But you know, but it's margin of error is what margin of error is. One poll is just one

poll, but maybe we are seeing the first inklings of an effect from that trial. And maybe the effect is to diminish it. We'll see. Your lips to God's ears. One other thing on Trump before I move on to college life and the book topic. You just wrote something that I need to address. In your newsletter, you asked if there's any tenderness in the Trump clan. That really, I didn't like that word.

That was kind of like the word moist. Tenderness in the context of Trump doesn't compute for me. No, moist is for a cake. Tender is for a family. No, I reject that. I reject that. Yeah, but was this just something that was just in your mind? You're just wondering if the trial is going to reveal any secret affection between Melania and Donald? Or why was this a topic of interest for you? Well, I was asking the question to make the point that while Trump is an exhibitionist par none, I don't think we've ever had such an exhibitionist at the pinnacle of American politics. And he shares with us his every utterance. There are things we don't know, right? And for such an oversharer, for such an exhibitionist, I have no sense to

this day, no real sense. If we're being honest, I have no real sense what a private moment between Trump and Ivanka is like, what a private moment between Trump and Melania is like. And in that first week of the trial jury selection, when people were wondering, where's Melania? Will we see Melania? Will Melania testify? It just reminded me that one of the last and only mysteries about Trump's life is whether any moments or corners of his private life would be recognizable to us as genuinely human interactions. And I think one of the reasons those of us who feel so confounded by him and kind of see him as almost so monstrous, I think one of the reasons is not just all of the deeds and all the horrible words, but he doesn't seem quite human because we never

get any sort of sense of tenderness. And so I was just kind of asking the question. I, you know, I was going back and thinking about and rereading moments when he praises Melania or when he praises Ivanka and the language, the diction, the Braggart's diction is no different from when he's praising Trump University back in the day, or when he's saying like big rally, etc. Or when he's praising his economic record. And I made the joke that it sounds like it's, Donald Trump branded artificial intelligence chat DJT, right? So is that because there really is nothing there? Is that because these relationships with his children and his wife are completely transactional? Or is there actually some little part of Trump, this overshare or this exhibitionist that we don't see? That's what I was getting at.

I think there really is nothing there. But it is an interesting question. I just tenderness. It's like it's just it's like the anti word for Donald Trump, right? So I guess there's a question is, does that moment exist anywhere? I don't I don't believe it does. You can see some videos from behind the scenes sometimes of Trump, right? So I guess there's a question. Does that moment exist anywhere? I don't believe it does. You can see some videos from behind the scenes sometimes of Trump. It doesn't seem like it's there. But I did not ask, just for the record, is there any moistness? I asked if there's any tenderness.

That's true. I just meant that tenderness in the context of Trump evoked the same feeling in me that the word moist evokes. I can't explain why. I'm just going to leave it there. I want to move uptown to Columbia University. You're on a campus now. They're moving to virtual classes at Columbia. I think it's pretty clear. We talked about this a little bit yesterday. I mean, anti-Semitism that has come from some of these protests is alarming. It's not all protesters,

hashtag. There's some earnest protesters. There's some good reasons to protest. And there were some earnest protesters on campus that were celebrating Passover with their Jewish colleagues yesterday. But the degree of the vitriol in some corners, some of them students, some of them agitators from the outside is, I think, quite alarming. So I'm interested in your expertise, both as somebody that's spending some time on campus. I think it's related to the subject of the book. Well, our campus, I'm at Duke, and we have not had anything approaching what you're seeing at Columbia and Harvard and NYU and some other universities. You know, I'm going to give you a frustrating answer. I like frustrating answers. Well, I just think too often, people like you and me who weigh in on public events, who are political

analysts, or God forbid the word pundits or whatever, you know, we feel like we got to say, here's the way it should go. Here's what's right, here's what's wrong. I think this is a really difficult situation. And boy, I wouldn't want to be a university president right now. I would not want to be the president of Columbia University. You have correctly noted that there's been some horrible, horrible things said by some of these protesters, anti-Semitic things, things that when Jewish students or Jewish faculties say, you know, I don't feel welcome or safe on my own campus. I do not think that's an, I don't think that's an overwrought statement. And I think that needs to be listened to. At the same time, it is difficult because universities are supposed to be bastions of and promoters of

free speech. Granted, they're private spaces and they can set their own rules. And that's what Columbia is doing. They're saying you're in violation of these rules and these rules apply to everyone. And so we're going to sweep you out. At the same time, you want to encourage students to be politically engaged. You want to hold high the values of free speech. And as you said very accurately, and I appreciate it, Tim, some of these protesters are chanting hateful, hateful, and intimidating things, not all of them. This is a really, really difficult situation, and we talked about it. I'm teaching a class at Duke right now that is consistent with my book. It's called The Age of Grievance. We had our last session yesterday. And I was talking to the students about it. And one of

the themes throughout the semester has been America's tough, right? We have all of these problems, because we're trying something here in America that is actually, when people say the American experiment, the word experiment is very wisely used. No one has ever tried a democracy at this scale, this diverse. We do not have an historical precedent or success story to look to and model ourselves after. America's also tough because we tell everyone, you have rights, you have individual liberties, we want to protect those, we want to promote them, we want to hold those high. And sometimes one person's rights and another person's rights are in direct conflict. Sometimes what somebody feels is important for their individual liberty and what somebody else does are in direct conflict. Sometimes what somebody feels is important for their individual liberty and what somebody else does are in direct conflict.

This situation is tough for some of the same reasons America is tough. And so I just kind of want to say there are a lot of shades of gray here. It is possible to see the anger and the sense of betrayal on both sides. And I would not want to be the president of Columbia University. I told you frustrating answer. I'm sorry. Well, that's okay. I like frustrating. And I'm interested in how you kind of talk to students about this, because one of the things to me that I look at this, and I just think there's a good reason why emotions are running high and why the rhetoric is overheated, right? It's a horrific situation. Like the terrorist attack was horrific and unprecedented in our lifetimes the starvation

and what's happening with some in gaza the deaths of children and babies is horrific right so i understand why you'd want to be overheated but the thing that's frustrating to me and i wonder how the students kind of think about this is just the rhetoric around this is only exacerbating it so much we don't want to both be both sides guys but there are two prime examples. Like, I look at the ethnic cleansing, genocide, and just unwillingness to even, you know, give an inch on that. The broad base attack on Jews, on Zionists and Zionism, you know, no matter, you know, what their political leanings are. Like, some of that stuff makes me very uncomfortable. In the last few days in Colombia, I've seen from some of the folks that are pro-Israel and defenders of Israel, including that professor that's been kicked off campus, I think wrongly,

probably, you know, using things like there's a pogrom at Colombia, and this is 1938 again. I just, I kind of just want to say to everybody, can we just dial it down a little bit here? But I don't know, maybe that's an unfair ask of them. I'm sure you talk about that with your students. What's your view on that? I agree with you entirely. I mean, this is emblematic of our grievance culture. Nobody ever dials it down. They dial it up. We're at this moment in American life and our political discourse and our civic discourse where people seem to believe if I can shout louder and use a more overwrought, damning vocabulary than the people on the other side, that's how I win the day. It's the Twitter ethos. It's the Twitter sensibility on college campuses in the public

square. Nobody ever pauses and does what I hope you and I have been doing over the last couple of minutes and said, the side over there that I consider my adversaries are the people with different opinions. Let me take a moment and figure out why they feel so deeply the way they feel. And they should take a moment and think the other way. That's not what we do. We immediately compete. I am more victimized than you are. I am more wronged. I am more deserving of apology and recompense and accommodation. And in order to make that case, I am going to use sharper and more scabrous language than you use, and I'm going to shout louder. That's not just this particular set of protests and counter protests at Columbia and NYU. That is almost every single battle in the culture where we fight, and it gets us absolutely nowhere. Yeah, it goes back to my favorite George Bush line,

post the presidency, at the eulogy, where he's talking about how we judge ourselves based on our best intentions and our opponents based on their worst examples. And I think that you see that everywhere. Okay, one positive thing about campus, I don't want to get into the book. Because we talked about this a little bit back when I was doing the Next Level Sunday podcast, we had a lovely conversation about your last book, people should go listen to they want. And we talked at the time, I feel like there's a caricature. Sometimes in the pundit class, there's those, it's like, you know, 40 to 78 year old white men, mostly, you know, talking about like wagging their finger. I know, exactly.

We're wagging our finger at what's happening in the youth and clutching our pearls about what's happening in the youth. And sure, there's some concerning things about the dialogue, and we should get into that. But your experience at Duke, I think, has been kind of instructive. It was similar. I was at USC, and I had a similar experience. So maybe talk about what you see as, you know, some of the misconceptions or, you know, how your experience matches with the narrative and dialogue on what's happening on college campuses these days. I'm happy to, and thanks for asking. Well, for starters, the students in the news,

no matter which side of this they're on, they're the minority, right? And this happens in news story after news story. We go toward conflict. We emphasize conflict. We emphasize the most colorful, forceful, compelling stuff. They're the minority. Most students, it's not that they're blasé. It's not that they're complacent. It's not that they're tuned out.

Most of them are more focused on getting their paper done, studying for the exam, figuring out their summer internship. So we're taking a very small minority of students on campuses and we're speaking and writing as if they are the norm. That's number one. I think we're also dabbling in caricature. It is really easy to go around the country and when it comes to the subject of wokeness, for example, wokeness is real. There is wokeness on campuses. We have seen plenty of examples of it and we've seen, I think, universities indulge it to an extent that they needn't and shouldn't. But again, that's a minority. That is not the fallback nature of

campus life. I've made a concerted effort in every course I've taught. And I make a point toward the beginning of saying to students, I welcome every viewpoint here. The best learning happens when we have a diversity of viewpoints, when we have ideological diversity. I want you to feel comfortable. I want you to actually kind of play with some notions outside your comfort zone, et cetera, et cetera. And I have found students, they're students, they're young people. They want to please their teacher. They want to get an A. If you give them a signal that what will please you in the course to the best grade is to be ideologically elastic, at least for the sake of the course, to consider viewpoints other

than your own, to encourage a heterodox discussion. If you tell the students that's what you want, that's the path to success, it's surprising how many decide to try that out for at least the semester. I wonder about, and I worry, that too many faculty members are modeling a sort of extreme progressivism for students that is being kind of imitated by students because of the culture of, I want to please the professor. And I would exhort my fellow faculty members to do their bit classroom by classroom to foster a different, more open-minded, more searching culture. I love that. My experience was exactly the same. It was only, you've done many more classes. I had only one study group at USC, but I felt exactly the same way. And I want to challenge my

own, you know, personal anecdote experience on this because it's like people chose to do the former Republican study group. So, you know, maybe it was, maybe it was selection bias, but I'm happy to hear that this is not maybe as widespread as people are concerned about, but there certainly are some things that deserve pushing back against. And you wrote about this in the book, on the DEI culture, for example, on campus. There's some good elements to it, right? There's some making sure that we have people from different backgrounds, different experiences, and leadership roles at universities. But one of the things you wrote about was how it has, in some ways, contributed to the grievance, because you have white students, maybe, or maybe their parents

that feel like they, you know, are being whatever reverse discriminated against or whatever. And then you have black and brown students that maybe feel like I think you use the word that there's like a pretempkin structure created for them. that's like outside of the real structure and that, you know, maybe that it didn't fill their ambition in the same way that, you know, going through a more traditional process would. I don't know, talk about your experience in that broadly and how you wrote about it in the book. Well, I mean, the DEI battle is interesting because I think it's one that needn't be as heated as it is in part because I think we bring to it, as we do to so many of our political debates and discussions,

we bring to it this argo, this can't, that doesn't make sense to everybody, right? When you start talking about, you know, I get, I've gotten emails about decolonializing Duke, decolonializing the Sanford School of Public Policy. To a lot of people, it's like, what does that mean? That just kind of sounds strange and forbidding and overwrought. Or you see other words along, I mean, even the kind of DEI acronym, what are we really talking about? And what can we all agree on? I think we can all agree that there have been people historically marginalized, who are not playing on an even field, or at least haven't to this point, and that we have an investment in making sure that they get a fair shake, right? I think we can all agree that we're better served by diverse than by homogeneous

environments, right? If we talk real talk like that, we move away from a grievance culture toward a constructive problem solving one. But we tend to use these vocabularies, and we tend to kind of inflate these claims to the point where everybody feels completely estranged from the side they don't immediately agree with. Regarding these buzzwords and all that, I also write in the book, and this is where some of the caricatures, they're not characters, this is where some of the complaints about higher ed are okay. But this is a story, I think, that's bigger than higher ed. I was in one class and we were talking about ways in which the Republican Party had and

hadn't changed over time. And we were talking about how much movement there had been on marriage equality, but how, and this was a couple of years ago, but how the abortion numbers were sort of static. And I said to the students, any kind of guesses, theories as to why that would be, why you would have movement on one and not the other. And a student raised her hand and she said, yes. And I said, well, and she said white supremacy. Now, she said that because in too many higher ed environments, white supremacy is always an intelligent, incisive answer to anything. Right? But it's not. And I said, what do you mean? And she said, well, Republicans don't want there to be abortion, because more white people than people of color get abortions, and they're worried about the race dying out. And I said, would you be

shocked to learn that you have that exactly backward? That in fact, in terms of proportions of population, a much higher percentage of people of color have abortions than white people. And she looked like I had just told her that I'd seen Bigfoot at the campus cantina, you know, buying a beer, right? That's what's happened to so many of these discussions is people grab hold of certain words that are matter, certain phrases that are matters of virtue signaling, that in some cases, bear no relation to reality. And when that happens, you cannot have constructive discussions, you cannot get anywhere near progress. Let's just take the lens back a little bit just for the book itself.

It starts chapter one is let me tell you how I've been wronged. And this is something that's been coming for a while. You quote my predecessor, Charlie Sykes, quite a bit at length, because he wrote a book in 1993 called Nation of Victims, right? So, this is not a totally new thing. You quote in the book, de Tocqueville, about how Americans are forever brooding over advantages they do not possess. So, you know, it's not completely a 2024 issue, but I wonder why you think, you know, it has spiraled out of control to such a degree and how you think we got here. Well, I mean, there are many reasons why it spiraled out of control. I mean, some are small, some are big, and they all are acting together. We could talk about social media and the changes in media. I mean, that's an enormous agent of this. Since the internet came along, we now live in an

information and a media environment where no two people have the same diet of information or news. So no two people have the same version of events. And that has facilitated conflict, conspiracy theories, extremism in a way that fuels this. I think a big piece of this puzzle that we don't talk enough about is this country's turn from optimism to pessimism. American optimism, as I write in the book, has always been overrated. We've never been quite as expansively and, you know, sustainably optimistic a country as some people think, but we have been fundamentally optimistic. Not over the last two decades. You know, when you look at the change in survey responses, when you ask Americans, do you expect your children to have a better life than you did? Those numbers have changed and they've changed in the direction of

people are much less sure. When you have that sort of doubt about the future, when you have that sort of negative mindset, when you don't believe the pie is growing, you begin to feel a whole lot more possessive and competitive about your piece of the pie. And that sets you up in conflict to each other. That kind of ends up emphasizing individual lots over the common good. And I think that's a big, big driver of grievance culture. Yeah, this is a bugaboo of mine. You call it pessimism, which is true, but there's an even more extreme version of it, doomerism that's out there. Doomerism. That's a great word. I wish I'd used that.

It's common amongst some of the kids. Also, the lefty kids do doomerism about when it comes to climate and across the board. And I did a snapshot a couple months ago on this, like, kind of against doomerism. Like, we're so aligned on this. It's hard for me to put a finger on exactly what it is. I mean, sure, there's been some economic stagnation. Sure, there's been certain parts of the country that have been left behind by globalization. You know, you can't paint with totally a broad brush here. But we are also living in a time of unprecedented

bounty. It's not just one political side. I mean, the Republicans have gone from shining city on a hill to Donald Trump's like American carnage, and this is a very bleak version of the world. Then, you know, on the left, as we mentioned, the climate kind of dumerism, all these other issues, you know, talking about the anti-capitalist stuff. To me, I'm a little flummoxed by it. I don't feel like I understand why that has happened over the last 20 years. And you're right to say that. And one of the reasons I wrote the book is to try to understand exactly that. And something, as you know, because you were kind enough to read it, to give me an endorsement, and I thank you. One of the things I wrestle with in the book is just what you brought up.

And actually, those things you mentioned, I think it turns out are not in conflict, they actually explain each other. It is weirdly because we live in an era of plenty, because most people in America are not hungry, because we actually have not had a draft and obliged people to go. It's because in a larger historical sense, and President Obama actually was very eloquent on this in his second term about how he used to say, no matter what you think of climate change, there's that if you want it to be living at any point in history in any country, you'd want to be in America right now, right? Yes, it's because of this, I think that we can get so exercised sometimes about our pettier slights, and our kind

of more localized, personalized issues. It's because you're not out to kind of say it in very kind of broad ways, because you're not out foraging for food is because you're not dodging missiles, that you can get sometimes extra exercised about extra consumed by things that would perhaps be better approached at a lower temperature. So the things do kind of go hand in hand. But you mentioned doomerism, which is a word you've given me a word today. Thank you. I mentioned in the book that the fact that we even have the word doom scrolling says a lot about, you know, our current mindset. I tell you, I found myself thinking afresh about and kind of marveling over and finding so emblematic the fact that by far the most popular watched viral show that Netflix

has ever streamed is Squid Game. I love Squid Game. I was terrified by it. But what does it say about this moment in time? And Squid Game was particularly popular among young people, among teenagers, 20-somethings, early 30-somethings. And those with Peter Pan syndrome and middle-aged people with Peter Pan syndrome and the youth. And Tim Miller. Yeah, 20-somethings, early 30-somethings and podcast hosts with basketball hats on is the market for Scream Game. But seriously, what does it say that by far the most popular show is about people so desperate in a merciless capitalist economy that they choose likely death, a likely painful death and a fight to the death among fellow contestants. They choose that over remaining in the outside world on the very, very off chance that they win the financial jackpot.

You said you watched it and loved it. And you and I, and maybe your therapist can talk about that a little bit later. It is hideously violent. It has almost not a glimmer of hope or reassurance in it. I don't see Squid Games Analog being the most popular show in history 25 years ago. I think it says a lot. Friends was the most popular show. There you have it. There you have it. From Jennifer Aniston to Fights to the Death. Yeah. I want to do more on the phones, but I have a kind of even darker thought that maybe calls into some of my vestigial conservative leanings a little bit. Is there like a, I'm worried I'm about to sound like Ross Douthat for a second, who I had on the podcast last week, who I have some disagreements with,

but maybe he's onto something on this. Are we unfulfilled? Are people unfulfilled? I was listening to you talk about the foraging and like a life where you are raising a family and you have lots of kids and you have a job that you feel like you need to be at, that you're needed, you're useful in some way, even if it's a minor way, having that sort of job versus, you know, living in a culture where people are having fewer kids, less family contact, less community contact, where you're doing PowerPoints. I mean, I remember back when I was a consultant, I went to Facebook and I was walking around there and I'm like, some of the less community contact where you're doing powerpoints i mean i remember back when i was

a consultant i went to facebook and i was walking around there and i'm like some of the smartest people in america are here just wasting their life doing powerpoints for fucking vc guys you know and maybe that would lead me to feel aggrieved and unfulfilled i don't know what do you think about that that our souls are not fulfilled by the nature of our society. I think it's 100% true. And I say that not as a conventionally religious person, or maybe not as a religious person at all, depends on how you define the term. It's what was written about prophetically. And it turns out prematurely in bowling alone, fewer and fewer Americans belong to anything, whether we're talking about civic groups, whether we're talking about churches, whether we're talking about, you know, companies that become their

homes for decades on end. There is a detachment and a disattachment, if that's a word in American life right now that we did not see even a decade ago, certainly not several decades ago. This is a country that encourages and prizes individualism. But you cannot, I think, live a happy life unless you are a part of something larger than yourself. And study after study of front after front shows that and it just kind of makes sense. None of us, none of us wants to feel that we're totally alone in this world, that nobody has our backs, that we're not nurturing other people and having their backs. And I think right now, so many different things about American life, about Western life is so fractured. It's quite dangerous. Well, I don't know the fix that

you said the word belonging. I was just my parents just sent me their, their priests homily for Sunday, when it's good, they send it to me. And I try to listen, Mom, and I don't always listen when you send it, but I do my best. But this week's was about that was about belonging, right? And, and kind of the loss of that, right? And a feeling of going to something or being a man, but then how that's different from that deeper sense of belonging. You made some suggestions at the end of your book about how to fix the political system. I don't remember. Did you have a suggestion on this topic? Well, you know, I didn't frame, I didn't phrase it as belonging, but as you're talking about it, I realized that it's belonging by another name.

The last chapter of my book is on humility. And in fact, the Times just ran an excerpt of that. And I think when you lose a sense of belonging, one of the things you lose along with that is humility. And by humility, I mean, realizing that everything doesn't revolve around you, that you don't always get your way, that not every political issue or situation in life should be or can be contoured precisely to your liking, right? When you have a sense of belonging, when you are a part of and you see yourself as a part of something bigger, a bigger group, a bigger society, a bigger culture, whatever, you no longer insist on having everything your way. You no longer expect everything to everything your way. You no longer expect

everything to go your way. And you recognize that your contentment has as much to do with the collective good as to your hourly or minute by minute wants and whims. So I talk about the need to rediscover humility. I think one of the ways you rediscover humility is with a renewed or a fresh sense of belonging. Yeah, I like the humility chapter. That one is a challenge for me. I was on the Dispatch podcast this weekend, and some of the listeners said maybe I fell short on that, sounded like, but I'm doing my best, you know, I'm doing my best. And I think it is a challenge for all of us. And we're in a culture where it doesn't feel like a prized value. That feels like an

understatement. But look at, again, I don't mean to both sides this, everybody knows my opinion about Donald Trump and what is the greater threat. Obviously, Donald Trump is like a caricature of inhumility, right? And that there is no, I guess. I alone can fix it. I alone can fix it. Yeah, the least humble person maybe in history. Humility doesn't really feel like a value on the social justice left sometimes either, right? Like where there is a value of, we are right, there's no room to think about any other way that you're, you know, you're either on the right side of this, or we judge you as being wrong. And, and so there doesn't seem like a lot of space for humility in our political culture. No, I agree with you, and you're correct about the social justice left, and I examine that in the book. I talk about both sides. I talk about the lunacy of a J.D. Vance, and I talk about social justice warriors who insist on applying the same lens to every situation, whether it belongs there or not. You know, I talk about the fact that I saw a lot of claims on

Twitter and even columns written by people saying that Brittany Griner was being abandoned by America and her fate in Russia ignored because she's a woman, black and lesbian. We read more about Brittany Griner, and there was a greater movement, including statements from the White House, to free her. And she deserved to be freed. She was unjustly imprisoned, don't get me wrong. Yes, she did. White House to free her, and she deserved to be freed. She was unjustly imprisoned, don't get me wrong. But we were more aware of her situation than other Russian political prisoners before her. It was the opposite. She was not being ignored because she was a celebrity, let's be frank. Because she was a celebrity, she was getting more attention. But in some precincts of the social justice left, because you have to see homophobia and racism and misogyny in every

situation. You applied it to this one, even though it had no place there. That is unhumble. And I want to say one more thing about humility. I was struck in real time, and I bring it back up in the book. Do you know it's kind of a convention of oratory when you get an incredible distinction or when you are lofted to the highest office? It's a kind of convention of, it's a bit of etiquette, it's a convention of oratory to use the word humbled. When Donald Trump gave his inauguration speech on that day, I was writing about it for the Times, I looked back and sure enough, in Barack Obama's first inauguration speech, he uses the word humbled. In George W. Bush's first inauguration speech, he uses the word humbled. In Donald Trump's first inauguration speech, he uses the word humbled. In Donald Trump's first

inauguration speech, humbled, humility, no variant of that word anywhere to be found. Sometimes the actual text says it all. I wonder if we could, I mean, as a man who, as you've mentioned, expresses his every utterance, like the longest record of thought maybe of any person in human history, I wonder if we could ever find him saying the word humbled. I'll challenge a listener who wants to try to find Donald Trump talking about the time where he's been humbled. I'm going to bet not. I'm going to bet not. Yeah, I want to just challenge you. I want to give the other side of the coin on what we were just talking about. I think whether it is somebody that has experience in black America that maybe says, I have a right to be aggrieved, like the way that we've been treated, the structural racism leads to legitimate grievance. There's some MAGA folks

that would say that, especially not the ones that are riding in boat parades, but maybe the ones that, you know, kind of live in Appalachia and their communities have been hollowed out. We'll leave the gays aside as gay men. I don't think we need to make those arguments. But what would you say to those folks who say to you, oh, Frank, you're just a white guy. You know, you've had things good for you in life. And you worked for the New York Times. And maybe you just don't understand that these grievances are just so legitimate that maybe

there's a sense of, I don't want to be told by you that I shouldn't feel aggrieved when I have real reason to be aggrieved. I would say you're right. And I'm not saying, in the book, I say not all grievances are created equal. And some are just, you know, and some are overwrought. You know, some are constructive, some are destructive. I use the Brittany Griner example because I thought that was a ridiculous claim in that particular situation.

And it was a ridiculous claim that reflected this tendency to go into the public square with your lens, your complaint, your brand, and apply it indiscriminately. That's that situation. Do Black Americans have every reason to feel historically aggrieved? And do many, if not most of them in real time, have complaints that we need to listen to and address because they're matters of justice? Absolutely. Are there people in America among the demographics that have supported Trump in such large numbers who have seen things happen to their communities, to their counties, to their lives that are causes of great distress that have not been adequately addressed by the government and by their fellow citizens? about is when you follow those grievances into places so overwrought and crazy that you're undermining the worthy part of your cause and all you're serving is American dysfunction. When you take the legitimate grievance of a working class, non-college educated,

white rural American who's seen the factories move away and the jobs go, when you take that and now you say what J.D. Vance actually said at one point, which is that Joe Biden wants a porous border because he wants drugs coming in and disproportionately killing the kinds of people who might vote for Donald Trump. That's grievance run amok. And that's what I'm talking about. When you decide that Brittany Griner is a poster child for racism and homophobia and misogyny because she's in a Russian jail cell, that's grievance run amok that's what i'm talking about we need to find the line between what is just and what is necessary and what is righteous and what is purely bratty i want to how to bratty i don't know there's something about bratty that

i just like oh boy just made me want to do my kind of like rupaul snap at you there um all right i want to go back to the phones really quick before I lose you. That de Tocqueville quote that Americans are forever brooding over advantages they do not possess. When I read that, you know, the thing that just jumps straight to my mind is I don't know if we are wired as humans to have to confront the advantages we do not possess constantly all day in our pockets, pretty people, people on vacations, really smart, whatever your insecurity is, you know, and having to see

that constantly having to see it rubbed into your face. Do you think that is what is the stem of all this? Why this feels so much worse than maybe it did 20, 30, 40 years ago? It is definitely a stem of this. It's one of the things that's contributing to it. You are right. And the way I read about it in the book is we've always had inequality, income inequality, all sorts of inequality. We've always had, you know, that phrase with your nose pressed up against the glass, looking at what you don't have. Keeping up with the Joneses. Exactly. And in fact, I kind of imagine a situation in the book between the Johnsons and the Joneses at the airport. I have a follow-up on that, but go ahead. Continue on that.

One is going through clear, and the other one has not even got TSA pre-check. One has no room in the overhead, and the other's in first class, and on and on and on. We've always had these divisions. We've always had these tears in American life. But they've never been shoved in our faces the way they are now, in large part because of social media, which you made reference to. You are constantly being assaulted. The person who's raising a glass of champagne at a wedding in the tropics with the sun setting, right? That's what comes across your Instagram feed, not someone kind of teary at night because they've had a really long day

and they're alone in their apartment. So you have this completely fictive sense of how much better everyone else's life is and how short change you should feel. But we also, our economy, even apart from social media, we are in this age of like fine grain demarcation of privilege and class. I mean, you know, when you order an Uber and the choices you make, you know, based on how much you're willing to spend, when you sign up for a sub stack, what level are you going to be? When you sign up for a streaming service, there are all of these kinds of activities in American life now, all these facets of American life that are tiered in a fine-grained way that they never were before. I call them microclimates of privilege. And I think those microclimates of

privilege or microclimates of exclusivity foster a sense of envy and resentment that is part of the problem we're talking about today. California is trying to ban CLEAR, or not ban it, but try to make it so that CLEAR is only acceptable at airports where they have their own line, where they're paying for the security machinery, et cetera, so that there's no line cutting. Because California, the legislators in their great wisdom think that the line cutting goes against the principle of equity. And I don't know. I was like, I remember reading your book and I was like, Frank's kind of right about this. He's got a good point. It does breed resentment, all these different levels of the airport. And then I read this article and I was like, I don't know about that. I don't know

if I want the government deciding that I can't cut a line if I pay a little bit more. That feels like too much. How does that strike you? Like, what is the solution to this? Is there a government role or is this really a cultural rot that we need to deal with with each other? Yeah. And in the particular situations we're describing right now, I don't think a government role would be effective or welcome. I think it would kind of cause more problems than not. I think we need as individuals, as we kind of investigate our own values, and as we try to bring our actions in line with our own values, I think people who construct this life that is all top tier, that is all kind of taunt to the people around them, I think they might want to kind of re-examine whether that's the best way to go. What do they

really need to make their lives as smooth as maybe they need their lives to be? And what is just a matter of pure indulgence and flaunting? And if we all sort of monitored ourselves a little better, you know, and didn't try to kind of gain the upper hand and gain the front of the line in every damn situation in a way that whether you mean it to or not becomes a taunt, I think that's a kind of cultural change we should all talk about and work on. I don't think this is a place where a government role is going to be effective or welcome or constructive. Do you have any positive things to end us with?

Do you have any areas of hope? Green shoots? Maybe Donald Trump, the great aggrieved in chief, gets that hamburger from heaven and the pendulum starts to swing back or any things you're seeing that gives you hope? You and I are talking now several days after I think one of the most hopeful positive things I've seen, which is what the House of Representatives did on Saturday and what Mike Johnson did in order to usher them to that vote and to end up with that result. I don't think months ago, you and I, if we were talking on this podcast, I don't think we would have anything positive to say about Mike Johnson. And I doubt we would have said we had much faith or hope in him. People

can change. People can be educated. We talked about humility a second ago. What Mike Johnson did was humble. He not only changed directions, he not only made common cause with the adversaries, Democrats you're supposed to hate. He then said, listen, I educated myself on this. Turned out, I didn't know everything I thought I knew. Everyone else should educate themselves a little bit. That was from a man who was an election denialist, a man with whom I have bitter, bitter complaint, a man whom I think had no business being elected speaker because he did not respect the integrity of an American election. He nonetheless did something that I think is praiseworthy. I think he did something in good conscience. He did something that models important values to

the people around him. That is a sign of hope. And as I sit here today, I would hold that out to people as a sign of hope for them. I like that. I'm an optimist. I'm with you. There's a lot of times you have these conversations, you're like, boy, I don't know, things seem to be getting worse. But there is good reason for optimism. There's a lot of good happening. One final example I want to leave us with is that I was reading in your book. It tickled me for two reasons. You were telling a story about how you once showed up at the box office for the Harvard Civic Center at three in the morning in pitch darkness to get tickets for a Queen concert. I want to hear a little bit more about your outfit as you were

waiting in that line. But the other thing that it does, it makes me think is like, you know, the next time I'm annoyed by a ticketmaster fee, or the fact that my website is not refreshing as quickly as possible. You know, there are a lot of times these little annoyances, you're like, wait a minute, look at the progress that we've had. I know, I guess there's some joy in being and there's some nice memory and waiting at 3am. But it's nice that you don't have to do that every time, right? Every time you want to go see a show, you don't have to go get up at three in the morning and sit in line. And what I assume you're wearing me, I don't know, what do you think about that? Were you in some tights? What were you what were you wearing? I know I was that was that was not me. I have no idea what I was wearing. No, no glitter. No, I wasn't the glitter type. But I will tell you this. We were talking a moment ago about a sense of belonging.

When you're there at 3 a.m. with the other diehard Queen fans who have really sacrificed to get front row or second row seats, I thought you were going in a different direction. I'm teased mercilessly for something I admitted in the book in that anecdote, which is we got eighth row seats when the concert came along. At the end of it, when Queen was finishing their final encore, and everyone's clapping and raising their hands in the air, Freddie Mercury threw out his tambourine and like a horseshoe, it landed on my arm. And I brought it home. And in my suburban bedroom, atop the bookcase was Freddie Mercury's tambourine, his real tambourine. I somehow

lost that over the years and have no idea whatever happened to it. And, you know, you write a book about what you hope is all these serious things. People read it and they get in touch with me and say, I have one question. I'm like, what? How the hell did you lose Freddie Mercury's tambourine? So not the moral of the story I was looking for. I was trying to end with some uplifts. I wasn't going to mention that. That's right.

Some belonging. I'm going to have some belonging this weekend at Jazz Fest. People need to find that. Maybe a Queen concert is a good place for it. Frank Bruni, your insight and your wit is always valued here. Please come back to the Borg podcast. Folks should go get his book, The Age of Grievance. It will be out next Tuesday.

Pre-order it. You know, you want to get on the lists and all that. And Frank Bruni, hope to talk to you again soon. Thank you. I really appreciate it. All right. We'll be back tomorrow with another edition of the Borg podcast. See you all then. And Frank Bruni, hope to talk to you again soon. Thank you. I really appreciate it. All right. We'll be back tomorrow with another edition of the Bulwark Podcast.

See you all then. Peace. Don't let the sun go down on your grievance Respect love of the heart over lust of the flesh. And do yourself a favor. Become your own savior.

And don't let the sun go down on your grievance And when you wake up in the morning And you have a brand new feeling And you find yourself healing Don't let the sun go down on your grievance The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brough.