STOP BEING STUPID ABOUT BEING SMART.

David Brooks appears to be confusing a symptom, in the form of one Donald Trump, with the sickness, which is a failure of the allegedly Smart People.  Consider the way he starts his argument.

Trump tells powerful stories that ring true to tens of millions of Americans.

The main one is that America is being ruined by corrupt coastal elites. According to this narrative, there is an interlocking network of highly educated Americans who make up what the Trumpians have come to call the Regime: Washington power players, liberal media, big foundations, elite universities, woke corporations. These people are corrupt, condescending and immoral and are looking out only for themselves. They are out to get Trump because Trump is the person who stands up to them. They are not only out to get Trump; they are out to get you.

This narrative has a core of truth to it. Highly educated metropolitan elites have become something of a self-enclosed Brahmin class. But the Trumpian propaganda turns what is an unfortunate social chasm into venomous conspiracy theory. It simply assumes, against a lot of evidence, that the leading institutions of society are inherently corrupt, malevolent and partisan and are acting in bad faith.

It simply assumes that the proof of people’s virtue is that they’re getting attacked by the Regime.

That "core of truth" is approaching, to mix metaphors, critical mass.  The condescension comes bundled with unliveable cities, experiments against reality in the classroom and in social interaction, and in clumsy attempts at nuance that fail to persuade anyone who has shopped for peanut butter or baby formula, or filled the gas tank.  As Mike Konrad puts it, "You can only push people so far and then comes Thermidor."

Mr Brooks, however, is not interested in granting that the "leading institutions of society" might have gotten a few things wrong, and making a case for putting things right.

America absolutely needs to punish those who commit crimes. On the other hand, America absolutely needs to make sure that Trump does not get another term as president. What do we do if the former makes the latter more likely? I have no clue how to get out of this potential conflict between our legal and political realities.

We’re living in a crisis of legitimacy, during which distrust of established power is so virulent that actions by elite actors tend to backfire, no matter how well founded they are.

Perhaps that crisis of legitimacy is one the establishment institutions brought on themselves. Roger "Tenured Radicals" Kimball nails it.

Let’s look around at American institutions, the media, say, or the educational establishment, or Congress, or big business, or the churches, the entertainment industry, or the profession of law. I’d say that “corrupt,” “malevolent,” “partisan,” and “acting in bad faith” sums them up pretty well.

He continues, dear reader, with substantive suggestions.

It’s things like pursuing policies that make America energy-independent, enforcing immigration laws so successfully that illegal immigration is slowed to a trickle. It’s pursuing economic policies—slashing taxes, sharply reducing regulations that are merely burdensome—that lead to the lowest unemployment rates in decades or in history for minority workers, who also saw real wages rise at their quickest rate ever. It’s defanging “corrupt,” “malevolent,” “partisan” diktats like Title IX rules in colleges and “woke” ideology in the military. It’s insisting that our NATO allies act like allies and pay their agreed-upon fees to support the organization.

There might be a few items on that list that Mr Brooks, and the "bourgeois bohemians" he claims to understand, could support. But where is the call for some sort of agreement among the Credentialed Elite to work toward some of those things?  He'd rather fret.  "It feels as though we’re walking toward some sort of storm and there’s no honorable way to alter our course."  The honorable course of action is one that could head off Thermidor or Napoleon, and Mr Brooks and Mr Kimball might both have useful contributions to make.

For instance, what, specifically, disqualifies Donald Trump from holding the presidency?  His lack of elective experience?  His stump manner?  His shambolic executive style?  Suppose someone emerged as an aspirant to the presidency who offered precisely, or approximately, the same policy bundle, but with some experience in elective office, and thus more respect for the conventions of campaigning, and better impulse control in meeting with staff and dickering with Congress?  Would Mr Brooks find the policy bundle acceptable if presented by a more conventional messenger?

Continuing: if the full Trumpian policy bundle is not to Mr Brooks's liking, or the partial bundle Mr Kimball presents has dubious elements, are there still elements he might support, and deploy his platform and his social network to see those elements made law or codified by rule?  That's what I used to understand as "compromise" and you take the points when you can.  The conventional wisdom has a lot to apologize for, and a conventional establishment that wants to purge anything that reeks of Trumpism, whether stylistically or substantively, is going to come to grief.

In the absence of such course corrections, those early stirrings of Thermidor might already be present, and they could strengthen.  "Insurgencies tend to be more decentralized and are often fought by multiple, sometimes competing, sometimes coordinating groups. These extremists historically target infrastructure and civilians, using domestic terror and guerrilla warfare, [California - San Diego political scientist Barbara] Walter said."  Take your pick: the futile and stupid gesture at the Federal Capitol, the longer but less destructive occupation of Wisconsin's Capitol; a summer of fiery but mostly peaceful protests.

Walter delivers a grave message that we ignore at our peril. So much remains in flux. She is careful to say that a twenty-first-century American civil war would bear no resemblance to the consuming and symmetrical conflict that was played out on the battlefields of the eighteen-sixties. Instead she foresees, if the worst comes about, an era of scattered yet persistent acts of violence: bombings, political assassinations, destabilizing acts of asymmetric warfare carried out by extremist groups that have coalesced via social media. These are relatively small, loosely aligned collections of self-aggrandizing warriors who sometimes call themselves “accelerationists.” They have convinced themselves that the only way to hasten the toppling of an irredeemable, non-white, socialist republic is through violence and other extra-political means.

Such phenomena might be harder to classify as part of a pattern, as there has been background noise of "accelerationists" almost as long as there has been an American Republic, and "hastening the toppling" is a strategy not limited to the right-populist part of the populace.

In addition, the characterization of Trumpian Republicans as the last refuge of white identity politics, which seems to be a common theme in recent scholarly work on insurgency, anocracy, and related scary topics, might itself be overtaken by events.  It's likely true that white voters have picked up some of the tics of identity politics, perhaps after being ordered into diversity training where the barrows and gilts in charge require each participant to open each statement with "speaking as a ..."  It's also possible that the refugees from places that suck who have come to the United States might not be natural Democrat voters, particularly not for squad-adjacent Democrats, and that the residents of communities with soft-on-crime prosecutors might be receptive to a tougher on crime message.

It's on establishmentarian pundits, such as Mr Brooks or Mr Kimball, as well as on academicians with a public intellectual role, such as Professor Walter, to contemplate those honorable ways to alter course.