If Not Trump, What?; New York Times, 4/29/16

David Brooks, New York Times; If Not Trump, What? :

"Donald Trump now looks set to be the Republican presidential nominee. So for those of us appalled by this prospect — what are we supposed to do?

Well, not what the leaders of the Republican Party are doing. They’re going down meekly and hoping for a quiet convention. They seem blithely unaware that this is a Joe McCarthy moment. People will be judged by where they stood at this time. Those who walked with Trump will be tainted forever after for the degradation of standards and the general election slaughter.

The better course for all of us — Republican, Democrat and independent — is to step back and take the long view, and to begin building for that. This election — not only the Trump phenomenon but the rise of Bernie Sanders, also — has reminded us how much pain there is in this country...

I don’t know what the new national story will be, but maybe it will be less individualistic and more redemptive...

We’ll also need to rebuild the sense that we’re all in this together. The author R. R. Reno has argued that what we’re really facing these days is a “crisis of solidarity.”...

Then at the community level we can listen to those already helping...

Over the course of American history, national projects like the railroad legislation, the W.P.A. and the NASA project have bound this diverse nation."