Published

12 months ago

March 5, 2025

Alice Rush

Here’s what commentator David Brooks said after the White House’s mistreatment of the Ukrainian president on Friday:

I was nauseated, just nauseated. All my life, I have had a certain idea of about America, that we’re a flawed country, but we’re fundamentally a force for good in the world, that we defeated the Soviet Union, we defeated fascism, we did the Marshall Plan, we did PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) to help people living in Africa. And we make mistakes, Iraq, Vietnam, but they’re usually mistakes out of stupidity, naivete and arrogance.

They’re not because we’re ill-intentioned. What I have seen over the last six weeks is the United States behaving vilely, vilely to our friends in Canada and Mexico, vilely to our friends in Europe. And today was the bottom of the barrel, vilely to a man who is defending Western values, at great personal risk to him and his countrymen.

Donald Trump believes in one thing. He believes that might makes right. And, in that, he agrees with Vladimir Putin that they are birds of a feather. And he and Vladimir Putin together are trying to create a world that’s safe for gangsters, where ruthless people can thrive. And we saw the product of that effort today in the Oval Office.

And I have — I first started thinking, is it — am I feeling grief? Am I feeling shock, like I’m in a hallucination? But I just think shame, moral shame. It’s a moral injury to see the country you love behave in this way.

—

Since my boyhood 60 years ago, I’ve heard people argue back and forth whether or not the United States truly is a force for good in the world, or if it looks out for its own interests, and good things sometimes accidentally derive from that. In any case, let’s agree that there is (or was) something intrinsically good about our nation and the way it had traditionally functioned in the world.

At this point, of course, it’s impossible to argue against David Brooks’ position, that any American beneficence has gone the way of chrome hubcaps and bell-bottoms, replaced the president’s sociopathic need become just one more dictator on this sad planet.

David Brooks “Nauseated” on America’s Moral Implosion

Related Topics:commentator David Brooks White House

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