NYT OPINION: America is Falling Apart at the Seams
by David Brooks

Louisa Gallas | Michigan
Dear Mr. Brooks, I share your confusion, distress, sadness at how disturbed America is. Always this current of malaise and toxic interactions but now at a critical mass. Or so it feels. Your mood is poignant and tender. We need more of that feeling tone in the media. There are so many crises coming together and the gothic shadow of climate change with its end times zeitgeist encompassing them all. What the media pushes too often is a traumatic focus, like it has PTSD and can only emphasize polarization and snarky discussions and worst case scenarios and mean-spirited take-downs. Pundits are so publically cynical on the big stations, so addicted to the negative. Why, yesterday I saw David Axelrod on CNN say Biden’s soulful call for people to be on the right side of history was “unbridled rhetoric”. Where’s the heart? Also there is a large movement within America’s cultural thinkers, Angel Kyoto Williams, for one of many, that only can be heard on podcasts, that don’t make it into the larger discussion. Many of these forums are by people of color who have lived with acute awareness of America’s spiritual problems in a far deeper way than most of us white folk and have had to reach deep for hope, activism under pressure. You might highlight those thinkers, bring them more into the public forum, a spiritual quest the media could consider news. In any event, thanks for showing some deep weary caring concern from your powerful venue as a widely read journalist.
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ARTICLE: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/opinion/america-falling-apart.html