“If something cannot go on forever, it will stop”. Herb Stein
As a corollary to the above statement, Herb Stein often observed: “Economists are very good at saying that something cannot go on forever, but not so good at saying when it will stop.”
David Brooks has penned a couple of great essays lately: Why Do So Many People Think Trump Is Good, (The Atlantic, July 8, 2025) and I’m Normally A Mild Guy. Here’s What Pushed Me Over The Edge, (New York Times, May 29, 2025). I don’t always agree with Brooks, but these two essays are right on the money. Start with this short observation:
“Even today, I’ve found I have no trouble simultaneously opposing Trump policies and maintaining friendship and love for friends and family who are Trump supporters. In my experience, a vast majority of people who support Trump do so for legitimate or at least defensible reasons.”
I say sympathize because I find myself in a similar position. I have both friends and family I disagree with, sometimes vociferously; Brooks’s ability to hold two opposing ideas in his head at the same time (oppose policies, yet understand why some support him) is surely in Brooks’s case, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, a test of a first rate intelligence and not an example of the cognitive dissonance that it might be for someone less thoughtful. In a civil society, in a democracy, we must accept that differing opinions are something to be discussed, not to go to war over. I am reminded of another great thinker whom I often disagreed with:
“If you can’t disagree ardently with your colleagues about some issues of law and yet personally still be friends, get another job, for Pete’s sake,” Scalia once said of his friendships with colleagues. Former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia quoted in: 9 Political Friendships Proved Party Lines Don’t Have To Divide Americans, Grace Panetta
Sadly, we have lost the ability to disagree and still be friends in America today directly as a result of a President who does his best to divide us by embodying and encouraging our baser instincts. In the words of David Brooks:
“There’s a question that’s been bugging me for nearly a decade. How is it that half of America looks at Donald Trump and doesn’t find him morally repellent? He lies, cheats, steals, betrays, and behaves cruelly and corruptly, and more than 70 million Americans find him, at the very least, morally acceptable. Some even see him as heroic, admirable, and wonderful. What has brought us to this state of moral numbness?”
In his Atlantic article Brooks offers this cure for the scourge of Trumpism:
“Recovering from the moral scourge of Trumpism means restoring the vocabulary that people can use to talk coherently about their moral lives, and distinguish a person with character from a person without it. We don’t need to entirely reject the Enlightenment project, but we probably need to recalibrate the culture so that people are more willing to sacrifice some freedom of autonomy for the sake of the larger community. We need to offer the coming generations an education in morals as rigorous as their technical and career education. As the ancients understood, this involves the formation of the heart and the will as much as the formation of the rational mind.”
Amen to that. The Brooks cure is one important reason that a well-grounded wide ranging education is as important today as it’s always been. I recall a book by the esteemed Legg Mason portfolio manager Robert Hagstrom with the title: Investing: The Last Liberal Art. In the book, Hagstrom argues that it is impossible to make good investment decisions based on finance theory alone. He explores fundamental investing concepts by looking at fields outside of economics, such as physics, biology, philosophy, and literature. Brooks would add religion and moral philosophy or ethics to the list. We could certainly use a refresher course in all these subjects today.
In the New York Times article, Brooks argues “there are at least two kinds of morality. There is a kind of morality based on universal moral ideals, and then there is tribal morality.” He goes on to say that the Christian Bible is based on universal moral ideals such as “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and The Sermon on the Mount. For a political party that claims to espouse Biblical values, Republicans have veered far away from those values under the MAGA banner. Brooks says it clearly: “Trump and Vance aren’t just promoting policies; they’re trying to degrade America’s moral character to a level more closely resembling their own.“
Brooks ends his article by affirming his usual humility: “Moral contempt is an unattractive emotion, which can slide into arrogance and pride, which I will try to struggle against. In the meantime, it provoked this column from a mild-mannered guy on a beautiful spring day.” True, and it is to some extent a perceived arrogant and prideful moral contempt that has separated Americans today. Let us not go there. Let us try instead to find a way back to the city on the hill that America has never quite been but has at least strived for.
Given Herb Stein’s comment that economists are not very good at predicting when something will stop, I will not make any prediction. However, I will cite two economists that come to mind.
“The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent,” J.M. Keynes (maybe).
“In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.” Rudiger Dornbusch
With a Republican controlled Congress that is unwilling to impose any checks and balances, a Supreme Court with a conservative majority that seems willing to allow this President to do almost anything he wants, and with private sector leaders in business, education and the media cowered by a man they know in their hearts and heads is putting democracy to its highest stress test in our history, it does seem that we may have to wait a long time before we see the pendulum of our democracy swing back toward sanity. It isn’t a happy prospect, but it is what it is. Stay tuned.