THE INJUSTICE COLLECTORS. A Name Game.
And You’re Up! But grudges could give you hemorrhoids.
It happened again. I just finished reading a book with which I shared a painful page-after-page love-hate relationship. It was written by my second favorite writer at the New York Times, opinion expert Frank Bruni. Bruni is: a journalist, twenty-five-plus year Times veteran; a White House correspondent; a former Rome bureau chief, if that’s not enough, onetime chief restaurant critic. If the truth is important here, my favorite Times writer is David Brooks. We might consider his book at some another time. While handing out compliments, for the record, my un-favorite writers at the New York Times, are turncoat Thomas Friedman — and the entire New York Times Editorial Board who can serve the country “by stepping down.”
Back to business, snap, I should have known I wouldn’t love this new non-fiction release when I saw the cover. At center, there is a red flame with a prominent “middle finger” etched on the back of a hand — a hard-to-miss middle finger. In April 2024, the Avid Reader/Simon & Schuster non-fiction was reviewed in the Times by Lionel Shriver (who he?). As it turns out, Lionel Shriver was born Margaret Ann, but changed her name to Lionel — (to me, turnoff enough. It's my call, I’m driving here) — had given the Bruni’s new book an unkind review.
I felt bad for him. Bruni: a brilliant, longtime editorial writer, opening gay, Duke University professor, who is now blind in one eye. Who needs a bad review from your own mother company? Immediately, I got a copy of Bruni’s The Age of Grievance. I planned to show Ms. What’s-her-face Lionel/Margaret Ann Shriver a thing or two. As Elaine Stritch once said to me, “Jim, if you want to make God laugh, tell him you have a plan.” Alas, lack-a-day, hi-ho, and hold the phone, friends, Romans, Countrymen, and fellow New York Times readers, I had no idea what I was in for: detailed kvetching on every one of its nearly 269 pages, not 288, as reported elsewhere. (We’ve hell-bent on keeping this accurate.)
One of Bruni’s colleagues wrote… “It can be a pleasure to read…”. Another, “A joy to read…”. One more. “His diagnoses of our fractured politics are clear and compelling. His prescriptions are designed to heal.” And then, “…smart and good.” “a lucid, powerful examination…”. “The name game has become the country’s most popular sport…” And my favorite, “A welcome call to grow up and cut out the whining.” – Kirkus Reviews.
I don’t think so. Though, perhaps, that’s what friend are for. I ask myself and Mr. Bruni (btw, he is approachable*), have we truthfully become a nation of (my phrase, not his) injustice collectors?
Although the real meat comes later, let’s begin with Madame/Sir Lionel Shriver’s April 30, 2024, New York Times review, called, “Why. Are Americans So Ticked Off…”. Woe is me.
The reviewer begins, Bruni castigates both parties about this “soul sickness.” “There’s plenty of culpability to go around…. Regarding every party, sex, race, sexual orientation or class…They feel cheated…disrespected… peeved… outright furious.’” She’s quick to include, Frank Bruni assumes the role of neutral arbiter, i.e., “referee.”
I have to admit, in many significant ways, this book changed me.
Before getting in too deep, I have to admit, in many significant ways, this book changed me.
All of the following paragraph appears to be true, but it is a choke-worthy mouthful, too much to bite into, then chew, and swallow. To me, hint: it seems a tad unbalanced. Yes, it’s out of context and I may be wrong. See what YOU think…
Bruni begins “…distorted (a.k.a. false) reports on Fox News about pallets of baby formula being rerouted to illegal immigrants; absurd accusation by the Senate candidate J. D. Vance that President Biden’s porous southern border was a deliberate plot to import fentanyl and thereby murder the Republican opposition; and Jan. 6. Although Trump is the premier exemplar of Peter Principle, [don’t ya’ love it!?] he has portrayed himself as the ultimate victim: He was grudge made flesh, grievance became president. … ‘The opening chapter deplores the rancor of Josh Hawley and Tucker Carlson, but pokes at the self-pity of Hollywood and Megan Markle only as an afterthought.’” And next...
Reviewer in dangerous territory here, true or not: “…while Jan. 6 appears throughout, a chapter on political violence conspicuously omits that more protracted festival of grievance: The Back Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd. The demonstrations persisted for months, and though the fast majority were peaceful, in more than 200 locations they a caused extensive property damage and led to injuries and deaths. Bruni’s selectivity displays a bizarre neglect of his natural martial.”
Can you say that? Is it politically, correct? Am I out of my league?
To move on… in his/her last paragraph of Victor /Victoria/Margaret/Lionel review she speculates, Bruni’s “audience will be those who already agreed with him.” (I say, you can write that about almost everything that’s out there in print!) And, finally, she/he wraps with, “the weakest, least satisfying section prescribes the cure: humility.”
Ms. Shriver, I’m glad I don’t know you.
AND NOW FOR SOME MEAT, POTATOES …
With tiny tad of real butter, in Frank Bruni’s own words.
Page 85: “Historically speaking and by the numbers alone, we’re living in an epoch of less poverty, less hunger, less abject want than our forebears did. There are fewer wars and fewer mass casualties, the violence and despair in places as diverse as Ukraine, Haiti, Israel, and Gaza notwithstanding. … the question of whether our liberation from direr, more epic tribulations has given birth to a pettiness and selfishness that pollute our social interactions and our politics in a manner as ultimately destructive as grander cataclysms and catastrophes are.”
Hang in. There’s one even better done the road.
Page 9: “Carlson prescribed testicle tanning as a testosterone boost—as one small, genital step in the manly direction. The documentary mingled grievance with gonads and gobbledygook.”
Page 20: “I [Bruni] had to adjust to seeing clearly with my left eye alone. My brain had to train itself to edit out the pointless efforts of my right eye, which warped and smudged what I saw. I was now a slower reader, a more typo-prone writer. And I had a sword dangling above me. Doctors said there was about a 20 percent chance that the optic nerve behind my left eye would frazzle in a similar fashion, also without warning I might go blind.”
Page 53: “…Did Trump’s triumph in 2016—when he got many million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton but bested her in that dubiously democratic area called the Electoral College—reflected the flowering of florid racism? A column by Thomas Edsall in the Times many years later, in early 2023, promised to reveal ‘The Unsettling Truth About Trump’s First Great Victory,’ meaning over Clinton … the opening paragraphs summarized the findings of three well-regarded books by serious academics that charted a connection between many white voters’ fixation on their status in a changing America and support for Trump. So that, then, was the truth? Trump rode to victory on Americans’ racism?”
Trump managed to pull support from racists, but he was able to pull in much more support from economically disadvantaged whites.
Page 53 (continued): “‘The bulk of support for Trump came from more moderate whites,’ Sean Westwood, apolitical scientist at Dartmouth College, explained to Thomas Edsall, analyzing the competing books and the accumulated data and scholarship. ‘Trump managed to pull support from racists, but he was able to pull in much more support from economically disadvantaged whites,’” Frank Bruni concluded from the quotes from Edsall “unsettling truth” and Hopkins hypothesis, that “the truth was complicated.” We suspected as much.
Page 63: “James Kimmel Jr., a lecturer in psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine and the founder of co-director of the Yale Collaborative for Motive Control Studies, sees it as a kind of drug. ‘I’ve been researching the way grievances affect the brain,’ he wrote in Politico in 2020, “and it turns out that your brain on grievance looks a lot like your brain on drugs. In fact, brain imaging studies show that harboring a grievance (a perceived wrong or injustice, real or imagined) activates the same neural reward circuitry as narcotics.’”
Page 71: “…some priceless remarks J. D. Vance made when he did a podcast interview with the head of a conservative men’s rights group. ‘I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left and turn them against the left,’ Vance said on the podcast. ‘We need like a de-Baathification program, a de-woke-ification program.” Vance also flashed forward to possible Trump victory in 2024. “I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administration state, replace them with our people,’ he said. If that sounded extreme, well, so was the contempt for and subjugation of real Middle American folks like him.” NOTE: J. D. Vance is a US Senator until 2027. Is it possible, amateur therapist here, he wants to distance himself as far away from his background as possible? He was adopted by his stepfather and got a new name, from Bowman to Vance. If you’re interested, check Wikipedia or the like. It’s all researchable. What’s more, at this typing, we ask, will he be the vice president nominee?
Page 76: “China’s economy still lags behind ours. Yet, according to Gallup, Americans have clung to the opposite belief—with an interesting exception. In 2020, when China was perceived and pilloried as the cradle of the coronavirus pandemic, 50 percent of Americans saw our economy as the mightier of the two nations,’ versus 39 percent who thought China’s was, a margin of eleven percentage points. That rediscovered swagger was short-lived. In 2021, 50 percent gave the crown back to China, while only 37 percent chose the United States… A fundamental misconception of global affairs by Americans isn’t surprising.”
To appropriate a phrase, I (Jim Fragale) lifted — “Attention Must Be Paid” — from Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Here, Attention Must Be Paid.”
Page: 106: “Swedish physician and statistician [author] Hans Rosling’s, Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong about the World — and Why Things Are Better Than You Think. NOTE: “Bill Gates offered a copy of [Rosling’s] this book to any college graduate who requested one.” PLUS. “Those strikes also informed a frequently cited speech that Obama delivered in Hanover, Germany, in April 2016.” Here are Obama’s words.
“‘We are fortunate to be living in the most peaceful, most prosperous, most progressive era in human history. That may surprise young people who are watching TV or looking at your phones and it seems like only bad news comes through every day. But consider that it’s been decades since the last war between major powers. More people live in democracies. We’re wealthier and healthier and better education, with a global economy that has lifted up more than a billion people from extreme poverty and created new middle classes from the Americas to Africa to Asia.’” He [Obama] went on to mention the remarkable eradication of once-devasting diseases. Then, as a sort of summery, he said, “’If you had to choose a moment in time to be born, any time inhuman history, and you didn’t know ahead of time what nationality you were or what gender or what your economic statues might be, you’d choose today.’”
Page 115: From Psychologist’s Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell’s book, The Narcissism Epidemic, “…we live in a time of extraordinary selfishness and entitlement, marked by ‘the odd perpetual adolescent of many American adults.’” The Reasons: 1) the internet, including social media, which has given us a means to withdraws from real, physical engagement with others—the kind that forces us to consider them as much as we do ourselves—and to lavish attention on our own personas, which are now manipulable, marketable, and measurable with a whole new set of tools…” 2) runaway narcissism is a parenting style over recent decades that focuses on affirmation—be stinting with punishment, generous with praise—and an analogous educational approach that emphasizes validation, protect, comfort.”
Page 116: Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, from their book The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. “… college campuses where lists of ‘microaggressions’ keep expanding, “safe spaces” …Three Great Untruths. 1) The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker. 2). The untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings. 3) The Untruth of us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people…When you give people the message that their feelings are paramount, that they should be protected not only from harm but also from disappointment, and that the world is a morally simple place, how could they NOT react to unfulfilled desires and unpleasant developments with a sense of grievance!”
Page 121: In a conversation between Frank Bruni and, “celebrated professor of sociology at Yale,” Nicolas Christakis, the educator said this, “People have been led to believe that they are owed something and it’s very difficult to accept that they might not be. Maybe it’s an aftershock of the American century, the prosperity, the safety--we take things for granted. We’re almost a victim of our success…They were not getting what they felt they were owed and had been promised.”
Page 123: SCREECHERS RE-VISITED: Frank Bruni: “Show me a group of people claiming a degree of offense disproportionate to its supposed justification, demanding a remedy that’s similarly out of whack and communication all of that histrionically, and I’ll likely show you a group of people who have been whipped into their frenzy at least in part by what they see on social media—because what they see validates their compliant and models the most impassioned expression of it. That applies not only to the screechers on college campuses. It applies to the screechers on Fox News. To the screechers in state legislatures. To the screechers storming the Capital on January 6, 2021. To screechers the world over.” Is this not a tad exhausting, or what?
Page 141: Paraphrasing Frank Bruni, since 2016 the news has been coming in depressing: The Pandemic. Racism. Climate change. Inflation.... Things are depressing. New data from Reuters Institute confirms that the United States has one of the highest news avoidance rates in the world. About 4 out of 10 Americans sometimes or often avoid contact with the news. Therapists are now treating patients for what they call ‘headline stress disorder.’ Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living’s author Krista Tippett,” examined the ceaseless blasts of joyless updates coming at us in more ways through more devise than ever before, and concluded, ‘I don’t actually think we are equipped, even physiologically or mentally, to be delivered catastrophic and confusing news and pictures, 24/7. We are analog creatures in a digital world.’” (Loved that!)
Page 153: “The United States has a substantial foreign-born population—it’s nearing 15 percent of all Americans, and that’s an all-time high…[after US Census. We learned] more than 60 percent of the United States was still non-Hispanic white…we Americans exist not as one big tribe with shared interests but as dozens of little tribes with separate—and, worse yet, competing interests.”
Page 188: [Appalling] From journalist McKay Coppins’ book, Romney: A Reckoning, “following the January 6, 2021, Capital riot, Romney, for his family, began spending five thousand dollars a day for private security. Romney [had] voted to convict Trump after both of his impeachments by the House, and he shared a whole new fear he sometimes felt at public evenings. ‘As a former presidential candidate, Romney was well acquainted with heckling. Scruffy Occupy Wall Streeters had shouted down his stump speeches; gay-rights activists had ‘glitter bombed’ him at rallies… these were Utah Republicans—they were supposed to be his people. Model citizens, well-behave Mormons, respectable patriots and pillars of the community with kids and church callings and responsibilities at work. Many of them had probably been among his most enthusiastic supporters in 2012. Now they were acting like wild children. And if he was being honest with himself, there were moments up on that sage when he was afraid of them. A fellow Republican senator of Romneys,’ a member of the party’s leadership in the chamber said the has leaning toward a vote to convict Trump…and was told: ‘You can’t do that…Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children.’ The senator eventually decided they were right. Party loyalty and political self-preservation weren’t all that kept Republican lawmakers solidly behind Trump… they feared physical harm if they strayed.’” [Unconscionable! I shake my head in disbelief.]
Page 216: “It’s in the details of our lives outside of politics that we become whole and comprehensible and valuable to others…I think we yearn, consciously and not, to find points of connection with the people around us, and I think we feel an incomparable sense of peace and safety when we’ve discovered those. …We are, to a remarkable extent, evolved to create strong bonds with our immediate neighbors. That’s the sunny side of tribalism—and there IS a sunny side of tribalism, if it’s moderated, if it exists in balance with an awareness of its perils. Here’s the challenge: Most of the roughly 330 million Americans (or, if you live in a similarly roiled Western democracy, the 67 million Brits or 83 million Germans or 215 Brazilians) aren’t immediate neighbors. And they don’t prattle on about their dogs, meals, and medical procedures in a venue as prominent as the New York Times [as Frank Bruni himself does]. So, we must find other venues and other methods to collapse the distance between us and them. We must integrate those methods into the structures and systems of our societies. And we must weaken the forces that get in their—and our—ways.
Page 247: ANTIDOTE(S).
“The January 6 insurrectionists were delusional, frenzied, savage. Above all, they were unhumble. They decided that they held the truth, no matter all the evidence to the contrary. They couldn’t accept that their preference for one presidential candidate over another could possibly put them in the minority—or perhaps a few of them just reasoned that if it did, then everybody else was too misguided to matter. They elevated how they viewed the world and what they wanted over tradition, institutional stability, law order…
“Jane Campton’s odd invocation of the Williams sisters to the Yale student’s viral meltdown, from Ron DeSantis’s fixation on mortifying his adversaries to Josh Hawley’s conviction that liberalism is at odds with virility. A healthy measure of humility would have pointed all those people in a different, better direction…
“…people who attend bridge-building exercises, whether in the halls of Congress or the hills of Appalachia, are humbly making an extra effort to understand strangers with whom they don’t usually met and humbly accepting their civic repair is worth a personal investment of time and energy. They’re the antonyms of the insurrectionists…
“…any one of us might be wrong, and we must therefore keep ourselves open to contradictory views and evidence…
“Intellectual humility allows us to revisit our assumptions, and the necessity of that is proven by how often we’ve been wrong or wrong-headed…
“Trump was ‘a braggart beyond his predecessors in the Oval office, and that says something sad and scary about the country that elected him and the kind of leader he’s likely to be. With Trump we enter a new age of arrogance. He’s the cock crowing at its dawn’…
“With any luck, he’ll soon warble meekly at its dusk. But he’ll have done his damage regardless, by sending the message to Americans that triumph is an individual act, that winning redeems whatever ruthlessness and cheating it requited, and that strength is figuring out how to bend the world to your advantage and not being troubled by anything so prissy as rules and rectitude…
“Charlie Baker, the former Massachusetts governor, durably popular as a moderate Republican in a Democratic state … he repeatedly stressed the importance of humility in an effective leader. He was fond of quoting Philippians 2:3… as a lodestar for his administration: ‘Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather in humility value others above yourself.’ In his 2023 book, (co-authored with his chief of staff, Steve Kadish, a Democrat) titled Results, Charlie Baker wrote, ‘Snap judgements—about people or ideas—are fueled by arrogance and conceit. They create blind spots and missed opportunities. Good ideas and interesting ways to accomplish goals in public life exist all over the place if you have the will, the curiosity, and the humility to find them.’”
We’re too often held hostage by our grudges, too frequently fixated on what in our lives isn’t exactly as we’d like it to be.
Human rights advocate, Loretta Ross, was troubled by the frequent targeting and pillorying of people on social media, and urged the practice of calling in rather than calling out those who’ve upset… ‘Call-outs make people feel fearful of being targeted,’ she wrote in a New York Times essay. ‘People avoid meaningful conversations when hyper-vigilant perfectionists point out apparent mistakes feeding the cannibalistic maw of the cancel culture.’ Instead, she advised, engage them. If you believe they need enlightenment, try the route, ‘without the self-indulgence of drama,’ she wrote.” Bruni noted: Ross was preaching humility.
“We’re too often held hostage by our grudges, too frequently fixated on what in our lives isn’t exactly as we’d like it to be. There’s indeed something there. And an amalgam of kindness, openness, and silliness might be effective solvent for grievances. We could try a dab of that…
“Or we could unhumbly cling to the conviction that we’re singularly unappreciated and cruelly situated against hostile forces in a disintegrating world that compels us to wrest what we can while we can, before it disintegrates even further. That’s the road we’ve been on for a perilous while now. It’s not too late to turn around.” The end of Antidote(s).
I was already having trouble keeping up…when on Saturday, July 13, 2024, our very own Frank Bruni put up another Opinion piece for The New York Times on Page A21 titled “This Is How You Know Trump Smells Victory,” in which he opined, loosely, that Donald Trump had recently put on some “sheep’s clothing;” had “softened;” had ”toned down” his rhetoric as well as his stances on abortion, homophobia, and suburban women. Mr. Bruni suggested, “It’s a lie.” … (We’ll see.)
And then, a little after 6 p.m., that same day, ten minutes his speech, as many as eight shots rang out at a Trump rally in Butler, PA. farm, just outside Pittsburgh. When the smoke cleared, we learned, a sniper with an AR-Stye Rifle, on a rooftop 148 yards away, (football length) had his head blown off by the Secret Service and one spectator/rally attendee were dead. In what was later called a possible assassination attempt by a local (Bethel Park) 20-year-old registered Republican, Thomas Matthew Crooks, Donald Trump’s right ear was grazed. As we view the Secret Service men shield Mr. Trump for his protection, a great deal of blood is visible on his face. (One report said he is shores had fallen off. (Can’t confirm that.) A layman’s question, I admit perhaps naive, why was a 20-year-old punk on that roof, 148 yards away from the ex-president, instead of a Secret Service or Security Expert — someone else?
Surprising even myself, I immediately prayed for Donald Trump.
In closing, I’d like to share with you, the Hemorrhoid Donut Cushions run under $50.00 — wherever Hemorrhoid Cushions are sold.
Frank Bruni has been a prominent journalist for more than three decades, including more than twenty-five years at The New York Times, in roles as diverse as op-ed columnist, White House correspondent, Rome bureau chief, and chief restaurant critic. He is the author of four New York Times bestsellers. In July 2021, he became a full professor at Duke University, teaching in the school of public policy. He currently writes his popular weekly newsletter for the Times and produces additional essays as one of the newspaper’s Contributing Opinion Writers.*Contact him on X: @FrankBruni; Facebook: @FrankBruniNYT; Instagram/Threads: @FrankABruni64 or his website Frank.Bruni.com.
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Wonderful review, Jim!