Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric and this is next question.
Next question.
Okay, you guys, I have a confession to make. I have a real thing for Frank Brunie. He's gay, though, so don't worry. He has been a prominent journalist for over three decades, twenty five of those at the New York Times. It was such a huge treat to sit down with him at the Temple Emmanuel Striker Center earlier this month to talk about his new book. It's called The Age of Grievance. Gosh, that title really rings true
right now. Don't you think it seems like whatever we're talking about politics, or the latest movie release or what Kim Kardashian was wearing to the met Ball, somebody somewhere is going to be upset about it and have their knickers in a twist. I think it's important to point out that historically, grievance has actually fueled some really important social movements, like the Revolutionary War and the Civil rights movement.
That's when grievance actually has led to something positive. But today, Frank argues, this constant bitching is having a very corrosive effect not only on public discourse, but who we are as a country. Here's our conversation. And by the way, I was told the audience noticed we had real chemistry. Hashtag just saying hi everyone, good evening. We've got a nice crowd this evening. Thank you all so much for coming.
I am thrilled to be able to be in conversation with Frank BRUNEI don't tell anyone, but I have a big crush on Frank. There are a lot of Frank Brune groupies among my friends. And I couldn't be more excited to talk about your new book called The Age of Grievance, Frank, and it explores so many of the ideas I have been thinking about as I consume media and am still a part of media. And I think you've really captured the complicated moment we're in in our culture.
You write the American soundtrack has become a cacophony of competing complaints. Nice alliteration, by the way, and.
I go, I go a little bit of literation crazy. I'm just warning you, yeah, no, yeah, my literation is triggering. Don't read the book.
I think this might qualify for the love of sentences in your newsletter, Frank. If anyone gets Frank's newsletter. That's one of my favorite parts where people write in and say when something's been particularly well written. And I love reading those in addition to all your insights, But did you have a tipping point? Did a light bulb go out, Frank when you thought I am going to write about this current moment and the fact that we do have a cacophony of competing complaints.
You say that it's like a tongue twister in your picked at it. First of all, thank you very much for I'm delighted to be here with you, and I want to thank everyone at Temple Emmanuel. This community is extraordinary, and this is like the fourth or fifth book I think I've launched or talked about here. So thank you for always being so welcoming. It means the world to me.
Give yourselves a round of applause.
I think it was a more gradual thing, and I have to give some credit. I think my editor, Ben Lunan is in the audience, and the book was actually his idea. He had been thinking about this himself. He'd been reading things I'd written, and he was sort of I think he could speak for himself, but he was tying things together and saying, hey, you know, as I read you, as I think about stuff, you know, don't you think we're living in an age of grievance? And
what would you think about a book on that? And I said, well, let's make sure we're on the same page, and so I wrote down some thoughts than we were. I've just been noticing for a while I think trump selection was a reflection of this, and then it became an accelerant of this that our public debate to me seemed to be changing and being degraded in a way that was new and disturbing in the context of my
adult lifetime. You know, we've always had polarization, we've always had partisanship, but I feel that the temperature of our discussions, the combativeness of them, the lack of productivity to them, is it a kind of nator And I really wanted to spend some time thinking and writing about why that
may have come to be, what it's costing us. I think the parts of the book that mean the most to me are the reflections on what we're losing out, on what we're doing to ourselves by constantly being in these postures of agrievement, and then how we might pivot beyond it.
Did you have any trepidation at all tackling this issue, because it seems no matter what you say, things are even misconstrued, misrepresented, weaponized. I've had that happen to me personally, and I was curious if that was a little frightening for you, right to wade into these waters.
I'm frightened as I sit here tonight.
Well, isn't that a product and what you're talking?
Yeah, I'm frightened every time I file a newsletter, you know, I just kind of put the finishing touches on tomorrow's newsletter today, and I'm frightened when I hit sand I'm frightened every time I'm at the keyboard. I'm frightened when I'm speaking in a classroom full of students, even though I've had a terrific experience at Duke University. And we can talk more about that, because I do think a lot of the coverage of campuses right now dabbles too
much in broad generalization and caricature. But yeah, it's a really scary time. And to go back to students, I mean, I've had students tell me and it's so upsetting given what an education is supposed to be about in the
phase of life. Thren, I've had them tell me like, it takes a while in a given class and a given semester to feel comfortable saying what's on their mind because they're so worried that they'll fumble through their words, they'll say something they didn't mean to say, somebody will take it the wrong way, and the next thing they know, I mean to use the vernacular, they're canceled, right right. That's a real thing. It's a real fear. And sure I worry about it too, but we have to just
we have to have these discussions. I will do my fumbling best to say what I mean. Some people will disagree with me, some people will agree with me, and you know, that's just the nature of the game.
It seems to me that we're not only you know, participating in grievance culture and we'll talk about that more in a moment, but also in binary thinking. To me, this idea of dialectical thinking, yes, and has become increasingly rare in any kind of discourse, looking at nuanced looking at complicated topics, kind of seeing different sides of the issue. How do you associate that with grievance.
Frank, Well, I think we're living in an era where and we'll go back to students for a second, because I think they're emblematic in this sense where people feel anytime something happens, they have to take aside, they have to stake their position, and then they have to cling to it and defend it. And then, because of the nature of the internet right now, because of social media, as soon as you have chosen your side, taken your position, you begin to filter all the information coming to you
in a way that validates the decision you've made. And it's the quintessence of closed mindedness, right, It's the antithesis of genuine inquiry, and it means that nobody ever gets to say some really important phrases. It's complicated. Most things are complicated. I'm just not sure. I'm still figuring this out. Those I think are really virtuous things to say, but we're living in an age when those are seen as signs of moral and intellectual weakness. Right.
In fact, I think people are increasingly penalized for not taking a position on these issues. When you think about grievance, how would you describe grievance?
Well, I mean the way I think about it, in the way I describe it, And well, I mean a grievance obviously is a complaint. It is it is, Well, it's a complaint, right, I mean grievance, And the word didn't used to have such negative connotations. If you go back,
it's in the First Amendment the word grievance is. But if you think about when you see the word grievance these days, and if you kind of did your own little survey on Google when you went home tonight, you would find almost always grievance is used in a negative, negative context, with negative connotations. And that's because there are so many complaints out there, and the legitimate are mixed with the illegitimate.
Because you do write the grievance can be an instrument for really positive social change.
Absolutely, I mean the fight for civil rights that was founded on a grievance. We're a nation born of grievance, right.
But in this moment in time, I feel like so many people are complaining about so much at such a pitch that what requires attention, what is urgent, and what is righteous gets jumbled together with all the other stuff, and it's just a kind of din I think of grievance in today's culture, in today's world, people they're opening the opening part of their political engagement when they go into the public square. It's with a position of how have I been wronged? Who has wronged me? What am
I owed? And how do I get back at them? Look at our look at our current political campaigns. Pretty much at any level, most candidates spend more time telling you how awful the alternative is and how you have to elect them, you know, as a bulwark against that. We're telling you how hard they're going to fight the fight against those evil people on the other side. I mean, of course, the epitome of this is Donald Trump literally saying verbatim when he rolled out his current reelection campaign
or election campaign, I am your retribution. Vote for me as a way of getting back at your enemies. What happened to the idealism in politics right well?
What did happen to the idealism of politics right now?
Yielded to an age of grievance.
Let's talk about your book, your previous book, because I think it's an interesting juxtaposition to this one. You write in the Beauty of Dusk about your experience losing your sight in one eye and facing the possibility of losing your site in the other eye, by the way, I asked Frank, and his vision has stabilized, which is really good news. So let's keep our fingers crossed for that.
But this happened after you suffered a stroke, and you say that that experience presented a very clear choice for you. You could either focus on what you had lost or focus on what remained. So how did that and your experience actually inform the writing of this book.
It informed it in the sense that and I think I say this in the book that one of the things I realized on a personal level was that stewing over and constantly measuring your misfortunes is no way to get to contentment. And I think that that personal realization
applies in the public realm too. That doesn't mean you accept conditions in the world that are hideously injust and it doesn't mean that when you are being genuinely wronged and you might be able to find recourse, that you just shrug your shoulders and say, no, I'm not going to think about that. But it does mean that you put things in perspective and you don't get carried away.
And I had to. I had to realize that in a certain sense in my personal life when I lost certain abilities and began to struggle with certain things because of my compromised eyesight. And I think maybe that did give me, if you'll forgive the vision related words, a different view of public life as well.
You know, it's interesting because you write about how a lot of readers found hope and solace in your story, and others found cruelty and actually tried to shame you for your reaction to your circumstances. Can you talk about.
That, Yeah, this wasn't the majority reaction at all, but I got more than a few emails, communications of various kinds that said, what you're doing and talking about your positive adjustment and how you made the most of this is cruel because some of us have anxieties, depressions, you know, a kind of mental health where we can't make that adjustment, and you're taunting us, and you're holding something up that's
impossible to us. Now, there's some truth or legitimacy in that if you just kind of say buck up, everything will be better, you are belittling the sorts of mental health challenges that some people deal with, but to me it also epitomized this desire to find fault and logic complaint.
I was just a man who'd had a stroke, who'd been told that for the rest of his life he would live with the twenty percent chance of going blind, and I was trying to describe my own psychological and spiritual journey in a way that I hoped would be instructive and inspiring to most of the people who read about it. And it just seems to me, you have to you have to make a decision to take issue with that, and you have to be determined to see
the dark side of everything. And I think a lot of us live our political lives that way.
Historically, I think the idea of victimhood is completely anathetical to the idea many conservatives have of themselves as being defined by personal responsibility, a stiff upper lip, and traditional values, which you were alluding to lately. Though you feel that
grievance quote transcends partisan affiliation. Talk about this idea and how grievance has become universal because you do state that, and then you really cite a lot of right wing grievance folks you know, the people who are plotting against Gretchen Whitmer, Carrie Lake, you talk about Ron DeSantis, you talk about Marjorie Taylor Green. So can you talk about how this kind of covers the entire political spectrum, because I think a lot of people see it more on one side than the other.
Well, it's interesting because you just alluded to the way we used to look at in the past or whatever. But if you go back to the late eighties in the early nineties, and I did, and I went back and down magazine covers and all that, it's astonishing how similar the conversation feels to today when it comes to wokeness right. I was just somewhere else today and someone played a clip of Robert Bork from back in those days, and he was talking about the left and its radical egalitarianism,
and I realized, that's just more syllables to say wokeness. Right. But at that point in time time, Robert Bork, other people on the right, they saw this as a phenomenon of the left. They thought this was just the multiculturalists at universities. Charlie Sykes, a very prominent conservative commentator, brilliant writer, and a never Trumper.
Now, I mean yeah, right.
He wrote a book that came out in nineteen ninety two or nineteen ninety three, I forget the exact year, and it was called A Nation of Victims, and it was someone on the right side of the political spectrum mocking this behavior on the left, mocking frivolous lawsuits, mocking you know, glossaries of words you shouldn't use, et cetera.
I interviewed him for the book and he's quoted in it, and he said, what was so interesting between then and now is all of this sort of victim mentality and woe is me, and this is what you owe me that the right used to mock the left for is the quintessence of the MAGA movement. Right. It's what January sixth was in part about.
Are you saying there snowflakes? Are you saying they're snowflakes?
I'm saying they're a damn blizzard.
When we come back, Frank will address some criticism he received from his own newspaper. If you want to get smarter every morning with a breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. There are still those who insist, Frank and I'm sure you've read this review, or maybe you haven't, that you had a partisan agenda with this book.
I'm going to read a short excerpt from the Recent Times. Thank you, bye, Lionel Schreiber, and let you respond to it, says Nevertheless, since Bruni has made his political views public for years, he's assuming the role of neutral arbiter, maybe a better word, as referee, seems like an artifice. The Age of Grievance is appealingly moderate in tone, positively beseeching
in fact, but also unabashedly partisan. The book is pitched at the so called classical liberal who believes the progressive left sometimes goes too far, but that the real danger to the country's well being comes from the trumpy and right.
I think the gravest. I don't think the book is partisan. Am I constitutionally and by nature essentially a center left person? Yes, so obviously I can't write as much as I try to see things in the most open minded way. We all have our tropisms, our leanings, and I'm sure I have my own. I think the book is very even handed, but it's even handed without indulging in false equivalences, and
they kind of fascle both siderism. I think this is a very difficult subject to talk and write about because there is a grievance mentality, a corrosive grievance mentality, that exists on the right and left both that exists, as you said, across the political spectrum. Don't think that's the same as saying the threat of it is equivalent on the right and the left. Where do we have, by far more organized political violence on the right, who came up with a plot luckily foiled to kidnap a governor
Gretchen Whitmer the right? Where do you see paramilitary groups the right? Where do we have pervasive, profound election denialism? We have that much more so on the right. Yes, you can find some of these things or analogs to them on the left, But I was just some of those. I was just calling things as I saw them.
Yeah, tell me to describe some of those analogs on the left that you would say that this is the manifestation of grievances by liberals.
Well, I mean, I don't know if it's a grievance per se. But if we're talking about being totally fair, one of the I don't actually read many reviews just because I'm an extraordinarily thin skinned person and the way I manage my psychological health is not to look at my Twitter. I'm sorry X mentions not to look at any of that.
That's very wise.
But like three or four people emailed me about that, and I thought, shit, I've got to read it just so I can intelligently respond. I thought, I thought Lionel Shriver, whom I don't know, and they try to give reviews to people who don't know you, I thought she made a really really legitimate complaint about me not making any mention of the violence associated with the George Floyd protest with you know, after the George Floyd murder and all
of that. I think I probably didn't mention it because it didn't feel organized and sustained to me in the same way as you know paramilitary groups on the right. But it is an example of people taking their complaints their grievances to extreme and extremely dangerous length. So that's something you see on the left, you also see on the left. You know, the MAGA movement. It's all about
the government is oppressing me. All of these condescending elites in places like the Upper East Side of Manhattan don't care about my life, you know, et cetera. But on the left, I mean, you see people applying the prisms of racism, of sex, of homophobia to situations where that prism is absolutely appropriate and to situations where it's not appropriate. And you see people defining them themselves by minority groups are in categories, and it's all about how wrong they've
been by the world. So yeah, you see that on both sides for sure.
You know, we talked about go ahead, can.
I Actually I want to just because I want to make clear what I'm talking about in terms of this indiscriminate application of prisms and lenses. And it's an example I use in the book, but I don't think it's the only one. So when Britney Griner was jailed in Russia, horrifying situation and you know, languished there for months, I
saw a commentary on the left. I saw columns written, you know, by people on the left that she was being forgotten and stranded and no one cared, and the government didn't care because she was a black, lesbian woman.
We heard more about Britney Griner as a political prisoner than any other political prisoner I can remember in the last decade now, and we should have been hearing a lot about her, because that was a horrifying situation and she did not deserve, by any stretch of the imagination, to be there, and we had to get her out. But this notion that she was languishing or that she was somehow getting inadequate attention because of racism, sexism, and
homophobia is ridiculous. And the problem is when you make those claims in situations where they're patently ridiculous, you undermine your credibility. When you need to make those claims and situations where it's urgent, you actually do a disservice to
your cause rather than a service to it. And we live in this era where there are all sorts of right and left, both grievance entrepreneurs who go out there and just say the same thing regardless of circumstances and end up giving the people who disagree with them a reason to tune out and pay no attention.
I'm going to talk to you about social media in a moment, but first the impact that Trump presidency and now election efforts are having on this. You say that this age of grievance actually predates Donald Trump. We saw seedlings of it in Sarah Palin. And by the way, you're welcome, right, I mean, so.
You conducted one of history's great interviews. You know, thank you? Do you can I ask you a question?
Yeah?
Sure, as long as we've known each other, do you remember that particular interview?
Well, I, oh, we have largerieree second of it. I remember one of her campaign aides reported to me later by my producer emailing or texting someone and said, this is a fucking disaster. I didn't realize that at the time, honestly, and I thought that I would actually be blamed for it. And that's why I almost kept, you know, a very sort of straight faced affect, and I never sort of looked at her oddly or I didn't do the Amy Puehller thing. I don't know why she blanked so much.
I don't think I blinked that much in interviews, but I didn't think. I didn't really think it was going to have an impact because I thought people were so deeply entrenched in their affection or dislike of her. It wasn't going to change any minds. But I think what it did it took the great center and thought, and I think people thought, is she really ready to be to become president of the United States? And I think
that interest. Yeah, I think that interview showed that she was honestly over her head in terms of kind of policy, her understanding of policy. But is that the first time Frank, you saw this, this environment or this atmosphere of green events and anger and anti elitism and anti expertise, because I'm sure historically we've seen it a lot, right, Yeah, No, I.
Think it's probably gone in waves historically. I wouldn't say first time, but I think things began to crescendo, just.
Like the Tea Party too, right, Yeah.
With the Tea Party, a lot of what happened in and after two thousand and eight I think was a really pivotal moment, and the Tea Party was part of it. Yeah. I mean she at the end of the day, most Americans didn't support her. Most Americans were frightened by the
idea of her and the presidency. But to those people to whom she had appeal, her supporters, they did come to see her, and she's even seen in retrospect as one of the first kind of examples of how cruel the elite, condescending people on the coast could be to someone who maybe didn't have their level of erudition, who maybe couldn't, you know, riffle through all the proper nouns that they could, but who was a good person, And
maybe there's a grain of truth in that. I do think if we're all to do some sort of public soul searching, one thing we should think about is when we disagree with people politically, how often do we speak and act in a way in which we're looking down our noses at them, Because that is not an effective strategy to getting them to kind of maybe see and entertain our side. It's an effective strategy for just driving people apart.
I think that's so interesting because I think one question that I kind of regret asking her was there was a lot made of the fact that she had never traveled outside the country and that she didn't have a passport or something until she was much older. If I don't remember the exact details, but I remember asking her about that and she said, you know, we couldn't really afford to take trips outside the country. You know, I
had to work all the time. And I thought, yeah, that is a really kind of shitty question to ask somebody, because she had a very legitimate reason, And to me, that was an example of this sort of dismissive snobbery that I think sometimes infects the media. And I was sort of in retrospect embarrassed that I asked her that question.
And what's fascinating right now is Trump has so defintely exploited that and yet he's a creature of the establishment. He's as elite as it gets, and I think it's some of the craziest political sorcery I've ever seen.
Well, please help us understand that, because you know, he has.
To understand he has a goal, he has a he has.
A golden toilet seat, right, and I mean, how how does he mix that grievance with is it? Is it mixed with aspiration? Help us understand, Frank, please, because.
I know I'm I'm throwing I'm thrown off because after you said golden toilet seat, you said how does he And I'm like, oh my god, where's this question going to go? You know, so I'm a little rattled. You have to give me a moment. Yeah, you know where we live in such a tribal time that that, my guess is if they paused and think thought about it more.
A lot of his supporters realize he's not exactly the perfect symbol for the way they feel they've been treated, but he is so emphatic and so consistent at telling them I'm going to get back at the people you hate. I'm going to hate them bigger and with more consequence than you do. And that's that whole I am your retribution. And he's been consistent about that. He's been for a man who's not always disciplined, he's been disciplined about that,
and he has seen how well it works. There's a lot about Donald Trump that does not feel very smart, but he is very smart about noticing what's working for him. And he has the advantage over some other politicians because well, politicians as a breed, I know this is going to come as a shock, are egotists and tend to be very self focused. I've met few who make every decision one hundred percent solely about what is good for them.
And if you do that, there's a great, great competitive advantage in being as shameless as Donald Trump is.
At some point, will there be grievance overload? I mean, how much can this engagement through enragement, anger and stoking people's you know, circumstances and sort of this anger, channeling this anger through him sort of the perfect vessel. At some point will that get old? Frank?
I mean, I think we've seen signs, you know, sporadic, intermittent, not like a straight line, signs of it getting old already. I mean, if you're kind of looking for some reassurance and some hope, let's look at what happened in the twenty twenty Democratic primary, right, Joe Biden was not the most grievance animated candidate in the Democratic field. Joe Biden, in fact, in a field that was kind of that showed the party moving left, where Joe Biden was among
the most moderate candidates in that field. He was the one who kind of spoke in the most measured and inspirational tone of a lot of them, and he won the nomination. And that was partly about people just kind of making the bet that he would have the best
chance against Trump. And this is about defeating Trump. But I think it also said something about what people were responding to Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders much much bigger flame throwers and other people in that field, and Joe Biden prevailed.
And I think it's in part because there are a decent number of Americans who are tired of the volume and the vitriol of it all and will respond when given a choice to a candidate who seems to be turning the temperature down rather than turning the temperature up. We'll see what happens.
Then, I was going to say, how are you feeling about twenty twenty four.
I'm feeling terrified. And I also feel like this is an election everyone kind of wants to say around the kitchen table on a stage like this, Okay, what's going to happen? What's the best bet? I don't think there's a way to make a bet. I think this is one of those elections because of so many variables. Trump's criminal trial current one the ones around the bend, Joe
Biden's age. I think there are variables and things are going to happen, maybe a number of things between now and December that I think could really change the arc of this contest. In a way, we cannot look like predict right now.
I think it's interesting that he's I'm not just the grievance candidate, but the candidate of retribution. And I don't know if anyone read the Time magazine cover story he did a recent interview talking about his plans for his vision for the future, and there's some pretty scary stuff in there about upending sort of the government. And when he was asked why so many people with whom he worked, his cabinet officials, etc. Weren't supporting him, he said, I
shouldn't have let them go on their own terms. I shouldn't let them resign. Next time, I'm going to fire a lot more people. I mean, it sounds like.
That would have made them more kindly disposed to him. Now, who knows, but I think what he really wishes is he'd made them all sign NDA's that's what he really.
Maybe maybe, but why doesn't that seem to resonate or does that seem to be an extension of grievance, That grievance ideally will lead to retribution, so people can get some kind of outcome for their grievances.
It's an extension. I mean, he's feeding on people's angers. People are in thrall to their own anger. I quote a Yale psychiatrist in the book about how your mind on grievance looks a lot like your mind on drugs. It's very exhilarating. It kind of gets the heart going faster. The problem is like a drug. The ultimate outcome is not any good. But yeah, I mean, he's been pretty clear when you read that Time magazine interview. Even before the Time Magazine interview, he's been kind of clear about
the kind of administration he wants to have. There still may be safeguards and pushbacks that would not allow him to have that kind of administration if he were re elected. But if he gets reelected and he gets his way, I don't think anybody this time around can say, gee, I had no idea. I thought it was all theater. I didn't think he was serious. This time around, we've been warned.
After the break. Are we doomed to a future of more and more outrage journalism. Let's talk about the impact social media has on feeding the grievance industrial complex, if you will. Kara Swisher talks about engagement through enragement, and it seems as if that the media has to participate in this sort of deal with the devil. That anger makes people gravitate to more stories. If you're trashing someone or if the headline is emanating some kind of anger grievance,
it's much more appealing for people. So talk about how social media has exacerbated this, Well.
It's exacerbated in the way you just just identified what makes something rise to the top. In social media, it gets reactions as something that is impassioned, fervent, furious, and so that just kind of gets multiplied. I would we
need to pull back. Social media is a kind of subgroup or whatever of the Internet, right, and in this Internet age, and you know this, you're in media, and you have a media company and all of that, there are there's such a there's such an infinite buffet of options available to those of us who are consuming information, consuming news, that we go out there in a way
we couldn't in the past. I mean, when I was growing up, if you want to watch TV news at night, your choices were ABC, NBCCBS and maybe depending on where you lived, PBS, and and they were all working under the fairness doctrine, So there were restraints on how political they could be, certainly how screechy they could be, and they didn't fill that much airtime. You couldn't sit there for hours listening to pundit after pundit tell you how awful Donald Trump is, or conversely tell you what a
nightmare Kamala Harris is. Right now, we all get to walk up to this buffet choose exactly what we want, and no two people have the same diet, So no two people are having their discussions or their disagreements based on the same set of information. That is such an
extraordinary powerful engine for division. And I don't know how we deal with that, but that is something that we have only been dealing with for the past two decades and has a lot to do with why this country is in such a dysfunctional place.
Yeah, people are creating their own ecosystems and echo chambers, and as another friend of Mineset, they're getting affirmation, not information.
That's right, that's right, and they become more certain of their viewpoint rather than more elastic. They become less interested in contrary opinions because they've been so assured that there's this correct or. Just as in cities, and I see this all the time, like I talk to students, how have you set up your social media feed? Like where
are you getting your news? And I'm using them in a representative sense in this A lot of them feel like they're deeply engaged and deeply informed because there's a lot of stuff they're consuming. But then when you ask them to pause and look at what it is, it's either all broccoli, or it's all roast chicken, or it's all hot fudge. Sundays, they've gone up to that buffet and they've filled their plate, but it's all with the
same thing in a way they don't always realize. And I think one of the things we absolutely have to do is look at the conversations we're having with children, you know, at school age, but also at the kitchen table, because I have found that if you kind of say them, well, what's your goal in being an informed person? And their goal isn't to be as monochromatically informed as they are. It just kind of happens that way, right They human nature has them gravitating to the things that make sense
to them. The algorithms then kick in and give them more of that, and you know, they're busy with a thousand things in their life, and before they know it, they're living in this very, very sordid, narrow silo. But they never really intended to be there. And so we have to have a constant conversation about who are you trying to be? What kind of informed citizen do you want to be? And does your behavior do your consumption habits align with that?
That's true, And I know my husband and I try to turn to Fox when we're watching just to see what different sides are saying about an issue, because I want to understand how it's being framed by various organizations. And similarly, I try to read different points of view
when I can. But disinformation and AI is going to make this even tougher, Frank, Not only are we going to have to try to have a varied point of view or various sources in terms of the information we're getting, but we're going to have to go the extra mile to determine if it's even true.
Yeah's and that's another conversation we have to be having constantly with young people. We have to talk about. I mean, the buzz phrase is media literacy, but it's an important thing and I think it's creeping up on us, and we just need to be very conscious of it and kind of build it into education and instruction.
Maybe that can be your next book.
I'm sick.
Okay, maybe not.
I want to write. I want to write my next book about my dog. That's really.
Let's talk about the Supreme Court because it's interesting you talk about how the Supreme Court has even fallen prey to this grievance culture. Can you talk about that?
Well? Yeah, I mean it kind of blew my mind because I mean, if you're thinking of people who have a privileged perch and have a reason to kind of float above it all you think in the Supreme Court, and in fact, I mean it was never entirely true. But our image of them, our stereotype is these are people. They get appointed for life, they wear those black robes. They they, among all of us, can kind of float
above the most base emotions. And I was blown away after they overturned Roe v. Wade, a decision written by Justice Alito. He had to know, you know, what a cultural shock that would be, and he had to know how upsetting that would be to many people. And that doesn't mean it should influence what he does. His job is to kind of follow what he thinks is right. So I'm not taking issue with the decision in the comment about I'm about to make. But he subsequently kind
of went out on the speaking circuit, was it? You know, kind of black tie dinners and gab like speeches where he talked like, you wouldn't believe how mean people are being to all of us the way they talk about us. Are you kidding me? I mean that, Hey, that's part of your job, but b what did you think was going to happen? And a Supreme Court justice singing a
song of woe is me? If even someone like that is asking you to pity him or her as a kind of victim of mean behavior, then this sort of victim mentality has really kind of spread much, much, too wide and far.
You also cite Clarence Thomas in your book and talk about him. Did someone say something and talk about him in his books?
His fan section over there?
How does he personify this age of grievance?
Well, his appearance in the book is more in terms of his wife, Jenny. And if you go back and you read the text messages that Jenny Thomas was sending the Trump White House between November twenty twenty and January sixth, twenty two, twenty one. I mean, first of all, it's like all caps, it's exclamation points. When did we enter this era where passion amounts to putting ten exclamation points at the end of a sentence and capitalizing every other word,
which Donald Trump does. But if you look at the tone of it, she seems to have genuinely convinced herself that the country is being stolen from her. Ginny Thomas, Supreme victim.
Why is this happening? Frank No, I mean, why is all of this? Why are we in the midst of an age of grievance? Tell me about all the forces that are kind of colluding to create this environment.
Well, I can't take about all the forces because I noticed the clock. We're moving on and that would be like till midnight. But we've talked about are kind of broken information ecosystem. That's an enormous part of it. I mean, the political tribalism run amuck is another part of it. But something we haven't talked about. The I also think is really important is what I call the new American pessimism. It has never been the case that we were as
expansively optimistic a country, as mythology has it. But I think we were always a fundamentally optimistic country. You know, in the legend and the reality of Ronald Reagan's political assent in his political reign was you know, mourning in America, the shining city on the hill. And you know, for a while after Reagan, the truism among political strategists was that the optimistic candidate one the one who says to you, things are going to get better. Now it's almost flipped.
And if you look at I'll give you one example. I have a lot of numbers in the book about you know, surveys when you ask people do you think your children will do better than you did? That used to it used to be a no brainer that a majority of Americans would say yes. No longer, but I mean a really good example is, for decades now, Gallup, several times a year has been asking Americans are you generally satisfied with the direction of the country or with
life in America? But I forget exactly how they word it, And up until two thousand and four, more often than not that number would be the generally satisfied number would be above fifty percent, But it would go like this, below fifty percent, back above fifty percent. Since twenty four, twenty years running. Now it is never crested fifty percent. It is most frequently in the twenties, thirties, or low forties.
It went down to I think eleven percent after the January sixth riots, But twenty years running, we cannot get to even a fifty point one percent majority of Americans saying they're generally satisfied with life in this country. When that happens, it's an enormous political problem because if you no longer have any faith or belief that the pie is expanding, you have a much different relationship to your piece of it. You are much more possessive of it,
protective of it. You see yourself as in competition with your fellow American rather than in collaboration with them. You believe that somebody else winning means that you're losing, That it's a zero sum game, and that creates an entirely different civic environment than what is the ideal one.
But are there legitimate reasons for that pessimism? Frank, are there reasons that people are not feeling satisfied?
Sure, there are legitimate reasons, but it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. And there are also reasons for optimism. I mean, we seem to be trying our hardest to fuck it up, but we live in a wonderful country. No we do. I mean we are, you know. And Barack Obama said it very eloquently in a second term. I think it was in a speech in Hannover, Germany, if I remember,
it's in the book. But you know, he was nearing the end of his presidency, so he was less frequently trying to do what all politicians try to do and score political points, and in a kind of reflective moment, he said, you know, we have a lot of problems, and we spend a lot of time just doing about
them and sometimes screaming about them. But if you could choose, if you had to choose to be alive at any point in history and at any place in history, you would do no better than right now being an America can in the United States of America. And that doesn't mean we should be complacent, and it doesn't mean that we don't have hideous injustices, and it doesn't mean we turn a blind eye to them. But it has to
be part of our awareness and conversation. Otherwise we're not living in truth, and we're dooming ourselves to the future we don't want by believing in so little, by by having so little optimism and having so little faith in the future.
There was one statistic that you share in the book by Gene Twangy, who I know, who I've interviewed several times. She's what would you say as social social psychologists?
Yeah, sort of an expert on young people and their interactions with technology.
Right, and generational shifts and how different generations see the world. She told you that when asked whether they believe that the founders of the United States are better described as heroes or as villains, forty percent of gen Z respondents said villains.
Right.
How do you make sense of that finding?
Well, I mean it's easy to make sense that finding. We spend a lot of time in schools these days talking about the racism, the sexism, et cetera of the founding fathers, and all of that is true, and to a certain extent, it's appropriate, and it's a good idea. But to a certain extent is the important phrase there. They were living in a different time and if we apply the moral yardsticks of today to you know, two hundred three hundred years ago. You know, it's just not
the right way to measure things. But I just think it's a problem when you feel that darkly about your own country. I just don't think it's a smart strategy. And what she talked about when she cited that statistic in the interview I did with her for the book, she talked about how starkly that contrast with what baby boomers say, and it's part of a of a yawning generational divide.
Right now, I feel like heroes or villains, there should be some middle word right, right, blowed, right, blawed, but not villains.
No, And we need to be kind of measured and balanced in the attention we pay. And another person who's interviewed at some length in the book is Representative Rocanna, who's a Democrat in Congress who represents the Silicon Valley, and he said he's constantly like in meetings with other Democrats saying, how come when we go on TV none of us ever say anything positive about the country. Why are we always talking about all the ways in which
the country is failing. We need to talk about that, but to talk only about that is to create a kind of psychology and darkness in people that comes back at us in all the scrievance.
And it doesn't enrage people, and it doesn't make them feel this visceral anger that keeps them connected to the media they're consuming. Nobody wants to read nice stories, Frank, You know that.
I do, and you know, I think a lot of us in the media we find ourselves writing one nice story and then reverting to another kind of story less we lose our entire audience, right, which is not a great way, but at least we occasionally do the nice stories. I do think we have to try harder, and sometimes it is at brief economic sacrifice in the media to write more stories that give people solutions rather than just
an inventory of the problems. There's a lot of kind of good research coming out about news avoidance, and you are right, the people who stay with the news tend to click on the things that are angriest, you know, and most upsetting. But there are also all these people who have left the news entirely because they can't take it anymore.
There is a lot of grievance on college campuses these days, and that's hitting very noticed. Are you doing news avoidance rank? And I'm curious what you think about what is unfolding and how it fits in to the thesis of your book.
Well, first of all, it's not every college campus, and even on the college campuses where it's happening, it's not the majority of students. And I do worry that a lot of Americans don't understand that because one of the things I've seen happen with the campus protest story over the last couple of months, weeks and days is various
outside political actors. And I don't mean the outside agitators occupying buildings, that there's those people too, but I mean various outside actors, people in congress, people in public life, take their larger rivalries, their larger battles, and they impose them on this and say this illustrates my point in X, Y or Z way, and they make it much bigger than it has to be, and I think they inflame it.
And that's the main thing that I'm noticing and taking away from it, which is, yes, it is about a very particular thing. It is about the Israel Hamas war
and things that are going on in the Middle East. Yes, it is very much in a tradition of student protest, and that is something in and of itself, but it also I think reflects and is fed by a habit in this country among people in public life that people are supposed to model how we should behave to take every situation and turn it up to the highest temperature possible, to bring it to full boil for whatever their political
purposes are. And I think we're seeing some of that play out on campuses too, or encourage what's going on.
The book is the Age of Grievance. Frank Bruney, Thank you so much, Thank you much, Thanks everyone, Thanks for listening everyone. If you have a question for me, a subject you want us to cover, or you want to share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world reach out. You can leave a short message at six oh nine five P one two five five five, or you can send me a DM on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. Next Question is a production
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