David Brooks wonders whether or not America is over [Collapse, Part 3]

At the beginning of July I had a pair of posts in which I suggested that America's institutions are collapsing:

The current political situation in the USA and the possibilities for radical change [Collapse? Part 1], July 3, 2025.

Why I think our institutions are collapsing [Collapse? Part 2], July 5, 2025.

Now David Brooks is inching toward that idea, The Crucial Issue of the 21st Century, NYTimes, July 31, 2025.

But today, most people think America is broken. According to recent surveys, public trust in institutions is near its historical low. According to a recent Ipsos survey, about two-thirds of Americans agree with the statement, “Society is broken.”

As David Frum pointed out recently in The Atlantic, between 1983 and 2007, the share of Americans who were satisfied with “the way things are going in the U.S.” hit peaks of about 70 percent and was often above 50 percent. Over the 15 years from 2007 to 2022, the number of Americans who were satisfied with the way things were going was frequently down to about 25 percent.

America’s social order has fractured, and that has made all the difference.

The French mystic Simone Weil once wrote that “order is the first need of all.” She emphasized that the social order is built on our obligations to one another, the texture of our trustworthy relationships.

To put it another way, all humans need to grow up in a secure container, within which they can craft their lives. The social order consists of a stable family, a safe and coherent neighborhood, a vibrant congregational and civic life, a reliable body of laws, a set of shared values that neighbors can use to build healthy communities and a conviction that there exists moral truth.

Why has the GOP shifted from being the party small government (Reagan's first inaugural: “... government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”) to big party populism:

When the social order is healthy, nobody notices; when it is in rubble, it’s all anybody can think about. Once the social order was shredded, small government conservatism made no sense. If your society is in tatters, why would you want a small government doing nothing? If you think society is in moral and civic chaos, why would you think this or that tax cut or this or that government program is going to make a difference?

And the Democrats?

Democrats are the party of the elite managerial class, and it’s hard for us affluent, educated types in blue cities to really understand the gut-wrenching disgust, rage and alienation that envelops the less privileged as they watch their social order collapse.

I’ve read dozens of pieces from Democratic pols on how their party can turn things around. Each one — promoting this or that policy — is more pathetic than the last. These people still act and think as if it’s the 20th century and everything will be better if we can have another New Deal. They aren’t even willing to confront the core Democratic question: How does the party of the managerial elite adapt to a populist age?

The Democratic opportunity comes from the fact that, as always, Trump doesn’t try to solve the problems he addresses; he just provides a show business simulacra of a solution. If Democrats can come up with an alternative vision of how to repair the social and moral order, they might be relevant in the years ahead.

If David Brooks is writing about it, others must be thinking it. Are we going to see more such articles in the future?