David Brooks

How do we have a sense of resilience?

How do we just fall in love?

I gave a talk at Yale recently called How to Be Ambitious Without Being a Jerk.

And I think those subjects have become central to my concerns more so than following Donald Trump every day, though I still do that too.

Well, you know, I'm doing a piece today about resentment.

And I think we live ultimately in a culture of resentment.

And resentment is funny.

It starts with a sense you can't have something.

You lack something.

Or somebody else achieves something that you don't have and you feel a loss of social standing.

Somebody doesn't see you and you want to be respected by this person, but they don't even know you exist.

And so it starts with a feeling of impotence.

But then it goes on and becomes a trans value of values.

And by that I mean the person feeling resentful doesn't only wish he had what he didn't have, he decides that what he doesn't have is not worth having.

And so eventually the resentful person says, all that stuff that seems noble, that's all a fake.

So kindness, that seems like weakness.

Generosity, that's all for performance.

And Donald Trump is the essence of a resentful person.

I remember in the 1980s, there was an entire magazine called Spy Magazine that was dedicated to ridiculing Donald Trump.

And a lot of the Manhattan real estate people looked down on this schmuck from Queens.