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Your Dvd Collection Is Organized, And So Is Your Walk-in Closet. Your Car Is Clean And Vacuumed, Your Frequently Dialed Numbers Are Programmed Into Your Cordless Phone, Your Telephone Plan Is Suited To Your Needs, And Your Various Gizmos Interact Without Conflict. Your Spouse Is Athletic, Your Kids Are Bright, Your Job Is Rewarding, Your Promotions Are Inevitable, Everywhere You Need To Be Comes With Its Own Accessible Parking. You Look Great In Casual Slacks.

-David Brooks

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Your Dvd Collection Is

David Brooks

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Your Dvd Collection Is Organized, And So Is Your Walk-in Closet. Your Car Is Clean And Vacuumed, Your Frequently Dialed Numbers Are Programmed Into Your Cordless Phone, Your Telephone Plan Is Suited To Your Needs, And Your Various Gizmos Interact Without Conflict. Your Spouse Is Athletic, Your Kids Are Bright, Your Job Is Rewarding, Your Promotions Are Inevitable, Everywhere You Need To Be Comes With Its Own Accessible Parking. You Look Great In Casual Slacks.

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More From David Brooks

President Obama Was The First President Not To Abide By The Limits In The General Election.

Empathy Makes You More Aware Of Other People's Suffering, But It's Not Clear It Actually Motivates You To Take Moral Action Or Prevents You From Taking Immoral Action.

It's Always Dangerous To Overinterpret What Donald Trump Says At Any One Moment.

What Bannon And Trump Have Presented Us With Is An Idea Of America That's Not Been The Traditional Idea, Not The Walt Whitman Idea, Not The George Washington, Abraham Lincoln Idea, Which Is One Of Welcoming Because We're The Last, Best Hope Of Earth.

A Wise Soul Once Declared That The Ultimate Power Of The Writer Is That He Has The Choice Of Whom He Wants To Be Co-opted By.

Sometimes, You Go - You Achieve A Few Things In Life. I Have Achieved More Career Success Than I Ever Experienced Or That I Ever Thought. And I Just Realized, It Doesn't Make You Happy. It's An Elemental Truth. It's So True.

When You Cover Politics, You Realize That Knowing How To Talk About Character Matters More And More. The Way We Hold Ideas Is More Important Than The Ideas.

Palin Is Smart, Politically Skilled, Courageous And Likable. Her Convention And Debate Performances Were Impressive.

Benjamin Netanyahu Is A Fascinating Figure.we Say Nixonian About A Lot Of People. He Really Is Nixonian. He's Brilliant. He's Very Isolated And Insular.

I Think Romney's Foreign Policy Is Sensible.

If We're In Some Sort Of Hobbesian State Of Nature, Where You Just Want A Strong Man Who Has No Compassion Donald Trump Is Going To Do A Little Better. So, We Will Figure Out What Game We're Playing.

The Party Cannot Be Competitive Nationally Unless It's Competitive In California, Oregon, Washington, New England, Pennsylvania, Along The Coasts. And The Problem For The Party Is, You Can't Get There From Here. You Can't Start Out Where The Current Republicans Are And Win Back Those Places. To Me, What You Have To Do Is Create A Different Republican Party That Can Win In Those Places.

Friendship Allows You To See Your Own Life But With A Second Sympathetic Self.

A Lot Of People Think Barack Obama Should Have Responded To The Russian Hacking Of The U.s. Elections Weeks Ago, Months Ago. So These Happened On His Watch. There's Nothing Wrong With Him Dealing With It.

The Government Is Supposed To Provide A Level Playing Field Where People Can Compete Fairly. It's Not Supposed To Cut Deals With One Company Or Another To Do So.

It's Hard To Imagine A Party That Is Not Corrupted By Hatred.

The Point Of Being A Teacher Is To Do More Than Impart Facts, It's To Shape The Way Students Perceive The World, To Help A Student Absorb The Rules Of A Discipline. The Teachers Who Do That Get Remembered.

I Think Donald Trump Is Going To Find It Very Hard To Do The Kind Of Massive Change He Wants.

Our Emotions Tell Us What To Value. They're Like A Little Gps System: Go That Way. Don't Go That Way.

If You Do Have To Look At Polls, You Should Do It No More Than Once Every Few Days, To Get A General Sense Of The State Of The Race. I've Seen The Work On Information Overload, Which Makes People Depressed, Stressed And Freezes Their Brains. I Know That Checking The Polls Constantly Is A Recipe For Self-deception And Anxiety.

I Would Have Swapped Out Donald Trump's Frontal Cortex For Somebody Else's For A Little More Self-control.

People Ask, Quite Legitimately, Why [betsy] Devos And Why Not A Lot Of The Others? But It's Because It Has To Do With The Special Interest Groups That Run A Lot Of Washington.

Clearly, Politics Is A Team Sport. Trump Is Not So Much Of A Team Player.

I Do Think Economic And Social Anxiety Is The Number One Issue. And I'm Pretty Confident Hillary Clinton Will Be Really Riding That Train Pretty Hard.

We Still Are America Though. We're Still A Country That Is A Country Of Social Mobility. We're Still A Country Of Immigrants. We're Still A Country With Common Ancestors. And Reviving The Civics Of America And The Idea That We're Going To Be United, At Least Not Right Now, But In Some Common Future, And Talking In That Hopeful Way That Martin Luther King Did, That Abraham Lincoln Did, Seems To Me That's The Way.

Everyone Is Dividing Based On Demographic Categories.

Donald Trump Understands Sense Of Belonging. And A Lot Of People Think Globalization, Any Time You Make Any Particularity, You're Sort Of Offending Some Other Group. And A Lot Of People In This Country Think They Belong To America Anymore, And He At Least Appeals To Some Sense Of Belonging. I Like The Idea That We Belong To Western Traditions, So I'm Glad He Appeals To That Sort Of Thing.

I Generally Think The President [donald Trump] Should Get His Cabinet Picks, Unless They're Egregiously Out Of The Range, Either Ethically Or Intellectually Out Of The Range Of What's Acceptable.

Basically, Global Capitalism, Basically To Support It, Or Is It To Be Opposed? Is International Order To Be Supported, Or Is It To Be Opposed? Republicans Have Taken A Very Clear Line. Democrats Can Have A Different Version Of The Line, Or They Can Just Say, No, We Are The Party Of International Peace And Activism, And We're The Party That's Going To Have A Civilized Capitalism.

I Don't Know If I'm Sexist, Though I Have Not Paid Much Attention To The Women's Bracket.

Self-actualization Is What Educated Existence Is All About. For Members Of The Educated Class, Life Is One Long Graduate School. When They Die, God Meets Them At The Gates Of Heaven, Totes Up How Many Fields Of Self-expression They Have Mastered, And Then Hands Them A Divine Diploma And Lets Them In.

When You Talk About The Problem Of Illegal Immigration, People Are Angry And Polarized. When You Talk About The Answers, The Debate Gets A Little Different.

The Idea That Russia Felt Emboldened And Apparently Fearless To Go Into Our Election And Manipulate Our Own Election Process, Whether Successfully Or Not, Is A Sign That They Are Outside The Norms Of Normal Society.

Election Process

I Certainly Hear A Lot Of People Say That Donald Trump Not Only Incited Some Bad Things. He Also Exposed Some Things. He Exposed Pain In America That A Lot Of Us Didn't Have The Full Extent Of, Some Of The Divisions And Chasms In The Country.

Politics Is Based On Social Identity, And So, Again, There Is Going To Be Differences Between Rural And Urban And Between Left And Right.

If You're A Soldier Or Marine In An Arab Country, Islam Is The Solution. And You Need To Show Respect.

Liberals Lost Touch With Working-class Americans Because They Never Had To Have A Conversation About Values With Those Voters; They Could Just Rely On The Courts To Impose Their Views.

Certainly, The Country Can't Have Two Presidents At Once, So The Tradition Has Been To Hang Back If You're The President-elect And Wait For Your Time In Office. [donald] Trump Is Not A Hang-back Kind Of Guy.

The Republican Party Has Become An Ethnic Nationalist Party.

Republican Party

It's Almost Inherent, But I'm A Massive Stanley Kubrick Fan. I'm A Big Admirer Of What Guys Like Christopher Nolan Have Been Able To Do. For Me, To Be Able To Try To Make Big Films That Reach A Lot Of People, And That Hopefully Have Something To Say, Is A Lofty Goal, But That's My Goal.

If You're Cutting Deals With One Company Or Another, Eventually, There's Going To Be A Quid Pro Quo. There's Going To Be A Bribe. There's Going To Be Something.

If You Thought Donald Trump Was Going To Be Swallowed Up By The Conventional Republican Party Or By Washington, You Were Wrong.

We Live In A Culture Of A Big Me. We're Encouraged - We Raise Our Kids To Think How Great They Are, Where We Have To Market Ourselves To Get Through Life. We're In Social Media, Where We Broadcast Highlight - Highlight Reels Of Our Own Lives On Facebook.

It’s Easy To See Why Politicians Would Be Drawn To The Populist Pose. First, It Makes Everything So Simple. The Economic Crisis Was Caused By A Complex Web Of Factors, Including Global Imbalances Caused By The Rise Of China. But With The Populist Narrative, You Can Just Blame Goldman Sachs.

I Was Really Fortunate That I Went To A High School Where We Actually Had A Film Theory Program.

Jeff Sessions Has Some Problematic Spots On His History, But He Has Been A Pretty Normal, Respectable Senator, More Conservative Than A Lot Of Us, But A Respectable Senator For A Long Period Of Time.

It's Just A Lot Safer To Be An Incumbent. So I Think They Have Used The Campaign Finance Reforms. They Have Passed Laws That Will Help Themselves Stay In Office. And I Think That's One Of The Flaws That We Do Have In The System.

Trump Has Picked The More Extreme Versions Of All Republicans So Far, The More Aggressive. And I Think The Thing To Watch Out For Is, I Could Totally Paint A Scenario Where Trump Runs An Authoritarian Regime. I Can Totally Paint A Scenario Where He Has No Control Over His Own Government.

Learning Was A By-product Of Her Search For Pleasure

I Came To The Conclusion Is That We Have A Very Shallow View Of Human Nature In The Policy World. We're Really Good At Talking About Material Things, Really Bad At Talking About Emotions, Really Good At Stuff We Can Count, Really Bad At The Deeper Stuff That Actually Drives Behavior.

It's Rare In An Administration For A Secretary Of State And A Secretary Of Defense To Get Along Really Well.

Every White House I Have Covered Since Reagan, When I Got Here, Power Has Been More Concentrated In The White House Than The One Before.

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin And Marine Le Pen Seem To Have No Respect For The Institutions That Were Created After World War Ii, And They See A Potential Alliance Of Populists Around The World Who Would Fight Islam And Restore A Certain Semblance Of Traditional Values.

I Think The Twenty-first Century Happened, Basically. That This Century Started On 9/11. And Basically, It's Been A Century Of Counter Reaction To Globalization And The Meritocracy. And A Good Century For 72 Nations Have Gotten More Authoritarian. We've Had Brexit. We Have Le Pen Rising In France. We've Just Got A Lot Of These Types All Around The World. And The People Who Are Suffering From Globalization And The Meritocracy Are Saying, "no More. You Know, We Get A Voice Too."

[betsy Devos] Is Quite A Smart Person, Capable, Pretty Sophisticated In Subtle Thought. And So To Me, That Puts Her In The Realm Of Policy. But We're In A Climate Where, As Today, She Tries To Visit A School, And She Can't Even Do That Because Protesters Are Blocking That.

The More People Doubt Their Own Beliefs The More, Paradoxically, They Are Inclined To Proselytize In Favor Of Them.

I Do Think Trying To Live Each Day As A Bunch Of Moral Occasions, Did I Live Up To What I Would Hope, And, If I Didn't, What Can I Do Tomorrow To Be A Little Better, I Do Think We Can Improve. We Get Better At Life As We Get Older.

We Know The 65-point Policy Points, To The Extent That They Exist, But Is Hillary Clinton Willing To Be Vulnerable, Is She Willing To Be Funny, Is She Willing To Be Both Authoritative, But Also Real? And So Less What She Says Than The Emotional Tone She Sets. It Takes A Lot Of Confidence To Be A Vulnerable Speaker On This Stage. And Sometimes She Hasn't Always Projected The Confidence It Takes To Be In Some Ways Weak. But That's What I Think People Were Looking For, That Moment Of Human Connection.

The Idea That A Big Country Is Going To Go Out And Send Troops Into Some Country To Take Their Resources, And Then The Rest Of The World Is Going To Somehow Trust Us Is Just A Ridiculous Notion.

I'm Thankful That We Live In A Crassly Commercial, Polarized Culture, So Media Jackals Like Me Have A Lot Of Work To Do.

The Crossroads Where Government Meets Enterprise Can Be An Exciting Crossroads. It Can Also Be A Corrupt Crossroads. It Requires Moral Rectitude To Separate Public Service From Private Gain.

On The [betsy] Devos Case, I Agree That The Gun - Her Gun Position Is Kind Of Weird, Kind Of Crazy, But I Do Think She Does Know About Public Schools.

Populists Love Rich People. They Just Hate Professionals.

I Think Charter Schools, Choice, And Frankly School Standards Need A Champion.

I Think Mitch Daniels, The Former Governor Of Indiana Was A Case Of That, Who Was An Outstanding Administrator.

Sometime Over The Past Generation We Became Less Likely To Object To Something Because It Is Immoral And More Likely To Object To Something Because It Is Unhealthy Or Unsafe. So Smoking Is Now A Worse Evil Than Six Of The Ten Commandments, And The Word Sinful Is Most Commonly Associated With Chocolate.

That Is The Job Of The Catholic Church, To Be A Balance To The Materialistic Drives Of Our Culture And Of Economy.

The Fact That There Could Be An Isis West Bank, The Fact That The Palestinian Government In Gaza Doesn't Even Acknowledge Israel's Right To Exist, The Fact Of Constant Terror, Delegitimization Campaigns In The Palestinian Schools, These Are All Much Bigger Facts. And For The Barack Obama Administration To Focus On This One Fact, Almost, Not To The Expense, But To Diminish Some Of The Others Which Are Much More Important, Is To Cast All The Blame On Israel And To Take The U.n. Policy Toward Israel, Which Has Been Longstanding, And Sort Of Surrender To It.

Charter Schools Are Public Schools. They're Paid For Publicly And They're Part Of The Public System. They Just Have A More Independent Structure.

The Republicans In Congress, They Believe In Ronald Reagan's Republican Party, Not Donald Trump Republican Party Or Steve Bannon's Republican Party.

Donald Trump Didn't Emerge From The Orthodoxy Of The Republican Party. And So There's Going To Be Bigger Differences Than Normal.

Students Are Too Busy Jumping Through The Next Hurdle In The Résumé Race To Figure Out What They Really Want. They Are Too Frantic Tasting Everything On The Smorgasbord To Have Life-altering Encounters. They Have A Terror Of Closing Off Options. They Have Been Inculcated With A Lust For Prestige And A Fear Of Doing Things That May Put Their Status At Risk.

You Have A Country That Is 20 Percent Liberal, 40 Percent Conservative. You Have A Country Where Maybe 22 Percent Have Faith In Government. If You're A Liberal, It's Just Going To Be Tough. And You Should Just Expect That. And It's Tough For People On The Right, Too, Because They Don't Get What They Want Either If You're, Say, A Libertarian. So, You Have Got The Country Sort Of Against You. And, Nevertheless, You Have A President.

There Is The English Language And Then There's The Trump Language.

English Language

I Agree With The Idea Of Cutting [budget], But It Should All Be Coming Out Of Entitlements For The Affluent And Not Out Of Domestic Discretionary, Which Is Welfare, Education, All The Stuff The Government Does, Parks, Fbi, And It Shouldn't Be Coming Out Of Medicaid.

I Think Globalization Has Been Really Good For America.

There Was This Famous Clash Of Civilization Thesis From Samuel Huntington, A Political Theorist. And The Idea Was That Western Civilization Is At War With Islam And Maybe Some Of The Other Civilizations Around The World. And I Don't Agree With That. But I Do Think There Is Such A Thing As Western Civilization. I Think It Starts With The Greeks And The Romans. Then It Goes Through The Enlightenment - Or The Reformation, The Enlightenment. It Goes Through The Scientific Age. And It Somewhat Defines Some Of The Cultures And Mores Of Europe And North America And Some Other Countries.

People Tend To Marry People With Similar-width Noses, Eyes Similarly Apart, With Complementary Immune Systems.

I Think Trump's Attention Span Is Super Low. I Don't Think He Has The Expertise To Actually Run A Foreign Policy.

For The Democrats, They're Trying To Avoid Having The Sanders-clinton Debate Over And Over Again. But, To Some Degree, They're Sentenced To That Debate. Clinton Is Much More Embracing Of The Global Economy And The International World Order. Sanders And Warren Are Much Less So. And They Have Got To Figure Out Which Side The Party Is On, If They're Going To Have A Clear Message. I Think This Is Probably One You Probably Can't Straddle.

Most Poor People In America Are White. The Family Breakdown Issue Is An Issue That Crosses All Sorts Of Racial Lines. High School Dropout Issues. But Because Of The Flow Of Events Which Involve The Racial Component, We've Sometimes Confused Racial Issues With Other Issues Which Are Trans-racial.

Our System Is Not Only Based On Rules, But A Series Of Self-restraints That We Won't Be As Barbaric As We Could Be In Competing For Power Because We Know If We're All Barbaric As We Could Be, The Whole Country And The Whole Society Falls Apart.

We Don't Have The Choice To Control Our Emotions, But We Do Have The Power To Educate Our Emotions. And We Do That Through Literature And Through Art And Music To Give Ourselves A Repertoire Of Emotional Experiences.

Civility Is The Natural State For People Who Know How Limited Their Own Individual Powers Are And Know, Too, That They Need The Conversation.

Individual Power

Russian Hackers Interfered In Our Elections, And We Like Penalized A Few Of Them. Whatever They're Doing Underground, We Don't Know. No, This Is Going To Be A Big Issue. And I Have To Say The Barack Obama - The Donald Trump Position Is, A, Mystifying, But, B, Doomed. He Has A Nice Little Vladimir Putin Romance Going On Right Now. I Think We're Going To Get Out The Hankies, Because This Is Going To Turn Into An Ugly Relationship Within A Year Or Two.

Donald Trump Is So Egregious In The Way He Talks About Women, The Way He Allegedly Treated Women.

The Brain Writes The Autobiography Of Our Species At The Conscious Level.

Barack Obama Won Such A Big Electoral Mandate Because A Lot Of People Thought He Was - Transcended Partisan And Ideological Barriers And Was Going To Put Aside The Old Debates. So, He Was Able To Get A Lot Of Moderates And A Lot Of Independents.

No Matter Where You Are On Politics, I Think It Is Wonderful To See Candidates Funding Campaigns Not By Talking To A Very Small Number Of Very Rich People, But By Reaching Out To A Very Large Number Of Citizens.

The Key Factor Separating Geniuses From The Merely Accomplished Is Not A Divine Spark. It's Not I.q., A Generally Bad Predictor Of Success, Even In Realms Like Chess. Instead, It's Deliberate Practice. Top Performers Spend More Hours (many More Hours) Rigorously Practicing Their Craft.

It's Part Of Donald Trump's Psychodynamics To Always Care About His Press Coverage Intensely. He's More Interested In That Than Anything Else.

You Have Got To Have Two Things In Education Reform. You Have Got To Have Some Flexibility, So People Can Figure Out What To Do. But You Also Have To Have Accountable, Basically What The Common Core Standards Were, Some Sort Of Set Of National Standards, So We Can Measure.

You Have Got To Be Loyal To People Beneath You.

Populists Hate Journalists, They Hate Teachers, They Hate Lawyers, But They Tend To Like Rich People. There's Something Deeply Consistent.

One Of The Things Capitalism Does Is, It Does Enhance And Exacerbate The Sin Of Pride, Making Yourself, The Material World The Center Of Your Universe, Instead Of God's Will.

The School Asks A Person Who Has Achieved A Certain Level Of Career Success To Give You A Speech Telling You That Career Success Is Not Important.

The Politics Is Broken Up And Down. And Trump May Emerge From A Reality Tv World That Is Much More Powerful Than We Think. And There Is The Prospect That This Is Where We Are, Which Is An Horrific Thought.

You Have To Have A Plan, Or Else You're Just Creating A Recipe For Chaos.

If We Are Going To Stop Wars On This Earth, We Are Going To Have To Make War On Hunger Our Number One Priority.

The Core Threat To Democracy Is Not In The White House, It's The [bush] Haters Themselves.

If You're Running A Successful Administration, Then You're Loyal To People Who Are Basically Good Who Make A Mistake. And That Seems To Be Essential For Any Organization. And It Should Be Essential If This Were A Normal Administration, Rather Than A Fiefdom, Where Everybody Simply Tries To Give Donald Trump A Good Headline Every Day.

I Don't Blame The Democrats For Fighting. They Have Got A Very Energized Base. And There Is A Lot To Complain About A Lot Of These Nominees. But I Think, If You Are Actually Going To Turn Someone Down From A President's [donald Trump] Own Cabinet, It Better Be A Lot More Egregious Than The Cases We Have Seen.

The Incumbents Just Have A Ton More Money Because They Have Rigged The System To Help Themselves, Because They Have These Networks Of Small Donors. Meanwhile, The Amount Of People, The Incumbents Being Reelected Has Just Been - That Has Been Going Up And Up And Up.

I Could Tell You That When You Have Trouble Making Up Your Mind About Something, Tell Yourself You'll Settle It By Flipping A Coin. But Don't Go By How The Coin Flips; Go By Your Emotional Reaction To The Coin Flip. Are You Happy Or Sad It Came Up Heads Or Tails?

Some Children Lack Tools To See Their Course In The World In Far-sighted Ways. Just Introducing School Vouchers Won't Change That. You Have To Have Nurse-home Partnerships, Early Childhood Education, Mentoring Programs And So On. People Learn From People They Love.

I Have Come To Think We Have To Treat Donald Trump's Tweets Like Snapchat. It's Just Something That Is Going To Go Away. And It Flies Out Of Some Region Of His Brain And It Goes Out Into The Ether. And Usually It's On The Realm Of Media.

The Natural Human Reaction Is To Greet Hatred With Hatred, Revenge By Revenge. That's The Natural Genetic Reaction.

People Used To Complain That Selling A President Was Like Selling A Bar Of Soap. But When You Buy Soap, At Least You Get The Soap. In This Campaign, You Just Get Two Guys Telling You They Really Value Cleanliness.

There Has Never Been Evidence That People From These [banned] Countries Are Disproportionately Likely To Commit Terrorist Acts. We Have Sent Chaos To The Airports. We Have Offended The World. We Have Derailed The Administration. We Have Done It In Such An Incompetent Way, The Administration Has, That People With Perfectly Legal Residence Have Been Widely Inconvenienced.

If We Got Rid Of Everybody In Washington Who Sold Access For Donations, Then The Town Would Be Empty. But It's Unseemly.

Donald Trump Appalls Me. I Won't Be Shy About That.

One Of The Things This World Is Finding Is That Emotion Is The Basis Of Reason. We Really Have To Trust Our Emotions, Which Are Much Smarter Than Our Reason In Some Ways.

I Think Barack Obama's Foreign Policy Will Be Regarded More Failure Than Success.

People Want A Reality That Tells Them They're Right All Of The Time.

Donald Trump's Being Authentic To What He Ran On And What Got Elected.

Being Authentic

Creativity Is Not A Solitary Process. It Happens Within Networks... When Talented People Get Together, When Idea Systems And Mentalities Merge.

Woe To You Who Insults The Intelligence Community, If You're President.

Fundamentalism Is Still On The March.

I Do Think Hillary Clinton Should Have Pivoted And Say, I Am Change, I Am Change, Because People Do Want Some Change.

I Have Seen [betsy Devos] Present A Few Times. I Don't Really Know Her. But I Have Seen Her Present On Education Policy, And She's Not A Stupid Person.

The Zooming Wealth Of The Top 1 Percent Is A Problem, But It's Not Nearly As Big A Problem As The Tens Of Millions Of Americans Who Have Dropped Out Of High School Or College. It's Not Nearly As Big A Problem As The 40 Percent Of Children Who Are Born Out Of Wedlock. It's Not Nearly As Big A Problem As The Nation's Stagnant Human Capital, Its Stagnant Social Mobility And The Disorganized Social Fabric For The Bottom 50 Percent.

Donald Trump's Ego Is Like A Comet The Size Of Jupiter Just Traveling Through The Solar System, And We All Have To Be Affected By Its Gravitational Pull.

My Colleague Ross Douthat Wrote That Any Time You Give Donald Trump The Benefit Of The Doubt, He Always Lets You Down.

Benefit Of The Doubt

If You Just Rely On One Model, You Tend To Amputate Reality To Make It Fit Your Model.

The Rich Don't Exploit The Poor, They Just Out-compete Them.

I Think Actually In Any Party It's A Sign Of General Health To Have Different Views, And Especially On The Subject Of Trade.

I Really Think Of [donald] Trump Erratic. I Think That Was The Big Message That Came Out. The Positive Agenda For Hillary [clinton] Was A Little Less Vibrant.

[mitch Daniels] Was Not A Bad Governor. He Could Be Playful, But - Or Communicator.i'm Just Saying It Will - I Think Will Be - Every Candidate Comes Into The White House, Assuming If [hillary Clinton] Wins, Or If She Does Win, With Strengths And Weaknesses. This Will Be A Weakness, Because This Was Such An Easy Moment To Show Some Heart.

Since 2005, A Majority Of Americans, According To The Gallup Poll, Have Said It Was Wrong And A Mistake To Go Into Iraq.

Donald Trump Tried To Set Up This Debate Where It Was Going To Be Globalists Vs. Nationalists, And The Republicans Were Going To Be The Nationalists. But, If Anything, The Democrats Looked More Patriotic And More Nationalist At The End Of These Two.

I Think There Are Two Basic Approaches You Can Use For Campaign Finance. One Is Complete Openness, Everybody Knows Absolutely Everything, But No Limits. But You Let People Decide.the Other Is Just Have A National Public System.

I Would Like To See An Animating Passion. Tim Kaine Actually Had A Good Line. What Animated You Before You Got Into Politics? And She Actually Does Have A Story There To Tell About Children. And So Drawing That Animating Passion Will Do Good.

I Wouldn't Say Philosophy And Theology Are Dead. Brain Science Doesn't Invent New Philosophies But It Helps Remind Us Which Of Our Existing Philosophies Are More True.

It Is Especially Painful When Narcissists Suffer Memory Loss Because They Are Losing Parts Of The Person They Love Most.

People Who Give Money In Large Amount In Politics Are Basically Not Altruistic.

When Your Institution Is Under Threat, You Feel You Have A Lot Of Hostility, You Feel Things Are Slipping Away, You Have Got Internal Problems, There's A Tendency To Turn Inward And To Focus On Yourselves.

Those Cultural Wars, Sexual Revolution Issues Are Fading From The Scene, And The Coming Generation Has Basically Settled Them.

I Think The Democrats Are Right To Protest, But I Don't Think Jeff Sessions Is So Far Out Of The Range Of Normalcy That He Shouldn't Be Confirmed.

It’s Not That Egypt Doesn’t Have A Recipe For A Democratic Transition. It Seems To Lack Even The Basic Mental Ingredients.

I Happen To Think Most People Go Into Government Do It For The Right Reasons And They Really Do Things As They See Them On The Merits Of The Issues.

Pain Now Is Better Than Pain Deferred.

Every Time Kellyanne Conway Goes On Tv, There's Another Fight With Whoever's Interviewing Her That Particular Day.

Obamacare Is Woven Into The Fabric Of Health Care. It's Very Hard To Just Rip It Out, As Donald Trump Sort Of Acknowledged With The Wall Street Journal.

On The [andrew] Puzder Point, I Do Agree There Has Been A Double Standard.

Double Standard

The Prevailing View Is That Geniuses Are Largely Built, Not Born.

I Do Not Believe That Anything Like What Donald Trump Just Proposed Is Going To Get Through Congress. Those Deductions Have A Lot Of Defenders. The Idea That They're Going To Completely Explode The Deficit Is Just A Party Killer For The Republican Parties.

[donald Trump] Has Shifted - President [barack] Obama Has Shifted American Policy In A Much More Critical Way In Israel With The Settlements Than The Previous Presidents.

The North Korean Regime Is Extremely Fiery, Extremely Insecure, Sometimes Hysterical. And When You're Around Somebody Who's Screaming And Unstable, The Last Thing You Want To Do Is Add To The Instability With Your Own Unstable, Hysterical Rhetoric.

Mitt Romney Knows A Lot. He's A Very Professional - A Consummate Professional.

Personally, I Think Mitt Romney Would Be A Great Secretary Of State.

The Effectiveness Of A Group Of People Is Not Determined By Their Iq But By How Well They Communicate.

You Figure Out, What Is The Crucial Issue Facing The Country Right Now? And For Trump, It Was That The Global Economy And The International World Order Were Failing Regular People.

I Just Think, Realistically, There's A Lot Of Room Outside The Trump Populist Right And The Bernie-sanders-elizabeth-warren Populist Left. There Are A Lot Of Us Who Believe In Open Trade, Open Borders, A Dynamic Forward-looking Economy, Not A Nostalgic Economy, But Do Want To Provide A Significant Level Of Social Service Or Sort Of Economic Milton Friedman Foreign Policy, Ronald Reagan Domestic Policy, Franklin Roosevelt. And There's A Lot Of Room In The Center.

If You Do Something Really Cognitively Demanding, Like Buying Furniture, It Turns Out Buying Furniture Is One Of The Most Difficult Things We Do. Go Into A Furniture Store And Look At A Sofa.

People Who Don't Like Trump Really Don't Like Trump. And I Guess I'm Among Them.

The Brain Is Not The Mind. It Is Probably Impossible To Look At A Map Of Brain Activity And Predict Or Even Understand The Emotions, Reactions, Hopes And Desires Of The Mind.

Jim Stavridis Is The Former Nato Commander Who Is Sometimes On People's Lists, Also Very Plausible, Self-possessed, Someone With Sobriety.

Donald Trump Is Sort Of An Orwellian Figure, An Authoritarian Figure Who Is Twisting Words In An Orwellian Manner, "1984," To Exercise Power And Control People's Minds, Or Is He A 5-year-old Who Has An Ego That Needs To Be Fed, And The Universe Has To Warp Around His Ego Needs So He Can Feel Good About Himself, And Everybody Has To Produce Photos To Make The Monarch Feel Like He's Made Of Gold.

What Family You Were Born Into Matters So Much More Than It Did Before In A Perverse Way.

Things That Change History Tend To Be Organized.

Republicans Are Living In A Hermetically Sealed Republican Universe, Just As Democrats Are. And So They're Responding To Their Own Universe, Even If It Leads To Electoral Downfall.

The Ugliness Can Sometimes Be Super Ugly, But Also A Warning Sign Of Something Down Below.

Basically, Less Educated Or High School-educated Whites Are Going To Donald Trump. It Doesn't Matter What The Guy Does. And College-educated Going To Hillary Clinton.

There Will Just Always Be A Distance Between You And The People Around You. Now, [hillary Clinton] Can Clearly Emotionally Connect With Her Intimates Within The Zone Of Trust. It's Just The Wall Outside The Zone Of Trust Is So Impermeable.

I Think The Republican Budget Priorities Are Messed Up. I Salute For The Way They're Attacking Some Of The Entitlement Programs, But They Are Taking Huge Cuts, By Pretending They're Just Block-granting It To The States, Out Of Medicaid, From The Least Fortunate.

I Think As We Interpret Him And Frankly As The World Learns To Interpret Donald Trump, Are These Just Words That Are Enigmatic Things Floating On Air Or Are They Actually Shifts In Policy And Will They Change Moment By Moment, Day By Day Without Any Underlying Connection To The Actual Stuff Of Governance? I Don't Know.

The People Who Really Have Character Make Deep, Unshakable Connections To Something Outside Themselves.

When Your Institution Is Under Assault, You're Feeling Like The Weight Is On It And The History Might Be Flowing Away, Don't Turn Inward, Go Outward.

The Thing That Should Most Concern Us Is A Shift In American Foreign Policy. We Have Had A Bipartisan Belief In American Foreign Policy Based On The Post-world War Ii Institutions That Believed In Democratic Global World, Which Russia And The Soviet Union Was Often Seen As Hostile To. And Most Republicans And Democrats Have Always Basically Believed In This World Order. Donald Trump And Vladimir Putin And Maybe Marine Le Pen Do Not Agree With This Basic Structure Of The World.

There Are No Free And Democratic And Wealthy Countries In The World That Have Us Rate Of Gun Violence. We Have To Worry About Loners And Alienated People. We Have To Do Better On Mental Health.

I Sort Of Feel We Have To Owe Some Respect To The Process And Owe Some Respect To The Electorate And The People Who Voted Donald Trump, On The Assumption That They Have Something To Teach Us.

Most People Don't Form A Self And Then Lead A Life. They Are Called By A Problem, And The Self Is Constructed Gradually By Their Calling.

If There Is A Series Of Attacks Like That Or, God Forbid, If Isis Is Really Sending Soldiers Across Europe And Maybe Across The World For A Barrage Of These Things, Then The Political Climate Is Revolutionized Here. And Maybe The [donald] Trump Speech Will Look Like A Precursor To A Climate That We're All About To Walk Into.

Putin's An Egomaniac, So There Are Two Ways He Can Process His Ego Mania. He Can Say, "oh, I Stood Up To The U.s.," Or, "hey, I'm Essential To The World Order."

I Think That It's An Arguable Position, Whether With Hamas And Isis Around, Whether There Should Be A Palestinian State, But It's A Defensible Position, Given The Current Circumstances.

People Generally Don't Suffer High Rates Of Ptsd After Natural Disasters. Instead, People Suffer From Ptsd After Moral Atrocities. Soldiers Who've Endured The Depraved World Of Combat Experience Their Own Symptoms. Trauma Is An Expulsive Cataclysm Of The Soul.

I Think The Presidency Is A Bad Way To Measure The Effective Campaign Finance, Because In The Presidency, There Is So Much Publicity, There's So Much Money Floating Around.

Hillary Clinton Is Still - She's Such A Private Person.

Donald Trump's World View Is That It's A Dangerous, Miserable Place, People Are Out To Get Him, And He Needs To Strike Them First.

There Are Plenty Of Team Players In Government Who Do Whatever The Leader Says. There Are Too Few Difficult Members, Who Have Complicated Minds, Unusual Perspectives, The Toughness To Withstand The Party-line Barrages And A Practical Interest In Producing Results.

The Things That Make Them Similar - Their Machismo, Their Expansionary Braggadocio - Is Going To Turn Them I Think Into Bitter And Dangerous Enemies. We Will Look Back On This Moment Where We Thought Vladimir Putin And Donald Trump Were Sort Of Close As A Moment Of Bitter Irony, When They Get Into A Schoolyard Display Against Each Other, Amping Up Each Other's Worst Tendencies And Putting The Two Countries In Some Sort Of Scary Position.

There Is A Virtue In Shamelessness.

Your Dvd Collection Is Organized, And So Is Your Walk-in Closet. Your Car Is Clean And Vacuumed, Your Frequently Dialed Numbers Are Programmed Into Your Cordless Phone, Your Telephone Plan Is Suited To Your Needs, And Your Various Gizmos Interact Without Conflict. Your Spouse Is Athletic, Your Kids Are Bright, Your Job Is Rewarding, Your Promotions Are Inevitable, Everywhere You Need To Be Comes With Its Own Accessible Parking. You Look Great In Casual Slacks.

Who Could Have Predicted This, That The Presidency Is Kind Of A Hard Job? Nobody Knew That. I Also Like The Fact That Trump Is A Detail-oriented Person. I Find His Interviews Amazing. He's Actually Kind Of Remarkably Candid.

The Three People Who Are Most Often Talked About With Hillary Clinton, Whether It's Tim Kaine Or Vilsack Or Cory Booker, They Are Three Extremely Nice People.

The Policies Of The Democratic Party Have Always Been In Cultural Consonance With The Culture Of The Working Class. And, Somehow, They Missed That.

The Legitimacy Of A War Is Not Established By How It Is Organized But By What It Achieves.

Putin Is Someone Who Has Been Undermining The Norms Of What We Consider The World Order Since He Got Into Power And In Increasing Success.

Putin Has Been - And With A Lot Of The Groups, The Conservative Groups, The More Extreme Conservative Groups That Underlie Trump, He's A Bit Of A Hero Because He Speaks For Traditional Values, He's Against The Global Institutions.

It's A Completely Irrational Decision To Drop Out Of School.

I'm Not Sure [donald] Trump Has Had That Distinction Between Private And Public Life In His Head. And So, I Think There's Likely To Be An Erosion Of Just That Standard, That Different Standard, Consciousness, And I Think It's Likely We'll See What We Haven't Seen In The Last Eight Years And Even The Last 12 Or 16 Of Private Enrichment In Office And Scandals Where People Have To Resign And Things Like That, Because Just Once The Standards Go, Behavior Tends To Go.

Democrats In Environmental Agencies Tend To Be More Sensitive To Environmental Harm. And Republicans Tend To Be More Sensitive To Business Harm.

In My View, Success Is Earned Externally By Being Better Than Other People. But Character, That Sort Of Unfakeable Goodness, Is Earned By Being Better Than You Used To Be. And It's About Self-confrontation.

Betsy Devos Is Not The Most Informed Person On Education Policy, But I Have Seen Her Present A Few Times, And She Presents As A Pretty Respectable, Intelligent Person Who Has Cared Passionately About Education And Cares About Charter Schools.

The Roots Of Great Innovation Are Never Just In The Technology Itself. They Are Always In The Wider Historical Context. They Require New Ways Of Seeing. As Einstein Put It, 'the Significant Problems We Face Cannot Be Solved At The Same Level Of Thinking We Were At When We Created Them.'

On The Larger Issue Of The Travel Ban, Our Friend Charles Krauthammer Of The Washington Post I Think Put It Pretty Well. I'm Not Sure It's Illegal, But It's Extremely Stupid.

Donald Trump Is This Whirling Dervish Of Chaos. He Picked A Fight With Mexico. Germany Is Not Far Behind. He Will Pick A Fight With Them. He Will Pick A Fight With China, Which Would Be Truly Cataclysmic.

Bibi Netanyahu, Froze The Settlements And Offered To Go Toward A Two-state Solution. The Palestinians Didn't Take Him Up On It. Historically, We Have Had A Series Of These Offers. And The Settlements Themselves Are Not The Keystone Here. It Seems To Me Myopic And Bizarre That At The Last Moment, The Barack Obama Administration Would Surrender The Whole Balanced Array Of Policies That Are Obstacles To Peace And Focus On The One That Is Most Detrimental To Israel.

I'm Not A Kicker And A Screamer.

Memo To Young Journalists: Democratic Victories Are Always Ascribed To Hope; Republican Ones To Rage.

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