On Thursday, writing for The New York Times, conservative columnist David Brooks outlined how President Donald Trump has embraced "mean world values" to put on an "apocalyptic" spectacle at the Republican National Convention, and glorify bullying behavior.
"Trump family values are mean world values," wrote Brooks. "Mean world syndrome was a concept conceived in the 1970s by the communications professor George Gerbner. His idea was that people who see relentless violence on television begin to perceive the world as being more dangerous than it really is."
"Mean world thrives on fear and perpetuates itself by exaggerating fear," wrote Brooks. "Its rhetorical ploy is catastrophizing and its tone is apocalyptic. The Democrats are not just wrong, many speakers asserted this week, they are 'subverting our republic,' abolishing the suburbs, destroying Western civilization and establishing a Castro-style communist dictatorship. The Democrats, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida said, want to 'disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and invite MS-13 to live next door.' The St. Louis couple Mark and Patricia McCloskey are the team mascots of mean world. They see Black Lives Matter protesters walking past their mansion and decide they’re in the middle of a race war. They come out waving their guns."
The consequences of this is escalating tensions on both sides, wrote Brooks — the right will increasingly resort to violence, and the left will become more amenable to it in response. And all of this will undermine the foundations of democracy.
"Joe Biden is going to have to take on this widespread anxiety about personal safety by insisting that the real source of danger is Trump’s chaotic incompetence and that Trump’s mean world extremism is corrosive to the social order," concluded Brooks. "In a civilized society law and order is not established with a bullying jackboot. Law and order is established through the calm, regular enforcement of decency, so people across society behave like stable, honorable human beings."
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