Flyover Man: See ya in hell, brother.

David Brooks hates Donald Trump but strives to love his voters. He takes their side in an imaginary dialogue pitting "Flyover Man," presumably representing the country between the coasts, and "Urban Guy," apparently an indiscriminate hater of all things Trumpian. Flyover Man apparently doesn't give a damn about the Ukraine scandal, though Brooks has him acknowledge that whatever Trump attempted with the Ukrainian government isn't even "among the 25 worst things he's done." Flyover Man, Brooks believes, will stick with Trump through thick and thin, and with fewer reservations in 2020 than he had in 2016. That's because Trump remains -- in Flyover Man's or Brooks' opinion -- the only politician who "saw us." Democrats, meanwhile, remain "unable to acknowledge our problems." What are these problems? They include the disappearance of "good jobs for hardworking people," which Democrats certainly don't ignore, but also the spread of "a cultural liberalism you preach but don't practice [?]" that results in "the breakdown of families up and down my block," the belief that "China is replacing us," and -- probably the dealbreaker for many Democrats -- the belief that "mass immigration is changing my town, region and state." While these problems persist, Democrats appear concerned only with impeachment, open borders, and socialism. Flyover Man claims -- it's unclear whether Brooks agrees with this or not -- that to vote Democrat in 2020 is to "sign up for our own obliteration." Such talk, including the claim that 2020 will be about "identity and pride," most likely makes Flyover Man's complaint that "every time I open my mouth you call me a bigot" a self-fulfilling prophecy. Since Brooks is a conservative columnist, Flyover Man gets, however improbably, the last word, but the columnist must realize that he hasn't really furthered what I presume is his own agenda, which is to get real Flyover Man a more sympathetic hearing from the media mainstream. Brooks's Flyover Man seems to fear the mere fact of change or transformation, inevitable as these are in the modern world, and that fear only confirms liberal bias against him and his causes. On the other hand, determined to show that Flyover Man is not a knee-jerk bigot, Brooks emphasizes his protagonists moral concerns over a vague yet presumably hypocritical "cultural liberalism." Brooks himself is more a critic of liberalism than a political conservative at this point -- he indicts capitalist individualism as well as cultural liberalism in other writings -- but even to talk of "cultural liberalism" in such general and pejorative terms is likely to get Flyover Man, if not Brooks himself, denounced as some Moral Majority troglodyte. It's unclear whether real Flyover Men are as reticent as Brooks suggests -- his protagonist keeps his opinions to himself out of fear of "blue cultural privilege" and claims to work too hard to pay attention to social media -- but it's also unclear what they (or he) expect from the wider world. Brooks asks for the right to say that liberalism is wrong without being slandered, but liberals have just as much right, as experience shows, to say that conservatism, not to mention Trumpism, is wrong.  Again, most observers will readily acknowledge that Flyover Man, his "privilege" notwithstanding, has had it rough lately, but if acknowledging that requires you to affirm that Flyover Man is some sort of blameless innocent and right in all his concerns and desires -- if it obliges you to endorse Brooks's own agenda of restoring some sort of Judeo-Christian traditionalism reinforced by a more strident nationalism that the nation has ever known -- then Flyover Man should expect further disappointment. Brooks's protagonist, after vowing to stick with "my captain," the President, through thick and thin, closes with "See ya in hell, brother." If that's where we're going in 2020 and beyond, though, that's as much on him and his kind as on anyone else.