The New York Times insufferable pontificator-in-chief David Brooks is calling for a revolution against President Donald Trump over his economic populism and government bloat-gutting agenda. “What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal,” proclaimed Brooks in his pretentious April 17 column. The propaganda dribbled through the entire piece, and his lede sentence set the tone for it all: “In the beginning there was agony. Under the empires of old, the strong did what they willed and the weak suffered what they must.” Then Brooks tried to pathetically cast himself as a cheap carbon copy of a revolutionary like Patrick Henry if you bought him on Wish.com: “It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising.” He continued: “It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.” As Brooks' concluded, "We have nothing to lose but our chains." Might this sound like an....insurrection?   Of course, something this unglued was then promoted during his Friday night segment on the so-called PBS News Hour. Brooks justified his insane Marxist language through false equivalency, “Peoples throughout history have done exactly this when confronted by an authoritarian assault.” Brooks is actually insinuating Trump is comparable to murderous dictatorial figures in history.  So what was Brooks’ stew beef? Oh, a number of things, but nothing that justifies a call for revolution: “In one lane they are going after law firms. In another they savaged U.S.A.I.D. In another they’re attacking our universities. On yet another front they’re undermining NATO and on another they’re upending global trade.” Yes, Brooks is up-in-arms over Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency targeting the millions in waste from USAID that went to a number of leftist pet projects, one of which was the grotesquely anti-American Central European University founded by billionaire radical George Soros. Also, missing from Brooks’ agitprop was that the universities that Trump is, er, “attacking” simply involve withholding of federal dollars for institutions like Harvard University that refuse to curb the rising spread of anti-Semitism on college campuses. Because these academic organizations are choosing to be paid billions in tax dollars collectively, the government does in fact have jurisdiction to ensure those funds are being used in the public interest. But in Brooks’ lexicon, such measures constitute “attacking.”  As far as trade goes, reshuffling the geopolitical economic deck with  the imposition of tariffs was the very platform on which Trump ran his entire 2024 election campaign prior to his landslide electoral victory. In essence, he’s doing exactly what the American people voted for him to do. What the ultimate outcome of this tariff war will be, nobody knows. However, the context obliterates Brooks’ attempt at triggering a quasi-1776 “civic” revolt against Trump, which looks even more foolish and irresponsible in retrospect given that voters democratically elected Trump to stick it to countries he sees as ripping the U.S. off with unfair trade practices: In other words, a civic uprising has to have a short-term vision and a long-term vision. Short term: Stop Trump. Foil his efforts. Pile on the lawsuits. Turn some of his followers against him. The second is a long-term vision of a fairer society that is not just hard on Trump, but hard on the causes of Trumpism — one that offers a positive vision. Whether it’s the universities, the immigration system or the global economy, we can’t go back to the status quo that prevailed when Trump first rode down the escalator. Oh go take a Valium pill, David. You’re not George Washington, for goodness’ sake!