By Blox Content Management,By Frank Bruni and Bret Stephens

Copyright berkshireeagle

Frank Bruni: Bret, after the heartache and fury of the past week, it’s good to be here with you, a friend — and, more to the point, a friend whose courtesy and sincerity don’t waver even when our views diverge.

Bret Stephens: As our friend and colleague Roger Cohen likes to say: mutual.

Frank: I suspect I’m a proxy for many millions of Americans when I say how much I’d like you to assure me — to persuade me — that I shouldn’t feel as anxious and scared as I do, that I’m suffering some liberal overreaction when I hear these pledges from President Donald Trump, from Vice President JD Vance, from (who else?) Stephen Miller, to prosecute and punish groups on the left that they’ve painted as sponsors of political violence. This feels to me like the latest opportunistic lurch toward the authoritarianism that the president and his minions really do want in America.

Bret: It’s not only scary, it’s gross. They’re wasting no time turning the tragedy of Charlie Kirk’s assassination into a political project.

Frank: Hell of a way to honor someone you revered.

Bret: Look, I do think this is an occasion for some quiet introspection on the part of the political left that has spent a decade treating Trump supporters as wannabe fascists. Speech, of course, isn’t violence, but there’s too much overheated rhetoric coming from the side of the political divide that likes to think of itself as the tolerant, nicer group of people.

That said, I don’t think my saying this carries much weight. Liberals don’t need a conservative like me to hector them. It should be up to people on the left to try to bring down the rhetorical temperature on their own side, just as it should be up to those of us on the right to do the same for our side. Right now, that’s not happening.

Frank: You will get no pushback from me on the smug moral superiority of far too many liberals. No pushback against the call for people on the left to own up to their use of inflammatory language. But I will challenge the intensity and lopsided nature of the focus on the left. It diminishes attention to the president’s language, which easily rivals what he’s railing against. And Trump, I repeat, is the president. Also, we can chicken-and-egg this thing until the cows come home.

Bret: And the jury will be out until the fat lady sings. Any other metaphors you want to mix?

Frank: I did not mix metaphors! I stuck with farm creatures! In any case, an additional point: While the quickness of “Nazi” from the left — but, let’s be clear, not all the left or even most of the left — was very wrong for so very many reasons, Trump and his henchmen would decree some descriptors off limits largely because they’re apt.

I mentioned “authoritarianism” earlier. I’m sure Trump would consider that a lefty slur. It’s not. It’s an accurate description of the direction in which we’re pointed, and a concerned observer needs to say that. Excessively neutered language equals inadequately mustered urgency.

Bret: Where I think you’re right is that we have a complete absence of moral leadership in the White House. Just compare the vindictive, divisive, angry way Trump responded to Kirk’s assassination to the statesmanlike speech that Joe Biden gave last year after the first assassination attempt on Trump’s life. As I’ve said before, Trump is the first president in our history to invert Lincoln: He speaks with malice toward all and charity for none. He makes Nixon look like Churchill.

You’re also right on the question of authoritarianism, at least in terms of where Trump would like to go if Congress and the Supreme Court let him. But there’s a difference between calling out the president and calling out his supporters. Most Trump voters I know are, at least in part, rebelling against a kind of leftist cultural autocracy that tries too hard to dictate what they can say, how they should think, and what identity they must have in order to opine on one subject or another. The truth is that illiberalism courses through both sides.

Frank: It does. The itch to repress is as human as the contrary yearning for freedom. But what worries me about the observation that you just made is that in its tit-for-tat-ness, it takes us away from the singularity, or at least distinctiveness, of what we’ve seen over these past eight months, which is executive overreach unlike anything in more than 50 years, at the least; government purges; extortion of law firms and universities; a tariff roller coaster that casts Congress as spectators, not consultants and participants.

About Congress — you wrote “if” Congress lets Trump do as he wishes. Have you met the current Republican majority? You know, the one that confirmed Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard? Kash Patel?

Bret: Hey, I said “Congress,” not this Congress.

Frank: Wait, wait, does that mean you’re rooting, as I am, for a Democratic House majority after November 2026 and you, like me, see that as the whole ballgame? Oops, did I mix any metaphors?

Bret: My literary platform calls for unmixed metaphors and my political one for divided government. But I don’t think we get there by hyperventilating over the looming end of democracy. America has been through worse: presidents who ignored the will of the Supreme Court (Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln); presidents who imprisoned their political critics (Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson); presidents who sent thousands of Americans into camps on transparently racist grounds (Franklin Roosevelt); presidents who deported over 1 million undocumented workers (Dwight Eisenhower and Barack Obama); presidents who declared, via social media, the ratification of a new constitutional amendment (Biden) … I could go on. My point is that America is resilient. It will survive Trump if his political opponents can turn themselves into a more attractive alternative.

Frank: Let’s skip the bashing of Democrats this week; it takes Trump off the hook.

Bret: And you!

Frank: Sure, but — barnyard metaphor alert — it’s beating a dead donkey at this point.

Bret: OK, but an elephant never forgets.

Frank: Back to your impressive tour through “presidents who.” Let’s not let that distract us from a president who exploits his office to make billions for himself and his kin off cryptocurrency schemes. A president who breaks new ground — congratulations! — by suing media organizations while in office.

Speaking of which, I want to make sure everyone read about or saw his exchange with Jonathan Karl of ABC News on Tuesday. Karl asked him: “What do you make of Pam Bondi saying she’s going to go after hate speech?” Trump answered: “She’ll probably go after people like you because you treat me so unfairly. It’s hate. You have a lot of hate in your heart.” Trump added that he’d extracted millions from ABC News in the settlement of a lawsuit. And then repeated that maybe Bondi should pursue Karl.

Bret, we must, absolutely, talk about historical context. But we must also recognize that Trump is sui generis — and so dangerous — and we must make sure that putting him in this, that or the other context is never a pacifier.

Bret: Again, you’ll get no argument from me on any of this. Trump is appalling. I’m still confident we’ll survive the moment, at least nationally.

Frank: Can I ask you a personal question?

Bret: Please do.

Frank: In this poisonous political environment that we’ve been examining and ruing over the past week, amid all the violence of recent years, are you afraid for your own safety?

Bret: Sadly, yes. The other week I did an event at a synagogue in New York, interviewing a former colleague from The Jerusalem Post about his new book about Israel’s security failures before Oct. 7. Two years ago, it wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow. This time there was a small but loud protest accusing me of supporting genocide; a city-block-sized barricade around the synagogue; dozens of police officers outside and heavy security inside. Even then we were interrupted by about a half-dozen hecklers. I’m lucky none of them tried to rush the stage. I won’t get into other details about personal security, but especially after Kirk’s assassination it’s not a simple matter to appear in public.

I’m not a politician or a policymaker. I’m a guy whose job is to offer a point of view for others to agree or disagree with as they choose. Or just ignore! It’s insane that I should now feel as concerned for my safety in America as I did when I’d travel to places like Pakistan or Lebanon, or when I worked in Israel during the second intifada.

How about you?

Frank: Despite receiving emails as nasty and chilling as you can imagine, I haven’t worried about physical safety. I have worried — I do worry — about intellectual safety, about safely speaking my mind, about the repercussions. I’m always aware of how much Trump and his allies are trying to intimidate and soften the voices of the likes of me. I mean, sheesh, I’m a contemptible trifecta for the MAGA right: a mainstream-media journalist, a professor at an elite university and someone represented in the LGBT consonant cluster. Sometimes when I write, I feel a tiny trembling inside. Maybe not so tiny. And I never felt that before the past eight months.

Bret: That’s so depressing to hear. And so telling, particularly in what it says about the MAGA right, despite all of its complaints about censorship and cancel culture. It’s not interested in free speech or justice. It’s only about turning tables.

Frank: Enough gloom. What if anything have you read lately that gave you hope? Or at least made you smile?

Bret: Politically, the only silver lining from last week was the emergence of Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah, as a composed and statesmanlike voice of decency and good sense, calling on younger people to “log off, turn off, touch grass, hug a family member, go out and do good in your community.” And he’s a Republican — a good reminder that not everyone in the party has lost his mind.

Frank: “Touch grass” indeed. As you know, Bret, from having accompanied me and my dog on our woodland walks, I’m a nature guy. So I loved Gavin Pretor-Pinney’s recent guest essay — with delightful graphics by Taylor Maggiacomo — about the wonder of our fleecy, ever-shifting skyscape and his founding 20 years ago of the Cloud Appreciation Society. He wrote that he wanted more people to remember “to look up.” Me, too — from our screens, from our pique, from our pettiness, to the better angels that are still within our grasp.

Bret: Mutual, buddy. Mutual.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.