In The Age of Grievance, longtime New York Times columnist and best-selling author Frank Bruni analyzes the ways in which grievance has come to define our current culture and politics, on both the right and left.
An official description of the book on the Simon and Schuster website states, "More and more Americans are convinced that they're losing because somebody else is winning. More and more tally their slights, measure their misfortune, and assign particular people responsibility for it. The blame game has become the country's most popular sport and victimhood its most fashionable garb."
Bruni, who will be appearing in a Chicago Humanities Festival program April 27, spoke with Windy City Times about the various results of grievances, how humility can possibly bring about some unity and why he feels privileged to be part of the LGBTQ+ community.
NOTE: This conversation was edited for clarity and length.
Windy City Times: I want to start with a general question. Are grievances inherently personal?
Frank Bruni: Let me think about that. The answer is "Yes, and" or "Yes, but." We feel grievances very personally but often, like, we share them with other people and they become a group grievance. That's why I'm hesitating.
WCT: I know this is asking you to speculate, but what percentage of grievances would you say is based on actual fact versus perceived fact?
FB: That depends on the grievance, right?
I'm speaking in generalizations here, but more often that not, there is some measure of factual root in pretty much every grievance. There are some conspiracy theories that are completely untethered from reality but even those are born in the soil of something real. It's just that what grows from that soil is so wild and fantastical, that it doesn't matter if it had a root in some reality.
Grievances are often seen as pejorative, as opposed to a cause or a calling—those are good things. What unites them is [that], whether they are rooted substantially in fact or have trace minerals of fact, they tend to grow in a way that has people wrapped up in the act of expressing their grievances as they do in solving the problem that was there in the beginning.
WCT: It's interesting that you distinguish grievances from causes or callings. You do say that not all grievances are bad. What's an example of a good one?
FB: What makes this tough to talk about, though, is a vocabulary problem. If you just look at the definition of "grievance" in the abstract—and it's also in the First Amendment—[it] just means a complaint about an injustice. So, in that sense, many grievances are not only good, but they're righteous and necessary. But now, a grievance connotes something that's possibly petty, possibly overlooked, possibly obnoxious, self-pitying complaint.
But iff we take the historical or abstract definition, I can think of many good grievances. The civil-rights movement was built on a righteous, necessary grievance—with the grievance being that we're being treated unequally and savagely. In fact, any movement in which people were being denied the same rights and opportunities as other people were [based] on grievances. But we wouldn't call those grievances today because the word has taken on such negative connotations.
WCT: So those would be called causes.
FB: I would call them causes to distinguish them. Every time I see "grievance" referred to in political coverage, it mostly connotes whininess, an addiction to anger, or anger for anger's sake. So I don't think we can use that word. I think "cause" works. I don't like "crusade" because it makes something sound too much like an obsession. And I wouldn't call segregation a "complaint."
WCT: There are so many sentences and passages in The Age of Grievance that I found compelling. But one of them is "The fruits of the grievances on the left don't match the fruits of the grievances on the right."
FB: The fruits of the grievances on the right are Jan. 6. Apart from the revisionists and conspiracy theorists who said, "No! It's really Antifa!," the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol and caused that destruction and deaths were taking part in something that was organized by the people on the right. I can't sit here right now and think of something that happened on the left that represented that kind of breach of a sanctuary. The left didn't try to overturn a legitimate election.
If you look at extremist political violence over the last 10 years—or from [bomber] Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City from 1995 forward—you cannot find perfectly analogous, commensurate activity of that particular nature on the left.
So that's what I mean by the fruits not being equal. But one of the reasons I point that out in the book is because, if you recognize that there is no equivalency on the left, it is nonetheless true that the dynamics of itching to see how you've been wronged, and to appoint villains as well as appointing an agenda, are across the spectrum. To deny that they exist on the left is to be dishonest and prevent meaningful conversation—but that does not mean that we find equal severity with those on the right.
WCT: I can almost hear someone on the right respond, "Well, what about the rioting and looting that took place after the George Floyd [murder]?"
FB: It's worth bringing up, but was it political violence of the stripe you saw in Oklahoma City? No—it was much more spontaneous than that. Was it anything like Jan. 6? No. Did people on the left plan to kidnap a Republican governor like the people on the right tried with Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer? No. Now have we had violence with people who would be on the political left? Yes, but the response to George Floyd's killing was not an attempt to upset or overthrow the government. Some may disagree.
WCT: I found myself nodding in agreement a lot when I read your book. One of those moments happened when I read what you wrote about COVID. I truly thought that was going to be the great equalizer in terms of forming national solidarity—but it didn't happen [because of mask-wearing].
FB: No. [The division] told me that we're not in a place where [solidarity] can't happen right now. I'm not saying it could never happen again, though.
As opposed to 9/11, this situation told me that we're so polarized that even when there's a common threat, we can't find durable common ground. COVID is an example of all sorts of things that come up in my discussion of grievances in my book.
But across the political spectrum, people are too quick to decide on a certain angle or accept a bit of information, and are too quick to insult, look down on and vilify people who aren't on the same page as they are.
Regarding those of us who call ourselves Democrats or liberals, if we're not honest about the fact that there was a significant passage of time early in the pandemic when we mocked people who talked about the lab-leak hypothesis… There's this tendency in society to rush toward an interpreted version of events that validates your view of the world, and to cling to it before we know enough for it to be clung to.
One of the things that I hope I make a sustained case for in the book is for rediscovering situations in which ambivalence and ambiguity are appropriate responses. Those are not failures of character or conviction; they are often triumphs of patience. And with bad actors and agents, we can at least try to understand how they arrived at their [positions], as opposed to simply mocking them, which won't change the situation and might even exacerbate them.
WCT: You also include solutions—and humility is a core part of your antidotes, whether they involve political leaders, activists, journalists and the reader.
FB: When you think about adult grievances, so often we're being "un-humble." In the case of certain grievances, we're basically saying, "I know what's right. I know the truth and how dare you disagree with me?" Well, that's not helping.
There are certain matters that are incontrovertible, but not all arguments fall into a clear dichotomy of right and wrong. When you insist on seeing yourself as a victim, and you're vilifying the other side in situations where there's a genuine disagreement, you are basically saying, "I'm better than everyone else." Our politicians—when they refuse to compromise with the other side and find common ground—are denying the validity of other perspectives and denying the possibly good intentions of people who have other ideas. When we cancel people for their worst behavior rather than try to coax the best behavior, we're being un-humble because we're not recognizing that we err all the time.
If we were less narcissistic and solipsistic, we would realize that we need to find solutions together because we rise and fall with each other. That requires an approach to the world in which everything is not about you.
WCT: Was there anything that you learned about grievances after the book came out that you wish you had included?
FB: That's a good question. There are things that have happened in the public square that have me saying, "Oh, that fits in." I actually have a file on my computer of articles that have come out since I could no longer change anything in the book—but they're all extrapolations of what's already going on. We constantly get new flesh on the bones of Trump claiming persecution. But they're just new, more operatic verses of what he's been singing for a while. I feel like I was able to hit all the notes that were there; it's just that the song has proceeded after I stopped being the one playing it at my grievance piano.
WCT: I like the extended musical metaphor. I wanted to end with a general question: For you, what does it mean to be part of the LGBTQ+ community in today's America?
FB: The first answer that came to me is going to sound a little weird but it feels like a real privilege.
What I mean by "privilege"—and I think about this a lot, and I'm going to get misty—is that I'm concerned that we're not committed to the kind of progress that we need to be. I worry that so many things are trending in the wrong direction. And I often get pessimistic, in the way that so many Americans get pessimistic.
Then I remember that those of us in the LGBTQ+ community are leaving examples of how much things can change for the better, and how those trend lines are going in the wrong direction. Even in the era of Donald Trump's Republican Party, even in an era of so much hateful speech all over the place, the House of Representatives, in a bipartisan vote, and the Senate, in a filibuster-proof bipartisan majority, established same-sex marriage [in 2022, with the Respect for Marriage Act].
I feel privileged to have seen the advances in my lifetime, and I feel so privileged and lucky to live in this world. I remember how much fear one could have about being an outcast. When I think about being a teenager in the '80s and how interwoven we are into society today, I feel privileged. It does not mean that we can be complacent; there are instances that still happen that are unforgivable, that show that there's the possibility of regress and that show that acceptance is not in every region—yet. But we are living lives that were unimaginable, in many ways, 30 years ago.
Frank Bruni will be part of this year's Chicago Humanities Festival, talking about An Age of Grievance with Interfaith America founder Eboo Patel at the Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St., on Saturday, April 27, 3-4 p.m. CT. The event is currently sold out, but to see other festival discussions, visit chicagohumanities.org/events/ .
