The July 24 N.Y. Times column by Bret Stephens — "I Was Wrong About Trump Voters" — is not, well, "persuasive," even though he concludes the column stating that he is "in the business of persuasion."  He makes it clear, by that admission, that he is a propagandist, not a journalist.  It is the propagandist who seeks to convert people to his way of thinking, which of course is to imply that his way of thinking is the only legitimate one.  The journalist is concerned with giving people an accurate record of the events of the day ("journalism," after all, comes from the French word for day — jour).  The journalist, therefore, is concerned with informing readers, not persuading them.

Stephens makes some admissions in this column, but the admissions themselves are not persuasive.  He began the column by acknowledging that, seven years ago, he spat out the charge, "'If by now you don't find Donald Trump appalling, you're appalling.'"  But what does an intended insult directed to Trump-supporters have to do with providing them with information?  Castigating is nothing more than personally-spewed venom, not the reporting of fact.

Stephens admits to this by noting that, compared to his comments on Pres. Trump, his criticism of Barack Obama was "more abstract than personal."

He goes on to claim that while he and his family are well off, he did not appreciate the reality that his class was insulating itself from the thrashings the economy is delivering daily to most Americans.  But by refusing to recognize that the country was far, far better off under President Trump than it is under Biden, Stephens continues to assert that his sense of personal superiority over President Trump is the standard by which Trump is to be measured.

Apparently, Stephens is so self-righteous that he does not realize that this statement, in mid-column, is self-inculpatory: "I could have thought a little harder about the fact that, in my dripping condescension toward his supporters, I was also confirming their suspicions about people like me — people who talked a good game about the virtues of empathy but practice it only selectively[.]"

The operative words in the foregoing statement are "my dripping condescension toward [Trump's] supporters."

Stephens gives no indication that he respects those of us who see Donald J. Trump as a reformer in the tradition of conservative populists.  Quite the contrary, as Stephens continues to assert, falsely, that with a second term, President Trump would "try ... to break the Republic itself," he reveals himself to be an orthodox propagandist for the class he represents, not a journalist — the aggrandizing class, bent on living the good life on the sacrifices of the common folk.

My late mom, Annie Zukerman, had a rather harsh description of nasty, snobbish people that comes to mind as Bret Stephens reveals himself to be, au fond, "a snake in the grass."

Image: N.Y. Times.