I don’t bother with the liberal media Trump critics anymore. I get my most useful news from anti-Trump conservative sources like The Dispatch, as well as writers about culture and religion.

Have I, a liberal, crossed the line over to the dark side conservative enemy?

If that’s your reaction, well then, I’m talking to you here. 

How’s it going in that bubble of yours?

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You and the liberal Trump critics that get too much of your attention are ensnared in The Trump Trap, which is a thick bubble of confirmation bias that obsesses on Trump.

I learn more from looking at a tiny Catholic college in Steubenville, Ohio, than I do from the daily media dish about the Iran War. (More on Steubenville later).

Here’s The Trap in action: 

Trump fills the room with his blustering inconsistencies, lies and broken promises. 

The liberal media dutifully and critically describe his behavior for the umpteenth time. Another day at the repetition office.

Each day another example, each day another barrage of critiques, and each day a reinforcement of the beliefs of people who have been reinforced so many times before.

“Look, he’s doing it again!”

How many times does that opinion of yours have to be reinforced? Apparently, as many as possible. The biggest problem with The Trap is that it’s biased — not because it is too partisan but because it’s too narrow.

It’s biased in favor of a kind of knowledge that is laser-focused on the president and on the events of the day, ignoring so many other important things. 

And that’s the bubble. “You can spend years inside a bubble,” Jesse Singal, a journalist and podcaster, writes, “convincing yourself and your friends both that a certain thing is true and that you all have a moral imperative to believe it is true.” 

No other view, then, is worth considering.

This contributes to polarization, dehumanization, diminishing trust of others, increasing distrust of institutions and a narrow view of the world around you.

Those things are the reasons why, as Jonathan Haidt puts it in The Atlantic, American life has become “uniquely stupid. And it’s not just a phase.”

We’ll look at two examples. One involves diversity in the workplace, specifically a case recently brought by a white male against The New York Times. 

The other, more general, is about misunderstanding the role of religion and culture.

Haidt says the best way to break out of the bubble is to expose yourself to ideas you oppose. Less reinforcement and more engagement, even if — really because — this engagement can be uncomfortable.

What Donald Trump has done to the legal system is a travesty. He has made the Justice Department into his personal fiefdom that does what he wants.

The lawsuits his administration has filed against universities certainly have a taste of vengeance about them. Its attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion programs feel like a purge.

But sometimes they may be right on the merits.

Take the recent EEOC case against the Times on behalf of a white male claiming that the paper discriminated against him in a hiring decision.

An easy case for people in the Trump bubble. Those opposing his claim accuse the plaintiff of being just another overly entitled whiny white guy acting as a point person in Trump’s fight against diversity, equity and inclusion. 

And that’s it. No look at the details of complaint, instead, according to Singal, simply “giving this whole story the stench of yet another instance of Trump and his toadies unfairly attacking the media.”

Conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan is absolutely certain that the Times is in the wrong. “Discriminating against people of color and discriminating in favor of political color,” he says, are equally wrong.

For now, you don’t have to be that certain, one way or the other.

Two things make the case more complicated. One is that diversifying the workplace continues to involve, as Singal says, “a fiendishly complex array of legal, regulatory, and political factors.”

The other, and this was true when I worked at the University of Hawaiʻi, there were a lot of gray areas, that is, legally precarious informal talk about how to hire more women and minorities.

That was the goal. You try to find a way to deal with the obstacles and not end up in court.

I’m not telling you which side is right. I’m not sure myself yet. But making your choice without even examining the evidence is harmful. Period.

Religion and culture. The bubble treats them as if religion and culture are at best somewhere “out there,” an extra in a movie about big-time politics, or at worst, as a problem rather than a solution.

This Trump bubble focuses entirely on politics, as if the world is going to change dramatically if the Democrats win the midterms in 2026 or the presidency in 2028. 

Politics does not change the culture that easily. Anger, distrust, despair and polarization are very much about culture.

David Brooks, the former New York Times columnist now at The Atlantic, says that culture has to change before significant political change occurs. I don’t go that far, but certainly social change involves developments that go far beyond Trump, Gavin Newsom and gerrymandering.

That’s why moving outside the bubble needs to consider religion alongside politics. 

Simply put, religious thought and action are additional sources of ideas when we need all the ideas we can get.

Up go the red flags, right? Trump’s claim that America should be one nation under God, Christian nationalism, “those evangelicals.” 

Understood. But religious thinking also contributes in good ways. Faith-based ideas should not be just for the religious.

Religious thinkers offer a useful vocabulary for talking about virtue. We need to talk about virtue. 

Think of your own lives, whether you’re religious or not. You may hope your kids follow your political footsteps, but what you actually try to teach them or show them is how to be a good person, kind, generous, full of virtue.

Like the ideas of Dallin H. Oaks, the head of the Mormon church. He has developed a “civic theology” for how to fight for your principles but at the same time be willing to moderate them. 

“Principled Accommodation,” Oaks calls it. 

It’s not about compromise. It’s about a moral commitment to listening and understanding people with whom you disagree and not to treat political opponents as enemies to be defeated.

It’s about being committed to the process that drives this theology, even if you end up losing.

The church made these principles work with the “Utah Compromise” which managed to accommodate LDS principles about same sex marriage and gays’ concerns about protections of their rights. Utah’s governor, Spencer Cox, has clearly been influenced by these principles.

It’s one thing for the worldwide head of a church to advocate this, where morality is anchored in LDS authority.

Even so, it could act as a guide grounded in experience.

Not many of you are going to put aside a Sunday football game in order to go into your study and read, I don’t know, Thomas Aquinas. 

A more realistic way of breaking out of the bubble is to think about these issues in your own terms. What would a more virtuous society look like? What cultural changes would you like? How could they come about? What does morality mean to you?

That’s why, whether you are Catholic or not, St. Joseph the Worker College, a tiny new school located in Steubenville, Ohio, a heavily Catholic former industrial town that has seen better days, is so relevant.

Students earn a liberal-arts degree in Catholic studies. At the same time, they learn a trade like plumbing and electrical work and use those skills to rebuild Steubenville.

Every morning, the students are encouraged to attend Mass in town. They have a full academic load, and they work in the community both as tradespeople and as models of Catholic faith. 

Of course St. Joseph the Worker’s situation is exceptional, but here’s why I found it intriguing and useful

It is so different from my own life. I’m not Catholic or very religious.

It combines the quiet contemplation of spirituality with the action of community work. 

There is real community renewal happening because of the physical trades work the students do and because Catholic families are moving to Steubenville due to its growing reputation as a good place for Catholic families to live. Urban renewal in both spiritual and material ways.

I loved the students’ energy and their commitment. They were devout Catholics working in a heavily Catholic town, but there was no sense of intolerance of other beliefs.

The big one for me is that I felt inspired and a little bit optimistic, something I have not felt about politics for a long, long time.

As my grandma might have said to her cocky big-mouthed grandson, “Mister Know It All, you think you know everything? God forbid, you should get a second opinion.”