Journalist and bestselling author Frank Bruni explored 'the age of grievance" in the sold-out James P. Elder Lecture on April 9 in Whitley Auditorium.
Journalist and bestselling author Frank Bruni says American society is living in what he calls an “age of grievance,” a time where more Americans believe they are losing because someone else is winning.
“We are quicker to anger, we let anger drive too many of our interactions,” Bruni said. “There’s a culture that’s taking hold wherever everybody is taking inventory over what their slights are. They’re turning minor slights into major crises. They’re looking for someone to blame. They’re looking for someone to punish. That’s the story of our politics.”
Bruni explores this concept in his New York Times bestseller “The Age of Grievance,” and, on April 9, spoke of how society got to this place and how it can move past it, in a sold-out James P. Elder Lecture in Elon University’s Whitley Auditorium, part of the 2025-26 Elon University Speaker Series.
Bruni served at The New York Times for more than 25 years as a White House correspondent, the Rome bureau chief, the paper’s chief restaurant critic and op-ed columnist. He is the author of five New York Times bestsellers.
Assistant Professor of Political Science and Public Policy Dillan Bono-Lunn welcomed the audience Thursday night, before Charlotte Pfabe ’27, a communications fellow and “ENN Tonight” anchor, introduced Bruni. The James P. Elder Lecture series was first endowed by former students of the popular professor and mentor. An estate gift from Elder in 2021 doubled the endowment of the speaker series, ensuring it will endure for future generations.
Polluted media landscape
In his address, Bruni discussed three ways Americans got to the “age of grievance,” the first being the “polluted media landscape.” This landscape is something Bruni knows intimately after working for The New York Times. As more media outlets exists, along with social media, Bruni says that “nobody is living in the same reality.”
“Truth itself has become a marketplace with lousy merchants,” Bruni said. “There are no more gatekeepers when it comes to the information that’s put out.”
To combat this issue, Bruni says, there needs to be continuous discussions with young people about what is happening on social media and the “lopsided” role of information and whether “they are using social media or it is using them.”
Micro-climates of exclusivity
Another reason Americans have moved into the “age of grievance,” Bruni says, is because of “micro-climates of exclusivity,” how everything from entertainment, travel, dining, etc. has incorporated levels of tiering, mainly based on how much one pays. Bruni says this “pecking order” has existed for a long time in society, but has moved into “every facet, every corner of our lives.” Bruni says social media only makes the issue worse.
“There are all of these peep holes into how other people are living, and they present a very, very warped view that leads people to feel left out and resentful,” he said. “Social media platforms are engines of envy.”
But Bruni says people don’t have to buy into these micro-climates and instead focus on “civic care”: how people are taking care of society around them.
Primed for disappointment
The third reason Bruni says Americans have moved into the “age of grievance” is because they have become more pessimistic, noting that a minority of Americans now believe their children will do better than them in life.
“We’ve all become catastrophists in front of our children. We’re just so primed for disappointment,” he said. “If I believe that tomorrow is certainly going to be darker than today, if I believe everything is going to hell, then I no longer have a collaborative relationship with you.”
Though he says all hope is not lost, people should avoid activities like “doom scrolling,” where you continuously look at negative news updates on social media, and get out of a cycle of pessimism.
“We need to start talking in a more realistic fashion about whether that pessimism is warranted,” said Bruni. “So much of it is not about the world being worse, it’s about expectations and a shortfall of expectations.”
The key, Bruni says, to get out of this “age of grievance,” and not “feel terrible all the time,” starts with perspective.
“Each of us (needs) to decide not to be that person who always sees things the most darkly, who is primed for offense, who is spoiling for a fight and is looking for people to be angry,” he said. “Because the way a culture changes is with each of us, and then our friends, and then our friends’ friends, and then we actually have enough people to make a difference and have a better America.”
