Stripped down, here’s David Brooks’ take on “Joe Biden and the Struggle for America’s Soul”:  Joe Biden built his 2020 presidential campaign around the idea that “we’re in a battle for the soul of America.”  What is a soul? Biden is not using the word in a religious sense.    .    . He is saying that people and nations have a moral essence, a soul. The soul is.   .   . the emotions that make us feel admiration at the sight of generosity and disgust at the sight of cruelty.   .   . when [people] feel their lives have no moral purpose, they experience a sickness of the soul — a sense of lostness, pain and self-contempt. Because we have souls, we are morally responsible for what we do.   .   . Donald Trump, and Trumpism generally, is the embodiment of an ethos that .    .    .  deadens the soul under the reign of the ego. Trumpism.    ....