re: Trump supporters are the majority

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Too many words

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Sorry, I forgot who my audience is.

I'll ratchet it back down to a 6th grade level and throw in some junior high school insults from now on so that you Trump people will understand it.

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Everyone doesn't fit into your cookie cutter categories

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Um, what I think is the largest group of Americans is the opposite of a "cookie cutter category." That's what I actually posted.

Again, I know. I went over your head and you didn't understand the post. But that's what it meant.

Let's see, what would Trump do? WWTD

I know! I'll start calling you Lake Upchuck Fan and say that you're a nasty person a few times. I'll talk about you when there is absolutely no reason to do so every chance I get. That should do it. You'll feel right at home.

Can you understand me now, Lake Upchuck?

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Our founders realized you can't have a strong nation with a weak national government. That's why they ditched the original confederation.

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"A government, of, by, and for the people" Pretty much describes populism. I like control of my government, not the opposite, but you do you Boo Boo

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The founders, being smart men realized the danger of mob rule and put protections in place for that.

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Representative Republic (which I support) is not mob rule, and can still be populist

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"A government, of, by, and for the people"

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Those words were first uttered by Abraham Lincoln who was not exactly known as a "populist". Sometimes the government has to make unpopular decisions and ignore the public opinion polls. That pretty much describes leadership, doing what's right as opposed to what's popular.

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doing what's right as opposed to what's popular

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If my kids don't learn anything else from me, they're going to hear this 1000 times.

Don't follow the crowd because a majority of people walking the earth today are flat out morons. Do the right thing and don't worry about what the crowd says.

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That pretty much describes leadership, doing what's right as opposed to what's popular.

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Right.

I wouldnt want a bunch of people just like me to run a government. It takes elites, populists...all kinds of folks.

This thing runs on negotiating and compromise, as much as it pains these folks to admit. We never get what we want, because thats how this thing is constructed.

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Cult45 populists are largely disenfranchised democrats left behind when they swung over to the race war from the class war.

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So the true conservatives dont have a party.



You guys need someone to go indy like Kennedy did.

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and we won’t be coming back.

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RFK

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Lolol

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So the true conservatives dont have a party.

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Individualists dont have a party thats viable on the national scale.

Collectivsts now have two, since the Republican party is fully in MAGA control.

It is clear in reading the last couple of pages that there is confusion on this board about what the word "populism" means.

It does not mean "popular." It does not mean "representative government," or "democracy."

It means: "a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups."

BLM is populism. The idea that the government owes black people reparations is a populist idea. So is the notion that SATs are racially biased. So is the idea that college kids aren't competent to agree to pay back student loans, so taxpayers ought to do it for them. So is the idea that the government should have intervened to keep employers from requiring employees to be vaccinated against COVID. The (constant, never ending) narrative that the "elites" are plotting to oppress, subdue, frick over, lead into an unnecessary war for profit, that's populism.

Now Roger mentioned above that we need a populist perspective, but that it can't sustain a government. I agree with him on the latter, the former not as much. Maybe we do need some populism, but we need it like we need garlic. It can quickly become too much. Here's why:

1. There are no guiding principles behind populism. It's basically whatever anybody feels pissed off about, regardless of whether it's a rational grievance or not (which is exactly why some people get confused and think it's about ideas being "popular.")

Black people go populist by demanding reparations. White people go populist by demanding that they get to keep their job while refusing to vaccinate even though their employer requires that they get vaccinated in order to keep it. A conservative would apply principles of personal responsibility and freedom of association to those situations and conclude that both groups can go kick rocks. But a populist has no set of principles that he or she applies. If it's something that they are upset about, they demand it, frick all else. That's obviously not sustainable. It's a bunch of toddlers whining about whatever catches their attention at any given moment.

2. The whole movement is based on victimhood. The Man is keeping you down. The left defines The Man according to race, the right defines The Man according to class (I think Bucky said something similar above, and he was right), but The. Whole. Movement. Of. Populism. Is. Whining. About. The. Man. Supposedly. Keeping. You. Down.

For decades the right has been complaining about the left being professional victims. I guess y'all decided if you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

3. Because the whole movement is about victimhood and whining about everything you can possibly think of and blaming every problem you've got on The Man, people end up irrationally discontent. I've been pointing out to people on the left for decades that despite any (small) problems we still have, we have a society with more civil rights, less racism, more equality of quality of life, more opportunity, more prosperity, more wealth for more people, than any other society that has ever existed on this planet. In all of history.

Yet populism keeps people in a constant state of discontentment. And when combined with the next point (see below), it's enough discontentment to convince otherwise rational people that we need to eradicate the system that has produced all those things I just listed. We've got to burn it down.

It's lunacy, frankly.

But we have a growing number of not-very-thoughtful people on both sides now who believe that.

4. Populism also necessitates a steady supply of looney-arse conspiracy theories. Because the whole thing is basically one overarching conspiracy theory of The Man keeping you down, it demands multiple smaller conspiracy theories to explain current events.

When people on both sides have been fed enough looney conspiracy theories that they don't believe anything that anyone says except the people feeding them conspiracy theories—when all official sources are dismissed and each side is certain that every election they lose has been stolen form them—now you have a boiling cauldron full of danger.

BTW, lest you think what I am saying only applies to people on the right, the left has been taken over by populism for decades. Black people haven't believed or trusted anything any official sources have said for a LONG time (and in their case, it's a lot more understandable). That's why they were the last group to mask up for COVID and now are the last group to stop masking. They don't trust the government when it says mask and they don't trust the government when it says stop...they have to see it for themselves (and yes, I know, every election they vote for more government, but that's exactly what populism does. It destroys rational thought.)

Remember he left claiming that Bush was "se-lected" rather than "e-lected?" Remember people claiming that Hurricane Katrina was caused by the government to kill black people?

That's where those of you championing this movement are leading the right. We already had people on here during the Iowa Caucus claiming that the government made it cold to suppress turnout (but then Trump won, so all that talk went away).

The republic cannot survive everyone going crazy like that. It just can't. Somebody has to remain sane and rational. Populism = irrationality.

5. The availability of information in current society has given many people the illusion that they know much more than they really do know about any given subject.

Our government was never designed to function according to the whims of some guy sitting on a couch somewhere munching donuts and watching CNN or FOX News and reading Tucker Carlson's latest blog and deciding on the basis of that information that XYZ military intervention is unnecessary.

That's not how this was supposed to work. Everyone can have an opinion, sure. But we're supposed to vote people in to office knowing that they will have more information than we do about any given situation and trust them to use it wisely. And if they don't, our job is to vote them out. Voting is what we're supposed to bring to the table as citizens.

Based on results. Not based on conspiracy theories or who is anointed as an "outsider."

Trump is great example. Based on the actual results of his first term, there's no reason why he should be the only candidate that people would support in this election cycle. Ron DeSantis has had much better results as governor of Florida than Trump had as POTUS.

But populism doesn't care about results. Or philosophy. Or principles. Or policy.

It doesn't care about anything substantive. Just emotion.

Basically, populism is a cancer that drives people down to the lowest common denominator (both their own and the country's), makes them irrational, and incites them to cut off their noses to spite their faces.

I think if we need any of it, we need very, very little of it.