Populism Spun into Spite

A few months ago I observed to a group of students that populism, for all it’s injustice-righting urgency, can sometimes be a dangerous force.

This is another of life’s humbling portals. Old dudes like me who generally root for protesters on general principles are, at some age near 70, forced to utter that cliche. Populism can be a dangerous force.

So sad. Yet so right.

“Is it not the glory of the people of America, that whilst they have paid a decent regard to the opinions of former times and other nations, they have not suffered a blind veneration for antiquity, for custom, or for names, to overrule the suggestions of their own good sense, the knowledge of their own situation, and the lessons of their own experience?”

Here Madison mounts a defense of populism, a much feared threat in his time. Indeed, the founding document he had helped to draft had gone to great length to check populist impulses. But as a counter-check against an elite cabal caught systematically lying to voters over a long period, Madison seems to agree that Trumpian tonic had to be stored away in the medicine cabinet.

Since the Republican party took over Washington in 2001, many fortunes have been made — most of them by cutting jobs, and by cutting corners.

Virtually every household has became precarious — one corporate announcement away from the heartless splattering of a breadwinner.

In response to such horror stories, politicians have assured voters that “we’re definitely going to look into that!” — whether it was outsourcing jobs or the water supply.

We have just watched more than a dozen of those establishment problem solvers audition for president in the Republican Party. Most limped off humiliated with single-digit support.

One candidate, however, did very well — by urging voters to apply common sense to the knowledge of their own situation, guided by their own experience. In a word, populism.

You can see how one might vote for the guy who just flung the finger at Mitt Romney and his oligarch friends.

Sure, we’re all offended by a charlatan. But what if you just don’t care so much any more about the charlatan piece? What if you think all suits are charlatans.

Look at the Kardashians. Are they real? Maybe not, but they’re very popular.