Democratic Primaries
In reply to the discussion: So I hear that Bernie Sanders isn't really a Democrat [View all]The Valley Below
(1,701 posts)is perceived as being the root cause of all that society's problems.
Populists and anti-Populists might adopt different terms to describe this condition, "rage at an untenable and unsustainable status quo" vs "scapegoating and demagoguery," but it describes the same rage-based politics that identifies one segment of society (the "people" ) who pin their resentments on some other segment of society.
Who the scapegoats are differs from movement to movement. The rage remains the same.
Rage based movements never lead to positive results.
The civil rights struggles had success by rejecting populist impulses.
Rage is bad voodoo. Rage is incompatible with reason. Liberalism is incompatible with political irrationality.
Populists play with fire. How many hundreds of millions of victims of populist regiemes need to perish before people see that populism is the most illiberal and most dangerous ideology on the planet?
In no way, shape, of form is populism a good thing.
primary today, I would vote for: Joe Biden