this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2023
788 points (95.1% liked)

politics

19245 readers
2227 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, a sign of the president’s strength in uniting his party to have the backing of one of its most liberal members

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Reptorian 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you have any evidence that populism is inherently bad? Yes or no? Incidents can be easily rebuked with incidents where populism has allowed progress or improvement into quality of living. So, if incidents is all you have, simply say no.

[–] SCB 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes I do. Every populist politician in human history.

You're welcome.

[–] Reptorian 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So, you don't actually have a case here? Could you please break it down and disseminate that statement in order for it be looked at and with scrunity?

[–] SCB 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Populism is the appeal to the basest of human emotions, exploited by demagogues to seize power and, at absolute best ignore their mandate and consolidate power for themselves and at worst, the Terror of the French Revolution or its parallels in China during the Cultural Revolution.

It is never, ever, guided by reason, sound policy, or best practice. It is what led to the USSR. It is what led to the Trail of Tears. It is what led to the secession of Southern states during the US Civil War. Populism didn't just give us Trump, it consistently gives us the worst society can be, because it is based off of the worst of society's emotions - fear, jealousy, anger, and resentment.

Please, author any defense of populism. I'm all ears.

I understand this is argument probably coming from some Sandersite-progressive "we only have good intentions" place, but that just makes you an enabler, not enlightened.

If good ideas can stand on their own, they don't need to be driven by resentment or fear of an "other."

[–] Reptorian 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What you're arguing is based on the assumption that populism is and has always been used by demagogues, and as populism is rather more accurately described as a political campaign strategy, it only requires one example to tear down the always assumption. All I need to point out is Bernie Sanders and the results of his works makes it so that understanding the questionable aspect of our own society is not to be seen as taboo, and making healthcare more accessible as well as reducing wage gaps is not a bad thing. In fact, he alone enabled a faster rate of political shift to that direction and removed the taboo of those stances. Your stance should be that populism is questionable, rather than a firm always bad as that can be teared down by examples of people trying to raise the flaws of socio-economic structures.

One could argue anything as bad if it has been used by demagogues. Moderation is even a example. You could argue that moderates enables a form of negative peace by allowing structure of society to retain gaps between people, and arguably leads to increase of gaps by simply pushing asides forces that wants to address those gaps. Moderates could be argued to lead to Trumpism due to those observation.

At the end of the day, what matters is the impact of political strategies and whether they have been used to benefit others. It is how they're used that matters at the end of the day.

[–] SCB 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Bernie Sanders is a perfect example of terrible policies supported by fiery rhetoric, yes. Sanders is not an effective legislator and his policies are DOA. He preys upon people's financial insecurity and frustration to "other" all wealthy people.

He is absolutely part of the problem.

[–] Reptorian 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

From the brief looks in congress.gov, so many legislature that has been voted on by Bernie Sanders also has passed, so there has been some of his policies that aren't dead on arrival. The DOA legislature thing is like criticizing a legislator for not getting things done when political atmosphere prevents said legislator from getting things done. So, I'm not seeing a good jab here. At the end of the day, he opened the floodgates to discussion of socio-economic structure of our society, and nothing should be closed unless there's a very good reason to do so, and that is indeed a positive result, and yes, it shows populism isn't always a bad thing.

Who exactly isn't a problem to you or haven't been a problem? Given that you haven't really responded to the observation that even moderation can be a problem, I'm guessing a moderate, and it would be very easy to spot a policy that is conservative which leads to Trumpism. And you know you want me to avoid pointing that out, and you probably want me to avoid pointing out negative peace issues.

[–] SCB 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Your second paragraph (if I'm understanding correctly) sums up my entire point. The Republican party didn't just magically arrive here. Every step on the road to Trumpism came from populist rhetoric. That is precisely the danger I'm talking about.

Sanders is absolutely the same problem from a different direction. Demonizing a faceless problem to rile people up is irresponsible and dangerous, full stop. The Republicans should be a clear warning of the dangers inherent.

Pardon if I misunderstood - had some trouble parsing your second paragraph.

[–] Reptorian 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The second paragraph is more about pointing to moderate stances leading into Trumpism. How does it do that? By pushing out rhetorics that shines a light into our structures and by simply hiding problems like systematic racism in the name of order. The second paragraph is not about populism, but as a observation of how anything can be argued to be bad.

You need to demonstrate that it's a faceless problem given that younger people are having far more struggles. So far, you failed to provide that case.

[–] SCB 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Trumpism didn't come from any specific policy. It was a combination of decades of populist/nativist rhetoric on talk radio leading into the same in mass media/the internet. Couple this with 2010s massive reshaping of congressional districts due to gerrymandering, and the radicals in the party were given the loudest voting "voice." Together, these things removed any barriers to MAGAs ascendance from within the party. As is commonly said, the Republicans who claim to be the "Party of Reagan" would have kicked him out of the party these days

Highly recommend you read "Why We're Polarized" by Ezra Klein for a well cited narrative of how this came to be.

Trumpism isn't really about policies, at it's core. It's about feelings. Feelings of resentment, dispossession, and nameless dread of the future. See any parallels there with how non-conservatives are beginning to feel?

Literally on a front page thread today: https://lemmy.world/comment/1150069

This is not a sign of healthy discourse and it is escalating.

[–] Reptorian 0 points 1 year ago

Trumpism did have it roots within conservative policies years ago. You can either trace it back to Nixon, or the observation of the political party switch after the Civil Rights movement. The hatred that are seen within Trumpism has always been there. It isn't populism at all, and I'd argue it never has been any more than other political campaign strategies. And yes, there are Reagan voters that proudly support Trump as the conservative mindset of hatred were always there.