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How to Deal with Populism

caracaschronicles.com

51–60 of 95 posts

Re: How to Deal with Populism

#51
post #18

Your organizing principle is simple: don’t feed polarization, disarm it. This is so important. Samantha Bee can't stop making piss jokes about Trump. That's not going to win anyone over. Nina Donovan's poem, recited by Ashley Judd at the Women's March, is brave and powerful. It is also polarizing. There is a line: "I’m not as nasty as a man who looks like he bathes in Cheeto dust." That's not going to win anyone over…

> Again and again, people are attacking Trump for the wrong reasons. Focus on the truly bad. I disagree. Attacking him at all is a huge mistake, at least until you/the opposition can offer a credible alternative (which Hillary isn't/wasn't). People will put up with all the bad that Trump is, as long as all the alternatives are worse (and yes, economic reasons will trump moral/social reasons for most people except the…

Unfortunately, there are also a large number of people who actively cheer acceptably childish behavior in a grown man, that they would have grounded their children for.

Re: How to Deal with Populism

#52

Serious question, does this guy actually know how to deal with populism? Chavez died of cancer, he wasn't defeated politically. Current day Venezuela is led by Chavez's former Vice President.

In some ways, the issue is not the person. We will all die at some point. How can we limit the damage done to the world meantime?

Re: How to Deal with Populism

#53
post #8

The core issue is not populism, its economic stagnation. 2008 came and showed the entire political and financial elite were swimming naked.

But a populist wasn't elected in 2008 or 2012. "Economic stagnation" doesn't explain Trump at all.

Can there not be inertia in the system? Is the GOP and the electorate flimsy as paper?

Re: How to Deal with Populism

#54
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if the primary concern of the electorate are cultural changes this is an irrelevant gesture. Now some might say it is racist or xenophobic to want to maintain the culture of your local community. I don't believe it is. It is a good example of how the constituents wishes (preserve culture of local community ) is at complete odds with the governments wishes. They can keep on throwing money at them, but it will neve…

> Now some might say it is racist or xenophobic to want to maintain the culture of your local community. I don't believe it is. My question: is it a National Government's job to maintain the culture of local communities? I would hope not.

That makes no sense. If immigration is responsible for changing culture, how could it not be the national government's job?

There's more than a few countries that have laws stating that it's essentially treason to modify the demographics of the nation. Seems to have worked quite well for Japan at the national level.

Re: How to Deal with Populism

#55
It's convenient that this article and another on the nature (or lacking) of modern humility are both on the front page at the same time.

I think this entire argument reduces to a recommendation: "Humble yourself". It's so damn easy to get caught up in egocentrism. There's an intrinsic human bias towards believing that what you believe is the right thing to believe. I've never met someone who is genuinely innocent of this fault (if it can be called a fault), especially when it comes to dogmatic issues of genuine belief. It's hard to imagine what it would be like to exist as a creature that does not put its own beliefs first, of course, so I think the logic instead has to be, "yes, we may believe our own beliefs foremost, at the expense of the beliefs of others. But we must commit time to hypothetical sympathy".

To participate in an argument, we must engage in hypothetical sympathy with our counterparts. The first assumption on hearing what is perceived to be a wrong idea cannot be, "this idea is wrong, and therefore the carrier of this idea must be stupid and inferior to me, the right and correct". That turns an issue that might be argued productively into an issue of dogmatism. Most people are rational, to a functional extent. The difference lies more in the set of axioms we possess, rather than the logic used to build from them. And so we must humble ourselves; our axioms are unproveable by the definition of the word. The first step to engaging someone else is to try and imagine what set of axioms, assuming similar logic, would allow them to reach the positions they hold.

---

I will note as a postscript that of course, there is a strong counterargument to this position: that there's no time for this bullshit. In an austere ivory tower, perhaps we could be humble all day, but as it stands in the real world, the lives of humans are finite, and the beliefs of some inflict real suffering. And so, most of the time it's impossible to justify this kind of gentle work towards mutual understanding. This is the perspective of arguing for the Human instead of Humanity. I don't have a good response to this other than, "damn, that's a hard one". And so, sometimes, wars are fought. I will never support their necessity, but I am sympathetic to their causes.

Re: How to Deal with Populism

#56
post #8

The core issue is not populism, its economic stagnation. 2008 came and showed the entire political and financial elite were swimming naked.

But a populist wasn't elected in 2008 or 2012. "Economic stagnation" doesn't explain Trump at all.

This plus weak counterpart does though. Plus genius use of new media to sway undecided people.

Re: How to Deal with Populism

#57
My take from this is that Trump is a symptom of a problem. The problem is never going to go away by attacking Trump or his policies. He is promising a solution to a problem that people are experiencing in the US. Like it or not, people are buying his solution.

If you don't like his solution, then you find a better one and sell it the people who are buying Trump's.

But most importantly, before we build another product to sell, we have to understand the problem. Get out of our ivory tower and understand the plight some people are experiencing.

Re: How to Deal with Populism

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because populism leads very quicky to dark places. Most all systems of government, of vested authority and state monopoly of violence, are to address our instinct towards populism. Egging on the mob never ends well.

You're only labeling it "populism" (which is normally defined as 'support for the concerns of ordinary people') because you don't like the outcome. If you liked the outcome you would call it "democratic." Somehow the idea of being concerned about the outcome for ordinary people has become vilified by American liberals because red state, blue collar, ordinary people are worthless. What is going on?! Trump wants to be…

In other words, your two parties are now the same party just flipping as it wills. And US considers itself a representative democracy?

Re: How to Deal with Populism

#60
post #2

Why are you `dealing` with populism in the first place?

Because populism leads very quicky to dark places. Most all systems of government, of vested authority and state monopoly of violence, are to address our instinct towards populism. Egging on the mob never ends well.

[citation needed]

Populism by definition is closer to being synonymous with a functioning democracy that it is to mob rule.

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