What is populism? Is all populism the same? Is all populism bad? Is populism a symptom of governments, political parties and ruling classes who have lost touch with the electorate?
This short video from the BBC got me thinking about how we throw that word around without really understanding it. And yes, the Left uses it to dismiss the concerns of others as being backward hicks or old or racists when they disagree without truly listening to the other side’s concerns. The Right does the same with different words: socialist, fake being the top ones, because the Left has their populists too (ie. Bernie Sanders.) And the problem is that both sides try to rule or motivate through fear rather than build a national (or at least political) consensous.
Lest anyone try to call me a Trumpie: I don’t like the man, but I don’t think he is 100% wrong on every issue. I do think he’s about 95% wrong in the way he goes about trying to fix issues both real and imagined. IMHO he’s a mean and nasty piece of work. And I’m not sure deep down he’s really a reformer, because he almost always sides with Big Business not the people.
But different forms of populism are spreading throughout the civilized world from both the Right and Left. There seem to be a lot of people upset with the New World Order and the Establishment that oversees it. Perhaps we should listen to the underlying complains more and see what the causes are before dismissing the complains out of hand. Yeah, I’m not holding my breath that either the Left or Right will do the right thing, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. Anyway, watch the short video, above, it will make you think.
