Trumpism and populist demagogue politicians

Lavender Room
1

Impeachment is a non event. Trump will survive to try for the hat trick in 2020. On 25 March Fred Hiatt, WAPO editorial page editor, provides the following insight on halting his brand of populist demagoguery. As in the past I need help with link. My apologies, but the cliff notes below are woefully inadequate. Sort of like the Barr letter to the Mueller report.

His preface:

“A populist demagogue is dangerous not only for the actions he takes but also the corrosion of norms he sets in motion.” Why will any future presidential candidate release his tax returns? Or, When the next President doesn’t declare a National Emergency to impose gun control then they risk being branded as naive sap.

“Once a popular culture begins to erode… it is hard to stop the rot. But voters can do it, if they demand to be treated with respect rather than be lied and pandered to”

Towards that end he offers a voters guide such that “you will know that your candidate is succumbing to populist demagoguery if she or he embraces”:

*The simple over the complex: If it were easy, the solutions would already be implemented. The wall solves immigration and opioids. If health care is promised solved by abolishing private insurance companies, then be nervous.

*Giveaways over hard choices: Free lunch politicians abound. “Trump told us he could cut taxes, protect Social Security and Medicare, and erase the debt, he was lying. If candidates tell you now they can give you free college and healthcare and no one- or maybe only billionaires- will have to pay, be nervous.”

*Scapegoats over solutions: “When the simple remedies fail and giveaways prove impossible, the demagogues fallback is to find someone else to blame. No candidate is likely to match Trump’s preternatural ability to see the traitor lurking within every friend while never holding himself accountable. But if your candidate starts telling you that everything will be fine if we just went after billionaires, or big banks, or big tech or… be nervous”

*Winner take all over compromise: “If your candidate insists that the other side has to lose for you to win, be nervous. It is Trumpism that will be winning.”

Can we all agree to stand, raise our glass, and toast the end of the populist demagogue and the rise of an informed and heard electorate? I know, I know. Pipe dream, right? Of course not all can stand together and agree. So to those who don’t/won’t rise, I must conclude that you are happy about your demagogue, be it Trump, Warren or Sanders, making you look the fool. Allow me to sit while you rise and salute your demagogue. Cheers!

2

So basically Orange Man Bad, but with a twist.

3

That article shows exactly what’s wrong when people fall for politicians BS. In this article, they don’t take sides, basically painting each with their own demagogue and yet you dismiss the entire thing with quick lines because you sense they attacked someone on your team, when it really wasn’t that at all. This is the kind of thing that prevents any meaningful discussion about policies.

sigh

4

Here’s the full article.

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
— H.L. Mencken

Trump represents the triumph of simplistic thinking and self-serving over fact-based analysis and the pursuit of the common good. Any who don’t agree become an enemy, not a political opponent. Reagan and Clinton were capable of corralling bipartisanship, but this art is fading in memory.

5

Impeachment is a non event. Trump will survive to try for the hat trick in 2020. On 25 March Fred Hiatt, WAPO editorial page editor, provides the following insight on halting his brand of populist demagoguery. As in the past I need help with link. My apologies, but the cliff notes below are woefully inadequate. Sort of like the Barr letter to the Mueller report.

His preface:

“A populist demagogue is dangerous not only for the actions he takes but also the corrosion of norms he sets in motion.” Why will any future presidential candidate release his tax returns? Or, When the next President doesn’t declare a National Emergency to impose gun control then they risk being branded as naive sap.

"Once a popular culture begins to erode… it is hard to stop the rot. But voters can do it, if they demand to be treated with respect rather than be lied and pandered to"

Towards that end he offers a voters guide such that “you will know that your candidate is succumbing to populist demagoguery if she or he embraces”:

*The simple over the complex: If it were easy, the solutions would already be implemented. The wall solves immigration and opioids. If health care is promised solved by abolishing private insurance companies, then be nervous.

*Giveaways over hard choices: Free lunch politicians abound. “Trump told us he could cut taxes, protect Social Security and Medicare, and erase the debt, he was lying. If candidates tell you now they can give you free college and healthcare and no one- or maybe only billionaires- will have to pay, be nervous.”

*Scapegoats over solutions: “When the simple remedies fail and giveaways prove impossible, the demagogues fallback is to find someone else to blame. No candidate is likely to match Trump’s preternatural ability to see the traitor lurking within every friend while never holding himself accountable. But if your candidate starts telling you that everything will be fine if we just went after billionaires, or big banks, or big tech or… be nervous”

*Winner take all over compromise: “If your candidate insists that the other side has to lose for you to win, be nervous. It is Trumpism that will be winning.”

Can we all agree to stand, raise our glass, and toast the end of the populist demagogue and the rise of an informed and heard electorate? I know, I know. Pipe dream, right? Of course not all can stand together and agree. So to those who don’t/won’t rise, I must conclude that you are happy about your demagogue, be it Trump, Warren or Sanders, making you look the fool. Allow me to sit while you rise and salute your demagogue. Cheers!

We get demagogues when people are deeply unhappy about things. We should think less about Trump and more about the conditions that produced him.

6

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
— H.L. Mencken
Isn’t that pretty much the only way to govern in the age of cable news?

7

I, for one, wholeheartedly agree with that editorial. It seems that people are missing the fact that much of what he writes is aimed squarely at the majority of the Democratic presidential candidates, most of whom are promising anything and everything and making other people pay for it. Sure, he is taking some shots at Trump (which are completely true shots, BTW), but his point is completely valid. Voters need to educate themselves on the issues and not buy into promises that try to distill complex issues into simple solutions.

8

Yeah, for sure the former and hopefully a meaningful latter twist. The Orange Man though has no peer and would win any and all demagogue elections.

9

We get demagogues when people are deeply unhappy about things. We should think less about Trump and more about the conditions that produced him.

Sure one follows the other. The key is not changing out one demagogue for another.

“Once a political culture begins to erode, in other words, it is hard to stop the rot.” Pandering to voters happens when voters have no pride or don’t quite comprehend they are being pandered.

10

Reagan and Clinton were capable of corralling bipartisanship, but this art is fading in memory.

Where Reagan and Clinton so uniquely capable of corralling bipartisanship, or was that simply an era where bipartisanship was capable of being corralled? I’d go with the later.

11

Reagan and Clinton were capable of corralling bipartisanship, but this art is fading in memory.

Where Reagan and Clinton so uniquely capable of corralling bipartisanship, or was that simply an era where bipartisanship was capable of being corralled? I’d go with the later.

You’re probably right. The vicious legal battle over Bush v Gore set the stage for where we are today. Obama ran on a platform of “Change” in DC, but was largely left wanting on that front (though he wasn’t helped by the GOP’s determination to block him at every avenue).

Trump has capitalized on the partisanship and doubled down. I’m not sure it ends well for the GOP, but we’ll see.

12

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
— H.L. Mencken
Isn’t that pretty much the only way to govern in the age of cable news?

Maybe. But that quote is from 1918 so the idea is not new.

13

I’ll take the third door…world wide progressives have made gains in a number of financial and social policies over the last decades.

This drumbeat of changes has largely seen progressives gaining something over time, and the others losing.

-women’s suffrage
-integration, then policies actively trying to level the playing field
-abortion
-alt-life topics in general
-regulations on big business
-increased skepticism and lowered support in wars
-significantly decreased acceptance of bigotry (rise of PC culture if you will)
-challenging the white male superiority (up to and including maybe even false accusations too)

So, you’ve got a group that’s been at the losing hand of all that stuff for quite a while. Then you get a few people in leadership roles coming out and boldly championing exactly how you have felt for a long time.

So, you see a world wide rise in populism to counteract it.

14

So basically Orange Man Bad, but with a twist.
Looks like they’re circling back to Trump being dangerous. It’s a stupid opinion piece where everything people don’t like about Trump has never been done by the Dems. People on both sides love to look the other way when their guy does something bad.

15

I, for one, wholeheartedly agree with that editorial. It seems that people are missing the fact that much of what he writes is aimed squarely at the majority of the Democratic presidential candidates, most of whom are promising anything and everything and making other people pay for it. Sure, he is taking some shots at Trump (which are completely true shots, BTW), but his point is completely valid. Voters need to educate themselves on the issues and not buy into promises that try to distill complex issues into simple solutions.

X2. And I’ll piggy back onto torrey’s response above. The 30 second sound bite sloganeering and how the Fox, CNN, MSNBC produce their product contributes to the distilling of complex issues into simple solutions. A gotcha exists here and I don’t know if all God’s children (read in millennials) want to tune into C-Span. The single candidate town hall shows produced by CNN do help. But the current demagogue has already cast them as forked tongue devils and instructed all to not watch.

16

People on both sides love to look the other way when their guy does something bad.

Well done. The first step is admitting you have a problem. :wink:

17

We get demagogues when people are deeply unhappy about things. We should think less about Trump and more about the conditions that produced him.

This.

https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/42852250/you-made-them-desperate-and-in-their-desperation-they-turned-to-a-man-they-dont-fully-understand.jpg

18

So basically Orange Man Bad, but with a twist.
Looks like they’re circling back to Trump being dangerous. It’s a stupid opinion piece where everything people don’t like about Trump has never been done by the Dems. People on both sides love to look the other way when their guy does something bad.

My intent in the OP and the article was to provide a debate centered on badness of the demagogue, wherever he or she may lie on our political spectrum. Please don’t focus on our guy versus their guy. It only serves as validation of the premise of the article on continuing our political cultural erosion.

19

I, for one, wholeheartedly agree with that editorial. It seems that people are missing the fact that much of what he writes is aimed squarely at the majority of the Democratic presidential candidates, most of whom are promising anything and everything and making other people pay for it. Sure, he is taking some shots at Trump (which are completely true shots, BTW), but his point is completely valid. Voters need to educate themselves on the issues and not buy into promises that try to distill complex issues into simple solutions.

Perfectly said Spot.

As I read the article I thought “Hmmm, you could easily substitute the word ‘Trump’ for ‘AOC’ or ‘Sanders’ etc. etc.”

20

If I might distill, you describe a progressive movement as winners over the course of the last century and those left behind were left to feel themselves as losers. Did this losing populace then allow themselves to be lied to and pandered in order to reverse their fortune? Will that reversed next group of losers do the same? Therein the entire point of this debate: The continuation of political cultural rot. The us v them, as Perseus would have it, or as you describe, the winner v loser, is the rot. Lose this mind set and we all win. It is not a third door you opened. It is the same door.