College of Political Knowledge
Subject: Political Theory
It all pretty much began back in the days of the 2004 political season with John Edwards appealing to votes on a us against them sort of platform and it has continued through 2008 and 2010 elections….the media has labeled this phenom as populism…..but is it?
The political ideology of populism began in the US in the 1840’s, I believe…….and reached a high point at the beginning of the 20th century…basically it was a revolt against the railroads and banks by the common people in the heartland….a fight against the “robber barons”………
Let us leap forward to the present……look at the populism of today, some of it faux and some real, such issues as the bailouts or the rule by special interests, etc. etc………..the media is billing at as populism when it smacks of reactionary to me……reactionary will seldom be used because it has a bad rep from the days of hunting commies behind every door…you know kinda like the Tea Party of today…….
Reactionary is defined as…….relating to, marked by, or favoring reaction; especially : ultraconservative in politics, as according to Webster’s…..and since populism is a reaction to a specific issue….I will say that it is reactionary…..to me it is also a description of pragmatism……reacting to an issue and taking the most simple solution…….by simple I am referring to the most advantageous to have it enacted…..
Populism was a reaction to a political problem…….and populism was a pragmatic approach to the problem…ergo it was reactionary……reactionary then, reactionary now…..seldom is it about well thought out solutions but rather a reaction….a real solution would be one that is based on knowledge not one based on numbers or stats or emotional tantrums….but then that is what we Americans are noted for…..reaction…seldom a well thought out response……
Yes. Of course, speaking in semantic rather than political terms, the word reactive is (like most descriptive words) one twin of an equal but opposite pair – REactive or PROactive. Proactive requires forethought and design, reactive requires sticking plasters (band-aids to you colonials 😆 ).
Sadly though, IMO, the proactive designs we come up with in politics in our “democracies” are almost always crap and, should they by accident occasionally look promising, they are quickly hijacked by vested interests with big funding who prefer the status quo or an alternative…
Or, to put it more succinctly, in your words, nothin’s gonna change for the better!
While I will agree with you somewhat….I think that the failures of democracy are from the reactionary policies of the parties….
Much of the right is totally wrong, but then so is the left. The system is broken – in fact, it was never otherwise and nothing will change until that changes first (if ever).
You talk about class wars and so on, but the truth is that you and people like you – INCLUDING me – do not have any more right to what there is than others who already have it… and please don’t quote “fairness” since there is NOTHING that says life has to be fair, that is ever was, or will ever be so in the future.
ONLY a completely new system will alter those facts and I doubt it will ever come since it will almost always be screwed up by the worst animal on this planet – humans.
You have commented on “American Exceptionalism” and I agree with all you say, but to me the real problem is “HUMAN Exceptionalism”! Humanity thinks it is something special and it simply isn’t… 🙁
You and I see the breakdown…but unfortunately the voters still think it is a good system…..(scratch head here in wonderment)……and yet the American people have NO confidence in the government……Only 26% of Americans in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll say they’re optimistic about “our system of government and how well it works,” the fewest recorded since 1974. Almost as many, 23% are pessimistic, the closest these measures ever have come. The rest, a record high, are “uncertain” about the system. And yet they still want to hold onto a dying system…..no accounting for intelligence….