Right Wing Populism’s Threat
“So take right now, for example, there is a right-wing populist uprising. It’s very common, even on the left, to just ridicule them, but that’s not the right reaction. If you look at those people and listen to them on talk radio, these are people with real grievances. I listen to talk radio a lot and it’s kind of interesting. If you can sort of suspend your knowledge of the world and just enter into the world of the people who are calling in, you can understand them. I’ve never seen a study, but my sense is that these are people who feel really aggrieved. These people think, “I’ve done everything right all my life, I’m a god-fearing Christian, I’m white, I’m male, I’ve worked hard, and I carry a gun. I do everything I’m supposed to do. And I’m getting shafted.” And in fact they are getting shafted. For 30 years their wages have stagnated or declined, the social conditions have worsened, the children are going crazy, there are no schools, there’s nothing, so somebody must be doing something to them, and they want to know who it is. Well Rush Limbaugh has answered - it’s the rich liberals who own the banks and run the government, and of course run the media, and they don’t care about you—they just want to give everything away to illegal immigrants and gays and communists and so on.
That’s the problem here. The right wing is co-opting populism, because people just want solutions for the economic problems that plague them. The Democrats promised change, but it’s been more kleptocracy, with a few tinkering around the edges of things that don’t impact people’s day-to-day lives.
When you give billions to banks and don’t fight for jobs and let any real healthcare reform be stripped away by out of touch DC elite windbags who have been in the capital for years and years, people get even more angry. And when that happens, they’re willing to listen to the next guy who promises them change, no matter how ridiculous their proposed solution is.
(via soupsoup)
