Populist Poetry
Several weeks ago the US Presidential election was won by Joe Biden and therefore lost by Donald Trump. In response I wrote this haiku:
A one-term blunder
This despotic wannabe
More fizzle than bang
I was intending to share it online but then an attempted putsch occured at the US Capitol. My verse now seemed over-confident. However that depends on what sort of mindset you have. The average complacent observer may well have felt that this rare event was indeed a bang. But I operate in a rather different milieu.
Since the 90s friends have been predicting civil war in the United States. Now suddenly it seemed that the spark had been lit. But the military never came to assist the stumbling crowd incited by Trump. The historic moment fizzled. The Democrats won a majority of both chambers in a process that had started with the US mid-terms in 2018. The new President was inaugerated. The Republicans may be fracturing but the wider prediction of civil war is yet to be shown. Till then it is still a wild speculation. And jade-coloured glasses are as much a distortion of reality as the more well-known rose-tinted variety. For now there is one less populist demagogue in power.
* * * * *
I have sometimes been using that word 'populist' rather lazily as a coy way to imply something authoritarian and extreme but it has a more specific definition than that. Populist behaviour can present as extreme because of a penchant for declamatory speech and while populism grows from democracy it sometimes provides a pathway to authoritarianism. And yet populism transcends ideology (which I discuss further in this review).
Anyone across the political landscape can be drawn into populist ways. Hannah Arendt suggested that 'mobs' are composed of isolated persons cast adrift from the groups to which they once belonged. They then seek a new sense of belonging and what they find is as much cultural as it is political. As a motley crew they can be surpisingly diverse as long as they adhere to a particular identity. And the charismatic demagogues with whom they become co-dependent can come from a variety of backgrounds too.
Populism sometimes shows a preference for particular policy. The combining of cultural isolationism and economic protectionism springs to mind. A demand for government accountability also occurs and while that desire can be democratic in origin it can also mutate into an arbitrary resentment of state-certified expertise and a suspicion of sophisticated civic processes. Sometimes these stances are simply oportunistic vote-winners but they can be more intrinsic than that. Academics describe populism as a 'thin ideology' that overlays itself onto more well-rounded political forms. And it is in its behaviour that populism shows itself to be something that any party or movement can adopt. It dawns on me that those behaviours are what have been bugging me so much in politics over the last decade.
Simplifying and sensationalizing complex issues. Deploying peer group pressure as an alternative to rules or customs. Caricaturing both ones rivals and even oneself. Casting every problem as a zero-sum game. Abandoning the common ground of facts for the territoriality of personal truths. Assuming anger is indicative of rightness. These are all populist characteristics. I once associated them with conservatives I clashed with and so became rather bothered to notice them emerging among seemingly progressive netizens. But now I see these are something that can be combined with any brand of politics. You would think I would be relieved.
The problem is that some are better at this stuff than others and in a world in which everyone embraces these behaviours it is they who will prosper. In our fast-paced multi-media lives it seems that personality is coming to define politics more than ideology and if so then populism could be the politics of bluster (something we are far more likely to notice in others than in ourselves).
I need to step back and take a longer look at all this. Much of what I have been noticing recently is trends transcending ideological divides and they are nothing new. Consider wowserism - this puritanical judging of words and deeds as seductive and corrupting has produced some accidentally odd bedfellows. Its seeming resurgence bothers me but other forms of 'meta-ideology' are heartening.
Environmentalism is something that crosses party lines more-and-more. A positive re-evaluation of the post-war consensus grows in the wake of pandemic. Preferences for peace, diplomacy and civic engagement unite those of distinct groups and such pluralists are too busy to be confined to the more clannish of scenes. And to be honest the populist behaviour I have described may be okay if limited to the small groups in which it tends to manifest as 'personal drama' both off and online (all those 'big fish in small ponds' are simply tiny demagogues). But we need to curb it from ascending to the level of society as a whole.
A one-term blunder
This despotic wannabe
More fizzle than bang
I was intending to share it online but then an attempted putsch occured at the US Capitol. My verse now seemed over-confident. However that depends on what sort of mindset you have. The average complacent observer may well have felt that this rare event was indeed a bang. But I operate in a rather different milieu.
Since the 90s friends have been predicting civil war in the United States. Now suddenly it seemed that the spark had been lit. But the military never came to assist the stumbling crowd incited by Trump. The historic moment fizzled. The Democrats won a majority of both chambers in a process that had started with the US mid-terms in 2018. The new President was inaugerated. The Republicans may be fracturing but the wider prediction of civil war is yet to be shown. Till then it is still a wild speculation. And jade-coloured glasses are as much a distortion of reality as the more well-known rose-tinted variety. For now there is one less populist demagogue in power.
* * * * *
I have sometimes been using that word 'populist' rather lazily as a coy way to imply something authoritarian and extreme but it has a more specific definition than that. Populist behaviour can present as extreme because of a penchant for declamatory speech and while populism grows from democracy it sometimes provides a pathway to authoritarianism. And yet populism transcends ideology (which I discuss further in this review).
Anyone across the political landscape can be drawn into populist ways. Hannah Arendt suggested that 'mobs' are composed of isolated persons cast adrift from the groups to which they once belonged. They then seek a new sense of belonging and what they find is as much cultural as it is political. As a motley crew they can be surpisingly diverse as long as they adhere to a particular identity. And the charismatic demagogues with whom they become co-dependent can come from a variety of backgrounds too.
Populism sometimes shows a preference for particular policy. The combining of cultural isolationism and economic protectionism springs to mind. A demand for government accountability also occurs and while that desire can be democratic in origin it can also mutate into an arbitrary resentment of state-certified expertise and a suspicion of sophisticated civic processes. Sometimes these stances are simply oportunistic vote-winners but they can be more intrinsic than that. Academics describe populism as a 'thin ideology' that overlays itself onto more well-rounded political forms. And it is in its behaviour that populism shows itself to be something that any party or movement can adopt. It dawns on me that those behaviours are what have been bugging me so much in politics over the last decade.
Simplifying and sensationalizing complex issues. Deploying peer group pressure as an alternative to rules or customs. Caricaturing both ones rivals and even oneself. Casting every problem as a zero-sum game. Abandoning the common ground of facts for the territoriality of personal truths. Assuming anger is indicative of rightness. These are all populist characteristics. I once associated them with conservatives I clashed with and so became rather bothered to notice them emerging among seemingly progressive netizens. But now I see these are something that can be combined with any brand of politics. You would think I would be relieved.
The problem is that some are better at this stuff than others and in a world in which everyone embraces these behaviours it is they who will prosper. In our fast-paced multi-media lives it seems that personality is coming to define politics more than ideology and if so then populism could be the politics of bluster (something we are far more likely to notice in others than in ourselves).
I need to step back and take a longer look at all this. Much of what I have been noticing recently is trends transcending ideological divides and they are nothing new. Consider wowserism - this puritanical judging of words and deeds as seductive and corrupting has produced some accidentally odd bedfellows. Its seeming resurgence bothers me but other forms of 'meta-ideology' are heartening.
Environmentalism is something that crosses party lines more-and-more. A positive re-evaluation of the post-war consensus grows in the wake of pandemic. Preferences for peace, diplomacy and civic engagement unite those of distinct groups and such pluralists are too busy to be confined to the more clannish of scenes. And to be honest the populist behaviour I have described may be okay if limited to the small groups in which it tends to manifest as 'personal drama' both off and online (all those 'big fish in small ponds' are simply tiny demagogues). But we need to curb it from ascending to the level of society as a whole.
Labels: Political
posted by Dan at
6.2.21
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