Fear
N.B.: To those reading, this is a rant, and I make all appropriate apologies to reason and the English language, however, this needs to be said, and said now more than ever.
pop⋅u⋅list Pronunciation ‘p&aum;-py&-list Function noun Etymology Latin populus, the people Date 1892 1 : a member of a political party claiming to represent the common people; especially often capitalized : a member of a U.S. political party formed in 1891 primarily to represent agrarian interests and to advocate the free coinage of silver and government control of monopolies
2 : a believer in the rights, wisdom, or virtues of the common people
From Merrian-Webster Collegiate Dictionary
Populist.
Populist.
It seems so obvious a term that one would think that the definition would be understood across time and ideology in the United States. A reasonable man might think that populism would be a wide-held belief in a country whose foundations so greatly extol the virtues of the average man, and their attempt to explore life to its fullest measure. They would be wrong.
If populism is an attempt to support the rights and powers of the “common people,” then there must necessarily be an adversary against which that support is leaned. That adversary in this modern age is often named the “privileged elite.” However, in order to accurately understand populism we must understand what it is not.
Populism is not the party of those who feel they “deserve power,” or feel that they are somehow subject to different mores and laws than others in their country. Populism is not about class warfare, nor is it about communism or any other red herring thrown forth to muddy the waters of debate.
Populism is about the innate fairness that Americans claim to love so much, and hope will spread around the world in time. Populism is about democracy, so much as demos is greek for “people” as populus is latin for “people”. They are two words, inseparable in their meaning because they are intertwined in their roots. Where democracy is a system of government where the supreme power is retained by the people, populism is a political doctrine reinforcing that system.
So what of our Republic? Where has it been lost? When did it become an autocracy, ruled by a tiny cabal of political elite who, from my skewed perspective, are more interested in enriching themselves than in anything that might, upon closer examination, benefit the “average American.”
The average american works harder and more hours now than in recent memory, takes home money that has less purchasing power, and has watched as the wealthiest 1% of the country have lined their pockets with the blood, sweat and toil of the average worker. No longer does the political process serve those it claims to represent, nor even those who vote, and that is a terrifying concept.
Why then, have democracy failed? How can I possibly argue that those who vote are not represented by those who are elected? It seems, on its surface, a truism, that those who are elected must by definition represent those who elect, and yet when examined more closely, it is clearly the case in today’s society that those elected are not representatives of the people, but of the ruling class. The ruling class, however, is not just some aristocratic elite, but those who move money, build instruments of war and shape the opinions of others.
Perhaps it is fantasy to say that things have changed. Perhaps it is only that they have come to the surface so clearly lately that one would have to have their head in the sand to not see what changes have taken place. I would like to believe that once, some large percentage of those elected attempted with due diligence to represent those who had placed their trust within their office. I would like to believe that people are generally good, and would, given the opportunity, do that which furthers the “great good.” And yet they do not.
Time and time again, power is taken, power is entrusted and power is abused, wielded to enrich the few who fund the system, further widening the already sizable abyss that separates the normal person and the privileged elite. While the common man aspires to wealth, they believe that when they get there, they will be different. Perhaps they will be, or perhaps it is that delta, that difference between the “haves” and “have nots” that brings with it a feeling superiority, and pours forth as a pseudo-religious manifest destiny.
It is long past time for those who wield the true power in a democracy, the people, to take up arms, and pull the levers, punch the cards, and remove from power those who serve no master but their own Greed. To serve an elected office is an honor, a privilege and a weighty moral obligation that should never be taken lightly, nor given without due thought and process. To those who would rob us of that power, who would manipulate the system to ensure outcomes that are favorable to the continuation of corruption we must say goodbye and ask that they take their shameful behavior home, for without the turn-over democracy is surely doomed to collapse into an autocratic and authoritarian state where the populace is afraid of the government and the government fears nothing, not even it’s “peers” in the world.
In such a state, wielding such power with blind abandon, surely there is destiny at stake, but not the destiny of greatness, but the destiny of Rome, with our own Nero sitting playing the fiddle as democracy burns itself out, fueled by the fatalistic futility that has become our electoral process. When a nation reaches such a point, and the flames burn and wisp closely to its citizens it will by all natural forces either explode in a revolution unlike one ever witnessed before, or implode in a further debasing of the ideals that it so hypocritically preaches to the world.
For much of my adult life, I have been told that I should enter politics, and I rebelled, commenting on the petty corruption and bickering that so symbolises public discourse in this republic. There are others like me, frustrated with the system, but at a loss as to where to begin its resuscitation, perhaps thousands. I do not want the power that is the true representative of the people, and I fear it for what it has done to so many people who once may have been good men and women.
It’s time to re-instill fear in those elected and bring about the revolution in thought that is 40 years overdue. Those who would seek power deserve none, and only those who truly fear what it might do to them might survive it’s blinding glare.
This entry was posted at 3:11 pm on 20 August 2002 and is filed under Long Writings, Social. You can follow any responses to this entry through the post-specific RSS 2.0 feed.
If it bleeds, it leads.
Unfortunately, the media outlets are a prime source of the problem. It doesn’t matter if you consider them liberal or conservative, they’re exclusively interested in serving the bottom line, not the populace—-but unfortunately that issue is “policed” by the FCC, who is more concerned whether someone got a peek at a nipple, than if the networks are rotting the collective brains of Americans.
Then again, televisions come with an off switch.
Unfortunately, people believe the media moreso than any opinions they might have had before. I don’t believe that people know what they want, nor who they want to do it for them. Why do things for yourself if someone else can do it for you? I think that this mentality echoes across American culture. People just don’t care. As much as the privileged elite manage to abuse power and use the average worker to amass unending wealth, it’s partly the fault of the people for letting it go that far. Go America!
I agree that the people are ultimately responsible for the behavior of the government. The electoral process is usually effective at equating who is gets elected with the person who received the most votes (with a few glaring exceptions).
I don’t know if I made this point in my blog entry or not, but I know I made it in IMs to a friend. She had observed that the “common people” are ill-equiped to make constructive comparisons between politicians and the various scenerios presented. I agree, but I believe a large part of this is the accelerating pace of “standardized tests,” which emphasize the rote memorization of information over the instilling of complex thought processes in children.
When I was in school (starting arond 5th grade, I think), I was involved in a program in the Eanes ISD called “Discovery,” which was a group of selected children who were grouped together not by grades, gender or race, but instead by their ability at a relatively early age to construct basic logic statements.
During this program, we spent an enormous amount of time in deconstructing arguments, reading opposing view points back-to-back, and expounding on the points an author might raise in a book. Rather than being asked to memorize the characters and plot lines for Shakespeare’s The Tempest, we were asked to take the core themes (which we had to determine) and create a new “play” based on those themes, but with a 20th century context.
That project alone introduced me to a lot of things about constructive, and deconstructive analysis of writing that would never have happened had I been in a normal program. I eventually left the program when it turned into a bit more of an elitist system, and returned to traditional honors classes. Suddenly, in my senior year in one of the best schools in the state of Texas, I realized I was reading a book I had read in 7th grade, and while I might have gotten more out of it due to my greater age, it shocked me that others were being introduced so late in life to challenging works.
We create our future in children, and the more we force them into mindless drone status, the darker and more bleak our future becomes.
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The problem today is people are too lazy to look into who is running, why they are running, what they stand for, and how can they do what they say they want to do. Today people make their decisions by watching the “sound bits” on local and national news and following like lemmings the ever popular “polling”. I mean if so many people are saying they are going to vote for Mr or Ms X well then they must be good and I will vote for them as well.
Besides that. Who votes anymore? Every 4 years we are asked to vote for president and it is hard to get 50% of voters to do it. For state and local elections it can be even smaller.
Have people given up? Do people even care?
There is no one right answer for this. It doesn’t help that the people we have to choose from are usually the same or close to it. Also for the most part we never had any say in what the party choose to run for office. Many times it is a friend of someone who is retiring or someone who had alot of money and the party wants him or her to run so they can spend alot of money on commericals. No wonder people feel left out.
Will it change? only “we the people” can do that. Unfortunately unless CNN, MSNBC, FOX, MTV etc.. all tell us we should do it I don’t think anything will change.