populism 3

One more thing about those markets. The commodities market is a zero sum game in that at the end of the day the winnings of the winners and the losings of the losers come out to zero. In the stock market there can be days where everybody wins and days where everybody loses, and like voodoo it only works because of what people believe.

That crossbow shooting accordionist is the perfect example of a populist. I guess he thinks that the crossbow and the accordion is what makes him a regular Joe, which maybe is true in the wilds of northern Michigan. And as a regular Joe that makes him not a politician, and since the gov is run by politicians, and it is all fucked up, the obvious solution is to elect people who aren’t politicians, like musical bowman regular guy Joe. See, there is a populist sentiment, keep it simple and put the blame on somebody.

That whole thing about running the gov like a businessman is a bunch of hooey. I don’t know how it keeps getting repeated over and over. If you ran the DMV like a business the only thing you would be concerned about is if the fees you collected were greater than your operating expenses. As far as how well it kept unqualified drivers off the road, that would be no concern of yours.

I want to distinguish between populism in places like Afghanistan or Africa where people vote for a symbol because they don’t know how to read, and the symbol they choose is the one for their tribe. People get in trouble for saying this sometimes, but some people are not ready for democracy, because outside of a narrow elite they have an illiterate mass.

But in the US we have a pretty good, though shrinking, middle class. We have the elite, the middle class, and those thirty percent who think it would be a good idea to go to war in Ukraine, though they can’t find it on a map. The latter are the guys that the populist appeals to.

In a way these guys are proud of their ignorance. It separates them from the elites in the government or business or whoever they can be convinced is ruining the country. As an oldster like me Beagles, I think that you can agree that everything is more complicated than it looks like. They reject this out of hand. Everything is simple, do what feels right and you don’t have to think about it. Thinking about a complicated idea is anathema to them because they can’t stand that greyness that creeps in, clouding the black and white.

Kill all the assholes is the sort of slogan that appeals to them, because why, it makes perfect sense. But stopping to consider who is an asshole and who isn’t, that gets confusing, and it’s boring, and it’s an impediment to action.

These people are the natural constituency of the populist, who rides the wave into the House say, because that’s where most of them seem to be right now, but once elected they can’t accomplish anything because it’s their way or the highway. And once they are elected their constituency could begin to see them as a politician, especially if they bend their convictions to accomplish anything, and come primary time, there is bowman musician regular Joe usurping them.