{"id":1718,"date":"2016-04-02T20:17:17","date_gmt":"2016-04-03T00:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=1718"},"modified":"2016-04-02T20:18:28","modified_gmt":"2016-04-03T00:18:28","slug":"true-populism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/?p=1718","title":{"rendered":"True Populism"},"content":{"rendered":"

The essay will appear in the April 3, 2016 edition of the Durham Herald-Sun<\/a>. ‘Where to Invade Next’ is showing at the Carolina Theatre this weekend. Check here<\/a> for showtimes.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The drill team at my high school in West Texas made some unorthodox song choices for routines. One of them was \u201cCrazy Train\u201d by former Black Sabbath vocalist Ozzy Osbourne. This song has been going through my head during election season. Songwriters Robert Daisley and Randall Rhoads penned: \u201cCrazy, but that\u2019s how it goes, millions of people living as foes. Maybe, it\u2019s not too late, to learn how to love, and forget how to hate.\u201d They go on to name that \u201cheirs of the cold war\u201d are vulnerable to media messaging that keeps people living as foes: \u201cThe media sells it, and you live the role.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was recently back in Texas for a wedding. A recurring loop was \u201cNo Politics!\u201d One patriarch advised, only half-jokingly, if a conversation starts drifting that direction, interject \u201cHow about them Cowboys?\u201d A cousin told my daughter, \u201cWhatever you do, don\u2019t name the one who shall not be named.\u201d Waiting to disembark on the flight home, one hapless neighbor said something about Sarah Palin, and people visibly winced, anticipating an old fight was on. This instant-argument, divide and conquer mess now has a name. The term is \u201cdog-whistle politics.\u201d Keep people living as foes by crafting a figure so divisive we cannot discuss politics with the people we are supposed to love. \u201cThe media sells it, and you live the role.\u201d When we cannot discuss our shared future with relatives, something is wrong. Afraid to seem uncivil, or erudite, or backward, or radical, or misinformed, or snooty, we stick to talking about recipes or sports. Some might sweep this into an indictment of \u201cpolitical correctness,\u201d but it is a form of political manipulation. We shout at one another on social media but stay silent when together. This is a crazy train.<\/p>\n

True populism requires that people who need to work for a living (meaning, like, all of us) actually talk to one another about what we are experiencing as we work or look for work. For starters, try this: \u201cName a time when you stood up for yourself at work,\u201d or \u201cName a time when you stood up for a co-worker.\u201d \u201cPopulism\u201d is a phrase political pundits are now using to sort you and me \u2013 that is, the populace \u2013 and their words are worse than a poor substitute for actual, political conversation with neighbors. Their words are an insulting distraction. The talking heads amplified on media and social media further divide and silence people who need one another to reverse this second great depression.<\/p>\n

Here are two examples of insulting distraction. Assessing support for the one who shall not be named, an ostensibly \u201cconservative\u201d media outlet called \u201cNational Review\u201d ran these words: \u201cEven the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence \u2013 and the incomprehensible malice \u2013 of poor white America.\u201d The writer continues \u201cThe truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die.\u201d The writer recommends people leave the towns where they grew up and get a U-Haul (with what extra income, I am not sure) to go somewhere else. This is a hateful, unapologetic form of social-Darwinism. If you cannot afford to leave home, you deserve to die. Another widely-circulated assessment of \u201cpopulism\u201d from a supposedly \u201cliberal\u201d source was Gloria Steinem\u2019s suggestion that young women prefer a labor advocate from Vermont over a hawkish, free-trade opponent because \u201cWhen you\u2019re young, you\u2019re thinking: \u2018Where are the boys?\u2019\u201d Steinem actually said that. In both cases, ways that working people are genuinely struggling to find traction are dismissed as besotted. Either you\u2019re clinging to a past best thrown in the trash or you\u2019re hoping to date a hipster. What if people privy to these dog-whistles talk to each other? What if we get off the crazy train and remember, if not how to love, then at least how to work together?<\/p>\n

This essay will appear on Sunday, April 3. I recommend we each bring a neighbor to see \u201cWhere to Invade Next\u201d at the Carolina Theatre in Durham. A reviewer named Jon Schwarz writes about the main message of this movie: \u201cYou and I aren\u2019t bad. All the people around us aren\u2019t bad . . . If regular people get control over their own lives, they\u2019ll use it wisely rather than burning the country down in a festival of mindless debauchery . . . [the movie] is all the more powerful because it doesn\u2019t tell you this, it simply shows you. It\u2019s not speculation about how human nature will be transformed after the revolution so we\u2019ll all be happy to share our ration of grass soup with The People. It\u2019s all happening right now, with imperfect human beings just like us.\u201d As Ozzy sings, \u201cit\u2019s not too late.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The essay will appear in the April 3, 2016 edition of the Durham Herald-Sun. ‘Where to Invade Next’ is showing at the Carolina Theatre this weekend. Check here for showtimes. The drill team at my high school in West Texas made some unorthodox song choices for routines. One of them was \u201cCrazy Train\u201d by former […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,10,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-ethics","category-organizing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7EotM-rI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1718"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1719,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1718\/revisions\/1719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.profligategrace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}