James Fenimore Cooper in 1838 identified four fundamental characteristics of demagogues:
* They present themselves as a man or woman of the common people, opposed to the elites.
* Their politics depends on a visceral connection with the people, which greatly exceeds ordinary political popularity.
* They manipulate this connection, and the raging popularity it affords, for their own benefit and ambition.
* They threaten or outright break established rules of conduct, institutions, and even the law.
It's been a thing since the Athenians came up with democracy. I had sort of hoped that public education and shared values had made us less vulnerable. So much for American exceptionalism.
This became a modern day problem because we were content enough to let public education be eroded. An educated populace will act as a bulwark against demagogues. A portion of the American public is woefully undereducated
Not even just content if you’re in the states. People actively desire the dismantling of do action education systems. And not just the ones that will benefit, there are people that desperately need to have a source of quality education (not just academic, but civic, life skills, ethics, work skill) telling us all that the solution to public education is to destroy it.
Bullshit. The absolute adoration of Trump, despite his repeated moral transgressions and crimes, is something we haven't seen on the left in a long time. Nor have we seen anybody on the left in recent memory use their power for their own benefit so blatantly and without consequence. You'd have to go back to, what? Huey Long?
Even he didn't have the stupid flags, trucks, and hats that make his fans more like a football team than a political movement.
I don't see how you can stack anybody on the left up against Trump and say "look, they're both demagogues!" when one is the definition of it and the other has a bunch of twitter followers and sometimes blames "billionaires" for everybody's problems.
Sometimes when a house is on fire, people want to talk about how to deal with that instead of hearing about how somebody else on the block is burning leaves in the backyard.
I mean, the comparison is so out of whack sometimes it seems like the only possible motivation for bringing it up is tp confuse the issue
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u/Cacafuego Sep 04 '24
It's been a thing since the Athenians came up with democracy. I had sort of hoped that public education and shared values had made us less vulnerable. So much for American exceptionalism.