Author seems to want to defend populism from association with authoritarianism, even though they are inherently linked.
Drakosk on
This article fundamentally changed how I viewed democracy when u/ONETRILLIONAMERICANS posted it. I think it also challenges certain assertions made about the rise of Trump. If he never went down that golden escalator, maybe we really would be in a completely different political world.
I’m no longer convinced by arguments that a populist-right would ascend without Trump or that Americans have suffered some cataclysmic decline in civic identity. Americans have always been generally ambivalent at best about democracy and vote based on identity more often than platform. Trump won because of his brand, not his policy per se. In hindsight, Obama probably won two terms because of his brand as well; past presidents have simply been more cogent in their policy beliefs, so the idea that they won off of policy was plausible. To me, Trump was simply the first president whose platform was so deficient compared to his branding that it was simply absurd to hold that the public voted based on platform.
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Author seems to want to defend populism from association with authoritarianism, even though they are inherently linked.
This article fundamentally changed how I viewed democracy when u/ONETRILLIONAMERICANS posted it. I think it also challenges certain assertions made about the rise of Trump. If he never went down that golden escalator, maybe we really would be in a completely different political world.
I’m no longer convinced by arguments that a populist-right would ascend without Trump or that Americans have suffered some cataclysmic decline in civic identity. Americans have always been generally ambivalent at best about democracy and vote based on identity more often than platform. Trump won because of his brand, not his policy per se. In hindsight, Obama probably won two terms because of his brand as well; past presidents have simply been more cogent in their policy beliefs, so the idea that they won off of policy was plausible. To me, Trump was simply the first president whose platform was so deficient compared to his branding that it was simply absurd to hold that the public voted based on platform.