Now, let me back into this a bit by noting that I’m not against “populism” in the general sense, because that’s just “democracy” by another name. Nor am I referring to the Populist party and movement of the early 20th century that backed a third party candidate (William Jennings Bryan) for President – even though I like the idea of more parties. Populism, generally, has an ugly side and it should be acknowledged – it can quickly result in things like lynch mobs or the election of even more oppressive regimes (note that when Palestinians held elections in 2006, they elected Hamas. Nice job, guys.) The Founding Fathers of our country understood that the passions of direct democracy could produce violence and oppression against political and religious minorities (if not ethnic/racial minorities), which is why we have (a) the Bill of Rights, (b) a Judiciary, and (c) a republican form of government – i.e. that we elect representatives for a certain term of years and they represent their constituents, rather than “direct democracy,” where in theory everyone votes on everything.
Modern politics, however, has become the slave to the pollster and the “base” of each party and all about winning just enough votes, without ever commanding a majority of this country’s “hearts and minds.” As Bovard notes, the majority of elections have become about instilling fear of the opponent, rather than in winning any substantive debate about issues. And they ALL do it – regardless of party or area of the country. Both Republicans and Democrats have continued to use “freedom from fear” – throughout our history, as Bovard illustrates – as some kind of new “freedom” that “they” are going to “secure” for us. Democrats are going to protect you from the fear of losing social security if those nasty Republicans get elected; Republicans are going to protect you from the fear of terrorism (with the Patriot Act, for example) because they’re tougher than those squishy, marshmallow Democrats.
Neither of them are, of course, going to protect you from the massive debt they’ve run up by overspending your tax dollars because neither of them cares. They’ll be dead or out of office when that check comes due and payable and the American dollar becomes so devalued it looks like the peso. But wait! Not so, anything, even their inability to balance the budget now becomes a cause celebre that can be used to generate more fear in the electorate of the other side – thus causing you to elect them – the same idiots who are responsible for the deficit in the first place! So, now we see the President and opposition leaders compromising on deficit reduction, while agreeing to raise the debt limit so that the government doesn’t default on its loans.
Bovard is absolutely correct to note this:
“Government fear-mongering creates a downward politico-psychological spiral. The more fearful people become the more gullible they will be. British philosopher John Stuart Mill warned in 1842: ‘Persons of timid character are the more predisposed to believe any statement, the more it is calculated to alarm them.’ It is almost irrelevant whether 10 or 20 or 30 percent of the citizenry can see through government’s fraudulent warnings. In a democracy as long as enough people can be frightened, all people can be ruled.”
Current political rhetoric frames every issue as a survival choice – either economic or physical – in order to create a choice between death/poverty (if the other side gets elected) or them. I would submit that we’ve reached a point where our citizenry are going to need to eschew party affiliations and simply start electing whomever is the newest person running, or start a massive write-in campaign for Bonzo the Chimp. At least we won’t have to listen to him tell us that we’ll die if we vote for his opponent.