Americans get to choose who they resent and blame for America's ills.
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| Sanders to Bloomberg: "Not going to fly!" |
Right populism resents the influence of cultural elites and foreigners.
Left populism resents the influence of domestic financial elites and corporations.
Right populism
Viewers of Fox got the message of insult and the sweet feeling of righteous resentment that is the staple of right populism. Students interrupted the Harvard-Yale football football game on Saturday to protest in favor of climate action.
How dare they, the Fox guests asked?
On the show "Outnumbered" four female guests and one male were indignant. The group did not engage the issue of climate or the universities' investments in fossil fuels. That was the message intended by the protesters. The message examined was one of insult.
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| Fox: How dare those spoiled elitists! |
This message fuels Fox and it works for Trump. His enemies are your enemies, including snobby limousine liberals, young and old, who treat them with contempt.
Left populism
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are critics of corporations and billionaires, financial elites, not cultural ones. Michael Bloomberg is a target. Bloomberg is a classic example of urban, sophisticated, woke culture. He even banned the sale of large size soft drinks in New York City on health grounds, something no other Democrat endorses. He advocates gun registration. He apologizes for his former policy of stop-and-frisk, which profiled black and brown people for public humiliation.
Their attacks ignore that. Instead, they attack unjust financial privilege, demonstrated by his presuming to enter the campaign without fully paying his dues as a candidate. |
| Click: Politico |
Not just disagree. "Disgusted."
This week Elizabeth Warren said, "He only needs bags and bags of money … His view is that he doesn’t need people who knock on doors. He doesn’t need to get out and campaign with people … And if you get out and knock on 1,000 doors, he’ll just spend another $37 million to flood the airways. And that’s how he plans to buy a nomination in the Democratic Party.”
She attributes motive and attitude to Bloomberg, "his view," and it is one of contempt.
She attributes motive and attitude to Bloomberg, "his view," and it is one of contempt.
The real critique of left populism is not that the rich are snobs, or prejudiced, or un-woke, but that the rich are too powerful and they stack the deck in their favor. They criticize economic injustice and its corruption of the political system.
But resentment over wealth disparity is not as emotionally salient as resentment over perceived snobbery. Americans are accustomed to some people having more money than others. Every American voter has more money than someone they know. So Warren and Sanders are working to make Bloomberg not just rich, but contemptuous. Look how he can just come in here like a steamroller, and not pay his dues talking to small groups.
The presumed cultural sneer embedded in a social hierarchy is more emotionally potent than is the disparity of power embedded in financial inequality. Most Americans would like to have ample money. Most don't hate the rich. People buy lottery tickets for a reason.
Americans attribute neutral values to rich people having and spending their money. There is no neutral value to a perceived sneer.
But resentment over wealth disparity is not as emotionally salient as resentment over perceived snobbery. Americans are accustomed to some people having more money than others. Every American voter has more money than someone they know. So Warren and Sanders are working to make Bloomberg not just rich, but contemptuous. Look how he can just come in here like a steamroller, and not pay his dues talking to small groups.
The presumed cultural sneer embedded in a social hierarchy is more emotionally potent than is the disparity of power embedded in financial inequality. Most Americans would like to have ample money. Most don't hate the rich. People buy lottery tickets for a reason.
Americans attribute neutral values to rich people having and spending their money. There is no neutral value to a perceived sneer.
10 comments:
I hate the rich but I want to be one. At least I’m consistent.
Plenty of good reasons to be disgusted by Bloomberg. If he had any courage, and truly felt it was urgent to beat TRUMP, he'd be running in the GOP primary. Fight it out and become the GOP's preferred billionaire to go up against Bernie.
Americans can each choose their own values, we have no shared culture or language or values in this land of infinite multiculturalism. In my value system, I'm disgusted by the pathologically greedy. I'd leave my ballot blank before I'd vote for Bloomberg, Steyer, or Trump.
Contempt Breeds Contempt
This is a brilliantly written piece, Mr. Sage. It is insightful, intellectually satisfying, and culturally astute. My perspective is crude in comparison.
Bloomberg’s message is that he is getting into the race because the entire field of Democrats just doesn’t look like they are up to beating Trump. Worse, like the new reports in Politico about Obama’s private comments that Sanders and Warren are pie-in-the-sky dreamers who are clueless about what it takes to win swing state voters, Bloomberg publicly pronounces that the rest of the field is just kind of gimmicky-looking or lightweight-sounding. Obama as the retired dean of our party says he’ll take Sanders out if he needs to. Bloomberg, as a billionaire party activist with real street credibility, goes a giant step further and says he’ll wipe clean the whole slate.
So hopeless, feckless, lame and absurd is Joe Biden that Bloomberg won’t even waste a bullet on him. Obama has already thrown the classical “old fool” under the table at the 5:00pm senior “early bird” Hometown Buffet line, making clear that his former VP is an embarrassment. Ya gotta feel sorry for the crazy old coot right?
But back to the point. Bloomberg holds Sanders and Warren in open, unmistakable contempt, and they are responding in kind. The political reality is that Bloomberg is now effectively a third party candidate. His massive tv ad buys will easily peel off 15 points collectively between Warren, Sanders and Biden, thus throwing the primaries into more disarray than they were already in. Bloomberg will loom large over the next debate without even being on the stage.
Contempt breeds contempt within our tent. Trump is wondering if he will even have a credible opponent.
Unfortunately, in today's political world, money is the mother's milk of politics. Money talks and B.S. walks. Bloomberg and Steyer have the deep pockets to buy many elections. They have enough money that they could buy a U.S. senator or a governor election, but probably not a presidential election. Still, Warren and Sanders have cause for being alarmed by having an opponent with deep pockets (who didn't pay their dues like the other candidates have).
Peter Sage should be familiar with big money in elections. He's one of the biggest democratic financial donors in the Rogue Valley, and democratic state-wide candidates are always banging on his door looking for a buck.
A couple of quotes to chew on: “This country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.”
– The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
"The Court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation. The path it has taken to reach its outcome will, I fear, do damage to this institution."
- Justice John Paul Stevens (on the Citizens United decision)
"Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton for your ribbons and bows/Everybody knows."
- Leonard Cohen
40 years of neoconservative/neoliberal economics has resulted in the commodification of everything we hear, see, taste, touch and smell. We are living daily the tragedy of the commons as money flows upward with increasing velocity to the already wealthy. Those who mistake envy for indignation show their own propensity for greed. It is not about money; it is about a system that says (via the valuing of money over morality, market over mission) some people are more equal than others; ie., "pay to play." The focus on wealth and income disparity by Sanders and Warren is not exclusive as suggested by Peter; they are well aware, as MLK knew, that its biblical, corrosive force underpins not only economic, but racial, social and environmental justice. If you want to see how such a system plays out, watch "The Take," that documents Argentina's failed tryst with neoliberalism.
Andy Seles
Our society is spiritually void, a void that many attempt to fill with money, status, and power. It manifests itself in the anxiety of never having "enough"; an existential fear. This terror is fed daily with messages that point out our personal shortcomings and lack of ambition by giving us myriad examples of those superior to us: the wealthy, our royalty whose whims determine our survival.
Protest at your peril, ignore and suffer, and never ever feel adequate or question whether the social order is corrupted. Those that dare to do so are castigated and branded as heretics. Yet, despite this Progressives have slowly, painfully moved us closer to economic and social justice and in the process America's democracy is the model for the World. One hopes it will continue.
Anyway, sure are a lot of Republicans in the Democratic primary. We already have a billionaire in the White House (how's that working out?). I don't see the point of another one.
Peter, kudos on a well-written blog, but also eliciting some high quality, thought-provoking comments from Y’all. Well-done.
There is a strong current of insecurity in our country these days that Trump rode to his electoral college win—but now the left wing of the Democratic Party are tapping into in order to energize the electorate. Moderate leaders of the party should pay attention. Trump appealed to voters worried about their roles and place in America, white working families who saw their jobs disappearing due to globalization and technology. Trump’s great lie was that somehow if he made America great again—life would be better for these families. But the truth is that it’s much more complicated than making America great again. Sanders and Warrens’ appeal is that they champion policies that tackle the source of insecurity for most Americans—the fear of losing everything if you’re diagnosed with a major illness like cancer, the fear of losing your health insurance if you lose your job, the fear of never being able to buy a house because you’re saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loan debt, the fear of knowing that you will not be able to experience the middle class lifestyle your parents did, the fear of spending your retirement in poverty. Candidates who are okay with the status quo and are offering no big new ideas are not addressing the needs of most folks. And candidates who happen to be enormously wealthy and at the same time focus on defending the status quo are a real turn off to a wide swath of voters. For many voters, it’s a hard stretch to believe a candidate will bring hope and change to our country when that same fellow made his fortune off a system rigged against working class people—especially when his policies offer no real change. So Warren and Sanders appeal is not because they’re not wealthy (they are both wealthier than Mayor Pete) but is because they are willing to attack the status quo and dismantle parts of our current system that are loathed by so many Americans.
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