We Could Use a Dose of True Populism

Great peril comes with being the party in power. You immediately become the establishment even if you did run on a platform of change. Throw in a few errors like sticking a bunch of Ivy League elitists in the cabinet and other positions of power and you’re ripe for the kind of phony populist movement we’ve seen rising up whenever frightened citizens tune TVs to Fox News or radios to Rush’s rants.

Let’s be clear. This tea party nonsense is no populist movement and Glenn Beck is no populist leader. Beck is nothing more than a person of great privilege and wealth doing everything in his power to make sure he maintains his advantages. The sad legions that follow people like him and Rush are people of relative middle-class privilege duped into believing there must be losers for them to feel like winners. These false populist masses are more like the Southern whites, in fact some might be the very same people, who were told that allowing black people some scrap of dignity would somehow diminish their own dignity.

What is populism? It’s a political philosophy and movement that sees societal systems as broken or corrupt, and slanted toward people of privilege and influence. Fixing a broken health care system that awards billions to insurance executives while denying adequate coverage to 40 percent of the nation is populism in action. Trying to protect the broken system and the fortunate ones it benefits, is not populism. It is the exact opposite of populism. That the media insist on calling Beck and the tea partiers “populists” just proves that health care isn’t the only broken institution in our culture.

When I think of a populist, the late newspaper columnist from Texas, Molly Ivins, comes to mind. Molly understood that when it comes to advancing the cause of the powerless, it’s not a matter of siding with government on one hand or corporations on the other, the point is to break the conspiracy between them. Since we get to elect our political leaders, they are the ones from whom we can demand change. As Ms. Ivins once wrote:

“What stuns me most about contemporary politics is not even that the system has been so badly corrupted by money. It is that so few people get the connection between their lives and what the bozos do in Washington and our state capitols.”

She also argued, “It is possible to read the history of this country as one long struggle to extend the liberties established in our Constitution to everyone in America.” Those two statements serve as a pretty good definition of populism. Trying to protect the privilege of those blessed by our cultural institutions is not populism, no matter how loud Rush screams into his microphone.

Populist leaders often come from modest backgrounds and know first-hand what struggle feels like. They’ve also seen how hard the poor and working class labor to survive or get ahead. They spot the lie when people like Beck and Limbaugh claim we all get what we’ve earned. What defines real populist leaders is they don’t look back and say, “I worked hard and made it, so can you. If you don’t it’s your own fault.” They look back and see that the game shouldn’t be so skewed, that fundamental systems need to be repaired. This tendency helped define the prophet Jesus. He could have used his fame and talent to claim fortune for himself. Could have said, you take care of yourself and I’ll do the same. But he didn’t. He was born poor and died poor after dedicating his life to denouncing the corrupt aristocrats of his culture who made deals with the Romans to feather their own nests and then betrayed their own people, using religious dictatorship to suppress them. They liked the order of things “as is.” Jesus answered with a resounding “No!” And that got him killed.

I see this same sensitivity to failed systems in President Obama’s drive for health care reform. The broken or corrupt system—take your pick—failed his own mother when she needed it most. You don’t forget something like that.

As for Beck and Limbaugh, they definitely are not populists leading a tea party rebellion like the one of Boston Harbor fame in the days of our revolution. They are King George, drawing to their flag those fearful of change.