[Peace-discuss] Populist rage

[David Green]

Mort, my reason for focusing on Rich, accurate or otherwise, is that he is viewed as on the progressive end of the liberal spectrum; as opposed to Thomas Friedman, who I think reveals himself more clearly as a fool, even to liberals. I suspect that many of the most influential liberals in the country think that Rich is gold (no pun intended), a master of urbane outrage (but not populist outrage) when necessary. I think that matters in terms of the efforts of those liberal elites who don't want to address structural issues by, for example, nationalizing the banks, to focus on malfeasance. Rich has a distinct role to play in establishing the limits of allowable debate, which include trivializing and disparaging "populism." If he didn't write for the NYT, which liberals read to reassure themselves that liberalism still represents what the historian Eric Goldmann called a "rendez-vous with destiny" (the first book I ever read in college), then I wouldn't
 pick on him, except perhaps just to be annoying. Krugman violates those limits to a certain extent, but in the spirit of FDR rather than a more fundamental critique of capitalism. In spite of all the rhetoric during the campaign and since, Obama and his aides are terrified of FDR. 




________________________________
From: Morton K. Brussel <brussel at illinois.edu>
To: David Green <davegreen84 at yahoo.com>
Cc: Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Sent: Monday, March 23, 2009 11:17:53 AM
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] Populist rage

My own view is that this, again, is much stewing about nothing.  


Rich writes about financial skullduggery, which indeed is not inconsequential to the populace. 


Read Rich's article, posted in Common Dreams, to see how well it relates to David's comment.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/22-0

--mkb



On Mar 22, 2009, at 4:15 PM, David Green wrote:

In the mainstream media, the connotation of the word "populism" is a warning to the ruling class that something needs to be done to forestall the populace taking democracy into their own hands. Frank Rich exemplifies today:

"Six weeks ago I wrote in this space that the country’s surge of populist rage could devour the president’s best-laid plans, including the essential Act II of the bank rescue, if he didn’t get in front of it. The occasion then was the Tom Daschle firestorm. The White House seemed utterly blindsided by the public’s revulsion at the moneyed insiders’ culture illuminated by Daschle’s post-Senate career. Yet last week’s events suggest that the administration learned nothing from that brush with disaster."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/opinion/22rich.html?_r=1

Populist rage always refers to sensational but essentially trivial outrages. The populist agenda other than one of reaction to such things can't be seriously considered; I don't think that Rich even knows of its existence.

The other way of looking at this would be to see Obama's "best-laid plans" as deserving to be "devoured" and replaced with plans that actually address the needs of raging populists, which is everyone who has to sell their labor. That's what Rich and the NYT, with the exception perhaps of Krugman (from a technocratic rather than democratic perspective) , do not want. It isn't that Rich doesn't sell his labor. It's just that he can only keep selling it if he supports the fundamental agenda of those who buy it from him.

DG
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