This is a really important conversation and I look forward to your next installment! Populism is indeed dangerous, and yet we are living in a time where the people have very legitimate grievances against the "elites" who control our political and economic system. The system seems to be leaving too many people behind in parts of our country that were once prosperous, and there seems to be an inability to stop the widening inequality in our society that, in my opinion, is driving a lot of the discontent and disengagement. So how should we address these issues? (Neo)liberalism seems to be failing to deliver for people. There seem to be some really structural issues getting in the way of reform, including (a) the influence of big money in elections, (b) the lack of real choice in elections due to unique features of our electoral system not found in other democracies, (c) our system goes so far in protecting minority rights that we have perpetually divided government where the Congress can never enact its agenda due to institutions like the Senate and Electoral College. If we don't want populists to burn the whole place down like in the French Revolution, people have to see some meaningful reforms happen.
This is a really important conversation and I look forward to your next installment! Populism is indeed dangerous, and yet we are living in a time where the people have very legitimate grievances against the "elites" who control our political and economic system. The system seems to be leaving too many people behind in parts of our country that were once prosperous, and there seems to be an inability to stop the widening inequality in our society that, in my opinion, is driving a lot of the discontent and disengagement. So how should we address these issues? (Neo)liberalism seems to be failing to deliver for people. There seem to be some really structural issues getting in the way of reform, including (a) the influence of big money in elections, (b) the lack of real choice in elections due to unique features of our electoral system not found in other democracies, (c) our system goes so far in protecting minority rights that we have perpetually divided government where the Congress can never enact its agenda due to institutions like the Senate and Electoral College. If we don't want populists to burn the whole place down like in the French Revolution, people have to see some meaningful reforms happen.
Extremely well said