Right-Wing Populism

[Kelley]

At 01:55 PM 2/10/01 -0500, Doug Henwood wrote:
>Chip Berlet wrote:
>
>>But as you point out, a "centrist" politician using populism
>>is really just trying to "throw the bums out" but offering
>>no real change in the sysyems or structures of power, and no
>>real policy changes. What's the point?
>
>There's a big boneheaded tradition in American political discourse that's 
>anti-political - that uses "political" as a synonym for partisan 
>self-interest, the lust for personal power, at the expense of the general 
>interest. So, you've got Ds and Rs duking it out in their 
>inside-the-beltway fashion instead of attending to the business of the 
>country, as if the nature of that business were simple and self-evident. 
>Perot's rhetoric in '92 was all about this - it was just a matter of 
>rolling up your sleeves and looking under the hood to see what's wrong. No 
>sense of "politics" (in Margaret Atwood's pungent definition) as the 
>matter of who does what to whom and gets away with it.
>
>Doug

that's usually referred to as pragmatism in the non-philosophical sense of 
the word.

it would be better to show that they *are* political, not buy into it all 
and allow them to call themselves "centrist" as if they've somehow elided 
taking a side.

kelley