Comment by edgyquant | Hacker News Reader

Comment by edgyquant | Hacker News Reader

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Of course. Plebs are focused on working the land etc they don’t have time for a full education into the political machinery of Rome they would need to understand in order to grasp the nuances of the problems of their day. So they outsource their grievances to a guy from that world who says he knows how to fix all their problems, it’s easy even, if it weren’t for the pesky Senators.

This is exactly like what we’ve seen in recent years (really it’s been seen time and time again.) I tried to leave out any names or obvious events other than to explain the rhetorical behavior they usually share.

I will say that it doesn’t take an ignorant person to fall victim to populism. I initially went head first into Bernie as “my guy” (not that I’m some genius, mind you.) Coming from a lower middle class white family he basically told me everything I wanted to hear in 2016.

It’s easy identifying a given problem but one thing I’ve come to try and understand is that if I ever have an idea that seems simple, it’s best to try and figure out why it is it hasn’t been solved yet. For any given issue (be it enterprise or political) there have probably been incredibly intelligent people, smarter than me for sure, who’ve tried to solve it and were unable to.

  > he basically told me everything I wanted to hear in 2016
  ...
  > it’s best to try and figure out why it is it hasn’t been solved yet

is the implication that bernie was just in it for himself? or just foolish for believing he could do what he said?

The implication is that it’s easy to say universal healthcare, student loan amnesty, and stimulus checks for all. It’s harder to say ‘but if we give stimulus checks, we might cause inflation’, or ‘universal healthcare might cost a few trillion a year, and I’m not sure how we can finance that’.

Stroking the plebs is not a new thing. Trump exists for this reason, AOC literally strokes the left with every tweet, so does Bernie.

Also, it’s easy to say free college for everyone. Especially when you know that the students who will actually need their college paid for won’t be going because the price of tuition is only one factor in why people decide against college. I would say Bernie definitely understands this nuance, but it doesn’t make for a nice soundbite and kinda seems like subsidizing college for those who would have went regardless.

No I definitely added a clause stating their true desires were irrelevant. Just that’s it’s easy to get yourself a powerbase by making sweeping promises that play at emotions. It’s not so easy to actually enact the needed change and occasionally it is impossible. If they’re the especially ugly type Populists can then use them as proof that the engrained powers are working against the people.

The only reason I mentioned my own believes was because I used to consider myself fairly well educated, having been a huge history nerd my entire life alongside the CS stuff we all do here, and yet I didn’t even realize Bernie was a populist until after Trump was president and the election was over.

It’s easy to get sweeper up in emotions, that’s my point.

i see, thanks for explaining

i think i agree, populist messaging can be a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands... on the other hand, i wonder how else politics of change can work without it?

it seems very hard to get a message through when theres such a huge low-pass filter... maybe there are other ways?

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