Jim Hightower: Populism Is a Rebellion Against Corporate Power -- It's Not Just Stupid, Raw Anger

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Memo to Media: Populism Is a Rebellion Against Corporate Power -- It's Not Just Stupid, Raw Anger

By Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown. Posted May 8, 2009.

Our fight against moneyed elites has more than 100 years of history.



When I lived in Washington, DC, in the 1970s, I got a call from a friend of mine who worked for the Congressional Research Service--a legislative agency that digs up facts, prepares briefing papers, and otherwise does research on any topic requested by members of Congress.

My friend could barely speak, because he was hooting, howling, and guffawing over a research question he'd just received. It was from the office of Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, the aloof and patrician Texas Democrat who was known on Capitol Hill primarily as a faithful emissary for Wall Street interests. At the time, Bentsen was contemplating a run for the presidency, and apparently he was searching for a suitable political identity. "What is a populist?" read the research query. "The senator thinks he might be one."

Uh...no sir, you are not.

Bentsen was closer to being "The Man in the Moon" than he was to being a populist. Yet, he was hardly alone in trying to cloak himself as "The People's Champion" while remaining faithful to the plutocratic powers. These days, there's a whole flock of politicos and pundits doing this--from Sarah Palin to Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich to Glenn Beck.

They are abetted by a media establishment that carelessly (and lazily) misapplies the populist label to anyone who claims to be a maverick and tends to bark a lot. Although the targets they're usually barking at are poor people, teachers, minorities, unions, liberals, protestors, environmentalists, gays, immigrants, or other demonized groups that generally reside far outside the center of the power structure--the barkers are indiscriminately tagged as populist voices. ........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/139893/memo_to_media%3A_populism_is_a_rebellion_against_corporate_power_--_it%27s_not_just_stupid%2C_raw_anger/

[laststeamtrain]

1. What it is, Jim. n/t.

[ljm2002]

2. Thanks for posting...

...and thanks to Jim Hightower! He is a treasure, and it is so good to see someone who can lay it out like he does, deconstructing the faux-populist BS that our media and the right wing pundits try to cram down our throats.

K & R

[glitch]

3. Thank YOU Jim Hightower, and marmar for posting. I wish they taught real history in schools. K & R

edit: I wish we allowed the teaching of real history in schools - blaming teachers should not be implied.

OMG, just saw the title to his new book "Swim Against the Current: Even a Dead Fish Can Go With the Flow." :rofl:

[Supersedeas]

9. you have a point here about history

[BeFree]

4. Its a pisser

Our enemies work to divide us by getting all us peons to fight each other while they get out the back door with the stolen loot.

[Better Believe It]

5. K & R

[bvar22]

6. Love the Hightower.

He despises the political dogma of "Centrism/Pragmatism" as much as I do.

"Centrism" is something you should be forced to accept, NOT a political position from which to begin negotiations.
As proved during the Clinton administration, if you start in the center, the end result will always be a drift to the Right.

Hightower's essay at Alternet is superb. It is an brief essay on the history of the Populist movement, and the problems facing the country today. I highly recommend it.

"We're seeing liberalism at work today in Washington's Wall Street bailout. Both parties tell us that AIG, Citigroup, Bank of America, and the rest are "too big to fail," so taxpayers simply "must" rescue the management, stockholders, and bondholders of the financial giants in order to save the system. Populists, on the other hand, note that it is this very system that has caused the failure-so structural reform is required. Let's reorganize the clumsy, inept, ungovernable, and corrupt financial system by ousting those who wrecked it, splitting up its component parts (banking, investment, and insurance), and establishing decentralized, manageable-sized financial institutions operating on the locally controlled models of credit unions, co-ops, and community banks."

<snip>

"Wall Street owns the country," declared Mary Ellen Lease at an 1890 populist convention in Topeka, Kansas. A powerhouse orator who took to the stump and wowed crowds at a time women were not even allowed to vote, Lease laid out a message her audiences knew to be true, for they were living what she was so colorfully describing. "It's no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street," she roared. "Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags....The people are at bay, let the bloodhounds of money who have dogged us beware."

If the "Centrist Democrats" are successful at fucking up Health Care Reform, I will be looking for a new Party.
This one sounds good.

"The only thing in the Middle of the Road
are Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos."--Jim Hightower

[Wednesdays]

7. K&R

:kick:

[gulfcoastliberal]

8. We need Hughie Long. He made it crystal clear with the Share Our Wealth chapters in every state.

Everyone should know all about Hughie Long - he got assassinated for Share Our Wealth. It was a damn good plan.