Left-wing populism, right-wing populism, and anti-populism

The term ‘populism’ has had a long and checkered history in politics and is experiencing a resurgence recently, used to describe many political developments. In the past it was adopted as a term of pride, but lately it is used as a pejorative. As a result, its meaning has become so muddled that some scholars suggest abandoning the term altogether.

A common framework for interpreting populism is known as the ideational approach: this defines populism as an ideology that presents “the people” as a morally good force and contrasts them against “the elite”, who are portrayed as corrupt and self-serving. Populists differ in how “the people” are defined, but it can be based along class, ethnic, or national lines. Populists typically present “the elite” as comprising the political, economic, cultural, and media establishment, depicted as a homogeneous entity and accused of placing their own interests, and often the interests of other groups—such as large corporations, foreign countries, or immigrants—above the interests of “the people”.
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Other scholars of the social sciences have defined the term populism differently. According to the popular agency definition used by some historians of United States history, populism refers to popular engagement of the population in political decision-making. An approach associated with the political scientist Ernesto Laclau presents populism as an emancipatory social force through which marginalised groups challenge dominant power structures.

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The closing of prisons in the Netherlands

Commenter birgerjohansson was kind enough to send me this interesting article about how the Netherlands is reducing its prison population and closing down some of its prisons and converting them to cultural centers.

The Dutch have seen their prison population decrease by more than 40% over the past 20 years. At the other end of the spectrum, Britain has the highest rate of incarceration in western Europe, and is struggling with an unprecedented prisons crisis. Britain’s minister of prisons, James Timpson, calls the Netherlands a source of inspiration.

Part of this is due to the general reduction in violent crime that has been occurring worldwide. While non-violent crime has not decreased, those crimes provide less of an impetus for incarceration, the negative consequences of which are becoming increasingly apparent.
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Israel is turning northern Gaza into a killing cage

In Gaza, Israel seems intent on violating every single provision of the Geneva Conventions governing the rules of war. It is bombing homes, schools, hospitals, refugee camps, and water and electricity infrastructures. It has gone even further and now seems to be pursuing a policy of deliberately starving the population by blocking aid in the form of food and water from entering the region.

Jeremy Scahill and Sharif Abdel Kouddous write in the invaluable site Drop Site News that Israel has turned Gaza into a killing cage, a war of extermination.

With the full support of the Biden administration, Israel is waging a merciless war of extermination against the 400,000 Palestinians remaining in the northern Gaza Strip as the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly considering a plan to annex the territory. No food, water, or medicine have entered the north since October 1 as Israeli forces have conducted a campaign of intense airstrikes and ground forces have invaded and encircled much of the area. 

As it orders residents to flee the north, Israel has intensified its attacks on Deir Al-Balah, a city in central Gaza that has not suffered the vast scale of destruction unleashed by Israel in other parts of the Strip. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have fled to the city in recent months. In the early morning hours of Monday, Israel bombed a crowded tent encampment for displaced people on the grounds of Al Aqsa hospital, engulfing civilians in a massive ring of fire. Video from the scene showed patients—some of whom appeared to be in beds attached to IV cords—being burned alive as others in the encampment tried desperately to extinguish the fires with small buckets of water. 
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Keir Starmer and the Labour party’s rapid decline

Just three months ago, the Labour party swept into power in the UK general elections, winning 412 seats in the 650-member parliament, a gain of 211 from before. It looked like the public was eager to throw out the Conservatives, whose 14 years of control had resulted in all manner of cuts to public services while giving tax and other benefits to the wealthy, something that is pretty much the standard right-wing playbook.

But after becoming the government, swept in with a seeming wave of enthusiasm, within just a 100 days, the popularity of the Labour party and its leader Keir Starmer has cratered and in some polls, he is now less popular than the former prime minister Rishi Sunak, a startling downturn in fortunes..

So what happened? One of the features of the first-past-the-post system in UK elections is that it tends to overstate the popularity of the party that gets the most seats.
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The danger of storm complacency

Hurricanes are extremely volatile events, highly sensitive to local conditions. They form quickly, their strengths can rise and fall rapidly, and their paths are can veer abruptly. Given all that, it is quite remarkable how weather scientists are able to predict things about them as much as they can. But because of their volatility, these predictions necessarily lack absolute certainty and contain margins of error. Unfortunately, many people do not appreciate this fact and when events turn out differently from what was announced, they tend to feel that either the forecasters were incompetent or that they were deliberately misled. (In my book The Great Paradox of Science, I spend considerable time making the case that teaching students and adults about the uncertainty inherent in almost all scientific measurements is an important element in understanding the nature of science. But unfortunately, very little time is spent on it.)
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If Ayn Rand reviewed children’s films …

… Daniel M. Lovery imagines what the reviews might look like.

Here is one of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

An industrious young woman neglects to charge for her housekeeping services and is rightly exploited for her naïveté. She dies without ever having sought her own happiness as the highest moral aim. I did not finish watching this movie, finding it impossible to sympathize with the main character. —No stars.

And here is one of Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.

An excellent movie. The obviously unfit individuals are winnowed out through a series of entrepreneurial tests and, in the end, an enterprising young boy receives a factory. I believe more movies should be made about enterprising young boys who are given factories. —Three and a half stars. (Half a star off for the grandparents, who are sponging off the labor of Charlie and his mother. If Grandpa Joe can dance, Grandpa Joe can work.)

MAGAwoman explains how and why the weather is being manipulated

Jason Selvig who, along with Davram Stiefler, makes up the comedy duo The Good Liars talks to a woman attending a creepy Trump event and she explains how and why the government is intensifying the strength of hurricanes.

The real Bourne conspiracy: The wild story behind the 2020 election fraud allegations

After the 2020 election, Fox News and other right wing media peddled the bizarre theory that there had been a vast conspiracy involving the Dominion voting machine company, the Smartmatic software company, the Democratic party, the deceased Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez, and large numbers of election workers all over the country to switch votes from creepy Donald Trump to Joe Biden. Although preposterous on its face, this spread like wildfire and became an article of faith with creepy Trump, his cult followers, and among his campaign team.

Both Dominion and Smartmatic sued Fox News, Newsmax, and OANN. and also people close to creepy Trump like Rudy Giuliani and Sydney Powell who spread this nonsense. Fox settled with Dominion for a whopping $787.5 million dollars. Smartmatic’s case against Newsmax was settled on September 26, 2024 but the details have not yet been released. Four other cases are still pending.
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Kris Kristofferson (1936-2024)

The gifted singer, songwriter, and actor died on September 28th at the age of 88.

There have been many articles and tributes to him. He had a varied career and many of his songs were sung by others and became major hits.

Kristofferson was a Golden Gloves boxer, rugby star and football player in college; received a master’s degree in English from Merton College at the University of Oxford in England; and flew helicopters as a captain in the U.S. Army but turned down an appointment to teach at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, to pursue songwriting in Nashville.
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Starting in the late 1960s, the Brownsville, Texas native wrote such country and rock ‘n’ roll standards as “Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down,” “Help Me Make it Through the Night,” “For the Good Times” and “Me and Bobby McGee.” Kristofferson was a singer himself, but many of his songs were best known as performed by others, whether Ray Price crooning “For the Good Times” or Janis Joplin belting out “Me and Bobby McGee.”

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Private equity companies should not be in health care

Mike Ervin is a disability rights activist who has a monthly column in The Progressive magazine where he discusses disability issues, a subject that gets little attention in most mass media. He also writes a blog Smart Ass Cripple.

In the October/November 2024 issue of the magazine, he describes how private equity companies have entered the business of selling and servicing motorized wheelchairs. Two such companies Numotion and National Seating & Mobility (NSM) are owned by private equity firms and they have gobbled up a lot of the other companies.
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