Somebody asked me the other day why I consider Elizabeth Warren a populist. Here is an example of her pronouncements that make me cringe:
Here we are, the richest country on earth — we have so much going for us, and yet we have a federal government that works great for millionaires, it works great for billionaires, it works great for giant corporations. It works great for anybody who can hire an army of lobbyists, an army of lawyers, give lots of campaign money. For the rest of America, it’s just not working.
This is garbage, people. This is overwrought, self-pitying garbage that I detest. Everything works great for me and for every single person I know. And it’s obvious that things are working beautifully for Elizabeth Warren, as well.
There is a lot of really bad shit in this country. Poverty, horrible, hopeless slums, segregation. And all this has got to be addressed. But it won’t be addressed by the self-pitying “us against the billionaires” melodrama because things are a lot more complicated than that.
I was driving through East St Louis a while ago and I saw this woman on the porch of a dilapidated house. East St Louis is a slum, in case you didn’t know. The chances of a person there becoming a victim of violent crime is one in 28, more than ten times higher than in the rest of the state. I don’t know what needs to happen for me to find the cynicism and the shamelessness to say that I know anything about the hardship faced by that woman on the porch. She and I are not in the same boat just because neither of us is a billionaire.
I don’t believe for a second that Warren is speaking to the people in East St Louis or Gary, Indiana (another horrible slum that I’ll never forget.) She is speaking to spoiled middle-class folks who love the “99% vs 1%” slogan because it makes them feel less guilty about the existence of the slums. When they say, “We are all dispossessed compared to the millionaires on Wall Street,” they conveniently erase the uncomfortable fact that some of us are a lot more dispossessed than others.
This is the nature of populism today. It’s all about allowing people to wallow in self-pity and, in return for a chance to feel like victims, they love you. And I hate this shit.
Clarissa's Blog 
Argument from ignorance (Latin: argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ignorance stands for “lack of evidence to the contrary”), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false (or vice versa). This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes a third option, which is that there is insufficient investigation and therefore insufficient information to prove the proposition satisfactorily to be either true or false. Nor does it allow the admission that the choices may in fact not be two (true or false), but may be as many as four, true
false
unknown between true or false
being unknowable (among the first three).[1]
In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used in an attempt to shift the burden of proof.
But don’t worry, Clarissa, JEB!, unlike you and Senator Warren, he knows what that woman in East St Louis needs:
Can’t you be more uplifting as well?
LikeLike
What Jeb and Warren are saying is nearly identical. Both are speaking to overfed middle classes that love to feel aggrieved and underappreciated. Both are selling the idea that the middle classes are right to feel aggrieved because an imaginary parental figure loves somebody else more and gives that somebody else more “free goodies.” Both promise to be good, caring parents who won’t give free goodies to anybody else.
The only difference is that the evil, entitled “anybody else” for Warren is an invented category of spoiled banksters and for Jeb it’s an invented category of spoiled blacks. But that difference is cosmetic.
LikeLike
Actually, JEB! was talking about African-American voters, not middle class ones. And if you want to eat a populist, promising there won’t be anything “free” isn’t now you do it, at least in this country.
LikeLike
“Populism” is almost always code for “class warfare.” It’s an “us vs. them” call-to-arms designed to make certain groups of aggrieved voters angry at a supposedly more privileged group.
By this standard, Elizabeth Warren is definitely a populist.
LikeLike
I’m all for class warfare all the time. 🙂 But if you are to engage in it, you’ve got to at least be able to name the classes correctly and not promote a conflict between imaginary classes. There is no class of the 99% in this country. And anybody who says there is has to be either an utter idiot or a profound hypocrite.
LikeLike
But if you’re for class warfare how can you not be a populist? Isn’t that the definition?
LikeLike
Populism is about pandering to the masses by giving simplistic, catchy explanations of very complex issues. Many people love populists because they make the world sound so easy to comprehend.
LikeLike
So you define “populism” specifically as dishonest class warfare, then?
By that more limited definition, Elizabeth Warren still meets the criterion.
LikeLike
It doesn’t have to be about classes at all. It can be but it can also be about something entirely different. Populist statements have to appeal to out desire to live in a simple, easily understandable world. And of course, such statements are always dishonest in nature because important issues are never ever simple.
LikeLike