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A review by amyiw
The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism by Thomas Frank
4.0
Hmm... Really good historical look at populism with a bit of his own twist at the end on Trump and Hillary. Some of the history explains why I feel I have lost my party, but really it started with Bush Senior and Clinton. Here he explains that it goes back even further for the really idea of the liberals that are supposed to be for equality, and social reform. Of course you would have to define both of those terms to really understand. His argument here is the anti-elitism is the establishment elite and contrasts that with the FDR advisory group which he called his "Braintrust". I don't know if we can discount experts but there is always a competing expert opinion, or at least almost always. With Covid today this is definitely the case yet the media and current administration is discounting them entirely. Only there science is correct, even when the studies are pointed out to be flawed. I point to the natural immunity studies, for just one case but don't want to get in an argument.
I wish this was written one year later and he put more money influence in policy and elections. I really would like to get an updated thoughts on the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. Right now there are so many union drives that are being busted but we don't get them in mainstream media. There are also union strikes, one that finally ended of John Deere that shows why unions are important. He does talk about this importance and how it is left out of the debate. It actually was in the talk by Biden, he was going to be the "most pro-union" president ever but until recently, ingored all the strikes and union forming attempts like Amazon workers in Alabama, or Starbucks in Buffalo NY, and so many more. Finally after independent news has screamed it, we have got some reaction.
So he does go into what divides us, and I have slowly come to the same conclusions as it is history repeating itself, but many of us have said stop. Yes, black lives matter but as Martin Luther King said, this is contingent on all of us being valued. When we have people working over time and still not being able to pay the rent, we create a desperate society. The media then portrays the problem as white supremacist. Is there a problem there, sure but it isn't what is keeping our wages stagnant nor are any of the other myriad of social justice issues. It is not what is keeping healthcare cost up and quality of care down. Not what is keeping housing unaffordable for many. It is not why we have the slowest Internet with the highest cost of all the G-20 countries. Some of these social issues would be answered just by improving the lives of all but more the poor and lower middle class with better pay, healthcare, affordable education and safety nets. But instead more and more people are falling out of the middle class into poverty.
The history is great here but now we have a technological behemoth that is running out of control. It is deciding what information is allow to be put forward and how it is even placed. I would have like a little blip in the narrative to discuss this too though it might require a whole book. How populist movements are being subverted or canceled or portrayed as populist while not, or even some that are flourishing. It is easy to see the same history happening here as other populist movements but it is hard to decipher.
I wish this was written one year later and he put more money influence in policy and elections. I really would like to get an updated thoughts on the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. Right now there are so many union drives that are being busted but we don't get them in mainstream media. There are also union strikes, one that finally ended of John Deere that shows why unions are important. He does talk about this importance and how it is left out of the debate. It actually was in the talk by Biden, he was going to be the "most pro-union" president ever but until recently, ingored all the strikes and union forming attempts like Amazon workers in Alabama, or Starbucks in Buffalo NY, and so many more. Finally after independent news has screamed it, we have got some reaction.
So he does go into what divides us, and I have slowly come to the same conclusions as it is history repeating itself, but many of us have said stop. Yes, black lives matter but as Martin Luther King said, this is contingent on all of us being valued. When we have people working over time and still not being able to pay the rent, we create a desperate society. The media then portrays the problem as white supremacist. Is there a problem there, sure but it isn't what is keeping our wages stagnant nor are any of the other myriad of social justice issues. It is not what is keeping healthcare cost up and quality of care down. Not what is keeping housing unaffordable for many. It is not why we have the slowest Internet with the highest cost of all the G-20 countries. Some of these social issues would be answered just by improving the lives of all but more the poor and lower middle class with better pay, healthcare, affordable education and safety nets. But instead more and more people are falling out of the middle class into poverty.
The history is great here but now we have a technological behemoth that is running out of control. It is deciding what information is allow to be put forward and how it is even placed. I would have like a little blip in the narrative to discuss this too though it might require a whole book. How populist movements are being subverted or canceled or portrayed as populist while not, or even some that are flourishing. It is easy to see the same history happening here as other populist movements but it is hard to decipher.