One of the tropes of modern politics is that populists like Trump succeed because of millions of disaffected…

One of the tropes of modern politics is that populists like Trump succeed because of millions of disaffected working people. This is just one more delusional variety of the nonsense idea that ‘the people’ is a thing. /1

We so desperately cling to the idea ‘democracy’ is ‘the people’ running countries. There is NO SUCH THING as ‘the people’. It’s a fiction, groups of people of whatever size do NOT think and act. /2

Anybody who wins in politics loves to *evoke* the people as the cause of their win. Their ‘mandate’. That’s the con. It’s a retrospective attribution. In reality the winner persuaded enough people to vote for them. /3

But that’s not the people acting. It’s persuasion acting. The distinction is fundamental. The same people will vote for somebody completely different, given half a chance. /4

The working people voting for populists like Trump have been persuaded to do that. Trump and his ilk TARGET them relentlessly. They know that’s their weakest link. So they sell them narratives about their exclusion, about how they too can be successful. /5

The critical point here is all the movement is at the TOP end. All change is led, its is never, ever spontaneously generated by the people, because it is impossible for groups of people to act in that way, even if they wanted to. There is no group mind. /6

Instead all people act the same way, and have done for the entire history of human life. They form status hierarchies. Populists like Trump offer people a status hierarchy they want. Somebody a bit King-like at the top. /7

It’s easy to persuade them the due process, checks-and-balances daily operation of actual democracies is failing them. All that supposed ‘red tape’. Even the persuaders often believe it, when they’re not just cynically deploying it. /8

And was I’ve Tweeted about before, we’ve forgotten that due process and checks-and-balances didn’t derive from some democratic urge anyway. They were the outcome of barons and Kings fighting over their respective authorities. That’s what the Magna Carta was. /9

The ‘progressive’ teams in modern politics to be successful must offer an alternative King. Not wallow in due process and checks-and-balances, which are vital to democracy, but didn’t originate in any concern for the people. /10

They only have power when the royal court, the barons and nobles around their king, in our day the billionaires surrounding Trump, demand limitations on the authority of the King. Right now they’re all on the same team, happily shredding every check and balance. /11

Eventually they will fall out, as Kings tend to always become delusional megalomaniacs when unchecked. But waiting for that day is a very slow burn to resolving the critical issues we have facing us today. /12

Change will more likely come by the near total collapse of the societies the populists run, due to their inability to run anything except their own PR. And increased, enormous pressure from China, and its industrial juggernaut. /end