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As general literacy declines, one of the consequences seems to be that words with multiple meanings or variations become compressed into a single vague meaning.

As general literacy declines, one of the consequences seems to be that words with multiple meanings or variations become compressed into a single vague meaning. Not so long ago there was a common distinction between capital-D Democracy the political system and small-d democracy the process of power or knowledge being diffused through the masses. You don’t see this idea expressed much anymore, and even the expression “making something more democratic” almost always implies a reference to the political system, not the the second sense. This distinction is useful, because one of the biggest trends of the technological age is the capital-D version supplanting and erasing the small-d version. Almost all of the institutional “defenders of democracy” have essentially no interest in small-d democratization processes, because they are themselves in the driver’s seat in the political democratic system. This leads them to ignore or disregard the issues of everyday people, which leads to populism, which is of course the biggest global political trend of the last decade. This is kind of a shame for tech in particular, because for the most part technology has been a democratizing (small-d sense) force throughout history. Phones, computers, cars, on and on: all examples of expensive exclusive technologies that became democratized and accessible to everyone. And yet that same force doesn’t seem to have been applied to the political system itself.

atmosx 1y ago
> democracy the process of power or knowledge being diffused through the masses […] Power sure, but knowledge? Nope. If anything it’s the opposite.
rayiner 1y ago
[flagged]
- fifticon 1y ago
  as I understand it, populism is when you exploit 'popular' causes to get a mass backing to bring yourself into, and to stay in, power. It is opportunistic, 'goal justifies means' philosophy. So, you don't really have orinciples or a cause, apart from 'I should be in charge'. It also means voters, if they are capable of judging that, cant really trust you, because you will switch causes whenever it suits you. In my own country, I could name politicians who always carried the same color as the reigning political movement, and who would switch when the winds change, because their real principle was 'be on the winning side'.
  - cat_plus_plus 1y ago
    This has an obvious aside of letting voters try whatever a large majority want to be tried, for example scaling back globalization in at attempt to prioritize material and psychological well being of citizens. This could well backfire and voters would then want something else, which turncoats will happily endorse. The alternative is that we can't get to something else because it has no popular support yet.
    - bigbadfeline 1y ago
      > "Prioritize material and psychological well being of citizens" Of which citizens, by what measure and in what direction? Up or down? "Quo bono" is never answered. Well, it's clear if you look at the charts - the curves never change direction regardless of who's in charge. > "letting voters try whatever a large majority want to be tried" Washing hands with the will of the voters is demagogy. Trump promised stopping the U war in 24 hours, bringing prices down and unseen prosperity from day one but all that was replaced by "it was a joke" and endless "necessary pain" (for you, not him). The spin now is that the voters elected a person, not his promises, and if he lied and joked... it's voters' fault. As if there was ever a choice without jokers in it.
- inejge 1y ago
  I'm sure you can look up the dictionary definition like everyone else, and it won't mention anything similar to "democracy", but if you want one from a random internet person: it's pandering to discontent and fear of some portion of the populace. The populist implies that he or she represents the interests of that populace and has solutions to their problems. Of course it is never that easy.
  - leereeves 1y ago
    Everyone not already in power who wants to be elected tries to appeal to those who are unhappy with the current government. How do you decide if they are "pandering to discontent and fear of some portion of the populace" or "standing up for neglected people"?
    - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
      I think that populism has an element of "tear the system down", which is something that goes considerably further than the usual "throw those bums out". When Biden ran against Trump, he tried to appeal to voters who were unhappy with Trump, but nobody called him a populist. He was just a normal politician. Trump isn't. Neither is Bernie Sanders. How do you decide? I can't give you a clear answer there. Still, there is a difference. (Maybe "do they talk like a normal politician"?) Most out-of-office politicians are on the Biden side; only a few are on the Trump/Sanders side.
      - leereeves 1y ago
        If by "tear the system down" you mean anti-establishment and anti-elite, I agree. That's an essential component of populism. I don't think many people would say Biden was anti-establishment. In 2020, Trump hadn't been in office long enough to change the establishment very much.
      - rayiner 1y ago
        > Most out-of-office politicians are on the Biden side; only a few are on the Trump/Sanders side. At least on the GOP side, it’s because they care only about cheap labor. Free trade to harness cheap labor abroad, and mass immigration to harness cheap labor for what can’t be outsourced.
- leereeves 1y ago
  Populism refers to any movement that claims to represent the interests of the common people against the elite. It might be left, right, democratic, or authoritarian. It might really serve the people or just use anti-establishment sentiment for its own benefit. It's not necessarily a bad thing but it's almost always reported negatively because the media is owned by the elite. Even elites who claim to care about the people don't want to be cast as the villain or lose power themselves. Ironically, a successful populist movement becomes the new elite and creates an opportunity for other people to be populists.
  - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    But it ought to be reported, maybe not negatively, but at least skeptically. Representing the people against the elites almost always means destroying (to at least some degree) the system that has elevated those elites. That may be needed, it may be justified, but we still need to ask what the replacement system is. It is easy to criticize, but harder to offer a better alternative. It is easy to destroy; hard to build. The populist's answer to what comes next often boils down to "trust me, bro" - there isn't a concrete, workable plan. As a result, the net result often winds up worse than what came before, not just for the elite, but even for the people the populist claimed to represent. This is true even if the populist was honest, that is, sincerely had the interest of the common people at heart.
    - yupitsme123 1y ago
      What you're describing is basically Conservativism. The root word is conserve. Liberals are often about taking down (liberating) the current system. But for some reason they often don't want or don't get the populist labels. For example, I don't think anyone ever called BLM a populist movement.
  - notahacker 1y ago
    > Ironically, a successful populist movement becomes the new elite and creates an opportunity for other people to be populists. Generally the first part is the defining feature of a populist movement: a leader or faction that seeks to insist that the only solution to elites or other hated minorities or purported threats is to assume that anyone trying to stop them accumulating more power is an agent of the elites. Naturally this rhetorical style suits people that want to accumulate a lot of power and wealth and don't want to give too many straight answers to questions about what they're doing with it. That's why Maduro, an oligarch who's been in power for over 12 years and decides exactly who is and isn't "elite" in his country is characterised as "populist" because his rhetorical style is all about claiming that he's on the side of the poor against [what's left of] the middle classes, whilst a civil war or coup which usually leads to elites being deposed may not involve populists at all.
- pessimizer 1y ago
  It was just a slur against the People's Party. It was like how people now call whatever Trump said last "Trumpism." Look at the People's Party's policies and that's what it stands for. The shorthand is that the policies prioritize wage laborers and small business over massive entrenched interests and insiders. The way the term has been used since then (always by people who disapprove) means "whatever the rabble are asking for now." Or "appealing to the lowest common denominator voter." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Party_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Party_(United_States) So the term is really meaningless, just a slur used against people whose ideas sometimes overlap with People's Party policies, used by people who would have hated the People's Party at the time.
- whatnow37373 1y ago
  Populism and democracy are orthogonal. Usually populists just ride democracy as a vehicle to where they really want to go. If The People selected you as their Chosen Leader, who needs pesky Elites in the courts and the Corrupt bureaucrats holding you back, the Chosen One? All opposition to what The People want is elitist gatekeeping and needs to be violently eradicated.
  - EnPissant 1y ago
    Suppose a political candidate runs on a platform of mass deportations of illegal aliens. If he wins the election and then makes good on this campaign promise, is that populism or democracy?
    - DonHopkins 1y ago
      It was called Fascism when Hitler did it. Why, did you have somebody else in mind?
      - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
        Deporting illegal immigrants is called enforcing the law, not fascism.
        AnimalMuppet 1y ago
        Depends on how you do it. Yes, they are here in violation of the law. But if that's what bothers you, then the process you use to deport them had better be in keeping with the law. If what bothers you about them being here is the "illegal" aspect, then you must not trample the legal process in order to remove them.
        FirmwareBurner 1y ago
        For example what's an illegal way of departing an illegal immigrant?
- hayst4ck 1y ago
  Populism is to (small d) democracy like a popularity contest is to a job interview. Populism asks "which candidate do I like more" while democracy depends on asking "which candidate will perform the job the best."
  - deleted 1y ago
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  - rayiner 1y ago
    That’s a weird (but revealing) comparison, because it makes it seem like there’s some too-down HR or manager deciding what the job criteria are what constitutes good job performance. What elites call populist voters are picking the candidate that they think will do the best at the job they want done.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- PJDK 1y ago
  Populism is definitely a part of democracy, but it is a criticism from "responsible" politicians for "irresponsible" ones. Obviously this is all politics so you needn't worry about the specifics of what actually is populist. But, imagine two "responsible" politicians. One who believes in lowering taxes as a worthwhile thing, and acknowledges cuts to services as a negative impact that is outweighed by the good. The other believes in higher public spending, with the negative being higher taxes, outweighed by the better services. Both would be angered by a third candidate that came along promising both lower taxes and higher public spending - just the "popular" parts of their respective manifestos.
  - rayiner 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - PJDK 1y ago
      Potentially - it's not like a strictly defined term. With mainstream political parties you'd more often think about specific policy areas than the whole business.
      - rayiner 1y ago
        I’d respectfully submit that the reason it’s not well defined is that it’s a pejorative deployed by the establishment in both the left and the right to disparage substantive policies they don’t like, rather than a principled label for a particular political approach versus another.
- tptacek 1y ago
  No, that's not what populism means. Populism is a rejection of pluralism. It is neither democratic nor anti-democratic, right nor left. You know this, and you've been in this argument before (the search bar avails). It's hard to imagine this could be a good faith comment.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - rayiner 1y ago
    I probably didn’t find the definition persuasive if I don’t remember it. That’s certainly not the definition given in say Merriam Webster (though that one’s not illuminating either). Populism is not inconsistent with pluralism, though it is incompatible with the elaborate anti-democratic machinery that’s been created to manage pluralism: administrative bureaucracy, elaborate laws, racial political machines and interest groups, etc. “Pluralism” as it exists in places like New York City and Chicago are failure states of democracy, where you’ve got divided populations managed by ethnic political machines, with politics consisting of horse trading between interest groups. Yes, populism is quite at odds with that version of pluralism.
    - tptacek 1y ago
      It doesn't seem like you're trying to reach any kind of shared understanding here, but rather just trying to perpetuate a partisan argument. Those are off-topic for the site.
      - rayiner 1y ago
        I’m not making a partisan argument. I attended the Iowa Democratic caucuses in 2019, and saw vibrant participatory democracy as de Tocqueville described. And I am trying to reach a shared understanding—what do we mean by “pluralism,” and how does that relate to “populism” and “democracy.” Your view seems to be that pluralism and populism are distinct but orthogonal to democracy. My point is that “pluralism” in practice seems to entail anti-democratic structures to manage the pluralism, and thus is less “democratic” than populism. To put it differently, you characterized populism as a rejection of pluralism. And my point is that, insofar as populism has anything to do with pluralism, it’s more a rejection of the anti-democratic structures that have been installed to manage pluralism. Which just makes it democracy.
ncr100 1y ago
On "reduced linguistic precision": Another example (this is a hard one imo) "discrimination". It is used in the US in an important legal document, a part of a powerful legal social right. It's both the NEGATIVE and unjust social process of dividing minorities, often segregating them away from the resource-plenty enjoyed by majorities -- basic 'good favor', low prices, neighborhoods with food oases. And it's also the POSITIVE or NEUTRAL term of "making a fine distinction and discerning". Such as, "The experienced journalist listened intently to the politician's statement, applying a keen sense of intellectual discrimination. She was able to quickly discern the subtle ways in which key facts were being selectively highlighted and crucial context was being omitted, allowing her to call out the misrepresentation rather than accepting the narrative at face value." (gen'd by ai <3) It was once an efficient term for identifying careful critical thinking. I speculate we do less of this as we have fewer words to do this with, nowadays. I suppose "bigot" and "bigotry" ought to have been used by the US when it made its civil rights advancements.
- jfengel 1y ago
  We designed the civil rights code so as to be least unacceptable to bigots. They feel that bigotry is an unalienable right, and to be honest, it took some serious rereading of the Constitution to not make it so. Even now they are finding that the Constitution does not in fact allow civil rights, and the Civil Rights Act is being pared away. You can call it out by whatever name you want, but in the end a lot of Americans want that and you don't have the overwhelming political force required to override them. The one small upside: they'll tell you that you're only making it worse by name calling. That's not actually true. It may not make things better, but it is not the cause of it. Arguing about words is just a common tactic to get you to stop talking about the actual subject.
  - KerrAvon 1y ago
    It’s important for sanity’s sake to remember that the bigots are a minority of Americans. They’re just a more reliable vote than the rest of us (and you can thank the Koch Brothers and John Birch Society for the multi-decade conspiracy that made this so.)
akomtu 1y ago
IMO, that's the sign of a different process. When the state cannot get rid of a popular idea that benefits the people, the state puts on a mask with that idea and then hollows it out. The most cartoonish example is the "democratic" republic of north korea.
driuha 1y ago
"almost all controversy would be removed from among Philosophers, if they were always to agree as to the meaning of words" (c) One could say it was always the case, you can cut through bs and have a productive dialogue if you define the meaning of words before the message, i.e. scientific papers do that. The problem with that is that most people won't do it because its hard and on the other end you will get ostracized most of the time if you try doing that in casual conversations. This problem is even bigger in politics which is a game of large numbers and you have to be as stupid as possible for your message to reach the masses.
keybored 1y ago
> As general literacy declines, one of the consequences seems to be that words with multiple meanings or variations become compressed into a single vague meaning. I don’t know for who the literacy is declining. But the people who yap about democracy are the educated intelligentsia.[1] So it’s the educated that narrow and widen definitions. > Not so long ago there was a common distinction between capital-D Democracy the political system and small-d democracy the process of power or knowledge being diffused through the masses. You don’t see this idea expressed much anymore, and even the expression “making something more democratic” almost always implies a reference to the political system, not the the second sense. That’s not true. When people talk about “democratizing X” where X is distant from the political process they mean people participation and power. Like “democratizing social media” could mean user-controlled and driven social media as opposed to everything being controlled a by corporation or something. > This distinction is useful, because one of the biggest trends of the technological age is the capital-D version supplanting and erasing the small-d version. Almost all of the institutional “defenders of democracy” have essentially no interest in small-d democratization processes, because they are themselves in the driver’s seat in the political democratic system. Pretty much true. > This leads them to ignore or disregard the issues of everyday people, which leads to populism, which is of course the biggest global political trend of the last decade. Pretty much. That there are a group of people who can ignore or disregard the issues of everyday people means (by its very premise) that there is no democracy.[2] People who then might have tolerated that then have enough and turn to the correct political theory: elites rule the commoners. Again the premise proves the theory correct. > This is kind of a shame for tech in particular, because for the most part technology has been a democratizing (small-d sense) force throughout history. Phones, computers, cars, on and on: all examples of expensive exclusive technologies that became democratized and accessible to everyone. This is a bit of a vulgar[3] conception of democratization. Democracy is about power, not access to X. If a car indirectly gives you political power by being able to travel and organize then it indirectly has that effect. But if it only gives you the opportunity to commute one hour each way to your workplace then it has got nothing to do with democratization. And if your phone just makes you addicted to social media—as the technologists on this board so smugly like to point out—then it doesn’t give you power. > And yet that same force doesn’t seem to have been applied to the political system itself. Democracy is about governing your own life in harmony with the rest of the people under that democracy. The political system is a big deal there. But there are other spheres of life the workplace.[4] [1] Parochial way of referring to relatively wealthy people who set the intellectual agenda [2] Although people can call it “liberal democracy” if they want since the Liberal in that is much more important to the system (according to its defenders) than the Democracy part [3] Tongue in cheek! [4] Referring to socialism
hayst4ck 1y ago
> As general literacy declines, one of the consequences seems to be that words with multiple meanings or variations become compressed into a single vague meaning. Words don't have objective meanings. Words are indirect references to ideas in your head. They are like named memory addresses that can be de-referenced. That's why "woke" can have different meanings to different groups of people who speak together. Words are sociologically derived, not objectively meaningful. Eventually these words can even become shibboleths which can be used to determine whether you are part of a group or not. People deeply underestimate the power of linguistics, especially in the hands of those who wish to exploit it. Control/influence over language and it's mapping is political power.

atmosx 1y ago

> democracy the process of power or knowledge being diffused through the masses […] Power sure, but knowledge? Nope. If anything it’s the opposite.

rayiner 1y ago

[flagged]

fifticon 1y ago
as I understand it, populism is when you exploit 'popular' causes to get a mass backing to bring yourself into, and to stay in, power. It is opportunistic, 'goal justifies means' philosophy. So, you don't really have orinciples or a cause, apart from 'I should be in charge'. It also means voters, if they are capable of judging that, cant really trust you, because you will switch causes whenever it suits you. In my own country, I could name politicians who always carried the same color as the reigning political movement, and who would switch when the winds change, because their real principle was 'be on the winning side'.
- cat_plus_plus 1y ago
  This has an obvious aside of letting voters try whatever a large majority want to be tried, for example scaling back globalization in at attempt to prioritize material and psychological well being of citizens. This could well backfire and voters would then want something else, which turncoats will happily endorse. The alternative is that we can't get to something else because it has no popular support yet.
  - bigbadfeline 1y ago
    > "Prioritize material and psychological well being of citizens" Of which citizens, by what measure and in what direction? Up or down? "Quo bono" is never answered. Well, it's clear if you look at the charts - the curves never change direction regardless of who's in charge. > "letting voters try whatever a large majority want to be tried" Washing hands with the will of the voters is demagogy. Trump promised stopping the U war in 24 hours, bringing prices down and unseen prosperity from day one but all that was replaced by "it was a joke" and endless "necessary pain" (for you, not him). The spin now is that the voters elected a person, not his promises, and if he lied and joked... it's voters' fault. As if there was ever a choice without jokers in it.
inejge 1y ago
I'm sure you can look up the dictionary definition like everyone else, and it won't mention anything similar to "democracy", but if you want one from a random internet person: it's pandering to discontent and fear of some portion of the populace. The populist implies that he or she represents the interests of that populace and has solutions to their problems. Of course it is never that easy.
- leereeves 1y ago
  Everyone not already in power who wants to be elected tries to appeal to those who are unhappy with the current government. How do you decide if they are "pandering to discontent and fear of some portion of the populace" or "standing up for neglected people"?
  - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
    I think that populism has an element of "tear the system down", which is something that goes considerably further than the usual "throw those bums out". When Biden ran against Trump, he tried to appeal to voters who were unhappy with Trump, but nobody called him a populist. He was just a normal politician. Trump isn't. Neither is Bernie Sanders. How do you decide? I can't give you a clear answer there. Still, there is a difference. (Maybe "do they talk like a normal politician"?) Most out-of-office politicians are on the Biden side; only a few are on the Trump/Sanders side.
    - leereeves 1y ago
      If by "tear the system down" you mean anti-establishment and anti-elite, I agree. That's an essential component of populism. I don't think many people would say Biden was anti-establishment. In 2020, Trump hadn't been in office long enough to change the establishment very much.
    - rayiner 1y ago
      > Most out-of-office politicians are on the Biden side; only a few are on the Trump/Sanders side. At least on the GOP side, it’s because they care only about cheap labor. Free trade to harness cheap labor abroad, and mass immigration to harness cheap labor for what can’t be outsourced.
leereeves 1y ago
Populism refers to any movement that claims to represent the interests of the common people against the elite. It might be left, right, democratic, or authoritarian. It might really serve the people or just use anti-establishment sentiment for its own benefit. It's not necessarily a bad thing but it's almost always reported negatively because the media is owned by the elite. Even elites who claim to care about the people don't want to be cast as the villain or lose power themselves. Ironically, a successful populist movement becomes the new elite and creates an opportunity for other people to be populists.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  But it ought to be reported, maybe not negatively, but at least skeptically. Representing the people against the elites almost always means destroying (to at least some degree) the system that has elevated those elites. That may be needed, it may be justified, but we still need to ask what the replacement system is. It is easy to criticize, but harder to offer a better alternative. It is easy to destroy; hard to build. The populist's answer to what comes next often boils down to "trust me, bro" - there isn't a concrete, workable plan. As a result, the net result often winds up worse than what came before, not just for the elite, but even for the people the populist claimed to represent. This is true even if the populist was honest, that is, sincerely had the interest of the common people at heart.
  - yupitsme123 1y ago
    What you're describing is basically Conservativism. The root word is conserve. Liberals are often about taking down (liberating) the current system. But for some reason they often don't want or don't get the populist labels. For example, I don't think anyone ever called BLM a populist movement.
- notahacker 1y ago
  > Ironically, a successful populist movement becomes the new elite and creates an opportunity for other people to be populists. Generally the first part is the defining feature of a populist movement: a leader or faction that seeks to insist that the only solution to elites or other hated minorities or purported threats is to assume that anyone trying to stop them accumulating more power is an agent of the elites. Naturally this rhetorical style suits people that want to accumulate a lot of power and wealth and don't want to give too many straight answers to questions about what they're doing with it. That's why Maduro, an oligarch who's been in power for over 12 years and decides exactly who is and isn't "elite" in his country is characterised as "populist" because his rhetorical style is all about claiming that he's on the side of the poor against [what's left of] the middle classes, whilst a civil war or coup which usually leads to elites being deposed may not involve populists at all.
pessimizer 1y ago
It was just a slur against the People's Party. It was like how people now call whatever Trump said last "Trumpism." Look at the People's Party's policies and that's what it stands for. The shorthand is that the policies prioritize wage laborers and small business over massive entrenched interests and insiders. The way the term has been used since then (always by people who disapprove) means "whatever the rabble are asking for now." Or "appealing to the lowest common denominator voter." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Party_(United_States) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_Party_(United_States) So the term is really meaningless, just a slur used against people whose ideas sometimes overlap with People's Party policies, used by people who would have hated the People's Party at the time.
whatnow37373 1y ago
Populism and democracy are orthogonal. Usually populists just ride democracy as a vehicle to where they really want to go. If The People selected you as their Chosen Leader, who needs pesky Elites in the courts and the Corrupt bureaucrats holding you back, the Chosen One? All opposition to what The People want is elitist gatekeeping and needs to be violently eradicated.
- EnPissant 1y ago
  Suppose a political candidate runs on a platform of mass deportations of illegal aliens. If he wins the election and then makes good on this campaign promise, is that populism or democracy?
  - DonHopkins 1y ago
    It was called Fascism when Hitler did it. Why, did you have somebody else in mind?
    - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
      Deporting illegal immigrants is called enforcing the law, not fascism.
      - AnimalMuppet 1y ago
        Depends on how you do it. Yes, they are here in violation of the law. But if that's what bothers you, then the process you use to deport them had better be in keeping with the law. If what bothers you about them being here is the "illegal" aspect, then you must not trample the legal process in order to remove them.
        FirmwareBurner 1y ago
        For example what's an illegal way of departing an illegal immigrant?
hayst4ck 1y ago
Populism is to (small d) democracy like a popularity contest is to a job interview. Populism asks "which candidate do I like more" while democracy depends on asking "which candidate will perform the job the best."
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- rayiner 1y ago
  That’s a weird (but revealing) comparison, because it makes it seem like there’s some too-down HR or manager deciding what the job criteria are what constitutes good job performance. What elites call populist voters are picking the candidate that they think will do the best at the job they want done.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
PJDK 1y ago
Populism is definitely a part of democracy, but it is a criticism from "responsible" politicians for "irresponsible" ones. Obviously this is all politics so you needn't worry about the specifics of what actually is populist. But, imagine two "responsible" politicians. One who believes in lowering taxes as a worthwhile thing, and acknowledges cuts to services as a negative impact that is outweighed by the good. The other believes in higher public spending, with the negative being higher taxes, outweighed by the better services. Both would be angered by a third candidate that came along promising both lower taxes and higher public spending - just the "popular" parts of their respective manifestos.
- rayiner 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - PJDK 1y ago
    Potentially - it's not like a strictly defined term. With mainstream political parties you'd more often think about specific policy areas than the whole business.
    - rayiner 1y ago
      I’d respectfully submit that the reason it’s not well defined is that it’s a pejorative deployed by the establishment in both the left and the right to disparage substantive policies they don’t like, rather than a principled label for a particular political approach versus another.
tptacek 1y ago
No, that's not what populism means. Populism is a rejection of pluralism. It is neither democratic nor anti-democratic, right nor left. You know this, and you've been in this argument before (the search bar avails). It's hard to imagine this could be a good faith comment.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- rayiner 1y ago
  I probably didn’t find the definition persuasive if I don’t remember it. That’s certainly not the definition given in say Merriam Webster (though that one’s not illuminating either). Populism is not inconsistent with pluralism, though it is incompatible with the elaborate anti-democratic machinery that’s been created to manage pluralism: administrative bureaucracy, elaborate laws, racial political machines and interest groups, etc. “Pluralism” as it exists in places like New York City and Chicago are failure states of democracy, where you’ve got divided populations managed by ethnic political machines, with politics consisting of horse trading between interest groups. Yes, populism is quite at odds with that version of pluralism.
  - tptacek 1y ago
    It doesn't seem like you're trying to reach any kind of shared understanding here, but rather just trying to perpetuate a partisan argument. Those are off-topic for the site.
    - rayiner 1y ago
      I’m not making a partisan argument. I attended the Iowa Democratic caucuses in 2019, and saw vibrant participatory democracy as de Tocqueville described. And I am trying to reach a shared understanding—what do we mean by “pluralism,” and how does that relate to “populism” and “democracy.” Your view seems to be that pluralism and populism are distinct but orthogonal to democracy. My point is that “pluralism” in practice seems to entail anti-democratic structures to manage the pluralism, and thus is less “democratic” than populism. To put it differently, you characterized populism as a rejection of pluralism. And my point is that, insofar as populism has anything to do with pluralism, it’s more a rejection of the anti-democratic structures that have been installed to manage pluralism. Which just makes it democracy.

ncr100 1y ago

On "reduced linguistic precision": Another example (this is a hard one imo) "discrimination". It is used in the US in an important legal document, a part of a powerful legal social right. It's both the NEGATIVE and unjust social process of dividing minorities, often segregating them away from the resource-plenty enjoyed by majorities -- basic 'good favor', low prices, neighborhoods with food oases. And it's also the POSITIVE or NEUTRAL term of "making a fine distinction and discerning". Such as, "The experienced journalist listened intently to the politician's statement, applying a keen sense of intellectual discrimination. She was able to quickly discern the subtle ways in which key facts were being selectively highlighted and crucial context was being omitted, allowing her to call out the misrepresentation rather than accepting the narrative at face value." (gen'd by ai <3) It was once an efficient term for identifying careful critical thinking. I speculate we do less of this as we have fewer words to do this with, nowadays. I suppose "bigot" and "bigotry" ought to have been used by the US when it made its civil rights advancements.

jfengel 1y ago
We designed the civil rights code so as to be least unacceptable to bigots. They feel that bigotry is an unalienable right, and to be honest, it took some serious rereading of the Constitution to not make it so. Even now they are finding that the Constitution does not in fact allow civil rights, and the Civil Rights Act is being pared away. You can call it out by whatever name you want, but in the end a lot of Americans want that and you don't have the overwhelming political force required to override them. The one small upside: they'll tell you that you're only making it worse by name calling. That's not actually true. It may not make things better, but it is not the cause of it. Arguing about words is just a common tactic to get you to stop talking about the actual subject.
- KerrAvon 1y ago
  It’s important for sanity’s sake to remember that the bigots are a minority of Americans. They’re just a more reliable vote than the rest of us (and you can thank the Koch Brothers and John Birch Society for the multi-decade conspiracy that made this so.)

akomtu 1y ago

IMO, that's the sign of a different process. When the state cannot get rid of a popular idea that benefits the people, the state puts on a mask with that idea and then hollows it out. The most cartoonish example is the "democratic" republic of north korea.

driuha 1y ago

"almost all controversy would be removed from among Philosophers, if they were always to agree as to the meaning of words" (c) One could say it was always the case, you can cut through bs and have a productive dialogue if you define the meaning of words before the message, i.e. scientific papers do that. The problem with that is that most people won't do it because its hard and on the other end you will get ostracized most of the time if you try doing that in casual conversations. This problem is even bigger in politics which is a game of large numbers and you have to be as stupid as possible for your message to reach the masses.

keybored 1y ago

> As general literacy declines, one of the consequences seems to be that words with multiple meanings or variations become compressed into a single vague meaning. I don’t know for who the literacy is declining. But the people who yap about democracy are the educated intelligentsia.[1] So it’s the educated that narrow and widen definitions. > Not so long ago there was a common distinction between capital-D Democracy the political system and small-d democracy the process of power or knowledge being diffused through the masses. You don’t see this idea expressed much anymore, and even the expression “making something more democratic” almost always implies a reference to the political system, not the the second sense. That’s not true. When people talk about “democratizing X” where X is distant from the political process they mean people participation and power. Like “democratizing social media” could mean user-controlled and driven social media as opposed to everything being controlled a by corporation or something. > This distinction is useful, because one of the biggest trends of the technological age is the capital-D version supplanting and erasing the small-d version. Almost all of the institutional “defenders of democracy” have essentially no interest in small-d democratization processes, because they are themselves in the driver’s seat in the political democratic system. Pretty much true. > This leads them to ignore or disregard the issues of everyday people, which leads to populism, which is of course the biggest global political trend of the last decade. Pretty much. That there are a group of people who can ignore or disregard the issues of everyday people means (by its very premise) that there is no democracy.[2] People who then might have tolerated that then have enough and turn to the correct political theory: elites rule the commoners. Again the premise proves the theory correct. > This is kind of a shame for tech in particular, because for the most part technology has been a democratizing (small-d sense) force throughout history. Phones, computers, cars, on and on: all examples of expensive exclusive technologies that became democratized and accessible to everyone. This is a bit of a vulgar[3] conception of democratization. Democracy is about power, not access to X. If a car indirectly gives you political power by being able to travel and organize then it indirectly has that effect. But if it only gives you the opportunity to commute one hour each way to your workplace then it has got nothing to do with democratization. And if your phone just makes you addicted to social media—as the technologists on this board so smugly like to point out—then it doesn’t give you power. > And yet that same force doesn’t seem to have been applied to the political system itself. Democracy is about governing your own life in harmony with the rest of the people under that democracy. The political system is a big deal there. But there are other spheres of life the workplace.[4] [1] Parochial way of referring to relatively wealthy people who set the intellectual agenda [2] Although people can call it “liberal democracy” if they want since the Liberal in that is much more important to the system (according to its defenders) than the Democracy part [3] Tongue in cheek! [4] Referring to socialism

hayst4ck 1y ago

> As general literacy declines, one of the consequences seems to be that words with multiple meanings or variations become compressed into a single vague meaning. Words don't have objective meanings. Words are indirect references to ideas in your head. They are like named memory addresses that can be de-referenced. That's why "woke" can have different meanings to different groups of people who speak together. Words are sociologically derived, not objectively meaningful. Eventually these words can even become shibboleths which can be used to determine whether you are part of a group or not. People deeply underestimate the power of linguistics, especially in the hands of those who wish to exploit it. Control/influence over language and it's mapping is political power.