Editor's Letter: Eyeing the populist storms

last updated 8 January 2015

Filthy hippies! Trust-fund Marxists! Incoherent, lazy, nose-ringed radicals—round ’em up, clear the square, make them disappear! As the denunciations of the Occupy Wall Street movement take on a more urgent tone, I’ve had a feeling of déjà vu. Where have I heard this all before? Ah, yes: The reaction to the emerging Tea Party two years ago. Remember how frightened some folks were when furious Tea Partiers packed town hall meetings, and a few showed up with guns? Plug in “crackers” for “hippies,” “racists” for “Marxists,” and disdainful references to tricornered hats instead of nose rings, and the attempt to delegitimize was essentially the same. Your populist movement is a dangerous mob; mine is a vital exercise in democracy. For a vivid illustration of this principle, consider TV provocateur Glenn Beck, an avid supporter of “taking back America” via the Tea Party. The “99 percent” movement, he warned this week, “will come for you and drag you into the streets and kill you. These guys are worse than Robespierre from the French Revolution!”

Populism can, of course, have its dark side. (See: Libya, Muammar al-Qaddafi.) There are plenty of nuts, bigots, and radicals in both the Tea Party and OWS. But the grievances at the center of these uprisings are real: at least 14 million Americans unemployed. Four million in foreclosure. Wealth concentrated at the top, and not trickling down. A government dependent on borrowing more than $1 trillion per year. You don’t have to pitch a tent downtown or dress like an 18th-century soldier to be angry about this. In fact, if you’re not mad, and worried about the nation’s political leadership, you’re not paying attention.