Populism

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On the show Wednesday with Paul Ramsey, we talked about how Trump is a bookend for Nixon containing the period of peak managerialism. The managers ran Nixon out of town for the crime of being a strong executive and now Trump, the strong executive, is running the managers out of town. It remains to be seen if that is how it plays out, but it is a good way to containerize this period of history.

Doing the show, it occurred to me that we can do something similar with populism in that it was populism that gave birth to managerialism. When you look at the birth of progressivism, it started with the populist movements. It peaked with the FDR administration, which is the rise of the managers. Now we see a populist movement rising to smash what was set off by original populism.

Here is where you see the two faces of populism, democratic and authoritarian or anarchic versus orderly. Of course, it is a fact of history that democracy leads to authoritarianism, so this long cycle dating to the 19th century follows a predictable course, just more slowly and mildly. The synthesis that will result from it may be a modern version of what the Framers imagined.

Anyway, that is for some posts this week. The show this week is a review of and comment upon populism in its many forms, as well as the criticism of it in light of the events unfolding in Washington. It is one of those shows that meanders around a bit, so it has no main point, just a main theme. Perhaps if the topic is of interest, I can do a more formal deep dive into the topic.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

  • Intro
  • Populism
    • Britanica (Link)
    • European Center for Populism Studies (Link)
  • The Negative View
  • The Positive View
  • Populism in America

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Comments (Historical)

The comments below were originally posted to thezman.com.

95 Comments

Pickle Rick #446047 February 28, 2025 11:23 am 33
They hate populism because it is inextricably associated in America with rural Southerners and Midwesterners, the OG Dirt People.
Mycale #446048 February 28, 2025 11:26 am 20
I feel like the three Democratic presidents after Nixon – Carter, Clinton, and Obama – all made populist pitches to Americans. Carter had the humble peanut farmer thing going. Clinton did the sax playing, the “I feel your pain”, “Sister Souljah”, etc. Obama’s whole hopey-changey pitch was about helping out the people instead of the elites. Was it smoke and mirrors, sure, but this whole mask-off, we are the institutions and better than you, you need to listen to us or go away, thing is VERY new. It really was Hillary Clinton’s arrogance and limousine liberalism taking over the party.
Jeffrey Zoar #446071 February 28, 2025 1:38 pm 12
The practice of insulting the voters and saying “we know better than you” began with Obama, not with H. She just took it to the next level. He was the first major party presidential candidate I ever heard insult the voters, which has since become a standard part of the D party platform.
Lucius Sulla #446088 February 28, 2025 3:31 pm 8
That aligns with when the Dems overtly became the party of minorities and women, so of course they’d have contempt for the traditional American voter. It hadn’t gotten there yet under Slick Willie.
Tars Tarkas #446079 February 28, 2025 2:23 pm 14
I wonder how much social media contributed to the mask-off phase. It is bad enough that everyone they know IRL thinks just like them, but then on social media, literally everyone agrees with them. Anyone who disagrees is blocked, kicked off or simply not presented. “Wow! We bugmen are the majority!!!!”
ray #446084 February 28, 2025 2:46 pm 1
Agreed.
Lakelander #446059 February 28, 2025 12:37 pm 17
The parasites fear exclusionary populism. They can’t feast on the self-reliant, independent ruralites as easily as they can on captive urbanites. This is extremely offensive to them so they’ve spent a lot of time war-gaming on how to transfer the dirt people to the cities. The UN sustainability goals demonstrate this quite well. This is a battle between exclusion/inclusion, masculine/feminine, order/chaos and ultimately right/wrong.
Piffle #446089 February 28, 2025 3:41 pm 1
I’ve been around “self-reliant independent” ruralites. They are indeed the salt of the earth, but let’s not go too far. The real problem when the mask comes off is that eventually those captive urbanites get tired of also being insulted.
Ketchup-stained Griller #446116 March 1, 2025 8:17 am 4
Minor nitpick, do we have to use negro-speak?OG originated in the early 1970s with the Original Gangster Crips, a street gang in Los Angeles. The term was derived from the gang’s name and originally meant “we’re the first”.
Ostei Kozelskii #446121 March 1, 2025 11:32 am 1
Hear hear.
Bartleby the Scrivner #446031 February 28, 2025 9:09 am 26
I was going to listen, but I’m sitting here, a fire going, one of my dogs curled up beside me, looking through our sunroom, at the new chicken coop across the yard. Just a few minutes of bliss before I venture back to the clown world we live in. Thanks to you all, and Z for his fine work. Time to feed the chickens.
redbeard #446032 February 28, 2025 9:57 am 3
Sounds like the perfect time to listen. Once the chickens get fed of course.
Bartleby the Scrivner #446038 February 28, 2025 10:49 am 2
That’s the plan.
Melissa #446036 February 28, 2025 10:44 am 8
Bartleby- That sounds sublime and far-removed from clown world. Great show, Z.I hope everyone has a nice weekend.
Ostei Kozelskii #446041 February 28, 2025 11:01 am 5
Toss ’em an extra dipper of corn, compliments of OK. And take a dram of the strong waters while you’re about it.
Eloi #446056 February 28, 2025 12:24 pm 5
Melville may be my favorite American writer (tied with Hawthorn and Updike). We see now why you chose your name.
Ketchup-stained Griller #446117 March 1, 2025 8:27 am 0
Use Omega-3 feed. And let them forage.
Bartleby the Scrivner #446134 March 1, 2025 6:46 pm 3
Yup We Use Omega-3 and those little shits forage like gremlins I pile leaves up and they jump right in! Scratching and clawing
The Infant Phenomenon #446051 February 28, 2025 11:48 am 22
Just a quick aside about your remarks around the 13:07 mark: Citizenship and nationality are not the same things at all, so it is possible–and regrettably commonplace–for those who do not have American or other nationality to have citizenship.Citizenship is a bureaucratic thing; a paper thing. Nationality is rooted in blood and soil, as the etymology of the word “nation” itself makes clear.When I lived in Europe 40-odd years ago, European passports (and the endless forms that one had to fill out for this and that) had two separate categories for nationality and citizenship. Whether that be true today, I don’t know b/c I haven’t seen European bureaucratic forms or passports in many a year and b/c Europe has been Americanized to a disgusting degree.But as a matter of *fact,* nationality is *not* synonymous with citizenship. Pajeet at the convenience store down the street might have American citizenship, but he can *never* have or–get–American nationality.
george 1 #446058 February 28, 2025 12:36 pm 17
Yes. So true. This is why America will ultimately not stay configured as it is today. That, or we just breakdown into a Mad Max landscape.
Piffle #446090 February 28, 2025 3:43 pm 1
Yes, I was just having this conversation recently. We will have to learn to acknowledge nationality again, rather than “full rights of a empire”. Once the Fed finishes breaking down (we seem to be in Red gaseous stage with Trump), the differences will become much more of an issue.
The Infant Phenomenon #446093 February 28, 2025 4:11 pm 0
Don’t be shy! Why not both!?
Jeffrey Zoar #446042 February 28, 2025 11:04 am 21
Populism has only been a bad word for a relatively short time. Since about 2015, when Trump came down the escalator. Not long before that, the NYT called Elizabeth Warren a populist and meant it as a compliment. Just as they only like democracy when it’s “our” democracy, they only like populism when it’s “our” populism.Zman gives the “managerial elite” too much credit for honesty. While many of the faceless idiot bureaucrats may honestly, in their deluded way, believe they are on the side of the little guy or the common man, the deliberate mendacity of US senators (for instance) cannot be overstated. These are thieving con artists and nothing more. They lie like they breathe, deliberately and with malice aforethought. They have no illusions about being populist. They know what they are, and they know what they steal.
NoName #446086 February 28, 2025 3:24 pm 17
Jeffrey Zoar:“Just as they only like democracy when it’s “our” democracy, they only like populism when it’s “our” populism.“ Well, like, duh…
The Infant Phenomenon #446095 February 28, 2025 4:21 pm 0
“Populism has only been a bad word for a relatively short time. Since about 2015, when Trump came down the escalator.” No, I’m afraid you are mistaken about that (you must be very young; enjoy it while it lasts):https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_E._Watson
A Bad Man #446073 February 28, 2025 1:52 pm 18
As long as the subject is Populism, let’s demand the assassination of Huey Long be re-opened! He dared to speak against the sainted FDR, while the latter ran for president no less than 3 times while hiding cancer from the American people as per reliable medical biographers. He snuck away multiple times to have surgeries aboard the yacht of his friend Vincent Astor. At this point give me ONE reason we should accept the narrative around Long’s killing.
ray #446087 February 28, 2025 3:26 pm 2
Here come the Kingfish.
A Bad Man #446110 February 28, 2025 10:28 pm 1
Better “every man a King” than every man a debt serf.
NoName #446103 February 28, 2025 6:50 pm 5
Carl Weiss, MD, assassin of Huey Long…
A Bad Man #446111 February 28, 2025 10:29 pm 3
I knew that figured I would let someone else share the fun! IIRC this Weiss was then conveniently offed like Jack ”Ruby’ — without looking it up to be sure.
Melissa #446035 February 28, 2025 10:40 am 18
Back in the early 2000’s, the daughter of millionaires from Potomac, MD married a normal, mid-western guy. My dad joked at the time that it restored his faith in God because that scenario occurs so rarely and he was happy for the guy.The marriage was held at Mar-a-Lago. At one point, both sets of in-laws were together and Trump walked over to introduce himself and ask them about their experience at the resort. He treated the elite, cloud people with the same level of respect and interest as he did the blue-collar, dirt people. There was zero respecter of persons or preferential treatment and he was perfectly relatable to each of them.It’s been interesting and funny to see the many kooks who have surfaced as critics of populism. Timothy Snyder and Garton Ash are somehow particularly ridiculous. Snyder wrote: “Sado-populism is a political strategy where leaders inflict pain on their followers to maintain power. This approach combines sadism and populism in a way that manipulates and controls the populace through fear, anxiety and division.” There is an endless supply of projection from the morons.David Irving and Mark Weber should have lived the life those those two idiots live.
Mycale #446039 February 28, 2025 10:52 am 14
I know a similar story, of a couple being married at a Trump resort and Trump stopping by and talking to the couple and guests, taking pictures, etc.Obviously Trump has lived a very charmed and blessed life but he seems to have connected with commoners in a very real way of the sort you just haven’t seen in a long time. Compare him to out of touch weirdoes like Eric Schmidt or Bill Gates and it’s just very obvious. Heck compare him to the sort of people that staff Democratic administrations. The fact is that people in places like DC and NYC think they are better than everyyone else and while they try to hold it in, the mask slips quite often.
The Infant Phenomenon #446096 February 28, 2025 4:44 pm 8
“Obviously Trump has lived a very charmed and blessed life but he seems to have connected with commoners in a very real way … .”Trump is Queens, New York through and through and a thoroughgoing vulgarian, but he clearly loves “our” (former) country, and we love him. But if my grandmother were still living, she would describe him as being “as common as pig tracks,” although she, too, would vote for him for the reasons I mention and would describe him as “gracious,” which he certainly is, as there are no end of stories to verify, including the fact that, when predatory lending caused a Georgia farmer to lose the land that had been in his family since the early 19th century such that the farmer killed himself out of grief and shame, Mr Trump happened to read about it, and he intervened, paid the widow’s debts, and returned to the bereaved family their patrimony. And that was *before* he was running for office. The story is well-known in Georgia.He is a good man–and an *honest* one!–with a generous heart and a hard head–a rare combination. But he *is* “unpolished,” let’s say. He *is* a “commoner,” as you put it, although I can’t imagine myself ever applying that particular word to him, but he has a sterling character, and we know that b/c if he did not, the lawfare against him would have revealed the fact long since. His tax records are “without spot or blemish,” to quote a well-known book.It is hard not to regard him as Heaven-sent. And come to think of it there is no reason not to. We are fortunate that he has come upon the scene at this time and in this place. He is a good, honest, upright (mostly) man who loves the country.
A Bad Man #446076 February 28, 2025 2:02 pm 13
We checked in some years back at the Marriot in Atlantic City and it was a shithole. Checked right out. Got a room at the Trump Chairman, next to the Taj Mahal. A slight glitch when we get there about the room and right off — they upgrade us to the Presidential Suite at no extra charge. The view of the Atlantic Ocean from the floor to ceiling windows was unreal and the days were cloudless. Needless to say, made the trip a LOT more enjoyable.
Xman #446043 February 28, 2025 11:08 am 15
“Here is where you see the two faces of populism, democratic and authoritarian or anarchic versus orderly.”I don’t know about that. Perhaps populism itself is a chimera. I happened across and old grad school acquaintance at the grocery store the other day and he recommended“The Populist Delusion”by Neema Parvini.I haven’t read it yet but apparently the thesis of the book is similar to my own view, namely that populism doesn’t really exist — political conflicts and even revolutions are battles between competing groups of elites, who conscript thehoi polloito their cause, and then the winning elite faction shuts down the populism when the conflict is over.You see this with all the armed communist revolutions of the 20the century, from Lenin to Mao to Castro. An armed proletariat shooting at the capitalist bourgeoisie is fine, but once the communists are in power the guns are outlawed and turned in.Hell, you even see it in the U.S., where you had colonial elites encouraging the masses to fight the imperial troops. But once that was over they took a pretty dim view of the armed rabble doing stuff like Shays’s rebellion, the Whiskey Rebellion, or Ft. Sumter and repressed those populist movements as ruthlessly as the Crown would have.I think that is what you are seeing now, you have the Trump/Musk/Ackman faction against the Pelosi/Clinton/Newsom/Hochul/Biden faction, and they are either conscripting the white proletariat or the illegals, blacks and trannies to their cause, respectively.I like a lot of the things I see from the Trump administration so far, but not everything, and it remains to be seen how well this is going to shake out for the “common man” in the long run.One thing is for sure, both elite factions are controlled by the Zionists…
Piffle #446091 February 28, 2025 3:49 pm 5
Populism does exist, but just not in the way most have been taught.. In any form government, the general opinion of the plebs is not important. That includes “our democracy” which has consistently had open borders and pushed other wildly unpopular laws, etc.Where populism matters is when the elite are squabbling among themselves. Then the sheer weight of pleb opinion becomes a thumb on the scale for the elite coalition with popular support. The elite meltdown over populism has to do with it being used to disrupt their managerial state.
TomA #446060 February 28, 2025 12:39 pm 14
I would argue that populism is simply the reemergence of common sense in a sick society that has lost its connection with ancient wisdom. It is an evolutionary repair mechanism that seeks to purge the illness of rapid chaotic change versus tried-and-true slow adaptation. If the driver of the bus is jerking the wheel left and right with reckless abandon, then Joe lunchbox in the back must step forward and put a stop to it or everyone dies.
Lucius Sulla #446055 February 28, 2025 12:05 pm 14
Glad you mentioned William Jennings Bryan. From my high school history classes in the 1990s, the textbooks basically used him as the face of populism to discredit it, finishing him off by mocking him over the Scopes Trial. That was the extent of our exposure to the topic.
Dutchboy #446070 February 28, 2025 1:38 pm 8
Bryan recognized that the old gold standard was a deflationary attack on the debtor class but his solution (expanded silver currency) was an inadequate measure. The appropriate response was to wrest control of monetary policy from the elite by creating a non-usurious banking system. Eventually, the financial elite recognized that the boom and bust cycle caused by the deflationary precious metal currency system was unsustainable. Their response was the Federal Reserve system, a private, usurious banking collaborative beyond the reach of political control. They can inflate the currency or crash the economy at their pleasure. One of their main activities is the propping up of Wall Street investment houses (or destroying them, as in the numerous victims of the 2008-09 crash).
Xman #446094 February 28, 2025 4:13 pm 9
To his credit, Bryan resigned as Secretary of State rather than go along with Wilson’s plan to send American boys to die in the trenches of Europe for “democracy”…
Arthur Metcalf #446107 February 28, 2025 7:55 pm 6
They still do it. At my niece’s high school, she did a project on Bryan and mentioned it over Christmas. I was very surprised. What was the angle? I asked. Oh, the dangers of Christian fundamentalism, she replied, meaning Christianity.
Xman #446112 February 28, 2025 10:55 pm 7
Funny how there’s never any discussion of the dangers of Jewish fundamentalism (aka “Zionism”) isn’t it?
Tom K #446075 February 28, 2025 1:56 pm 10
Trump pushed Zelenskyyyyy in the Oval Office. I saw it! I saw it! I saw it! Trump should be charged with assault and battery! lol. Call Leticia James!!!!
thezman #446081 February 28, 2025 2:30 pm 25
That was the best White House presser I have ever witnessed.
Ostei Kozelskii #446085 February 28, 2025 3:12 pm 4
Sounds like Zelenskyyyyyy was the one who got pressed.
karl von hungus #446092 February 28, 2025 3:52 pm 3
J D wanted to give zelensky a “pink belly”
Major Hoople #446101 February 28, 2025 6:37 pm 4
All Zelensky had to do was keep his mouth shut and walk away with some money. He couldn’t or didn’t want to do it. Trump didn’t blow this up, Z did. Was he trying to? Either way, he is an idiot and if he is alive at the end of next week I will be very surprised.
Anna #446105 February 28, 2025 7:31 pm 6
Zelensky is trying to stay alive by refusing to cede even an inch of territory: he knows that his own citizens will finish him off if he signs any such agreement. Don’t forget that Ukrainians have lowest IQ in Europe (in the 90s).This IQ number would be way smaller if it were not for the ethnic Russians, which are about 20% of Ukrainian population.Germans understood in 1945 that they lost, Ukrainians are not capable of it, especially after euphoria of international support in the last 3 years.
Arthur Metcalf #446106 February 28, 2025 7:52 pm 6
I think Americans might be catching up (or down) to the Ukrainians. I just watched Fox News for two hours while doing a repair project and not one person on that network understands what Trump is asking Zelensky to do.Apparently Trump will need to literally say the word “surrender” before most people get it. Two hours of “maybe he needs to say this” and “they need to offer this and that for that” and “Putin still has designs on Europe” (Brit Hume). It’s like we’re in a madhouse. Over and over and over with this shit while the country dissolves into a 3rd world mudbath.
Pozymandias #446143 March 2, 2025 4:35 pm 1
Given the degree to which he’s made a fool and pariah of himself, Zelensky’s only remaining somewhat smart move would be to call up his CIA-Mossad handlers and tell them he wants the “Tel Aviv option” where he gets to resign, keep some of his ill-gotten loot and retain a small bodyguard force and retire to a beach house in Tel Aviv. He’ll probably still end up dead soon. Indeed, it’s hard to think of any other single person in the world who has a greater variety of powerful and dangerous enemies.His fate will also be a nice warning to traitorous and venal people in countries all over the world that this is what happens to people sell their souls to the globalist cabal that runs Amerika. It should make at least the smarter people everywhere think twice before participating in one of the Empire’s phony color revolutions.
Geoff #446034 February 28, 2025 10:02 am 6
Hey Zman, or anyone else who knows the answer – what is the name of that bluegrass band that is at the beginning of the Friday show? Every time I hear that it resonates deep in my honky soul somewhere. When you mentioned how Europeans view the stereotypical American, it made me realize that bluegrass seems like a purely white American thing. Do Europeans have a bluegrass scene, or is it solely a west of the Atlantic type of music?
John k #446037 February 28, 2025 10:46 am 5
Came from Celtic/English/Scottish folk music. There used to be a show on public radio that showcased that music I forget the name of it but the hosts name I remembered cuz it was so unique – Pheona Richie.
ZFan #446044 February 28, 2025 11:12 am 5
That show was “Thistle and Shamrock” I used to listen to NPR all the time back in those days; it is unlistenable now
Melissa #446045 February 28, 2025 11:19 am 8
Thistle and Shamrock was really good.Car Talk was great, too. I do not care about cars at all but those brothers were really fun to listen to back in the day.It’s actually kind of fun to tune in to NPR for a couple minutes every few weeks just for the sake of schadenfreude.
Ostei Kozelskii #446061 February 28, 2025 12:41 pm 3
Tom and Ray Magliozzi, i.e. the Tappet brothers.
Paintersforms #446068 February 28, 2025 1:16 pm 7
They had a line about being careful about fixing one thing on an old car, because something else might get jealous. Lol, very true!
Tars Tarkas #446083 February 28, 2025 2:39 pm 5
Still cheaper than a new car and without all the modern crap that ruin modern cars. Modern cars all look alike and have for the last 25 years, so unless your older car is an old hooptie, nobody can really tell it’s 20 years old. The average length of a new car loan has ballooned to 72 months. That’s 2 extra years of mandatory full coverage insurance and 4 years compared to the 60s and 70s.
Paintersforms #446098 February 28, 2025 5:50 pm 2
Yep, you can blow money on new cars, or blow time and labor keeping the old ones going (and have a fun and profitable hobby while you’re at it). Or not know how to fix the old ones and have the worst of both worlds lol.
Tars Tarkas #446114 March 1, 2025 2:09 am 2
Yes. If you’re not handy with a wrench, you will spend more money on repairs. But even then I doubt you are going to spend anywhere near a new car payment (and collision) having the occasional repair. The cost of repairs on new cars is stupidly high. One story making the rounds last year was the five thousand dollar taillight on a GM truck.
Paintersforms #446122 March 1, 2025 12:44 pm 0
The Mennonite part of me is too cheap to even consider it!
ZFan #446078 February 28, 2025 2:16 pm 4
I enjoyed listening to them even though I was no kind of gearhead since high school. I tuned into NPR wherever I lived and probably thought I was more sophisticated for that and only watching PBS on TV. Even so, I was aware of the left wing bias, but there was at least a bit of respect for traditional values from classical and folk music programming to occasional conservative commentators. I distinctly remember listening to Federica Matthews-Green, the wife of an Episcopalian turned Antiochian Orthodox priest present a segment on All Things Considered. She was a prominent pro-life advocate, but I think the segment was her talking about romantic relationships leading to marriage.I never ever heard a socially conservative given such leeway on NPR again. I can’t stand the smarmy news presenters now or the weekend edition host(ess) who flaunts her juvenile female African-American idiocy
Geoff #446049 February 28, 2025 11:29 am 6
I can definitely hear the Celtic roots in it, but I would argue that the centrality of the banjo makes bluegrass unique from that sort of British folk music.I guess what makes me wonder if Europeans listen to it, is how strongly it is associated with the American Southeast.Whenever I hear the intro it immediately transports me in my mind to sitting on an open porch, thick with that muggy, swampy air that so much of the South has, with cicadas in the background and fireflies flickering.I don’t know if that would come through to people from another continent who haven’t experienced the South.
Ostei Kozelskii #446062 February 28, 2025 12:48 pm 3
Although I like bluegrass, I don’t know too much about it. However, I wonder if there might not be a major regional variation within bluegrass. Specifically, is there mountain bluegrass (Appalachian Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Georgia), versus lowland bluegrass (Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas)? I’ve gotten the vague impression that mountain music revolves more around the banjo, while lowland music features the guitar more. But I could easily be out to lunch, and probably am.
LineInTheSand #446066 February 28, 2025 1:11 pm 2
For those of us who misspent our youth listening to heavy music, it is interesting to note the similarities between bluegrass and speed/thrash/technical heavy metal. Those old banjo, guitar, and fiddle fellows who played those blazing bluegrass melodies at amazing speed would be reincarnated in bands like Dream Theater, Symphony X, and many others. The similarities in these types of music is an example of an extended phenotype, if I understand that term correctly.
Ostei Kozelskii #446074 February 28, 2025 1:56 pm 0
Do those metal musicians acknowledge the debt?
Paintersforms #446069 February 28, 2025 1:26 pm 2
I’ve always thought of it in ethnic terms— Scots-Irish, Appalachian. It’s even kind of a thing up here in PA, believe it or not. I think lowlands, I think slavery and more black influence, blues and gospel, but I’m not an historian of music. Just my impression.
Jeffrey Zoar #446072 February 28, 2025 1:42 pm 1
I don’t think there’s really such a thing as lowland bluegrass
Jack Dob #446097 February 28, 2025 5:40 pm 1
Yes. Think Bill Monroe of flat land Kentucky vs. The Stanley Brothers of the Virginia Mountains. Both brilliant, some overlap, yet distinctive differences.
Ostei Kozelskii #446100 February 28, 2025 6:15 pm 0
Thank you. I was hoping the distinction wasn’t just a figment of my imagination.
Hemid #446054 February 28, 2025 11:59 am 5
Thesoundof bluegrass is American, because of the banjo (and things that sound like banjos, and guitarists imitating banjoists).The banjo is the dirt people harpsichord, as locked to and evocative of them as the original is to the royal court.When American musicology was populist—always on topic!—the banjo was “the only American instrument,” the one sound wholly newly invented here. Not so, but that was the story back when musical innovation was credited to workers and miners and places andfolk, not to blackness (good), whiteness (bad), and corporations (the breath of God). The idea of identifiable people inventing music has been disposed of, officially—not least to discredit the inventors of bluegrass (losers).
Boris #446067 February 28, 2025 1:14 pm 8
“…not least to discredit the inventors of bluegrass (losers).”Exactly. Unfortunately, to most Americans the sound of a banjo can mean only one thing: ignorant, toothless hill folk getting ready to sodomize you. The movie “Deliverance” set back Appalachia 100 years in the eyes of most Americans, especially the elites who despise and wish to depopulate the entire region hence the “who cares?” attitude that hundreds of thousands of Appalachians died in the opioid crisis. All the good will from those corny, yet mostly lovable rural-based tv shows of the 60s (Andy Griffith Show, Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, Petticoat Jct, et al, was destroyed by that one infamous scene in “Deliverance”. Rural Americans have been squealing ever since.
Ostei Kozelskii #446077 February 28, 2025 2:06 pm 6
Incidentally, there are a great many Twilight Zone episodes that are highly sympathetic to rural whites and rather few that portray them negatively. Regarding Deliverance, while doubtless an influential film, it was not seen by enough people to overturn positive views of hillbillies all on its own. There were broader forces at work, and they antedated Deliverance.
TempoNick #446137 March 2, 2025 12:51 am 1
There are also quite a few Twilight Zone episodes that are downright subversive. They warn about Big brother and are written around many themes that we can see today in real life, a dystopian horror show right before our very own eyes. One of my favorites is “Number 12 Looks Just Like You.” There’s several lines in the script where the girl who has to get the transformation so she can be beautiful like everybody else is saddened by the loss of her dad. Her best friend tries to console her as follows ..Valerie: I’ve been thinking about what you said. I mean about what your father said. Well, I don’t see why you’re so concerned about him. He’s dead. I mean, surely you’ve had other fathers. My mother’s been married eleven times, and personally, I’ve liked the stepfathers better anyway.Marilyn Cuberle: Valerie, please don’t.Valerie:Look, I know you’ve had nine fathers since the first one. Everybody marries everybody these days.
Tom K #446080 February 28, 2025 2:24 pm 9
Then CBS cancelled all those great shows in 1971. They even have a name for it, the “rural purge”. Orchestrated by one Fred Silverman.
Ostei Kozelskii #446082 February 28, 2025 2:39 pm 1
Deliverance was released in 1972.
Ketchup-stained Griller #446118 March 1, 2025 8:41 am 1
Fair trade though, we got Archie Bunker.
Pozymandias #446129 March 1, 2025 2:28 pm 1
Archie was of course, intended as a way of ridiculing the “working class bigot” type. Perhaps unintentionally though, he was often the only voice of sanity on that show while Meathead and the Sally Struthers characters constantily illustrated liberal buffoonery.
TempoNick #446138 March 2, 2025 12:54 am 2
And in real life, Carroll O’Connor was quite a bit of a liberal buffoon himself.
Pozymandias #446142 March 2, 2025 2:15 pm 0
I always thought that was ironic. I knew about O’Connor’s leftism and found it funny that the role he was best known for was someone so different.
Dutchboy #446065 February 28, 2025 1:07 pm 3
Norwegian country music is somewhat bluegrassy. One of its featured instruments is the Hardanger fiddle.
TempoNick #446109 February 28, 2025 10:02 pm 0
Have you heard of the Shazam app? It is so good, it can even identify music on a store loudspeaker with a lot of ambient noise in the background.
Geoff #446119 March 1, 2025 8:54 am 1
Thanks for the suggestion, I may have to fo that route. I can’t believe no one knows the name of that band, Z had to have mentioned it sometime.
Hemid #446102 February 28, 2025 6:42 pm 4
Think how easy it would have been for DeSantis to justdo his job,steal “Trumpism” from Trump, and be president right now—instantly co-opt the whole MAGA thing for the “deep state” and save the whole system in its fully rotten 2020 form.But he couldn’t do it. In the primary he not only didn’t run for the nomination, he didn’t even run against Trump. He ranagainst Trump voters. Remember “listless vessels?” (He’s illiterate.) The end. And Elon has blown it just as badly, but we can’t do anything about him yet.Only Vance has played it right so far, pretendingjust a littleto wineverything. It’s the smallest concession, but they can’t bring themselves to make it. “Elite” hatred for normal people is so irrationally intense and all-consuming, they won’t doanythingto quell it, not even lie—not evennot lie.Antiquity has nothing to teach us. We’re subject to an unprecedented madness, a truly totalizing hysteria, the end of everything. Even Lovecraft didn’t quite imagine it.
Arthur Metcalf #446120 March 1, 2025 11:12 am 1
By the time Vance’s play pays off, it will be too late to save it. These white DC bureaucrats grow old, and the next generation cannot install Windows on their laptop without assistance. Time grinds and the 1940s and 1950s grow fainter and fainter. The beast is tottering on its walker into the grave muttering about alliances we read about only in history books now.
Dutchboy #446064 February 28, 2025 1:03 pm 4
American populism was a reaction to capitalism. The political parties successfully neutered the early populist movements. The capitalists were also able to successfully control the managerial state inaugurated by the New Deal, which ended up as a partnership between the managerial bureaucracies and monopoly capitalism. That partnership has continued to this day. Trump is going after the bureaucracy but it is unlikely that a billionaire has any stomach for going after monopolistic capitalism. We could end up with the libertarian wet dream of unfettered capitalism and the inevitable reaction against it.
fakeemail #446108 February 28, 2025 9:57 pm 3
zelensky is a repugnant little toad with a nasty toad-like voice. can’t help but wondering if the WWF style press conference was staged or set-up by in one way or another. ANd by what side?
Southern Brother #446113 March 1, 2025 1:40 am 2
I always look forward to your show every Friday. Thank you for your insight. I believe you are a legitimate way to break through to the normies in my circle. Thank you for doing what you do without trying sell me supplements or other bs. One of these days when I’m more financially secure, I will at the very least buy you a coffee. If things go better for me, you will be at the top of my list to speak at an event. o7
Paintersforms #446063 February 28, 2025 12:56 pm 2
I keep mentioning that book about the Scots lol. One thing that really blew my mind was one of the early figures of the Scottish Enlightenment saying that man naturally wants to increase his property and material prosperity, this becoming the basis for a new morality.Anyway, you get the material advances of the 19th century, the rise of democracy, the development of capitalism. We conquer nature; we’re rich; having property, we’re powerful, or at least think we are. There’s a bloom of humanity, and a new problem of mediocrity. It turns out to be an unnatural state of affairs.Since ditching the new morality isn’t an option, managerialism is the solution. Let everyman keep his delusions.Here’s the thing: the Constitution was written for an agrarian society. A return to something like its vision has some serious implications imo. Like fewer, more impoverished people. I don’t see how it’s possible otherwise. Very tough sell. I think it’ll happen anyway.Anyway, big picture, we’re victims of our own success. Populism, like democracy, tracks the growth in wealth and power of the common man, but the common man isn’t a leader, by definition isn’t elite.It’s a weird time, because we have these elites that are unimaginably wealthy and more powerful than the state, yet Democracy! I think it has to be bound up in managerialism— letting everyman keep his delusion, and all.I think it has to go back to that new Enlightenment morality about man’s prosperity being the good. If people wake up to the delusion, there goes the morality. It’s a different world, everything adjusts, everything changes. Maybe that’s what we’re living through. Anyway, enough rambling.
Bartleby the Scrivner #446133 March 1, 2025 4:54 pm 1
Did I just read that Nuland, Rice, that pudgy Ukrainian dude, and Blinken, allegedly conferred with Zelenskyy and told him to sink any deal with Trump? Why that’s a violation of the Logan Act!! Then it occurred to me that, even if it was so, magic 8 ball seems to be heading in no arrests for ANY violation by the anointed ones. I guess I can look forward to the release of the Epstein Files!!
usNthem #446132 March 1, 2025 4:44 pm 0
Leftard elites and reading the tea leaves are not two things one would figure go hand in hand these days. It’ll probably take firing squads or scaffolding to possibly wake them up from their fever dreams.
Chmi #446127 March 1, 2025 1:45 pm 0
“Let me be clear: I am not using these numbers to say that women, blacks, and Latinos do not still face problems because of sexism and racism. These numbers say nothing about individuals being passed over for promotions because of their sex or ethnicity, about glass ceilings, or about discriminatory or harassing interactions in the workplace. But there can be many people who legitimately think they haven’t gotten fair treatment without justifying the rhetoric that the orthodoxy uses about white male privilege”Charles Murray,Human diversityClever tactic to reach the feeble-minded who are deeply hypnotized, or cowardly pandering which achieves nothing but the abasement of oneself?God knows.
fakeemail #446141 March 2, 2025 12:46 pm 0
latter
Ketchup-stained Griller #446099 February 28, 2025 5:56 pm 0
I’m having a hard time keeping up.
Namely #446033 February 28, 2025 9:59 am 0
Can you do a show on fishing some day so that we do not have to see the other man link?
Namely2 #446057 February 28, 2025 12:34 pm 0
here is the link –https://zmanfishing.com/


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