Thread by @EmporersNewC

I’m tired, I’m fed up, I didn’t want this election, but since we’re having it, I’m not going to let the polls make me give up on my country.

Many of us may look in horror as populist politicians lie, contradict, spread their half-thought-out oversimplified solutions all over our media, and wonder how they continue to maintain such unwavering support, but it’s actually quite simple.

It’s because a free press does not harm the support of a populist politician, no matter how much they expose the politician’s failure to meet basic standards, they only improve that politician's standing.

That's because the populist appeals to the electorate’s base instincts: Conceit, bitterness, envy, and underserved pride. A targeted attempt to drop people standards and drag us all down into the gutter.

Politicians that resort to populism don’t mind giving wrong figures, because the ensuing arguments mean the scrutiny never goes beyond their shallow sound bites.

When a populist refuses to do an interview, their supporters don’t see their cowardice, they cheer as they see their preferred politician ‘sticking it to the elite’.

They are happy to turn up camera in hand to an event they can’t attend. It allows them to show themselves as the outsider, the victim, and the anti-establishment figures that they definitely are not.

The supporters of populists get their jollies watching their bumbling politicians’ bullshit their way through the media, as if they were all part of the same game. They have been convinced politics is a game of lying, and their populist politician of choice is their star player.

Everything a populist does, that should normally discount them from office, is seen by their supporters as being cool, playing by their own rules, and with that their supporters give them free reign to lie, and cheat, all, they believe, in their own interest.

An interest groomed from the poetic promises of those Pied Pipers of populism; the dishonest guarantee of a better life, at no cost, put in ready cooked form and handed to them on a silver tongue.

A populist politician doesn’t say: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” They say: “Sit down. Put your feet up. We’re going to fertilise this country in bullshit. Just relax and watch the greatness grow.”

And the greatness of the country is the mother’s milk to the populist supporter, the reason that someone saying “This is a great country” is never far away from populist propaganda.

But populism doesn’t beget greatness, its political leaders only aspire to the undeserved claim of greatness. They make great speeches about the world wars while at the same time simultaneously complaining about their parliamentary post-traumatic stress disorder.

And as they are revelling in their promises of guaranteed greatness and oven ready riches, what do we do? We pull our hair out, we get frustrated, and we question the polls, all because we can’t believe people would back these populist parasites.

We naively believe that each time the media catches the populists out, the scales will drop from their supporter’s eyes, and they will finally see that these politicians don’t just play to their base, they prey on their base too.

Just like the populist supporters, we too are guilty of believing that someone else will do the job that must be done. That the media will do that job, and honesty, rationality, and decency will prevail.

Normally it would, but in the face of a populist movement that doesn’t care if their politicians brag about what part of the anatomy they grab people by, it is like taking a knife to a gun fight, or making Chris Grayling a minister.

It’s just the wrong tool for the job.

Neither is the solution to populism gather into parties that seek to exploit each other’s weaknesses, rather than trying to come together to harvest each other’s strengths.

We should not be wasting time, and energy, quarrelling with each other when only working together in an alliance of hope can we make a difference.

And you know what? There is every reason to believe that the people in this country are starting to wake up to this fact.

More, and more, I see people from one party suggesting that their support should be lent to other candidates in certain constituencies.

The hour is late, but with each passing message we get closer to our goal of taking a strategic approach to counter the intellectually lazy approach that we are facing.

But we cannot just rely on a dispassionate and objective approach, our politicians must also raise the spirts of the electorate, appeal to their morality, and offer them hope and a future.

Politicians must endeavour not to just capture minds, or even hearts and minds, but to instil in the electorate the self-worth that has been eroded in recent years.

Appealing not just to their base, but to every person, regardless of their political leanings. The fight against populism is not about Left and Right, but about Right and Wrong.

And if we’re going to win this, our politicians must not be blind to their own deficiencies, or be unprepared to address them at this late stage.

I believe that all of this is possible in the next few days, and none of this is unreasonable.

If we don’t achieve this in the next few days, then the amount of work we will need to do on damage limitation to both ourselves and our country’s reputation will be threefold in the following years to come.

Today I ask myself, can we stand together and renew our confidence in our cause, determined to stand against those who would exploit us?

Can we spend these last few days bringing about a peaceful revolution of hope?

I believe we can.

/End