I am finding hope in Zohran Mamdani's candidacy and likely victory in the New York mayoral race.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

I am finding hope in Zohran Mamdani's candidacy and likely victory in the New York mayoral race.

I need to remind myself that one person is not a movement.

Leaders like Mamdani, Ocasio Cortez, Warren and Sanders give me hope, but their wins are not enough to fix everything, and their losses are not enough to end everything.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

I guess I long for a left-wing populist future for the United States, where local democratic governments run by amateurs in comfortable natural fiber clothes figure out how to sincerely serve the needs of everyone in the community with ample public budgets and mutual goodwill.

[virtuous_sloth@cosocial.ca]

@evan Think of them as phase-change nucleation sites. When the time is right, change will happen fast.

[ristkof@mastodon.social]

@evan so do I, except for the word “populist”? Do you mean popular instead?

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@ristkof no, I mean "left-wing populism":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_populism

[ristkof@mastodon.social]

@evan ok… I see the word “populist” is not what I thought it was, but also not a very clear concept? I had a negative connotation for that world, almost like it would designate “overly simple, manipulative”. Just me?

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@ristkof not at all! It's definitely a double-edged concept. Populism has an inherent danger of descent into demagoguery.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demagogue

[Guest]

@evan @ristkof I'm unsure whether populism can be pried apart from demagoguery. A populist case can be made for health and retirement benefits. I don't know how to make a populist case for addressing global warming. Unfortunately, I also don't know how to raise the education level of the populace within a few decades.

[evan@cosocial.ca]

@lori @ristkof well, I don't know if there's an option. So many of our social issues derive from extreme wealth inequality within and between countries. I think in terms of climate change, I'd say that Green New Deal politics is a left-populist response to the crisis.