What the Left Fails to Understand About Populism

The problem with fixating on inequality, oligarchy, and other abstractions

Excerpt: "As Stephen Colbert explained long ago, common sense comes from thinking “from the gut, not the brain.” Psychologists have a more sophisticated way of articulating this distinction. As readers of Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow or Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink know, the human mind exhibits two different systems of cognition. The first is rapid and concrete, focusing on primary representations of things you can see, hear, and touch. The second is slower and more laborious, but capable of abstraction and logical reasoning. In some cases, the two systems produce different verdicts. This can create persistent disagreement between common sense and expert opinion.

The distinctive feature of a populist message is a reliance on rapid cognition. Populist politicians focus on primary representations of the world, such as the price of groceries, rather than abstract concepts, such as affordability. Everyone can picture the price of orange juice or bread on the supermarket shelf.

During his presidential campaign last year, President Donald Trump spent a great deal of time summoning such mental images. “Groceries, such a simple word,” he has repeatedly said by way of explaining his victory. Many liberals made fun of his rhetoric."