Populism and Politics in a changing World

I like to unwind from my day when I get home from work.  It's quiet time for me after a hectic day of running around followed by work.  Generally I end up on the sofa with some small snack, the boys having been fed, watered, and cuddled.  They lay contented, purring their siren song, sometimes on my lap or next to me though more often than not in the favorite places.  Tonight I happened upon an episode of Charlie Rose.  His guest, Zanny Minton Beddoes, was speaking about Trump, Brexit, and the rise of Populism.  I listened intently to her take on things.  Most of what she said I agreed with but some things I did not. Being the Editor in Chief of The Economist, she was of course all in on free trade acknowledging though that it does has knock-off effects.  I am not in favor of free trade but I'll save that for later.
I'm very interested in Europe and its history, have been for a long time even before I went to college. That was my main reason for choosing a Minor in European Area Studies.  What I learned is that in many ways the U.S. is such a young country where the Old World is not; however, even at our young age we share many of the ideological struggles that they have had over the centuries.  This current resurgence of Populism and the rise of Trump is not an isolated incident.  It is the logical end in a long line of connected events that can be traced back to the creation of our country.  History tells us that many of the immigrants that arrived here were economically disadvantaged and religiously oppressed, that they came here to be free from tyranny, to live the life they chose, one that they felt was divined by God.  What we are not readily taught is that within their respective colonies these colonists formed their own version of tyranny and oppression based on their religious and social beliefs.  Routinely people were banished, left to survive in the wilderness, more often left for dead. And after the formulation of our country there were routine, almost like clockwork, religious re-awakenings that were rooted in these early definitions of traditional values.  Preacher's would hold tent revivals whipping up religious and social hatred with their fire and brimstone stump speeches. What also came with this was anti-immigrant uprisings, the earliest aimed at the Irish Catholic laborers who migrated in the early 1800's.  There is a well documented account of a massacre in Philadelphia of Irish laborers in 1832.  Draft riots during the Civil War where Protestants attacked Irish and German Catholic neighborhoods, burning houses, and murdering their inhabitants.  Populism is not new here.  It has a very long and storied history.  Two names come to mind, that of Charles Coughlin, a priest who was in Detroit and Senator Huey Long of Louisiana both active during the 1930's.  Father Coughlin initially supported F.D.R. and the New Deal but soon turned populist and antisemitic.  Senator Huey Long also took the populist road and was a well known demagogue in the South.  One could categorize Nixon as a demagogue too for using the anti-democratic post civil rights fervor in the New South as a politic tool to gain and hold the presidency.  Reagan can be defined as a populist as well.  His well worn generalizations tapped into that yearning for a less complicated time when things were predictable.  This long history of populism seems always to happen during or after a time when there is great change or fear of change.  Trump is just another in a long line that can be traced back for centuries here and beyond in Europe.  It's fear of change and the loss that accompanies it that drives populism.  Europe is in the gripe of that now.  In almost every country in Europe populism is on the rise and taking political control.   In many places these far right parties are in government or rule in partnership with other right wing groups.  Fear is the driver.  Loss too.  And abandonment.  The Tea Party here is the current driver of populism coming out of the fear that whites are losing power.  Their anti immigrant platform is filled with the vitriol that would make any demagogue proud.  Trump's crime, if it can be called that, is his predatory use of that existing fear and loss his for own personal power.  It doesn't help that our political system has been shown to be wildly corrupt and at the beck and call of the moneyed oligarchs who pick and chose their candidates as if they were shopping for loaves of bread.
Our world is changing and we are powerless to stop it.  Globalization and the free trade that it needs is a fact of life if the current form of capitalism is to survive.  Moderating it is problematic at best because the vested interests are not able nor willing to let go.  Investment follows where profits lay. Profits are made by producing things better and for less with innovation at the root of it all.  We are told that we must innovate, that new is necessary, that change is good, that old is bad.  We are conditioned to want these new things faster and cheaper while being told that with one click we can have almost anything delivered to our door within days, sometimes within hours.  On a grander scale we are sold into the idea that the latest gadget, a better car, a bigger house can be ours, all while our desires are satiated by corporations who blind us with a constant stream of slick ads.   It's a vicious circle that we willingly buy into.  Who doesn't like new things?  Or something better for less?  But what that chase leaves us with is a sense of insecurity, that we are never enough, that our happiness is just beyond our fingertips.  It also tells us that things mean more than our authenticity, that our self worth is what we own instead of who we are.  And that is what this is all about; it's powerlessness with a capital P.  Powerlessness is a very heady emotion rooted in our insecurities.  Powerlessness warps our perceptions to a point where we can no longer distinguish between reality and illusion.  It taps into all the baggage we carry from our life experiences exponentially growing that baggage into the monsters that haunt us both during our waking and sleeping hours.  And we are angry because of it!  Couple  all of this with fear, loss, and abandonment, and we are all ripe for a demagogues picking, like low hanging fruit on a tree.   Populism is not the purview of the unintelligent or the uneducated either.  That's too easy of a definition.  We all are subject to these powerful raw emotions.  It's just that some of us seem more inclined to navigating them better.  So what can we do?  How do we address the Trump's of the world and the populism that reappears as regularly as clockwork?  Good question.  I want to say I do not know.  And I don't.  Maybe though, we can decouple from the vicious circle of our current form of capitalism and come to the understanding that a kinder and gentler form of it can retain good jobs locally and still thrive but it will mean that we will pay more and have less.  That free trade is not the be all end all. That innovation and profits have less value than attaining a quality life.  That maybe we don't need the latest gadget or the latest fashion to feel whole; that connection, self worth, and authenticity does have more value than the products we buy.  Whatever the answers may be, we must continue to fight the demagoguery and the political, social, and economic corruption that it feeds off of because the alternative is just too horrifying to imagine.