GOV310 – In The News: A look at national politics through the eyes of Texas, August 7, 2018

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] in the news.

[0:00:08 Speaker 2] Hello, I’m President Daniel,

[0:00:10 Speaker 1] and I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project. Not Darren Shaw, having gone to a Bernie Sanders rally

[0:00:16 Speaker 2] on Welcome to in the news for introduction to American in Texas government. So this week we have with us Dr Henson, who again is the director of the Texas Politics Project. Thank you so much for joining us this week.

[0:00:28 Speaker 1] Thanks for having me,

[0:00:30 Speaker 2] So we’ve gotta want to just jump right into it this week again. Second exam was finished yesterday, things looking good. And so let’s talk about what’s in the news. So when the first thing that jumped out jumps out is that the Trump Administration’s has received a another kind of rebuttal in its attempt to remove the deferred action programmer DACA. And so in a second order, the judge, a federal judge, has argued that the state of the Trump administration must reinstate DACA and must, but has given him 20 days to figure if they want to appeal again. And so it looks like Doc is safe for another day. But the fight is still going on, and so again, if you think about this, this deals with the interviews were brought over as Children who have based, made even gone to college, served in the military and allowing them to stay within the U. S. Even though they, even though there are undocumented and they’re entering to the U. S. Was was illegal. So this is something that’s kind of been going on, and it’s not really sure. Um, how long the Trump Administration’s gonna keep fighting this professor? Remember, Dr Hensen, you’ve done quite a bit of looking at public opinion towards DACA. What do you think? Well,

[0:01:46 Speaker 1] well, I mean, you know, public opinion on this is interesting for the Trump administration in a lot of ways. Immigration and Border security, Donald Trump’s signature issue and a signature issue for Republican candidates really going back before Donald Trump. You know, you were saying that Doc has been around for a long time? I mean, the Obama administration was fighting over Dhaka for, you know, the last few years of his two terms. It’s been an issue in terms of public opinion. It’s not really is much of a winner for Republicans and for the Trump administration as other aspects of immigration and border security policy. It’s one of those areas where, UM, public opinion among Republicans in particularly is not a solidly opposed to Dhaka and not, as you know, quote unquote anti immigrant or restrictive on immigration as it is in other areas. So you know, they’re kind of stuck with it. You know, it almost feels to me like it was one of the early commitments of the Trump administration. They don’t want to give up on it, but it’s just they’re getting, you know, sort of dragged through the wringer on this because they’re having a hard time get rid of it, which is what they promised their voters.

[0:02:56 Speaker 2] Yet it’s the moment is very sticky. I mean, is you can see you have individuals who clearly on with the Democrats. They’re very strong supporter with again, you don’t have strong. You may have opposite intense opposition from Republicans. And so going after this and again, when you start sending these individuals away, that’s when you see a great deal. I expect to see a great deal pushback. So it’s gonna be interesting to see you know what happens with DACA going forward now. The second thing we want to move to is dealing with air automobile emissions. And so the Trump administration has tried to relax many of the guidelines before put forward for automobile emissions and particular is try to repeal A. Basically, a wave of the state of California has that again, part of what was under the Obama administration. But but another part of the waiver goes back to the past of the Clean Air Act and what this does the louse, California, to set really stricter emission standards. So California, um, going back to the clean pass of the Clean Air Act because was really won The first movers dealing with clean Air Congress allowed it to set its own emission standards. Other states cannot set their own emission standards, but they can adopt California emission standards. So if you ever watch a game show and it says the car has California emissions and basically it’s saying that the State of California is establishes admission standards and it meets those emission standards for the state of California. So you have 12 other states, including the and and the District Colombia, which have adopted California’s admission standards. So while other states cannot adopt their own standards, they can copy what California is doing. And on top of that, dealers in states neighboring states that have adopted California missions can sell cars with California missions. So it gets soldier. Seeing here is that because of this car’s of California, missions make up about 40% off the market share when it comes to new automobile sales. So California is able to dictate a large portion off the automobile sold in the U. S. And so there has been this pushback from autumn for the automotive industry to try to repeal the amount of power California has. They believe that California’s way too much power and the power that California has given it is Matt earnestly fair two of the States and maybe imposing burdens on on other dealers. But this is an interesting story about federalism on I think you know, dancing. You had an interesting analogy regarding this. It’s interesting

[0:05:38 Speaker 1] the history of federalism for most of our lives anyway, and we’re old people. But the history of federalism has been usually about the federal government trying to impose more standards, more regulations, more demands on the states and the states pushing back, wanting fewer restrictions lower levels because of the politics of this issue and, frankly, the science of global warming and the nature of you know where cars are and the environmental problems in California. This kind of flips that in that what we’re seeing is a state fighting toe have to do the right more regulation themselves and the federal government trying to pull back on these regulations. And I think you know, the politics you were talking about for the and even the economics for the car industry are gonna be interesting. The Attorney general of California, heavier Buscetta has already said they will file suit against the federal government to to stay this and hopefully reverse the order from their perspective. Um, either way, this gets tied up in the court and so what the auto industry is gonna wind up with is probably more uncertainty rather than less because of the litigation that’s gonna come out of this.

[0:06:51 Speaker 2] It’s a very tricky situation and get many of you may not remember this, but California was really known for its pollution, specifically Southern California. So we think of the term smog, which is kind of the mixture of of a mixture of basically automobile emissions, plus the atmosphere. We have this grey hey or really brown haze over the city where you really couldn’t see anything and base. It was a fall created from vehicle emissions, but other pollutants in the air. And so this is what Southern California became known for specifically Los Angeles and extremely poor air quality. Know of one individual who would talk about driving to count really bad asthma, and we talked about driving down to Southern California. It seemed like a Sunnis. He hit L. A. He would pass out because he couldn’t breathe properly, and it took him a couple of days to be able to breathe. And so this is really part of the history, especially early seventies regarding California, where you see them really make this very strong push because it begins, you have the second largest city, us with horrible air quality. So if you think about the way talk about air quality in China, well, that’s what counts we look like under ah, in the late sixties, early seventies. I grew

[0:08:07 Speaker 1] up in Southern California in the seventies, and, you know it was smog alerts and you know, you you know we moved inland, and basically L. A. Is in a basin. And, you know, you get what you call the inversion layer because the differential temperature the smog comes in and because of the way the geography and the temperature, it just sits there until the sea breezes blow it out and then it blows it out into the eastern part of the bull. And so those areas out there Riverside Eastern L. A county, you know, we’re just horrible. And if you went up in the mountains, you could look down and you could actually see the flat level of smog that just filled the basin. And it was, And it’s, you know, significantly started getting better about the time I left.

[0:08:51 Speaker 2] Yeah, it’s get it’s one. That’s where things. So it’s not necessarily the fact that Californians were just driving this horrible cars. It was a mixture of things. So if you think of like Hurricane Katrina was so bad in New Orleans, it was a combination of, well, normal, just like a bowl. And so the war just came straight in and stay there is below sea level, and with California, it’s just with Los Angeles because in the basin it’s just the natural, like the dust, things that from farms kind of blow in and just settle down there. And so all of these things factored into this. But the one thing they could control was vehicle emissions, and so that’s one of things that they pushed forward. But the Trump administration is trying to basically relaxed amount of power that California has within this. And so this is again a fight about federalism. Eso, you could argue this is a fight about rights, the right to free air, things of that nature. But also it’s a fight about federalism, really, who controls this? Does the state control this? Does the federal government control this? There’s a past agreements that allowing this state this control. But can it have that much control? And we also see these fights come out where California’s tried toe have a little bit more control with things such as its ports. So it’s tried to make its own international deals or packs in order to bring business into its ports and in many ways, super C, the federal government and so many times states will say, Look, we know it’s in our best interests, allow us to negotiate this because if you negotiate, this would be bad for us. So may look good for you or the people who are involved, but may be bad for us. So sometimes the federal government does allow states these freedoms. But as we can see in the case of California by a lot of these freedoms, it is a lot of the state of California to have A with me. But our has a disproportionate effect on of the automobile industry and whether this is good again, I think the automobile industry target this is a bad thing, whereas those who support environmental issues believe it’s a It’s a great thing, given how import environmentalism is in state of California, where even, you know, the conservatives in California are really big on environmentalism because you’re honest war sitting when he was governor of California Republican governor of California, actively lobbying Congress to pass stricter emission standards for vehicles. So it’s, you know, if you in Alabama, you must love football. If you’re in California, you must love the environment. Eso nobody is going. Nobody’s gonna run for office in California Sunday. We need lower. We need lower pop pollution standards. So it’s it is not gonna fly well on

[0:11:25 Speaker 1] partisanship. Really, In presented this in a funny way, sitting here, you know, you know, in Texas, you know, for the for the eight years of the Obama administration, it was Texas suing the federal government over various provisions, including DACA, because the tie everything together on and then the partisan identity in the White House and in Washington changes. And now we’re not suing. Texas isn’t suing the federal government anymore. Now it’s California democratically run state suing the federal government. So you’re kind of view of federalism is also often colored by partisanship.

[0:12:01 Speaker 2] Oh, it’s an ends where, yes, it’s very clear, you know, Texas, Texas, when the federal government over. I mean, if you look at the Supreme Court cases coming out what you saw battle between the states and the federal government, Texas was leading the way, sometimes sex when sometime texts would lose now that you have a Republican in office. Even when George W. Bush was in office, Texas was suing a lot. But Texas seems to be a

[0:12:25 Speaker 1] while for them to get their

[0:12:26 Speaker 2] yes and so it’s it’s Texas to be the stall wort for defending conservative states or the California New York are defending the more liberal states

[0:12:36 Speaker 1] governor. Texas Rant When he ran for Texas, part of his appeal the Conservatives was that his attorney general, what he did was he got up in the morning and thought about how he was going to see the federal government today.

[0:12:47 Speaker 2] That’s right. And so again, you hate the federal government when it’s not your group in charge. So that’s one thing. But we need to remember about about these things. Feather garments Great when it’s your pokes. But when somebody else’s spokes own out oppressive the federal govern suppressive eso moving on from this discussion What I want to talk about our I guess the ISMs that have popped up within the discussion of American politics and so in particular would talk about socialism, populism and fascism. These are three terms have been used quite a bit. You’re hearing people say you know the rise of socialism specifically within the Democratic Party. The use of populism on the part of Bernie Sanders as well as President Trump been also fascism, So President Trump has been accused of being a fascist. What exactly are these things? So you want to spend a little time talking about each of these? So the 1st 1 of start off with is really a discussion off socialism. So we have a video that talks about socialism, specifically democratic socialism,

[0:13:54 Speaker 0] you hear in America, where capitalism reigns supreme, we want our businesses and economic markets to be freer than a bald eagle flying through the sky, eating a Big Mac. But clearly the stigma of socialism is lifting. As one of our presidential contenders, Bernie Feel, the Bern Sanders has brought socialism and in particular democratic socialism to the forefront of the national conversation. Socialism at its root stands for the belief that a group of people can work together for the betterment of all the members of that population, not just for the benefit of the few not to be confused with its more extreme totalitarian form. Communism Socialism isn’t about how much the government controls, but that its people control and share its resource is democratic. Socialism is the enactment of socialist principles through the means of the democratic process. Democratic Socialists believed that the government and the economy should be run by the people it is representing rather than a small handful of people working against the interests of the majority. So it makes sense that socialism is making a sort of come back here in America, right? Thanks. Toa Unfettered capitalism The top 1/10 of 1% wealthiest people in this country now own more wealth than the bottom 90% CEOs, air making 300 times with their workers make. And some are even giving their workers livable wages or benefits. Now, you may be looking at me right now and saying, Well, yeah, he’s just a communist. But I assure you, I am not a communist. I’m just a millennial and we love socialism. And what a lot of people may not realize is that America is kind of already a socialist country. Think about it. Medicare Free K through 12 education, the Postal Service, even the army air, all socialist programs. How will you drive on a road or a highway? You’re utilizing socialism. Yet it still remains to be seen if socialism will catch on with Americans enough to elect a boisterous Democratic Socialists of the executive office jaded from the cold war and weary of bigger and more costly government programs. It seems like democratic socialists have more work to do to move past the stigma created against socialism in this country. And Americans only need to look to other countries to see that socialist parties can thrive and work in conjunction with capitalists to have a free market that works for everyone. The important thing to remember is that there are good and bad things about both socialism and capitalism, and that we only need to strike the right balance to make them both

[0:16:13 Speaker 2] work. All right, So that video was an attempt to give people understand a little more about what socialism is because usually people think of socialism. They automatically conflated with communism. And so what we have up here on the screen right now is really a definition of socialism on So a political theory off social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole. And so the idea here is that, um that the the means of production, things that nature are kind of controlled by, are dictated by the community and so that people have a little more saying What is going on now? Communism, on the other hand, is a political theory which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs, Usually organized under a party led state now under communism, there’s this idea of no private property that the state controls everything and usually a one party state. And so there’s no competition and if there isn’t a competition, is within one party. And so because of this is seen as very totalitarian, and it really restricts a lot of voices. Democratic socialism. So this is what you see coming out of Bernie Sanders, you see, with a lot of the rhetoric coming out of the kind of the new wing or the emerging wing within the Democratic Party argued. The government is dedicated to the development of socialist society, building economy through government policy. And so the idea is, the governor plays a more active role in the economy. It does not get rid of private property and does not get rid of capitalism. But it plays a much, much stronger roles. Everything of Denmark, Finland, New Zealand Canada. These are nations in which you would think of as democratic socialist nations. And again, as the video pointed out, there are clear examples of socialism within the U. S. So you think of Medicare. So when you reach a certain age, everybody received. So we all contribute to Medicare. And you know, certainly in the larger individuals receivers, so security. So there are examples of socialism that exist already. But because socialism is so strongly linked to communism and because the Cold War and because really the totalitarian aspects of communism, people are very scared. They think of this as the government coming in and taking over. Whereas Bernie Sanders and other social say no, which of the government coming in and taking over? It’s the government coming in to try to work, to create a much fair economy. So you’re still gonna have individuals who have large amounts of wealth, individual, less amounts of wealth. But it’s many ways attempt to try to decrease the wealth inequality and one of the reasons why you see this really take white, see things like socialism and communism. Things were just take off is fear that workers are being exploited and so that you are putting in, um, a lot amount of work and you’re not getting as much out of it. And that started individual being rewarded much mawr for what they contribute than what you contribute. And so, in many ways, is trying to create some type of or reduced inequality. They realize any qualities going exist the matter What? But it’s the amount of inequality that people are worried about, and so not to say that socialism is the fixed to all things. It has a numerous problems. Eso is great in theory on, and many times it’s failed in practice and and why you’re seeing many social Democratic nations you are seeing to see. You begin to see them kind of pull back and reduce the size of government and moving to private private hand move things in the private hands. But socialism is a little bit more. It’s more than communists. Communism is a subset of socialism. Many ways you could say it’s kind of a crazy uncle of socialism, but But the problem is, we think of socialism and communism as being the same when in fact they are highly distinct. Eso Ah, you

[0:20:13 Speaker 1] know, it’s interesting to me that we’re having this discussion again again. We get to feel like old guys again, I think. But, you know, you mentioned something about how the Cold War in the United States led to this idea of how this kind of conflation between socialism and communism is sort of the same thing. That it’s almost, is it for a long time in the United States, particularly during the Cold War, you couldn’t talk about socialism without, you know, the spectre of communism, you know, hovering over it. And the association was kind of unbreakable when it’s interesting now in this moment to see socialism making something of a comeback into mainstream discourse. And yet we’re still seeing that hangover from the Cold War. I mean, if you listen to, um, you know, people that are running against farther left Democratic candidates or when Bernie Sanders was so prominently in the race pretty common to call anybody that says they’re Democratic Socialists. Ah, communism. Or, you know, Ted Cruz has said of some of these left candidates, you know, I know what happens in a socialist country. He’s talking about Cuba, and so that association still has this kind of political charge, even though it’s it’s, it’s a little bit archaic and it’s kind of draining off,

[0:21:31 Speaker 2] yes, but

[0:21:32 Speaker 1] it’s not gone.

[0:21:33 Speaker 2] No, it’s not gone. And I think the key thing that Sanders, another Democratic Socialists would argue is that communism is a one party system that controls everything. Whether the Democratic, socialist, you want party competition so you want party competition really dictated. How much should the government being involved in this? How much the government not be involved in this? Also, they don’t believe in the idea of the government taking away private property. As you’ve seen happening. The former Soviet Union you’ve seen happen in China and Cuba. They believe that no people should still have private property. But in terms kind of dictated the rules of transactions, things of that. Nature is in many ways many ways to try to make sure that workers are not exploited. That’s what they’re trying to get across, however, because of the spectre of communism. Ah, and again, if you think about a what 60 year, um, prop of effort to I want to sit nicely propagate, I guess to some degree, it is propaganda to paint Communism is the worst thing ever, you know, again. And be truthful, yet it wasn’t that great. Uh, it’s like, uh but this effort to, um, to attack communism and to link socialism to communism makes it very difficult on. So in many ways, it’s the same thing where I get crushed shells. Talk about this. We talk about, you know, the the Supreme Court, making certain decisions which may make it a little bit more difficulty, percent individuals to vote in theory. Or people automatically think, Oh, my goodness, we’re going back to Jim Crow. And so it’s you associate these two things, and so you make It is seen as an over reaction, but it’s been kind of deeply ingrained in terms of our understanding. Now, the second term, we want to talk about its fascism. And so you hear a lot of people talking about these anti fascist groups. Well, they’re anti fascist. First, about what is a fascist on? So a fascist fascism is a political appeal focused on a community declined nationally. Ation of victimhood promises the remedy. Remedy this through unity, energy and purity. And so what you see coming out of fascism and really the first nation to adopt fascism would be Italy under Mussolini on. So this took took rise around World War Two is this idea of purity of the nation that the nation has fallen as following hard times and because of some impure group, And so we must now push this group out by any means necessary. And so again, Acosta, Mass. Based Party of Committee Nationalist militants abandoned Democratic liberties. And so you you quell or try to crush a type of opposition. And I didn’t pursue with redemptive violence and without ethical legal legal restraints, goals of internal cleansing or external expansion. And so with this, you kind of get the, um the BBC is kind of the evil of government, where people kind of riled up Say, this group has as hurt us. We must chase them out. So we think of Italy, every think of the Nazis. These are examples of fascist all right, where they called for an issue of purity. So purifying Italy purifying Germany by pushing these these impure groups out and again this authoritarian leader, whether be Hitler in Germany or Mussolini in Italy, this idea of a strong man who’s going to lead us, lead the nation back to its pure roots. And so this is what fascism is and people to throw it out there all the time like you’re a fascist. Well, is it really? Is it really that no, people just use fashion all the time is an insult. But let’s actually understand what fascism is. And again, we think of fascism. We think of these groups of arguing, of the nation’s on declining. We must redeem ourselves by getting rid of these bad people. And we must get these bad people no matter what. And so we must suspend all types of habeas corpus, any types of rights they have in order to get them out. And a lot of time that centralized one figure. It was extremely authoritarians. And so you see again, attempts to stop to crush opposition crushed the press expensive. They’re in opposition to get to get this through.

[0:25:53 Speaker 1] Yeah, I think the interesting thing about fascism also kind of coming back into vogue is, ah, a term of art or a term of, you know, sort of political accusation. I mean, unlike socialism or even communism to some degree the incidents in which people stand up and say, You know what? I’m a fascist. Come join our stuff, you know, come join our group, come join our movement is pretty minimal. I mean, it just doesn’t there’s not It’s been pretty thoroughly delegitimized, but I think what’s useful about the definition we’re using is that you can look at it and you were sort of doing this and see where the elements are that if people are going to, you know, people that have their own anxieties from the left about what’s going on right now, they look at you know, this sense of grievance that seems to be so activated. You know, frankly, among a lot of people that have been attracted to trump whether you know, calling Trump himself a fascist is, you know, pretty much a bridge too far, given you know, that that the technical definition of fascism. But you know, as you said, you know the sense of something in the past that needs to be corrected, This idea that you know, we’ve lost national purpose and national unity in that you know, there’s something extraordinary in the moment about that that requires powerful leadership is what people are hanging this on. And it’s again. I think it’s kind of a bridge too far, but you can definitely see why somebody might line out those elements and make a graph and go well. There’s a little of this going hunt and a little of this going on. And there’s a little this going on. And then you make the leap. It’s it’s not unlike the socialism communism thing.

[0:27:41 Speaker 2] Yeah, so again, we’re getting these two terms thrown out there, but the issues makes you know what they are. I think this is the problem that I found that when we talk about fascism and we talk about socialism, people don’t really Degree don’t really get what exactly is this into the many ways they’re talking across each other. And so the call somebody was a socialist Communist is problematic. Cost him on. The Fascist is problematic because do you even know what a fascist is? So I mean, I find myself doing this all the time. They call somebody That’s like, Well, what is that? Uh, well, then don’t use that term, all right? You don’t know. The term means Don’t use it, but we kind of I think we understand it, but we really don’t. And so my hope is that when you’re seeing all these things being put out there, you have an idea of what it actually is. And it’s common for a lot of terms that are understood with a month amongst academics or even understand political elites that when they get into the mainstream public that they get misinterpreted. And so our way of understanding it, it could be changed drastically, and it becomes part of just everyday conversation. The true meaning of the term gets lost. So this leads us to the last term populism, So populism. And so this is a, uh this is taken from another work. Eso were kind of populism. Short introduction. This is the thin Senate ideology that considered society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups the pure people versus the corruptly and which it argues that politics should be an expression of the general will of the people. And so one of things about this is you can easily see how populism could be turned into fascists where people compete. People see a link between that just as we can see a link between how socialism continued to communism. Populism people. When people use populist rhetoric, they could easily be accused of fascism because again, this idea of the pure people and a corrupted leak, our sometimes corrupt group. And so if you think about the populace populism, you see the screen from Bernie Sanders as well as from President Trump, is that Senator Sanders talks about the corrupted lead in specific the economic elite. When President Trump ran for office, he talked about corporately, specifically the political. So either the mainstream Republican Party, the mainstream Democrats, these were the These are the ones who had corrupted us and cheated the nation. And so what you find is populism is usually coupled with another ideology. So if you think Bernie Sanders, his populism is coupled with socialism, if you think of President Trump, his populism was couple really with a kind of a national with the nationalist ideology and again the anti establishment, highly emotional. Okay, again, one of things about it is emotions matter. When people get angry, they are more likely to act. All right, so if you get him scared or more likely, like way gotta find a way to solve this, and they’re gonna look for somebody to give them answers. And when they’re angry, they’re more likely toe act more like to go to the pool of the polls. So, happy people. Yeah, I’m good. Why should I vote if you’re angry? Oh, no. We’re gonna fix this right now. Alright. Again. Think about the number of times. What? You’ve been angry and you’ve acted all right again. One of things we know about anger is that when people are angry, they can’t really calculate things very well. All right, so think about that time, All right? When you had over solder sibling or something like that really made you angry, All right? And you were ready to fight. I think about it. I got a cousin six years old in the all right. He did something. It really upset me. I got really angry, like, fix this now. All right? So went up and I confronted him. And then when I woke up two hours later, I realized Oh, I should have thought that through a little bit better, But again, anger gets people to act. Alright. Anger gets people to act And so you want to apply. You want to focus on this Emotionalism? Been a type of that conspiratorial aspects where you think there is a secret group working behind the scenes. You see the same thing on the right as well as the left eso. Right now you’re going for the electricity public opinion and you see those public opinion lectures? I talk about conspiracy theories And where did they come from And again, When you see this idea of a pure group and an evil group, that’s where you’re more likely. See, conspiracy theories come about and again. Also, this idea popular sovereignty that the people should have a lot to say has have a very strong saying this. Now I’ve said a lot, but Dr Hits in here has actually done quite a bit on populism. So I can you

[0:32:26 Speaker 1] know anything about populism is that you know there’s this Valerie ization. There’s the kind of elevation, as you say of the will and the value of the common person and the people, and that could just be filled in with whatever kind of ideological content or specific content you want. And that tends to be really his sport historically, historically and geographically specific. So, you know, in this moment we’re seeing different forms of populism that tend to be mostly more conservative nationalist forms of populism, the trump movement in his success in the United States in several European countries. What’s different? I think about the United States. There’s, You know, one thing is that in a two party system, you know, populism has a hard time finding a permanent home, even though it’s kind of out there, and it sort of sporadically raises his head sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right. So you know, when you talk about populism in Texas, there’s a lot of kind of old time Texas liberals that get, frankly, kind of pissed off when you talk about it the way we’re talking about it. Because to them, populism is the populace party that started in Texas in the late 19 century and lasted very briefly into the early 20th century. That was about fighting the railroads and business for the agrarian interests and for the common person. And when you start talking about other forms of populism, they get, you know, uncomfortable and or you know, kind of pissed because you’re devaluing their historic, deeply rooted populism. But there’s also been conservative populism in in the history of Texas and in the United States as well. So I think you know, the interesting thing is, too, is toe notice. Populism is this kind of ideological thing that happens that seizes people either through anger or through fear, or through what’s in the air at a historical moment that people can use to appeal to the will of the people. But you can kind of poor a lot of different things into it, depending on you know, the skills of the leader and what’s going on in the environment at the time.

[0:34:36 Speaker 2] Eso again, these air. These are important concepts, and they’re not static in the sense that only one group could be populist on. The one group could be fascist on the one group could be socialist that it’s it changes, and so populism again, as we talked about, is kind of a base, but it’s usually mixed with something else and eso it’s important to understand how these how they interact with each other and make sure we understand, understand that we’re using them properly because again It’s so easy for us to get lost in terms of understanding what these terms mean because again, while wanted notices people will talk about but never to find them right. And I think

[0:35:16 Speaker 1] part of you know, part of what makes it that a little more endemic in the United States. One could say a lot of different reasons, but one of them going back, it is that we don’t have a multi party system, right? So in in other countries where you have a multi party system, because the rules are different and you can support that, you know you have a consistent socialist party that’s contesting elections that’s in the political system that’s in media, that is in people’s lives in a way that clarifies what they’re about, You know, in the United States, you know, socialists have, you know, usually been either shut out of the Democratic Party or trying to express themselves as they are now inside the Democratic Party. And you know, the Democrats, despite the position of the opposition, are very unlikely to ever become a proper socialist party in the United States. And so you don’t get the kind of rooted nous in those meetings in those meanings that people grow up knowing. Yeah, you know, one of my uncles was in the Socialist Party or, you know, you know, my funky cousins were socialists or they were in the, you know, right wing Nationalist Party may not call it a fascist party, but

[0:36:28 Speaker 0] they have

[0:36:28 Speaker 1] a more fixed sense of what a fascistic party would look like. You just don’t get that in the United States because the parties air such coalition parties.

[0:36:38 Speaker 2] Yes, and again, it’s one of things where we’re trying to make sure that when you do encounter these terms of these concepts that you understand it and in many cases, correct people are they using it when they using it incorrectly against speaking of the whole socialist thing? Bernie Sanders executing a one hour lecture, Georgetown, explaining what it means to be a socialist, tried to get rid of the stigma of that. But again, it’s very difficult I’m thinking about is giving trying Teoh fashion

[0:37:07 Speaker 1] up in the guy that said No really is a post up. The post office is a good example. I think that’s not how I try to make the same

[0:37:13 Speaker 2] No now, but Medicare eyes a great example of V a Social Security. So security. Those are examples of all kinds of example socialism. I don’t think anybody’s going out and trying to defend fascism. Well, I guess you could think of the white supremacist groups, some X two summits, that those would be the ones defending fascism. But again, these are things that are out there. But we want to make sure you understand the roots of these things and how we understand his academics and how really they’re based definitions before it kind of gets out into the mass public and in many ways may change or people made it may not fully grasp with. The concept is about so I believe that’s all we have. So again, we wish you all a great week, and I’ll see you next week.

[0:38:11 Speaker 0] Government 3 10 in The news podcast is hosted by doctors Darren Shaw and Eric McDaniel and is produced by the liberal Arts TS Development Studio and the Department of Government and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin