Phil said: “ . . . the situation is  more complex than simply calling populists racists or xenophobes.  It’s not that they hate other  people.  They care more for themselves at this point than they do for others’  And that is self regulation.”  (which doesn’t mean we have to admire it. But it is survival.)

	Yes. This is  an opportunity to agree with Phil. Almost, anyhow. I would say that the “self regulation” is motivated by what is contained in Phil’s 3rd sentence, the words, 
“themselves” and “others”.  When people percieve that they are under threat, being cheated, ignored, or even not-taken-care-of, it raises that part of the human pyche we call 
“self interest”. It then mobilizes the strategies of xenophobia and paranoia. Why those?  Because they assure safety. Both cause an immediate withdrawal or a call to arms. There is no doubt that they were installed by natural selection —probably around the Stone Age (pleistocene) — thus it still remain part of every humans character. In modern societies where we encounter strangers everyday some with splendidly different features— such negative responses need to be repressed and the ironically oppossite feature of humanity — a great need for one another -- brought forth.  The  emphasis on the latter was one of the principles of The Enlightenment that allowed the emegence of liberal democracy. 
	But democracy required a participatory citizenship including a literate prolatariate. And beyond that an educated society. The  European version of liberal democracy let emerge as a mixed society of capitalism and socialism.The American version emphasized freee enterprise and capitalism.  Not a bad decision.  It creaed a lot of wealth —fast. 
And it created social stratification vastly aided by slavery.  Why? Because capitalism feeds on cheep labor and the history of America is full of episodes —some bloody and wide spread —of hostility between labor and management. Ah but a liberal democracy allowed for , even encouraged, the freedom to organize and for collective bargaining to rise up against it. That worked to even things out a bit.  But not for everyhone.  There were those at the bottom of a strartified society.  Irony: A society that likes to brag about its middle class fails to notice that to have a middle class you have to have a higher class and a lower class. Nothing wrong with that. It’a  just part of diversity.  That is, if it’s regulated.  
If it is not regulated — well, you know what happens:  The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.  And when the poor get poorer their education level drops further, access to institutions close tighter, and their skill and intuition to organize evaporates. Unitl the Big Man comes on the scene and mobilizes them around his ambitions and goals. This is called populism and it is often the failure to mobilize on their own that allows the previously un-mobilized to become a mob —seemingly full of promise for the prolierate. The use of that word makes it sound like communist propaganda so they don’t use it. 
	And look who embraced them:  the Republican Party and Evangelical Christians. What would have saved them? An energetic and well funded public school system and a set 
of other institutions still committed to the  principles of a liberal democracy. 
	Yes.  And I think it would help to know the origins of xenophobia and paranoia.

Those are just some of my thoughts for today


JW 




	
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