Why Populism is Democracy

If you support the will of the people, then you embrace populism

Making ten promises and only keeping one, while using the people’s money to pay for even that, could certainly be considered a “bad” form of populism. Empty promises in general, or just too many big hopes, should generally set off alarm bells. Carl Sagan’s axiom, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence,” applies especially well to campaign promises and freebies. Doubt and skepticism become your best friends in such wishful and misleading environments.

Effective movements always train a thousand local leaders instead of building up a cult of personality. Part of the danger of investing hopes and dreams in the leadership of one person and their inner circle is the risk of cults of personality in general: abuse of power and misuse of resources. Even in a best-case scenario, investment in one leader means one easily-broken link the the chain, one single point of failure.