Bruce Bisset: Populists prey on gullible public

Donald Trump is riding a huge wave of populism during his election campaign.

Doubtless most Kiwis think Donald Trump's run for United States president is a joke, laugh snidely at the man's corncob rhetoric and appalling lack of understanding of how most of the world works, and can only shake their heads incredulously to think Americans could actually elect him.

He is, after all, a man who insults women to (and about) their faces, has said tactical nukes are the solution for terrorists, hypocritically waves the Bible around while making up quotes that aren't in it, and thinks the "poor and huddled masses yearning to breathe free" should be repatriated.

But he's the Republican frontrunner, riding a huge wave of populism; the rise of the great American stupid, as his campaign has been labelled. Trump probably won't get the GOP nomination but he's proving how fundamentally dumb and diminished a huge number of Americans now are.

And if that does not worry you, it should.

The US remains the world's foremost military country, with bases in 158 countries and an alarming record of armed intervention whenever it perceives "American interests" are under threat - no matter how obscure those interests are to any other than the direct financial beneficiaries.

True, Trump may be only the fool the dealmakers wheel out to legitimise their reign, but he's a perverse one; and it speaks volumes for the degraded and decadent level of governance to which other fools are willing to stoop to keep a grip on power.

Any way you slice it, the deeply ignorant electorate backing Trump and others like him is a wild and dangerous beast. Unleashed, it would make Isis look like a carnival sideshow.

Certainly when a US state governor can publicly wonder whether Pope Francis is secretly an atheist, and American newspapers and commentators can openly label him a communist, then Houston, we have a problem.

But New Zealanders should not be too quick to mock the US. After all, we have our own rather more affable sanitised version of Trump, and he's already elected: Prime Minister John Key, of course.

Think that's an unfair comparison? Consider how Key's appeal is based on populism, not policy; people vote for him because they (wrongly) perceive he's a "nice man" with a "charming smile", and are so beguiled on such a shallow level they'll believe anything he says. Though even he can't remember what he has said, half the time.

Let's face it, if National voters seriously considered policy their yardstick, they'd have tossed Key and Co out by now, since his regime have broken almost every half-promise and vague indication of policy they've haphazardly put forward over the past three terms.

The kicker is the TPPA negotiations, the outcome of which has degenerated from a bad deal we'd get some crumbs from to a meaningful loss of sovereignty with negative economic benefit - now that any chance of dairy concessions appears dead.

This was a "non-negotiable" plank; no dairy, no deal, said the PM, but then downplayed it to "getting the best we can" - meaning taking whatever is offered - and now says Kiwis will "come around to" an appreciation of the treaty even if there's no dairy deal - meaning, there won't be one.

That Key is willing to be hung for agreeing to such an obnoxious piece of corporate deceit demonstrates how firmly he is still in the pocket (if not the pay) of big finance.

That the gullible and all-too-forgiving public will not kick the horse from under him is the real crime and one his fans seem unable to grasp at all, let alone be shamed by.

The rise of the great New Zealand stupid. Very Trumpesque.

That's the right of it.

Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.