Sad Puppies & Donald Trump

Amanda Marcotte makes an link between GOP nominee hopeful Donald Trump and the ‘Sad/Rabid Puppies’ over on the Slate:

As Jeet Heer at the New Republic notes in a piece about Donald Trump, this kind of reactionary rhetoric is often framed as populist, but it is in fact “the voice of aggrieved privilege—of those who already are doing well but feel threatened by social change from below.” So it is with the Puppies.

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In other words, just as Donald Trump is a rich white guy who acts like he’s put upon because he has to listen to women’s opinions and share his country with Mexicans, the Puppies are privileged men who think that the world is coming to an end because people who don’t necessarily look or act or write like them are winning awards that they want for themselves.

Sums it up quite well. Trump is not a populist (neither are the ‘puppies’), as Jeet Heer explains:

The word populist causes too much confusion when used to describe movements like McCarthyism, the Tea Party, or Trumpism. These are not mass movements of the people hoping to make a more democratic society. Rather they are political factions of authoritarian bigotry, backed by the rich, and designed to protect aggrieved privilege. Trump is best described not as a populist but as an authoritarian bigot, a quality best seen in his callous response to the news that two men evoked his name when they beat up a homeless Mexican man. “I will say that people who are following me are very passionate,” he said. “They love this country and they want this country to be great again.”