Which is to say, both the left and the right can be populist, but the populist left seeks to improve peoples' lives, no matter what that takes, while the populist right is *only* willing to make the world better when that doesn't interfere with the interests of property owners.

This is how you get the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire equating publicly produced, free insulin with forcing enslaved Black people to pick cotton in the fields:

https://newrepublic.com/post/174485/libertarian-party-suggests-former-black-lawmaker-pick-crops-free

2/

For right populists, the property rights of pharma giants are human rights, so anything that interferes with those rights is equivalent to any other human rights violation.

This is not only wrong, but it's also a huge vulnerability in the right populist mindset. It's a button that, when pushed, produces a reliable and reflexive outrage.

3/

This is essential for the creation, maintenance and expansion of #plutocracy. In a plutocracy, a small minority owns most of the property (we live in a plutocracy). By definition, plutocracy isn't popular, since it's a system that benefits a small minority at everyone else's expense. In its natural state, plutocracy is only popular with its winners, and not the vast majority of losers it creates.

4/

So plutocrats need to find ways to get turkeys to vote for Christmas. One important trick is to convince us all that the system is fair, guided by an #InvisibleHand that performs mystic passes over our heads at birth and locates the very best of us and elevates us to the apex of the social pyramid.

But there's a problem with this: plutocracy is self-sustaining.

5/