Populism trades long-term institutional stability for the short-term high of mob rule, eroding the rule of law to feed its own ego. By reducing complex social realities into a toxic divide of "us versus them," it turns democratic governance into a zero-sum war. When the gap between a populist leader's perceived reality and the actual functioning of the world becomes too wide, the system eventually snaps, resulting in the "bust" phase of a political or economic cycle. It would appear that in the case of Donald Trump and the MAGA movement, we are well on our way toward such a bust. Since the...
















