There is a rising and very important populism, talking about money in politics, talking about trade, talking about economic issues, within the party, and across the board, there has been a serious rethinking of trade, rethinking of big banks, rethinking of monopolies that have too much power.

Zephyr Teachout

Categorized in : Politics

People think that the politician is just part of a system, and whether they're lying or not doesn't matter.

Zephyr Teachout

lying people thinking

Oftentimes people get it wrong when they say we need to educate voters first and then give them power. I tend to favor giving them power first.

Zephyr Teachout

giving people needs

There is a long American tradition of suspicion of concentrated economic power because of its tendency to corrupt government and turn it from a democracy into a plutocracy.

Zephyr Teachout

political government long

A lot of politics plays at the level of myth, and if you understand that, then you feel like you have access to the secret language of politics. People respond to political characters in archetypal ways. A fun game is to think of a politician and ask, "Which god is that? Are they like Aries? Are they like Athena?".

Zephyr Teachout

fun character thinking

One of the most dangerous things about Fox News isn't that it's right wing but that it's nihilistic. It takes away the capacity to believe in politics.

Zephyr Teachout

news wings believe

Creativity is essential to any kind of joyful living. Sometimes I act, sometimes I draw, I paint, I write poems. I can't imagine living without it.

Zephyr Teachout

creativity essentials writing

Things poll well, but people don't believe that politicians are telling the truth. Politicians might mention renewable energy, and the public will think, "That sounds good, but I don't believe they're going to do everything they can to build those towers."

Zephyr Teachout

believe people thinking

Integrity is hard work. I do think the internet makes it harder because of the temptations of performance. You can perform and have integrity, but it's easier just to perform. So the temptations of social media lead to some dissonance.

Zephyr Teachout

hard-work integrity thinking

In Europe, populism is sort of a dirty word, but we have this wonderful history of populism in America, including the abolitionist populists and the white and black populists working together in the nineteenth century.

Zephyr Teachout

white europe dirty

My current goal is to change the way we think about antitrust and anti-monopoly.

Zephyr Teachout

goal way thinking

I don't have any particular plans in mind. What I see is that you can become so focused on the idea of running that winning becomes your motivation, as opposed to what you stand for being your motivation.

Zephyr Teachout

motivation winning running

If those people in power never made any mistakes, we'd be done for as a democracy. But people keep making mistakes. History is a series of mistakes.

Zephyr Teachout

democracy mistake people

I think the reason you see so many people dropping out of politics is because there's an anti-poetic strain in modern political discourse.

Zephyr Teachout

political people thinking

New York City is one of the most vulnerable cities in the world to climate change, so I see Keystone as the central threat to New York.

Zephyr Teachout

climate cities new-york

I think that most people have deeply creative sensibilities.

Zephyr Teachout

creative people thinking

This is what's so hard about our current politics: things poll well, but people don't believe that politicians are telling the truth.

Zephyr Teachout

telling-the-truth believe people

If you think art is a competitive forum, then you're going to stop doing it if you're not good. But if it's not competitive, it's something that you'll keep doing.

Zephyr Teachout

forums art thinking

I'm not from the arts, I'm a law professor. But I think we need more poetry in politics.

Zephyr Teachout

law art thinking

People respond to political characters in archetypal ways. A fun game is to think of a politician and ask, "Which god is that? Are they like Aries? Are they like Athena?"

Zephyr Teachout

fun character thinking

Public education is so important - resisting privatization and charterization, high-stakes testing, and defunding. It's important for New York, but it's also important for the country.

Zephyr Teachout

important new-york country