When a political movement becomes interwoven into an individual’s self-identity, said individual is unable to criticize that political movement without implicitly criticizing themselves. Conversely, to maintain the belief that individuals and the political movement that they are ingrained within are inherently good, any policy action that the political movement undertakes must also be inherently good, and all political actions by that movement become justifiable. This reality is the end goal of populist rhetoric. Populism divides the world into an “us vs. them” dichotomy and uses this divide to create an incredibly loyal political base. Populism has been present in the United States for over a century to some degree, but has reemerged as a focus in academia in response to the 2016 presidential election, in which Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders frequently used populist rhetoric.