I just finished reading Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? and I have to say that it has given me a clue (I think) to the quandary I have been in about our current state of affairs in this country. Let me restate this in a practical way:
How in the hell can people be supporting the Conservative agenda which is so clearly, unequivocally, blatantly in direct opposition to their personal interests? Or, more bluntly, Why the hell would anybody want to join the Tea Par-Tay?
The first few chapters of the book dealt with the term "backlash" which I associate in a way far different from how he meant it. I remember "backlash" in terms of the Southern Conservative Democratic Party's reaction to the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and I didn't immediately see the connection Frank was trying to make.
As I read on I began to understand that what had happened in Kansas, the backlash, was organized by pretty much the same cast of characters who have been active in the current
conservative revolt or Tea Party movement and it fit a very, very similar pattern. And when I got to the end of the book, I found that Frank realized, after the 2004 election, that he wasn't witnessing something strange about his home state but something that was a petri dish for a conservative movement across America.
He had no idea how right he was.
Here are some quotes:
"American conservatism depends for its continued dominance and even for its very existence on people never making certain mental connections about the world, connections that until recently were treated as obvious or self-evident everywhere on the planet. For example, the connection between mass culture, most of which conservatives hate, and laissez-faire capitalism, which they adore without reservation."
Okay....here's how it works according to Frank. Conservatives have painted the liberal democrats as elitists, you know, the "latte-sipping, Birkenstock-wearing INTELLECTUALS, who want to impose their values on the good, old, Christian, salt-of-the-earth working man by poisoning movies and TV and all other popular culture and (most importantly) killing babies in abortions. The Democratic party has helped this along by trying to become more "business friendly" and making Democratic Economic policies only slightly less conservative than Republican Economic Policies. So if there's no difference in economic policies, then VOTE VALUES. But by doing so, you are making the true beneficiaries of Republican Economic Policies wealthier and playing into the hands of the true elites.
Frank goes on:
"As a social system, the backlash works. The two adversaries feed off of each other in a kind of inverted symbiosis: one mocks the other, and the other heaps even more power on the one. This arrangement should be the envy of every ruling class in the world."
Frank recognized in 2004-2005 that this could spread:
"Maybe Kansas, instead of being a laughingstock, is actually in the vanguard. May what has happened there points the way in which all our public policy debates are heading."
Wow! Ya think so????? I did head this way. The same corporate players involved in turning Kansas into the "reddest of red" states have been at play all over the country...Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Florida...13 states in total. All using the same formula and all having the same degrees of success.
I haven't figured out how to counteract this on the local or even state level yet but What's the Matter with Kansas has given me some insights into the techniques, tactics and motivation of the conservative movements. I'll figure out the rest after I read, study and inwardly digest more on the subject. One thing I do know, however, the Democratic Party needs to return to its roots...right now it's just a slightly less conservative Republican Party.
much more later
