What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

Description

The largely blue collar citizens of Kansas can be counted upon to be a "red" state in any election, voting solidly Republican and possessing a deep animosity toward the left. This, according to author Thomas Frank, is a pretty self-defeating phenomenon, given that the policies of the Republican Party benefit the wealthy and powerful at the great expense of the average worker. According to Frank, the conservative establishment has tricked Kansans, playing up the emotional touchstones of conservatism and perpetuating a sense of a vast liberal empire out to crush traditional values while barely ever discussing the Republicans' actual economic policies and what they mean to the working class. Thus the pro-life Kansas factory worker who listens to Rush Limbaugh will repeatedly vote for the party that is less likely to protect his safety, less likely to protect his job, and less likely to benefit him economically. To much of America, Kansas is an abstract, "where Dorothy wants to return. Where Superman grew up." But Frank, a native Kansan, separates reality from myth in What's the Matter with Kansas and tells the state's socio-political history from its early days as a hotbed of leftist activism to a state so entrenched in conservatism that the only political division remaining is between the moderate and more-extreme right wings of the same party. Frank, the founding editor of The Baffler and a contributor to Harper's and The Nation, knows the state and its people. He even includes his own history as a young conservative idealist turned disenchanted college Republican, and his first-hand experience, combined with a sharp wit and thorough reasoning, makes his book more credible than the elites of either the left and right who claim to understand Kansas. --John Moe

Reviews

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-08-25
Summary: "great but still misses the boat"

Great insights but he still misses the boat: at heart it's about ethnicity/religion, not ideology or class. The real Americans, as they see themselves, have never forgiven the non-real Americans for coming here. Franks' theories are interesting and useful though, and I think he may actually agree with my theory but it's not politically correct for him to do so publicly.

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-08-06
Summary: "Ignorant or Innocent?"

What's the matter with Kansas? Thomas Frank has done a good job of explaining it. Take decent God-fearing, hard-working people who want to believe that their country and their religion are the best you can get and who have little or no intellectual curiousity, and you have some easy pickings for a savvy manipulator. Just wrap yourself in Patriotism and Family Values and tell 'em Jesus Is Your Savior. Do it often enough and it won't matter that your "family values" are such that you told your cancer-ridden wife you were dumping her for something more babe-alicious, or that you were caught with your pants down in the men's room at some Ohio airport. Or that you are responsible for virtually everything negative in the life of the poor schlub that voted for you, from starting some war that killed his kid to the deregulation of banks and Wall Street that caused his pension and any hope of a decent old age fly out the window.

Tell the folks that you are the one who really loves God and Country and the other guy...the one who wants to give the voter decent and affordable health care, protection from abuse by Big Business,and who wants to hold banks and lenders accountable when they screw over the ordinary joe...is anti-American and doesn't respect Jesus. Do it often enough, give the campaign a catchy "Sun Swept American Morning" title, and play the Star Spangled Banner underneath your radio and tv ads. Bucko, you just got yourself a Red State. Have we already forgotten what Michael Deaver bragged openly about doing for Reagan?

When people are not suspicious of the message and the messenger, you get Kansas, a state where the working population votes for tax cuts for the rich, where a guy who isn't leaving anything but medical bills to his kids gets all het up over the cruel Estate Tax, and where a guy who's driving a ten year old hoopdie was waving his fists for the repeal of the yachting tax.

Long story short, What's the Matter With Kansas is gullibility. My Uncle Stanley used to say "If you believe a politician, you're a jackass. If you believe him in an election year, you're the jackass those other jackasses send out to buy the beer."

Every year, worker production goes UP and worker's pay goes DOWN. Want figures? Between March and June 2009, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, wages increased by about 0.5 percent; productivity was up by 2.8%. These figures pretty much held true over the course of the last decade. I didn't research beyond that. (Interestingly enough, several partisan right-wing websites have story after story, quoting politicians but citing no credible sources, that the American Worker is now richer than Croesus, getting raises and bonuses galore at the expense of those poor Wall Street types who are having a hard time floating a loan for a loaf of bread. Gollee, I love those boys over at Heritage.)

If We The People are content with bread and circuses, so be it. We--and Kansas--are getting what we deserve. All it takes to fix things is the backbone to look behind the curtain...even when the curtain is Red, White & Blue. As long as we are willing to remain intellectually benumbed, we'll continue to be fodder for the Billionaire Boys Club that is the Republican party.

Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-07-17
Summary: "Right Trends and Analysis; Wrong Recommendations"

Frank is a classic liberal, without great self-awareness. He will annoy many readers with his biases. Nonetheless, his analysis of the typical Kansas voter remains on-target in 2010. The typical Kansas voter is NOT joining the Scandinavian progressives in Wisconsin/Minnesota or aligning with the aging New Deal/union group in Kansas City or St. Louis. Some are following the individualist western/Colorado voter, while most are following the Texas/Oklahoma Baptist convention. As Frank notes, the historical class based loyalties are done. He attributes this to blue-collar ignorance rather than to growing middle class incomes and the appeal of classic individualistic American values. Frank clearly outlines how conservatives have redefined the political playing field, making cultural issues supreme for working and middle-class voters. He also outlines the highly effective conservative strategy of marginalizing high education, profession and income liberals. In the end, Frank does a good job of describing how conservatives have redefined the political playing field to their advantage. He does not have constructive advice for classic liberals or more recent third way, progressive centrists to advance their positions. Liberals and progressive centrists can use this analysis to understand their competition and attempt to reposition their policies in terms of both individual free enterprise and fairness, equity and justice.

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-07-16
Summary: "Loved It!"

This is a really great book. I can't recommend it strongly enough, people. First of all, it's very well written. Frank's story of the destruction of agriculture in Kansas reads better than any mystery novel. The book is extremely funny, very well-researched, and beautifully structured.

Using the example of his native state, Kansas, Frank sets out to answer the question that has kept many people puzzled all through the Reagan years and both Bush administrations: why do the people who lose the most when Republicans come to power keep voting Republican? The author analyzes the enigma of "sturdy blue-collar patriots reciting the Pledge while they strangle their own life chances; of small farmers proudly voting themselves off the land; of devoted family men carefully seeing to it that their children will never be able to afford college or proper health care; of working-class guys in midwestern cities cheering as they deliver up a landsslide for a candidate whose policies will end their way of life." The strangest part about this is that, somehow, many people have convinced themselves that "they're voting Republican in order to get even with Wall Street." So how did the conservatives manage to reduce their most staunch supporters to this kind of blindness?

The Republicans, says Frank, emptied politics of any economic content and instead filled it up with an endless debate revolving around the issues of culture war. The economic hardship caused to Kansas by the Republican policies produces more rage on the part of the people, rage that can be used to turn them even more conservative: "Strip today's Kkansans of theeir job security, and they head out to become registered Republicans. Push them off their land, and the next thing you know they're protesting in front of abortion clinics." Who cares about the economy, when you can conveniently vent your rage on abortion-promoting homosexuality-loving free-love-extolling snobby Liberals?

The representatives of the religious right see themselves as constant rebels who are engaged in an uprising against thee all-powerful liberal state. They believe that the state remains liberal even when the Republicans take hold of all branches of power and put their representative in the Oval Office. What is it that these rebels demand? "More of the very measures that have brought ruination on them and their neighbors in the first place."

In order to sustain this political fiction of being lone rebels against the all-powerful liberal machine, the Republicans pick causes that are guaranteed to cause moral outrage but that can never be fully resolved. We can never go back to the kind of gender relations that existed in the 50ies. It's impossible to turn back the clock on the achievements of the movements for civil rights. But that, says Frank, is kind of the whole point: "The issues the Cons emphasize seem all to have been chosen precisely because they are not capable of being resolved by the judicious application of state power." Having no tangible, material results in this endless struggle against the fictitious liberal power is a great thing. It means that the conservatives will be able to provoke and milk the moral outrage of their supporters for a long time to come.

With the popular support of the people they aim to dispossess, the Republicans easily implement any and all policies that end up serving the rich snobs the conservative movement claims to despise: "The angry workers, mighty in their numbers, are marching irresistibly against the arrogant. They are shaking their fists at the sons of privilege... They are massing at the gates of Mission Hills... and while the millionaires tremble in their mansions, they are bellowing out their terrifying demands. 'We are here,' they scream, 'to cut your taxes.'" Sounds hilarious, doesn't it? When we remember, however, that this is exactly what happened, Frank's narrative becomes a little less funny.

Rating: 3 / 5
Date: 2010-05-22
Summary: "Explanation as only a Kansas native can give"

I recommend this book because only Thomas Frank can explain from a native standpoint how places like Kansas can vote against their own best interests in election after election. Any outsider trying to explain this phenomenon would be cast as an elitist that's out-of-touch with the common man.