What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heat of America – Thomas Frank
What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heat of America – Thomas Frank, Henry Holt and Company, LLC. (2004 & 2005) 322pp. (S) ***
A third into his book, Thomas Frank writes this: “ . . . the Republicans are the party of the disrespected, the downtrodden, the forgotten. They are always the underdog, always in rebellion against a haughty establishment, always rising up from below. All claims on the right, in other words, advance from victimhood.”(p.119) Here, and in several other places in his book, Frank has exposed an important truth about the psychology of the right. They perceive themselves as the dispossessed, worn down by the repression of an omnipotent liberal elite. Oddly, this psychology prevails even when the Republican party currently dominates all three branches of the federal government. Why is this?
For answers, Frank later in his book, levels direct criticism at the Democratic party for having lost its moorings in pursuit of corporate dollars and hence adopting a center-left ideology. In this development of the 1990s, Frank sees a lower-class of voters whose interests have gone completely ignored by the Democratic party, thus making it ripe for right-wing exploitation, via cultural “wedge issues” or other shenanigans. According to Frank, lower-class voters confuse the domineering machinations of big-business which they are the victim of, and which by continually voting Republican, are only furthering their suffering and low economic status, with an imaginary cultural elite, created and propagated in popular media. But what Frank fails to recognize, that even as the Democratic party shifted right under the tutelage of organizations like the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council), Al Gore won 500,000 more votes nationwide than Bush did in the 2000 U.S. presidential election and that in 2004, had it not been for massive and widespread election fraud, John Kerry would presently be president. This proves one of Michael Moore’s main points. That when it comes down to basic issues; healthcare, the economy, the environment, the American electorate is much more progressive than the rigid conservative model by which the corporate media seeks to instruct and inform the U.S. voter that he/she should conform to. In other words, while the left may be losing in places like Kansas, overall it has been winning elections, elections that have been wrenched from the jaws of victory due to the corrupt maneuverings of a ruthless and shameless foe.
A third into his book, Thomas Frank writes this: “ . . . the Republicans are the party of the disrespected, the downtrodden, the forgotten. They are always the underdog, always in rebellion against a haughty establishment, always rising up from below. All claims on the right, in other words, advance from victimhood.”(p.119) Here, and in several other places in his book, Frank has exposed an important truth about the psychology of the right. They perceive themselves as the dispossessed, worn down by the repression of an omnipotent liberal elite. Oddly, this psychology prevails even when the Republican party currently dominates all three branches of the federal government. Why is this?
For answers, Frank later in his book, levels direct criticism at the Democratic party for having lost its moorings in pursuit of corporate dollars and hence adopting a center-left ideology. In this development of the 1990s, Frank sees a lower-class of voters whose interests have gone completely ignored by the Democratic party, thus making it ripe for right-wing exploitation, via cultural “wedge issues” or other shenanigans. According to Frank, lower-class voters confuse the domineering machinations of big-business which they are the victim of, and which by continually voting Republican, are only furthering their suffering and low economic status, with an imaginary cultural elite, created and propagated in popular media. But what Frank fails to recognize, that even as the Democratic party shifted right under the tutelage of organizations like the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council), Al Gore won 500,000 more votes nationwide than Bush did in the 2000 U.S. presidential election and that in 2004, had it not been for massive and widespread election fraud, John Kerry would presently be president. This proves one of Michael Moore’s main points. That when it comes down to basic issues; healthcare, the economy, the environment, the American electorate is much more progressive than the rigid conservative model by which the corporate media seeks to instruct and inform the U.S. voter that he/she should conform to. In other words, while the left may be losing in places like Kansas, overall it has been winning elections, elections that have been wrenched from the jaws of victory due to the corrupt maneuverings of a ruthless and shameless foe.
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