Social security? Gay marriage? Taxes? All these domestic issues
seem a great blur in the newly re-elected president’s afterburners.
Not to say they won’t be revisited, but, as of last Wednesday
morning, they all seemed rather tertiary.
There was jubilation and reassurance on the right, resignation
and disbelief on the left. But nowhere was there the kind of
hairsplitting rampant in the last weeks of the presidential
election.
And that fits George W. Bush just fine. It’s no surprise he won:
He’s always embodied a simplicity and confidence that Democrats
have been unable to complicate.
But what has galvanized the Republicans and turned the moderates
of yesteryear so far to the right?
Thomas Frank might have the answer. In his new book, “What’s the
Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America,”
the Midwest native argues that class hatred is driving the
popularity of highly conservative politicians.
In an interview with The University News in late October, Frank
explained what he had found while researching his home state–and
he shared how he thought it reflected the country as a whole.
“Conservatives have invented an entirely different way of
framing class and talking about class,” he said, noting that where
social divides of 80 years ago had been between owners and workers,
they are now between what is perceived as the elite, and everyone
else. “That’s what has allowed Republicans to be so successful, and
all of these issues plug into that narrative about class.”
By and large, those issues, Frank explained, were ones that
emphasized moral values and downplayed tangible results.
Nonetheless, issues like abortion have been rallying points for
conservative Republicans–who, between 1992 and 1996, rose
astonishingly quickly to power in Kansas politics.
“The abortion issue is a proxy for social class,” said Frank,
who noted that he is “very pro-choice” and “fundamentally not
sympathetic” to pro-life activists. “It’s a way of talking about
class issues without really talking about them.”
The problem, Frank says, is that while the actions of
middle-class conservatives are morally laudable they are
economically detrimental.
And conservatives haven’t necessarily disagreed.
blue-collar conservatives are voting against their material
interests. I haven’t had anybody say, ‘No, that’s not right.
Conservatives do help these people out, over the long run,” Frank
said.
“All they say is, ‘It’s really virtuous for these people to be
doing this, and we should salute them for the selflessness.’ And
that’s great, but what about their families? They’re ruining the
world they live in, in pursuit of a fruitless goal,” he said.
He added, “One of the defining characteristics of [the culture
war issues] is that they’re all unsuccessful. They’re all issues
where you basically cannot change things.”
Frank’s focus on the practical well-being of the nation stems
from the blossoming of corporate America, and the popularity of
free-market economics, in the 1990s.
In 1988, Frank founded The Baffler, a magazine dedicated to
publishing long, essay-style works of journalism, similar to those
found in Harper’s. Frank said the publication focused on “business
culture and the culture of business.”
He said that during the ’90s his magazine was one of the only
vocal critics of the economy. “[Everyone was saying], ‘The free
market is here! We’re all going to be rich! We’re all going to be
free!’ And we were one of the only ones saying, ‘Nope, nope, nope.’
We were one of the nay Sayers.”
Until Sept. 11, 2001, Frank said, many parts of America were
suffering under the free market economy “while the mainstream media
were insisting on exactly the opposite, (that) times [had] never
been better.”
As for the reception of his newest book in Kansas, itself, Frank
said the media have been highly hostile, but ordinary citizens have
been receptive.
“The readings have gone very well,” he said. “You get a lot of
very sympathetic people who show up and who have anecdotes of their
own that they want to tell you.”
