Welcome To Dumbfuckistan

Dumbfuckistan, originally uploaded by underablackenedsky.

Sometimes someone else expresses my angst better than I can. Thank you Patrick Linsey.

Welcome to Dumbfuckistan
That's in Red America, where working-class Americans persist in voting for a party that wholly rejects their most fundamental economic interests

by Patrick Linsey - December 9, 2004

It has to be the most tiresome cliché in contemporary American politics: the latte-swilling, Volvo-driving, French-speaking, liberal elite. And last month, 57 million of them voted for John Kerry.
Thank heavens that those decent, God-fearing folks in the middle and southern portions of America were able to protect us, by coming out in force to reelect President George W. Bush. It's nice to know that somewhere in this land of ours, people have their priorities straight. After all, what pleasure can you really take from a steady job, affordable health insurance, governmentally assured Social Security or a coherent foreign policy when, at the end of the day, you're still confronted with Janet Jackson's nipple or Rosie O'Donnell's wedding ring?

But if one can avoid becoming lost in the banality of oversimplification, there is a question begging to be answered: Why do working-class Americans from the South and the plains states persist in voting for a party that wholly rejects their most fundamental economic interests? Such is the topic of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America , which, even if it cannot fully provide an answer, eloquently demonstrates the question's significance.

Over the past 20 years, a conservative revolution has occurred in Kansas, the state where Thomas Frank grew up. He writes of a state where family farms are gobbled up by massive, government-subsidized agro-businesses. Industry giants flee from the cities like Wichita, leaving only memories of the high-paying, blue-collar jobs that once sustained its economy. In fact, the only Kansas towns with any economic vigor are inhabited either by poor, immigrant laborers toiling in slaughterhouse sweatshops or by millionaires, spending their tax rebates on Ferraris and plasma screen televisions.

In light of these conditions, the emergence of a new political movement in Kansas (and neighboring plains states) is not surprising. But why on earth would such a movement promote economic policies that destroy family farms and condone the outsourcing of industrial jobs? It makes absolutely no sense.

"Strip Kansans of their job security, and they head out to become registered Republicans. Push them off their land, and next thing you know they're protesting in front of abortion clinics... But ask them about the remedies their ancestors proposed (unions, antitrust, public ownership), and you might as well be referring to the days when knighthood was in flower."

Frank explains the contradiction by describing Kansans' new political philosophy: the politics of the aggrieved. Despite the fact that Republicans control all three branches of the federal government, they have managed to portray themselves as victimized underdogs. "The key element of this... is the notion of a 'liberal elite...' Our culture and our schools and our government... are controlled by an overeducated ruling class."

Conservative Republicans have been able to take the anger Kansans feel over economic issues and focus it on so-called "liberal elites." They are lectured that these straw men elites are not content to simply live out their own, immoral lives, but they must also foist their depraved culture on decent, everyday Americans.

Meanwhile, far from promoting their own ideas to make things better, the conservative philosophy is that of trench warfare. These new conservatives perceive that their way of life is under constant attack. They denounce the activist judges who rewrite the Constitution. They condemn the Hollywood liberals who fill their televisions with garbage. They curse the brainy, Ivy League professors who want to take their guns and their Bibles away.

Indeed, intellectuals bear the brunt of the outrage. "The social conservatives... use anti-intellectualism to assail any deviation from a system of values that they alternately identify with God and the Earth--people of Red America." Ann Coulter and David Brooks fill reams of paper with bizarre musings stereotyping East and West Coast Democrats.

The trend of anti-intellectualism that Frank depicts is frightening. Students of history will note that when the ruling party begins pointing fingers at scholars, things rarely end well (think Nazi Germany and Mao's Cultural Revolution).

And while the new conservatives are busy shouting their outrage, they elect some of the most right wing, anti-labor, fanatically religious politicians in recent history. Relatively mainstream Republicans, like Bob Dole, retired, making way for Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.). When not deregulating the telecom industry, Brownback enjoys activities like washing the feet of his assistant in the manner of Jesus Christ.

While Frank successfully articulates the political climate in Kansas (and indeed in much of the country), he still seems perplexed, and at times exasperated, by the phenomenon. He wonders why the same conditions that once bred the progressive movement in American politics have created a new rise in conservatism that threatens even the reforms of the New Deal.

"The standard reaction in Kansas to the vulgar machinations of the state's self-perpetuating ruling class, to its cronyism and its brazen flaunting of its wealth, to its business scandals and the grinding destruction of the farm communities, is to push ever deeper into the alienated right-wing world of the culture wars."

What the book fails to do is imagine any way to revitalize progressive politics in regions like Kansas. Rather, Frank seems content to document his state's slip into reactionary conservatism and economic ruin.

Still, Thomas Frank deserves credit for organizing a compelling study of America's current political climate. The re-emergence of progressive politics in America, and especially in Kansas, depends on the existence of a party that understands how said politics have been suppressed. This book should be studied closely by leaders in the Democratic Party, many of whom, as evidenced by the most recent election, have absolutely no idea what's the matter with Kansas.