Revisiting What's the Matter with Kansas?

     Reading Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? was a watershed moment for me – finally a reason was given for the perverse behavior of poor people voting for Republicans.  Of course these are the same politicians that were passing laws that saw the same poor people grow even poorer.  Frank’s argument, in brief, is that people vote based on politician’s social policy and not that politician’s economic policy.  A Kansan, or whoever else, will vote for someone who is pro-life (a social policy) even though that same elected legislator is pro-shipping American jobs overseas.  And, frustratingly, this happens in a state with such a wonderful progressive past.

     The code had been cracked – so simple, so obvious.  Reduce funding for public schools so much that they can only afford one book then legislate that the book purchased must be the bible.  Put another way: “The existing economic order is beyond question: it's just there as if it were the will of God.”

     In the last few decades there hasn’t been a popular progressive movement – in the sense that would see significant numbers of progressive candidates put into office.  The official parties, Democrats and Republicans (together which, of course, comprise the War Party) haven’t had to alter their platforms and grapple with internal dissension as they did in the Progressive Era, 1890-1920.  In the rearview mirror the Occupy Movement fizzled out despite being comprised of wide ranging interests.  The War Party attacked Occupy and Occupy had its own internal limitations.  Also, the most famous progressive politician of late, Bernie Sanders, is an Independent, only nominally a Democrat for this election.

     Why no movement?  I swear I’ve seen T. Frank being confused by this apparent lack of basic common sense.  Let’s try to answer why, let’s critique his argument.  The best critical review I’ve found states it simply that things don’t boil down to pure economics:

 Frank's book is remarkable as an anthropological artifact. Although not terribly successful at explaining the cultural divide, it manages to exemplify it perfectly in its condescension toward people who don't vote as Frank thinks they should. Call this the Aretha Franklin version of the culture wars: people want respect, and they're more likely to vote for the party that gives it to them. More than that, people are unlikely to vote for a party that shows contempt for them.

     A simple kindness can go so far, just a little respect: “Call this the Aretha Franklin version of the culture wars: people want respect, and they're more likely to vote for the party that gives it to them. More than that, people are unlikely to vote for a party that shows contempt for them.”  Frank underestimates the power of a little bit of ego stroking.

Thomas Frank

     I still think Frank’s view has merit.  I would just add one more factor and that is the overall health of the economy.  Like, overall.  Being objective – which is a very, very, very tough thing to consider and which must take in factors to the n^th power.  Consider that the average American is in the top 1% . . . globally.  So during their time of apparent evisceration, the Rust Belt Americans that Frank talked about where not really reaching rock bottom.  But now maybe are – remember during the Great Depression people starved.

     Maybe now people are facing really hard times and that is being reflected in people’s political behavior – maybe what was the matter with Kansas was times weren’t quite tough enough, not like the populist heyday of the late 19^th – early 20^th c.  As John Michael Greer writes:

The problem with plutocracy, in turn, is that it embodies the same fixation on short-term personal advantage that gives it its entry to power, since the only goals that guide the rich in their increasingly kleptocratic rule are immediate personal wealth and gratification. Despite the ravings of economists, furthermore, it simply isn’t true that what benefits the very rich automatically benefits the rest of society as well; quite the contrary, in the blind obsession with personal gain that drives the plutocratic system, the plutocrats generally lose track of the hard fact that too much profiteering can run the entire system into the ground  A democracy in its terminal years thus devolves into a broken society from which only the narrowing circle of the privileged rich derive any tangible benefit. In due time, those excluded from that circle look elsewhere for leadership.

Perhaps the system is finally being run into the ground and that is what is waking people up.