What’s the Matter with Kansas? By Thomas Frank

I have been struggling with the question of why people continually vote against their best interests and this book was recommended to me as at least a partial answer.

The basic premise of the book is that the American public has been fooled into voting for big businesses and the ultra-wealthy by preying on their “values”. Of course, the politicians that talk about these values the most are the ones who are least likely to do anything about them. There is rarely any serious opposition to abortion or basic rights but as long as the politician rails against these things, they can get the tax cuts for big business that they are looking for. And instead of simply admitting that they are not doing anything about the “value” issues, they blame the mighty and supremely mysterious “liberals” who seem to be able to stymie any and all changes, despite the conservatives being in power.

So, basically, the repugs and conservatives count on Americans to be naïve, under-educated and easily fooled – and usually convince people to be proud of these traits! And the repugs continues to get away with it, which apparently just goes to show that the cons are correct in assuming that people here are not too bright – or at least that they are not paying attention. There definitely is a correlation between being well-read, informed and educated and being liberal. And the cons prey on this as well and denigrate the “liberal elite” for being educated, as if that were a bad thing.

One of the common themes among conservative writers is that the mid-westerners are “simple”, and their definitions imply that they are also simple minded. The writers also celebrate the fact that these people shop at Walmart and eat at McDonalds, without noting that this is probably due to the fact that they cannot afford to do anything else.
Of course, these writers who are celebrating these “average Americans” and their mid-west values all live in blue states and big cities and would never shop at Walmart or eat at McDonalds.

Frank concentrates his investigation to Kansas, his home state, and the changes that the state has gone through – moving from very left-wing liberals to ultra-right-wing extreme conservatives. According to his studies this has happened primarily due to anti-choice groups voting on this issue alone despite the harm to their own economy the politicians wreck.

He goes into plenty of detail and anecdotes and makes an interesting, though extremely depressing, read.

While this book was written in 2004/2005, the lessons learned are good to remember. We are finally seeing a bit of a backlash to this, though, as people realize that repugs got us into the financial disaster that we are currently immersed in.