I finally got around to reading Thomas Frank's book, What's the Matter with Kansas? I don't agree with everything Frank says, but he makes many valid points. When I closed the cover, I came away very depressed.

He paints a picture of our future that makes the horrors of George Orwell's 1984 pale in comparison.

He summarizes on p. 248:

"American conservatism depends for its continued dominance and even for its very existence on people never making certain mental connections about the world, connections that until recently were treated as obvious or self-evident everywhere on the planet. For example, the connection between mass culture, most of which conservatives hate, and laissez-faire capitalism, which they adore without reservation. Or between the small towns they profess to love and the market forces that are slowly grinding those small towns back in the red-state dust — which forces they praise in the most exalted terms."

His point is that the Right is waging an economic class war, but concealing it as a cultural class war. They rail against homosexuality, pornography, drugs, violence in the streets — all as glorified by Hollywood, but then vote to cut the taxes on those that bring it to them - the mass media.

They shriek in horror at the degradation of traditional family values, but then support the corporate interests that cut wages, send their jobs overseas, promote high-priced medical insurance - all of which are responsible for the poverty and hopelessness so destructive of those values.

Has anyone else here read Frank's book? What do you think? How did it make you feel?

Contact Sander Bellman