Pick a side, any side. Do some research (or not, in a lot of cases), get on your soapbox and shout. Such is the lot of books on popular politics and political culture. One such is Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? The book explores the trend of working class voters moving unerringly towards the right and voting against their economic interests.
This pattern has been taking shape since Nixon's 'Southern strategy' and 'silent majority' in the late 60s but in the last two decades has suddenly lurched much further to the right. In spite of the damage being done to their livelihoods, many Kansan voters are instead choosing to focus on moral issues (abortion, gay rights, etc.) which ultimately produce a lot of noise and fanfare in terms of getting people to the polls, but never actually make any kind of progress in reality.
Obviously such a book is going to have a point to make and will be channelling a lot of the author's bias and preferences into it. It's probably not going to change anyone's mind in that they probably already have their ideas about politics set in stone, but it does certainly bring to light issues that some people hadn't thought of before. The research is definitely there and it's written in an entertaining and insightful style, but for everyone argument there's a counter-argument and some statsitcs which contradict the author's evidence. I think there is definitely something in it (I remember studying the puzzle of working class conservatives (big and small C) in Britain) and it does give the outsider some interesting views into contemporary America and it's politics.
The idea of two societies in the U.S. – the coasts and the bit in between – is an interesting one, but a little too simplistic for my liking. However alien some of the concepts are (and fundementalist creationist pro-life Christians are pretty alien to me and I imagine an awful lot of us limeys), I'm still not wholly convinced that these people are just stupid, which perhaps they come across as. It was a very interesting read and what it does well is not just laying the blame at the ignorance of the masses or the manipulation of the Republicans, it also acknowledges that the Democrats should take some rap for failing to prevent this happening. Overall, particularly in light of the recent economic crisis, it seems remarkably prescient to have pointed out that unregulated free market capitalism is very much an error-prone system. If there's one thing that studying American history for the last six months has taught me, it's that ideas move in cycles and reforms and regulations swing one way and then the other, so while things have certainly shifted a very long way to the right at the moment, things can and almost certainly will change.
Book number: 20
Title: What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
Author: Thomas Frank
Category: Non-fiction
No comments:
Post a Comment