MyDD :: MyDD Book Club Discussion #2

MyDD Book Club Discussion #2

by Chris Bowers, Wed Dec 01, 2004 at 09:58:55 PM EST

First, let me apologize for the light posting today. I did not expect it to take so much time, but I became utterly consumed with simultaneously preparing for tonight's discussion while simultaneously preparing for tonight's Philly DFA Meetup. I will resume regular level of posting tomorrow.

Once again, for those who were not around the first time, here is how the discussion will work. I will post a summary of the book in the extended entry, trying to limit my comment on the subject matter as much as possible. Readers will then post their review of the book as new comments. Discussion of the book will branch off from individual reviews. Any new comments that are not replies to other comments must be book reviews. My summary of the book's basic argument follows in the extended entry.

What’s the Matter with Kansas, by Thomas Frank

To answer the question in the title first, the great populist narrative of our time, which also happens to be the dominant conservative narrative of our time, The Great Backlash, is the matter with Kansas, according to Frank. The Great Backlash originated in the late 1960’s, and takes as its primary aim to “nurture a cultural class war.” (128)

The book argues that the import of the Great Backlash narrative is that it is populist, powerful and purely cultural—a populist crusade against elites entirely drained and utterly devoid of economic populism. Like the great populist movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Great Backlash is a crusade against a perceived elitism that is crushing the “common man.” As Frank points out, like the Great Backlash, many of these earlier forms of populism either also came from the Great Plains, or at least also had tremendous resonance there, especially in Kansas:

Politically, Kansas is what the marketing boys call an “early adopter,” a state where the various ideological nostrums of the day—from Free Love to Prohibition, utopian communism to the John Birch Society—were embraced quickly and ardently. In the thirties the state almost elected as governor a beloved radio doctor who claimed to restore virility by transplanting goat testicles into humans.

But its periodic bouts with leftism were what really branded Kansas with the mark of the freak. Every part of the country in the nineteenth century had labor upheavals and protosocialist reform movements, of course. In Kansas, though the radical kept coming out on top. It was as though the blank landscape prompted dreams of a blank-slate society, a place where institutions might be remade as the human mind saw fit. Maps of the state from the 1880’s show a hamlet (since vanished) called Radical City; in nearby Crawford County the town of Girad was home to Appeal to Reason, a socialist newspaper whose circulation was in the hundreds of thousands. In that same town, in 1908, Eugene Debs gave a fiery speech accepting the Socialist Party’s nomination for president; in 1912, Debs actually carried Crawford County, one of the four he won nationwide. (All were in the Midwest.) In 1910, Theodore Roosevelt signaled his own lurch to the left by traveling to Kansas and giving an inflammatory address in Osawatomie, the one-time home of John Brown.

The most famous freakout of them all was Populism, the first of the great American leftist movements. Populism tore through othe4r states as well—wailing all across the Texas, the South, and the West in the 1890’s—but Kansas was the place that really distinguished itself by its enthusiasm. Driven to the brink of ruin by years of bad prices, debt, and deflation, the state’s farmers came together un huge meetings were homegrown troublemakers like Mary Elizabeth Lease exhorted them to “raise less corn and more hell.” The radicalized farmers marched through the small towns in day long parades, raging against what the called the “money power.” And despite all the clamor, they still managed to take the state’s traditional Republican masters utterly by surprise in 1890, sweeping the small-town slicksters out of office and ending the carets of many a career politician. In the decade that followed they elected Populist governors, Populist Senators, Populist congressmen, Populist Supreme court justices, Populist city councils, and probably Populist dogcatchers too; men of strong ideas, curious nicknames, and a colorful patios. (31-33)

I have to agree with Frank that from 1850-1936, Kansas had an unmistakable populist, radical impulse (even if they did vote against FDR in 1932). From the Free Soil abolitionists who sought to defeat slavery literally by any means necessary to the medical quackery, though radical lefty populism, of Dr. Brinkley, Kansas, and indeed much of what is now referred to as “Red America” worked to stick it to the “elites” for much of our history. Eventually, this impulse came to form one of the main branches of FDR’s nearly Super-majority New Deal coalition, which itself came to form the “affluent society,” or “thirty great years,” of 1940-1970, when to be moderate on economic policy was to be Dennis Kucinich today.

(My first critique, and I know I should just be summarizing, is that all of the radicalism he describes in Kansas occurred a long time ago, and we should not expect that in a mobile society that certain areas will always remain the same. Further, areas such as Rochester, New York, a long way from the Midwest and the town where I was born, were actual far more radical than anywhere in Kansas, and are now deep blue. The abolitionist, suffrage and prohibitionist movements all either originated or found their national headquarters in Rochester in the 1840’s, before Kansas was even a state. Where does Frank think those original Free Soilers came from? And does he think Kansas was going to be that way forever? William Jennings Bryan has been gone for a looong time. Anyway, I digress…)

However, unlike in earlier times, when populist movements simultaneously merged cultural and economic crusades against the elite, for the Great Backlash elitism, while still the enemy, is not defined by economics at all, but entirely by culture affectation. In fact, the narrative of the Great Backlash redefines the nature of class to focus not on the material, but purely upon the cultural. According to the Great Backlash, being elite is not about your income, it is instead about what you eat, where you shop, what you watch on TV or at the movies, and where you were educated.

Now, you could argue that where you eat, shop and are educated have everything to do with income and material issues, but then you would not be understanding the narrative at play. Ordering a $25 steak is not being elitist, but ordering a $5 veggie burger would be. Buying a $50 ticket to a NASCAR event is not elitist, but buying a $20 ticket to a soccer game is. Being Buddhist is elite, being Pentecostal is not. Being humble is, having a Ph.D. is not, even if you earned the Ph.D. on full scholarship. The difference between being elite and not being elite has nothing to do with money at all, but instead about your tastes and attitude about the world.

According to the Great Backlash, culture is class, and the heart of culture is a conflict between liberalism and the common:

Even the rhetoric of the backlash, with all its regular-guy flourishes, sometimes appears to have been lifted whole cloth from the proletarian thirties. The idea that average people are helpless pawns caught in a machine run by the elite comes straight from the vulgar-Marxist copybook, which taught generations of party members that they inherited a deterministic world where agency was reserved for capitalists—or, more precisely, for capital itself. OR consider the set of accusations against the liberal elite having to do with their unmanliness, their effeteness, their love of things French,--all of which we heard do much about during the run-up to the recent [editor’s note: ongoing] war with Iraq. The old-left lineage of this particular backlash stereotype us undeniable. Here is Mike Gold, the two-fisted literary critic for the Daily Worker, waging old-school culture war on the religious pretenses of novelist Thornton Wilder: It is that newly fashionable literary religion that centers around Jesus Christ, the First British Gentleman. It is a pasted, pastiche, dilettante religion, without the true neurotic blood and fire, a daydream of homosexual figures in graceful gowns moving archaically among the lilies. It is Anglo-Catholicism, that last refuge of the American literary snob. Toss in references to the novelist’s devitalized air,” his “rootless cosmopolitanism,” his familiarity with a “discreet French drawing room,” and presto: you’ve got the latte libel. The Bobos. The establishment. The blue-state elite. The difference, of course, is that Gold attributed these characteristics to the lazy, denatured rich. Adrich, Brooks, Coulter, Limbaugh, and the rest simply turn the stereotype on liberals. (130-131)

At the heart of the Great Backlash narrative is the conflict between the oppressive force of liberalism and the righteous force of the American common. In the narrative, liberalism is an anti-Democratic force that produces and dominates a vulgar, atheistic, and elitist culture against of the will of the common, in fact specifically to spite the will of the common. Worse still for the humble, pious, martyred common, liberals do this because they have superior agency, and they do so without any possible hope of recourse or recall from the common people, because the common people do not have agency of the sort wielded by liberals. Like Capital for Marxists, for those in the Great Backlash “liberalism” is a social force beyond the reach of democracy that has full agency and that is able to impress its will on the fated masses against their wishes.

Of course, this oppression of the common man by the liberal elite is purely cultural. The control and production of vulgar popular culture is a necessary element of liberalism that exists in Hollywood, outside the realm of electoral politics. The control and production of scientific studies is a necessary element of liberalism, performed in anti-democratic academia where the common is not allowed. Production and control of the news media as a means of indoctrinating the nation with leftist thought is a necessary element of liberalism Control of the anti-democratic judiciary is a necessary element of liberalism as well. Rather than being a cause of other forces, liberalism is a social force unto itself, and control of anti-democratic, culture producing institutions is simply what liberalism does. Liberals themselves are elitists who control these anti-democratic institutions, and do so in order to deride, oppress, and otherwise thwart the decency of the commons.

This is one of the keys to the narrative. The Great Backlash is primarily a working class movement against “the elite” that views everything through the lens of culture, is entirely drained of economic populism, and is fatalistic. Liberals simply control all of anti-democratic cultural producing institutions and there is nothing that can be done about it, no matter how many conservatives there are in Congress. While the populist narrative works as political agitation, it is a permanent narrative and never has to succeed in order to maintain its force. The narrative has neither an endgame nor a dream of progress. Conservatives could control 90% of the seats in Congress, never deliver a single culture war victory or even slow down the increasing vulgarity of culture, but that would not matter to the Great Backlash. Liberalism does not exist within a democratic framework. It is understood as an inherently anti-democratic social force that controls the anti-democratic institutions that produce the culture that oppresses humble America. Liberalism, as a social force, has agency, subjectivity and will over the production of culture, while the common and Democracy do not. While hating liberalism is thus a tremendous tool for political agitation, The Great Backlash never has to succeed in defeating liberalism once in power in order to maintain credibility as a political force. Liberalism can be kicked out of electoral politics, but that barely evens dents liberalism, according to the Great Backlash, because liberalism’s great strength comes from its control of anti-Democratic institutions.

This sort of mindset, Frank argues, is only possible if the economic is entirely drained from popular conscious. For the economic to be entirely drained from popular consciousness itself requires the institution of very economic program the Great Backlash furthers, even if it is only a secondary aim:

The erasure of the economic is a necessary precondition for most of the basic backlash ideas. It is only possible to think that the news is slanted to the left, for example, if you don’t take into account who owns the news organizations and if you never turn your critical powers on that section of the media devoted to business news. The university campus can only be imagined as a place dominated by leftists if you never consider economics departments or business schools. You can believe that conservatives are powerless victims only if you exclude conservatism’s basic historical constituency, the business community [editor’s note: the aristocracy as well] from your analysis. Likewise, you can only believe that George W. Bush is a man of the people if you have screened out his family’s economic status. Most important, it is possible to understand popular culture as the product of liberalism only if you have blinded yourself to the most fundamental of economic realities, namely, that the networks and the movie studios and advertising agencies and publishing houses and record labels are, in fact, commercial enterprises.

Indeed, the economic blindness of backlash conservatism is also a product, in large part, of those same commercial cultural enterprises. Conservatives are only able to ignore economics the way they do because they live in a civilization whose highest cultural expressions—movies, advertisements, and sitcoms—have for decades insisted on downplaying the world of work. Conservatives are only able to compartmentalize business as a realm totally separate from politics because the same news media whose “liberal bias” they love to deride has long accepted just such compartmentalization as a basic element of professional journalistic practice. (128-129)

The result of this is a powerful populist narrative that is entirely focused upon culture but ends up reinforcing and in fact propelling an aristocratic economic structure that itself seeks to downplay to economic. The Great Backlash is completely destructive of its own economic interests because, while decrying the popular culture, accepts the basic popular culture submersion of economic forces (and, I would argue, the basic academic submersion of economic forces, but I digress…). Culture completely supersedes economics, and the cultural force that is liberalism operates entirely independent of economic concerns, simply to demolish common culture. It is only in this light that class is a function of culture, and that being an elite takes on an entirely cultural tone. A CEO who eats steak and has box seats at football games isn’t elite, but a poor loser such as myself who buys fresh tofu cakes at three for a dollar and green tea sachets at 25 for three dollars is. Class and elitism, and thus oppression, are entirely cultural in the Great Backlash narrative.

Frank argues that this has led to an enormous class divide within the Republican party, where the radical conservatives tend to be working class, and the moderates tend to be professional and investor class. Take, for example, an interview Frank conducted with Kay O’Connor, a Kansan and one of the great working class heroes of the new conservative narrative, who recently suggested that women’s suffrage was a bad thing:

When I ask her if she has an explanation for it, she thinks for a minute and then tells me that the class thing reflects the same essential “personality difference” that people’s politics do: folks who live in the marbled mansions of Mission Hills “are probably demonstrating that they have higher ambitions for monetary gains as opposed to, shall we say, spiritual gains.”

The one who is more materialistic or more interested in building resumes, and running for office, and being the CEO, or owning a big company, and having the material things… that is the person who is more moderate, and they understand what it takes to get to the top of the mountain to get to the top of the heap. You gotta work hard, and sometimes you stomp on people. The conservative, on the other hand, he just wants to go to church on Sunday, or he wants to go fishing on Sunday, and he just kind of wants to be left alone. (169-170)

There it is. Difference in class is based entirely on a difference in personality and ideals—on a cultural difference. Lattes vs. black coffee. The Simpson’s versus the Walton’s. that is what defines class to the modern conservative. This is the heart of the Great Backlash narrative—it is purely idealistic rather than materialistic, and I mean that in the academic uses of the words. For the new conservative, the world operates entirely within the realm of ideas, and material structures and institutions play no role whatsoever. As an old leftie, I am extremely sympathetic to this analysis, and I admit to never fully trusting the long-term loyalty of leftist who primarily viewed the world as a product of ideas rather than material structures. From my perspective, I have always thought that if you believe that ideas have more sway than material structures in the creation of our society (although both are certainly important), then I believe that you could easily turn into a Great Backlasher, or at least a pro-business conservative, sometime down the road. Whether or not it this is true, that is my gut (if academic) instinct about politics.

In addition to the complete subsuming of economic issues into cultural issues, this interview with O’Connnor is another key point. The populist, working class movement that Frank describes as working against its own economic interests is primarily a movement of working class Republicans becoming far more radically conservative than their still conservative, but supposedly moderate, professional and upper-class Republican counterparts. While the Backlash Narrative has the possibility to spread to every segment of the working class population, for now it is largely centered within the Republican working class. Frank argues that in contemporary America, radical conservatism of the culture war and economic kind is a working class movement, while tradition Republicanism of only the economic kind (that despises the culture war kind) is a middle and upper-class Republican movement. The narrative has caught on with recently downtrodden members of the white working class some areas, even in formerly democratic areas after NAFTA (more on that below), but for now it is largely a Republican-only phenomenon whose greatest battles are being carried out within the Republican Party itself between rich “Mods” and working class “Cons.” It is a great, populist, working class Republican crusade to make the Republican party even more ludicrously favorable to the wealthy, the corporate, and the aristocratic, while further destroying its own self interest, all in the name of a culture war that they themselves admit cannot be won. The movement is growing however, and its potential to spread should not be underestimated.

Despite the massive intra-party struggles, the alliance between “moderate” pro-wealthy, but anti-culture war, conservatives with rabidly anti-modernist conservatives who believe wealth is the product of negative personality traits and who only adhere to the culture war has yielded the most conservative, wealth distribution legislation since the twenties. The common has no agency to alter culture, but it sure can alter economics. As Frank argues:

Their grandstanding leaders [conservative, culture war leaders] never deliver [because liberalism is an all-powerful anti-democratic force], their fury never wears off [because liberalism is always in control and the common has no ability to change that], and nevertheless they turn out every two years to return their right wing heroes to a second, a third, a twentieth try. The trick never ages, the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again, receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors, receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs, receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote tot take a stand against terrorism, receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism, receive a social order in which wealth in more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEO’s are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining. (7)

The culture war has resulted in entirely economic consequences, Frank argues, and many of the people who have it worst economically as a result of this are the strongest supporters of the culture war. Economics does not matter.

The narrative is, of course, total bullshit. It started against imagined, and/or overblown bullshit from the sixties, and it is the same now. It holds up to no actual scrutiny whatsoever. Liberals do not control the institutions the narrative claims it does. Liberals do not do the things, or hold the positions, the narrative claims it does. Further, liberals are clearly not elitists, as exit poll after exit poll repeatedly shows that liberals are much poorer than conservatives. However, these three obvious falsehoods about the narrative do not matter, for several reasons:

Academic scrutiny is itself liberal and elitist Actually deconstructing the narrative is itself invalid, since that would be exactly the sort of thing liberals do.

Democrats abandoned the working class With NAFTA, farm reform and other anti-working class policies, Democrats sought to take economics off the table with Republicans, and got exactly what they were looking for, only with a different result.

>The culture at large subsumes economics in favor of culture. Already quoted about.
The narrative is very anti-racist, but very anti-Semitic. These are not Dixiecrats. The Great Backlash narrative describes something different, and the very things that it accuses liberals and liberalism of are exactly the same things that Jews and Judaism were accused of in the early part of the twentieth century and before.
The plenty-E-plaint. This is the big one. This is the endless catalogue of incidents that collectively paint the picture of liberal cultural snobbery, obscenity and media bias that serves to underpin the entire culture narrative about liberalism and the common. Everyone does it, but especially conservatives, from the red-state blue state map narrative to the latte-drinking, Volvo-driving, sushi eating, New York times reading, Green tea ordering stereotypes and everything in between. Liberals are snobs, the common are Christian Boy Scouts, and the endless catalogue of the plent-E-plain reinforces this idea.

So that is the narrative, Frank argues. Never underestimate its power as a reassuring and reinforcing worldview for white working class conservatives. Those anti-Democratic fuckers impose their culture on us against our wishes, and we respond by hating them and organizing against their culture. It is a purely cultural class war. They want to make us Communists. They want to make us Muslim. They want to make us Gay. They want to make us like them. As the times change, the structure of the narrative can remain the same: They want to impose their values on us. It does not have to be well-defined, or even real. That is the matter with Kansas—an anti-elitist populism that ends up economically reinforcing the economic elite and destroying the conservative working class that has no ability to identify its elitist oppressors in economic terms.

Want to change things? Well, the first solution for Democrats is to burn he DLC at the stake. Taking economic issues off the table and selling out the working class in order to appeal to the corporate elite was the worst decision Democrats ever made. Frank argues this not out of morality, but in terms of pure electability. With economic issues off the table, much of the white working class that once supported Democrats now hates our guts. If you have trade, abortion and guns on the table, and you take trade off the table, whom do you think the white working class will support? A return to economic populism is the only solution, according to Frank—identify the real elites for who they are. The corporate elites, after all, are the real elites, not those who happen to drive a Volvo. However, as long as the Democratic Party is defending corporate elites instead of the working class, the Backlash narrative will continue to grow in power, and spread to more and more demographics.

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Frank's book (3.00 / 1)

I picked up this book on the way out to Idaho for a wedding reunion. Reading through the first few chapters was like heaven-sent, I was amazed. In fact, the first part of the book is so amazingly insightful, that it's depressing. I longed for some way out, and hoped that the second part would tell me all the answers. Instead, the second part is more of an "how I got here to tell this story" decline. I guess Frank does go into 'solutions' a lot more in his first book, but I'm not to sure about that, because I've not read it... But that really doesn't take away from the first part of the book's insights.

Franks seems to think that some sort of economic populism would work to pull us out of this dynamic. I have my doubts that will work, unless the very same people are directly impacted by economic woes, because at it's base, I don't believe these are religious values at work, but mere consumer values. They are being sold something that makes them feel better, judge others, and believe the lies that are told. It's a variation off of the racist southern card, with the secular liberals and homosexuals replacing the blacks as the 'other' whom to resent.

We are entering a period here where Bush and the Dobson crowd are about to really get down and grapple with issues that matter the most right now (that's a joke). There are a number of constitutional amendments about to be spured on by the Republican right, which will succeed? The burning flag amendment? The anti-gay marriage amendment? In God we trust on the money and the pledge in school? The anti-abortion amendment? We might even get the Republican-joke of a balanced budget amendment. The latter will make an exception for years under Republican control. I'm sure they'll have others as well. These will begin going into the state leg's and onto the ballots beginning in 2005. It's their long-term mobilization effort to GOTV.

Meanwhile, the real agenda, gutting the federal social programs and depleting the federal government of revenues from the wealthy will proceed. At some point, the redsters of Kansas will get hit the hardest, and then we'll see an economic backlash from these very same people, but not likely before that time.

by Jerome Armstrong on Wed Dec 01, 2004 at 10:35:09 PM EST

Re: Frank's book (none / 0)

I'm not sure that I agree with the last part of your comment concerning Kansans (and the like) being impacted the most by the Republicans' gutting of federal institutions. I know that they will be affected, but I think that the Republicans will counter-balance the problem with good, old-fashioned pork for the states that they represent.

by nanoboy on Wed Dec 01, 2004 at 11:05:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]

the matter with Kansas (none / 0)

I just finished it this evening. I think this is a very important book, much better than I expected. The amount of work that went into it, face to face and face to book, is impressive. It will take me a while to go back through some parts and look into some of the sources. For now, let me just say I strongly agree that the class issue, more or less as Frank defines it, is fundamental to whatever political future lies just ahead. The spiteful, 'born to lose so screw you first' attitude of these New Republicans rings true. I was born in 1938, and grew up in Racine Wisconsin, in a blue collar family. The collapse of that world, smokestack to rust belt, happened there too, beginning earlier, I would say. Obviously it's never coming back as it was; the question is what to do. Yes, it's a class conflict, of a new kind perhaps, and yes, education, public education, is going to be a major element in either fixing it or screwing up the country once and for all. It's going to take decades to fix things. Wrecking them completely could go a lot faster now. I'm going to think some more about this book and these issues, and post on it again toward the weekend.

by Guatemala Jack on Wed Dec 01, 2004 at 11:27:05 PM EST

Frank's book (none / 0)

I have written a lengthy comment on Frank's book here.

Frank gives very keen observation into the creation of cultural class warfare. And I found it very fascinating to see how these folks talk. It's simply different from the way any Democratic politician talks. I couldn't put my finger on it, but I could tell the word choices were different. It will be important for D politicians and communications wizards to read this book if for no other reason than to see how people talk. If you can capture some of the language, and speak out your policies in that way, you can make big gains among these voters.

That's my pro-Frank commentary; but I have a lot of anti-Frank commentary as well.

Unfortunately, from a tactical/strategic standpoint, Kansas is not helpful. First, it ignores race, because Frank thinks race isn't a problem in Kansas. Certainly, compared to much of the rest of the country, it is not a large problem. Second, the organization of Conservative Christians is strongest in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Georgia. Not exactly.

From Jerome's comments, it seems that he's skeptical that greater economic populism will work. I agree. Consider this from Ed Kilgore:

If you are so inclined, you can stay tuned to CSPAN for a replay of this morning's Washington Journal, where the entertaining but fundamentally misguided Thomas Frank argues that Democrats can trump cultural issues by coming out for public ownership of grain elevators and free coinage of silver at a 16-1 ratio. (Yes, that's a parody of Frank's argument, but so, too are all the insults he's hurled at New Democrats lately).

Now, Kilgore is a New Democrat, and Frank really is spoiling for a fight with the DLC, so these two are having it out. But the man has a point; if you follow through Frank's logic, you come conclusion that sounds ridiculous. Now that NAFTA has passed and is identified with New Democrats, and the FFA has passed, what economically populist movements are left? Wind power? Broadband? Media deconsolidation? And can you really trump killing babies and gay people?

Frank also feels that the Democratic party has moved left on social issues; abortion, gay rights, and particularly the environment, and that the platform has become dominated by these upscale liberal concerns. I tend to agree, as evidenced by the fact that the lower bound for Kerry's tax cut was $200,000. Apparently he felt that if he raised taxes on families maing $175,000, they might go running back to Bush.

On Balance, Kansas gives a good idea of how we got where we are, and how Republicans took advantage. In an of themselves, this may produce some insight into how we can re-gain the heartland. But Frank's prescription is probably bad medicine.

My alternate prescription is threefold. First, Democrats should innocculate on abortion. Democrats should come out in favor of policies aimed at reducing the abortion rate, through alternatives counseling, through adoption incentives and mentoring programs, through programs designed to help parents speak to their children about health education, etc. This will separate the wheat from the chaff; the voters who think reducing abortion rates is a noble goal from the "every sperm is sacred" crowd. The latter are unreachables and always will be.

Second, they should reframe on gay rights. We have to remember that Jesus was a tolerant guy who did not believe in trickle down economics. We must call all of this gay-bashing by its true name, and end the fraud of calm-faced gay-bashers. We did this with racism; we just have to do it again. Efforts like the UCC and the National Council of Churches to form a religious left are a step in this direction. Unless we cede ground on this issue, we will have to force a reframing.

Third, we should punt guns. Period. No more national registration, no bans on specific weapons. Let's figure out how to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, and if that doesn't work, we'll go back to specific bans again.

by niq on Wed Dec 01, 2004 at 11:42:09 PM EST

Threefold plus (none / 0)

I am agreement with your threefold.

I now call this abortion position "progressive pro-life" which means maintain choice and reproductive rights, but try to progressive reduce abortion and defend life in general (war as a last resort, etc).

On gay rights, I think we need to shift the discussion to actual rights they are being denied even if marriage is the ultimate solution. "Gay Marriage" means "Gay Sex", not inheritance rights, social security benefits or one of the other 1,000+ rights specifically tied to marriage.

Gun rights - yes.

To this let me add

The Environment
I think this is the wedge issue of the future that works to the benefit of progressives and even connects into economic issues and the problems of Capitalism.

Labor And Against The MegaCorporation
Also, I sure wouldn't abandon economic issues, especially labor issues. There are so many problems with Capitalism that have to be deal with one way or another. Economic populism or anti-capitalism or whatever you want to call it is a valid struggle against illegitimate authority and should not be dismissed. It's just going to take some time to win back control of that discussion. I also wouldn't frame this as just looking out for one's self interest, there are bigger moral issues.

If you limit yourself to just your threefold, then there is not much clear difference from Moderate Republicans and I personally wouldn't bother to support it.

by RedStateIndie137 on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 12:41:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Threefold plus Twofold (none / 0)

You have solid ideas. In particular wrt the environment and economics, Dems should get back to talking about how GDP isn't the be-all and end all; after all, it includes the money we spend cleaning up lakes and cleaning our air from smog. I guess wrt labor and megacorporations I am just taking for granted Democratic advantage on "the economy".

But the environment is tricky. People like the environment, but much environmental legislation is regressive. Think septic tank regulation, Heating & Air Conditioning regulation; if you are some rural or exurban homeowner, having the guv'mint tell you that you have to upgrade your septic tank or home heater, even if they partially subsidize it, the odds that you will be unhappy about this are greater than the odds you will be happy. Absent catastrophe, environmental progress is difficult.

I agree that Democrats should not abandon the "corporate frame", and paint the GOP as the party of big business. Bush does a good job of innocculating himself with "small businesses", but that will be hard to continue. The press doesn't really buy it.

Besides, Democrats have a horse-whipping 70 point advantage on the environment right now.

One more thing: Democrats must also (a) make the business case for their health care plan, and (b) show how their plan will mean reduce costs for those who already have health care.

by niq on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 11:18:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Environment, Great Outdoors & The True Elites (none / 0)

as far as the Environment goes,
yes, the focus should not be on the EPA type issues you raise but the bigger public issues that connect hunters, hikers, and ecologists and point to MegaCorporations and Privatization as the enemy. We saw this in the Montanna governers race.

I get pretty frustated by what I call the "shop you way to better world" environmentalism where all the responsibilty is placed onto the consumer.

This ties into Frank's book by being about who you frame as the elites. EPA regulations against individual freedoms reinforce the backlash framing as liberal intellectuals as the Elite against the common man. When we should be framing MegaCorporations and the SuperRich as the Elite that they are. The wealth elite who avoid responsibility and trash the environment for profit and make the common person ultimately pay the price. The wealthy elite who want to take private ownership of public lands and public access rights away from from hunters and fishers.

BTW As far as health care goes doesn't public health care (aka socialized medicine) have a better business case than the insurance plan that Democrats have been pushing? I would also include intellectual property reform to reduce costs (as well as reinforce the MegaCorporations as the real Elites with all kinds special protected powers from the gov't).

by RedStateIndie137 on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 12:07:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Socialized medicine (none / 0)

It is true that a single-payer system is the lowest cost. However, it is socialized medicine and can be attacked as such.

The Kerry plan is good politics. Democrats have not done a good job of messaging that they want to fix "the perverse incentives of the free market". When Bush responded that the problem with our health care is that there weren't enough market incentives, Kerry should have shot back that there are too many, namely that the way for health insurance companies to make money is to just avoid covering sick people. His plan clearly fixed that, and saved you money on your health insurance. This can be messaged very effictively, but apparently no one cares to think about it or something.

A number of center-left economists have pointed out that the Kerry plan is in many ways a trojan horse for a single payer system. After all, once it is clear that the public plan is cheaper, employers will all hop on, fast. There will still be many plans within the FEHBP, but everyone who is employed will get coverage.

Okay RedStateIndie, I'm sold. Let's start a consultancy :).

by niq on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 01:37:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]

What the hell does "single payer" mean? (none / 0)

I've asked this question several times and if there was an answer I missed it. Unless somebody can define this rather bizarre phrase for me I am tempted to start troll rating anyone who uses it.

This is the most godawful meaningless, counterproductive phrase we have on the left. If somebody wants to take on a major framing project this is the place to start. How many different meaningless descriptions do we have for national health care? Let's get a good one and stick to it.

by Gary Boatwright on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 04:27:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]

"Medicare For All" (none / 0)

"Medicare For All" was a good starting point, until the GOP started feeding Medicare to the zombies.

by Paul Rosenberg on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 10:11:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]

thanks Chris n/t (none / 0)

- John McCain

by Bob Brigham on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 12:00:39 AM EST

Solutions? (3.00 / 1)

Frank's book provides liberals with a powerful, "Aha! Now I get it!" Once the phenomena have been pointed out, plen-T-plaints and admonitions to "Look how they despise you! Look how stupid those liberals think you are!" seem to be everywhere. Most revealing is Frank's answer to the liberal's question, "They've won everything--why are they still so angry?"

Frank provides a powerful description of the sense of powerlessness and disrespect felt by many who are led to seek the cure for their distress in the Backlash message. I think many who read the book will find some new sympathy for them. Even (I hope) some admiration for their willingness to fight back against those who don't respect them and to make great sacrifices in their attempt to regain power over their lives. Too often, liberals have played into the hands of those who are manipulating these very understandable, human desires in order to increase the power and wealth of the true elites. I wonder how many votes were lost every time a Democrat plastered a "Somewhere in Texas a village is missing its idiot" bumper sticker on the back of his car. A working class person who voted for Bush in 2000 reads that as, "If the person in that car thinks Bush is an idiot, then he thinks I'm an idiot too--I voted for him." And is more determined than ever to vote for Bush again in 2004. Take that! (you smarmy liberal).

Frank suggests, but I don't think he explores as thoroughly as he could have, what leads so many people to the Backlash in the first place. Why do so many Americans feel powerless and disrespected? And what is the cure for it? Clearly, the cure offered by the Backlash is snake-oil. Being intensely aggrieved and angry provides some emotional relief--if it didn't, the Backlash tactics wouldn't be as successful as they are. But in the long run, it's a hollow victory. It doesn't provide the true cure, which would be to have real respect, real power over one's destiny. The message of the Backlash is simply, you can't win, just stay angry. Here's some more fuel for your anger.

Frank also doesn't really address the way a steady diet of right-wing hate and anger changes people. More and more, I'm hearing liberals bemoan, "My mother (brother, best friend, etc.) used to be a liberal (moderate, old-fashioned Republican). But since she started watching Fox and listening to Rush all the time, I can't even talk to her. She's become totally irrational. She believes everything they say, no matter how absurd, and nothing can change her mind." It's as if they're describing the effects of brainwashing. That may be too strong a term, but the psychological effects of this kind of constant verbal and emotional manipulation are disturbing, to say the least.

Before reading What's the Matter with Kansas, I was depressed and frustrated about the right-wing bias, lack of real content, and angry incivility of Fox, Rush, and their many imitators. Since finishing it, I have been genuinely frightened. I am beginning to feel like millions of my fellow Americans have been kidnapped by a cult and the country that I love is in real danger. Is deprogramming needed?

Many who have read Frank's book seem to think that the cure will come when the economic devastation of the right wing agenda comes to its inevitable and disastrous end. I'm not convinced of that. Part of Frank's point is that many people seek more than just financial gain. They are looking for something that offers more than the materialism, commercialism, and consumerism of the late 20th century. They want something more genuine and important to believe in. They seek the sense of community and human connection of working together with others who believe in "values" that surpass mere economics. I, like most liberals, am dismayed and saddened that this need is being directed towards anger, homophobia, a virulent (and I would opine, very unChrist-like) form of fundamentalist Christianity. But I don't think simply trying to convince them that Democrats offer a better paycheck is the answer.

by Janet Strange on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 12:02:40 AM EST

Not vote for just better paycheck... (none / 0)

I agree. These people will not vote just for a better paycheck. You can't just ask them to be financially more selfish and think they will ignore social issues like abortion.

That's why I think a larger systematic critique is so important. If we can show that this Capitalist system is the unfair and immoral system that it is, then you can gain support for remedies and alternatives. Whether those be worker owned businesses, elimination personhood for the corporation, better collective bargaining or whatever.

Let's not forget that much of the original anti-capitalist movements were driven by christian morality not just people looking to increase there own paychecks. Economic populism is not just about one's self interest and should be framed as such.

by RedStateIndie137 on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 12:21:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]

And The Irony Is... (3.00 / 1)

of course, that it's a cultural studies book that says we shouldn't be talking so much about cultural issues, but rather economic.

BTW Thomas Frank has a Phd in Cultural History. So if you were hoping for some actual economic populism or an economic critique or capitalism, he's probably not the guy to do that.

I love the book. Being about the same age as Frank and growing up in the Red State of Texas, much of it had rang true to my own experiences. I was even a religous conservative in high school.

My emotional response is mixed. I alternate between being hopeful about a new rise in economic populism that could radically realign the political climate to feeling hopeless at how much cultural issues would ultimately win out against all logic of economics no matter how bad it got for people. I know these people and it makes me hopeless. Of course, I also know these places, like Texas, we were once dominated by progessive populists.

I am not even sure how an economic populist movement could really get going now. The critiques of capitalism have fallen out of our political vocabulary. Whereas the previous movements in the U.S. including critiques of Capitalism from Socialists, Marxists, and Anarchists (Libertarian Socialists). These included religous people; christians who were communists or socialists. Even if it was a more moderate form of progressivism that won out, it really benefitted from the rest.

Almost everyone now assumes that Capitalism is the best possible system and really never questions the authority of capital. People are afraid to actually say the problem is with Capitalism itself. They have to rename it neo-fuedalism or say it's just this form of capitalism, crony capitalism, consumer capitalism, etc. They just can't believe that it's something intrinsic to Capitalism. And we don't seem to even have a word for what the alternative might be in our vocabulary. Ok, it's not communism or marxism, so what is it? What is the goal? If you say it's just Fair/Responsible/Regulated Capitalism, then you short of lose the framing to those who are arguing for pure Capitalism.

Plutocracy or Democracy?

Still there is so much ammo to work with. It's so dissappointing that giving all that has happened in the past few years that the Democratic party didn't really use any of it to regain control of the discourse of economics. "Remember Enron!" could have been the battle cry. But unfortunately, the Democratic party doesn't seem up to the job of fighting for the working class anymore. They are too much in bed with The Corporation to criticize it. But that's actually what is needed not NAFTA and all the crap Clinton gave us.

On a related note....

I got the tail end of Thomas Franks appearance on CSPAN Books. One person asked him if he thought there was hope for the Democratic party or if it would take a third party to generate an economic populist movement. Basically he thought there was little hope for the Democratic party and that it would take a third party.

the closing thoughts in the WaPo interview
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A7971-2004Oct28.html
------

One day he attended a fete thrown by Grover Norquist's tax-cutting powerhouse, Americans for Tax Reform. "It was at the New York Yacht Club, for God's sake," Frank reports, astonished by the sense of invulnerability the choice projects, by the Republicans' obvious belief that the Democrats would never actually call them on this.

"Rich people toasting tax cuts in the New York Yacht Club! If we had a left in this country, they would put that on a TV commercial from now until Election Day."

-----

by RedStateIndie137 on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 12:03:37 AM EST

Re: And The Irony Is... (3.00 / 1)

I don't think an "anti-capitalist" message would resonate. For many of the reasons you point out.

Also, I think it's too abstract, too nuanced, too wonkish. As you say, most people don't even question that capitalism is the best economic system, they can only see certain abuses of capitalism that need to been reined in. At best.

I'm thinking more these days seems more gut level--what is it that most people want? And what is the particularly American story? Part of hard-wired human development is a desire to mature into a capable adult. To acquire "power," not in the sense of power over others, but power in the form of competence, experience, even wisdom. Add to that the American dream of self-reliance, independence, self-improvement.

The American ideal is to be able to take care of oneself, a rejection of the feudalism left behind in Europe (thinking purely in terms of how early European immigrants shaped our idea of Americanism). Feudal societies promise that the "lord" will take care of you. In return, you surrender your autonomy. You have no power to determine your own fate. You remain, fundamentally, a child.

The desire to shape one's own fate is powerful. It drove slave revolts in the South in the early 19th century. Individual slaves risked everything--and often lost their lives--trying to escape slavery, not simply to escape abuse, but in rebellion against of the fundamental degradation of being "owned" by another human being and rendered powerless.

The Backlash manipulators are using this as one of their strongest tools. They portray the "liberal elite" as those who control you, who render you powerless. The conservative working class is constantly praised for having real competence-you, they say, have the power to do real things. You feed the country with your farms and ranches, you build houses, fix cars, keep the community safe as police officers, keep our country safe in the military. Those effete liberals are helpless when confronted with something as simple as a leaky faucet. Hell, they probably couldn't be trusted to change a light bulb.

I think the progressives would do well to consider how progressivism is empowering to individuals. First of all, that getting the government out of your private decisions gives you that most American value--freedom. It's not for the government to decide who you love or whether you must bear a child. The government should not be spying on you using the fear factor of terrorism. And so on.

In addition, education grants, small business support, social security are not a matter of the government offering to "take care of you," they enable you to become competent, to pursue your dreams, to be independent in your old age.

And finally, the American myth of the American hero (think of all of those old westerns) says that the strong, independent hero uses his strength to protect and care for those who need it--children, the elderly, the sick, those who have been unfairly treated by fate or by the wicked.

Like I said, this is just what I've been thinking lately. I think it is "anti-capitalist" in the sense that you mean it. But I don't think many people will sign up as "anti-capitalists." I do think that real empowerment, not just, be angry because those nasty liberals think you're stupid and are trying to rob you of your freedom, is a place to start.

by Janet Strange on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 02:03:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: And The Irony Is... (3.00 / 2)

Instead of anti-capitalist try anti-Walmart or anti-Enron. Consider Dilbert. Look at how popular Elliot Spitzer is for attacking wall street coruption. How many people were rooting for Microsoft to lose their anti-trust case? Look at how populist groups on the right and the left attacked Michael Powell's FCC media consolidation regulations.There's plenty of room to maneuver when you're attacking the wealthy elite.

The biggest question is whether the Democratic party is ready to abandon corporate contributions. Dems have pretty much been abandoned by many sectors already. How far can we go with enhanced worker's rights, pro-labor reform, minimum wage and national health care? We have to not only write off the Chamber and National Mfg Assoc. we have to renounce their programs as anti-family and anti-worker.

Some new language would be better so we can avoid sounding like socialism lite, which we'll get accused of anyway. We have to attack the "every government program is socialism" meme with government support for working families. Let's go back to Head Start, Day Care and increasing the EITC.

by Gary Boatwright on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 04:23:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Plutocracy Or Democracy (none / 0)

That's the frame, all right.

"Plutocracy" is a way of talking about capitalism that gets goes to the very core of what's wrong with it--the use of money to control people's lives. And true Democracy is the true alternative, which can accomodate a wide range of economic arrangements, provided that none of them is used to give money power over people.

by Paul Rosenberg on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 02:14:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Plutocracy Or Democracy (none / 0)

That's a succinct version of what I was trying to say above (succinctness has never been my forte--sorry). One way to get the economic issues back on the table is to reframe the economic issues as empowering, as a way of refusing to allow the big-money interests to control you, to limit your options, to rob you of your autonomy.

by Janet Strange on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 02:20:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Plutocracy Or Democracy (none / 0)

"One way to get the economic issues back on the table is to reframe the economic issues as empowering, as a way of refusing to allow the big-money interests to control you, to limit your options, to rob you of your autonomy."

Sounds pretty succinct to me!

by Paul Rosenberg on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 10:50:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Frank's Book (3.00 / 1)

As I read Franks book, it became clear that the Democratic Party would never fix Kansas by moving to the right. I believe that we need to expose the Conservatives as the hypocrites that they are. The Conservatives do not want to solve the problems of the country, but want to use the problems of the country to create a Permanent Privilege Class. The Conservatives use the Values Issue to get away this crime.

We on the Left need to educate our follow Citizens the real value of the Conservatives. They value the Permanent Privilege Class. We know this true by their actions.

1.    They state that they are looking out for the little guy, but shift the tax burden from the wealthy to the middle class.
2.    They state that they are for balance budgets, but pass spending bills with record deficits. These deficits will be paid by the children of the Middle Class.
3.    They cut financial aid for college students. This helps keep a Permanent Under Class.
4.    They create an endless war to award no bid contracts to their fellow Elite, while using the children of The Under Class to feed this machine. These same children no longer can get the financial aid to attend college.
5.    This list goes on and on and on.

We on the Left must reframe the word "Conservative" back to it's true meaning:
A Conservative is a person who uses the Value Issue to enrich himself and to create a Permanent Privilege Class.

by SRconbio on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 12:58:00 AM EST

This Takes Us Back To Agre's Piece On Conservatism (none / 0)

Which is worth looking at again, IMHO.

by Paul Rosenberg on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 02:16:38 AM EST
[ Parent ]

tackling it head-on (3.00 / 1)

I agree that economic populism isn't the answer. We need to tackle this head-on, that means convincing conservatives that this whole narrative is bullshit.

The first step, I think, is to use the "you hurt my feelings" card to put them on the defensive. When your conservative uncle uses the phrase "latte-drinking liberal," respond with "I don't know why you think I'm some sort of monster. What did I ever do to hurt you? I think I'm a pretty decent person, but if you think I'm evil because I'm liberal, then I guess we have nothing further to say to each other. Goodbye forever." If you can, act like you're wounded to the core.

If the conservative uncle is anything but a monster, he'll apologize quickly, and say "I didn't mean you." Respond with "I'm a liberal. If you think those things about liberals, you think them about me." He'll have no choice but to back off even a little further.

If at that point, you eloquently make the case that liberals aren't bad people, and that it's hurtful for conservatives to throw around stereotypes, you may be able to make a permanent impression.

by joshyelon on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 01:43:56 AM EST

Re: tackling it head-on (none / 0)

Somewhat more seriously, there's something we can do at the national level as well. Democrats need to respond to these stereotypes by reacting outraged at the mere act of stereotyping:

David Brooks: "so as we all know, liberals tend to have a preference for lattes."

Democrat: "Didn't your mother tell you that spreading hurtful stereotypes is morally wrong? What's more, I'm Jewish, and the "elitist" stereotype you just used on me is the exact same stereotype the Germans used on my ancestors. What makes you think it's acceptable to try to hurt people that way?"

David Brooks: But.. the stereotype is accurate...

Democrat: "I don't give a crap, even if the statistics do show that liberals drink their coffee with milk, it's still an attack. Some people say jews are tightfisted. Some people say Hoosiers are dumb. You say liberals are latte-drinkers. It's all the same, it's all hurtful stereotyping, and it's all morally pitiful."

by joshyelon on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 02:06:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: tackling it head-on (none / 0)

I've actually been thinking of using this one with my Fox-addicted conservative relatives. I really think they see me as a good person and love me (in spite of my misguided political views). I'm waiting for an opportunity to ask them, why do conservatives think I'm such a horrible evil person? Hoping for a little cognitive dissonance . . .

Your idea of tackling this on a wider level is even better.

by Janet Strange on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 02:30:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Baby, Bathwater, Etc. (none / 0)

The move you're suggesting would pretty much undercut any effort to talk in generalities. Which makes it quite difficult indeed to talk about social forces. Which thus reinforces the notion that there is nothing but individual character on the one hand, standing up to a conspiracy of evil on the other.

It's really a fine distinction between generalizing and stereotyping. And you've proven it with your example--which is a generalization, not a stereotype.

A much more important target--also much easier to discern--is demonization. While this, too, can be blurred--the repeated use of otherwise innocent stereotypes in a demonizing context can turn milk (in your coffee) into the mark of Satan--it's relatively easy to aim your fire at classic examples, rather than such spin-offs.

This doesn't have to mean letting the latte remark pass. But a wisecrack would be much more appropriate, IMHO:

(1) David Brooks: "so as we all know, liberals tend to have a preference for lattes."

Democrat: "Got milk?"

(2) David Brooks: "so as we all know, liberals tend to have a preference for lattes."

Democrat: "Got your milk detector, David? I hear that Ridge's last act was to order them for every airporrt. Must be made by Halliburton."

(3) David Brooks: "so as we all know, liberals tend to have a preference for lattes."

Democrat: "It's the milk of human kindness, David. You should try it sometime"

by Paul Rosenberg on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 10:41:21 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: tackling it head-on (none / 0)

I think the religious left must tackle the religious right head on. The Cons are God, Family, Country in that order. All that repub talk of values is perceived as repub. talk about God.

And I think the religious left is begining to know this. Look at some of the recent diaries on dKos.

US Christians Face Judgement

The dKos convention organizing is being lead by Pastor Dan.

The religious left knows they have to speak up because the neocon christian crap is blasphemous. Its God, Family, Country for the Religious left too.

I think that the more secular among us can help this situation by simply being less judgemental about people of faith, especially the Christian Left. When good religious folk are attacked from the left and right, they have no power. The religious left are our allies. They understand seperation of church and state (give to Ceasar what is Ceasar's). They understand justice (he who is without sin cast the first stone). They work for peace (Blessed are the Peacemakers, for theirs is the kingdom of God). They don't exploit others (do unto others...)

Anyway, I've just come to see this whole thing as a conservative incited holy war championed by the republican party.. Our only hope of countering them is the Christian left. I think we should help them out.

by gina on Fri Dec 03, 2004 at 12:28:34 AM EST
[ Parent ]

How do you break through anti-intellectualism? (3.00 / 1)

That is going to be the key to determining if the Democrats can be successful against the Backlash. The Backlash prides itself on being uneducated--no highfallutin' degrees here! As much as it pains the left, we cannot expect logic and reason to win this one. Even economic issues may not do it. I am truly frightened for the first time that we may actually be seeing the beginning of the New Dark Ages here in America.

by dwckabal on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 02:15:02 AM EST

Re: How do you break through anti-intellectualism? (none / 0)

If you figure this one out, please let me know. I'm a (shudder) professor! I teach biology. Darwin! Evolution! I'm even an atheist. I'm clearly spawn of the devil.

by Janet Strange on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 02:26:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Working Around Anti-Intellectualism With Lakoff (3.00 / 1)

You deal with anti-intellectualism with a variety of strategies. But the major one is that you work around it by developing frames rooted in a liberal value system that present liberal positions in a common-sense light. If you can make liberal ideas seem commonsensical--which they are--then the power of anti-intellectualism is vastly deflated. This, in turn, makes it much easier to deal with when it really has to be met head on.

I'm not saying this is easy. Just that it is sensible and doable. In fact, this comment got me thinking last night about doing a short book, "The Top Ten Lies About Evolution, God and the Bible." The aim would be to come up with simple ways of making the foolish look foolish--but without making people feel foolish for being taken in.

by Paul Rosenberg on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 10:49:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Work Arounds Are Depressing (none / 0)

Isn't this depressing though?
When political parties are reduced to emotionally manipulating the public through "proper framing" rather than having an enlightened discussion, doesn't it even bring into question the very foundations of true democracy?

It's sort of like it becomes the puppet masters of good versus the puppet masters of evil.

After reading Frank's book and Lakoff's book, I find myself confused. On the one hand I feel like I know how we progressives might could win, on the other hand I feel like we are just trying to be better cheaters or something and we have given up on the foundations of true democracy. It's more like a perversion of Plato's republic, where two groups of elites are competing to be the ruling class through manipulation of the stupid masses.

I hope that these work arounds can ultimately bring about some higher success intellectually/academically. Although, it does seem pretty grim when you look at places like Kansas or the capitalist culture of TV that this nation shares for that matter.

by RedStateIndie137 on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 12:42:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Work Arounds Are Depressing (none / 0)

Whether you realize it or not, you are working on an assumption that there is a superior "frame-free" way to carry on discourse, political or otherwise. But Lakoff--along with many other cognitive scientists--would argue that this is a myth. The frames may be more or less subtle, more or less consciously employed, etc. but they are always there, simply because all human thought is contextual. (See Lakoff & Johnson's Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought for a thorough presentation of the background of this critique.)

Furthermore, framing is not necessarily just "emotional manipulation" as you put it. In Moral Politics, Lakoff presents a compelling arugment that liberal frames have a factually superior grounding.

Naturally, I would say that the ultimate goal should be educating people so that they understand both sets of frames, not just in isolation, but as cognitive systems, and can reflect on them in their entirety. But there's no way they can do this without first being exposed to liberal frames as well as conservative ones.

Thus, from where I stand, you are complaining about the fact that people have to learn how to add before they can learn how to multiply. Yes, it's true. They have to go through that. But it's still quite superior to where they are now, stuck with counting on their fingers and toes. And it's not a bad thing to teach people how to add.

by Paul Rosenberg on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 10:04:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Working Around Anti-Intellectualism With Lakof (none / 0)

A short book like that would certainly help; however, to break through anti-intellectualism, the person you're talking to has to a least be minimally willing to think about whatever topic you are discussing. The problem is that most anti-intellectuals have boiled down their entire existence into black and white issues--there is no grey area, therefore there is no room for discussion. We need to find a way to marginalize (again) these extremists and show the majority that really don't have as much in common with these (rightly labelled) wingnuts as they think.

As far as doing it in a way that won't make them look foolish, that requires breaking through a person's cognitive dissonance--something we talked about during the last discussion. But once you've got someone at least thinking--however minimally--breaking through the cognitive dissonace is much easier.

by dwckabal on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 01:28:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Working Around Anti-Intellectualism With Lakof (none / 0)

I'm suggesting that the solution begins with using frames ala Lakoff, not getting people we're trying to reach to read Lakoff themselves. That can come later--much later, perhaps. But first we have to get them to see things another way. To see that it's possible to see things another way. And to get them to see that, we have to become much better are communicating whole visions, not just individual bits of data.

by Paul Rosenberg on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 10:09:57 PM EST
[ Parent ]

A few more comments (none / 0)

Thanks, Chris, for choosing this book for the discussion. I've been thinking about reading it, but hadn't gotten around to it. This made me do it. And it was much better than I had imagined--very lucid, very readable. I'm recommending it to many. It's not everything, but it's a helpful work.
Thanks, too, for the summary; very well done.
On the question of voting against one's own economic interests: the fact is, I do too. I am fortunate enough to have a high enough income that I actually benefit from Bush's tax cuts, including the virtual elimination of the estate. I opposed them anyway. I opposed them because I think they're unfair as well as because I thought they were poorly designed for the economic stimulus they were claimed to be aimed at producing (after most of the other claims had fallen by the wayside). The latter involves a macro argument, but the former objection is, in many ways, a moral one. So I understand, in my own personal way, the attraction of voting based on moral issues, even when we're talking about economic policy.
Frank argues--and I think he is convincing--that the foot soldiers of the conservative movement (the Great Backlash-ers) are mostly low- and moderate-income working folks. Not all such folks, but rather those who are increasingly being left behind economically. Their world is disintegrating, they don't fully understand it (do any of us?), and they are grasping for certainties. One can hardly blame them, of course, but they are grabbing falsehoods, "false consciousness," as it used to be called. I don't see how this can be overcome by economic populism, exactly. What is needed is a new vision, one that helps them understand what's really going on in their world and also gives them hope. Hope is critical.
I don't have the vision. But I would think we need to look at places that are doing better, where there is more hope, and look to draw on those experiences. And for those with a stronger religious background than I: isn't this an appropriate place to draw on religion? Doesn't it offer hope? Can't we find a way to connect with the disaffected through the religion they already know, but bring out those aspects of it that light the way forward instead of distracting everyone by looking at the rear-view mirror?

by Omark on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 01:58:30 PM EST

Late Review (none / 0)

I came away from the book with a solid explanation of why the Cons vote Republican. Many people I talk to think that people in the red states vote against their economic self-interest and not realize it. I think Frank shows us that these Cons think they are voting to hurt the liberal elite and thus benefit themselves. They actually believe the economic policies of the GOP are sound and beneficial.

For me, economic populism is the answer. But I don't think we can call it economic populism; It should be called the platform of the Democratic Party. How did we lose these voters in the first place to the Backlash? The GOP veered right on cultural issues and convinced these Cons that the culture war matters more. Eventually, through group identity these voters adopted the economic policies of the GOP. What did the Democratic Party do? I think it did next to nothing. Instead of being liberal and pushing a new agenda, we keep playing the defensive: don't let them take away Social Security, cut Medicare, etc. We lost these voters because the fight for social justice is never over but we acted like it to the point of the Clinton Administration and triangulation.

Who was the last successful Democratic President? Lyndon Johnson. Look at his legislative accomplishments which include Medicare, Headstart, the Higher Education Act among others. What is our platform today? Where are the new bold liberal ideas? We need a new platform for the party that includes revitilizing the labor movement, paid college for service through Americorps, universal Headstart, progressive tax reform, a minimum wage indexed to inflation, etc. We need to show America that we are the party of the working class like we used to be. These policies might seem on the extreme left today, but that is because we have let the GOP move the spectrum. There was a time when Rehnquist was the most conservative member on the Supreme Court. There was a time when Bob Dole was on the far right of the GOP. Moving to the center fails, because they will just continue to move right. We don't have to move left; we just have to stand up where we already are.

Frank doesn't exactly give a strategy to win back these voters, but he raises a good point that Democrats look at the situation and hope to pick up the Mods which will turn us into the Republican Party of Nixon and Rockefeller (244). How can we expect to grow liberalism when we lose our base because of our stagnant economic policies? I realize a lot more is necessary on the issue of framing our beliefs, and I suppose we will get into that in two weeks with Lakoff. However, I just don't understand how the Party that has produced so much for working class America from the first minimum wage to the graduated income tax allowed it to be painted as an elitest party. The Democrats are there in Red America; we just need to give them a reason to vote for us again.

by Matt42 on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 03:11:11 PM EST

Economic populism and issues (3.00 / 1)

I'm puzzled over the confusion about how we sell economic populism. We don't need a grand new theory or need to retreat to Bryan Jennings. For starters how about:

National Health Care
Raising the minimum wage to $10/hour
Enhancing family leave
Eliminating tax cuts for outsourcing

Anti-trust and anti-capitalism memes are alive and well in America. Look at all of the protests over letting Walmart set up a new mega-store. All you have to do is read Dilbert to understand that Americans despise or at least distrust large corporations. There is near universal condemnation of Enron and Global Crossing. Americans don't trust Wall Street. Look at how popular Spizer is.

We don't need a radical new program and a grand new theory. Take the four simple issues above(or others if you have any suggestions)and weave them into an anti-Walmart/Dilbert meme.

For some reason a whole lot of Redstaters still believe that Bush's tax cuts benefit the middle class or will somehow trickle down. I doubt this illusion will last must longer. We need to be ready with an economic populist welcome mat when they wake up.

by Gary Boatwright on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 04:06:53 PM EST

Re: Economic populism and issues (none / 0)

I agree with you. However, I would add one more item to your economic populism list.

Unions.

Everyone thinks Manufacturing is the Holy Grail of High Paying Jobs. One look at our history and China tells us this is not true. In the United States, manufacturing jobs were low paying until the rise of the Union. I believe this will be true in China too. Why are Manufacturing Jobs moving to China? Low labor cost. Why are the labor costs low? Because in China, real unions are illegal.

I believe the Democrats should work for two major changes that will give unions more power in the USA.

Pass laws that make easy for Unions to form. Today the deck is stack against the formation of unions in a nonunion work place.
Pass a law that makes it illegal to hire replacement workers for the first three months of a strike.

By empowering unions, the service work force, the white-collar force, and blue-collar would have real power to raise their income and to obtain better benefits. I do not believe any one type of job is the Holy Grail to High Paying Jobs. The Union is the only counter balance that the employee has to the greed and the power of Corporations.

by SRconbio on Thu Dec 02, 2004 at 10:52:15 PM EST
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