"What's the matter with Kansas?", Obama, and elitism

I hope the author wasn't serious when he called Crown Royal "a luxury brand."  It's certainly not a discount brand... but luxury?  I really hope that was a joke.

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Glock21 Op/Ed

Maybe his point was meant to be that she didn't drink some rot-gut brand that sells for $4/gallon?

It looks like he's saying some other pundit thought it was very lowbrow stuff. At least that's what I get from the "Old Prole Rotgut Rye" comment. That Hillary is trying to paint herself with the "aw, shucks, I'm just common folk" brush. Then again, what do I know, I'm just an elitist liberal.

I'll whole-heartedly second the book recommendations.   Rebellion (in either direction) has been for sale for a very long time now.

"I'm waiting for a candidate who's not too much of an elitist to drink some of my bathtub gin."

Where's Wilbur Mills when you need him?  Of couse, I am far too much of a gentleman to ever inquire as to the details of the gin's production.

RSW - I think you might be missing the point.  Frank is saying that the elites are the extremely wealthy people in this country, not the middle class intellectuals who actually have very little power.  But the average conservative is directed by several influences (talk radio, the President, the GOP platform, etc.) to believe that "liberals" are really the elitists.  Thus the anger over things like "the war on Christmas" that is coupled with the deafening silence regarding the war on the middle class.

In other words, Republicans think it is perfectly appropriate to be outraged because the mall can't have a Christmas tree, but it is completely over-the-top to be outraged that Americans are working harder than ever before in our history, and are not making more money.  Daring to mention that fact is elitist.  Bringing up the tree at the mall shows that you are a "true America".

Or, for a more current example, check out the recent thread on the capital gains tax, and the almost complete lack of facts produced to support the idea of trickle-down economics.  Yes, tax cuts for the rich are good for all of us.  But we don't have any evidence that shows that is true, of course.  How dare you ask for evidence!  What are you a "class warrior"?

Sigh.

it is elitist to say that people are stupid for voting for the GOP when they could be making more money with Dems in power.

Well, see ... there you go.  He isn't saying anyone is stupid.  His criticism is usually reserved for the elites in power - the media, the politicians in Washington, the heads of big business who sell themselves off as "the common folk" while robbing the common folk blind.

Are the common folk too stupid to know this is happening?  Of course not.  But who is reporting this news to middle America?  Certainly not the corporate media. 

Look, like the recent discussion about China, it is not elitist or unpatriotic to state facts.  Sam Walton and Wal-Mart are closely associated as friends of the working people.  But the evidence is quite clear that Wal-Mart is one of the worst things that has ever happened to small town America.

So what are we supposed to do?  Do we ignore the evidence against Wal-Mart and just declare it great for America because I can buy a frozen dinner there for 89 cents, or do we point out that Wal-Mart has single-handedly driven millions of small businesses into the ground in this country in the name of consolidated retailing?  And if I dare to point out the latter am I really an elitist, or is that just the label given to me by people who have a strong vested interest in the success of Wal-Mart?

Do you see what I am getting at?  This is a ridiculous game.  One can only be an elitist if one dares to speak anything critical of corporate America and the way it treats the working people in America.  If you don't wholeheartedly support Wal-Mart's underpricing of the average small businessman, then obviously you are a socialist, latte-drinker who has no business telling the average American anything.

It is this kind of stupidity, and censorship that has led us into the terrible, terrible place American currently resides.  Citizens being arrested and held without trial because to defend them is to sympathize with terrorists.  A war costing trillions of dollars and untold blood spilt because bringing the troops home is akin to "surrender".  Millions of Americans in poverty and without health insurance because supporting universal coverage equals "socialist medicine".

Don't blame the messenger.  Frank has his finger right on the problem, and that will undoubtedly make some people incomfortable.  But good for him.  We should be really uncomfortable with the results of this administration, this government, and this economy.

Wal-Mart is an incredibly complex issue that is most likely beyond the scope of this discussion.  But, in brief, our labor laws are much too lenient when it comes to companies like Wal-Mart.  This corporation has single-handedly fended off the rights of workers to organize for decades now, using the most nefarious of techniques.  Yet our labor laws are so toothless, so corporate friendly, that they have hardly even been fined.

And one of the largest employers in America continues to be union free.

As for consumers, there is a price for the prices you pay at Wal-Mart.  There are all sorts of things that could be done to level the playing field for the small business person who dares to enter the retail field.  Tarriffs on Chinese goods are one thing.  Stricter regulations (are you really comfortable buying toys for your kids at Wal-Mart?) on the dirt cheap prices.  Heck, Wal-Mart makes its dime on being the low cost leader because it can bully manufacturers into selling their products at a cheaper rate.  I think that kind of sh*t needs to be illegal.

But the topic for today is elitism, or the elites.  Can't you tell the way that I don't like Wal-Mart that I am an elite?  Hold it, didn't you just say you don't shop at Wal-Mart?  Aren't you now an elitist?

When this topic comes up I always think of the developments in downtown Champaign.  Millions of dollars in tax breaks and dollars thrown at these developers and anyone who dares to complain is an elitist who is standing in the way of progress.  Or the sprawling suburbs that are swallowing up our farmlands and over-taxing our infrastructure.  Dare to complain and you are an elitist.

The business class has done a wonderful job framing this debate.  Think about this astonishing, paradoxical fact: in conservative world anyone who is against tax breaks for the wealthiest 1% is actually an elitist.  An "out of touch" liberal latte-drinker.  As if any self-respecting lower class American should be proud to watch the rich get richer.

Astonishing.  How did they do it?

What's wrong with Connecticut?  A hundred years ago and more, while Kansas was enjoying the fruits of being the leftwing populist Eden that Thomas Frank believes it to have been, Connecticut was part of the Republican stronghold in the Northeast.  Now it's definitely a blue state...sure there are still a few country club Republicans left, but like just about every state north of the Potomac and east of the Alleghenies, it's as blue as the South is red.  Connecticut is also the most affluent state in the union, last time I heard - why, those crazy people are "voting against their interests"!  Must have been the "bitterness industry" from the Democrats, driving the people there to think that the Republicans want a 100 year war, that they will outlaw abortion for everyone, and impose a draft.  Clearly there's something wrong with people in Connecticut, and they could use some fixin'.

And what about African-Americans - they voted solidly for Republicans a hundred years ago, and now they vote solidly for Democrats.  I'm new to this whole "what's wrong with..." thing, and obviously rules of etiquette and polical correctness would keep me from asking what's wrong with African-Americans, but maybe Thomas Frank would be so good as to ask the tough questions, since this is more his game than mine.

"Elitism" is thus a crime not of society's actual elite, but of its intellectuals. - Thomas Frank

Uh, notwithstanding DBoon's attempt to declare that the elite is the monied class and not the intellectual class, there are more than a small number of people that believe that the elite and the intellectuals are one and the same thing - there always have been, and there always will be.  There also seems to be an assumption by some posters that rich = Republican.  Since most of the wealthy people have congregated in places like California, New York, and Illinois, the bluest states, I'm not so sure that I buy that link (see "What's wrong with Connecticut?" above).

Since so many uneducated clock punchers are "voting against their interests" by pulling the GOP lever, and so many well-to-do arugula munchers are "voting against their interests" by pulling the Dem lever, maybe we should just come right out and say that the Dems are party of the, um, elite (intellectual and/or monied), and that the GOP is the party of the lumpen.  Unless that would destroy peoples' most cherished illusions, or disallow people to make the determination of what other peoples' interests are for them.

"Yes, and one can only ponder this question if he assumes that he can determine the best interests of individual Kansans better than they can. A very preposterous and liberal notion, but not an uncommon one."

For that second statement to be true, two conditions must be satisfied: 1) In order to be preposterous, it must be absolutely impossible to tell whether or not average citizens are being economically screwed by the people they elect; 2) In order to be a liberal notion, it must be entirely unheard of for conservatives to ever offer proposals or solutions that are not automatically universally accepted, even if those solutions are only to preserve the status quo.

Neither of those conditions, it seems to me, can be met.

"Kevin, you are only further proving my point. How did we get from "best interest" to "economically screwed"? Do you see what just happened? You decided for those people what they should be most concerned about."

Nice try, but no cigar.  We didn't "get" to economically screwed; it's where we started in the first place.  The book, and the attempts here to explain it, begin with the premise that people have voted against their own obvious economic self interest, not some sort of nebulous "best interest" in general.

And I have not decided anything for anyone.  One of the reasons for the discussion that the book encourages is to try to figure out why Kansas picks one set of concerns over another, in an effort to determine how and why people in general (with Kansas as an example) make such decisions.  The point isn't to judge those choices, but rather to understand why some people are more concerned about some things than others, especially when those hierarchies do not agree exactly with our own.

"Connecticut is also the most affluent state in the union, last time I heard"

Now, New Jersey.

"But to claim that the people of Kansas have not fallen into mass poverty since they began voting for Republicans is simply false."

In 1999, 6.7 percent of Kansas families were below the poverty level.  This site says it's 8.6 percent, although it's unclear which year, with a median household income of $45,478, which means half of Kansas households are making more than that.  Both of those figures are better than the national averages.

Mass poverty, eh?  The hyperbole is strong with this one.

"The notion that people get to determine what is in other peoples' best interests, economic or otherwise, strikes me as deeply arrogant, paternalistic, and undemocratic."

God forbid anyone should ever devote a moment's thought to the relative merits of policy alternatives.  Of course, no one here, yourself included, would ever openly advocate for or against any public policy on the basis of what's best for the taxpayers.  Better just to let our elected representatives make all the decisions without any public discussion whatsoever.  Having any sort of public opinion about anything the government does is just so, well, arrogant and paternalistic.

"That's the whole point of having a representative democracy with elected leaders - so that people can decide *for themselves* what is in their best interests, and act accordingly...not a parliament to which we don't elect representatives, not a nobility or monarchy, and certainly not armchair populists like Thomas Frank, but *each individual* deciding for themselves and acting accordingly."

Oh, ok, now I get it.  You thought that we were trying to impose our wills on Kansas by abolishing the government and assuming divine or dictatorial powers.  I really don't remember asking for that.  Let me double check ... nope, nope, that's not what anyone said.  We just want to understand how and why others arrive at their hierarchy of values.  Why are some things more important than others, what specifically is most important to them, and has the answer to that been manipulated by anyone?

"You want to know why Kansas is a red state?  How about because there was a book written by a condescending, arrogant guy titled "What's Wrong with Kansas""

And of course, you know that he is condescending and arrogant because you've read the book.  Oh, wait ... probably not.  You're probably basing that opinion entirely on your misinterpretations and misunderstandings and misrepresentations of what we have said about it.  To be perfectly honest, I haven't read the book either, but I have read a great deal of analysis that was inspired by it.  I've found most of it to be fascinating and ultimately helpful, I think.  Ultimately, though, for all I know maybe he really is condescending and arrogant, but you certainly can't prove it by misrepresenting the arguments presented here.

"Boon and Kevin seem to think that it's obvious that the Dems' economic program is in the best interests of the people of Kansas - and yet I'm sure that the GOP would beg to differ."

I'm sure they would.  So would I, for that matter, because it's not what I said.  I do happen to think that there are specific GOP policies that are obviously harmful to workers, but that's a different argument altogether.  What is more important to me is why people might place other issues at a higher priority, and what those issues are.

"It seems to me that a better question isn't why the people of Kansas "vote against their interests," but why do so many people across the spectrum "vote against their interests" - it's not limited geographically or politically."

That's actually an excellent question, and one that I think the book (and the subsequent discussion of it) was intended to ultimately encourage people to ask.

"Perhaps one of the problems is that we are trying to segement off economic interests with all other interests - that is simply not possible."

Well, yes, actually it is.  Some issues are clearly economic, and some are clearly not.  Some might crossover.  This is called categorization, and it is an aid to discussion and rational thought.  Maybe I've misunderstood what you intended to say here.

"I'm sure that there are plenty of military families in Kansas - are they supposed to just ignore the war when they go into the voting booth?"

Of course they're not supposed to forget the war.  How could they?  This is precisely the sort of thing that the inquiries inspired by the book and subsequent discussions are intended to delineate.

"The same goes for every single issue down the line - social issues, foreign policy, agriculture issues, etc.  No one votes in a hermetically sealed, economic-issues-only vacuum."

Well, now you're agreeing with what would seem to be one of the essential premises/conclusions of the book.  Funny how that works.

You know, I was going to go into a long point-for-refutation of your post.  Then I just decided, no, go ahead.  If you think that white working class voters don't believe that it's arrogant to be asking what's wrong with them, or declaring that you have a better notion of their interests than they do and that they are voting against them, or that this doesn't hurt the Democratic party, then by all means, carry on.  You are certainly welcome to your opinion, but I'll do you one better and concede every single point that you make.  I'm sure that the Dems will be able to insult Kansas into becoming a blue state one of these days.

So ... go ahead and cry "hyperbole!" instead of addressing the basic point that Kansas is far worse off than it was before it turned Red.  It gets us to talk about something else (nice).  When it is revealed that actually Kansas is at the bottom of the list of states regarding income it makes that look a little better.  Very impressive!

You might want to look up the Decennial Census and the 2005 American Community Survey.  Both will illustrate to you that Kansas has really plummetted downhill economically since the 80s (uh oh, is "plummetted" hyperbole?).  It has mostly to do with farming incomes and the consolidation of the land into the hands of a few large agricorps.  Most of which was done by Republican legislators who were elected on social values platforms.

Or you could read the book.  Frank is a great writer - very humorous and entertaining.  Though you might want to highlight the parts where he uses hyperbole and then send him that copy with your objections.  I'm sure he'd get a good laugh out of that, and your attempts to make Kansas sound like a middle class utopia.