The national spotlight on Kansas continues. And as a resident, the actions of an ultra-“conservative” (I’ll get to those quotations in a minute) legislature and governor are painful and painfully embarrassing. Especially as non-residents mock the fact that the state’s citizens reelected our governor after it was already clear that his grand voodoo economic experiment was going to be a massive failure. In all the rolling waves of regressive legislation pounding us into depression-era-like dust – less money to education, the war on women’s reproductive health, the disastrous actions in healthcare – one is most menacing in its ugly vitriol and marginalization of a group of people.
The poor - stigmatized in rhetoric for decades - are now to be vilified by the law; the food stamp now the state-sanctioned Scarlet letter. Shame has fallen on the state of Kansas. And shame should fall on those that call themselves “conservative.” Because it surely isn’t liberal and it didn’t used to be conservative. It can only really just be called bigotry.
Our governor has signed a bill and spot-lighted provincialism in the Midwest, shadowing the kindness and normalcy of the majority of its people. Poor Kansans that need government assistance are now restricted in print on how they may live their lives. Restrictions such as not being able to spend their money on cruise ship vacations (just keeping those cruise ships safe from the dirty poor! Oh wait… you mean they aren’t actually going on these vacations because they’re poor?); to bans on swimming pools and movies. This rhetoric aimed at humiliating fellow citizens has been burned into law, and a shroud hangs over it like low smoke in the fields of histories’ recent fires. This law makes me recall other propaganda where a group of disenfranchised people are subjected to being defined by the rhetoric of the powerful. The state’s leadership has now singled out a group of people and created a set of labels and rules for them to hold them away from us as “the other.”
Through this all I read about us on popular blogs and national news of how we the voters deserve what we get because we sent him back to office. Lines like “[Brownback whom] Kansans re-elected in a remarkable display of heartland vapidity” scream from the World Wide Web. The reality is that the election was remarkably close and there is argument that new laws of voter suppression kept it from being razor-thin close. True, it shouldn’t have been a contest at all for all the damage Brownback and his cronies have already done, but low voter turnout plagues our state as it does the nation. And Democrats continue to hamper themselves by standing in the middle of road, where they are bound to get squished.
That said, we Kansans must loudly and publicly denounce it. For every person in this state and country that continue to sneer at the mythical welfare queen, there are just as many that don’t hold those views. We must not allow this view to prevail in Kansas. Active hatred does not endanger our way of life; acquiescence in the form of apathy does.
Also, the rest of the country’s progressives need to stop finger-pointing at all of “fly-over country” as if we are one big voting block of that “heartland vapidity”. Perhaps it makes them feel better, but just like the bigots point their fingers at the poor to elevate themselves; this snark just helps divide rather than unite all progressives across the country. (Everyone just has to feel superior to someone, it seems).
And those that call themselves “conservative” must condemn these actions across the land. I have known many Republican voters, some of my best friends have defined themselves as conservative, but they are not bigots. A true bigot knows nothing but bigotry but he clings to the legitimacy of an official institution like one of the two major American political parties. The time has come to cut these demagogues goose-stepping legs out from under them.
Kansans, work on gaining your self-respect again and sign up for to volunteer for the next progressive campaign.
And Republicans, purge your fearful, hate-mongers that are tarnishing what is left of your reputation.