Intro: is the Right really irrational?
Section: Politics
Liberal journalists too casually surmise that the people Thomas Frank described in his recent book, What's The Matter With Kansas, operate either irrationally or stupidly. Article after article assumes them to be fanatical and deluded, blindly absorbing Neocon nonsense wrapped in the flag or "family values" or fake religious ideology. When Frank was in Austin during his book tour I asked if his observations might indicate the growth process of a pragmatic grassroots movement seeing itself eventually dictating policy to the mean-spirited elite it enabled at the moment. This occurred once before in history. Frank didn't disagree.
If what really motivates Frank's getting-poorer Kansans is less the cultural nonsense they spout than their drive to consolidate their political/economic position based on pessimistic but probably accurate assessments of how influence and power operate in the United States; if they predict their strength to be enhanced more through the dismantling of democracy than through its reinforcement; if they perceive rank-and-file Democrats as incapable of standing against their own elitist leadership much less corporate power in general; then these neo-Christian soldiers of the Midwest, and elsewhere, might be characterized as narrowly and ruthlessly self-serving -- but hardly as irrational.
For the Left to stereotype the Right as irrational and stupid seems to me -- well, frankly, irrational. And dangerous. Reaching out to cynical pragmatists using religion as a facade, with economic education and "correct" religious doctrine and fake love and other patronizations, makes us appear naive and inept. What the rank-and-file Right needs from us in order to jump ship is (1) our wild-eyed declaration of corporate independence, (2) our rabid refusal to relinquish the Bill of Rights, and (3) our reckless embracement of citizens victimized by racism and sexism -- not because the Right values them, but because we claim to.
I think Thomas Frank's data tell us that the way to heal our country is to wrench the Democratic Party from corporate sycophancy -- to build an organization clearly a better alternative than Tammany. This is the crucial problem -- not the Right's irrationality, or stupidity.
Thanks for listening.
David Weiner
Dept. of Sociology
Austin Community College
Austin, Texas
(512) 345-8319