January 26, 2005
Five `Must Reads' for All Progressives:
Five Book Reviews
By Floyd Johnson
Of all the books I read last year, these five stand out as most highly recommended:
- What's the Matter with Kansas, by Thomas Frank, Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt & Company, NY, 2004
- The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy, by T.R. Reid, Penguin Press, NY, 2004.
- The Republican Noise Machine: Right Wing Media and How it Corrupts Democracy, by David Brock, Crown, 2004.
- The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, by John Micklethwait & Adrian Wooldridge, Penguin Press, NY, 2004.
- The Working Poor: Invisible in America, by David K. Shipler, Knopf, NY, 2004
Thomas Frank's well documented
What's the Matter with Kansas (Metropolitan Books, 2004) dissects the history of Kansas - from its abolitionist beginnings, its early days of hot bed socialism (and Eugene Debs), progressivism, and practical unionism, to its currently solid Republican red state status. Frank presents the political transformation of Kansas as a microcosm of what is happening across America today - red states vs. blue states - and why the working poor are voting against their own economic self interests and indirectly for big business and the very corporations that are making their personal economic lives miserable (i.e., the grain consumers and meat packers
ADM, Tyson, Cargill, and
Tyson who control the grain growing farmers of Kansas).
One of the more interesting aspects of this book are Frank's observations about the sources for the almost unbridled hatred now shown toward `liberals.' He observes that conservatives now attack `liberalism' as the source of all the problems that are now confronting the `working man.' Today, Republicans control the Executive, both houses of Congress and most Statehouses. But right wing spokesmen continue to excite the masses by telling them they are the victims of `liberal' domination in our press, our schools, and our society at large. Big business is back in the saddle, taxes are falling, regulations are crumbling, profits are rising, and the very wealthy are enjoying the very best years of their lives since the 1920s. But still the right wing cannot quit the charade - they must have a rhetorical adversary to do battle with on behalf of the poor and `victimized' working man. That enemy is now defined as our decaying `culture' and the `liberals' who created that culture. Even wealthy, more moderate Republicans appear to be embracing the same "family values, anti gay, pro guns, and pro life" slogans of the extreme right. They have learned that `moral values' is a brand that sells - that preaching righteousness is the key to getting elected. Once in office, however, Republicans do nothing about the so called moral decay. Hollywood continues to make lurid movies that people pay to see, millions still watch Sex and the City and Real Sex on cable, Texas cowboys still frequent topless bars and porno shops, and hookers in Las Vegas and New Orleans still find customers for their wares - all the while jobs are still being outsourced offshore.
Frank points out that ordinary working people are right to hate the culture they live in, that they are right to feel they have no power over that culture. But most importantly, Frank points out that the populace is wrong about the forces that are creating our cultural problems. It is consumer capitalism - and capitalism alone - that drives and produces the products that ordinary people continue to buy even as they complain about moral decay. But the conservative right continues to insist that our culture is the way it is because `liberals" have made it so. Right wing think tanks, the foundations that fund them, and the right wing media have developed a well coordinated message for generating public politicized anger. By diverting people's resentment away from its natural source (i.e., their own miserable economic situation), right wing strategists have separated class from economics and created a Republican-friendly buzz word for disgruntled working Americans - the hated `liberal.' Ironically, ignoring one's own economic self-interest when voting may seem dumb and even suicidal to most liberals - but when viewed from a philosophical perspective it may seem to be an act of Christian self-denial for many working people at the bottom of the economic ladder to vote for a strident `pro-life and pro-family values' candidate rather than the candidate who promises them more job protection and better health care. But it is also ironic that these same voters do not seem to be surprised or disappointed when their chosen `family values' candidate once elected does nothing about the `decaying culture' but instead continually votes for big business interests and the very wealthy as jobs and profits move offshore.
Even now as mainstream media conglomerates slink to the right to appear more `fair and balanced,' the best selling right wing critics go from shrill to shriller, from charges of `bias' to Coulteresque accusations of left wing `lying' and conspiratorial `indoctrination.' At the same time, the best selling right wing media icons Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter continue to ignore (and not discuss) the very real economic problems that confront ordinary Americans as they constantly bash the dreaded `liberals.' Fueling the cultural backlash and attacks on `liberals' is an age old theme - `anti-intellectualism.' Many unschooled ordinary working people resent what they consider to be the arrogant (`we are smart - you are dumb'), snobbish ("we are good - you are bad"), elitist ("we know best") attitudes of some intellectuals. Almost a cliché now, many ordinary Americans now regard these so-called `intellectuals' as effeminate, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, NY Times-reading, tax-hiking, government-expanding elitists from socialistic colleges back east. Rush Limbaugh claims in his book (edited by David Brooks) that he (alone?) is the champion of the plain people, of good old red state America. He states that he is the enemy of the haughty `liberal elite' under whose tyranny America now suffers.
Frank concludes his astute, but occasionally depressing, book by observing that liberalism has ceased to be relevant to huge portions of its traditional constituency because the Democratic Party has abandoned its base. They have abandoned farmers, union members and workers at large in pursuit of something Terry McAuliffe and Bill Clinton called `New Democrats' - young affluent, white-collar professionals who are liberal on social issues. Courting large corporations to obtain large campaign contributions became more important than courting labor unions and workers. New Democrats stand rock solid on certain social issues such as pro-choice, for example, but on the other hand they make endless concessions to corporate America on welfare, NAFTA, labor law, Social Security, privatization, deregulation, and the rest of it. Like conservatives, liberals have taken economic issues (`class warfare') off the table. And this is the stupid strategy that has dominated New Democrat thinking since the seventies. As EJ Dionne puts it, both parties - Republican and Democratic - have now become vehicles for corporate America and upper-middle-class interests. The old class-based language of the left has disappeared from the universe of the respectable. But while Democrats were falling asleep at the switch, Republicans were busy building their own class-based language and making a populist appeal to ordinary workers. Democrats were giving those same voters - their traditional base - the big brush off. It was pure suicide.
The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the End of American Supremacy, by T.R. Reid (Penguin Press, 2004) should be a `must read' for every American because we live in an ego-centric nation with largely parochial views of the rest of the world. And while George Bush was napping his way through classes at Yale, events were unfolding in Europe that promise to change the entire power structure of the geopolitical world. It may be time for George and all Americans to wake up. `Welfare state' is a term that we Americans often use derisively. Europeans, however, wear the label of `Welfare State' proudly - they take care of their people - all of them. Today, in the `united' Europe, medical care is universal and virtually free. Doctors still make `house calls' (in the UK). And while the US spends 13% of its GDP on health care, Europe spends only 6.7% of GDP (in the UK) ranging up to 9.4% (in France). All this while poverty rates in European countries hover at 7% and the poverty rate in the US is at 20%. Any citizen can attend any university in Europe, again virtually free (except the UK), if they qualify academically. Europeans do more than just talk about `family values' - they use tax revenues to pay for things critical to every family. Most European countries subsidize day care for young working moms. Sick leave and family leave are mandatory. Five week annual vacations are the norm. The 35 hour work week is standard in France and Italy. And pensions are exceedingly generous - 70-80% of last salary in many European countries. The European Union has also established numerous rigid rules and regulations that American companies must now comply with if they want to do business in the European market with its 500 million people and a GDP equal to our own. Just ask Jack Welch the highly regarded CEO of GE - he found out the hard way in his failed attempt to acquire Honeywell that the European Union has its economic act together. The Union blocked the GE Honeywell acquisition and Jack Welch retired with a touch of disgrace. And Europeans are buying American companies with great and familiar brand names as well. Look around you - Daimler bought Chrysler, not the other way around. European owned companies are all over the place in America and as the value of the dollar falls (relative to the Euro) many more American assets will be bought by European companies. Europe has become an economic powerhouse. George Bush, the Neo Cons, and the United States ignore `old Europe' at their peril.
The Republican Noise Machine: Right Wing Media and How it Corrupts Democracy, by David Brock (Crown, 2004) is a truly frightening book for what it portends for the media in America and where Americans will get their news. David Brock was once a journalist for Reverend Moon's Washington Times and was the attack dog darling of right wing journalism. He trashed the likes of Anita Hill and both Clintons. But, he repudiated all of his past efforts in his confessional, Blinded by the Right. In this blistering exposé, Brock mounts a systematic assault on what David Brooks called, "a dazzlingly efficient ideology delivery system that swamps liberal efforts to get their ideas out" - the right wing media. Brock analyses in brutal detail how the powerful and admittedly partisan right wing media delivers information and misinformation with more attention to propaganda than fact. Blue-state Americans may read this book. Red-state Americans probably will not. And, there's the rub. The divide between red and blue Americans will continue to grow as each group seeks out only the news they `want to hear' on the radio, television, and the web. A study of audience reading and listening habits by the Pew Research Center revealed that most Democrats get their news from the major television networks, PBS and NPR, but that many (if not most) Republicans get their news from the Fox News Channel and AM talk radio. If the right wing media continue to become merely outlets for Goebbels-like propaganda, openly and blatantly promoting a single ideology without regard for the facts, then all Americans are at risk. As Brock puts it, "Democracy depends on an informed citizenry. The conscious effort by the right wing to misinform the American citizenry - to collapse the distinction between journalism and propaganda - is an assault on democracy itself." This book contains a powerful warning for all Americans, including the mainstream press.
The Right Nation, by Micklethwait and Wooldridge (Crown, 2004) is a reasonably `fair and balanced' record of the rise of conservatism from 1952 to 1988. The book accurately lists and describes the many think tanks and independent research groups formed by the conservative right (and the foundations that fund them) to influence policy. The history is comprehensive, the analysis of public mindsets is excellent, and the authors' views for the future of the conservative movement are extremely interesting and thought provoking. It is worth reading if only for the historical background alone. Small quibbles: The authors omit, or only obliquely mention, the pivotal roles that the dirty tricks of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove played in Republican elections. In the media section, the authors praise the Fox News Channel, Charles Krauthammer, and Brit Hume, and suggest that the NY Times is guilty of shoddy journalism. Micklethwait is the US Editor for the Economist magazine and Adrian Wooldridge is the Washington correspondent for the Economist. If this book is just a bit Republican-friendly, it is understandable given that Wooldridge undoubtedly does not want to lose his gate pass to the White House. It is still an important read.
The Working Poor: Invisible in America, by David Shipler (Knopf, 2004) looks at the `forgotten America' where "millions live in the shadow of prosperity, in the twilight between poverty and well-being." These are working people for whom the American Dream is out of reach despite their willingness to work hard. Struggling to simply survive, they live so close to the edge of poverty that a minor obstacle, such as a car breakdown or a temporary illness, can lead to a downward financial spiral that too often proves impossible to reverse. David Shipler interviewed many such working people for this book and his profiles offer an intimate look at what it is like to be trapped in a cycle of dead-end jobs without benefits or opportunities for advancement. From Shipler's Introduction: "Most of the people I write about in this book do not have the luxury of rage. They are caught in exhausting struggles. Their wages do not lift them far enough from poverty to improve their lives, and their lives, in turn, hold them back. Nobody who works hard should be poor in America." This guided tour through the lives of the working poor shatters the myth that the America is a country in which prosperity and security are the inevitable rewards of hard work, a place where people can `pull themselves up by their bootstraps.' Shipler is a former reporter for the NY Times and the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Arab and Jew.
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Floyd Johnson describes himself as a depression-born, unreconstructed FDR-Democrat. He moved to Phoenix from London in 1975 after residing several years in Brussels and London. He received a Masters Degree from Thunderbird - The Garvin School of International Management in Glendale in 1981. After 35 years in the computer industry, he was a used and rare book seller in Peoria, Arizona until his retirement in 2002.
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