As a harbinger of the looming change, the Wall Street Journal on Line has a new columnist! Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas has joined the stable of right wing frothers with a new take on my favorite topic: what's the matter with being smart?
According to the general clucking of the national punditry, my 2004 book – "What's the Matter With Kansas?" – is supposed to have persuaded Barack Obama to describe the yeomanry of Pennsylvania as "bitter" people who "cling to guns or religion or . . . anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations." Mr. Obama's offense is so grave that the custodians of our national consensus have elevated it to gatehood: "Bittergate."
Mr. Frank disavows any knowledge of Senator Obama's drawing his criticism from "Kansas". He does note, however, that:
The media flurry kicked up by Mr. Obama's gaffe powerfully confirms an argument I actually did make: That as they return again to the culture war, what the soldiers on all sides are doing is talking about class without actually addressing the economic basis of the subject.
Fearful of addressing the real issues in the class wars we are fighting, we see the re-emergence of the same distracting euphemisms that have dominated the political terrain for the past 30 years.
Consider, for example, the one fateful charge that the punditry and the other candidates have fastened upon Mr. Obama – "elitism."
Designed to anger and disgust those who don't know who to blame for their failing economic status, and told by both parties that the key to economic growth is "education", their lack of training, or relevant skills, eats at their bowels. Who to blame, then. Why not make the educated the target of the have-nots?
It is a stereotype you have heard many times before: Besotted with latte-fueled arrogance, the liberal looks down on average people, confident that he is a superior being. He scoffs at religion because he finds it to be a form of false consciousness. He believes in regulation because he thinks he knows better than the market.
Drawing a line between the religion of the market, and their current condition is blocked by hurling "insults" at those who propose changing the dynamic that has created the current economic mess.
"Elitism" is thus a crime not of society's actual elite, but of its intellectuals. Mr. Obama has "a dash of Harvard disease," proclaims the Weekly Standard. Mr. Obama reminds columnist George Will of Adlai Stevenson, rolled together with the sinister historian Richard Hofstadter and the diabolical economist J.K. Galbraith, contemptuous eggheads all. Mr. Obama strikes Bill Kristol as some kind of "supercilious" Marxist. Mr. Obama reminds Maureen Dowd of an . . . anthropologist.
Control the debate by demonizing the the other side with labels that target the deepest fears of the audience.
Ah, but Hillary Clinton: Here's a woman who drinks shots of Crown Royal, a luxury brand that at least one confused pundit believes to be another name for Old Prole Rotgut Rye. And when the former first lady talks about her marksmanship as a youth, who cares about the cool hundred million she and her husband have mysteriously piled up since he left office? Or her years of loyal service to Sam Walton, that crusher of small towns and enemy of workers' organizations? And who really cares about Sam Walton's own sins, when these are our standards? Didn't he have a funky Southern accent of some kind? Surely such a mellifluous drawl cancels any possibility of elitism.
It is by this familiar maneuver that the people who have designed and supported the policies that have brought the class divide back to America – the people who have actually, really transformed our society from an egalitarian into an elitist one – perfume themselves with the essence of honest toil, like a cologne distilled from the sweat of laid-off workers. Likewise do their retainers in the wider world – the conservative politicians and the pundits who lovingly curate all this phony authenticity – become jes' folks, the most populist fellows of them all.
This has always been the most confusing aspect of the strategy, for me. How can the wealthiest, most powerful people in a society that is on it's knees, tar the opposition with a label that should signify hope?
If Barack Obama or anyone else really cares to know what I think, I will simplify it all down to this. The landmark political fact of our time is the replacement of our middle-class republic by a plutocracy. If some candidate has a scheme to reverse this trend, they've got my vote, whether they prefer Courvoisier or beer bongs spiked with cough syrup. I don't care whether they enjoy my books, or would rather have every scrap of paper bearing my writing loaded into a C-47 and dumped into Lake Michigan. If it will help restore the land of relative equality I was born in, I'll fly the plane myself.
I'll navigate, load the bomb bays, and provide the thermos of hot French Roast.