The misdirected rage of middle America

Jarvis Ryan reviewed What’s the Matter with America? The Resistible Rise of the American Right by Thomas Frank
26 September 2005
Article excerpt and image from: www.australianreview.net/


"... So how is it that the Republicans—the traditional champions of big business—have become the preferred party of so many working-class Americans? This is the question Thomas Frank sets out to answer in What’s the Matter with America?
BACKLASH POLITICS

Frank’s starting point is what he calls the Great Backlash, a 30-year reaction against the gains achieved by the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 70s. The backlash has profoundly redefined the national political debate, particularly traditional notions of class, causing a fundamental realignment in political loyalties. The focus of debate has shifted away from economics (wealth redistribution, public versus private ownership, and so on) towards culture and social values. The Republicans have retained their commitment to free market economics but transformed their image, using the language of populism to recast themselves as the party of the little guy, defending the values of ‘ordinary Americans’ against a decadent ‘liberal elite’ which they claim has lodged itself in key posts in the media, the courts, government bureaucracies, schools and universities. The leaders of the backlash charge this elite with presiding over a ‘moral decline’ in American society.

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But those who vote Republican in the hope of preventing the nation’s moral decline are being hoodwinked, Frank argues: moral values are an elaborate Trojan horse disguising the Republicans’ real agenda of aggressive free market capitalism.

The leaders of the backlash may talk Christ, but they walk corporate. Values may ‘matter most’ to voters, but they always take a backseat to the needs of money once elections are won … Abortion is never halted. Affirmative action is never abolished. The culture industry is never forced to clean up its act (p. 6).

Instead the Republicans harness the anger whipped up by the backlash and channel it towards pro-business policies ... " more>>