What's the Matter with Liberals?

Thomas Frank's 2004 opus, What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America is, perhaps, the single greatest takedown of the US right I've ever read. It put so succinctly what I was even then suspecting about the basic bait-and-switch driving American conservatism, but didn't know quite how to put into words. What Frank has to say is nothing short of poetic:

Old-fashioned values may count when conservatives appear on the stump, but once conservatives are in office the only old-fashioned situation they care to revive is an economic regimen of low wages and lax regulations. Over the last three decades they have smashed the welfare state, reduced the tax burden on corporations and the wealthy, and generally facilitated the country’s return to a nineteenth-century pattern of wealth distribution. Thus the primary contradiction of the backlash: it is a working-class movement that has done incalculable, historic harm to working class people.

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 the elections are won. This is a basic earmark of the phenomenon, absolutely consistent across its decades-long history. Abortion is never halted. Affirmative action is never abolished. The culture industry is never forced to clean up its act.

The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off. Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. Vote to make our country strong again; receive deindustrialization. Vote to screw those politically correct college professors; receive electricity deregulation. Vote to get government off our backs; receive conglomeration and monopoly everywhere from media to meatpacking. Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization. Vote to strike a blow against elitism; receive a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining. 

I remember reading this book back in the 2006 to 2007 time frame. I had been disillusioned with leftism since the late 1990s, and had flirted with right wing thought for a while. It was the above paragraphs that pierced the conservative illusion for me, and began the process of reconciliation with left leaning politics.

In the meantime, though, I still can't help but notice that the mainstream left commits a comparable deception of its own. While I haven't yet read Frank's recent takedown of the democrats, Listen Liberal - or Whatever Happened to the Party of the People, I can't help but wonder if it wouldn't have its own paragraphs of truth bombs like the ones above? Would they read something like this:

Populist progressive values may count when social justice activists make their appeals to government or campus administrations. But once in office, the only measurable policy implementation we see are reflections of the pre-molded cultural sensitivities and social mores of upper middle class college girls rather than reflections of the needs of the working poor whose misery they're using to morally legitimize themselves in the first place. 

While the so called progressive left hand-wrings over trigger warnings, microaggressions and will absolutely dig in their heels and fight to the last in their insistence that it's okay to hate white males because of their gender and the color of their skin, conservatives have smashed the welfare state, reduced the tax burden on corporations and the wealthy, and generally facilitated the country's return to a nineteenth-century pattern of wealth distribution almost completely unopposed. Thus the primary contradiction of the resistance: it is an upper middle class movement that has done nothing to ameliorate the incalculable, historic harm done to working class people.

The leaders of the resistance may talk Marx, but they walk corporate. Social justice may "matter most" to voters, but it's back to business as usual, perhaps with a few more women and visible minorities wearing the suits, once the elections are won. This is a basic earmark of the phenomenon, absolutely consistent across its decades-long history. Neocon petrodollar wars are never ended. Regressive tax laws are never repealed. Wall Street is never forced to clean up its act.

The trick never ages; the illusion never wears off. Demand gender equity on corporate boards, ignore the historically unprecedented gap in wealth and power between the executives and their workers. Demand that the state crack down on online trolls in the alt-right and in the manosphere, ignore the need to crack down on corrupt corporate lobbyists and the pork barrel military industrial complex. Demand that celebrities and professionals with "marginalized identities" be able to sue their bosses over offensive comments, ignore the abysmal wages and benefits that condemn millions of workers to poverty. Demand massive fines for not using a "genderqueer" college student's preferred pronouns, ignore the fines that should be assessed to corporate maleficence ranging from dodging water and air pollution standards to fraudulent accounting practices.  Demand fluffy, feel-good pseudo academic initiatives like "decolonization" and "indigenization", ignore the spiraling costs and debt loads imposed on students who will spend the best years of their lives earning degrees not worth the paper they're printed on in the job market. While conservatives have ushered in a social order in which wealth is more concentrated than ever before in our lifetimes, in which workers have been stripped of power and CEOs are rewarded in a manner beyond imagining, the only protest to be had out of the so called liberals and progressives merely insists that these same CEOs be women and people of color.

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