Re: Thomas Frank op-ed piece

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Carl says:

> > From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
> >
> > (Thomas Frank's new book "What's Wrong With Kansas" argues
> > implicitly that the Democrats lose elections because they are
> > identified with the wrong side of the "culture wars". This is the
> > same sort of position that Michael Moore argued in the Nation
> > Magazine in 1997 and that Richard Rorty put forward in "Achieving
> > Our Country". You get a more strident version of this in Todd
> > Gitlin's "The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by
> > Culture Wars". Moving directly into the enemy's camp, you get
> > Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s "The Disuniting of America: Reflections on
> > a Multicultural Society" and Jim Sleeper's "Liberal Racism: How
> > Fixating on Race Subverts the American Dream". Somehow, this kind
> > of economism that panders to white workers has been associated with
> > Marxism in some circles. Frank himself would probably describe
> > himself as a Marxist, but not on the Charlie Rose show--I don't
> > imagine. In any case, this has little to do with the outlook of
> > Lenin who urged that socialists act as a "tribune of the people".)
>
> I think _What the Matter With Kansas?_ is a great book, but Frank
> doesn't really provide any explanation for conservatives' amazing,
> Lamont Cranston-style ability to "cloud men's minds" and substitute
> preposterous cultural issues for economic concerns that have
> life-and-death significance. Why *are* so many Americans so easily
> gulled, so mulish, so spiteful, so effing perverse?  I was born in
> this country and have lived here for over a half century, but the
> basic weirdness of this place never fails to astonish me.

In my opinion, mulish, spiteful, and perverse reactionaries are a
great boon -- not to the Republican but the Democratic Party, which
would lose even more of its post-60s constituencies (organized labor
+ Blacks + social liberals + leftists who fall for a self-fulfilling
prophesy) if they did not exist, which is the conclusion that I got
from the Thomas Frank op-ed piece:

<blockquote> Of course, as everyone pointed out, the whole enterprise
[the Federal Marriage Amendment] was doomed to failure from the
start. It didn't have to be that way; conservatives could have chosen
any number of more promising avenues to challenge or limit the
Massachusetts ruling. Instead they went with a constitutional
amendment, the one method where failure was absolutely guaranteed -
along with front-page coverage

Then again, what culture war offensive isn't doomed to failure from
the start? Indeed, the inevitability of defeat seems to be a critical
element of the melodrama, on issues from school prayer to evolution
and even abortion.

Failure on the cultural front serves to magnify the outrage felt by
conservative true believers; it mobilizes the base. Failure sharpens
the distinctions between conservatives and liberals. Failure allows
for endless grandstanding without any real-world consequences that
might upset more moderate Republicans or the party's all-important
corporate wing. You might even say that grand and garish defeat -
especially if accompanied by the ridicule of the sophisticated - is
the culture warrior's very object.

The issue is all-important; the issue is incapable of being won. Only
when the battle is defined this way can it achieve the desired
results, have its magical polarizing effect. Only with a proposed
constitutional amendment could the legalistic, cavilling Democrats be
counted on to vote "no," and only with an offensive so blunt and so
sweeping could the universal hostility of the press be secured.
("Failure Is Not an Option, It's Mandatory," <em>New York Times</em>,
<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/16/opinion/16FRAN.html";>July
16, 2004</a>)</blockquote>

There is one point in the Culture War that leftists, unlike liberals,
might want to steal from conservatives: gun control.
--
Yoshie

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