by Thomas Frank
Reviewed by Cheryl Hammond
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“The poorest county in America isn’t in Appalachia or in the Deep South. It is in the Great Plains, a region of struggling ranchers and dying farm towns, and in the election of 2000 the Republican candidate for president, George W. Bush, carried it by a majority of more than 80%.” Thomas Frank goes on to examine the political shift to conservative Republicanism, where voters forego their best economic interests for wedge issues of abortion, gay marriage, and the right to conceal-carry.
Frank’s book was recommended by the Sierra Club for hosting a “Let’s Talk” group, not because the book covers environmental issues, but because the conservative right votes against protecting the environment and our health. Facts about global warming, the depletion of the oceans, the loss of aquifers, and all the other critical environmental messages can’t penetrate the mind “frame” when the messengers are perceived as latte liberals, arrogant and know-it-all, the class that “shakes its head disapprovingly at the God-happy hillbillies of the hinterland.”
Along the way, this book also illustrates the political growth of Kansas and the relationship between Missouri and Kansas. Today’s Kansan carries with him the authenticity of the “real American,” a distinction not automatically applied to the average resident of the East Coast, say. On the other hand, Kansas is also a symbol of “squareness”. As a tourist destination, it ranks dead last among the states. But a century ago, this stereotype of Kansas and its citizens was unknown.
Kansas was the home of free-soilers, socialists, and populists. The state was originally settled by eastern abolitionists to stop the “slave power” Missourians from moving west. Free-soil militias, Jayhawkers, fought a guerilla war with slaveholders along the Missouri border. The pro-slavery “border ruffians” from Missouri took over the Kansas legislature in 1855 and moved the capital to the Missouri border. They merely copied their home state statute book, crossing out Missouri and replacing it with Kansas, where required.
When it came to slavery, the new Kansas laws were even more extreme. Not only was slavery legal, but it was protected by law from criticism. Transporting a publication such as Uncle Tom’s Cabin into Kansas was a capital crime. Those who held doubts about slavery were deprived of the right to vote. Frank draws parallels between the new Kansas Conservatives, and the Missouri ruffians who supported slaveholders and fought for the wealthy planter class even though they themselves would never own slaves. Similarly, today’s new conservatives vote tax cuts for the boss while they themselves lose economic ground. The ruffians clung to an image of ordinariness and anti-elite while painting the abolitionists as know-it-all meddlers, just as modern conservatives today bash latte liberals. Frank’s analysis is in contrast to the legitimacy-building stance of many new conservatives who see themselves as latter-day John Browns.
Frank shows the decline of the Kansas aviation industry with the main union representing Boeing workers losing half its membership in Wichita between 1999 and 2002. Frank reported so many closed shops in Wichita when he visited in 2003 that you could drive for blocks without ever leaving empty parking lots. The farm towns are the same story. “Walk down the main street of just about any farm town in the state and you know immediately what they’re talking about: this is a civilization in the early stages of irreversible decay.” On the other hand, Garden City has a “winning formula for the new economy.” The powers here are Tyson, ConAgra, and Cargill Meat Solutions. No rugged individualists here, just cheap non-unionized labor brought from Mexico. Vast farms surround the slaughter houses growing water-hungry feed corn in these semi-arid plains, pumping water from the underground aquifers which will be dry in a few decades after collecting rainwater for millions of years.
Frank, a Kansas native, presents his arguments in a witty format, not sympathetic to certain highlighted conservative leaders. “The angry workers, mighty in their numbers, are marching irreversibly against the arrogant. They are shaking their fists at the sons of privilege… They are massing at the gates of Mission Hills, hoisting the black flag, and while the millionaires tremble in their mansions, they are bellowing out their terrifying demands ‘We are here’, they scream, ‘to cut your taxes.’”
For the United States to make environmental progress, social conservatives and advocates of environmental conservation must come together, so that we can all move forward on the issues of habitat destruction and fragmentation, catastrophic climate change, air and water pollution, loss of ecosystems, such as ocean fisheries, and all the other critical environmental issues.
What’s the matter with Kansas, How conservatives won the heart of America Metropolitan Books, copyright 2004.
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