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Thomas Frank

Krakatoa Kansas versus the Red Wave

August 7, 2022
by Peter Feinman
(MGM Studio)

In 2018, the President of the United States predicted a Congressional red wave. He was wrong.

In 2020, the President of the United States predicted a Congressional red wave. He was partially right but not enough to save him from the House Select Committee and DOJ indictment.

In 2022, everyone in the political chattering class predicts a midterm first term Congressional red wave for the out-of-power party.

Then came Krakatoa Kansas.

Now everything is jumbled. There is uncertainty (fear). What happens if the Republican Supreme Court victory negates the Republican Congressional victory?

Politics is not only local, it is personal. By that I mean, as individual human beings we respond most strongly to actions or events that directly affect us as individuals. Most recently, the price of gas an example. Back from when the draft was rare and we were not fighting a war, the draft was no big deal. Elvis being drafted could even be made into a movie. With the war in Vietnam, suddenly the draft affected every home. It became a big deal. That has not happened in any war fought by America since then.

With these thoughts in mind, let’s turn to the recent, surprising, and cataclysmic vote in Kansas about abortion.

WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS? (2004)

Here is what I wrote about Kansas on September 17, 2020:

The book What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank was another exercise in false expertise. The thrust of the book was to resolve the dilemma of why so many Americans vote against their economic and social interests. There had to be something wrong with these people since culture war issues trumped their economic and social concerns. It would be like supporting candidates who consistently favored tax cuts for the rich while giving you nothing. How could people be so dumb as to be shafted again and again while cheering the very people who exploited them? What’s the matter with these people?

The publication date of 2004 is most revealing. That election year was the last time and only time in the Baby Boomer Era a Republican presidential candidate won a majority vote. If it was written say a year before the publication date, then it was five years before Sarah Palin called for taking back the country and 13 years before the then long-time Democrat and Clinton supporter conned Republicans into thinking he cared about the little people the elitists fly over. To put those years in perspective, it means the Democrats had 13-year notice on the 2016 election and learned nothing during the interim except to pour more oil on the fire. Still it is questionable whether or not the Democrats have learned that there is nothing wrong with the people of Kansas except the way they have been treated by the elitists.

The issue raised in by the book was that condescending arrogant self-righteous Democratic elitists knew what was best for the little people of Kansas. The real problem is that those people are too dumb to know what is in their best interest otherwise they would vote Democratic. The harm that this elitist Democratic view has caused this country is not the subject of this blog. The issue is what was left unspoken then: what about when the know-it-all was Republican?

THE TEA PARTY AND SAM BROWNBACK

Sam Brownback (Federalist Society)

Enter Sam Brownback and the Tea Party now the Freedom Caucus of Insurrectionists Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan. Back then, the Tea Party had the words, it had the slogans, and it had the plans that would solve the problems of America. All it needed was the chance to put its money where its mouth was. Then everyone would see that they could not only talk the talk, they could walk the walk.

So Kansas Senator Sam Brownback decided that instead of running for reelection during the Tea Party tidal wave of 2010, he would run for governor. He won and immediately launched his Tea Party program through dramatic cuts in income taxes. Every Tea Party person knows that income taxes are the problem and cutting them if not eliminating them was the answer. Brownback was true to his word. His “red-state experiment” put into action the very slogans the Kansas voters had cheered during his campaign.

Unfortunately for Brownback, his tax cutting occurred in the real world and not in the political professional wrestling arena. The results in the real world were exactly as expected. The Kansas experiment resulted in a corresponding massive cut in state revenue. There was no economic boom to generate sufficient revenues to compensate for the lost revenue. In fact, the result was a financial disaster for the state.

Plunging revenues meant plunging funding available for government spending. Kansas budget shortfalls led to deficits which led to cuts in spending in areas that directly affected individual people. Schools figured prominently in the cutbacks. The thing about schools is that they are in every neighborhood. You do not need to listen to radio talk shows, watch cable talk shows, or listen to politicians to know when you very own neighborhood school is under attack.

It took time, but eventually Brownback’s Tea Party experiment was declared a failure. Tax cuts were reversed, vetoes were overridden, and taxes were increased. More or less there was peace in shire once again. There also was Democratic Party governor elected in 20218 in this Republican state.

Governors are different than Senators and talk show hosts. They have to put up or they are shut up. Governors have direct responsibilities. They act. They do things. Or sometimes they choose not to do things. Whatever the case, they directly impact the lives of the people in their state. They can’t get away with the airhead slogans of Representatives or Senators. Brownback showed he was not doing the job and the people could see and feel it. They may have been conned by the Tea Party slogans but now they had been burnt by the Tea Party actions. Time for a change. Time to vote a Democrat into office.

ABORTION AND KANSAS

The national media are very good at reporting on the words of the national bloviators. There is no doubt that professional political wrestling makes for great sport. If it bleeds, it leads. And that carries over into the political coverage as well.

Then Brownback occurs and all hell breaks loose. For years Republicans talked the talk of overthrowing Roe v. Wade. Republicans sold their soul to a candidate who promised to appoint the judges who would make it happen. The only Republicans who did not talk about reversing Roe v. Wade were the Supreme Court candidates themselves when they were speaking to the Senators individually or in committee. Then at last they had the opportunity to do what Republicans had talked about for decades. They did the Brownback and have reaped the whirlwind. The abortion tornado has ripped through the country, now first seen in Kansas.

ABORTION ARMAGEDDON: THE POST-ALITO APOCALYPSE

Way back on May 8, 2022, I conclude the blog with the above title with:

Remember what happened the last time the wishes of the Evangelicals were fulfilled? For decades, Protestant evangelicals had rallied for the prohibition of alcohol on a national level. It was not enough that alcohol sometimes was prohibited locally or on Sunday. It needed to be banned everywhere for all times … except for medicinal purposes, of course. Those efforts eventually paid off. That time it was not through the Supreme Court but in an amendment to the Constitution. Welcome to the Roaring Twenties. The amendment soon was reversed in abrupt fashion. The fervor of the religious could not overcome the wishes of the majority of the Americans. Once the law went into effect, everybody was confronted with its meaning and impact and eventually the majority prevailed.

Little did I know it would start to happen so quickly with abortion. Abortion isn’t whether or not Pelosi should go to Taiwan. It is not whether or not we should kill the Al-Qaeda leader or what should we do in Ukraine. Like Prohibition in the 1920s and the draft in the 1960s, it is national issue brought home on the local level, on the personal level. You do not need radio and TV talk show bloviators to see the impact of the abortion decision.

We know that primary turnout usually is small. This enables the extreme crazies more easily to be nominated. But sometimes, just sometimes, there are issues which touch individual people directly. So much so that it causes them to act. Alito cannot suffer the same fate as Brownback, but those who cheered him on can. Who knew that Kansas would become a cutting edge state in the 2022 elections?

RUSH TO LEGISLATE WITHOUT THINKING

Democrats now have a template that can be used against every Republican candidate at the state and federal level in the country. The question to be posed to Republican candidates is a simple one:

WHAT ABOUT THIS …?

In the rush to legislate, the Republicans never took the time to debate the different situations which may occur. Every day another one surfaces. The Republicans stand naked shorn of their slogans. States now are constantly reacting on the fly to the myriad of human circumstances which can arise given the absence of legal abortions in a state. There is no point in listing all the questions raised since the ruling. We are witnessing the live experience of how rabbis created the Talmud as they tried to relate biblical laws to the lives actually led.

The Republican state legislators abandoned their obligation to conduct such debates prior to the passage of the abortion ban legislators. Instead they are being confronted with what their decision devoid of intelligent thought means in the real world. If the Democrats are smart, those Republican legislators and candidates will be confronted every day of the campaign with “What about this ….”

“If we are going to ban abortion, there are things we’ve got to do to make sure the need for abortion is reduced, and that women are not endangered,” said Representative Nancy Mace, Republican of South Carolina.

“What are you going to do to reduce the need?”

Ask every Republican candidate. Every day.

Mace supports expanding access to gynecological and obstetrics care, contraception, including emergency contraception, and the right of women to travel to other states to get an abortion without fear of prosecution. Do you?

Ask every Republican candidate. Every day.

Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen learned he needed to clarify and elaborate his position. Suddenly he supports family and maternity leave program, a $2,500-per-child adoption tax credit, and improving access to birth control. Do you support that?

Ask every Republican candidate. Every day.

For years Republicans were able to get away with calling for the reversal of Obamacare without having an alternate. They do not have that option with state-level abortion.

If you doubt the power of Krakatoa Kansas consider this headline about insurrectionist Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano:

The Republican nominee for governor once called abortion his “No. 1 issue.” Now he says the next governor won’t control abortion policy (Philadelphia Inquirer, 7/28/22).

2022 will be remembered in part for the showdown between Krakatoa Kansas and the Red Wave.        

When Experts Are Wrong, Criticize the People: The Unmovable 42%

September 17, 2020
by Peter Feinman
The Warning Democrats Ignored

Imagine a hypothetical where the experts are wrong. Yes, I know how difficult that must be to grasp, but try. Suppose there is a disconnect between what actual people in the real world do and what the experts say the people should do. Naturally, the difference can’t be due to an error by the experts so it must be due to the people. They are too stupid to know what is in their own best interests. If only they would be guided by the wisdom of their betters, everything would be alright.

STRANDED ON THE MOON

I first became aware of the shortcomings of the experts at some corporate retreats/training programs. There we were, a group of strangers gathered together to learn from the experts.  As part of the training in one exercise we were divided into smaller groups of probably ten people each. The problem posed to us was that we were stranded on the moon (pre-Matt Damon on Mars) or at another training session in the desert. We were never stranded on an island after a three hour cruise.

The instructors then gave each group a list of 20 items. They asked us to rank the items based on their potential contribution to our survival. After a short time, each group presented its rankings to the collective group. Then the instructors compared our rankings to those of the experts.

One of the 20 items was a gun. I always ranked it last. I always was outvoted.  The experts also ranked it higher. On the moon, the gun’s recoil could propel someone across a crevice. In the desert, the sound of the gunshot might attract the attention of the search party.

At this point, I suspect some of you have realized the absurdity of the expert opinion in the real world. Even Hollywood knows such expertise flunks the reality test. In the real world, the gun represents power. Assuming the existence of alpha males in the group or mean girls/queen bees, the gun meant there would be a battle to control it and therefore the group. It would not be used to propel someone across a crevice or to attract searchers, it would be used to kill or threaten to kill someone. Maybe at some point there would be a struggle for the gun, the good guy would prevail, fire the last bullet to get the attention of the searchers just before they disappeared over the horizon, and get the girl but that was not what the experts had in mind. Interestingly, I never proposed giving one person the gun and another person the bullets but as I recall the exercise did not allow for such creativity. Anyway, the lesson learned was that people may be experts in the lab without knowing squat in the real world.

WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS (2004)

The book What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank was another exercise in false expertise. The thrust of the book was to resolve the dilemma of why so many Americans vote against their economic and social interests. There had to be something wrong with these people since culture war issues trumped their economic and social concerns. It would be like supporting candidates who consistently favored tax cuts for the rich while giving you nothing. How could people be so dumb as to be shafted again and again while cheering the very people who exploited them? What’s the matter with these people?

The publication date of 2004 is most revealing. That election year was the last time and only time in the Baby Boomer Era a Republican presidential candidate won a majority vote. If it was written say a year before the publication date, then it was five years before Sarah Palin called for taking back the country and 13 years before the then long-time Democrat and Clinton supporter conned Republicans into thinking he cared about the little people the elitists fly over. To put those years in perspective, it means the Democrats had 13-year notice on the 2016 election and learned nothing during the interim except to pour more oil on the fire. Still it is questionable whether or not the Democrats have learned that there is nothing wrong with the people of Kansas except the way they have been treated by the elitists.

THE WAR OF NORTHERN AGGRESSION

With Civil War, the smug superiority of the condescending arrogant self-righteous elitists really shines through. Everyone knows the war was really about slavery. Everyone knows the claim abut state’s rights was just a smokescreen for the real cause of maintaining slavery. Everyone knows that the proponents of the Lost Cause are really backwards subhuman racists who should not be welcomed in polite society.

Now try listening. Confederates call the war the “War of Northern Aggression.” Why? Maybe they assigned that name to the conflict because it genuinely expresses how they felt.  Just as we know from feminists that rape is about power and not sex, so we should consider that for the Confederates, the war also was about the violation of their home. In the Union, the exploits of Sherman and Grant are heroic, to the people who lived on the lands ravaged and devastated, the view was different. “Damn Yankees” is not a slavery-based approbation. It is a response to the mentally and morally superior people who are the elect of God (or the goddess) who never tire of telling Southerners that they are inferior people. Today there are two peoples it is still acceptable to demean and insult: Nazis and Southerners. And then the mentally and morally superior people wonder why such degenerates vote for Trump. Obviously it’s because they are racists who want to bring back slavery. Then the superior people pat themselves on the back and bask in their moral superiority.

THE POLITICALLY CORRECT AND 2016

By now there is no excuse for not knowing that Politically Corrected People (PCP) were more of a determinant than Putin in deciding the 2016 election. I am not going to repeat here example after example from previous blogs or from the ones I have been saving, where Trumpicans express their revulsion at the PCPs. If anything, that revulsion has intensified. Snowflakes in schools and colleges cringing at the mere sight of murals or sound of words! The toppling of statues! The declaration of superiority with the capitalized B in black! Truly the American world is coming to an end. Democrats have expressed no desire to celebrate America…such declarations would only antagonize the Woke who want to replace July 4th with 1619.

Trumpicans may not know anyone who died from Covid-19, but they all have stories to tell about another action against America taken by the PCPs, they seen them on Fox.

As it turns out, Trumpicans are voting for their self-interests but no one until the candidate who thinks with his gut actually listened and understood what those interests were. If people are voting against their economic and social interests perhaps something else is more important to them. Perhaps telling people over and over again they are backward, inferior, and consigned to the demographic dump heap of history isn’t an inspiring message. Perhaps telling people they have nothing to look forward to isn’t an inspiring message. Perhaps elevating people here illegally to the same level as those who are here legally isn’t an inspiring message.

If this country is to remain a single country, a big “if’, then it will become necessary for people to talk to each other. That is not possible now. Neither party is attempting to transcend the differences that divide us. Centrifugal forces rule the day. Thomas Friedman suggested Joe Biden should go on listening tours to Trumpican areas. Not preaching tours, nor haranguing tours, nor lecturing tours, but listening tours. Even Donald Trump tried a town hall with people who are not loyalists. Never again. It didn’t go well. He will never expand his base. Can Biden do better? Does his empathy and sympathy skills extend to people who oppose him? If he expects to govern then he will need to listen to the Trumpicans as well as to the Woke.