You can do better (politics)

I just finished “What’s the Matter with Kansas” which is a relief because the text was occasionally dense and more often dry but I knew what I was getting into. The other reason it was great is because it ended smarter and better than I thought it would.

For all intents and purposes it’s a book about how the conservative wing of the Republican Party ousted the moderate’s in Kansas state government. It talks largely about how the conservative wing are so focused on wedge issues that good economics went out the window. It spends a large amount of time showing how religious fervor on the great planes had been hijacked and used to push a no-government policy when it comes to economics that only really serves to screw the small time guys (the religious people) who were the rank-and-file of the Republican Party out there.

But he made an important point, only in the final chapter which I think makes it stronger. I’m not going to write the whole thing, but the phrase that caught me was “The Republicans didn’t so much win Kansas as the Democrats abandoned it.”

When we think of “liberals” as Thomas Frank (the author) points out, we think of celebrities from all stripes commenting on how we need to save animals, or not make fun of ugly people, how we should be vegetarians and save whales. And how ultimately, the democrats have courted this mentality very heavily for the past two decades, leaving the factory workers of the heartland with no help and less of a voice in federal government. Frank notes how we shouldn’t begin to wonder why the people, looking for someone to speak to them choose those who at least spoke to their religious convictions as opposed to...nothing.

Democrats aren’t bad people, and neither is being someone who enjoys a leftist government, but the Democrats elected to office have been a fucking sham. If its not Clintonian “triangulation” or Nafta, its this idea that anyone gives a fuck about how someone feels. The Blue Dog movement isn’t filling the gaps for those of us who want to have a government who wants to fix social problems, not moral ones.

To me there’s a better way to just about everything, and you need only take an issue into account to realize that any ass on the bus can figure out a better way to ride the bus. Congress is madness and that’s true, but we need to start holding people to the fire. If you allow yourself to be ignored, then you invite this level of terrible government. Shrinking the government is blaming the wrong malfunction.

When you look to government and see corruption, we should see laziness in ourselves for not voting with good intentions.

Government went sour in the minds of the people and we’re loosing the American mindset. We’ve gotten fat and lazy, both physically and mentally. Start local, and you can demand better. The movements that gave us the greatest leaders started years before they were realized on a national level. They were born in the backrooms in bars, at kitchen tables and today they’ll likely be brought to life on-line, finding a trans-national audience all the more quick. The tools of the masses are allowing bigger jobs to be started and executed sooner. All we need to do now, is develop the minds of the masses to remember how to take pride in themselves, in their cities and state, and most of all in country and government.