The Wrecking Crew by Thomas Frank

[Joanne98]

One of our favorite political books of the last few years is "What's the Matter with Kansas," by Thomas Frank.

You can read out 2-part 2004 BuzzFlash interview with Thomas Frank here.

With a fierce, lacerating style -- that also has room for empathy -- Frank got to the core of the oddity of working class stiffs voting against their own economic and community interests. Using his home state of Kansas as the basis for his sociological/political analysis, Frank wrote a reflective, insightful, often droll tome about the phenomena of people who vote against their own interests.

There is a lot of detailed portraiture of such abandoned and confused citizens in his book, but he blames the Democrats as much as the Republicans, because the Democrats have largely abandoned the issue of class and economic justice, not to mention the growing disparity between the rich and middle class -- what's left of it -- in the United States.

Now, he is coming out with a new book that dissects the devastation of the right wing coup that has reached its apotheosis in the Cheney/Bush administration, after beginning its executive branch and congressional trajectory with the election of Ronald Reagan.

Coming from Frank, it should be a scintillating read.


Advance preview from the Chicago Tribune:

Thomas Frank is a brainy, droll Kansas native who has his doubts about capitalism and conservative populism, and can infuriate both Democrats and Republicans. In the August Harper's, he torches the latter with "The Wrecking Crew."

The journalist/historian with a PhD from the University of Chicago argues that Republicans have betrayed virtually all their principles during the Bush years, personified by the unequivocally outrageous bribery and fraud masterminded by conservative lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Frank contends that put conservatives in charge of government and they inherently behave differently: "Its leaders laugh off the idea of the public interest as airy-fairy nonsense; they caution against bringing top-notch talent into government service; they declare war on public workers. They have made a cult of outsourcing and privatizing, they have wrecked established federal operations because they disagree with them, and they have deliberately piled up an Everest of debt in order to force the government into crisis. The ruination they have wrought has been thorough; it has been a professional job."

Frank details the roots of what he deems a total betrayal of ideas and suggests that a John McCain election victory will only cement "Industry Conservatism" made up of "lobbyists and other angry, righteous profiteers." Ouch.

-- James Warren for the Chicago Tribune

From the Publisher, Metropolitan Books:

From the author of the landmark bestseller What’s the Matter with Kansas?, a jaw-dropping investigation of the decades of deliberate—and lucrative—conservative misrule

In his previous book, Thomas Frank explained why working America votes for politicians who reserve their favors for the rich. Now, in The Wrecking Crew, Frank examines the blundering and corrupt Washington those politicians have given us.

Casting back to the early days of the conservative revolution, Frank describes the rise of a ruling coalition dedicated to dismantling government. But rather than cutting down the big government they claim to hate, conservatives have simply sold it off, deregulating some industries, defunding others, but always turning public policy into a private-sector bidding war. Washington itself has been remade into a golden landscape of super-wealthy suburbs and gleaming lobbyist headquarters—the wages of government-by-entrepreneurship practiced so outrageously by figures such as Jack Abramoff.

It is no coincidence, Frank argues, that the same politicians who guffaw at the idea of effective government have installed a regime in which incompetence is the rule. Nor will the country easily shake off the consequences of deliberate misgovernment through the usual election remedies. Obsessed with achieving a lasting victory, conservatives have taken pains to enshrine the free market as the permanent creed of state.

Stamped with Thomas Frank’s audacity, analytic brilliance, and wit, The Wrecking Crew is his most revelatory work yet—and his most important.
http://www.buzzflash.com/store/reviews/1211

Should be good.

[DemReadingDU]

1. I bought the Harpers magazine

just to read this article. it is quite fascinating

[Doctor_J]

2. Leave it to the Trib to let a winger like Warren review this book

why is it that all the wingers become literary/film critics when a liberal writes a book/makes a movie?