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"Thomas Frank turns his eye on what he calls "the Great Backlash" - the popular revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment. Marshaling public outrage over everything from improper flag display to un-Christian art, the backlash has achieved the most unnatural of alliances, bringing together blue-collar midwesterners and Wall Street business interests, workers and bosses, populists and right-wingers." "In asking "What's the matter with Kansas?" - how a place famous for its radicalism came to rank among the nation's most eager audiences for backlash bunkum - Frank, a native Kansan and onetime conservative, seeks to answer some fundamental American riddles: Why do so many Americans vote against their economic and social interests? Where's the outrage at corporate thievery? Why do illusory slights to the Ten Commandments trouble some people more than do the prospects of falling wages or monopoly power or the destruction of their very way of life?" "Frank answers these questions by examining the conservative revolution in his home state, a place that has lately drawn the astonished attention of the world for its unlikely skirmishes over abortion and homosexuality. In Kansas, as in so much of mid-America, Frank finds, society's losers are even more committed to the Republican agenda than are society's winners. The state's low-wage slaughterhouse workers and its struggling farm towns today far outdo the state's real-estate millionaires and its prosperous telecom execs in dedication to a political program that can only wind up hurting them." "What's the Matter with Kansas? is a portrait of an upside-down country where blue-collar patriots recite the Pledge while they strangle their life chances; where small farmers cast votes for an economic order that will eventually push them off the land; and where a group of frat boys, lawyers, and CEOs has managed to convince the world that it speaks on behalf of the common People."--BOOK JACKET.
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Previews available in: English
Edition | Availability |
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1
¿Qué pasa con Kansas?: Cómo los ultraconservadores conquistaron el corazón de Estados Unidos
Apr 06, 2008, A. Machado Libros S. A.
paperback
8477741999 9788477741992
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2
What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
2007, Picador
in English
1429900326 9781429900324
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3
What's the matter with Kansas?: how conservatives won the heart of America
2005, Henry Holt
in English
- 1st Owl Books ed.
080507774X 9780805077742
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4
What's the matter with Kansas?: how conservatives won the heart of America
2004, Metropolitan Books
in English
- 1st ed.
0805073396 9780805073393
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5
What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
2004-06-01, Henry Holt And Company
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6
What's the Matter With Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America
2004, Metropolitan Books
in English
- 1st ed.
0805073396 9780805073393
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Book Details
Edition Notes
Includes bibliographical references (p. 253-294) and index.
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Work Description
One of "our most insightful social observers"* cracks the great political mystery of our time: how conservatism, once a marker of class privilege, became the creed of millions of ordinary Americans
With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank turns his eye on what he calls the "thirty-year backlash"—the populist revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment. The high point of that backlash is the Republican Party's success in building the most unnatural of alliances: between blue-collar Midwesterners and Wall Street business interests, workers and bosses, populists and right-wingers.
In asking "what 's the matter with Kansas?"—how a place famous for its radicalism became one of the most conservative states in the union—Frank, a native Kansan and onetime Republican, seeks to answer some broader American riddles: Why do so many of us vote against our economic interests? Where's the outrage at corporate manipulators? And whatever happened to middle-American progressivism? The questions are urgent as well as provocative. Frank answers them by examining pop conservatism—the bestsellers, the radio talk shows, the vicious political combat—and showing how our long culture wars have left us with an electorate far more concerned with their leaders' "values" and down-home qualities than with their stands on hard questions of policy.
A brilliant analysis—and funny to boot—What's the Matter with Kansas? presents a critical assessment of who we are, while telling a remarkable story of how a group of frat boys, lawyers, and CEOs came to convince a nation that they spoke on behalf of the People.
*Los Angeles Times
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