Nineteenth posting - Kansas

I am reading a book called What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank. If you haven't heard of it, you can still probably guess that it's a full-on, liberal-slanted view of how the nation's midsection was co-opted by the Christian Right and corporate America to think and vote through morals- and values-tinted lenses, rather than through economics.

My parents used to (and still) say that people vote their pocketbooks. Good Democrats they are, but my parents -- like me -- have been sort of blindsided by what may or may not have been a conscious conservative Republican effort to put social issues into the forefront of political decisions (spun in "values" language). From the last election (the first that W won), it was amazing for me to hear so much about values and so many loaded social subjects (e.g., abortion, school vouchers, gay marriage), and such disproportionately little discussion on the economy and positive government.

One Amazon reviewer wrote of the book: "His most important point is how class resentment in Kansas (and similar states) has been turned away from economics and sidetracked into "values". This political process has a long history -- that's how fascism has always worked." The class resentment part is echoed in a series of New York Times articles on class in America. This country has always had a different and more fluid version of class than that of other parts of the world. A trap we seem to be falling into lately is that class definitions are becoming more and more material and less social. It's as if the "socio-economic indicators" are being overweighted to the "economic." The class piece doesn't worry me so much -- it's one of the great things about America that you're not born into or out of a social class -- but this class resentment through values is scary, and I'm afraid it is only getting worse. The book has its funny parts, particularly for those of you from the Midwest, and what you might consider less conservative areas of the Midwest... I highly recommend it.

On another note, a friend of mine in California, one with his finger on the pulse of great, great music, just sent me a CD that begins with one of the best theme songs from a TV show -- The Rockford Files. I played it this morning on my drive in to the office and couldn't stop smiling (http://www.timvp.com/rockford.html).

Rock on! NATHAN