Investigation of the mystery of the great plains

For many Democrats, the re -election of Bush in November 2004, remains a mystery. Because it is above all in the account of America of employees, workers, farmers that we must put this new victory. In the plethora of analyzes that try to understand and, more often, deplore the reversal of an electorate historically acquired to the Liberals, a book is distinguished. Considered by some as one of the best political trials of the last ten years, What’s the Matter with Kansas ? is indeed characterized by a tone and an approach that break with the style of classical political analysis. The argument of Thomas Frank, journalist engaged on the left and whose notoriety is well established, is not really new. It is a question of showing how the Conservatives managed to recruit an increasing number of voters in a fringe of the population which nevertheless constitutes the first victim of their policy. But the author’s merit, and undoubtedly one of the reasons for his success, comes from what he offers, through the study as meticulous as caustic of the case of Kansas, a striking exemplification of this paradox. Far from abstract theoretical speeches, Frank is working to give shape to “ The great reaction “, This radical conservative push which has gradually swept away the progressive past of this state of the heart of the Middle West.

A century ago, in fact, Kansas was at the forefront in the struggle for social and economic rights, known for the power of its unions, sometimes even mocked for its political radicalism. By systematically establishing a parallel between yesterday and today, Frank thus shows that the only thing that the inhabitants of Kansas have preserved from this hectic past, is this taste for excess today turned towards resolutely different horizons. The desire for revolt is there, but while it once fed the struggle for the abolition of slavery, it now feeds the fight against the right to abortion. There is the “ Mystery of the great plains “:” Here, the logic of dissatisfaction grows in a single direction: on the right, still right, and always more right … The state is in rebellion, ready to take up arms. Simply these weapons are directed very far from the culprit ».

Because the culprits, for Frank, are the large companies, the agro-food industry or the ultra-liberal economic policy of the government who continue to cut the protections of small farmers and have gradually plunged the State into the economic and social slump. But for the inhabitants of Kansas it is not. The culprits are rather the “ liberal “, This urban and arrogant elite, depicted by conservative essayist Ann Coulter, and which would aim to impose, through media transformed into propaganda tools, an ideology contrary to the values of America” authentic ». The reasons for the crisis are not material or economic, but cultural and moral, just like the crisis itself. There is therefore no point in incriminating the economic elites, large absent from conservative discourse. Besides, isn’t the economy “ natural »» ? And wealth, like poverty, do they not depend on God ?

From the Frank’s investigation, an amazing portrait gallery, two observations and two questions. First observation: despite surprisingly different motivations and sociological profiles, conservative voters have in common to keep fights which no longer find echoes or in the camp of moderate republicans: it is an immense campaign to fight against abortion which constituted in 1991, the starting point of the conservative wave. And this fight remains topical because there is little chance that the Supreme Court one day returned to the 1973 judgment which authorized it (Roe v. Wade). However, this is what the Conservatives understood. Not content with having evacuated the economic of the legitimate field of action of politics, they specialized in the defense of lost causes, constantly fueling resentment and a logic of victimization which constitute their electoral fuel. But, second observation, this rhetoric of handling cultural utopias does not turn empty: it indeed corresponds to an organization of flawless terrain, whose highlight is undoubtedly the most interesting point of the book. Thus of the strategic battle which led the conservative wing of the republican party, initially minority, to take power over the moderates. Establishment, recruitment strategies, relays in the economic and associative world, have gradually allowed them to constitute a real militant base while carving out a place of choice in the world of local elites. Thus, under the same banner, opportunistic politicians, crooked financiers and, for the most part, small employees sure of contributing to the realization of the property by helping their next by all means.

Frank does not hide his persistent misunderstanding in the face of the strength of this movement which leads these citizens to vote, with a passion and a sincerity that are difficult to dispute, “ against their own interests ». But perhaps this misunderstanding is due to the simplicity of the initial presupposition: we are, according to Frank, in the presence of a class struggle, but of a masked class struggle in the guise of cultural war, of a “ Reverse class struggle “Consisting in the unprecedented alliance of” small peoples And great capital, at the expense of the first, for the benefit of the second. However, are cultural and symbolic issues really reducible to economic issues ? Would it be enough that citizens “ understand »The relationship of the conservatives and the big business, so that, finally delivered from their blindness, they enter the right to electoral path, that is to say vote for a Democratic party which also defends the right to abortion and homosexual marriage ? So far nothing allows you to say it. But counting on such a revelation to reverse the trend could justify the economy of a substantive reflection on democratic institutions and practices, on the way of representing the diversity of a decidedly complex electorate.

Article published in The life of ideas (paper version), n ° 4, July/August 2005.