There is a new documentary movie inspired by Thomas Frank’s book What’s the Matter with Kansas: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America. It is a liberal film maker’s attempt to understand how nice rural people who are being badly hurt by neocon economic policies can nevertheless vote for neocons because of their profound opposition to abortion, gay marriage, and gun control. The tone of the movie, like the title to the book and the movie, suggest a subtheme: “Why can’t they be smart like us?”
But what is so smart and energetic about us? We too are being badly hurt by neocon policies, and yet we can not organize or mobilize ourselves to stop them. We are trapped by our own addiction to material comforts, and by our firm dedication to our liberal principles of supporting women’s choice on abortion, the right of gay’s to a same sex marriage, and of the removal of guns from our midst. Like the people of Kansas, we have not been willing to forgo or to compromise our cherished principles in order to join with, organize, and mobilize together with the millions of Americans who are also being badly hurt. All of us, Republican and Democrat, left and right, women, men, gays, straight, born-again religious, and agnostic, hunters and pacifists, are being driven into poverty and the dark ages by the 5000 or so extremely wealthy persons with their banks and insurance companies who maintain neocon policies, and control our government and our lives.
The most graphic current example is our own health care: We cannot have the security of decent health care because we will not give up our principled stand on abortion, and neither will the people of Kansas. (Meanwhile, we are manipulated by the media of the rich to prevent us from “following the money” to see who benefits, and from full recognition of the fact that we will be forced to give 27% of our health dollar to CEO salaries and bonuses, and fined by the IRS if we do not)
Health care is but the tip of the ice berg. These ruthless, cruel neocon forces, determined to extract every last penny of profit from us, have the tools to use against us here at home, that they use against people in the Middle East: Torture, Guantanamo type “detention centers,” remote controlled drones, a West Point plan to use the Army for domestic “riot control,” and authoritarian police worse than those of Copenhagen who recently arbitrarily arrested 2000 climate control advocates.
So far, we have allowed these few ruthless cruel neocon persons to use their mainstream media to divert our attention from what they are doing to us, while they provide us only with unimportant news of fires, rapes and murders, and lies about the “terrorists” abroad who “have weapons of mass destruction.”
We, millions and millions of us, have an interest in the common good, in preserving civilized life, a sustainable planet home, self government, a stable monetary system, and a humane economy. We have a common interest in preserving civilization itself, and in our common protection from the cruel arbitrary Law of the Jungle.
With all of this at stake, let’s reconsider our strategy and our own mind-sets.
First off, an observation: There are some issues that democracy cannot handle when proponents and opponents are equally divided. Every person who has ever served as a city councilman knows that one must avoid considering dog leash ordinances like the plague. Keep that issue off the agenda! It is a divisive and emotion laden issue. One half of the voters will storm city hall in support, and the other half will storm city hall in opposition. One’s city will not be able to consider fire and police problems, planning, zoning, and other issues of concern to all. With this in mind let’s consider the national hot button issues.
Compared to the millions and millions now hurt by neocon policies, how many women need an abortion? A few thousand per year? Are there no other options, such as the “morning after pill?” Women for thousands of years have had wisdom to control conception by their own means. If civilization falls and we are ruled by the law of the jungle, where will women then get their abortions? Is it wise to allow ourselves to be driven into poverty and the dark ages because we cannot make common ground with those who oppose abortion?
Compared to the millions and millions now hurt by neocon policies, how many gay persons need a marriage ceremony? A few thousand? If civilization falls, where will gays then get the sanction of a civil society for a same sex marriage? Considering what is at stake, are there not other options such as a simple private partnership contract that could suffice?
Do we really want gun control? Or should we too want an AK 47, or the most powerful gun we can manage, and a bazooka type rocket? If we are all armed to the teeth, the authoritarian police and the Army captains implementing the West Point plan for controlling our domestic resistance will think twice before they rush in to arrest us. If remote CIA controlled drones are threatening to bomb our houses because we are not going along with the program, we would very much like to have a bazooka.
As Frank’s book and the movie depict, there were and are populists in Kansas who resent the power, wealth, corruption; and arrogance of Wall Street bankers and insurance companies, perhaps as much or more than we do. Our only hope for avoiding the precipitous fall of our civilization is to make common cause with the people of Kansas, motivate, mobilize and fight our common neocon enemies together.
So it is with the abortion issue, same sex marriage, and gun control. We must keep them off the agenda! These are divisive issues of less importance than the gigantic common survival problems that we all face.
The very rich use their media to stoke these emotion-laden, divisive issues, to keep us fighting and divided, and to keep us from realizing that they are ruthlessly victimizing us for their own profit. They also dominate and control our elected Republicans and Democratic officials and use their media to create and exaggerate differences in social programs and philosophy, to examine endlessly the “strategy” of candidates, in order to divert our attention from the reality of their domination and oppression of us.
To deal with our overwhelming common problems of our fragile terminally ill capitalism, global warming, peak oil, wars abroad, torture, and our economic victimization, we must put aside those issues affecting relatively few persons, so that we can deal with the common good.
We can:
- Talk to “the people in Kansas” with humility and the realization that we are as victimized as they are. Join with them. Organize and Mobilize together with them.
- Stop work, have sick outs, sit down strikes, work stoppages for a day or for a week, or for whatever it takes.
- Stop buying, stage strategic boycotts of companies and buyer’s strikes of products.
- We can march with pots and pans and ridicule our elected officials who give us “excuses” for their betrayal of us. We can run against them ourselves.
We face as much or more oppressive authoritarian power as our Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence. They then pledged and gave their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to implement its principles. We can do no less. We must. The Enlightenment itself is at stake. Our material well-being, our security, our freedom, and our self-governing democracy are at stake.