> Whatever is going on between Chuck0 and
> John Lacny, I don't know and don't care. I
> think the topic is too important to get lost in
> personal bullshit.
Yep. And what's going on, frankly, is that Chuck Munson thinks that by making an argument contrary to his, I am attacking him personally. Talk about backlash tropes!
Anyway, I'm not going to rehash in detail my thoughts on Tom Frank's book, which I have given before. But my differences with it are along the lines of what Chuck Grimes is talking about: Frank gives equal weight to all of the "cultural" elements of backlash, when in real life some are more important than others. In the Kansas context, Frank gives special emphasis to abortion, and how the Operation Rescue siege of Wichita in 1991 led to the rise of the hard right among Kansas Republicans. Now, abortion is a very important element in all of this, and it's especially good at roping in Catholics as well as fundie Protestants, all of whom come out with their voters' guides from the pro-life league at the polls. People literally vote on the abortion issue alone even in piddling local races for borough council or prothonotary. So gender and male supremacy are an important part of backlash, too. But race trumps even this.
Abortion is important, and so is guns. But as I've mentioned before, gun fetishism is really all about race, too, particularly fear of black crime, and a residue of white-settler culture where the armed herrenvolk defended kinder, kuche, kirche from potential assault from the dusky savages.
Go onto a message board populated by right- wingers and bring up racism or police brutality. I guarantee that nothing else, absolutely nothing, will be taken as personally by its inhabitants and produce as much of a visceral reaction. This is because racism is not just an attitude. It is a social FACT in which millions of "rank-and-file" whites have a material stake in the form of access to jobs, housing, and informal networks of myriad kind, and I mean even among white workers. If only the "sectarian left" among whites recognizes this (along with every black person apart from Armstrong Williams and Clarence Thomas, apparently), then the rest of the left among whites is not worth calling a left at all (paging Carrol Cox!). Race is not just "a problem" among many. It is the central fact of the US political economy, co-equal with class.
Is this "calling people racist"? Well, yes, it is. If there weren't a material-ideological component to racism, it would be overthrown tomorrow -- and capitalism along with it. Does that mean I go around shouting at people to "stuff it, you racist fuck!"? No -- or at least only in extreme circumstances. Objective analysis of the facts at hand is distinct from agitprop aimed at reaching a mass audience. But if you don't understand the real motivations behind people's thinking -- including especially the thinking of backward people -- you won't come up with good agitprop. And the fact remains that white racial anxiety lies behind about 90% of "backlash" thinking, even if it's not at the forefront 24/7/365. And it will be the hardest attitude of all to extirpate.
- - - - - John Lacny http://www.johnlacny.com
People of the US, unite and defeat the Bush regime and all its running dogs!