“Pity the Billionaire,” the new book by Harper’s Magazine columnist Thomas Frank, surveys the politics of the last three years to determine why the American right survived and thrived after an economic crash caused by a 30-year love affair with the so-called free-market that it procured. Salon speaks to Frank by phone. —ARK
Salon:
Early in the book, you describe the moment in the spring of 2009 when free-market economics had been so thoroughly discredited that Newsweek could run a cover story proclaiming, “We’re all socialists now.” What happened? Why did that moment dissipate?
I saw that cover so many times [at Tea Party events]. For these people, that rang the alarm bell. I think the AIG moment [when the bailed-out insurance behemoth used taxpayer relief to dole out huge bonuses to its executives] was in some ways the high point of the crisis, when [the politics] could have gone either way. There was this amazing public outrage, and that for me was the turning point. Newsweek had another cover, “Thinking Man’s Guide to Populism,” and I remember this feeling around the country, that people were just furious. Somehow the right captured the sense of anger. They completely captured it. You could say they had no right to it, but they did. And one of the reasons they were able to do it was because the liberals were not interested in that anger.
I’m speaking here of the liberal culture in Washington, D.C. There was no Occupy Wall Street movement [at that time] and there was only people like me on the fringes talking about it. The liberals had their leader in Barack Obama … they had their various people in Congress. But these people are completely unfamiliar with populist anger. It’s an alien thing to them. They don’t trust it, and they have trouble speaking to it. I like Barack Obama, but at the end of the day he’s a very professorial kind of guy. The liberals totally missed the opportunity, and the right was able to grab it.
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there is no left in the US…only right and hard right…with the exception of the likes of Sanders…how do you affect change when corporate influence is not just allowed but bloody guaranteed…
The right has succeeded for so long because it struck directly at the heart of the average American who is kept scared, made stupid, and encouraged in his/her inate bigotry, greed, and intolerance.
By Karon Reiter, December 29, 2011 at 9:20 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
The liberals that now reside in Washington are not MY liberals, they’re not my mother’s liberals - there are NO FDR liberals left in Congress except for Kucinich and Sanders. These new liberals are the old moderate republicans which wouldn’t be so bad if it were not for the fact that they have no fire up their ass, no fight left in them to get done what they “say” they believe in - which makes me think that they and Obama have gotten exactly what they want - that they are just one of the heads of the 2 headed political monster that rules Washington.
my 5 y o great-great grandson tells me that the Democrats have been
bailing out Republicans, and vice versa for, at least 2 hundred years. he
opines dat dat wld continue as long as most people still think dat dat is
not so; i.e., dat it all cheques and balances out as the constitution
commands! tnx
I want to pick up a minute on something the interviewer said which I believe is a kind of “false question” and Tom Frank agrees with the premise of that question. Here it is—the suggestion of ““a cognitive withdrawal from the shared world.” The interviewer goes on to say: “It seems like the modern digital communication revolution encourages this. ‘A cognitive withdrawal from the shared world’ — that sounds like a description of the Internet ...” etc.
There are certain aspects of digitalized information that perhaps encourage a “withdrawal from the shared world,” but seems more to me like an “emotional” or a “psychological” withdrawal. This latter withdrawal is fully as dangerous as a “cognitive” withdrawal, but on the other hand, the
Internet seems to me to be such a strong “cognitive connector” that connections outweigh withdrawals.
Not much is known about that very essential emotional trait “empathy,” but awareness of its importance is increasing rapidly. And empathy seems to result from realizations of inter-personal connectedness. The Internet would seem to be a very powerful connector based on its outstanding achievements during its relatively short history. The emergence of near-simultaneous “revolutions” at various places would seem to be a clear example, for they represent the very opposite of “withdrawal from a shared world.” “Occupy Everywhere!” would seem to be the surprising culmination—a sense of innate
universality perhaps never before so widely recognized in human history.
By Dr_Snooz, December 28, 2011 at 5:51 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
The Right captured the rage because the “left”, ie:
the Democratic Party, offered half-hearted reform
that really wasn’t reform at all. Instead, it was
more of the same. It was a health “reform” that was a
giant give-away to big pharma and the health insurers
and a certain senator in Nebraska. It was a financial
“reform” that had all its teeth plucked out before it
even went to committee, whereafter it was really
watered down. It was a $29 trillion bailout to the
banks and a “stimulus” package of less than $800
billion for the rest of us. This “stimulus” was
comprised too much of tax cuts, and thus, was not in
any way stimulative, but rather, just another
giveaway to billionaires while giving the rest of us
a royal shafting. It was a TARP that bought dud
mortgages from the banks, but still seems to allow
them to foreclose on the poor saps living in those
homes. The voters in this country are ignorant and
stupid, but they figured out that the Dems, once
again, sold them out. Remember that this lot of
scoundrels was elected in a landslide following the
collapse with the hope that they would genuinely fix
things. When government has become toxic and all you
can do with it is rotate in a new group of criminals
every four years, is it really surprising that the
party that advocates drowning government “in the
bathtub” is winning hearts and minds?
Anyway, all this assumes that we are still living in
a democracy. Which we are not. The oligarchs in this
country merely tell Congress what policies to
implement and then tell the media to insist that we
the electorate somehow want it.
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By kmdyson, December 29, 2011 at 7:59 pm Link to this comment
there is no left in the US…only right and hard right…with the exception of the likes of Sanders…how do you affect change when corporate influence is not just allowed but bloody guaranteed…
Report thisBy berniem, December 29, 2011 at 3:54 pm Link to this comment
The right has succeeded for so long because it struck directly at the heart of the average American who is kept scared, made stupid, and encouraged in his/her inate bigotry, greed, and intolerance.
Report thisBy Karon Reiter, December 29, 2011 at 9:20 am Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
The liberals that now reside in Washington are not MY liberals, they’re not my mother’s liberals - there are NO FDR liberals left in Congress except for Kucinich and Sanders. These new liberals are the old moderate republicans which wouldn’t be so bad if it were not for the fact that they have no fire up their ass, no fight left in them to get done what they “say” they believe in - which makes me think that they and Obama have gotten exactly what they want - that they are just one of the heads of the 2 headed political monster that rules Washington.
Report thisBy balkas, December 29, 2011 at 7:58 am Link to this comment
my 5 y o great-great grandson tells me that the Democrats have been
Report thisbailing out Republicans, and vice versa for, at least 2 hundred years. he
opines dat dat wld continue as long as most people still think dat dat is
not so; i.e., dat it all cheques and balances out as the constitution
commands! tnx
By gerard, December 28, 2011 at 7:17 pm Link to this comment
I want to pick up a minute on something the interviewer said which I believe is a kind of “false question” and Tom Frank agrees with the premise of that question. Here it is—the suggestion of ““a cognitive withdrawal from the shared world.” The interviewer goes on to say: “It seems like the modern digital communication revolution encourages this. ‘A cognitive withdrawal from the shared world’ — that sounds like a description of the Internet ...” etc.
Report thisThere are certain aspects of digitalized information that perhaps encourage a “withdrawal from the shared world,” but seems more to me like an “emotional” or a “psychological” withdrawal. This latter withdrawal is fully as dangerous as a “cognitive” withdrawal, but on the other hand, the
Internet seems to me to be such a strong “cognitive connector” that connections outweigh withdrawals.
Not much is known about that very essential emotional trait “empathy,” but awareness of its importance is increasing rapidly. And empathy seems to result from realizations of inter-personal connectedness. The Internet would seem to be a very powerful connector based on its outstanding achievements during its relatively short history. The emergence of near-simultaneous “revolutions” at various places would seem to be a clear example, for they represent the very opposite of “withdrawal from a shared world.” “Occupy Everywhere!” would seem to be the surprising culmination—a sense of innate
universality perhaps never before so widely recognized in human history.
By Dr_Snooz, December 28, 2011 at 5:51 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)
The Right captured the rage because the “left”, ie:
the Democratic Party, offered half-hearted reform
that really wasn’t reform at all. Instead, it was
more of the same. It was a health “reform” that was a
giant give-away to big pharma and the health insurers
and a certain senator in Nebraska. It was a financial
“reform” that had all its teeth plucked out before it
even went to committee, whereafter it was really
watered down. It was a $29 trillion bailout to the
banks and a “stimulus” package of less than $800
billion for the rest of us. This “stimulus” was
comprised too much of tax cuts, and thus, was not in
any way stimulative, but rather, just another
giveaway to billionaires while giving the rest of us
a royal shafting. It was a TARP that bought dud
mortgages from the banks, but still seems to allow
them to foreclose on the poor saps living in those
homes. The voters in this country are ignorant and
stupid, but they figured out that the Dems, once
again, sold them out. Remember that this lot of
scoundrels was elected in a landslide following the
collapse with the hope that they would genuinely fix
things. When government has become toxic and all you
can do with it is rotate in a new group of criminals
every four years, is it really surprising that the
party that advocates drowning government “in the
bathtub” is winning hearts and minds?
Anyway, all this assumes that we are still living in
Report thisa democracy. Which we are not. The oligarchs in this
country merely tell Congress what policies to
implement and then tell the media to insist that we
the electorate somehow want it.