Gulf between working class and intellectual left

"Why don't they listen to us? (Speaking to the working class)," asks a progressive academic. "In his intriguing book What's the Matter with Kansas?, Thomas Frank argues that culture now trumps economics in the political sphere and offers as explanation yet another, if more sophisticated, version of false consciousness. "People getting their fundamental interests wrong is what American political life is all about," he writes on the very first page. "This species of derangement is the bedrock of our civic order; it is the foundation on which all else rests." American politics is, he insists, a panorama of madness and delusion worthy of Hieronymous Bosch: of sturdy blue-collar patriots reciting the Pledge while they strangle their own life chances; of small farmers proudly voting themselves off the land; of devoted family men carefully seeing to it that their children will never be able to afford college or proper health care; of working-class guys in Midwestern cities cheering as they deliver up a landslide for a candidate whose policies will end their way of life." More.