- 4 hours ago
We had this conversation with Thomas Frank in September, 2008. The subject was his just-published book "The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule".
The Republican Party had been behaving badly for quite some time. The Supreme Court's 2010 "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission" decision defining money as "speech" and corporations as "persons" made everything worse … much worse. American Citizens must forcefully act to reclaim our faltering, failing Democracy.
The Republican Party had been behaving badly for quite some time. The Supreme Court's 2010 "Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission" decision defining money as "speech" and corporations as "persons" made everything worse … much worse. American Citizens must forcefully act to reclaim our faltering, failing Democracy.
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00:02Welcome back. I am Paula Gordon, Bill Russell. We're delighted to be with Thomas Frank.
00:07A lot of people would know your name and associate it with a very widely read book called What's the
00:11Matter with Kansas?
00:13I might also mention even more people know me as the Big Hurt. I used to hit home runs for
00:18the Chicago White Sox.
00:19Oh, well, that would do it, wouldn't it? I'm going to change the subject from baseball for just a moment.
00:25Actually, I want to stay with that Big Hurt theme. How has the reception been for this book in places
00:31like Kansas and Plain, Virginia?
00:35I wanted to say there's a book that he has written since What's the Matter with Kansas called The Wrecking
00:40Crew.
00:40That's what we're talking about, The Wrecking Crew.
00:41Yeah, yeah.
00:43I was in Kansas the other day and there's a large audience and they seem very appreciative.
00:49Did they, forgive me, I'm going to use this word once, resonate with the message?
00:57Absolutely. Of course.
00:59Listen, let me tell you, The Wrecking Crew is about conservative misrule.
01:03About, you know, these agencies thrown into reverse, these incompetent people put in charge.
01:06This sort of massive wave of corruption and scandal, you know, the lobbying, all that stuff.
01:11I have yet to find anybody, I've been on this book tour, did I tell you six weeks I've been
01:17on this book tour?
01:17I have yet to have anybody stand up for that system and say,
01:22No, no, that system rocks, that system delivers, that system is, you know, that's great stuff.
01:26You've got it all wrong, Frank. You know what they say instead?
01:29Those people are liberals. What you're talking about?
01:32Yeah. George W. Bush? Liberal.
01:35Ronald Reagan, you know, if he did what you say he did, liberal.
01:39No.
01:40Yes.
01:40I just, this happened to me just the other day.
01:42I was in a radio debate, I don't even remember what city I was in.
01:45I believe it was in Chicago.
01:47And there was a, look, you have a lot of guys who really believe in conservative principles
01:52and they see what the Bush administration is doing and it's just, it's cognitive dissonance.
01:56This was their man.
01:57Four years ago they worshipped him, they bought little bronze statuettes of him to put on their, you know, on
02:01their desk.
02:02And look what he's done. Look what he's done.
02:04And their only response is to say, he is liberal, he is liberal, he is not me, he is the
02:12other.
02:12But that's part of the game that they're playing.
02:14Yeah, it is.
02:15It's opportunism.
02:17Well, we've got, you know, we're sitting in the middle of a political campaign
02:19where you've got the candidate of the Republican Party running against his party.
02:23Yeah.
02:24And the party applauding him for running against the party as if somehow or other Republicans, I mean, they're new
02:31zombies.
02:32There was?
02:33New zombies.
02:33Somebody took over their minds and bodies.
02:34Yeah, not the old zombies, we're the new ones.
02:35The new ones, uh-oh.
02:36Did you see Mitt Romney's speech at the Republican convention two weeks ago?
02:39Romney said, Washington, D.C. isn't conservative, it is liberal.
02:43And he said, and it's been liberal for 30 years now.
02:45Now, I have to ask you a question right here.
02:48Because some of what is at the heart of classic propaganda, and you go to the book, you look under
02:55P, propaganda, is you take words, and you twist them, and you make them something else.
03:00This is pure Orwell.
03:02It's Orwell, but it's also, and then you say it louder and louder and louder and louder.
03:06I'm saying, Alice in Wonderland was a wimp.
03:11Aren't you telling me that this is all very cynical manipulation of a very eager-to-be-fooled audience?
03:20Oh, yeah, well, cynicism is the name of the game here.
03:23I mean, this book could have been called Adventures in Cynicism, or An Economy of Cynicism.
03:28I mean, you've got people that, you know, running against their own party is just the start of it.
03:33These are people who have ruled Washington, D.C. for 30 years.
03:36And, you know, there's a biography of Bush that came out a few years ago, and they called him the
03:39Rebel-in-Chief.
03:40He's supposed to be a rebel against the Washington, D.C. order.
03:43The dude is the president, and his party controlled Congress at the time, and they had for many years.
03:49And before him, there was his dad. And before him, there was Ronald Reagan.
03:52Who was his surrogate dad.
03:53Yeah, and to try to understand them as rebels against the system, which they have themselves built.
04:01Which is the same, forgive my sake, lie that McCain is doing.
04:05He's saying, well, I will never.
04:06He has slightly better claim to that.
04:08Well, 91%. He's got a 9% better claim.
04:13Yes, he does.
04:14But there are a few real things that he did that Bush would never have done.
04:19But, I mean, we'll give him credit for that later on.
04:22But he regrets them all.
04:22But that's just the beginning.
04:24That kind of cynicism is just the beginning.
04:25You've got to remember, these people come into office with this deep hatred of the liberal state,
04:30and these extraordinarily cynical views of the liberal state, where they, in their mind, government is not a legitimate institution.
04:40The market, man, that is legitimate.
04:43That's natural.
04:44That's civil society.
04:46That is the real world.
04:47Government is this imposition.
04:48Free market.
04:50Not any market.
04:51By the way, we're talking about cynicism.
04:52I mean, one of the things that they do is toss concepts and constituencies overboard when it becomes convenient.
04:59You know, there is no loyalty to anything except for business.
05:02And the concept of the free market has always been sort of the greatest fig leaf of them all for,
05:07you know, the needs of business,
05:09the needs of the upper class in America.
05:11It's, oh, that's just the free market in action.
05:13That's just, globalization is what did that to you, buddy, you know, come on.
05:17And then, of course, when they need to be bailed out, then it's like, you know, forget the free market.
05:22Even that goes, you know.
05:23There's nothing free about the free market.
05:26We socialize the debts, we socialize the losses, and we privatize the profits.
05:31I mean, this is...
05:32That's right.
05:33Oh, do that again.
05:34It's not an exaggeration.
05:35It's not original.
05:36You can find it anywhere.
05:37It's still good.
05:38It's in What's the Matter with Kansas.
05:40That's a well-known...
05:41I mean, and I quote it from the Wall Street Journal back then, you know.
05:44And, you know, we're doing it.
05:45We're right smack in the middle of another one of those exercises.
05:48And history, you're a historian.
05:49I mean, do you think they're going to make the former CEO of Merrill Lynch give back his $100 million,
05:53you know, severance package or whatever it was?
05:56I doubt it.
05:56Two things.
05:57I want to go back.
05:58This notion of free market is simply incorrect.
06:01The market has never been free.
06:03Well, it's a utopian scheme.
06:05It can never happen.
06:06It's utopian, and it wouldn't work anyway.
06:07Yeah.
06:07And the closer we get, the more obvious that is.
06:09We're not even close because it's not a free market.
06:12It is a manipulated market.
06:14It's essentially crony capitalism, which is not the same as a free market.
06:19The closer you get to a free market, the worse.
06:21Ask the people in Saipan.
06:22Exactly.
06:22The closer you get to where management has all the power, the workers have none.
06:27I mean, because a union is also supposed to be a violation of the free market.
06:29So if the workers get together and organize, oh, the free market's gone, got to bust that up.
06:34So, you know, the closer you get to a free market is the closer you get to sort of pure,
06:38you know, 19th century misery.
06:42Yes.
06:42Which I describe in the book, there's been some experiments in this, even on American soil.
06:47And I mentioned Saipan.
06:49It's this island in the western Pacific where they...
06:51Which is our territory.
06:52Our territory.
06:52It is part of the United States of America.
06:53But when they signed up to be part of the U.S., they got to control their own immigration law
06:57and their own minimum wage and a couple other things.
07:00And they take this great deal that they got from us.
07:03But it's part of the U.S.
07:03So there's no tariff duties on anything they manufacture there.
07:06And they show it around to various manufacturers in the world.
07:09And next thing you know, I mean, they've got this sweatshop gulag there just built overnight.
07:14You know, they import workers.
07:16They work for very low wages.
07:18The stuff gets sent to America.
07:20It's made in the USA.
07:21When the workers get out of line or complain or do anything wrong, boom, back.
07:25Back to their home country.
07:26And, of course, the workers have borrowed money to come there.
07:29So they don't dare, you know, step out of line.
07:32And this has become the entire economy on the island.
07:35It started with the garment factories.
07:37But now it's like, you know, the hotels, the, you know, the resorts.
07:42Even the newspapers run on workers brought in from other countries.
07:46And people have domestic servants.
07:48Even, you know, welfare recipients on Saipan have servants in their house because they can pay them.
07:54I think it's less than a dollar an hour.
07:55By the way, they could.
07:56This is all, their lobbyist was a fellow named Jack Abramoff.
08:01Yes.
08:03His job was to keep the federal government from coming in and applying our horrible liberal rules to them.
08:09And now that he's out of the picture, we did it.
08:11Before we go to Jack the Ripper.
08:15Can we call him Jack the Ripper?
08:16I don't know.
08:16It just occurred to me.
08:17I'm sorry.
08:18Saucy Jack.
08:19Saucy Jack.
08:21You say that the management is in charge on Saipan.
08:25And it's important.
08:25The piece that you didn't quite add that I would like you to add and continue to explore is that
08:32they also control the government.
08:33Yeah.
08:34So it isn't just the guys who run the businesses.
08:36The business community runs the government.
08:40That's right.
08:40And the government.
08:41By definition, because it's ethnically defined.
08:44The citizens there are the indigenous islanders.
08:48And these workers have no chance to become citizens.
08:52The workers aren't citizens.
08:52No.
08:53They can't become citizens.
08:54They can't vote.
08:55They can't serve on juries.
08:57Don't you call that at least indentured servitude, if not slavery?
09:01It is, I think, by definition.
09:03What it is by definition is debt bondage, which is a form of indentured servitude.
09:07So, yeah.
09:08That's what it is.
09:10And it's pretty rugged.
09:12I had thought until I read your book that Burma was rapidly becoming the model for what these
09:18people have in mind.
09:20Burma?
09:20Burma.
09:21Mylar.
09:22Look at the way the government operates there.
09:25It has a lot of the same similarities.
09:27You essentially have a plutocracy, and it does what it bloody well pleases.
09:32It has essentially alienated itself from the rest of the world, so there's not much interference.
09:38And in a way, that sort of describes what these folks want to do.
09:43But Saipan, it's closer to home.
09:46Saipan's up there.
09:47Well, it's part of the U.S.
09:49It's part of the U.S.
09:50But it's like Dubai or something like that.
09:52Or what Iraq was supposed to be.
09:54In the free market paradise.
09:56Right.
09:57Yeah.
09:57Is it possible that we could ask these people to move there?
10:00You mean the people who created it, who now are overseeing our demise?
10:06Sorry about that.
10:07I want to go back.
10:08It's easy to mock this because it's just so patently absurd.
10:12Yeah.
10:12If we weren't smack in the middle of it.
10:14You said earlier, you were talking earlier about the liberal state.
10:17And liberal has been so thoroughly abused in the language that I think most people are clueless
10:22about what you mean when you say a liberal state.
10:24And having had a real good time in this segment, let's start there again when we come back
10:28in a moment.
10:29We'll be serious.
10:31We'll be serious when we come back.
10:31That's fine.
10:32That's fine.
10:32We'll be serious when we come back.
10:33That Frank will address liberal and the liberal state when in a moment we come back.
10:37Bill Russell, I, Paula Gordon, we trust you'll be with us.