Here is one of Frank's tales:
"In 1888 the town of Ulysses, in far western Kansas was engaged in a bitter contest with a nearby hamlet to become the seat of government for Grant County. In order to secure this prize, believed in those days to guarantee eternal prosperity, Ulysses issued $36,000 [in bonds]. The official story was that the money would go for capital improvements ...." [p. 85] However, there are stories of gunmen being hired to scare off the competition.
In order to make a long story short, long after winning the capital seat, those bonds came due in 1908. By that time, the town of Ulysses had fallen from fifteen-hundred residents to about forty. So, rather than try and come up with the $84,000 now due on the town's debt, the citizens threw the debt collector from the collecting bank from out east in jail, i.e. a single bank out east had bought up all of the municipal bonds. Then the "[i]mpoverished and resourceful ... citizens of Ulysses cut the town's building into pieces and dragged them across the prairie to a new location...."
Using the story of Ullyses in 1908 as a contrasting metaphor for mobility in the age of globalism, Frank points out in his book time-and-again: "The only social actor capable of that kind of defiance today is the corporation. Corporations are mobile; cities are not." Frank points out the fact that all across America, corporations extort billions of dollarsin tax credits, loans, and other financial gimmicks from local communities. For example, in Kansas, companies like Boeing, Sprint, ConAgra, and meatpacking firms are prime examples of recipients of public largess. Frank makes very clear through his research that these big firms constantly "socialize debt and privatize profit." They run whole counties throughout the state.
Frank warns Kansas and America that until local citizens once again perceive that they are living in an economic and social climate that is equivalent to "war on the masses" of poor and weak by the nations' most wealthy and elite public corporations and private companies, Kansans and other Americans will continue to be run over in the global political-economy.
KANSAS AS AN ARAB STATE
At the same time I was reading Frank's WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS ? , I traveled in several Arab countries; therefore, I have to agree with Frank when he indicates that the similarity between Arab states and Kansas are great. The areas of similarity I am referring to include:
-how politics functions
-how the right wing fundamentalist religious have tilted societies and skewed peoples understanding of their self interests, and
-how the economies function mainly for the elite while debt needs to be written off by the state.
In his book on Kansas, Frank was specifically referring to an article in the Wall Street Journal that discusses a location in the world "where hatred trumps bread". [p. 219] Frank went ahead to paraphrase the article as follows. This is a land where:
". . . a manipulative ruling class has for decades exploited an impoverished people while simultaneously fostering in them a culture of victimization that steers this people's fury back persistently toward a shadowy, cosmopolitan Other. In this tragic land unassuageable cultural grievances are elevated inexplicably over solid material ones, and basic economic self-interest is eclipsed by juicy myths of national authenticity and righteousness wronged."
The Journal writer was writing about Arab states-but Frank and I had to read: Kansas, Kansas, Kansas.While the Journal writer's analysis does strike me as similar to the actual living world of Egypt and many neighboring Arab nations today, his essay's description definitely describes Kansas in 2007.
Frank makes this statement accurate by painting clearly how the conservative intellectual elite has successfully framed many Kansan worldviews to include the perception of themselves as victims who are suffering under a snobbish liberal elite. These Radical Republicans of today "invite us to take our place among a humble middle-American volk, virtuous and yet suffering under a[n] . . . elite who press their alien philosophy on the heartland." They do this even theough their wacky leaders, like Senator Brownback of Kansas, are some of the wealthiest and most privileged folk around.
However, in any Arab country in this Third Millennium the cosmopolitan Other is the West. Meanwhile, in Kansas the mythical Other is a supposed Eastern God-hating establishment. In the Middle East, voters ignore the sins of the homegrown supposedly-honest religious-oriented folk in the name of a battle against of a supposed out-of-control Liberal West dominating their social milieu in the global economy. Whereas, in America, even though the biggest media conglomerates are run by conservative bastards, like Rupert Murdoch and Fox News, only a tiny liberal establishment is ever held responsible for sins of popular culture in the "red state" Heartland of America.
VALUES HELD VS. VALUES OPERATIONALIZED
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