(2005-02-21) Sirius Interviews Frank

R U Sirius has a conversation with Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with KanSas? ISBN:080507774X and The Conquest Of Cool ISBN:0226260127

• One of the distinctions I wanted to make in the book was between genuine dissent and the sort of domesticated, consumer-friendly dissent that our culture produces in such enormous quantities.

• I agree about the importance of culture, and also about the explosive power of anti-authoritarianism, and every time I get the chance I talk about the importance of Dems presenting themselves as the party of dissent, not the party of contentment as they so clearly did this time around.

• For reasons of its own, reasons that have little to do with human liberation, today's Capitalism deals in cultural revolution, and to supply its need for constant overthrow and obsolescence it has settled on youth culture and pseudo-counterculture as the symbols of the day.

• What made the liberal consensus work back in the day was a coalition between civil libertarians and average people, the latter having signed up because of liberalism's economic promises. Those average people are increasingly becoming Republicans because of the triangulations of the Clinton era; now the Dems are about to start alienating the other half of the coalition as well. If they no longer stand for anything, I don't see how they're going to win any election anywhere.