{"id":167,"date":"2005-02-15T10:19:00","date_gmt":"2005-02-15T10:19:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/?p=167"},"modified":"2005-02-15T10:19:00","modified_gmt":"2005-02-15T10:19:00","slug":"politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/?p=167","title":{"rendered":"Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every book I’ve read in the past three months has gotten me more charged to do some serious world changing! I want to rant somewhat on my recent reads (What’s the Matter with Kansas<\/a>, Good to Great<\/a>, Don’t Think of an Elephant<\/a>), but I need to do it over a few days.<\/p>\n

Thomas Frank’s Kansas is a froth-mouthed, frustrating creature, waiting for its moment to rip out the last of “liberal hold on America”. I think his pessimism is misplaced. Let me paint a different picture of Kansas.<\/p>\n

The leaders of the conservative backlash live in simple homes, and have hard lives and day jobs, many in factories. Their efforts are hugely grassroots, going from door-to-door, and involving large sectors of their communities. Simultaneously, they’re investing in their future, building infrastructure, and financing new ideas. These people are politically sophisticated, and they’re working class people.<\/p>\n

We’re in the middle of the largest working class revolution in American history, and the poor are going about it right!<\/p>\n

Sure, they aren’t supporting what we were hoping for. But their current view of the world is warped. It’s kept stable by their ideology and a lot of effort, but it can’t be stabilized with respect to every perturbation, and sooner or later, it will fall apart. I think it’s so unstable that when it goes, it will explode, and then there will be hell to pay.<\/p>\n

But it won’t easily fall apart on its own, but that’s where the other two books come in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every book I’ve read in the past three months has gotten me more charged to do some serious world changing! I want to rant somewhat on my recent reads (What’s the Matter with Kansas, Good to Great, Don’t Think of an Elephant), but I need to do it over a few days. Thomas Frank’s Kansas … Continue reading Politics<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jamesrising.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}