Remembering Thomas Frank's "American Psyche"

Thomas Frank wrote "That we are a nation divided is an almost universal lament of this bitter election year," then went on to observe that "we," by which he meant the commentariat, "know for sure the answer isn't class" and "rule that uncomfortable subject out from the start," instead certain that the matter must be culture, culture, not class, with the "red state-blue state" divide the favorite suspect and constant point of reference.

Frank wrote all this two decades ago, but it is still the song sung by the centrist "Establishment" commentator today, a reminder of how after the events of the last twenty years (a historic financial crash, the metastasizing of the country's wars, pandemic, the resurgence of great power confrontation, the profound deepening of the ecological crisis, the ascent of the far right) their conventional wisdom has not changed one iota, to their absolute discredit. Indeed, one can argue that their extreme refusal to countenance any "uncomfortable" ideas that call into question their complacent idiocies played its part in making the past two decades of American and world history the train wreck they have been.

Still, if their ideas about this matter did not change--if we still hear ceaselessly of "division," and "culture, not class," and "red states and blue states"--there is at least one thing that I can say seems to me different from how things stood in 2004. This is that Thomas Frank wrote that comment in an article for the New York Times--a newspaper far less likely to give Frank or anyone like him a platform these days as it boosts ever more openly far right commentators, all as Mr. Frank seems to be regarded as ever less admissible by the gatekeepers of Big Media broadly pushing the same line, as you are reminded should you look at its content.* Doing that these days you are far, far more likely to read about a soccer coach who just so happens to have the same name as Frank--while it seems telling that Frank's most conspicuous appearance in the print media in years would seem to be an interview not with any outfit comparable to the Times (or even The Guardian or Harper's, for which he used to write), but with Jacobin back in February.

* In the wake of Trump's victory at the polls (which came after I wrote this post) the Times deigned to publish Frank once more. You may read the item here.