Listen, Liberal
Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?
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Narrated by:
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Thomas Frank
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By:
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Thomas Frank
About this listen
From the best-selling author of What's the Matter with Kansas, a scathing look at the standard-bearers of liberal politics - a book that asks: What's the matter with Democrats?
It is a widespread belief among liberals that if only Democrats can continue to dominate national elections, if only those awful Republicans are beaten into submission, the country will be on the right course. But this is to fundamentally misunderstand the modern Democratic Party. Drawing on years of research and first-hand reporting, Frank points out that the Democrats have done little to advance traditional liberal goals: expanding opportunity, fighting for social justice, and ensuring that workers get a fair deal. Indeed, they have scarcely dented the free-market consensus at all. This is not for lack of opportunity: Democrats have occupied the White House for 16 of the last 24 years, and yet the decline of the middle class has only accelerated. Wall Street gets its bailouts, wages keep falling, and the free-trade deals keep coming.
With his trademark sardonic wit and lacerating logic, Frank lays bare the essence of the Democratic Party's philosophy and how it has changed over the years. A form of corporate and cultural elitism has largely eclipsed the party's old working-class commitment, he finds. For certain favored groups, this has meant prosperity. But for the nation as a whole, it is a one-way ticket into the abyss of inequality. In this critical election year, Frank recalls the Democrats to their historic goals - the only way to reverse the ever-deepening rift between the rich and the poor in America.
©2016 Thomas Frank (P)2016 Macmillan AudioWhat listeners say about Listen, Liberal
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- Anonymous User
- 28-04-22
This should be required reading for every american
Seriously! This would be like waking up from the matrix in a political sense. The poisonous liberal elite is a real thing. Just not in any sense that you've probably been told. More in the sense of a settled aristocracy that looks at the poor at best as a tragic gangrenous foot that hopefully will eventually just fall off. But not everyone is born to lead or to be a rich professional. You still need checks on the power of managers. It doesn't matter if you(or they) stereotype working joes(and joanne) as foulmouthed ignorant assholes. They have families and if you make them resentful and bitter that bitterness is going to infect their families and their communities down the line. Not everyone can be a manager in society. Period. Obama was a friend of the settled urban elite. He saved a system that didn't deserve saving. Trump was a member of the settled elite cosplaying as a rude working class "man of the people". Questions about queer rights and such are just a way for politicians to make money and rile you up. Its a sales bonanza! It doesn't matter in the big picture of things. People without the "right education" picked up straight from the ground and allowed power might have important insights and perspective. Obama's cabinet was made up of insiders. Roosevelt's cabinet had people with much more varied and humble backgrounds. The varied but real results of his new deal was good enough to even turn a determined right wing racist bigot like H.P. Lovecraft into a supporter. It might do that again if you/we/they let it.
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