mondojohnson

Thomas Frank, author of the funny and perspicacious “What’s the Matter With Kansas?”, meticulously documents the rise of the conservative movement over the past 30 or so years in this incisive book.

As he did with “What’s the Matter…”, Frank uncovers another exasperating paradox at the heart of the contemporary conservative clan. In his previous book, he puzzled over the right-wing’s ability to recruit the sympathies of blue-collar America — the “Reagan Democrats” of yore — even though the winger agenda is diametrically opposed to the interests of that demographic.

In “The Wrecking Crew,” Frank explores the craven cynicism and hypocrisy that drives the right wing. The conservative movement is compelled by a blinkered zealotry that insists that government is the enemy, and should be ultimately “drown in a bathtub” so that the divine forces of the free market can carry on unimpeded. Yet, whenever they are in power, they drive deficits through the roof and try to pull down the wicked government from within by a calculated strategy of filling federal positions with cronies and incompetents (witness FEMA pre- and post-Katrina, and the young naifs sent to “rebuild Iraq”).

Frank is not speculating when he describes this planned destruction of government. He relies on the words of the wingers themselves, who are quite explicit in outlining their strategy. Two characters that slither their way through the narrative are Grover Norquist and Jack Abramoff, who are both vocally proud of their dirty-trickster techniques. It is not a war of ideas: it’s just a war. The battle cry is “defund the Left” — don’t bother winning the argument, just cut the cord on the microphone. It’s intellectual cowardice at its worst.

Frank also details the long and ugly winger history of involvement with some of the worst tyrannies in the world, from apartheid-South Africa to the sweatshops of Saipan. Where most rational people would see racist indentured servitude — or even slavery — the glassy-eyed golfers of the right wing see a “laboratory of free markets.”

Like “Kansas,” this book was simultaneously funny and depressing. But the humor doesn’t undermine the scholarship, which is thorough and irrefutable.