In this lecture, Thomas Frank distills the central argument from his New York Times best seller, What's the Matter With Kansas?, which unravels the great political mystery of our day: why do so many Americans vote against their economic and social interests? In this special recorded lecture, Thomas Frank answers the riddle by examining his home state, Kansas, a place once famous for its radicalism that now ranks among the nation's most eager audiences for a backlash that he calls a "derangement", the popular revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment.
In his concise, reasoned approach, Frank charts how the "great backlash mobilizes votes with explosive social issues", marshalling cultural anger to achieve economic ends. As a result, conservatism, once a marker of class privilege and now the creed of millions of ordinary Americans, has become a "working class movement that has done incalculable harm to the middle class".