What's The Matter With Oklahoma

What's the Matter With Kansas? is a relatively new book by Thomas Frank that explores a question which is getting a lot of attention these days. The question is how a majority of middle-class voters in states such as Kansas and Oklahoma, once hotbeds of populist revolt and even radicalism, came to believe they shared the same interests of millionaires and billionaires on Wall Street and elsewhere.

This vexing issue is particularly important in Oklahoma. A recent local poll of state voters shows Republican President George Bush far ahead of Democrat Senator John Kerry in the presidential race. This is typical news in conservative Oklahoma, but now more than ever, with middle-class Americans losing financial ground under the unfair fiscal policies of the Bush administration, it is important to ask the question: Why do Okies continue to vote against their financial interests?

Frank's answer to that question, when applied to Kansans, is to analyze the conservative juggernaut over the last thirty years and its success in creating a phony cultural war against a fictional "liberal elite."

That applies to Oklahoma, as well, but our state has its own special story. In the last thirty years, we've had a conservative media, led by the right-wing The Daily Oklahoman. The newspaper constantly brainwashes its readers with unfair news coverage and an unbalanced editorial page. The Tulsa World is somewhat better, but that is a qualified "somewhat." By any definition, it is extremely conservative. Meanwhile, local television stations in Oklahoma and throughout the nation have simply given up on covering news with any depth or substance. And local talk and news radio is virtually all right-wing all the time. (For a refreshing alternate, check out Air America Radio.)

It is easy to get used to the stench when you are faced with it day after day.

As this right-wing takeover of the media ensued, the conservative mantra was always that "the media is liberal, the media is liberal," which is a lie. The "mainstream" media is big business devoted to profits, not truth. It has always been that way in this country. Where and why did we lose that basic, non-partisan truth?

Why a majority of Oklahoma voters continue to believe the propaganda of the right-wing media is perplexing. For the vast majority of working-class Oklahomans, health insurance rates and medical costs continue to soar. Students and their parents face rising college tuition. Professional, well-paying jobs in Oklahoma continue to be scarce. The middle-class now pays proportionally more in federal taxes under the George Bush tax cuts, which favor the most wealthy in the country.

When I ask Oklahoma Republicans why they vote against their own financial interests, I am usually met with the barrage of conservative, untrue cliches about less government. Yet, today, the Republican Party, more than any other time in its history, stands for more intrusive government in people's lives, not less.

I have had this argument with a countless number of middle-class, lifestyle liberal Oklahomans who grew up to become Republicans. They vote with the wealthy elite and the country's religious extremists, which comprise a small part of the population. But the wealthy elite, by its very nature, will do everything in its power to acquire more wealth by lowering the incomes of the middle-class and the poor. That is historically true. It is a non-partisan truth. And the religious extremists will do everything in their power to stop some of the lifestyle choices made by many Oklahoma Republicans. For example, I know a lot of conservative Oklahomans who want the state to legalize six-point beer for convenience stores. What state groups would be the first to stand up against this idea? Religious groups. That is another non-partisan truth.

At what point will you stand up, I ask my conservative friends, and demand a decent living and decent health care for yourself and your children and millions of other working middle-class Oklahomans and Americans? Do you have to lose two or three or four jobs? Do you have to be homeless, on the street, begging? I ask, Why do you have to take me and my family down with you into the potential despair of lifelong low incomes or unemployment or unafforable health care?

I always ask, What will it take to make you love yourself again and vote for your own interests?