Excerpt from What's the Matter with Kansas?

This week I started reading a book called What's the Matter with Kansas?, by Thomas Frank, a book that has been in great demand following the election. It's an examination of what Mr. Frank refers to as "the Great Backlash," a political phenomenon of the last thirty years wherein social issues are used to mobilize middle class people to vote for pro-business economic policies. I'm not that far into it, but so far I like it very much (you probably wouldn't like it JTR, whoever you are). I wanted to share a paragraph.

From the air-conditioned heights of a suburban office complex this may look like a new age of reason, with Web sites singing each to each, with a mall down the way that every week has miraculously anticipated our subtly shifting tastes, with a global economy whose rich rewards just keep flowing, and with a long parade of rust-free Infinitis purring down the streets of beautifully manicured planned communities. But on closer inspection the country seems more like a panorama of madness and delusion worthy of Hieronymous Bosch (he was a painter, JTR): of sturdy blue-collar patriots reciting the Pledge while they strangle their own life chances; of small farmers proudly voting themselves off the land; of devoted family men carefully seeing to it that their children will never be able to afford college or proper health care; of working-class guys in midwestern cities cheering as they deliver up a landslide for a candidate whose policies will end their way of life, will transform their region into a "rust belt," will strike people like them blows from which they will never recover.