Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” is now 12 years old. Much of his book’s fevered language still seems extreme; still, right now much of what he implied and described has become reality or is well on its way. So much so in fact that mainstream pundits like David Brooks, Michael Gerson, Steve and Cokie Roberts, Kathleen Parker and others are in various ways expressing desperate hopes that the Trumpkins, Cruzers, and Sandersnistas will abandon fantasies and regain rationality. Alternatively, the Establishment is hoping these angry citizens will, as usual, not vote.

Here in Kansas, however, our state’s supply of the “Mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore” crowd seems surprisingly mellow. And the folks who ought to be mad — moderates, progressives, liberals, etcetera — seem unable to muster much collective strength or fervor so far.

The first evidence of this situation is the near silence from the Kansas populace regarding the insults and injuries done by the last few legislatures. The Fort Hays State University-sponsored “Kansas Speaks” public opinion survey of a few months back clearly showed substantial hostility to the Brownbackian tax changes. The reported revenue reduction and its analysis by many different groups show the income tax cuts, sales and sin tax increases, and altered exemptions and deductions to be excessive, unhelpful, beneficial to the wrong people and seriously regressive upon those least able to pay. Yet there’s little evidence of a groundswell of public activism demanding repeal or reduction of the enacted tax cuts, or workable spending reductions for that matter.

Exhibit two is the flurry of nonsensical bills introduced in these first weeks of the current legislative session, a session, readers may recall, that according to Senate President Susan Wagle, is going to complete its work and get out of town in seventy-five days rather than the ninety-plus it often takes the legislature to finish its business. So, what is the ‘work’ the legislature is planning to complete so efficiently?

After three weeks of the session we’ve watched as:

A Sharia-like dress and deportment code for one standing committee was proposed and then withdrawn;

A resolution offering constitutional protections for hunting and fishing as the primary tools of wildlife conservation is being considered;

A bill protecting the firearms selling industry and its agents from civil rights discrimination has been introduced;

And HB2507 proposes eliminating a candidate’s city of residence from the election ballot, bringing back for history buffs a hint of the “pocket boroughs” of late 18th Century British Parliaments.

Meanwhile there have been no significant efforts to resolve the state’s tax difficulties with significant spending cuts or revenue increases; no policy advanced to fix school finance; nor effort made to address water depletion and climate change issues.

The evidence suggests that electoral challengers willing and eager to undo these misguided policy choices are scarce at the moment. In spite of legislative district boundaries drawn by federal judges in 2012 that seriously disturbed ingrained partisan/ideological alignments, it appears that the likeliest contested legislative elections in Kansas in 2016 will be intra-party and will occur in the August primaries, not in the November general election. No evidence yet exists to suggest an impending change in the political power distribution in Topeka.

If the public remains unaware of, unresponsive to, or unmotivated by the time-wasting trivialities of a legislature full of incumbents who hope that by doing nothing they can maintain their holds on their seats, then the predicted fiscal calamities will keep on coming. It still seems that the sum of all Democrat and moderate Republican legislators will still fit in a couple of mini-vans to go to lunch together after the 2017 session convenes.

Dr. Mark Peterson teaches political science at the college level in Topeka.