Joe Bageant

How did you become a redneck socialist?

Dear Joe:

Regarding "shacks" in Belize, I can be happy in a hammock between two trees. Never did much care for material things. except for my laptop, books and music. Oh yeah, and my weaving loom.

I just finished reading your essay "What the Left Behind Series Really Means" and I am chilled. My rakish and drunken uncle one day opened the door to a couple of Jehovah Witnesses and found "Jesus". He then proceeded to dry up and wreak havoc on his children. His daughter -- my cousin -- has chronic psoriasis now and his son has disappeared from the family (I would have too).

Joe Bageant speaks in Philadelphia

As the guest of Prof. Linh Dinh, of the University of Pennsylvania, Joe Bageant will speak in Philadelphia next Tuesday. The event is free and open to the public. Here is an email announcement sent by Prof. Dinh:

The Gonzo Laptop Truth Machine:
Becoming an authentic and dangerous writer

A raucous evening of storytelling and political commentary with Joe Bageant, author of Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War, to be released by Random House Crown in June, 2007.  By turns brutal, tender, incendiary, and seriously funny, his online columns at (www.joebageant.com) have made him a cult hero among gonzo journalism junkies and progressives. Bageant's fans include Studs Terkel, who says "Joe Bageant's writing has the power of an old-time Scottish Border ballad. It is maddening and provocative," and that "Bageant's writing is as lyrical as Nelson Algren's, and if there's a semblance of hope, it's that he catches on with new readers thanks to the alternative media." Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States says, "Joe Bageant is a brilliant writer. He evokes working class America like no one else."

Tuesday, April 3, 2007, from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm in the Arts Café, with an introduction by Linh Dinh, CPCW Fellow in Poetics and Poetic Practice.

Location: Kelly Writers House
3805 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104

America's yesterdays seem free and wild

Dear Mr. Bageant,

I've been reading your work for sometime now and thank you so much for never disappointing and always bringing a bit of a smile to my face.

I am twenty-five years old and work at a Costco in California. It's an awful, obscene place where Americans barely capable of walking sweat up and down the aisles looking for the sixty gallon drum of mayonnaise or the 300-inch television or the ten pound bag of pre-shredded cheese, while breaking from their binge gluttony only to queue like bipedal cows before the sample tables. It's very depressing and in futile protest I've stopped eating anything while at work.

Your incredibly offensive recent column

Hello,

As a faggot, I take offense to your incredibly offensive recent column in which your Screaming Man Voice describes the ball-less democrats as "faggot democrats." To compare those of us who blocked the streets and shut down Wall Street in the fight against the healthcare companies -- to compare us to the pseudo-opposition party ruling congress is quite an insult. Working class faggots and faggots with AIDS weren't (and still aren't) afraid to take on the monster Healthcare Industrial Complex and until Bush II we were kicking ass.

Genuinely,

Matt

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Matt,

Try to understand that Screaming man is a savage parody of those very types we both revile, and the . It's a literary device, much in the spirit of Hunter Thompson, not to be read literally, but in the literary sense.

Joe

Advice on being an expat in Belize

Hello Joe,

I have a few questions about your current home in Belize. What does it take to set up shop there? To buy property, build, live for a time while I/We figure out some way to feed ourselves in the long term. I have some friends and we can collectively come up with some cash. I am a fit 40 year old, and my friends are younger. I have a degree, tools and trade skills, but no nest egg that will carry me for thirty years. But I like to work anyway. Could the local economy feed me and perhaps buy a few beers? And I do not mean the current "economy" which may not last too long, I mean the one that remains amid prolonged economic depression. I'm just trying to feel out options and would appreciate any help you can offer.

Sincerely,

Tom

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Well, Tom, I hate like hell to give advice about settling in Belize. After all, though I've been there several times and now have settled there, I am a newcomer and like all writers, I am prone to run my mouth because because we like to hear ourselves talk. Lately though, I've come to know a lot of expats in my area, which is the poorer Garifuna villages along the coast.

Escaping before the last battle for oil

Joe,

I have begun to read your essays. I find myself drawn to them. I have been studying the work of James Kunstler and Dmitry Orlov as well. At age 54, my insight is telling me and showing me the seemingly endless scams that American and Western life perpetuates. What is portrayed as the truth is indeed a lie, someone is making a buck at your expense every step of the way. I have studied finance since losing my shirt in the tech bubble, only to learn "finance" is a total scam. I now invest accordingly.

I lost my family (another scam?) through divorce seven years ago. My wife had had enough of me. I've lost my two sons in the process, totally feminized, totally indoctrinated in the entitlement, get something for nothing, American culture. They are trading their father's wisdom for the shock of their lives at some point. By divorce decree, I finance their college expenses, most likely a rat hole for the world that awaits them.

Corporations became world's government

Joe,

Your writing is better than ever. ("Escape from America".) I am lately concerned that the people I read and admire on the web are moving out. Jim Willie at Hat Trick Letter moved to Costa Rica. And even some I do not admire, have foreign residences. Bush bought a farm in Paraguay. Damn I would hate to move half a world away and find my next door neighbor was W.

Personally, I want to hang around for the revolution, (or hang in the Revolution), because America sure has some catching up to do. Republicans hate everything the French Revolution represents, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity," but they love the guillotine. So there is hope for them even, and isn't it true that most revolutions begin with the party or group already in power?

Consumerism growing fast in Vietnam

Dear Joe:

Just a quick note to thank you for your work on behalf of those few of us who can see a purpose beyond manic consumption and extension of credit beyond the point of absurdity.

I live in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (formerly known as Saigon, the Paris of the Orient, you know) where I work as little as possible as an English teacher. I'm 36, fairly typical working-class from a family in the now dead auto industry in the rust belt, and deeply unsatisfied with what our culture has given me to strive for and work towards. It never fit me, never will, and I won't do it.

40 years in Norway, I'm still tied to US

Hi Joe:

The whole discussion of escaping the empire, and your experiences of being a non-original resident in a land not mentally or socially geared to immigration sets off all kinds of bells, whistles and echoes of feelings past and present.

Being someone who more or less bailed out forty years ago, I may have little to contribute that is relevant to what you're talking about. I have no direct experience with what living in the US entails these days. The land I left behind was seemingly benign compared to what's going on today. LBJ was president the last time I had legal residence in the US. On the other hand, I've lived a long time in Europe (Norway and France) with varying degrees of consciousness of being an expatriate.

Looking for answers outside the Empire

Joe,

Okay, I agree with your analysis, completely. And at 54, with no retirement beyond some minimal pittance of Social Insecurity they grant if the age of elibibility doesn't exceed my life expectancy, I, too, am tempted to throw my towel in and find someplace that will accept an overweight, undegreed mook like me as a fellow communitarian.

After all, the joints creak enough that I'm tempted to think the social struggle gains no benefit from the joint effort of my mind and conscience any longer. In the blogosphere, I'm just the weird old guy screaming to invisible passersby of his shopping cart. What can any sex-obsessed, pop-culture younger consumer of rat pellets possibly gain from the likes of me?