No excuse for rampant personal greed
Hey Joe,
My admiration for your writing is extreme, boundless. There is a touch of noble ennui, of a strange melancholy that I glean from your essays. The intensity of childhood reality, with its antebellum flowers and breezes, wafts around your words, words implicitly shedding the abstract foolishness of adult normality. Might I even ascribe a tiny measure of the mystical to your turning away from corporatist demons and tempters?
Speaking of "corporatist," I wanted to extend a few free-form thoughts. Until recently, I seethed quietly with utter disgust at the travesty of corporate personhood, as brought out in certain books and articles -- especially the film The Corporation -- that show how these artificial legal entities are sociopathic and amoral. Again, until recently, I bought into the notion that the CEOs and boards of directors were simply caught up in their hapless roles of acquiescing in all things to the bottom line of profit generation. That ordinary workers were exploited and abused as wage-slaves was merely a structural necessity, and managers were really good people just swept along on the corporate tide.
I no longer buy in to that. The bottomline and productivity be damned! There is no excuse for rampant personal greed and mistreatment of others. If one must choose between "success" (as measured by ladder-climbing or share-increasing at all costs) or "failure" (characterized as a lack of wealth and ambition), then one must embrace the latter. To do otherwise is despicable. One is not morally entitled to deflect evil behavior by thinking of himself as just a single cell in the invisible corporate Golem.
So, it's really simple: if one's job requires that they boss around (control) other human beings, then one is a spiritual criminal, an assaulter of souls, a low-life beneath contempt.
Best regards,
Tim
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Tim,
That's quite a mind blowing letter. I have been trying to find the words to write those very same thoughts, and even the same observations for over a month now.
And somehow, I think an ever growing number of us are coming to that same understanding, which can only be called moral and spiritual. And so, even though it will not thrill my book editor or my agent, I have decided to take my writing in that direction -- simply because I have no other choice.
It is quite comforting to know I will be in such fine company as you and so many others I am meeting who believe as you and I do.
In brotherhood,
Joe
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What they're saying about Joe's book
Here are some comments about Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War.
"Joe Bageant is a brilliant writer. He evokes working class America like no one else. The account of his revisit to his Virginia roots is sobering, poignant, and instructive."
-- HOWARD ZINN, author of A People's History of the United States
"This book is righteous, self-righteous, exhilarating, and aggravating. By God, it's a raging, hilarious, and profane love song to the great American redneck. As a blue state man with a red state childhood, I have been waiting for this book for years. We ignore its message at our peril."
-- SHERMAN ALEXIE, author of Reservation Blues
"This fine book sheds a devastating light on Bush & Co.'s notorious 'base,' i.e. America's white working class, whose members have been ravaged by the very party that purports to take their side. Meanwhile, the left has largely turned them out, or even laughed at their predicament. Of their degraded state -- and, therefore, ours -- Joe Bageant writes like an avenging angel."
-- MARK CRISPIN MILLER, author of Fooled Again: The Real Case for Election Reform
"Joe Bageant is the Sartre of Appalachia. His white-hot bourbon-fuelled prose shreds through the lies of our times like a weed-whacker in overdrive. Deer Hunting with Jesus is a deliciously vicious and wickedly funny chronicle of a thinking man's life in God's own backwoods."
-- JEFFREY ST. CLAIR, author of Grand Theft Pentagon and co-editor of CounterPunch
"This recounting of lost lives -- of white have-nots in one of our most have-not states -- has the power of an old-time Scottish Border ballad. It is maddening and provocative that the true believers in 'American exceptionalism' and ersatz machismo side with those stepping all over them. Bagaent'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."
-- STUDS TERKEL
"Deer Hunting with Jesus is one of those rare books that is colorful, depressing, hilarious, and biting all at the same time. Joe Bageant has given us a glimpse into the vicious class war that is too often ignored or hidden by those happily perpetrating this war."
-- DAVID SIROTA, author of Hostile Takeover
"Dead serious and damn funny ... Bageant writes with the ghosts of Hunter S. Thompson, Will Rogers, and Frank Zappa kibitzing over his shoulder ... Takes Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas, to the next level."
—- MOTHER JONES
Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War is now available at all major bookstores and online at Amazon.com. CLICK HERE.
