Brother Joe,
As soon as I got my last paycheck I bought your book, Deer Hunting with Jesus. I'm a blue-collar worker, but since I went to high school in the 1960's, I'm totally literate and could read the book in one day. It was heart-rending reading about my own kind who live in a very different situation, one that traps them within functional illiteracy and perpetuates ignorance. Ignorance is not at all the same as stupidity.
By their "country smarts" they have been able to fend for themselves in harsh environments for centuries. They've been exploited by political and economic powers while remaining invisible to the intellectual elites. Or when noticed, dismissed as stupid hillbilly racists. Which in some ways they are. But why blame people for their ignorance when their local schools fail them, health care is non-existent, and the best jobs (for which they're made to feel grateful) are chicken processing or serving Wal-Mart? The Republicans appealed to their religious beliefs and exploited their unfocused anger.
These people are part of the working class, the majority in this country. We will deal with this one way or another. Fairness or fascism. And we owe people like Lynndie England and the other tragic products of the people of violence, at least an apology. What we really owe them is a chance. But over the last two decades, the race to the economic bottom has crushed working people. Nor is education a solution if it's simply a mechanism to strip away the gifted few and blame the rest for their lack of postmodern technical skills.
We need to scream out what this one dollar, one vote oppressive system really is: the evil empire of Mammon consuming the souls of subjected people no longer living as citizens of a democracy. As both a believer in Christianity and the U.S. Constitution, I will not be silent!
Rafi
Seattle
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Rafi,
Between Peak Oil, ongoing environmental collapse and the steady devolution of the consciousness of masses through media, a great leveling of our society is underway, in my opinion. It has been gradual over the last half century, but is bound to reach critical mass. Such things always do, whether it be Czarist Russia or the Roman Empire. And no matter how much the fear card is played, no matter how much alarm is sounded to the effect that "The barbarians are at the gates," the truth appears to be that the barbarians are inside the gates, and represent the human outcome of our own degraded for-profit culture.
Once again the narrative of Aaron's golden calf escapes metaphor and comes to life, this time as the corporate state. And once again the populace looks to it as their deliverer out of Egypt. I don't think Halliburton and Exxon and CitiBank have any such thing in mind.
In art and labor,
Joe
