Mr. Bageant,
A couple of weeks ago, after reading a synopsis of your book, Deer Hunting With Jesus, I purchased it at a local book store. Until then, I had never heard of you. I am approximately half-way thru the book and I want you to know that it really, honestly scares and worries me, so much, that I've had to stop reading it just before going to bed at night. If I read 15 to 20 pages right before bedtime I am unable to sleep. I agree 100% with what you are saying in the book. I just hope that as I read further, you offer some possible solutions, or at least some encouragement for somehow making things better in the near future.
Not only do I identify with your progressive philosophy, but I identify very much with your background, and I also identify with the working poor whom you write about. I am 53 years old. I grew up in a Northeast Pennsylvania (anthracite coal region) town very much like your hometown of Winchester, Virginia. My father worked as a janitor, and my mother (who went to work when I was 12 years old) sewed sleeves onto women's blouses at a local garment factory. Both of my parents earned just slightly more than minimum wage. They never owned a new car, never owned a nice house, never had nice clothing, and they never had enough money to save anything for the future. Yet, they were both staunch Republicans, as were/are the majority of people of my town.
Because of state and federal grants, and because I did not relish the thought of living a lifetime as my parents did, I was able to get a college degree and become a social worker. I now see many, many people just like those you describe in your book -- families who are trying to scratch out a living on $15,000 to $20,000 a year (and no health insurance, no pension plan), people who (through no fault of their own) are under-educated, under-employed, totally uninformed, and who are taken advantage of constantly. Most would tell you that they are supporters of George Bush, they support "the war on terror" (whatever that means), they are proud shoppers at Wal-Mart, and they are anti-union.
As I said earlier, I sure hope that as I read further, your book offers some possible solutions to this huge problem. There's got to be an answer -- there's got to be a way to show & convince this very large (and growing) group of people that the political party they support so blindly is out to screw them every chance they get.
Tom
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Dear Tom,
I am simply a writer and recorder of my times. It is a craft, just as bricklaying and auto repair are crafts. Of course, I have my own views regarding solutions, but they are generally regarded as too socialistic to be acceptable in the current American atmosphere of self-interest. Things such as cutting the Pentagon budget in half. Moderate free health care for all. Revamp American education so that American school teachers do not come from the bottom quarter of all college applicants. Coalition building politics instead of two powerful elite political parties. Limiting personal income to $100,000. Putting most of the tax burden back onto the corporations as it was before World War II. Deemphasizing home ownership in favor of more sustainable non-suburban lifestyles. Creating a much larger corps of social workers and family workers from within neighborhoods, not colleges. Cheaper and more extensive public alternative transportation. But, most of all, massive spending on child health and educational opportunities. Our huge problems require huge solutions and long range vision, not a particularly American trait.
None of these broad approaches are going to happen in either of our lifetimes and probably will never happen at all.
However, action by people such as us on a one-to-one basis, based upon truth-telling and action, should not be underestimated. As the empire continues in its decline ordinary people will increasingly ask why, and be more willing to listen to people who offer answers. When such things as the Social Security (the most popular program in American history and upon which 67% of Americans depend for their entire retirement) stop or is reduced to pay trillions in war debts or jack up stock market profits. When oil, which drives our entire national electrical grid, reaches peak, people will do more than howl. (Wanna bet that mountain top removed coal, which is being touted as our savior, won't be hiked up to the limit for maximum corporate profitability?)
Frankly, I think it will take what Americans would consider a collapse to turn it all around. The "American lifestyle" was but a brief moment in history, a civilization made possible by cheap hydrocarbons.
Meanwhile, we can work face to face -- as you do -- in elimination the misery of our brothers and enlightening our children and theirs. We can live lives focused upon compassion, which sometimes requires standing up and physically fighting as did the old Wobblies, the Hudson Valley farmers movement, and early populist/socialist movements that made America better and more just in their times. In doing so, we not only move closer to self-realization, but to a better world. Compassion is contagious stuff. I would not dare underestimate its effects in changing America or the world over time. Man is not born mean. He is made mean by the life he experiences. Same goes for compassion, which is why it is contagious. If we are not willing to risk everything in our pitifully brief personal lives to gain justice and understanding for the many, then we cannot pretend pious concern for our fellow man.
At least that's the way I look at it.
In art and labor,
Joe
