Joe Bageant

Pain of realizing that I have no country

Hello Joe,

I too was one of many in the 60's and 70's who imagined a better culture through self enlightenment. The trouble started with the end of the Vietnam War, we didn't have much of a plan for political action after Vietnam. I also discovered that a lot of activist types were all done protesting because their real cause was the saving of their own bacon and this was accomplished. Everybody was worn out and, sad to say, so was the notion that we as people had some obligation to each other, so much for "brotherhood".

I'm not as critical today of these people who went about their lives into the 70's and the crass, self-indulgent 80's, but I harbor some deep hurt. I hurt because I feel duped and I must say I was more than a bit naive. I probably have some company in that regard -- your site tells me so. I love reading the letters from your readers. It helps to know that others are still holding out for some hope, even when they express their utter disgust with the reality of the new century.

We are all victims of Stockholm Syndrome

Hi Joe,

It has been many years now that I have been in search of my tribe. I come across a member every now and then who sees the world as I see it, but not very often. I am a back-to-the lander. I took seriously, as many of my friends did way back in the 70's, adopting a lifestyle that would enable me to find my place in nature. Living life simply, undistracted by all the phony glitter. I found that piece of land, built my own house, started up a garden and even went so far as to get some small livestock, almost literally living a John Prine tune. I continue to this day, warts and all, a life of personal responsibility. Using it up before throwing it out, driving small vehicles through the years as well as composting and recycling.

Hey, what's with the revolution bullshit?

Note:

Here are four more responses to my invitation in "Coffee, Consciousness and Revolution". More to come.

Joe

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Hi Joe,

There's an idea out there that the natural progression of the universe is towards higher and higher forms of consciousness. From inanimate matter, to amoeba, to lizard, to tool-using apes. According to this idea, there are different levels of consciousness in humans. At one level is pure survival. Then there is an extension of identification to family and tribe, and then further to all humans and the universe itself. Supposedly, around 20% of the population reached a higher level in the 60s which included concern for other people and the planet.

Spiritual quest of a gay, redneck Hindu

Joe,

Buenos dias from New Mexico. I sent you a short email and you answered with grace and humor. As a writer myself, and as a seventh generation Southerner, I appreciate your ability to communicate truth. You're something else, Bud.

This email, however, is about me, me, me. I can't think of anyone else who might even remotely understand my love/hate relationship with the South and things Southern. First off, I'm a 56-year-old gay man in a relationship of 24 years (so far). I left the South in 1984, so I've been gone almost as long as I lived there. This is not an accident. My life has been spent on a conscious spiritual quest, trying to recover from the trauma of being raised in a fundamentalist Baptist culture.

Somehow, I always knew, deep inside, that God had nothing to do with the hateful, mean-spiritedness I was surrounded by. I love the South, and I also despise much about it. I wind up defending the South and Southerners, even when I might agree with their critics. It's sort of like Mom's a drunk, and we all know it, but we still love her and don't want the folks down the street bad mouthing her.

Familiar, warm breath of elite vampires

Note:

Here are three more responses to my invitation in Coffee, Consciousness and Revolution. More to come.

Joe

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Dear Joe,

As always, I read you first thing in the morning so that my day's framework is sane instead of the insanity of corporate America wherein I must toil for the next six months while I plan my escape.

Last night I was at my office Christmas party and at my table piled high with the usual holiday excess of food and booze, there was talk of plans for the future. Some in our group (in their 20's and 30's) were talking about balancing their careers and creating families of three, four children and the kind of money that would be needed to maintain their high-spending lifestyles. Most were eagerly anticipating their perennial bonuses, salary increases, deals, mergers, stock options, $etc., $etc., $etc.

I don't understand your position on guns

Dear Joe,

I just finished reading Deer Hunting with Jesus, which I really enjoyed reading. Many of the things you write about also ring true here in Australia.

One of the things which I found interested me in your book was the importance of health care system. In Australia we have a well entrenched Medicare system, which the conservatives (here called 'the Liberals') weakened but were afraid to destroy.

Another big difference is that fortunately the fundamentalists don't have such a big hold here.

Webb, Edwards and a non-wacky Lou Dobbs

Dear Joe:

I have  been a regular reader on your site for the past few months, and I must say there is far more insight into what is happening in our country on your site than in  all the political language in our electoral system. And trust me, I know what I am talking about. I work as a political consultant.

There are very many reasons why your insights would not be welcome in the context of a traditional campaign setting.

1. The kind of grassroots organizing you advocate involves spending money that would need to be taken away from TV buys and mail. Which (depending on the ethics of the individual) means a loss of commission fees (15% in TV buys) and kick-backs from printers on the mail.

We must cooperate in order to survive

Note:

Here are three more responses to my invitation in Coffee, Consciousness and Revolution. More to come.

Joe

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Hi Joe,

Your latest essay is very thoughtful. I hope you're right, that in every human being, at least the ordinary sort, there is an innate yearning for justice. Just as you said, we have our killer ape gene, which our "betters" try to make dominant, especially in the young men and women cannon fodder they send off to places like Iraq and Afghanistan. But, after all, those killer apes had groups, societies if you will, in which they instinctively cooperated with one another in order to kill the wooly mammoth, the saber-toothed tiger, or whatever.

You may not trample on rights of others

Prelude:

My invitation to respond to "Coffee, Consciousness and Revolution" certainly generated a landslide of email. And certainly serves as a reminded of just how smart I ain't, which is always a good thing, humility being good medicine for the soul. There is no way possible to answer all the responses, but Ken and I can post them for a while in the spirit of shared thought among all the good folks who drop by this little piss stop in cyberspace. Below is the first of several that will be posted in the next week or so.

Joe

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Hi Joe,

I'm afraid I disagree with you on the idea of "fundamental internal justice".

Removing what you have described as "the state conditioned consciousness" I am compelled to equate with a descent into savagery, equivalent to nothing better than a colony of rabid rats each out for only themselves.

The swampy muck of murderous prejudice

Dear Joe,

Greetings my friend. America is about to close out another year of Empire and one of our clarion bards is about to retreat to Belize, leaving the appreciative of us in exile in our own land.

The last time we communicated you were entertaining the idea of giving the Neo-Nazi Bill White a forum for discussion and my reaction, I suspect, was probably harsh as I compared the old bastard to a coral snake. LOL. You were gracious enough to land it with reflective comment. I imagine that if other inquiries were tested, the same violent animus directed toward the Neo-Nazi zeitgeist was evident. The comment you published by Phillip from New York -- "anti-semitic crap" may have been the milder of a more rancid collection. The generations of those who carry the Nazi history of  genocide and the Holocaust do so in the blood, not as intellectual ideology or in forgiveness as 'political correctness -- the First Amendment, and all that. Thus, the coral snake analogy.

Coffee, Consciousness and Revolution

It's not every day I get out of bed and have an insight, or what passes for insight for me these days, however small. But over my morning coffee, this came to mind. I would appreciate if any readers cared to share their responses, critical or otherwise.

As Americans, we have each done all the wrong things. Ruined the planet, crashed our own economy and perhaps the world's, created a meaningless society and abandoned the civil common good. Why? All for no other reason than that the society around us told us that as individuals, we'd be better off if we went along with the program. We were further reinforced in our behavior because we were the best at it.

Let's get rid of the auto ads on TV

Hi Joe!

Thanks you so much for Deer Hunting with Jesus -- a terrific piece of truth telling! Four days ago I was sitting here in Nashua, New Hampshire, watching the huge TV news coverage of the "Incredible Snowstorm", which had been going on since 1 PM. The Boston news started an hour early because there are so many thousands of cars stuck on the Massachusetts Turnpike. Oh the horror of it all! Six inches coming in six hours! And more to come! "We can't remember a storm like this!" shout the news reporters, out there in the wicked elements.

No Mexicans in rich man's swimming pool

Joe,

I truly appreciate your perception of our system. I got a revisit on a part of my life which is long gone. When I first came to the US, I was 11 years old. I was born in another part of America, the "Republic" of Panama, and left there to live in Texas where my sister was already living. She had met and married a Navy guy of Mexican descent. I lived on the south side of San Antonio and got introduced to the continuing war with Mexico, which the Mexicans, according to my step-father, were taking the country back "without firing a shot." This was the same redneck who told me he had seen Mexicans shot down for little or no reason at the ranch where he was raised south of San Antonio.

Always looking for areas of agreement

Joe,

I am finding it interesting that you are posting some of the darker letters you receive. In the letter "I'm certain of coming economic collapse" from Howard in Pennsylvania seems to epitomize the classic, intelligent, Republican bigot (oops, make that Libertarian):

1. What liberals really want however, is control of the proletariat.

2. With respect to the war, the U.S. liberal media is to be as damned as the administration.

3. While my normally, quite pacifist, anti-military, Jewish friends say Saddam has to go. (AIPAC pressure on the White House was intense during this prelude, it has been documented).

Redneck, bogan or wog: poor means poor

Joe,

For me, reading Deer Hunting with Jesus was a deeply disturbing, and yet refreshing, experience.

That it was disturbing is easy to understand, although I am sure you cannot possibly fathom all the reasons: you painted a vivid picture of what it is like to be a white working poor person in the US. And you were thinking about big, white, red faced men and women of Scot-Irish heritage. If this was the only thing you aimed at, already your book would be a magnificent achievement: it gives us overseas readers a glimpse to a part of the American life that is seldom shown, and for the same reason, is easily misjudged.

But that is not the full story. Although not an Aussie by birth, I've been living in Australia for the last 12 years. I don't know whether you suspect this or not, but there is a further reason why your redneck ode is so valuable to us Down Under. This book is vitally relevant to us. And it is terrifying.

A good reason not to come back to USA

Joe,

I have just returned from Mexico to Oklahoma, and immediately wondered why I came back. Electricity is out here in many houses (from the ice storm), no heat or hot water or telephone in my place. Houses and apartments without electricity in the states are just overpriced iceboxes. In a warm climate, being without electricity is an inconvenience, not an emergency.

It makes you think about how things could be in a few years, when the electric grid goes down semi-permanently.

Wellness Center: No sick people, please

Joe,

Thanks for Deer Hunting with Jesus.

Your book put our local non-profit hospital situation into perspective for me. They're part of the Sutter chain based in Sacramento, and they're saying they have to cut their patient beds from 67 to 25 because of financial difficulties. Meantime, the Wellness Center is crawling with gazebos and meditation gardens, and their new Wellness University offers this:

Debt collectors will be more aggressive

Dear Joe,

The debt collectors won't stop calling my phone number. Fortunately, the calls aren't for me, but for someone who USED to have my phone number. My usual response is to tell them that I'm not the person who they seek, and that if I knew who she was, I'd turn her in so quick it would make her head spin. The list of companies looking for "Jessica" is impressive: everything from car loans to credit cards to payday loan places. I've even started getting calls for debt reduction services. They drop me pretty quickly because I don't have at least $4,000 in credit card debt.

This gives me a view of most people's economic reality that I didn't have before. My mother explained how to write hot checks when I was four, and that shaped my view on money: live within my means. Of the four apartments on my floor, one neighbor has been evicted and the other two have gotten late rent notices at least once since July. I know this only because the management tapes the notices to the door of the apartment.

Left and right must ignore differences

Joe,

It is on your website that I find the most interesting viewpoints and unique observances. Your self-description as a "Redneck Socialist" is to most people a contradiction in terms, (I among them, at least until reading your work), attracts the most interesting combination of views.

The email from Howard in Pennsylvania, entitled "I'm certain of coming economic collapse", is just such a great example that there is still clear-headed thinking on both Left and Right. I am reminded by his email of the book Diary of a Man in Despair by Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, which is written also from the view of a "liberal conservative" in the 30s and 40s. Reck-Malleczewen was a Prussian Royalist Junker with all the intelligence, fire and independence of analysis that Howard put into his email.

A good seed in a bad barrel

Dear Joe,

I am an avid reader of your website and have read your book, Deer Hunting with Jesus, many times. I feel that yours is one of the most truthful voices in our land and wish I would have stumbled upon you long ago. Your words are truly life changing.

The shooting in Omaha struck me so close to my heart, and before I go on my rant, my sympathy for those whose lives were taken is great, and I wish their families the utmost support to pull through their dark days ahead.

Escaping a fundamentalist childhood

Joe,

I was raised by a dedicated southern Baptist mother but managed to escape both them and the Mormons, amongst whom I live now. All of my family is from Texas save for me; I was born in New Mexico (oilfield trash) and am proud NOT to hail from Texas. My mother dragged me to every Baptist revival and Bible school and prayer meeting she could. I well remember going to revival meetings as a kid and, as the preacher thundered about the hellfire and damnation and agonies that awaited us all, thinking, "What did I do? I'm just a kid!"

Advice for a cynical and young patriot

Joe,

I didn't think it was possible, but you might be more cynical than I am. I call the hologram by a different name. The Matrix. I was in the Marines and spent almost two years in Iraq. I enlisted in the Corps after graduating from college and I am about to start my master's degree at American University in Ethics, Peace, and Global Affairs.

Thanks for writing the book "Deer Hunting with Jesus." It was strikingly apropos for the times in which we live. The mass majority of men that I served with came from that background you described. I didn't fit in well with my "liberal trash talking." It's great to be out of the Corps and I hope to make a difference. I hope to reach people and let get them to wake up.

The similarities of the US and Australia

Hi Joe,

I saw your interview one morning several weeks ago on Australian TV and was struck by your politeness in answering a question suggesting that as a visitor to our shores, you could not expect to fully understand a culture you were just visiting, etc. First of all, how refreshing to hear this from an American. Most Americans I've seen would not hesitate to bloviate about something as complicated as culture even if we do both speak a similar tongue.

Having said that, I'm sure you do see similarities in culture, and not just the facts like we both wear shoes. I have read or heard a number of times expat Americans say of Australia that "it's just like America 20 years before" and not in any condescending manner at all. This phrase truly chills me to the bone.

That letter smacks of anti-semitic crap

Mr. Bageant:

Concerning the letter and your reply in the post "I'm certain of coming economic collapse": I cannot disagree more with the sentiments shared by that letter writer. Why we went into Iraq was to secure, or at least make safe, the ability to access Iraqi oil fields.

To keep Israel safe by removing Saddam? Please. Recall that during the first gulf war, Iraq lobbed missiles (Scuds) which hit Israel. To its credit, Israel refrained from retaliating.

To somehow claim that Israel is responsible for our unjustified invasion of Iraq smacks of anti-semitic crap.