Mr. Bageant,
I was born in a single-wide trailer surrounded by hundreds of acres of corn and a lot of cows, the product of generations of farmers and ranchers in rural America. After my parents divorced I ended up in rural Alabama, an area devastated by the collapse of cotton farming, and then, the deportation of jobs from Russell Mills to Mexico. Last May I earned my B.S. from Auburn University and am now pursuing a graduate degree in agricultural economics. I tell you this history so you know where I'm coming from and don't think that I come from the middle or upper class, ignorant to the type of people you speak about in your book.
First, I love the comment about people being as confused about the title of the book, Deer Hunting with Jesus, as if it were titled 'NUKE THE WHALES'. There are numerous other one-liners that caused me to laugh out loud while reading the book. Also, while I often times don't agree with the things you say, you write in a manner that is interesting enough I could keep reading and finish the book. While I realize that you come from a background that culturally is very similar to my own, we share few of the same political beliefs.
I believe that while it is a setback to be brought up in such an area, if you want, and if you try, you can still make whatever you want out of life. It's pretty simple. Make decent grades in high school, don't do drugs, and don't get pregnant. I worked 30 hours a week while I was in high school, 60 or more in the summers -- bailing hay, working horses, packing groceries, and any other kind of work I could find. Once in college I worked two jobs while taking classes, until I started my own landscaping business.
I now have a degree and do research for the University while pursuing my graduate studies. I'll graduate next Christmas. I might go to law school, I've got a few business ideas to pursue, and I also plan to run for office. While I don't pledge loyalty to a party, I lean heavily Republican. It's not because I'm ignorant, or because I'm a Christian, or because I grew up with "white trash". It's because anyone in this country who works hard, sacrifices, and makes good decisions can succeed in this country, without the need of a bunch of handouts.
In your book you relate the example of a married woman who worked and collects social security, in relation to a married woman who didn't work and collects Social Security. You implied that it's not fair for the woman who paid so much into the system to receive the same amount as the woman who didn't work. My argument is that too many people want to give away a bunch of benefits to people who did nothing to deserve them. That would significantly decrease my willingness to work hard in life and contribute to society, if other people were going to receive the same benefits for nothing.
Yes, as you mentioned there are plenty of people who work hard all their lives and are still poor. Take a drive around rural Alabama. You'll see plenty of single wide trailers on dirt lots with a 40,000 dollar pickup truck out front. Their credit sucks so their paying 10% interest on it over six years and end up spending 55,000 dollars for the truck, or more likely it's repossessed. They work hard, but rather than save the money they spend it on crap like that. Yes, I agree that ignorance is a huge problem but I don't think it warrants a 250 page tirade against the GOP (the other 23 pages went against the left in the gun control issue).
I respect your knowledge on the issue, but don't agree with a lot of what you say. I believe it would take at least 20 pages for me to illicit a well thought out, educated argument so I will restrain from attempting to do it in a few paragraphs for fear that I will just look like another ignorant, rural, southern, Republican. Good book, but I'm kind of torn about the fact that I gave a socialist $25 to help further his message.
Sincerely,
Aaron
------
Dear Aaron,
We are not so far apart in our beliefs as you may think, though we are plenty far. Yes, extremely motivated and intelligent people do often make it out of the trap of poverty. I'm one. You're one. However, in no way can we assume that everyone can do that. For one thing, we are not all born equal. You know that as well as I do. Different family and cultural backgrounds have different effects on people's development, and overestimating the role of free will cannot change that. Most of humanity grows up to lead pedestrian lives and do what their neighbors and community do, what they see around them. And that used to work. But today millions of Americans who could once go off to the mills with their neighbors now deliver pizza and disposable labor jobs. It's a degrading lifestyle and the new subculture of the new permanent underclass.
Make decent grades, don't do drugs and don't get pregnant. You say it's that simple. But I'll tell you my friend, if drugs, pregnancy and unemployment are all you ever see around you your entire life, you get the idea that's the way the world is. It's the same here in Belize as it is in America. Too many babies, too many kids dropping out of school, etc. And as long as the few are rich and the poor are many, it will remain that way. Poverty multiplies, wealth divides.
Americans are the richest people on earth and we deserve scarcely a penny of it. We are only 6% of the planet's population yet we gobble up 36% of the world's resources. Just because we work hard to steal the world's resources for our own, mostly so the rich can sell that $40,000 truck to the poor redneck (and in your case get him out of jail when he ultimately fucks up do to a lousy education and absolutely no grasp of the world) -- cheap violent synthetic culture to the black man and Chinese Pottery Barn junk to everyone else -- and we fund the largest army on earth to keep things that way, does not mean we deserve that wealth. The capitalist system steals just as much from America's poor, then blames them for their poverty. In creating our new American corporate feudal serfdom, we are now cannibalizing our own people's dignity and assets. So when we look around us at degraded human beings, let's not be so quick to sneer at these fellow human beings. It's a degraded and degrading system slowy collapsing, hence the cannibalizing (financial colonization) of its own people.
As to the trailer and the $40,000 truck, I believe I covered that in the book. Tell ya something I've learned from watching poor people the world round. They cannot handle money because they come from families that never had any, and thus did not develop financial skills as part of family identity and individual family culture. So when the get money, instead of investing it in success, they buy a symbol that represents success to them, not knowing the process of financial success. In fact they do not understand success in the financial sense, only in the material sense. They think it has to do with possessions.
Now you and I caught a good break in that we grew up right next to the dirt on a farm or working on one. Agriculture is naturally instructive in the ways of this world. Yes it's hard work but it also shows the direct relationship in activity production and yield in all things of this world. It shows what gets results in the most fundamental way. Sadly less than 2% of Anglo and African Americans have that opportunity these days.
In the end I say this: I am successful as a writer. You will soon be successful as a lawyer -- and that is a real problem. How are we going to handle it? Do we exercise our advantage over "those people?" Do we walk the prideful road? Or do we tread lightly and compassionately on this brief journey we are granted. Judging from your letter, I'm guessing that you are a fairly young man, or at least a man in his prime. In other words, the most dangerous stage in life, pocked with hubris and prone to rationalization and folly that comes to haunt one as an old man.
Thank you for your openness of mind regarding my writing. I would suggest that the same open mind be tempered by a little compassion, then applied to all of your fellow men.
This is not a criticism, not even exactly advice, but merely one American brother on this earth trying to share with another.
In friendship,
Joe
