Joe Bageant

Letting go of the quest for bling

Dear Mr. Bageant:

(That "Mr. Bageant" sounds a little pretentious, but I don't really know the right way to address an internaut whom I've never met.)

I've just been reading some of your essays after seeing your name in an article in El Mundo about your book Deer Hunting With Jesus being published in Spain in the new Los Libros del Lince Spanish language series by Enrique Murillo.

The last online essay of yours that I read, "Nine Million Little Feet", got me thinking about how I have also stepped away from home and how that has given me a changed and changing perspective. I had already let go of the quest for bling while living on a (relatively) limited income in very expensive Boulder, Colorado, for a couple of years, but then I moved to Mexico City and started to get a more close-up picture (I can't say experience because I have never wanted for anything) of the world way outside the American Dream.

Should Obama choose Jim Webb as VP?

Dear Joe,

Whatever passes for "dittos" from me to you. I live in Sweden, but grew up in the USA, with bonafides from places like Okeechobee, Florida, where I have in fact lived in a double-wide. I have honest to goodness rapture ready relatives.

Have you ever read Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason? Paine wrote this in Paris, in prison, and he thought it was going to be the last thing he did before Robespierre put him to the guillotine.

I've got a question for you.

Immersion in the shit storm of talk radio

Hello Joe:

When I was a boy the last item of the day for us kids was to kneel at our bedside and pray to an angry god, hoping against hope that he would spare us from his wrath and the destruction to come. It took a good chunk of my 51 years to finally realize I was talking to thin air and that there would be plenty of wrath and destruction to come from the misguided words and deeds of ordinary men and women bent on trying to be god and play god and get the "big" god to be on their side.

I mention this only as a point of contrast to the far more comforting and enlightening bedtime ritual I've adopted of late, courtesy of your spot-on, no-bullshit, take-no-prisoners writing. I prop up on a pillow, laptop on, navigate to your site and console my very troubled of late soul by reading what you have to say about a once great country that is going down very fast.

Jefferson and Washington would weep

Joe;

Wow, what an article! I have just read your essay "A Feral Dog Howls in Harvard Yard". It's as true as the day is long. Our typical tenured professor has as much guts, smarts and pluck as a gerbil and wouldn't last five minutes in the real world.

Damn it, Joe, I'm not blowing smoke up your ass when I say your articles are simply a desperately needed breath of fresh air. You know I'm right. Of course you're not infallible or wise in all things. So what? You have the guts to stand on your own two feet and boldly speak the truth as you see it. Outside of the internet, that behavior almost doesn't exist here in the US. Land of the "Free & Brave" my ass. Jefferson and Washington would weep for a hundred years if they could see the present state of affairs.

Getting comfortable with being depressed

Joe:

I have just finished reading your essay "The Audacity of Depression" and I want say thanks for helping me put a new and uplifting slant on the visceral unease I've been feeling. Your comments on the state of the world, particularly the USA, align closely with my own thoughts.

I'm struggling, recently, with trying to offer my three grown children some hope for their future -- and I find that I can't. Hope for the future is something I can't honestly offer them. Does that make me depressed? You bet it does! Being 64 and recently retired from a 30-year nursing career, my instincts are to "make it all better". But, I can't. Any information or education I send my kids ends up sounding like a condemnation of their lives, which are very successful and deeply rooted in the current delusion.

No longer working class, so quit bitching

Dear Joe,

I've read your book Deer Hunting with Jesus and it reminded me of growing up in a small mill town on the Connecticut River called Bellows Falls. We used to call it Fellows Balls. When the paper mills closed and the railroads became a shadow of their previous selves, most workers traveled to Springfield, 12 miles north, to the machine tool plants, then those plants closed down.

It's an irritating litany repeated everywhere in this country. The little village of Bellows Falls couldn't even support the 12 or so bars for its 3,500 population. Bellows Falls is having a semi-gentrified cultural/arts/music scene revival, but the poor and working folks are still struggling to survive. Now I'm 58 and live in a hamlet of 250 just 20 minutes from Bellows Falls. Sometimes it seems like a thousand miles away. I enjoy reading your work in this dark age.

Steve

Hard times aren't coming, they're here

Good Afternoon Joe,

You can count me as a new reader. I found you down a trail of links. You write eloquently about what I call the spiritual blight in the good old USA.

I lived for years in and around Austin, Texas and I've had a belly full of arch "liberals" who look down there nose at anyone who doesn't get their organic free trade coffee beans from Whole Foods Market. (Driving there in their SUVs with a Save the Whales bumper sticker, no doubt). In other words people who think they are "liberal" because of what they CONSUME, and don't begin to understand how elitist and offensive they really are.

Back here on planet earth (deep east Texas now) you get what they sell at Wal-Mart or Brookshire Bros. because those are the only grocery stores in town. Of course you also have what you can grow, raise, or catch. East Texas may not be Belize, but it's a lot closer to the Third World than it is to Wall Street.

Thank you for 'The Audacity of Depression'

Dear Joe:

As a long time reader of your prose, I've often thought about sending you an e-mail. As I read through your latest essay "The Audacity of Depression", complete with your riffs on musings from Adorno and Lyotard, I knew I just had to finally shoot you a note. While you have often weaved tidbits of forgotten wisdom into your essays (everything from the Rolling Stones to Gui Rochat), your current invocation of a prominent Frankfurt school thinker and one of the more salient French post-modernists is pretty damn apropos of our current political malaise. However, I was actually taken by the more central argument in your piece.

World's best sex manual, the Commie Sutra

How you is, Joe?

Primaries, candidates, elections "issues" (???!), pundits -- the silly season which lasts for years. Some things I can have a bit of fun with and laugh about. Others, well, do you run up a black or red flag before you declare war? I want to do the right thing, so I just write to the editors and such, indecision being upon us.

I'm 61-years-old and my life has been pretty much truncated. I probably won't be around this time next decade. But I wonder why people don't laugh and enjoy. A young friend of mine really has a hard time believing that I'm an atheist and a socialist. I'm not like the others. (No, he's never actually met any other atheists or "reds", but I'm "different", he says. Most people agree that I'm "different". Mainly my wife of forty years. Even though I showed my young friend my voter registration card and he's known me for years, he can't accept it. He has no Idea of what the socialist movement did in this country. Well, since it's being destroyed brick by brick, I suppose he can be excused a bit. But he asked me, really, "What had socialists done for the world?"

Choice of pregnancy or a new sewing machine

Dear Joe:

I just finished your entertaining rant about global population ("Nine Billion Little Feet"). I realize nothing will shake you in your convictions that all is going to hell. (I nearly erased this email at this point, as it is futile to argue facts against feelings.)

Look up some world demographics on Google. Population growth is crashing everywhere that women have a choice between pregnancy and a new sewing machine. The population will continue to grow until mid century -- caused by all those little kids you see out in the street -- and then begin a sudden plummet back to current or 1960's levels. The demographic decline is happening first among the rich, of whom you do not approve. But "rich" comes to mean anyone with a choice between another kid and a sewing machine, or washer. People behave rationally. When another child gets in the way of a real improvement in status or amenity, they stop having more children. But this, as I am sure you see, means they must be offered a choice between another child and the opportunity to own and operate something, of which you would disapprove on some ecological ground or another.

Boutique businesses for money laundering

Joe,

I have just read your essay Dead Man Shopping. Your writing simply dazzles. I wish you could enjoy the temperate climes of California. I wonder why certain writers, like Joan Didion and John Steinbeck, ever left this state for New York. To me their talent remained here. The provincial is perhaps the most critical of his own character, like the reformed smoker.

Twenty years ago I lived in Northern California, the Eureka area, which was branded by the twin male occupations of logging and fishing. A third dynamic was taking hold, the male occupation of pot growing. Fishermen may carry guns, loggers probably not, pot growers always.

'America is run by gangsters,' he said

Hello Joe,

Greetings from Sydney, Australia. I heard your interview on our ABC radio a while back and finally bought your book, Deer Hunting with Jesus. Nearly finished it and I can't agree more with your sentiments.

I have been over to the USA four times and travelled around the back blocks a bit, including your area. I feel a sadness for the average citizen there. They haven't got a clue as to what's going on. I feel the USA has become a giant military camp to protect world capitalism and the citizens are not aware they have been conscripted. I have also travelled around Asia a bit. I've had deeper conversations about world affairs with Indonesian fishermen, Thai taxi drivers and even Tibetan peasants in far western China than I could get out many of the "middle class, educated" people I have met in the USA.

Australian labor unions reverse a trend

Hi Joe,

As I was reading your Deer Hunting with Jesus over Christmas I was reminded of a joke map of the US that appeared on the internet after Dubya was elected the first time. The blue areas, strips and pockets on the East and West Coasts were labelled the "USA" while the large red area in between was labelled "Dumbfuckistan".

Your book really highlighted the disconnect between the middle class left in the US (and I suspect elsewhere in the world) and working class people. While the left seemed happy to be making jokes at their expense, the right was busy connecting, having the conversation and winning the support; and from what you say, they are still doing it.

The dismal trajectory of society and politics

Joe,

I think of myself as middle class -- but I can't really define it. I have a college education, and in politics I would be described by those who know me as a bleeding heart liberal. I'm 65 years old. I was sitting in a coffee shop in Seattle talking to a young man from Virginia who says he left the state twenty years ago to get an education and see the world, but is going back to see his 70 year old father who is not in good health.

Our conversation led into social issues. Not surprising since he is a social worker, and he told me about your book, Deer Hunting with Jesus.

I read it in one sitting and am already insisting that all of my friends read it so we can talk about it. I loved the book.

Belize just suits my Neanderthal tastes

Joe,

I often think of you being in Belize. As a Green I prickled a bit by your comments about Greens in the essay Nine Billion Little Feet. No doubt I and other Greens are trying to save the world (planet and humanity).

Canada, I expect, will be in another election soon. The Harper government wants a vote of confidence to perpetuate the war in Afghanistan. Condi Rice is managing that campaign. An election as remote from affairs of the heart as any endeavour can be! I participate simply because I don't know what else to do.

You have rightly pointed out there is much to do close at hand with the people I meet everyday when I ride the bus, sit in the town square, make my rounds as TV lady at a hospital. Shite! But I could write volumes about the corporatization of health care. Sick people/patients are a money maker for the company I work for. Don't laugh.

Why bother to sign Declaration of Defeat?

Hey Joe,

Seems like the revolution rhetoric puttered out, huh? Who has the energy for all that anyway? I offer this instead. All ya gotta do to join in, is sign on and quit trying. Actually, why bother to even sign on?

TO: Whomever is no longer concerned

FROM: Scott, president, founder, and only member of THE UNASSOCIATED ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN PAUPERS QUASI-REVOLUTIONARY QUITTERS CLUB

---

DECLARATION OF DEFEAT

I (your name goes here), having CONCLUDED, based on the undeniable reality that all American problems invariably become exponentially clusterfucked and are always forcefully contagious, and that the American dream is a tiresome, unrewarding bad trip, not worth the efforts or the casualties. Understanding that participation is complicity, resistance is futile. Having consumed all the mind-numbing propaganda that I can bare. Being duly aware that, I, by having neglected to contribute to the coffers of the winning campaigns can expect no favors and no mercy. Having zero interest in the present electoral outcomes, even for their circus-like entertainment value.

People are beaten down by hard work and fear

Hi Joe!

One of the main reasons I read Deer Hunting with Jesus was to find the answer to the question: Why do they vote Republican? Your book present several good answers.

Almost half the population is functionally illiterate. Doesn't know the difference between a patriotic song and politics. Only scans and barely understands the headlines. Listens to Rush everyday for news.

That is something liberals like me have trouble understanding. My parents made sure my brothers and I understood the value of a life of the mind. My parents bathed us in that belief. But a family that has none of that, well, you only know what you are presented with.

How do we put the Boomers out to pasture?

Hey there, Brother Joe.

I just wanted to drop you a line and add my name to the long list of readers coming from out here in God's Country saying, "Keep it up, Hombre." Anybody with recommendations from Studs Terkel and Sherman Alexie is worth checking out, I suppose. Especially when he's got the balls to nail a title like Deer Hunting with Jesus.

So, like others in the chorus, I wanted to let you know about my journey down the old hog trail. I'm pretty much true blue Missouri Mule. My one set of grandparents opened up a small town meat locker and ran it for 30 years before the place burned down. Kind of lucky for the fire, actually, as that was the only way they got to retire. The other set of grandparents transplanted into West Missouri for construction work, straight out of Cherokee Country, Oklahoma. That set has bloodlines in the James Gang, and my Grandpa had some coonhounds in the movie Where the Red Fern Grows. These genes sure make things interesting, but they're the kind that's more likely to result in prison time and DWIs than PhDs.

Anonymous hero makes the world go round

Mr. Bageant,

I have just finished your book Deer Hunting with Jesus and I have to thank you for writing it. I am a teacher of students that have been failed in one form or another by our systems (I don't believe a 16-year-old can fail). And the root of all that I teach is Love and Compassion. I know that sounds like some mumbo jumbo, but being of Tibetan descent I think I have that license.

Children seek meaning, as we all do, but in them it is raw and unadulterated by the "hologram" -- or the hologram only has a slight hold on them. With kindness and gentleness they let down their guard and the gangbangers, criminals, druggies, etc., and become what they are, young people in need of something to believe in, something to work toward, and an adult that sees them as something other than a meal ticket, a burden, or something to screw.

Not being ignorant is painful

Greetings Joe,

Your article "Nine Billion Little Feet" was accurate in every way. We try to throw those rocks at the American Consumerist Shitty Evil Way. Not that the beast will ever feel them, but it's the throwing that matters.

Although I haven't yet gotten to your point of disassociation yet, I'm working on that. I don't buy those shiny bobbles that everyone else has. No cell phone, no TV, a job that pays crap, used clothing stores, community garden shares, the whole bit. For me, it wasn't all that hard to not want these extravagant lifestyles. I avoided college, figuring that since I had been subjected to 12 years of forced dumbing down education, all that had to be unlearned. So why would I waste another few years just trying to get some shiny high paying job, when I never agreed with the sick American culture that I grew up in?

When do people realize that they are slaves?

Joe,

A while back I badgered you to check out some essays on American schooling (none dare call it education) by the likes of the late Richard Mitchell and the still living (I think) John Taylor Gatto. I think you must have scanned some of it since I noticed that you mentioned the derivation of our system from those of Prussia and India.

Having thanklessly toiled in a subordinate capacity in the intellectual cesspool known as "special ed" some decades back, I can attest to the utter lack of interest on the part of the system in imparting the slightest spark of thought in these charges. Since by the time they hit school and for the few years they stay before becoming parents or prisoners they are already damaged (blasted is a more descriptive term) beyond any hope of intellectual development.

Solutions require critical thinking skills

Hi Joe,

You really know how to scare the shit out of a person, don't you? I just finished Deer Hunting with Jesus and I loved it, but the gradual creeping feeling of helplessness and powerlessness that has been descending upon me for some time has suddenly accelerated at a rate to make me feel truly uncomfortable with my place in life. Don't get me wrong, I believe I am a good person, but you make the world sound so broken that the only thing it sounds like we can do is to burn it down to bedrock and start again. I include all of us, 'cause when America sneezes, we all catch a cold here in Australia.

The wealthy cannot barricade themselves

Good morning,

I write from Arctic Norway where I teach psychology in the local university. Thank you for the essay. I have lived in rural Philippines, and what you describe fits the scene there as well.

The world is going to become more and more ugly, I fear. And wealthy nations are planning how to remain wealthy and barricaded, at the same time planning how to import and exploit cheap foreign labour.

It is a paradox that will not work.

Markus
Norway

How to motivate people to have fewer babies

Dear Joe,

You make some obvious points. But they needed to be said out loud, because to some, they are not yet obvious. Here are some of my responses:

If you don't like naughty corporate giants monetizing their mass murders (AKA "cancer clusters," and other ways people are killed by environmental  pollution, etc.) give some thought to pressing criminal charges against the CEO's. Anyone in America can bring a criminal action via our grand jury system.

If you would like to specifically address naughty corporate giants who have tried to control our elections via news black-outs on specific candidates, join the Citizen Class Action. You write that you are seriously considering boycotting the income tax.  Well, join the crowd.

The insanity that encourages overpopulation

Joe,

I loved your rant, "Nine Billion Little Feet", but I have one teeny little point. It is beyond embarrassing to me that our generation did in fact, put one of our own in the White House -- and the bastard turned out to be a reactionary counter-revolutionary driving this country like a bat out of hell toward 1929 and beyond.

What we need is focus. Why are six kids a good idea in Belize? What cultural identity makes it so? Is this factor shared among other peasant peoples? Can we change it? Don't look at me, man. All I can add is the obvious insanity of Viagra, en vitro fertilization, surrogate mothers, the Catholic Church, and the U.S. tax code which encourages procreation in the face of this crisis.

Village elders saddened by globalization

Joe,

I was moved by your essay "Nine Billion Little Feet". I enjoyed the read, but what moved me was your epiphany of self discovery among the third worlders. I've lived among those people here in Taos New Mexico. Joe, I really do applaud your venture, in the same spirit as Thoreau or Gauguin -- my heroes. The great adventure! Where you are now is not what the folks back home would consider real or maybe even sane.

In my travels, I came to a point where the vision of eluding the "real world" came up against this question: "Is what I am doing have any value or should I hoist the white flag and return to a relatively secure and well paid slot in the educated semi-elite back in the real world?" That was 35 years ago and honestly I was scared. For the first and last time, I got some LSD and went into the mountains with my mind set on an finding answer to my dilemma. I got the answer and I'm still here because my heart is here.

US politicians are flavors of vanilla

Hi Joe,

Thanks! I'm moving to Morocco and it's all because your article on Belize got me thinking (Getting Out the Bling Vote). Just wanted to tell you how thoroughly I enjoyed your piece on elections in Belize. I laughed very hard. Not only did I laugh very hard but I almost packed up and moved to Belize on the spot because I have a pension and decided the time is NOW to get out of here and use it to enjoy life rather than subsidizing my work income and wars.

Haha! But Belize didn't look as good as Costa Rica, which didn't look as good as Panama, which didn't look as good as Ecuador, etcetera, etcetera, so I crossed the Atlantic and am moving to Morocco soon.

Watching economic catastrophe unfold

Joe:

Reading your response to Aaron ("By working hard, anyone can succeed") and several previous right-leaning correspondents makes me wonder if perhaps you are just too nice of a guy.

One of the biggest obstacles this society faces in reforming our untenable economic system is the self deluded belief that "everyone can make it if they just work hard enough". Often, this belief is held by those who have themselves benefited from liberal policies, yet are incapable of admitting it.

By working hard, anyone can succeed

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.

George Washington gave voters free rum

Dear Joe,

The only difference between the U.S. and Belize is who gets paid by the candidates ("Getting Out the Bling Vote"). If memory serves, George Washington lost his first election to the House of Burgesses at least in part to his refusal to provide the usual number of barrels of liquor to the voters. He learned his lesson, ponied up the booze the next election, and won.

I'd argue that the low turnout that we see in most elections reflects people's sense that their vote is worth nothing unless they think that they can prevent something "bad" from happening, like homosexuals being able to marry legally. I voted in support of a referendum to let gay men and lesbians marry in 2000 in Nevada because I figure that anyone of legal age who wants to marry ought to be able to get married.

Dilemma of liberal teen in rural Michigan

Dear Joe,

I am from a small town in Michigan and lately I have been facing some difficulties. As a liberal I do not agree with many people in my community and many of my peers on a lot of the issues in your book Deer Hunting With Jesus. Issues such as gun control, national defense, Social Security, and Medicare are discussed, and they are of great importance, but where I come from those issues are not as important as "moral" issues such as abortion or gay marriage. I have always found it interesting how people can get more upset over two women marrying than a local soldier being killed in Fallujah. I yearn for change.

I was watching CNN the day after Barack Obama's caucus victory in Iowa, and I found it ironic that a faith CD commercial was on during the break. I am a Christian, but I have not been able to understand my fellow Christians' views on a lot of issues. I am a supporter of Barack Obama as well as John Edwards. I would be willing to vote for any person as along as I agree with them on the majority of the issues. I would not care if the person I voted for is a Mormon, Black, White, Muslim, Hispanic, Atheist, Catholic, Asian, or even Born Again. (Well really if Jimmy Carter ran again I actually would not mind, but I am not so sure if any Evangelical can be like Jimmy).

Greeting card platitudes from Obama

Dear Joe,

Let me first say how enjoyable Deer Hunting with Jesus was. Very. For someone of a younger generation like myself, it is very heartening to know some of those elders who avoided the mind trap of growing up in society are still freeminded. Do you see Barack Obama's campaign as in any way analagous to George McGovern's campaign in 1972 (ignoring the different Republican candidate)? Hope? Idealism?

Much respect,

Claude
Australia

------

Dear Claude,

You are too kind in your assessment regarding my supposed escape from the mind trap of America's crude media driven consumer society. You are talking to a guy who lies around on the couch in his under shorts, eats corn nuts, drinks cheap beer, and watches crime shows fer god sake. ;-)

But no, I don't see any resemblance in Obama's campaign to McGovern's. McGovern was what he appeared to be. Like any other politician, Obama's every move, word and nuance is extremely calculated and orchestrated in ways that were not possible, or even imaginable, in 1972, Same with all American candidates today.

They're burning kids alive over here!

Hey Joe,

Thanks for posting the message from Pablo on your website ("After Iraq, will any American be innocent?"). As a Chilean, he has experience in exactly what I worry about -- how many crimes is my government hiding, and how can I know?

Your audience, more than most, is probably aware of how much of what passes as "news" in the U.S. is actually government propaganda. Yet, being told lies is actually better than what we are never told -- the stories that go completely unreported. As Pablo points out, we hear little or nothing about civilian deaths in Iraq, and any concerns expressed are dismissed as invalid -- either motivated by some pathological hatred of the current Administration, or based on unverifiable figures.

The fact is, to quote our late unlamented Secretary of Defense ...

After Iraq, will any American be innocent?

Hi Joe,

I loved Deer Hunting With Jesus and I visit your web site regularly. I am sending the short rant below hoping that it will generate some discussion.

Dismissing the staggering death toll of civilians in Iraq is the new Holocaust denial. The only difference is that while the former is penalized in most of Europe and can land the discontent in jail, the latter is a politically correct and socially acceptable position. Just as every single Jew was a potential enemy and deserved to be interned or sent to a prisoner camp, every Muslim today is considered a threat. Just as rounding up Jews and other undesirables was a way of preventing future attacks against the stability of the Reich, installing democracy against the peoples' will in Iraq is presented as a preemptive measure. Furthermore, it's rationalized as yet another example of American magnanimity and those who criticize it are either fifth columnists or just plain ungrateful.

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

------

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.

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.

I'm certain of coming economic collapse

Joe,

I picked up your book at Barnes & Noble on Sunday. Read Deer Hunting with Jesus front to back. I spend a lot of time in the I81S corridor from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania to Herndon, Virginia. We are in Winchester frequently. I hail from a similar background, having grown up on Main Street in a similar town in Pennsylvania, not far from Winchester, so I certainly understand the culture.

We have been sold out by Corporate America and I am horrified by what has happened inside the Republican Party. Your description of average Americans as debt servants is exact. And overall, the country is in one hell of a mess.

However, all I read in your book was a blistering, contemptuous, critique and saw no suggestions, so I am not sure what you prescribe as an alternative? I have spent considerable time in Europe and I saw little work, mostly eating and drinking. The people were healthier but did not seem happier. 85% of the people on the planet would immigrate to the U.S. if they could get a visa. Those poll numbers are only slightly diminished since the war in Iraq. What do you suggest as an alternative? Stronger labor unions and restrictions of overseas manufacturing? That won't work either, much too late for that.

Left is far too quick to blame religion

Hey Joe,

Reading the letter "The shadows of a religious childhood" from John in Norway, I sympathize, but I think there's something worse than religion out there. The generations in my family preceding me were all Catholics, but it's much less so now. My father, an altar boy back in the day, calls himself a "recovering Catholic." At any gathering, nun horror stories and jokes are bandied about. One of my uncles in particular is venomously atheistic, and this is a problem for secular humanism.

I know a lot of atheists up here in the obnoxious, narcissistic, self-righteous, boomer-land called Vermont, and whenever one of them proclaims their atheism or ridicules someone of faith, I just want to laugh in their faces. "Don't you get it?" I want to say, "90% of Americans believe in God! You're the most minor of minorities! Nobody gives a crap what you think!"

Born into a world of struggle and debt

Joe,

I bought your book Deer Hunting with Jesus yesterday and finished it today. I bought it because I heard you a couple of weeks ago on the radio here in Australia and checked out your website. I enjoyed your essays so much, it seemed churlish not to buy the book as, otherwise, I was freeloading on your artistic efforts.

I was born in Scotland in 1944, but I have lived in Australia for thirty odd years. I was raised in a working class family in Glasgow and, like every body else, did not know I was poor. At primary school (5-years-old to 11-years-old) I showed an aptitude for reading and early mathematics. My teachers persuaded my parents that I should go to a school which specialised in mathematics and science. It was expensive, but the local council had a fund which paid the fees of those who could not afford to go otherwise. Six years later, University beckoned. this was now 1962 and the government not only provided free education plus book allowance to all university students, but granted a living allowance of half the average wage to students who passed the means test.

Foreclosure? Repent and take another loan

Hey Joe,

Good news. Here in Minne-snowta our illustrious Repugnican Governor Pawlenty has just proposed advancing millions of dollars to counsel about 80,000 "homeowners" who are behind on their house payments. He is worried because through 2009 thousands more adjustable rate loan payments are scheduled to rise. Minnesota foreclosures (20,500 through September) are expected to quadruple this year over 2005. Minneapolis, St. Paul, and suburbs reported 3,699 foreclosure filings during the second quarter of this year, up 13.2 percent over the previous year. The Twin Cities alone could lose 1.6 billion in property value by the end of 2009 (sources: U.S. Congress Housing Link. RealtyTrac).

We were freer men then, however poor

Joe,

In your reply to the letter from Lawrence in Seattle, Swept up in Jesus fever at age 12, you wrote:

The interesting thing is that they actually think they are the majority in this country. I suppose it is the result of never socializing with people of a different class, which can make you blind to even a majority. I find this majority everywhere I go, Oregon, New York State, Missouri, Michigan ... The fact that we never see it in the media, to me at least, is proof of this country's deep denial and brainwashing about America being a nation of "middle class" people.

Swept up in Jesus fever at age 12

Dear Brother Joe:

I just finished your book Deer Hunting with Jesus, and Praise Gawddd! I believe, as in that great title of an album by Weissberg and Fogelberg, that we are "Twin Sons of Different Mothers". Mama was from way Western Kentucky, around Eddyville, home of the State Pen. It was called "'Tween the Rivers" (Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers ran parallel) in those days before the TVA.

There were feuds. Mom's brother, Adolph (I'm not making this up) blew a guy's head off with a shotgun. Some time later, the dead guy's brothers whomped Uncle A real bad with clubs. He expired a few weeks later. There is a wonderful old cemetery back in those woods, now faithfully maintained by my cousin Ben. The stone of the guy done in by Uncle A actually says "MURDERED" on it. His people are all buried around him, and "our people" are a hundred yards away.

Bush kept Alabama safe from communists

Joe:

Just finished reading Deer Hunting with Jesus. Great book, I have often wondered about some of the same things you touch on. My roots are rural Pennsylvania and south side Chicago. Between the two, I developed a pretty good bullshit detector, but yours is the finest I have seen in a long while. Mine only goes to ten, so often it gets pegged. Yours must go to eleven.

It's all a matter of image. Sincerity, if you can fake that, you've got it made. I remember reading an interview with a rural woman about Bush wearing blue jeans and clearing brush on his ranch. "You can't get more real than that" she claimed. Yep, George Bush was born in a log cabin and drinks hard cider.

The whole damn mess and your book

Joe,

I just want to thank you for speaking for the rest of us who are cowering in fear of losing everything (which isn't much) and are wondering where we're all going to end up. I'm 62 so I figure it doesn't matter so much about me, but what about my kids and all the other kids and their kids?

I'm  looking to buy into a small piece of land with a cave where I can hide -- it's a pipe dream. I work for Wal-Mart and the price of real estate, even in downstate Ohio, keeps leapfrogging ahead of me.

The shadows of a religious childhood

Joe!

They didn't call it The Rapture when I was growing up, but the concept still scared the crap out of me. I remember when I was in fourth grade dreaming about the roof of my school building disappearing in a pink light and everyone yelling "Glory! Glory!" as they lifted their arms to the sky. I told my sister about the dream and she thought it was wonderful, a gift from God -- but it terrified me. And that fear is what stayed with me the longest, the most tenacious residue of the faith of my fathers, what finally led to stray from the path of righteousness. How could a message based on love produce only fear?

My parents were born Seventh Day Adventists, all my grandparents in Norway converted to Adventism around 1900. Adventism is all about The Last Days. You're brought up to read the signs that Christ is coming again: Earthquakes, wars, famine and flood, the price of gas, all signs that we are entering the Last Days. Even though we've been doing so for all of the 150 odd years that Adventism has existed, born as it was from the flotsam and jetsam of the Great Disappointment of 1844, we're still living in the Last Days. Once The Last Days start in earnest, that's your goose cooked, jack, it's too late to repent. That's the hook that gets you shaking in your boots: Is it too late? Is there still time? You know that passage in the Bible about a cloud the size of a man's hand being a sign of Christ's imminent return. There were times when I was a kid that I was scared to look at the sky!

I am one of Australia's working poor

Hi Joe,

My name is Kerri I live in Canberra and I am a public servant (federal government worker). I just wanted to pass on that I saw you on Australian morning TV last week and I am intrigued by you, I don't know why, not many people leave me thinking and intrigued any more. I will be reading your book and your articles from your website.

I am concerned Australia is headed down the same track politically as the US. I am NOT really up to date with politics in Australia even though I am Australian and I can't seem to find someone worth voting for even though there is an election looming and I think many people like me vote because we have to and that is a problem.

The liberal vision is not egalitarian

Joe:

I'm not exactly you're target audience, but I'm close to it. While I'm a card carrying member of the Boomer Meritocracy (Johns Hopkins '69, U of Chicago Law '74, partner in a 170 lawyer firm in New Jersey) and Jewish to boot, I grew up in Baltimore and I did my two years as an enlisted GI in 69-71. Before I went into the Army, my father told me, "Learn to like country music." What he meant, of course, was that the default white guy culture in the ranks was uneducated Southern. I took his advice and got along well with my squad mates and my NCOs (except for the one guy who thought, correctly, that I was paying a bit too much attention to his wife and cold cocked me one night in the beer bar). They were as good and friendly people as you'd ever want to know -- as long as you didn't spook them by questioning their basic assumptions about things.

USA looms large, affecting the world

Dear Mr Bageant,

I came across your book when looking for "Richistan" on Amazon.com. The book looked interesting so I ordered your Deer Hunting with Jesus. I found it a good, though sobering and depressing read. I have passed it on to my son, a lefty and an artist, I am happy to say. I now understand, a little more, the American attachment to guns. Personally, I haven't fired a weapon since 1973 and have no desire to do so.

I have a nasty feeling that your description of the plight of the American worker is a vision of the future of Australia. I live in Australia and heard your interview with Phillip Adams last week, my wife heard you talking to Jon Faine in Melbourne. At 59, I am about your vintage. My wife and I met and married in Rhodesia and, given the intractable problems of that benighted country, left to settle in Australia in 1973.

Education is no guarantee of security

Dear Mr. Bageant,

My family finally makes sense to me after reading your book, Deer Hunting with Jesus. We don't live in a society that values critical thought. Examining our lives will force us to come to terms with the decisions that we've made, so it is viewed as dangerous and unsettling. The torment of hope is more than most can bear. Most people look at the cost of change, but not the opportunity cost of staying where they are. Staying where they are is viewed as a no-cost option, but change will take real work and is perceived as a higher risk than many will be willing to take.

Joe Bageant on Australian radio

Hi from Queensland Australia to Joe and all our (thinking) American friends,

With reference to Deer Hunting with Jesus -- currently being promoted by Joe in Australia -- Joe's interview with Phillip Adams on Late Night Live on Australia's Radio National was excellent. Mr Adams is one of Australia's leading social commentators and often derided by our conservative minders as being of the left.

Our current ultra-right wing government in Australia is using trash-talk in an all out and desperate attempt to be re-elected in an election scare-campaign that equates union membership with being in league with the devil. The devil, however, being in the detail of their bigoted scare mongering and lap-dog antics with reference to U.S. foreign policy (invade now, explain later).

I invite U.S. residents and readers of Joe Bageant's blog to listen in on the web. Click here and you will be taken to a page where you can choose "Listen now" for RealAudio and Windows Media formats, or "Download audio" for an MP3 file.

Paul
Proud Union Member & Teacher
Bundaberg, Australia (51st state of the good old US of A)

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Note: The interview with Joe begins at 32:03. The first two segments of the program are discussions of the current political campaign in Australia, then a discussion of the history of deportations from Australia. Well worth a listen. -- Ken Smith.

Americans seem fed-up, bitter and angry

Hello Joe,

I just watched your interview on a morning talk show on Australian television. I was fascinated by what you were talking about in the U.S. I am an American "ex-pat" and have been living in Australia for the past three years with my Aussie husband. Just so you know, you are absolutely right on the money about how Australia is at the back of the bus and the U.S. is seeing the crash first at the front. I try to tell people the road that they (we) are going down but nobody seems to see it or want to see that this is the boom before the bust.