Joe Bageant

Sarah Palin is the Future of Conservatism

Dear Readers: Here we have a fourth article by An Anonymous Political Consultant, now writing under the pseudonym John Brown (Email: postpolitico@yahoo.com). His previous contributions to this site are: "Not New Ideas, but Identifying New Enemies", "Moving to the Center of Elite Consensus", and "Life in the Post Political Age".
-- Joe

---

By John Brown

When we look back with the benefit of hindsight at this year's presidential election, we will remember two noteworthy developments. The first and the most obvious one is the historic victory of Senator Barack Obama, and the other and much less noted one is the political birth of Governor Sarah Palin or more importantly the new prototype of conservatism her emergence represents.

Senator Obama's victory is most important in what it negated, the primary political narrative of our time. The conservative political and economic consensus, which has dominated this country since the start of the Reagan administration, is no more. Governor Sarah Palin's emergence is important in what it revealed, a snap shot into how and in what form the American right makes its comeback.

American problems are familiar in Spain

Dear Mr Bageant,

I am writing to tell you how much I have enjoyed Deer Hunting with Jesus, which I finished just this morning. I read the Spanish edition, Crónicas de la América profunda. 

I found your book by chance, thanks to a notice in my local library (the reason why I read in Spanish and not in English, although I will try to get in the original language and have a go at it again, it's really worth it). Here in Spain, the only picture we get from your country is through the movies and the television series. We eat your food, we wear your clothes and our kids copy the ways of the downtown kids in your country (talk about paranoia -- it's really disturbing to see a Colombian kid who has barely spent two months here, living in one of the slums in Madrid, Spain, and dressing and gesticulating as a bro in the hood), but there is a great deal we miss, because it is not the stuff of television.

Joe discusses the election and poor whites

The American News Project traveled to Winchester, Virginia to get Joe Bageant on video, talking about his book Deer Hunting with Jesus, the upcoming election, corporate control of damn near everything, and why poor people without medical insurance are opposed to expanded access to health care. On its web site introduction, the American News Project described Joe's book as "one of the most prescient pieces of analysis about American politics and culture in this election year."

The seven-minute video closes with 20 seconds of Joe picking his mandolin and singing.

-- Ken Smith

Sick and tired of re-fighting Vietnam War

Dear Joe,

Here's one of the reasons I'm voting for (in fact, already voted for) Obama: he is untainted by the Vietnam War.

McCain is a very dangerous man because he is so hungry to win a war, that is, to win Vietnam. I even heard him say in one of the so-called debates, "I know how to win a war." Oh, yeah? Not much evidence of that particular competence, but lots of evidence of a deep desire -- let's say, acute obsession.

Bible advice for the Barberette of Beza

Hey Joe,

I am not a Democrat, nor a Republican. I hail from the great state of Vermont, with our independent Senator Bernie Sanders, one of the few sane voices in Washington. I am going to vote for Obama. There is no choice as far as I see.

Well, I made a deal with the devil last week while cutting hair in prison. Seems all the heroin addicts that have found Jesus are voting for McCain (yes, they can vote). Tormented by the fact that I am an atheist, and on my way to hell, they agreed to watch the debates with an open mind towards Obama if I in turn would read the Bible. Ha, I of course, was thinking Wine Lovers Bible, or Poisonwood Bible, or my mom's great Gardening Bible.

USA betrayed itself and all its friends

Joe,

Hi from Australia. I've just read your essay, "The Bailout in Plain English". It's all too true. Of late, Henry Paulson, your Treasury guy, was quoted as saying that he finds the recent US government move to buy shares in Wall Street banks is necessary but as objectionable to those bankers as it is to him.

Joe, as a retiree in Australia who worked his ass off for 44 years to get enough money on which to live and now finds 40% of his retirement fund is gone, will you please tell Hank Paulson what's fuckin' objectionable. It goes like this, "Hank, you and your Wall Street hyenas with your unregulated, unfettered free market Greenspan baloney allowed this voodoo money to be AAA rated by the world's most trusted ratings agency, that icon Standard and Poor's, so that the multi-trillion dollar load of dog shit could be exported to banks around the rest of the world.

Former cop, 'deadbeat dad' having hard time

Joe,

I came across your blog while searching for the phrase "escape from America".

I'm a 42-year-old man and I remember this country when it used to be "free". Those days are gone, or maybe I was just naive or too dumb and we were really never free. I don't know which.

I have been a police officer and have had a first hand look at corruption. I hated it with a passion. After all, I got into that job to honestly help people, not fuck them. Unfortunately, the way these laws are written, a person has no more say as to how their children are raised anymore. Hell, my father used to beat me when I deserved it. Try that now and you will find yourself in prison and lose all rights to that kid.

Not new ideas, but identifying new enemies

Dear readers,

Well, the masked political consultant blew through town the other day painting the town with his latest message, this time a big picture message. So big picture in fact, that it makes the ideas such as the "framing concept" of George Lakoff look like mouse farts. Before he again rode off on his white horse Mescalero, he left this silver bullet for us to contemplate -- the answer to the question: "Why the neocon bastards always seem to put six rounds into the chests of earnest liberals in every political gunfight, and why the Christian fundamentalists always cheer for the bad guys?" 

In art and labor,

Joe

PS: Here are linked headlines to the two previous contributions to this site by our favorite anonymous political consultant: "Moving to the Center of Elite Consensus" and "Life in the Post Political Age".

---

By An Anonymous Political Consultant

The rise of religious fundamentalism as a political force is the most important and misunderstood development in our recent history.

The primary motivating factor in the development of the religious right is a defensive response to the challenges posed by the power of popular consumer and entertainment culture and not a backlash against progressive or liberal ideas and social movements.

What we need is a Christian Workers Party

Hi Joe,

I just this morning finished your book, Dear Hunting with Jesus, which awakened me and taught me much. Thanks for writing it.

Toward the end I started to mentally resist what I perceive as your somewhat anti-religious leaning, and after introspection I see that I have a question to ask both you and this country at large:

Why can't a Liberal be Christian?

I have no doubt whatsoever that you will answer, "Of course a Liberal can be Christian!" But I will suggest to you that sometimes what you write seems to belie that answer.

Channeling outrage, looking for the good

Hi Joe,

I haven't been able to put your website down since my brother sent me there three days ago. You are my hero. You have been able to articulate what I have known since 1964 my first year of conscious contact with reality  that we were doomed. I tried to do something about it for the next eight years, but gave up in 1972 when McGovern lost to Richard Nixon. Then, I headed for the hills and valleys and woods of Humboldt County in northern California.

So I know rural life. I am not a redneck. I am a hippie. But we all lost the class war, so it doesn't seem to amount to much what we did or didn't have in common. It seemed important back then and some of my best friends were rednecks. We all hung out together at the Ivanhoe.