Joe Bageant

Imminent collapse with business as usual

Dear Joe,

I found your website today via some link or other -- maybe via the Information Clearing House. Read some of your essays and had a good giggle. Here's my view from the other side of the Atlantic. Nice to see someone articulating the American nightmare -- er, dream -- as I have found the capitalist circus all my life living in different parts of the western world. I was working in a 'responsible' job until I got bullied out about six months ago.

Springtime in the Republic of Larry

Amid the comforts of empire, the citizens blithely bumble

YOU SPEAK OF LIBERTY? OF AN ENLIGHTENED POLITY? YOU BEER-SOAKED KNUCKLE DRAGGERS AND PRECIOUS WET-LIPPED LIBERALS WOULDN'T KNOW LIBERTY FROM A CONGOLESE  ASS-EATING TAPEWORM! YOU HAVEN’T GOT  THE INSIGHT OF A GODDAM FRUIT FLY, MUCH LESS ENOUGH TO VOTE.
-- Northern Virginia internet denizen called THE SCREAMING MAN!

“Grrrrrrrr!”
-- Bingo, the philosopher dog

By Joe Bageant

Spring has truly arrived when I once again find myself in the garden shed with my dog Bingo while pretending to fix the lawn mower. Meaning that I need to clean out the stale gas that I purposefully leave in the tank each fall so my wife will have to ask me to tinker with the mower every spring. Screwing around in the garden shed, pretending to do maintenance only a man is supposed to be capable of, is one of the many ruses that keeps me from having to do actual yard work. I love to watch a woman do yard work, what with the bending over in shorts and all.

Bosses learned to work together as a class

Mr Bageant,

The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. I've been reading your essays with a great deal of enthusiasm for the last few months and have been inspired by much of what you wrote. However I have also been concerned by a tone I have noticed in some of the letters and feel that I need to speak up to address it. People seem to be forgetting the basic solidarity of the working class.

Maybe front lines are here, not in Baghdad

Hi Joe,

I am going to tell you my story, but I am going to do so in context of one of your essays -- the one on Lynndie England, "The Girl with the Leash". I grew up in Cumberland, Maryland, home of the Military Police unit at Abu Ghraib. My first job 30 years ago was as a civilian clerk at the Air Force recruiter signing up our young men and women.