Joe Bageant

UK has moved to fiscal libertarian right

Hi Joe,

While Pete has a point ("English liberals also hate working class") that there is a very patronizing undercurrent of distaste for the working class among the UK left (though liberal means something else in the UK -- the social middle-ground with libertarian economics), it's a long stretch to say that Chav equals working class. It's a more specific term than "white trash". It would be a bit like saying that "soccer mom" is a synonym for "middle class" in the US (whereas lots of middle class are not soccer moms). Sure, Chavs are a subset of the British underclass -- ignorant, uneducated, violent, with a particular fashion "uniform". Chav is said by some to mean Council Housed And Violent, though I think that was invented after the fact.

English liberals also hate working class

Hi Joe,

I have just read "Poor, White and Pissed" I and whole-heartedly agree! I'm English working class and was brought up on council estates (like your projects) and first worked as a road sweeper before getting a break doing an indentured apprenticeship as a plumbing and heating engineer here in the UK. Our class system is heavily entrenched, but the working class is beginning to believe the middle class lie that there is no working class anymore, just like the American working class was sold this bullshit in the 50's and 60's.

What happens when real estate collapses

Joe,

Your recent post ("Privatizing park benches and guard rails") mentioned scavenging for metals in houses, etc. In my past life I was an inner-city landlord and property manager, during the post-oil-bust years in Oklahoma City. This was a time when you could buy houses for pennies on the dollar (which I did). Once I bought a three-story house for $1,000 (but that's a long story). This was in about 1990 or so. I bought many solid old houses in bad neighborhoods for less than $15,000.

Lack of connection with my fellow 'Murkins

Joe,

Here I am, a Viet Nam vet, wounded during both my tours and on full disability because of them, and I can't help but think: don't people ever learn? Aren't we smarter than geese? I mean: the world isn't brand new every morning as far as science can tell us. People say, yet do, things so at odds with each other that it just makes me shake my head.

I've been reading articles by Finley Peter Dunn ("Mr. Dooley") and I find a lot of good insight therein. As the articles were written a century or so ago, one wonders if the wheels haven't been spinning, or the conveyance of state has been static while a backdrop did the actual movement which merely gave the illusion.

Privatizing park benches and guard rails

Hello Joe,

Today I ordered a few things from a beading supplier in little Idaho Springs, Colorado. We got to talking about how high the price of metals, from brass and copper up to silver and gold, have risen in the last few years. I told her about how this summer I recycled some very old copper roof sheathing for some decent gas money, and how silver is vastly undervalued due to extensive fraud in the markets.

Living in a car, traveling around the country

Hi Joe,

A friend sent me a link to your essay "Madman and Sedatives", and I felt right at home reading it. That was excellent!

I'm in dire need of publicity for my Third World American USA Podcast tour, beginning around November 7. I'm afraid there's no polish here, just a guy traveling the country, living in a car, and seeking the reality of poverty, the wealth gap and debtors imprisonment (and related issues). I get the feeling you might find this project interesting, so please take a look, and I'd certainly appreciate any publicity or links you can provide.

Suffering Christian fundamentalism in Europe

Dear Mr Bageant,

I stumbled upon your article, What the Left Behind Series Really Means, during my almost constant yet strangely masochistic traversal of atheist, agnostic, humanist, religious, creationist and evolutionist (and the rest of an ever growing list of subjects with which to torment the soul!) literature on the web.  I have no idea why I am responding to the article as I've never been one to communicate readily on any level and have nothing constructive to add, please forgive my doing so.  Performing a brief and probably highly pretentious self-analysis, I feel like I'm writing out of sheer relief, from a position of utter exhaustion.

Torture at Abu Ghraib is not a new thing

Joe,

Your essays confirm that I'm not going out of my mind. I mean that. I pick up the paper these days (metaphorically -- actually I flip through blogs and news websites) and I honestly don't recognize where we're going with this thing. So many things have hit me in the last five or ten years of "waking up" that I'm practically shell shocked.

Bullshit and backstabbing from fellow teachers

Joe,

As a Brit living in the US for the past 20 odd years, I have shaken my head at what has been happening to this country over the past several years. I often wonder why I do not return to the UK. My American wife certainly wants to go as soon as we can. But things aren't much better there what with puppy Tony's nose buried up King George's ass. The UK is pretty much a large American aircraft carrier. So I stay and watch the drama and hope that the people with guts like you can rally enough support to chip a large enough hole in the humming monolith so that the slaves can see the light on the other side.

Joe, you almost hit the nail on the head

Hey Joe!!!!

A big hey hey from up here in the north Atlantic region of our U.S. of A. I was reading your take in your article entitled "Madmen and Sedatives" and yup! -- you ALMOST, ALMOST hit the nail on the head. See the apathy or downright atrophy you see around you isn't social entirely like a cosmological ant-farm going through stages from WW2 but instead it's televised by megacorporations and we really fuckin' eat it. We are a nation of lemmings under a haze of Vaseline moping about in the shadows of what we are mistakenly calling journalism. That's the problem.