Joe Bageant

Panama Red visits Joe Bageant in Belize

Panama Red, who has been traveling the world and making music for more than 40 years, somehow got the idea that his life would be more complete if he visited his friend Joe Bageant in Hopkins Village, Belize. The plan was to spend a week with Joe in Hopkins and learn something about the music of the Garifuna poeple -- and it was a good plan, with some bumps and detours along the way. Panama Red has written several great articles on his visit to Belize, posted on his web site, that are well worth reading.

A swan dive off the highboard of democracy

Joe,

Like a lot of people seem to be doing, I have been spending more and more time on your site. I'm trying not to get fixated about it. I've looked at the pictures you've posted of your home town, your vacation to the French Riviera, you trip to Belize. I've read the recent letters of people who tell you that they question their own sanity because of the pain they feel as a result of their wanting to do something to stop the evil that our country has become. They think they might be crazy for feeling this way about America. I feel this same way they do. But I know I'm not crazy. Famous last words. Maybe it's not about whether or not you're crazy. Maybe it's about whether or not you are socialized enough to look at the minute by minute insanity that streams across the TV and Internet without running screaming out of the house and into the street.

Our National Sociopathy

By Joe Bageant

There is a dark side to any state induced oblivion -- in this case, our national and international sociopathy, our unacknowledged inner and outer violence. By now it should be clear that our national and personal sociopathy stems more from our environment and culture than anything our mamas and daddies did to us in childhood, lousy as those things may have been for some. This ain't Kansas anymore and besides, our parents were products of the same culture, only less so.

His anger was part of what killed him

Dear Joe,

Your exchange with Robert regarding marriage ("The tension between love and awareness") hit a nerve. Since I discovered your site a month or so ago ("Somewhere a banker smiles") I keep saying, "If only Brian were here to read this . . ." He would have dug it. Or maybe not. (He hated practically everybody.) Anyway, like Robert and his wife, like you and your wife, he and I agreed on the basic stuff about the decline and fall of any idealistic notions we ever had about the U.S., the accelerating corruption of our politics and our psyches, the horror of the Bush administration, late capitalism, the World Bank, etc., etc., etc. He was the SCREAMINGMAN. I screamed only on occasion but mostly tried to be the voice of sweet reason saying, "Honey, you can't live there all the time." And indeed he couldn't. He died in August 2005, of an apparent heart attack, at the age of 46.

People just don't care what's happening

Joe:

I love you!!! I read your essays and suddenly do not feel so totally alone anymore. My friends all believe in the Democrats and think I am insane for being a socialist. I read the news about what we have done in Iraq and how we condone torture and I double over in anguish. I want to build a house on the Mexican border and harbor "illegal aliens" there. There are days when I just do not understand how people can carry on their lives and go "shopping", have parties, etc., and not care about the trauma this country has perpetrated on the world.

Happy with Christ on Main Street

By Joe Bageant

Working class whites were happy with their town squares, Christmas season parades down Main Street, crooked councilmen, yokel sex scandals, free libraries and free water and gossip about niggers raping white girls. The Frontier spirit. "Freedom to kill rabbits." Then one day they looked up and, as Internet writer Andrea Black puts it,

They were being squeezed economically and the developed Western World and the US Govmint no longer approves of Betty Joe doin' abortions wearing her tennis shoes. The price of gas ... farms going bust. Mary Jo and so many others -- in prison. Turn on the tee-vee and see teen-age whores dumping on Christianity on Jerry Springer. Unnatural couples gettin' married, with rice and flowers. The Pres f*** in the White House. No, No, and No! G-damm libruls!

There is some truth to it though.

The hubris of the money-making townees who cared nothing about public education, or the cohesion of America, the pay packets of workers, farmer's plight. Sneering and sniping and sipping Starbucks koffee and eating sushi. Who just want to be fed and fed and fed -- salad and corn and squash and beef -- well, we all know who will have the last laugh. The Kristians. Fanciful?

The tension between love and awareness

Hello Joe,

Until the 2000 elections, I didn't even vote, and certainly was not "radicalized" yet. But, that election was stolen and the implications of that fact are -- well, too massive to go into here. What I couldn't understand is why nobody seemed that upset! The only riot I saw was a manufactured riot from the RNC. Then there was a little event titled 9/11. I was in Washington, DC when that plane hit the Pentagon. I could hear and smell it. These two events had a different effect on me than they did a lot of my friends. I was disgusted, hurt and intellectually, spiritually curious about what was unfolding. I wanted to get to the root causes quickly. So I started reading. And I am still reading.

Neurological Biocaste Blues

By Joe Bageant

As most of the world has noticed by now, very few Americans are critical thinkers. Most suffer from a collective learning disability based on the complete commodification of our consciousness by consumerism and electronic media. In this case, learning disability is a nice way of saying that we have become collectively stupid, muchless capable of insight.

Insight is scary to Americans so conditioned to rote consumption and substituting entertainment and illusion for actual involvement. When they realize something, and I mean genuine higher understanding of what the sum of the parts mean, not simply what they appear to be, their consciousness is altered and they become different inside. Suddenly the world is no longer the solid consumer state sonambulation they are accustomed to. They have no tools to deal with it. Beyond that least half of us are so conditioned we are incapable of human insight at all. We have the past two elections as proof.

Happy without money or social position

Joe,

I often find myself wondering if there is some underlying purpose, maybe unacknowledged, but it's there as a bonus nonetheless for people who can see and use it. I keep hearing from business, school, and others the rather testy mantra: "We are a competitive society." So, we have "things" as trophies, counters in the game to show who's on top and who's on the bottom. Are you the first to own the Super Duper Fartbox Five model, or must you make do with last year's mere Super model as you are lower on the social food chain? Is it the fact that you actually need the item or is it a badge to show who and what you are? Does this "competitiveness" actually increase quality or merely keep the workers busy, ensure that they never link up for any common cause? Keep them scratching gravel with all the yard birds and out of the way?

JoeBageant.com will keep on humming

Dear Joe,

You really have become dear to me as I have visited your site and read your essays and correspondence. To me, you are one of the best that we call "human." I really hope that moving to Belize will be the satisfying experience that you seek. I take it that you will not be keeping up your website? I don't see how you could, although maybe I am just not up to the wireless tech possibilities. I sure hope that there is a way that you can keep us apprised of your thoughts.