Joe Bageant

Years of needless medication, self-doubt

Joe,

You made some very impressive points in your essay "What the 'Left Behind' Series Really Means". I suspect that there is a basic human need for "miracle, mystery and authority" because it seems that as soon as a person gets a different kind of education -- that is, goes to a university and assuming they become secular humanized -- chances are overwhelming that they'll unquestioningly refer the puzzles and mysteries of their lives to various types of shrinks, who will almost always assure them that their behavior is involuntary and due to a mental illness, AS LONG AS they assign their insurance claims.

Smirking Allies: Nazi Brown and Kevlar Black

By Joe Bageant

Americans are addicted to spectacle, especially those involving absurdity, sex, violence and the icons of violence. Which makes America's tiny "Nazi Party" fringe a magnet for TV cameras anywhere it shows up in public. We like our bad guys so blatantly labeled a four-year-old can read them.

The formal name of the largest Nazi organization in America is the American National Socialist Workers Party (ANSWP). Of course having the word "socialist" in its name plays so neatly into the corporate government of America's hands, one wonders just who is funding ANSWP's glossy magazine, or National Commander Bill White's dozens of radio broadcasts and appearances around the country. Then too, ANSWP marchers carrying signs reading "What Would Hitler Do?" almost too conveniently fit the bill in a nation where anti-hate is a big and hyperbolic business.

A few Republicans voters are jumping ship

Joe,

As soon as I saw "Winchester, Virginia" on the inside cover of the book, I had to buy your Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War. I was born there and grew up in the same county near Middletown. My family roots run deep, back to the original German and Irish settlers, with some French and Indian thrown in the mix. Anyway, I had always felt like an alien in the Valley and still do when I go back to visit. I've been living in the Raleigh-Durham area since moving here to attend the University of North Carolina in 1999. It has been a welcome change moving to where so many progressive live.

Recruiting Trench Liberals and Leftnecks

By Joe Bageant

Despite what Internet liberals may think, most real working class Americans, and I mean the people who tune up your Prius or press your dry cleaning, haven't given a flying fock about the Iraq war for the last couple of years now. Not until recently, when it became pretty clear we are losing it -- losing being the worst possible thing in a society force fed on sports and the winner-loser mentality which created the uniquely American contemptuous epithet, "a loser." But now as my friend Buddy, who at middle age has been reduced to bagging groceries and "shagging carts" in the parking lot at one of the local Food Lion supermarkets says, "If we ain't losing, we seem to been over there entirely too long to be winnin'. That's for shore."

Dead Man Shopping

Stonewall Jackson prays for retail sales in the lost potpourri zone

[CONSUMER WARNING: This essay contains no rant material]

Small businesses are the backbone of our economy and the engine of job creation.
-- Ronald Reagan

I never met a small businessman yet who didn't have one finger up his ass and the other on the scales.
-- Mad Dog Howard

By Joe Bageant

Like many older married men, I'd rather have my fingernails pulled out with heated pliers than go with my wife to an allegedly cultural event, which in our still quite Southern town of Winchester, Virginia, usually means attending yet another local history or genealogy lecture. And I'd rather have the late Uday Hussein personally administer the ball shockers to me than attend one of our town's many commercial events such as First Night, First Friday, or any "celebration of" (pick your own noun) such as Winchester's spring festival of the apple blossom, downtown days, historic main street or any of the other thinly masked events which I call "Chamber of Commerce coordinated purchasing opportunities."

Tired of fear and loathing in Los Angeles

Hey Joe,

I have been reading your articles for about a year running now and each paragraph pushes me a little closer to escape. Each article shines more light on the psychotic vampire of a socio-economic system we live under. I can see the blood dripping from its fangs. But I am confused, lost. You see, I happen to have a very specific skill that the Hollywood mythmakers find very appealing. As a result, I am 23 and making more money than 99% of the world's citizens. Yet it does not feel that way. Living in this city drains you as fast as it fills you, be it gas, food, rent or entertainment. I spent $40 on four drinks Friday.

Bush makes Reagan look like Betty Crocker

Hi Joe,

I once accused you of being a Redneck Socialist. After reading the letter from a reader and your reply, "Purpose of government is to control people", I now realize I was wrong and have done you a disservice by this, I apologize. You are actually a Redneck Anarchist, correct?

Yours In Fraternal Solidarity,

Eric

------

Dear Eric,

Redneck Anarchist? Well, I seem to be these days. So yes. But since you've asked an old windbag a question, you get a long winded answer.

Were the 60s really that much better?

Hello Joe,

Regarding the letter from a reader and your reply comparing the 60s to today in the posting "Purpose of government is to control people", I believe your perspective is more rosy-colored than realistic. Yes, there was probably more hoping and dreaming back then, and I was more a part of that than I was of the very grim side to the 60s. But to compare the two eras:

-- Vietnam vs. Iraq. It was maybe worse, certainly as bad as Iraq. Was it worse for Vietnamese than this war is for Iraqis? They are both American-caused hell-on-earth. True, the future blowback from Iraq will be enormously worse than from Southeast Asia. But there were certainly more US kids in harm's way then than there are now.

It's always a good idea to blame women

Dear Joe,

Were you aware that your site was hacked by a wannabe scribe from Maxim Magazine? I'm guessing his article proposal "Send America Hot Finnish Babes To Improve Its Breeding Stock And Teach The Fat Chicks Here A Lesson In Thrift And Levelheadedness" was rejected on the grounds that it was directly cribbed from Greg Gutfeld's satirical masterpiece "Send America the Swedish Bikini Team to Improve Its Breeding Stock and Teach The Fat Chicks Here A Lesson In Thrift and Levelheadedness". Perhaps the disgruntled plagiarizer in question has resorted to guerrilla tactics like hacking "progressive" sites like yours in a desperate attempt to be published by any means necessary. This scenario is the likeliest explanation as to how "Send America Hot Finnish Babes To Improve Its Breeding Stock And Teach The Fat Chicks Here A Lesson In Thrift and Levelheadedness" appeared on your site, 'coz I can't imagine any self-described "leftist" dude coming up with this crap on his own (insert howling laugh track here).

Purpose of government is to control people

Hi Joe, 

Just wanted to say I loved your piece on "Ghosts of Tim Leary and Hunter Thompson". I wonder when this country will finally emerge out from under the shadow of the sixties. I was born in 1959, so I have nothing to compare the past 47 years with, but I somehow doubt that America in 1957 was so concerned with the decade 1910-1920, or that ragtime hits were as familiar to teenagers then as Beatles songs are to teenagers today.