Joe Bageant

Excerpt from Deer Hunting with Jesus

A six-page excerpt from Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War is available in PDF format  and can be downloaded from ColdType.net -- a web site based in Canada that publishes "writing worth reading from around the world". For those who grow tired of reading on a computer screen, all of the writing on ColdType is formatted like a magazine in a PDF file that you can send to your printer. Click here for the link to the excerpt from Joe Bageant's book.

But, don't stop with the book excerpt. There is much else well worth reading at ColdType. Some four dozen of Joe's online essays are available in PDF format -- click here. And, this month's 80-page ColdType Reader is in two sections. The first section Our covers subjects that include the funding of sports stadiums, crimes of the CIA, failings of the media, apartheid states, immigration, Michael Moore, Neo-cons, Conrad Black and Canada’s uppity girls, bloggers, trench liberals, eco-junk and much more. Contributors include some of the best writers in the world. The 14-page second section features insightful interviews with three of ColdType's favourite contributors: Joe Bageant, William Blum and Norman Solomon.

ColdType.net is produced by Tony Sutton, a gifted newspaper designer. "Although I appreciate the reach of the Internet, I'm not too keen on its limited formatting," Sutton says. "And, like many other internet readers, I still like to print out stuff, read it and file it -- holding a publication in your hands and turning pages is so much more fun than reading on a computer monitor. The great thing about the PDF format is that it allows me to publish without having the hassles of advertising or subscriptions or print runs or returns or paying printing bills and postage -- or making a profit! And I think there’s something respectful in presenting great journalism in a manner that avoids the generic blandness of HTML, making it instead enticing, unique, readable."

-- Ken Smith, webmaster

In Memoriam: Robert "Bobby" Delay, 1958-2005

Prince of the Wild Palms

For two years I have wondered about the abrupt disappearance of one of the most extraordinary souls I ever encountered on the Internet -- Bob Delay -- who I wrote about in the essays, "The Wild Palms of Etowah," and "The Onion Eater."

Then yesterday I received an email from a reader in his hometown of Etowah, Tennessee:

"Bobby took an overdose of prescription drugs and died in August 2005. When he killed himself he set his computer to notify the police the next morning. He went so far as to tell the police that there were dogs inside the house but they should not worry cause the dogs would not hurt them. Had it all planned out."

Early on Bob decided to devote his whole life's energy to seeking universal spiritual truth and was widely ridiculed by people such as his cousin, disgraced Texas Congressman Tom Delay, for refusing to take a normal workaday job. As a younger man Bob traveled widely to sit at the feet of holy men, studied an astounding range and depth of the world’s religious and philosophical writings. Ultimately, he took the plunge into the deepest sort of exploration and came back up with the prize of universal understanding in his grip and, as saints and prophets have so often warned, the attending horror of that truth. The truth being that all formal religions are a lie, and that man advances spiritually by himself and through great personal pain and labor. He was brilliant to the point of madness, which is the only way to be brilliant.

God rest his soul. He was a brother to me and all who bothered to know the reclusive soul in that brokedown mansion in Etowah, Tennessee.

Joe

We need to scream about oppressive system

Brother Joe,

As soon as I got my last paycheck I bought your book, Deer Hunting with Jesus. I'm a blue-collar worker, but since I went to high school in the 1960's, I'm totally literate and could read the book in one day. It was heart-rending reading about my own kind who live in a very different situation, one that traps them within functional illiteracy and perpetuates ignorance. Ignorance is not at all the same as stupidity.

Time to start hiding the beer and women

Joe,

The letter "Mysticism does not run treatment plants" and your reply set me to thinking. I kinda think you and your reader are approaching the same question from different points of view and kinda talking at cross purposes, in my opinion. If I could, allow me to see if I can lend a little possible clarification.

From everything I've read that you've written, what I think you're complaining about is not really human rationality but rather human hubris. That horrible idea that we thinking apes seem to have adopted that we can out-think Mother Nature or Gaia or millennial evolution or however you want to define it. Human rationality is, I think, all well and good, however, it is when we hubristic humans believe we have discovered "a better way" of doing things without actually considering all the various and, oftentimes, unforeseen consequences that we go astray.

The ominous silence regarding the truth

Dear Mr. Bageant,

I read the title of your book Deer Hunting With Jesus and immediately ordered it from the only independent bookseller I know. In the meantime I read some of your postings. I am almost ten years older than you and I thought you might find some of my experiences interesting. I find them ominous.

I was born in Mississippi and reared there and in East Texas. When I got involved with the civil rights movement, my mother, a very proper Southern lady, wanted to know where I got such radical and foreign ideas. I told her they came from that nice Episcopal church she sent me to. When they told me that God said I should love my neighbor, I never realized they meant I should love my WHITE neighbor. My mother hadn't wanted me and I had been cared for by a live-in black woman, so I had never picked up the required prejudices.

The very worst advertisment for socialism

Hey Joe,

I was just reading Justin's "You commie, why don't you leave America?" rant letter, which while a good laugh, does raise an interesting point.

The very worst advertisment for socialism is socialist states. From the Soviets, to the Peoples' Republic to the Nazis (yep, they were socialists too, folks), they have been pretty much without exception disasters of epic proportions. Hell, even Chavez is looking less and less like the poster-boy we were all hoping for.

Surviving in a world that hates old ladies

Joe,

For four months now, I have perused the help wanted ads. I've gone to interviews, sent off countless resumes and emails about jobs. Some of the job ads raised my blood pressure. They want someone who can drive a truck, pick up 75 pounds, make a dozen stops per day, handle all the paperwork, the phone calling and appointment setting, do repairs on the truck as needed, and drive 12 hours a day. For $11.00 an hour. Right.

I left my last job because of a conflict with my dispatcher over a safety issue. He wanted me to continue driving after I'd told him I couldn't maintain the minimum road speed with an empty trailer in 40 m.p.h. gusts. It was unsafe, but he didn't care. He's learned from Bush that it doesn't matter what the underclass thinks. It doesn't matter if they die, as long as they try.

European liberal prefers global meritocracy

Howdy Joe,

I read your book Deer Hunting with Jesus. I picked up your book in Rue de Rivoli during a short business stay in Paris. Not bad for the voice of a Redneck to reach so far! Globalisation also has its benefits, huh? Your book is excellent. Couldn't put it down. Your story is clear to me, and being a European liberal, I have no problem agreeing with a lot of views that would be described as "leftie" by contrast in the USA. However, I will not dull your mind by stroking your soul with only praise.

The slow, subtle advance of totalitarianism

Joe,

Your Welcome to Middle-Class Lockdown is a fine, fine article. I live in the UK and although we have a lot of the same stuff going on in politics and militarily, it isn't quite so hard edged. In the 60s I marched and demonstrated and thought the world would just go on getting better for all of us and that injustice and war would be eliminated once we'd got Vietnam sorted out.

Never in a million years did I think that we would have Bush and Blair, and Guantanamo Bay.

First tree huggers in the 60s worked hard

Joe,

A couple of quick thoughts regarding the Sixties and, what seems to be more important, nostalgia for the Sixties. I was a little young for the “Summer of Love” that folks like Paul Krassner are celebrating the 40th anniversary of. I observed it from the soporific vantage point of lily-white Upper Arlington, Ohio. But I have been around for a while, and will likely always be a true believer in peace, love, sex, drugs, and rock and roll.