Joe Bageant

No longer will I preach to the choir

Hi Joe,

I have been meaning to write you for several days now but not have gotten around to it as I was having trouble with what I wanted to say in a concise manner without rambling or being long winded. Anyway as fate would have it apparently I will not have to do it as I see you have discovered my blog: http://afterarmageddon.blogspot.com/.

The inspiration for my blog came from reading your book, Deer Hunting with Jesus, and finally coming to the agonizing decision that there is no hope of anything getting better until some catastrophic event forces the American public to do so.

My high school reunion and your book

Hi Joe,

I read your book, Deer Hunting with Jesus, and now I understand why planning my recent high school reunion had affected me so much. I graduated in 1997 from a small rural school. My friends all work now in nursing homes and help their boyfriends lay carpet on the side on weekends. Their children (who are mostly under five, except for the ones who I had the pleasure of meeting while I was still in high school) like to Roshambo and eat jelly (a "fruit") out of the jar with sporks. If you  take the jelly away or perhaps prefer not to Roshambo while visiting, they will call you a pussy or pieceashit. Some have started to lose their teeth, so their words come out -- along with good-sized globs of jelly -- as a puthy and peethathit.

Anyway, as I'm sure you know, Ohio is right there with you and Pootie. I appreciate that you understand that these are not stupid people (althought they aren't smart in the traditional way) and that in many cases they are idealistic and optimistic. They are kind too. I'm also glad you touched on the attitudes of latte and limousine liberals towards the working class.

Stock market and retirement fairy tales

Joe,

The "good investor" is supposed to save his money and put everything he can into the stock market pyramid scheme, with the hope that he will make lots and lots of money over time. Stocks always go up, up, up, forever, amen (so they say). The fly in the ointment is that, according to M. King Hubbert (the fellow who first discovered the peak oil theory) the industrial expansion economy is basically over.

In order for stocks to go up, the economy must expand. In order for the economy to expand, there must be enough energy to run the whole thing -- normally more energy every year. If there isn't significantly more energy used every year, the economy would generally contract. If a lot less energy is used every year, it contracts a lot.

NAFTA was Clinton's biggest error

Joe,

You have nailed it down, my friend, in your book, Deer Hunting with Jesus. But it isn't just the anti-union mutt people of northern Virginia anymore. Erie, Pennsylvania, was a strong union town and when I worked at GE 30 years ago we had 35,000 employees. GE had moved the appliance line to Louisville, Kentucky, in the mid-50's to escape the labor union, but the IUE organized the plant down there, and the company eventually sold the entire division to a French conglomerate. It cost Erie 35,000 jobs, but we still had the railroad division which employed another 35,000.

To the Princes of Gringolia

Wanting everything is not the problem. Always getting what we want is.

(Editor's note: A version of this essay was posted here last August. This longer and more polished version was published last week on AlterNet.)

By Joe Bageant

HOPKINS VILLAGE, BELIZE

Right now I am doing something only someone as fucked up as an American-style lefty could possibly do: waiting for Hurricane Dean to strike my rickety shack and masturbating an indignant essay about "the global class struggle."

It seems we Americans as a people are much given to personal indignation, if not national action, excepting perhaps aerial bombing and mass surveillance. But the poor of these Caribbean villages struggling for merest daily sustenance -- the money for which is so often doled out by a well-scrubbed white hand much like my own -- cannot afford open indignation much less "class struggle."

Meanwhile, two gecko lizards are staring at one another on the wall above my laptop, as the small TV in my cabana blares an update on approaching Hurricane Dean. But the rain hammers the tin roof so loudly it's impossible to hear what is being said, even with the sound turned all the way up. So I watch the hot blonde, the satellite pics and blurry shots of storm tortured palms and hope for the best.

Maybe obese Americans are afraid of famine

Hey Joe,

In another era, you might have been an American expatriate living in Paris. It was once a home for freedom of thought and speech. (Like America acts the part.) I imagine your world-class mind would have gotten on famously, even drunkenly serious, with Hemingway. I look forward to reading more of your diatribes, that quite frankly exceed labels such as "leftist" and "malcontent". And I would love to meet the villagers you so expansively regard with respect and compassion.

I'm not smart, but I'm smarter than Bush

Dear Joe,

Here we go again! The War Drums reverberate.

Not content with the carnage of the two wars it is in the process of losing, the U.S. Administration, with France and Britain firmly on board, is now pursuing a causus belli with Iran. Every US news outlet has signed up. Today, an "expert" told a CNN presenter that he"s "comfortable with flattening Iran". Another presenter, interviewing the Iranian President after his U.N. speech, said, "Mister President, you have the blood of American troops on your hands." What about the blood of the Iraqi people on Bush's hands; or the Afghans. What about the countless thousands who have died in CIA and British Intelligence orchestrated coups in the Middle East and South and Central America? I'm British and however much I like the American people -- having lived among them for six years until I left earlier this year -- I am only too aware of the fact that there are no heroes left, except on the silver screen.

Joe, you're wrong about Albanian people

Dear Joe,

I don't know where you got that information about Albania but it is exaggerated and quite out of date. (See the letter from a reader and a reply, "So rich he wants to start his own country".) Albania is a poor country that foolishly made a stamp to honor George W. Bush during his recent visit, but I've been there twice and it's not nearly so fucked up as you wrote. There is corruption just like in every other developing country, and there is real poverty. But Albania has come amazingly far in 15 years after having the craziest communist regime in Europe. And unlike most Americans, Albanians have their own kind of la dolce vita -- they know how to enjoy life without making every aspect of it a commercial exchange.