Joe Bageant

I'm certain of coming economic collapse

Joe,

I picked up your book at Barnes & Noble on Sunday. Read Deer Hunting with Jesus front to back. I spend a lot of time in the I81S corridor from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania to Herndon, Virginia. We are in Winchester frequently. I hail from a similar background, having grown up on Main Street in a similar town in Pennsylvania, not far from Winchester, so I certainly understand the culture.

We have been sold out by Corporate America and I am horrified by what has happened inside the Republican Party. Your description of average Americans as debt servants is exact. And overall, the country is in one hell of a mess.

However, all I read in your book was a blistering, contemptuous, critique and saw no suggestions, so I am not sure what you prescribe as an alternative? I have spent considerable time in Europe and I saw little work, mostly eating and drinking. The people were healthier but did not seem happier. 85% of the people on the planet would immigrate to the U.S. if they could get a visa. Those poll numbers are only slightly diminished since the war in Iraq. What do you suggest as an alternative? Stronger labor unions and restrictions of overseas manufacturing? That won't work either, much too late for that.

Left is far too quick to blame religion

Hey Joe,

Reading the letter "The shadows of a religious childhood" from John in Norway, I sympathize, but I think there's something worse than religion out there. The generations in my family preceding me were all Catholics, but it's much less so now. My father, an altar boy back in the day, calls himself a "recovering Catholic." At any gathering, nun horror stories and jokes are bandied about. One of my uncles in particular is venomously atheistic, and this is a problem for secular humanism.

I know a lot of atheists up here in the obnoxious, narcissistic, self-righteous, boomer-land called Vermont, and whenever one of them proclaims their atheism or ridicules someone of faith, I just want to laugh in their faces. "Don't you get it?" I want to say, "90% of Americans believe in God! You're the most minor of minorities! Nobody gives a crap what you think!"

Born into a world of struggle and debt

Joe,

I bought your book Deer Hunting with Jesus yesterday and finished it today. I bought it because I heard you a couple of weeks ago on the radio here in Australia and checked out your website. I enjoyed your essays so much, it seemed churlish not to buy the book as, otherwise, I was freeloading on your artistic efforts.

I was born in Scotland in 1944, but I have lived in Australia for thirty odd years. I was raised in a working class family in Glasgow and, like every body else, did not know I was poor. At primary school (5-years-old to 11-years-old) I showed an aptitude for reading and early mathematics. My teachers persuaded my parents that I should go to a school which specialised in mathematics and science. It was expensive, but the local council had a fund which paid the fees of those who could not afford to go otherwise. Six years later, University beckoned. this was now 1962 and the government not only provided free education plus book allowance to all university students, but granted a living allowance of half the average wage to students who passed the means test.

Foreclosure? Repent and take another loan

Hey Joe,

Good news. Here in Minne-snowta our illustrious Repugnican Governor Pawlenty has just proposed advancing millions of dollars to counsel about 80,000 "homeowners" who are behind on their house payments. He is worried because through 2009 thousands more adjustable rate loan payments are scheduled to rise. Minnesota foreclosures (20,500 through September) are expected to quadruple this year over 2005. Minneapolis, St. Paul, and suburbs reported 3,699 foreclosure filings during the second quarter of this year, up 13.2 percent over the previous year. The Twin Cities alone could lose 1.6 billion in property value by the end of 2009 (sources: U.S. Congress Housing Link. RealtyTrac).

We were freer men then, however poor

Joe,

In your reply to the letter from Lawrence in Seattle, Swept up in Jesus fever at age 12, you wrote:

The interesting thing is that they actually think they are the majority in this country. I suppose it is the result of never socializing with people of a different class, which can make you blind to even a majority. I find this majority everywhere I go, Oregon, New York State, Missouri, Michigan ... The fact that we never see it in the media, to me at least, is proof of this country's deep denial and brainwashing about America being a nation of "middle class" people.

Swept up in Jesus fever at age 12

Dear Brother Joe:

I just finished your book Deer Hunting with Jesus, and Praise Gawddd! I believe, as in that great title of an album by Weissberg and Fogelberg, that we are "Twin Sons of Different Mothers". Mama was from way Western Kentucky, around Eddyville, home of the State Pen. It was called "'Tween the Rivers" (Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers ran parallel) in those days before the TVA.

There were feuds. Mom's brother, Adolph (I'm not making this up) blew a guy's head off with a shotgun. Some time later, the dead guy's brothers whomped Uncle A real bad with clubs. He expired a few weeks later. There is a wonderful old cemetery back in those woods, now faithfully maintained by my cousin Ben. The stone of the guy done in by Uncle A actually says "MURDERED" on it. His people are all buried around him, and "our people" are a hundred yards away.

Bush kept Alabama safe from communists

Joe:

Just finished reading Deer Hunting with Jesus. Great book, I have often wondered about some of the same things you touch on. My roots are rural Pennsylvania and south side Chicago. Between the two, I developed a pretty good bullshit detector, but yours is the finest I have seen in a long while. Mine only goes to ten, so often it gets pegged. Yours must go to eleven.

It's all a matter of image. Sincerity, if you can fake that, you've got it made. I remember reading an interview with a rural woman about Bush wearing blue jeans and clearing brush on his ranch. "You can't get more real than that" she claimed. Yep, George Bush was born in a log cabin and drinks hard cider.

The whole damn mess and your book

Joe,

I just want to thank you for speaking for the rest of us who are cowering in fear of losing everything (which isn't much) and are wondering where we're all going to end up. I'm 62 so I figure it doesn't matter so much about me, but what about my kids and all the other kids and their kids?

I'm  looking to buy into a small piece of land with a cave where I can hide -- it's a pipe dream. I work for Wal-Mart and the price of real estate, even in downstate Ohio, keeps leapfrogging ahead of me.

The shadows of a religious childhood

Joe!

They didn't call it The Rapture when I was growing up, but the concept still scared the crap out of me. I remember when I was in fourth grade dreaming about the roof of my school building disappearing in a pink light and everyone yelling "Glory! Glory!" as they lifted their arms to the sky. I told my sister about the dream and she thought it was wonderful, a gift from God -- but it terrified me. And that fear is what stayed with me the longest, the most tenacious residue of the faith of my fathers, what finally led to stray from the path of righteousness. How could a message based on love produce only fear?

My parents were born Seventh Day Adventists, all my grandparents in Norway converted to Adventism around 1900. Adventism is all about The Last Days. You're brought up to read the signs that Christ is coming again: Earthquakes, wars, famine and flood, the price of gas, all signs that we are entering the Last Days. Even though we've been doing so for all of the 150 odd years that Adventism has existed, born as it was from the flotsam and jetsam of the Great Disappointment of 1844, we're still living in the Last Days. Once The Last Days start in earnest, that's your goose cooked, jack, it's too late to repent. That's the hook that gets you shaking in your boots: Is it too late? Is there still time? You know that passage in the Bible about a cloud the size of a man's hand being a sign of Christ's imminent return. There were times when I was a kid that I was scared to look at the sky!

I am one of Australia's working poor

Hi Joe,

My name is Kerri I live in Canberra and I am a public servant (federal government worker). I just wanted to pass on that I saw you on Australian morning TV last week and I am intrigued by you, I don't know why, not many people leave me thinking and intrigued any more. I will be reading your book and your articles from your website.

I am concerned Australia is headed down the same track politically as the US. I am NOT really up to date with politics in Australia even though I am Australian and I can't seem to find someone worth voting for even though there is an election looming and I think many people like me vote because we have to and that is a problem.