Joe Bageant

Why did a caring leftist turn bitter?

Hey Joe!

Reading the letter from spite-filled Jewish Lisa, my first reaction was to jeer her, like many of your readers (here and here). How could someone with a caring, leftist background turn so bitter and hateful?

But I try to listen to my inner Buddhist when I can. Instead of condemning, my IB wants to comprehend. So I got to wondering -- why did she turn out this way? What converted her from a leftist Spanish-teacher type to someone who labels life's losers as "vermin"? She must have been through a lot of pain and poverty, possibly a victim of crime.

Obama should have visited West Virginia

Dear Joe,

I picked up Deer Hunting with Jesus in San Francisco last year on a visit (I live in Decatur, Georgia, just east of Atlanta). I loved your book, although it made me uncomfortable as hell, seeing as I'm one of those over-educated, white wine quaffing, Democrat voting, lefty elitists that the patrons of the Royal Lunch probably hate. (I'm also a big fan of Jim Hightower, whom I think resonates with you.) A few months later, I wondered whether you went to press before or after the Virginia Tech shootings.

I looked for a reference to the episode on your website, to no avail. My guess is, the book went to press before the massacre, or you would have discussed it.

Also, what do you make of Hillary Clinton's strong showing in Appalachia?

All the Best,

John
(retired psychologist with James River roots from 1688)
Decatur, Georgia

Working class whites do support Obama

Dear Joe,

I'm a native of Alexandria, Virginia, about to be 62 and starting Social Security early, who knows? I'm also a union retiree (Teamsters Local 639). Further, I grew up in legal segregation until 1964 or so. I've read your writings on the folks you grew up with. I know them too. Our athletic leagues in the fifties and sixties included schools in Culpeper, Winchester and Fredericksburg, all in your area of Virginia. Away games before interstate highways took some time.

Here's what I think. Senator Obama will win a lot of votes in Virginia, maybe not take the state but make it close. My kids range in age from 32 to 38. Among them there are two mixed marriages and one lesbian couple. Most of the kids in their age range will look at their kids and vote for the future.

Amish, Mennonites thrive in hard times

Joe,

I live in Cincinnati. I've recently started wandering around in Southern Ohio, a beautiful part of the Appalachian foothills that modern America seems to have forgotten. Amish and Mennonite colonies have been showing up in the area for around thirty years, as I understand it. These people live simply, but the visible contrast in health and general obvious prosperity between them and their more conventional neighbors is stunning. The people there who bet on industrialism for their future are hurting. The New York Times recently ran an article about the loss of jobs and economic malaise in Jackson, Ohio. Early American industrialism was big around Jackson, with its easily exploitable iron and coal. Those industries have moved on and the factory jobs that brought some prosperity more recently are now following.

Letters from readers and Belizean music

Joe,

I am constantly amazed at the level of discourse on your web site. I say, Joe, if you ever throw a party and invite all your letter writers, I wanna come. I do wonder if you get tons of email and print, like, one out every 50? Do you correct spelling? Is lovely Lisa from LA an anomaly? Do you get many letters from people who have read Deer Hunting with Jesus hoping it was a book about hunting and/or Jesus? -- which it sorta kinda is, but not in THAT way.

I feel a little guilty taking up your time with such a nonintellectual letter. Maybe you could write about your letter writers. Maybe you already have.

Nora
Amazed and grateful in Vermont

The age of working class art is over

Dear readers,

Webmaster Ken Smith and I are extremely fortunate in that we get emails from across the country telling the personal stories and views of working Americans. Every once in a while we receive a letter so dead on accurate about the American condition that it leaves us damned near speechless. This is one.
-- Joe Bageant

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Joe!

It was with great pleasure that I plowed through Deer Hunting With Jesus. I thought you did a nice job of splitting the difference between Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter With Kansas" and Jim Goad's "The Redneck Manifesto." Reading your book, I had the same sort of reaction I have when I think about the folks I left behind in my own middle of nowhere hometown. I lurch between feelings of sympathy for their plight on the one hand, and disgust ("How can they be so god-damn stupid!") on the other. I can tell you are familiar with these sorts of thoughts. I was also glad to see you address the role that small-town politics plays in maintaining the status quo. The big city liberals (of which I am now, thankfully, one) think that voting for Obama or Hillary is going to make any sort of difference in this country. Like real estate, politics is local.

It is not about right and left anymore

The letter "Democrats have lost mainstream America" from Lisa in Los Angeles sparked several blistering replies. The letter below, sent to Joe, addresses Lisa directly.

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Lisa,

As a fellow Jew, I cannot find the words to condemn you strongly enough for what you have become, and what you have let yourself become. In short, to stand against everything Judiasm stands for, and to serve the party of the grandson of Adolf Hitler's money launderer and Hitler's greatest American ally, Prescott Bush and the Bush Family.

The Bush Family who, if they would have succeeded in 1934, would most assuredly have meant death to you and me and millions like us. (See this BBC report.)

You might not be an Appalachian Redneck, but Joe Bageant's book is surely about you, too. As you sit home and "enjoy the descriptions" (likely code for feeling smugly superior to those you view as unsophisticated, unwashed louts) you have not the self-awareness to notice that you are just as easily sidetracked into nonsensical divisive wedge issues as they.

In a rut with consumerism and capitalism

Dear Joe,

I read the letter "Democrats have lost mainstream America" from Lisa, the Jewish, Spanish speaking Republican. I was entertained that she opened up with a missive describing her background. Just so you know she's not working class. I mean Jewish, OK. A woman? Acceptable. Working class? Ewwww! But that's OK. She has the education to talk with them, even though she makes it abundantly clear she's not one of them.

She wants to remove people from eligibility for welfare so she can get a greater sum of money for her own problems. She's also seemingly OK with her 73-year-old mother working to support her insurance. She was getting no care in an emergency room (probably at a state hospital because that's where they take violent crime victims) and had to go home to die, and blamed it on the illegals and "uninsured" who were "cutting in line" rather then seeing how the system itself is broken. She may agree with Republican talking heads she seeing on TV, and she seems entirely motivated by greed and kowtowing to authoritarian ideals. She's complaining about the symptoms and not seeing the sickness.

We are colonized by a nation of wankers

Yo, Joe!

Just wanted to drop you a quick note from the frozen north (Winnipeg, up in Canada) to tell you how much I've enjoyed what you've got to say. Well, maybe not enjoyed -- understood, frequently agreed with and occasionally been deeply angered by.

In the film "Trainspotting", there's a scene in it where one of the Scottish drug addicts goes off on the English, and then his own people. Perhaps the most telling line is: "We're colonized by wankers."

All too frequently, that's exactly the way I feel about the U.S. True, we've got a full crop of our own homegrown wankers, but my god, it's tough to get a word in edgewise when you live right next door to that frigging noise machine.

Democrats have lost mainstream America

Dear Joe,

I am reading your book, Deer Hunting with Jesus, and enjoying the descriptions while being infuriated by your personal opinions. Oddly enough, you miss the point over and over. You're clueless.

Let me give you some background on me. My parents are from New York City and are Jews. My mother was raised by Eastern European immigrants to be a Communist and to the left of Che Guevara. My father was raised by religious parents who were more conservative. My mother was a social worker turned special education teacher (who still works at 73 to pay the $700 a month for my medical insurance.) My father was an engineer turned trial attorney and who is retired and living in Tucson. We are hardly rednecks, yes?