Joe Bageant

'Because killing people is what we do'

Hi Joe,

I want to share a chance encounter I had last weekend while visiting my brother in southern Ohio. My trips there invariably involve our stopping at various pubs in several surrounding communities. Late Saturday night we visited the pub whose owner my brother considers to be a good friend -- except for his politics. But the guy has a good heart. And he tells funny stories. And he is a good guitar player. He even supplied and “ran” the fireworks display at our parents’ 50th anniversary party a number of years ago. But this particular evening, I don'’t even remember how my brother and I “got started” with him regarding politics,– the military, the war, blah, blah.

It was an unusual night at that pub because just the three of us were there. Usually, it’'s crowded, the juke box is playing, and guys and gals are playing pool in a back room. A few people eventually wandered in. Our friend, tending bar that night because his “help” didn'’t show up, served them and came back to us to continue our debate that got louder and louder. Mainly because my brother and I had already had a few beers.

New York, Hollywood, back to Kentucky

Dear Joe,

I was fortunate to find your website a few months ago and have been an enthusiastic reader ever since. I just polished off your book Deer Hunting with Jesus and I was thrilled to see something in print that so gracefully articulated what I've been seeing all my life.

I grew up in a trailer park in central Kentucky. I was a child of divorce and could have easily slipped through the cracks had it not been for the love of some wonderful grandparents and godparents. They were people who had weathered the Great Depression and had lost kin in World War Two. My grandparents started out as share croppers working other people's land solely for pay in the form of food. The godparents came of age in the Black Star mining camp in eastern Kentucky and they were paid in corporate script. Never even saw US currency during their childhood. Hell, even their schoolhouse was owned by the corporation.

A rehearsal for rounding up dissidents?

Joe,

Thank you for your recent discussion of sex offenses and the criminal justice (?) system. I am another devastated mother who is supporting a registered sex offender who would otherwise be sleeping under a bridge. We have turned to farming which is actually more fun than you might think -- and more work. I could go on forever. In fact, some of the things that have happened to him probably would make a good magazine article since he was an attorney who had some left-over cases that involved mobsters who attempted to use the sex thing to pressure him into changing testimony. We have been drummed out of the local Lions Club and even the county beekeeper's association!

New Yorker finds good people in Tennessee

Hi Joe,

I have just discovered your web site and I am sure glad that I did! You have given voice to things that I have always known in my heart to be true, but could rarely articulate.

I recently moved to Johnson City, Tennessee, after spending the previous 46 years of my existence in the New York City metro area. I am a birthright liberal of Puerto Rican descent. My dad supported all five of us and my mom on a draftsman's salary. He was a smart man, and almost finished college. Thank goodness that he was a World War Two veteran, which allowed him to buy the modest suburban home I grew up in. Many of my cousins who were left behind in the city didn't fare nearly as well. The city will swallow you up as sure as any decrepit coal mining town. Looking back, we were very poor, but I never knew it.

Rising fascism tide, how fast and far?

Hi Joe,

I found your stories in your recent "Most Americans are afraid to feel outrage" post mostly gut-wrenching, except for the last. That was about as rich a mixture of farce and pathetic as one could mix, even with deliberation. But, it did remind me of something I have thought for some time, why are people afraid of, at least in the Anglo-centric countries, the arrival of the police state? Are they so confused they don't realise we're already in a police state?

It is patently clear we have a police state. After all, we have police. These police have the right to arrest and detain one considered to be breaking the law. Depending upon the apparent law(s) being broken, one can be held without charge for long periods (up to 42 days here in the UK), and ultimately released without any charges being brought. This doesn't sound like a state of freedom to me. It sounds like a police state.

Another felon becomes a profit center

Dear Joe,

Your column "Old Dogs and Hard Time" is the first piece I've seen that looks at the human consequences of getting put into a criminal category from which there is no redemption -- another Bageant gem! I can't compare my trivial sentence with what your friend and neighbor Stokes endures, but it drives home the point of what a profit center we felons have become.

On New Year's Day 2006, I celebrated by tagging a highway overpass, "Troops Out Now!" A couple citizens, eager to protect the homeland, got on their cell phones and before I knew it, five (count 'em) patrol cars, lights flashing, appeared behind my brother's pickup. A firefighter with a squeaky clean record, my brother was pretty nervous. But I'll shorten the narrative to assure folks he survived the strip search, the "spread 'em and cough" routine looking for small arms, and made it through the night without being raped, as I promised. After posting $3,000 bond and swearing we wouldn't become lifelong fugitives from justice, he noted that he'd met some "pretty decent guys," played some euchre, and signed a petition complaining of the jail's vile "food."

Most Americans are afraid to feel outrage

By Joe Bageant

The story of convicted sex offender Stokes (Old Dogs and Hard Time) caused a landslide of poignant, and often terrifying emails describing other victims of our system. Some are as young as ten years old, others are working single moms or retired people whose lives were ruined by our increasingly punitive state. A state that increasingly derives profit by inflicting misery upon its citizens through an ever growing number of laws and regulations.

The majority of Americans do not feel a thing about these state orchestrated persecutions of their fellow citizens. They do not feel anything because they are afraid to allow themselves to feel outrage. And because their government has conditioned them not to feel public anger. There are social consequences (being an outcast) for speaking such things aloud. There are even more consequences for acting upon those feelings. The citizenry is deeply afraid of those consequences. The bottom line is that they are afraid of their government.

Goodbye Rousseau and Locke, hello Oprah

Joe,

This week I finally lost my last thread of hope in my country and democracy. Last year I had the privilege of voting out one of the most disastrous (and conservative) governments ever to govern my country and putting in its place the nominally social-democratic Australian Labor Party. However, the euphoria of that happy day has been lost. Rather than the strong progressive government hoped for by millions of Australians, we have had months of petty legislation in the pursuit of a bourgeois liberal nanny state.

The most recent example being a recent government pronouncement having four drinks in a night classifies a person as a dangerous binge drinker. While the government fusses over minor details, greater wrongs remain untouched. The aboriginal settlements in the Northern Territory remain under occupation by the Army. The law still permits employers to block unions from their premises leading to greater exploitation of workers, and many rural communities still do not receive adequate telephone service.

5% of the world, 25% of the prisoners

Dear Joe,

I should be at a wine bar here in Aspen, Colorado, trying to hook some eccentric heiress while I can still waddle around on my hind legs. But, damn it, your most recent missive struck a deep cord in me (Old Dogs and Hard Time.)

I was once a young, idealistic lawyer and a damn good one to boot. But the U.S. legal system broke my heart, and eventually me as well. Criminal trials should be a sacred trust. To do trials properly requires exhaustive investigation and preparation. The best litigators -- criminal and civil -- have top notch private investigators (usually former detectives or federal agents) on staff or call. They can glean vital information from law enforcement or potentially hostile witnesses that a lawyer usually can't!

Whores and gangsters, beer and whiskey

Dear Joe,

I wanted to thank your for a timely insight: "I am finding that what we experience as a sense of helplessness is actually more of a true understanding of our situation on this planet as individuals."

I had tail-spinned into one of my periodic black moods and -- on crawling out from under my mental rock -- performed my daily ritual of checking your website for new stuff (don't want no emails telling me, I need my rituals). Your advice to Jason the journalism student contained the words I needed to hear. I understand what you mean when you say being heard is no big deal, but believe me when I say that hearing you is important to me!