Joe Bageant

The system is the problem, it's rigged

Joe,

Reading the letter "What will America look like in two years" evoked a memory of what America looked like to me two years ago.

At the checkout of grocery store in the US, I came across a food bin by the door, collecting food for children. For children! My being appalled bemused my American born and reared cousin. As I explained to my cousin, in my sheltered life, living on the two relatively wealthy continents of Europe and Australia, I had only ever seen something like that once before. The bin I had formerly encountered collected food ... for dogs.

Moving to the Center of Elite Consensus

Dear friends,

Our popular masked political consultant just rode back into town "on his white horse Mescalero" to again scrawl insight on our village walls. This time the subject is elite consensus and how it affects our lives.

Enjoy,
Joe

---

By an anonymous political consultant

Over the last many weeks we have all been subjected to endless news stories about Senator Obama's campaign "Move to the Center". Leaving aside the political illiteracy which underlines this phrase, the use of it reveals important clues about the rhetoric of electoral campaigns, whom they target and what they are trying to communicate.

Put simply, what "Moving to the Center," means is: moving towards power and money.

What will America look like in two years?

Joe,

In "Life in the Post Political Age" posted on your web site, the anonymous political consultant wrote:

"His very presence, the color of his skin, the very strangeness of his name is the best guarantee of his betrayal of the expectations of the constituencies that will vote to elect him. Barack Obama is in short order a far more reassuring prospect for the continued dominance of the financial elite than another four years of neo-conservative rule which in an almost historically unique combination of greed, ill will, incompetence and stupidity have brought the country to the edge of disaster."

US compared to Soviet Union collapse

Greetings Joe,

In reading over the recent letter "Could US regions become semi-autonomous?" and your comments in reply, I was reminded of an essay I saw online a couple of years ago. It was written by a Russian emigre and compared the collapse of the Soviet Union, as he witnessed it, with the coming collapse of the USA, as he anticipated it might happen. It's a thoughtful and intriguing piece and if you don't already know it, I think you'd find it worthwhile to take a look.

The fella's name is Dmitry Orlov. You mentioned Orlov in reply to a reader's letter in March of  '07, but there's no way to know from that fleeting reference whether or not you are familiar with his collapse-postcollapse comparison.

Could US regions become semi-autonomous?

Brother Joe:

It seems as if the drunken frat boys have mismanaged our society into imminent collapse, and I think sooner than your four decade projection, but why quibble. The point is that most Americans don't know why, will be plenty upset, and the house of cards will tumble according to the old class and ethnic hatreds, stoked by fevered religion and televised bathos. I've been thinking of the collapse of the Evil Empire, that military colossus that stood astride Eurasia for seventy years or so. There was plenty of chaos when it fell, but somehow the people had kept each other alive for all those years in a sort of shadow society. The difference: regional/ethnic integrity. The Russians had always been held together by a czar by any other name, and when the doo-doo hit the blower, they reverted to those old political units. Our country is much more of a construct, with some regional cohesion, but with an ugly possibility of civil war developing everywhere.

Americans wait for the big smackdown

Mr. Bageant,

Thanks, asshole, for writing a book that makes me feel so fucking miserable I could cry. For all the redneck jokes I've heard and the feel-good superiority they engender for having been born into a northern Virginia culture, yet rising above it, I now feel like a traitor to my class. I feel a compulsion to do something more than merely espouse liberal values. I feel a need to do something about them, and I thank you for awakening me to this need.

Times of London article on Joe Bageant

The Times of London in its most recent Sunday magazine had a wonderfully written article on the coming American election, "How Barack Obama can win over poor whites". The Times writer, Tony Allen-Mills, spent a couple of days with Joe Bageant in Winchester, Virginia, to learn why many Americans vote against their own self-interest.

"The story is pretty accurate," Joe says, "except for one transposition of quotes. I have never milked a cow in my life and certainly never walked four miles to school. That was 80-year-old Jim McCoy's quote."

This article uses Joe's book, Deer Hunting with Jesus, as a focal point to explain the Obama/McCain race to British readers. Also, be sure to look at the comments, including many from American readers. It appears that some Americans don't like a European, especially a Brit, getting ideas from a redneck socialist. Click here.

-- Ken Smith

Shock, confusion over Knoxville murders

Dear Mr. Bageant:

I am heartsick. Some nut went on a shooting rampage at our sister church in Knoxville last Sunday. I am a Unitarian Universalist living in Eastern Tennessee -- not the most liberal area in the world, for sure, but not a land of drooling maniacs, either. I like my neighbors, and have no reason to fear them. I am originally from New York.

It's so hard to make sense of all this. In my heart, I feel that this was the depraved act of a sick individual, who was incapable of taking responsibility for his lot in life, and instead, went looking for a scapegoat. It disturbs me greatly that there are such disturbed people in our midst- our neighbors, aquaintences, and perhaps, even families, but it is a fact of life. Life is very fragile.