Joe Bageant

Thank you for the painful truth about hope

Dear Joe,

Thanks very much for writing "The Sucker Bait Called Hope." I just finished reading it this Thanksgiving Day morning.

Several times I wanted to stop reading. I wanted to go find an article on Obama's new cabinet appointments or go pour another cup of coffee and put more wood in the stove, anything but read more of the painful truth. And, of course, what you wrote is the truth.

I'm glad I finished reading the essay. Yes, yes. Vote for the spirit. It's an affirmation I needed right now.

The Sucker Bait Called Hope

Making the best of a slow apocalypse

By Joe Bageant

We just concluded an election in which both parties talked about hope, one more so than the other. Hope, that murky, undefined belief that some unknown force, perhaps Jesus, or modern science, or some great political leader, or other -- as yet unknown force -- will reverse our national or personal condition ... will deliver us from what every bit of evidence indicates is irreversible, if not politically, then ecologically: Decline and eventual collapse. There is quite a difference between hope and understanding the facts, then holding justified optimism. Hope is magical thinking, a sucker's game. Politicians the world 'round fully understand this.

Consequently, we go into a new year with millions of Americans still clinging to The Audacity of Hope. And we do so because we are victims of learned helplessness, learned from the cradle as it is rocked by the foot of the Capitalist consumer state. Sure we can hope for movement away from domination of the weak by the arrogant, away from ecocide and genocide toward a better world. What the hell, hope is one of the few free activities in this society. We don't even have to put down the remote and get off our asses to do it. In fact, its delivered through television.

Relax, the super-rich will take care of us

Joe,

Thank you for Deer Hunting with Jesus. Great book on Republican deception and those who fall for it. Just found your website, thanks to a link on Crooks and Liars or Firedog, and I just started reading your essays.

"Nine Billion Little Feet" hit on the major problem the world has yet to deal with -- apparently for fear of offending silly old assholes who think we're still living in biblical times, and not recognizing that we have a choice between birth control/abortion or starvation/illness/war as ways to keep population in balance with resources. All while the richest man on the planet contributes his wealth to finding better ways to keep more people alive so they can grow up to buy his software. Apparently he's doesn't understand the concept of Whole Systems.

Sarah Palin is the Future of Conservatism

Dear Readers: Here we have a fourth article by An Anonymous Political Consultant, now writing under the pseudonym John Brown (Email: [email protected]). His previous contributions to this site are: "Not New Ideas, but Identifying New Enemies", "Moving to the Center of Elite Consensus", and "Life in the Post Political Age".
-- Joe

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By John Brown

When we look back with the benefit of hindsight at this year's presidential election, we will remember two noteworthy developments. The first and the most obvious one is the historic victory of Senator Barack Obama, and the other and much less noted one is the political birth of Governor Sarah Palin or more importantly the new prototype of conservatism her emergence represents.

Senator Obama's victory is most important in what it negated, the primary political narrative of our time. The conservative political and economic consensus, which has dominated this country since the start of the Reagan administration, is no more. Governor Sarah Palin's emergence is important in what it revealed, a snap shot into how and in what form the American right makes its comeback.

American problems are familiar in Spain

Dear Mr Bageant,

I am writing to tell you how much I have enjoyed Deer Hunting with Jesus, which I finished just this morning. I read the Spanish edition, Crónicas de la América profunda. 

I found your book by chance, thanks to a notice in my local library (the reason why I read in Spanish and not in English, although I will try to get in the original language and have a go at it again, it's really worth it). Here in Spain, the only picture we get from your country is through the movies and the television series. We eat your food, we wear your clothes and our kids copy the ways of the downtown kids in your country (talk about paranoia -- it's really disturbing to see a Colombian kid who has barely spent two months here, living in one of the slums in Madrid, Spain, and dressing and gesticulating as a bro in the hood), but there is a great deal we miss, because it is not the stuff of television.