Joe Bageant

Working his ass off, eating sausage gravy

Hey there, Mr. Modelo,

I really don't follow your posts on a regular basis, although you're "bookmarked" on my browser.

Read your post "The Iron Cheer of Empire" tonight, and will comment with the following:

You gave up, huh? Moved to your perceived land of milk and honey, and now you've found it in yourself (between Modelos) to try and convince me that I'm a piece of shit for staying in the Motherland, trying to better myself in my company so I have a job next year, and the 15 years after that, while worrying my fucking head off every day about the economy, while you can walk down your alley and buy rooster sperm eggs, tacos and local produce, then stroll past the locals as they sit on their front porches each night and discuss with their friends how the made the right choice buying their wares that day.

Corporations, government are dehumanizing us

Dear Joe,

After 56 years or so of watching the "powers that be" in operation, I have come to the conclusion that slowly, but surely, big corporations and the government are dehumanizing us.

I can recall a time when those who dealt with employee relationships were called "personnel departments and employees were referred to by name. The first step was to take away our names and give us "employee numbers", (under the guise of simplifying accounting procedures) so that we would no longer be thought of as a real person. Then it was to change the corporation department that deals with employees from the "personnel department" to the "human resources" department, which takes away our humanity altogether. With time and constant hearing of ourselves referred to in this manner we've come to accept it when we should be screaming at the top of our lungs against it. Even our media, whom I truly believe are on someone's propaganda payroll, refers to us in this manner.

Difficult to be skeptical yet be optimistic

Hey Joe,

I've read Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War and most of your posts. Can't say there's much in any of what you say that I disagree with. In fact, I'm with ya.

Which brings me to the issue at hand. Curmudgeonliness. A good, healthy outlook, given present circumstances. I put myself squarely in that category alongside you and most of the really "aware" people I know.

But I'm a 62-year old teacher, working hard to help the next generation be readers and critical thinkers and perhaps contribute positively to the world. And somehow it seems to me that the curmudgeonly take on things just doesn't work for the young. Cynicism (or at least a robust skepticism bordering on pessimism) in those of our advanced age seems the only reasonable perspective to me. But in the young, it is sad, defeating, and tends to dim their inherent idealism (if it hasn't already been crushed by their direct circumstances.)

American literature has abandoned poor whites

Dear Joe,

First of all, please, I apologize my poor English. I’m writing to you from Spain where we have a very deficient education system and a natural tendency to fail on learning foreign languages.

Now, after being intentionally modest, I have to say that I’m an avid reader of your work and that your Deer Hunting with Jesus has been an inspiration for my end of graduate essay, a kind of a small thesis. The subject of my essay is the relation between literature (and also popular culture in general) and America’s white underclass. The main idea is to see which image of the white low classes is being exported from the US and how, for example, Europeans like me receive it.

On literature I found out that during the first half of the Twentieth Century, American authors used to talk about the poor whites, especially the most representative novelist of that era (Faulkner, Steinbeck, Dos Passos, Caldwell). So, there was a quite general interest on portraying that reality from the canonic literature. But, after the forties, this interest seems to vanish (at least as a major theme.

Half measures never accomplished anything

Hey Joe,

I've written to you before. I said that you had pointed me in the right direction about dealing with class and race and all. I think I spoke too soon.

I'm not working class. At least, not really.

For starters, I'm Asian.

I'm not the kind of Asian that runs donut shops and runs from the immigration officers, nor one of the poor bastards that flee sweatshops on one side of the Pacific to get stuck in sweatshops on the other side. I'm luckier. I was born Stateside, to college educated parents with green cards.

Americans have become weak and fearful things

Joe,

Today, a friend forwarded to me a news article with this headline: "Fines proposed for going without health insurance." Here are some things I don't get:

1) If folks can't afford to reroof the Old Manse or buy groceries or put retreads on the Jimmy, how (and why) are they going to get insurance, and

2) If they can't afford insurance, how are they going to afford the alleged fine, and

3) Who is the Insurance Police, who's going to rat me out, and

4) Why did The Bastards wait until the whole country is unemployed to pull this shit, and

An equal opportunity malcontent, not sexist

Hi Joe,

I read your column ("How much freedom can one man stand?") today and you mentioned two women bloggers that are looked upon as irrelevant. You couldn't find two irrelevant male bloggers? One, even? Do you make the mistake of when thinking about irrelevance, you automatically think of women? That's not very fair minded, you know.

I don't think that dude at Daily Kos is all that great. Of course he thinks women are irrelevant, too. I don't go there anymore. He got snookered into backing Obama with all the Hope and Yes, We Can bull pucky. I certainly don't want to hear him whine now.

A Rambling Reply to Robert

Regarding Belizean beer, FDR's ghost and the Citibank tapeworm (also why we ain't Mayans, no matter what that calendar says!)

Hola amigo,

I think I first read some of your stuff in a short stay in antique Guatemala. On my return to the US, a friend gave me your book Deer Hunting with Jesus and I enjoyed it for the most part.

I try to live outside of the United States, on my Social Security, and for the most part in Costa Rica, but not in the tourist areas, of course. The yuppies from all countries are destroying everything everywhere i go eventually. I read your article on the underclass. From my anecdotal experience, most folks when you ask about class, respond that they are in the middle class. I have been wondering about what happened to the working class. It seems to me the great pundits in our society have convinced the majority of us that even if we are doing the crappiest jobs, we are middle class.

Slacker kid nails it: money IS slavery

Joe:

From the beginning of recorded history there have been slaves and other forms of cheap labor. For many centuries, most people were just subsisting. Whether they were serfs, owned a small plot or otherwise got by, they were effectively slaves to their work in order to survive.

When serfdom ended with the industrial revolution, people were able to switch to the cheap labor jobs in factories. Then with workers uniting in unions, things got a little better, but we were still slaves to our job because even those of us who had a middle management job, were still only a paycheck or two from losing everything.

Ideology discussions have been demonized

Joe,

I have never read you describing your ideology. So this could mean that you don't find ideology important, or it could also mean that you never felt the need to talk about this topic. But for me ideology is important.

An example: a few months ago here in Australia, Malcolm Turnbull (opposition leader, head of the Liberal Party, which in Australia is the "conservative" party, go figure) criticized Kevin Rudd (prime minister, Labour Party) for what he considered an unjustified move against a justly deserved middle and upper class entitlement. The specifics of the case are unimportant. His words were something like: "Rudd is acting on ideology". Supposedly left-wing, or, God forbid, socialist.