Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War
Sat, 2008-08-30 08:45
#1
Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War
Sat, 2008-08-30 08:45
#2
“Bageant writes with the ghosts of Hunter S. Thompson, Will Rogers and Frank Zappa kibitzing over his shoulder,” says Mother Jones.
If “D” had not asked just what kind of “class war” is meant in Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War, I would have assumed that this little book (273 pages ) had been reviewed here soon after its publication in 2007.Particularly since the writing of Joe Bageant is as Mother Jones reported, trenchant, honest and funny as hell.
The copy at Words Worth Books has been secured by me, because this is a story about the people of the U.S. who are seen as rural and mountain-dwelling rednecks, but whose unexplained pursuit of Republican ideals gets explained for the “liberal“ city folk of whom Bageant despairs. People’s lifestyles are described, and “unlikely candidates that they are for revolution, they have nonetheless helped fuel a right-wing revolution with their votes - the same right-wing revolution said to be rooted in the culture wars “ of which they are ignorant.
“As far as they are concerned, dumb people in our social class have been known to become very rich. Take Bobby Fulk, the realtor we all grew up with. He’s dumber than owl shit but now worth several millions. And he still drinks Bud Light and comes into the Royal Lunch once in a while.”
In the first chapter, “American Serfs”, Bageant says “Malcolm X had it straight when he said the first step in revolution is massive education of the people. Without education nothing can change. “
What’s needed, he adds, is “for someone to say out loud: ’ Now lookee here, dammit! We are dumber than a sack of hair and should ‘a got an education so we would have half a notion of what’s going on in the world.’ Someone once told me that and, along with the advice never to mix Mad Dog 20/20 with whiskey, it is the best advice I ever received. But no one in America is about to say such a thing out lout because it sounds elitist. It sounds un-American and undemocratic. It also might get your nose broken in certain venues.”
The question of class, in Dispatches from America’s Class War, D ?
“In the old days class warfare was between the rich and the poor, and that’s the kind of class war I can sink my teeth into. These days it is clearly between the educated and the uneducated, which of course does make it a culture war…
“It’s going to be a tough fight for progressives. We are going to have to pick up this piece of road kill with our bare hands. We are going to have to explain everything about progressivism to the people at the Royal Lunch because their working-poor lives have always been successfully contained in cultural ghettos such as Winchester by a combination of God rhetoric, money, cronyism, and the corporate state. It will take a huge effort because they…in many respects accept it as their lot.”
That’s just a bit from the first chapter.
Can’t wait to get into the next one, “Republicans by Default.”
Still can't believe this hasn’t appeared before in the Book Lounge at babble!
[ 30 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
Sat, 2008-08-30 09:41
#3
I thought about putting up a discussion on the book but didn't think it would babble friendly.
The strongest parts of the book are when Bageant writes about the dissconnection between the people who live in small town America and the political class\elites and the economic reality of smaller town life. It reminded me of how some babblers, myself included, have written about how and why the NDP has little rural Canadian presence.
The chapter about religiion was weak, and sounded like old news. Bageant's economic analysis is quite good, his emphasis on class conflicts even though most of the people he profiles would consider themselves and America classless. His commentary on race has a very white male feel. The section on firearms was okay.
A decent read overall. I like the style. I'd much rather read Bageant and Matt Taibbi than Naomi Klein and Chomsky.
Sat, 2008-08-30 09:45
#4
Lard Tunderin Jeezus
...though Bageant would no doubt encourage you to read both.
Sat, 2008-08-30 09:51
#5
Joe Bageant has a website [url=http://www.joebageant.com/]over here[/url]. He really nails the American disconnect. His "Pissing in the Liberal Punchbowl Again" explains why the Democrats keep losing.
Sat, 2008-08-30 09:57
#6
LTJ. No question. But I wonder if Bageant would encourage Pootie to read Chomsky?
Would I toss my Bageant or my Klein to mostly apolitical rural types? What's the greater accomplishment as a writer - preaching to the choir or managing to speak to the choir and the drinkers and smokers and gun owners watching NFL preseason games at the local booze hole?
Bageant, I think, can speak to people that Klein and Chomsky will likely never meet, unless they're on assignment or researching their latest book.
[ 30 August 2008: Message edited by: Farmpunk ]
Sat, 2008-08-30 10:31
#7
And perhaps the "reading class" will learn from him and go again into the hinterland and do more productive political thingies?
Sat, 2008-08-30 10:33
#8
Lard Tunderin Jeezus
Toby, thanks for that link to Bageant's site. I've just spent a good half hour reading it.
quote:
After a while, it does not matter that the story was manipulated. Deep need for a national story drives most to come to love and accept the story over time. It is the only one they have. And if the story is sufficiently intolerant and mean, we don't care about Iraqi deaths. And we come to love empire and capitalism. Beyond that, many would have become bullies anyway, without any help from the national storyline. They don't value democracy, or the ecology or liberty, but they do believe in authority and discipline. Aw come on! It ain't just Dick Cheney and his pet president Sparky doing all this. At least half the country is loving the queer bashing and the bombing and the god rhetoric. We should quit pretending that a very large portion of Americans are not degraded human beings. They are. Skeptics are welcome to visit me here in the armed and inbred environs of Winchester, Virginia. It no longer matters what or who degraded them. Much time has passed and this is how many Americans have become. Fundamentalist cults abound, both religious and economic. Millions upon millions of Christians live in hermetic worlds of their own, with their own books stores, schools, media. Millions of middle class Americans both conservative and liberal live in suburbs and condos and brownstone row houses completely surrounded by their own kind, all of them worshippers in the American value cult, commodity fetishists. They are differentiated mainly in their own minds and the narratives they have made up for themselves. And of course in their consumption.After 35 years of inattention to these not-so-nice Americans among us (in another time they would have been called fascists, but now they are considered merely a political "base," which is in itself a strange sort of national acceptance of cruelty as part of the national character) we are now watching them consolidate power. For the time being they control the presidency, the Congress, the media, the Supreme Court, the federal courts, most governorships, and most state legislatures. And if their manipulation of congressional districts stays put they could feasibly stay in power indefinitely. Do these people, this half of our population which cheers on unprovoked wars abroad, spying on the citizenry and demonizing of the poor truly hate democracy? Fuck if I know. But after generations of brainwashing and psychological molding and exploitation of their fears, I suspect they never really knew what democracy was.
If anyone is going to turn the ship of the republic around, put us on a course more in the direction of liberty and openness, it will require the navigational help of those among us who can still remember what it was like before totalistic capitalism took such grip. People who can remember that genuine good will and intent were once alive in the hearts of most people even if never in the halls of Congress. Remember when at least some human and social progress was evident around us, thereby giving reason to hope.
And these sorts of people are indeed still with us, though quiet, perhaps out of insecurity. Only last Saturday I saw them at the Jiffy Lube. Sitting in the waiting room with our little Jiffy Lube paper coffee cups, waiting for our cars to be finished, we were watching on CNN the placement of the casket of Coretta Scott King in the rotunda of the Georgia State Capitol. To my right there was the huge black lady with corn rows and two bright eyed children hanging on her ankles. There was the thin young 30-something half-black dude who had just got off his cell to his wife (Yeah honey, it's on CNN. Bye.) There was the very straight suburban blonde yuppie woman with her sculpted pony tail sticking through the back of her aubergine Eddie Bauer ball cap. And as those Georgia state troopers on CNN, looking so much like the very same kind who once struck fear into the Martins and the Medgars of the South, were climbing those marble stairs under the gray February Georgia sky, one step at a time, then a pause, then one more step ... There was not a dry eye a dry eye in that Jiffy Lube waiting room. It was not just the cheap emotionalism of televised pandering. Everyone there remembered, by God! Remembered or found reason to believe in, an America that at one moment in history at least, rose from its stupor to struggle forward toward something higher. Something better. And yes, noble even.
[url=http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2006/02/welcome_to_midd.html]Welcome to Middle-Class Lockdown[/url]
Sat, 2008-08-30 10:43
#9
[QUOTE]
If anyone is going to turn the ship of the republic around, put us on a course more in the direction of liberty and openness, it will require the navigational help of those among us who can still remember what it was like before totalistic capitalism took such grip. People who can remember that genuine good will and intent were once alive in the hearts of most people even if never in the halls of Congress. Remember when at least some human and social progress was evident around us, thereby giving reason to hope.
(end quote)
No evidence of ageism here!
------------------------------------------
The book is a good read, while the above extract from his website may be confusing, unless one understands that he's talking about the "story of the people" of the U.S., and the story of his hometown is told very well in the book. And, of course, it's characters are not exclusive to small-town America.
But the depression and absence of hope gripping so many of them in Winchester, are not conditions found in such large proportion in Canada simply because of a more accessible social welfare system. A visit to the hospital will not mean putting the house up for sale in many cases. The bulk of the paycheque does not go to medical insurance or drugs. Fear does not rule here.
And as farmpunk has noted, there are echoes of some Canadian rural life here, and a lesson for the NDP. Although Bageant stresses that that condition is not to be overcome without education.
Perhaps some can recall characters from their own beginnings, and manage to find residual pockets of behavioural sinks still there in memory. I remember a couple. They still resonate. [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img]
[ 30 August 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
Sun, 2008-08-31 15:08
#10
quote:
Farmpunk
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 12955
posted 30 August 2008 09:41 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I thought about putting up a discussion on the book but didn't think it would babble friendly.
I'm curious as to why you thought that?
Sun, 2008-08-31 15:20
#11
M. Spector
George, a friendly hint, since you seem to have missed the newbie lecture about how to quote stuff.
Clicking on those big quotation marks at the top of any post will open up the "Post a Reply" window with the text of the post already in it.
Or you can use the low-tech method and just put (quote) in front of the text you want to quote and (/quote) after it (only using square brackets instead of the round ones I just used.)
I'd have sent you a PM about this, but I seem to be on your "ignore" list.
Sun, 2008-08-31 16:16
#12
Spector is very particular about how people reply to posts, George. And there's no way to ignore him.
To be honest, judging from some of the other political books discussed here, I wouldn't have thought there'd be much interest in Bageant since he's not offering a detailed a detailed analysis. And, clearly, some of his stances would draw almost immediate condemnation. Guns, for instance.
I was actually expecting more from the book, to be honest. There are some really good passages, where he is funny and sharp, but nothing ties together. He keeps rambling on about "the great American hologram". Seemed a little weak, to me.
It's a book I'd give to apolitical friends, and babble is anything but apolitical.
Mon, 2008-09-01 01:50
#13
quote:
Originally posted by M. Spector:
[b]George, a friendly hint, since you seem to have missed the newbie lecture about how to quote stuff.Clicking on those big quotation marks at the top of any post will open up the "Post a Reply" window with the text of the post already in it.]
Okay, here goes. I just have to discover now, I guess, how to edit out those parts I don't want to quote...like the rest of this missive from you. Like the paragraph below, about the low-tech method. I'll just ignore it and see if it goes away :-)
Or you can use the low-tech method and just put (quote) in front of the text you want to quote and (/quote) after it (only using square brackets instead of the round ones I just used.)
[I'd have sent you a PM about this, but I seem to be on your "ignore" list.[/b]
]
I "ignore" nobody, mate. [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]
So it looks like I don't just click on the " marks above your own posting. Back to the drawing board... [img]redface.gif" border="0[/img]
But it boldened your remarks...
Ah, memories of the old schoolroom revisited
[ 01 September 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
Mon, 2008-09-01 02:26
#14
(quote)
To be honest, judging from some of the other political books discussed here, I wouldn't have thought there'd be much interest in Bageant since he's not offering a detailed a detailed analysis. And, clearly, some of his stances would draw almost immediate condemnation. Guns, for instance.
I was actually expecting more from the book, to be honest. There are some really good passages, where he is funny and sharp, but nothing ties together. He keeps rambling on about "the great American hologram". Seemed a little weak, to me.
It's a book I'd give to apolitical friends, and babble is anything but apolitical.
(end quote)
-----------------------------------
This very political septuagenarian finds Bageant very political, and I suspect it has much to do with age. He hails back to a time - and describes it - that I recognize very clearly, and his explanation for the changes ring true. The fact that he puts it in rough but entertaining form does not hide its essential political message for me. When he says "we" have to go out and pick up the roadkill, he flies an activist flag. And when he tells about his identity around his old haunts as that of "lefty", and maxing out his credit card to help the disposessed, he's going farther than most activists that I know. And when you add in his biography, his personal history of travel and work ...I guess I just don't understand your take on it, finally. Particularly since you seem to (properly, I think) associate the NDP's rural showing with its distance from the ideas of rural folk in Canada, like Bageant and his thoughts on liberals.
As for his "fitting in" to the super-heated political atmosphere of babble? I'm still amazed that it has not long ago been dissected and examined under the lenses of watchers on both sides of the 49th for the truths it holds.
And while we can't expect people out there to come to Chomsky et al, we can perhaps expect Mohammed to move toward the mountain of poverty with some more understanding of what is needed to get them to understand the root causes of their plight. [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img]
p.s.
The one major political weak spot that may surface clearly, as I read through the chapters, is his take on the economics of the Chicago School that rode in with (and provided the major armaments for) the neo-con set, which he does identify by themselves. He has the time right, with Ronnie Raygun. It may simply be the old but widespread problem of divorcing economics from politics - often marked by disinterest in the business doings that support our way of life (or not) in these capitalist nations we call home.
[ 01 September 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
[ 01 September 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
Mon, 2008-09-01 07:57
#15
I like his style. Babblers may not, given that most appear to lean towards academia more than stylistic readability in writers.
George: "Particularly since you seem to (properly, I think) associate the NDP's rural showing with its distance from the ideas of rural folk in Canada, like Bageant and his thoughts on liberals."
And the reception I've experienced to introducing those associations should be enough to prove my point that Bageant's book isn't going to be on the top of many babblers' To Read lists. Could be wrong, of course.
Mon, 2008-09-01 10:07
#16
It sounds like a great read to me.
Mon, 2008-09-01 10:42
#17
quote:
Originally posted by Stargazer:
[b]It sounds like a great read to me.[/b]
Yeah, me too. Or if you'd rather, watch the video
[url=http://ten.com.au/tv_videos.html?channel=9AM+WITH+DAVID+AND+KIM&clipId=1... web site.[/url] Once you get past the ad (Aussie TV) it's pretty good.
Tue, 2008-09-02 04:06
#18
Hey George. I didn't notice this thread for a while but I'm glad you've got the book and are enjoying it. I checked out the website a bit, as I think I would like this guy's writing, however I don't love the website layout. Anyway keep posting if you find any particularly interesting passages; I've always been of the opinion that "red states" are also the ones where revolution in the US is most likely (and I've always been fascinated by efforts by the right to co-opt the anger and disenfranchisement in these areas). Keep me posted.
Tue, 2008-09-02 11:17
#19
I'm not sure that these folks are going to be on our side in any revolution, D [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img]
(quote)
THIS WHOLE BLESSED COLUMN IS STRAIGHT OUT OF BAGEANT...
IT IS OFFERED UP AS A SAMPLE OF THE DISTINCTIONS HE MAKES AMONG THE LIFE OF THE HEARTLAND.
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF HIS INTERPRETATIONS . I FIND HIS CATEGORIES (OBVIOUSLY THOSE OF HIS SUB JECTS)_ QUITE REVEALING.
I DID NOT KNOW THESE "THINGS"
ARE THEY OLD HAT TO OTHERS?
Top hourly wages at Rubbermaid now run as high as $15, up to $32,000 yearly, good money be local standards despite the fact that its purchasing power has dropped by more than a third since the day Rubbermaid opened. Forget that fifteen bucks is really eleven bucks of less. Forget that the health insurance costing $250 a month for one person, with a $1,200 deductible, pays only 80 per cent of medical bills. Here in Winchester we have been pistol-whipped into a proper sense of gratitude, wo this is considered a good deal.
---------------------------------------------
By the time our country ham steaks and mashed potatoes are delivered, we are on the subject of unions, always a volatile topic down here. Tom is intensely antiunion, which amazes me since I can remember when he had a Che Guevara poster on his apartment wall. You’d think after twenty years in a southern factory a guy would be begging union organizers to sweep through this town like Grant took Richmond. But Tom and most other plant workers here have bought the rightist mantra that goes: “maybe union were once valuable, but they have priced American labor completely out of the market. They always want more money for less production.” Tom, like me, has heard this line from birth; we know it by heart. He still believes it.
---------------------------------------------------------
And for Tom: “…the bottom line is that globalization is in our national interests.”
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Nor does one talk to Americans like Tom about universal health care or universal education, paid parental leave, affordable housing, unemployment compensation, food stamps, or Head Start. There are shameful “entitlements” - “more damned government giveaways,” in Tom’s opinion. Frills. …One of the slickest things the right ever did was to label necessary social costs as “entitlements.” Through thirty years of repetition, the Republicans have managed to associate the tem with laziness in Americans’ minds. To the ear of hardworking blue-collar and service workers, it means “something for nothing.” Undereducated, uninformed, but surely propagandized, these working Americans believe no part of their lives is subsidized in any way. Tom thinks he has never benefited from the commonweal because he has never been on welfare. He is proud never to have utilized any social program. He surely could have used a treatment program for substance abuse, but he found his way out of addiction with a hand from Jesus. Others can do the same.
It comes down to gumption, Tom says. Child care for single mothers or low-income housing subsidies? “They ain’t necessities,” he drawls. Out national narrative is about gumption, not giveaways. It’s about good guys and bad guys, not social complexities. Weak-will people and strong people. It’s about stories that sound right, political narratives that resonate without much effort of thought.
Politics.
“The tom Delay scandal, the Abramoff scandal, wiretapping citizens without warrants, Republican cronyism, payoffs, charges of election fraud…none of it registered. “All politicians are crooks” seems to cover it adequately for Tom and others like him. The main thing is that the narrative be a simple one that makes clear whom to love and whom to hate, who is weak and who is strong. The truth matters far less than the sheer audacity of the story.
Since the days of Ronald Reagan, Republicans have been good at coming up with such stories. Anyone who could sell people on the “trickle down” theory - the notion that working people’s best interests reside in giving as much money as possible to the already-rich - is good.
Then, too, only a subjugated lower class could possible have bought it. During the Reagan era the Republican myth machine circulated the “black welfare-baby-sleeping-in-the-box-the-color-television-came-in” story. I believed it at the time, and I’m sure Tom did too. Now decades and hundreds of millions of PR dollars later, the over-arching conservative Republican narrative has been perfected and is embraced by half of America. Along the Republican road between Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, it evolved into something more brazen and meaner.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom’s stereotyping is born of more than just listening to talk radio. Like tens of millions of other proud-to-be-rednecks, he has neither the time nor the opportunity to read and learns about things because he is so busy working. The fact is that Tom does about twenty-five hours of contracting work after-hours at Rubbermaid each week. Menawhile, his fellow Rubbermaid workers, friends and neighbors are pouring their own house foundations, changing their motor oil, or actually cutting the brush the president pretends to clear.
Life is about workfor the American redneck. By redneck, I mean all kins of rednecks, not just southern ones, ranging from Polish and Hungarian stock rednecks of the Appalachian coal country to the Scandinavian ones of the logging Northwest. In the South and the Midwest there are even Jewish rednecks who drive muscle cars and brawl and love country music. For all these people work is an obsession and has been for generations stretching back to the textile mills, the homesteads of the West and Midwest, the immigrant labor mines of West Virginia and Colorado and Montana, the subsistence farms of the South. The forbears of today’s rednecks were people for whom not working meant their families would starve. Literally. So the work ethic is burned into their genetic code. (Incidentally, I am not talking about white trash here. I am talking about rednecks, the difference being that rednecks work themselves to death and will never accept a handout. White trash folks do not have the same hang-up.) In the redneck mind, lazy is the worst thing a person can be -worse than dumb, drunk or mean, worse than being a liar and a jailbird or crazy. The absolute worst thing that a redneck can say about anyone is: “He doesn’t want to work,” which is generally followed by “Hell, I don’t want to either, but I have to.” By the same logic, educated liberals who have time to read, who in fact read so much that they join book clubs, are suspect.
Only one thing can bring such ceaseless activity to rest: a direct hook-up between televised sports and the brain. And even then it often requires vast amount of beer, which I personally have no problem with, except that all this busyness and beer keeps us stupid and blind to the greater world.
(end quote)
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What do you think?
[ 02 September 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
Tue, 2008-09-02 11:19
#20
quote:
Originally posted by George Victor:
[b]What do you think? [/b]
Not to harp, and with respect, I really wish you'd use the quote function. [img]wink.gif" border="0[/img] It would make your posts easier to read.
Edited to add quote! heh.
[ 02 September 2008: Message edited by: RosaL ]
Tue, 2008-09-02 11:32
#21
Sounds like Tom is the epitome of the standard American in "What's The Matter With Kansas?"
Tue, 2008-09-02 23:46
#22
Still only in the second chapter of the book, "Republicans by default", which has been helpful in understanding McCain's choice of running mate.
Chapter five, "The Covert Kingom" ("They plead upon the blood of Jesus for a theocratic state"), promises to be just as enlightenin' about the nature of life up in Alaska these days.
Or pretty much anywhere in the Heartland.
Wed, 2008-09-03 17:28
#23
OK, you guys got me! Bought it today.
Fri, 2008-09-05 09:35
#24
All this time I'm saying "I'd read it" and lo and behold, I had already ordered it and just received it today. Doh!
Also received "The Racist Mind: Portraits of American Neo-Nazis and Klansmen"
Am awaiting:
Innocent: Inside Wrongful Conviction Cases
Surviving Justice: America's Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated
No Longer Exiles: The Religious New
Right in American Politics
Secret and Suppressed II: Banned Ideas and Hidden History into the 21st Century
Fri, 2008-09-05 10:05
#25
Looking forward to seeing your take on Deer Hunting....!
Sat, 2008-09-06 06:23
#26
Have to take a break after reading his chapter "The Deep-fried, Double-wide Lifestyle", in which he predicts economic meltdown "when the creation of mortgages can no longer be sustained," while folks wait for things to work out on both the economic and environmental fronts.
"The Republicans have proclaimed the entire disastrous mess to be the lifestyle we are entitled to as Americans, and therefore nonnegotiable. The Democrats, even when they do have power, remain terrified of proposing any real change that would release us from our oil and sprawl addiction."
John Allemang of The Globe and Mail has Bageant's folks down pat - probably he's read his work too - and his "Palin Country" poem today is worth a boo:
Please call us rednecks, 'cause we're proud
To be so rude and rough and loud,
And act in ways elitists think
Proves that we've had to much to drink
In some dead-end Alaskan dive
When dude, it just shows we're alive.
We love our church, our kids, our beer,
Can tell you right down to the year
That God put Man upon the Earth,
Know life starts well ahead of birth,
don't give a damn about the arts,
And stay away from foreign parts
Until the moment that we're sent
As John McCain's vice-president.
The great thing, when your neck is red?
Nobody cares what's in your head -
The voters seem to like 'em dumb,
So why not pick a hockey mom
Who hunts and prays and procreates
To govern these United States?
If you can drive a snowmobile,
The people, bless them, think you're real,
And in the end, who needs a brain?
Jusst tell your kids they must abstain,
Pretend that when your rule's ignored
It's some great gift sent by the Lord,
And prove you'll go to any length
To make each redneck fault a strength.
----------------------------------------------
Seems to me Stephane is challenged by this same element in Canada. Lots of them out there. WE pretend that Canada is above that - but to what extent is that true? How close are we to becoming a society with those kinds of divisions?
Despite Bageant's assertion that only education and the development of some knowledge of the outside world can "fix" Heartland's plight, I've yet to see something on education and curriculum in Winchester. Hope it appears. It won't be in the next chapter, "Valley of the Gun".
Sat, 2008-09-06 07:12
#27
From the [url=http://www.joebageant.com/]web site[/url] referenced above - Bageant on Obama's taking on inner-city black fathers:
quote:
The politics of Personal ResponsibilityPersonal responsibility is a legitimate issue when discussed in the context of family and personal lives. When dragged into the political arena it is an issue that is entirely an elite construct. The actual positions of the elite are not particularly relevant. What is important is that the issues get discussed not what results from that discussion. The relevance of this issue is not in what it illuminates but in what it hides.
The recent enthusiastic embrace of Senator Obama of the call for "responsibility" from inner city black fathers is a prime example of this issue. What he is really saying is, "I will never blame the owners of the country for the social problems caused by their economic policies." Senator Obama knows better than anyone that you can eliminate most of the problems of inner city fathers in a generation with a decent educational system and living wage jobs.
But all systems of power need a convincing and unlikable enemy, which can bury the contradictions of the system. In our case incoherent, undereducated black urban males fit the bill perfectly. They are being attacked not because they are a threat to the power structure, but precisely because they are not.
What voters are expected to believe is that after a 30-year class war against the bottom 90% of income earners, the source of their troubles are black rappers and inner city fathers and not criminality on Wall Street or a corrupt political system. The road to the White House over the past 30 years has been paved by pretending to believe the absurdity that the individuals who pull the levers of power over people's lives are named Willie Horton, Sister Souljah and Ludicrous, and not Robert Rubin, Phil Gramm and Hank Paulson.
If as a society we are prepared to believe this, then we have lost the stuff that makes free men.
Good analysis but I am bothered by a braggadocio that sunk in macho narcissism the likes of Hunter S. Thompson.
[ 06 September 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]
[ 06 September 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]
Sat, 2008-09-06 07:50
#28
[QUOTE]
Good analysis but I am bothered by a braggadocio that sunk in macho narcissism the likes of Hunter S. Thompson.
(end quote)
--------------------------------------------
Thompson was narcissistic?
Bageant is also narcissistic?
Okay, but I'm more concerned about his "good analysis" that says all we have to do is educate the lads.
Since when did this become a simple matter?
And don't you think that the black candidate for president, with a lot of years experience in the ghetto, is speaking about the feelings of all those Afro-Americans, men and women, who want to see the guys get with it?
Maybe a Malcolm X could have been instrumental in raising the consciousness of more men to the need for education, as Bageant says. And the programmes of Lyndon Johnson started to help. But it's too trite to say, in effect, don't lay the blame on the fellas. They have to figure in on the solution.
Or have I misread your message?
Sat, 2008-09-06 08:00
#29
You are putting your spin on it, which is legitimate.
I don't hear B. say it is a simple matter. On the contrary, he makes the point that it is much more difficult than liberals think it is - when they bother getting off their high white horse.
But when Obama point the finger at impoverished black men, he is above all speaking to a population that is mostly White, mostly racist, and mostly opposed to giving impoverished Blacks decent jobs, not at those impoverished black men specifically.
Sat, 2008-09-06 10:50
#30
He is placing himself on the side of the unmarried mothers among Chicago's Afro-American citizens, and, of course, telling White America that that is going to be part of the solution.
That's not spin, that's my "take" (analysis) of his situation, both his proposed policy and his political position in this campaign.
-----------
You suggest;
(quote)
But when Obama point the finger at impoverished black men, he is above all speaking to a population that is mostly White, mostly racist, and mostly opposed to giving impoverished Blacks decent jobs, not at those impoverished black men specifically.
(end quote)
---------------------------------------------
If that population Obama is speaking to is "mostly racist", we are indeed in deep dung, and nothing can be done politically, period.
Sat, 2008-09-06 11:04
#31
quote:
Originally posted by Farmpunk:
[b]I like his style. Babblers may not, given that most appear to lean towards academia more than stylistic readability in writers.[/b]
Seriously? Lord, I hate academic prose. Puts me to sleep in three pages. If I wanna read that crap, I'll pay $500 to some professor to force me to, and then get a university credit for it. [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]
Sat, 2008-09-06 11:04
#32
quote:
If that population Obama is speaking to is "mostly racist", we are indeed in deep dung, and nothing can be done politically, period.
Well that's convenient... Either the problem (ingrained racism among U.S. Whites) doesn't exist, or if it does, we are powerless... [img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img]
Also: Obama representing African-American women? More like The Moynihan Report, if you ask me...
[ 06 September 2008: Message edited by: martin dufresne ]
Sat, 2008-09-06 11:13
#33
My take on it:
(quote)
---------------------------------------------
If that population Obama is speaking to is "mostly racist", we are indeed in deep dung, and nothing can be done politically, period.
(end quote)
--------------------------------------
Yer one of them all or nothing fellas, Martin...
where "mostly" becomes "all".
Certainly not an academic position. [img]biggrin.gif" border="0[/img]
[ 06 September 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]
Sat, 2008-09-06 11:20
#34
Yer $500 course sounds like a subsidized one, Michelle.
You are immediately suspect in the redneck community of Heartland, America,.....eh? [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]
Sat, 2008-09-06 12:07
#35
Bageant writes nothing like HST. That's jacket copy fluff.
Some of Bageant's racial commentaries will not go over well with babblers, George. Accept that.
Sat, 2008-09-06 14:25
#36
Farmpunk, I'm curious to know if you have read the Redneck Manifesto by Jim Goad and if so, do you see any comparisons between the two books? I've read Jim Goad's book, and I get the impression they may be somewhat similar in their hypothesis.
Sat, 2008-09-06 14:48
#37
quote:
Originally posted by George Victor:
[b]Yer $500 course sounds like a subsidized one, Michelle.You are immediately suspect in the redneck community of Heartland, America,.....eh? [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img] [/b]
Hee. Well, I was somewhat kidding. But only somewhat. I don't like jargon for the sake of jargon, and dense, turgid academese for the sake of academic pride. But I can slog through it when necessary. Some people really get off on that stuff, though, which is great for them, and more power to them.
But I prefer popularizers to jargonistas when it comes to reading for interest, even on serious topics.
Sat, 2008-09-06 16:14
#38
SG, no. But I'll put it on the list. A decent read?
I liked bits and pieces of Deer Hunting. It certainly didn't hang together. He should have just talked about class and small town economies and people instead of trying to mix in religion and race. Those passages read like stuff that should have been edited out, or works on their own.
Sun, 2008-09-07 03:22
#39
It is a decent read. Lots offensive about it but it is a good look poor whites who live on the fringes of society.
Sun, 2008-09-07 05:04
#40
"Valley of the Gun" was no fun. But Bageant stayed on mission, arguing that if the "left" and "liberals" would stop harassing gun owners out there in the Hinterland, they'd have more Democratic votes at election time.
His stories of boyhood hunting - he hasn't owned a gun in years - and his defence of gun ownership, are easily understood by anyone who has themselves hunted. This scribe trod a similar path through the woods, although I never could imagine hunting deer.
I parted from the hunting culture in my early 20s, and got some strange looks and accusatory stories from my childhood buddies in the process. They knew I was swinging over to the conservationist side of self, which is a part of almost all who walk the woods and streams, and which wins out in most people by middle age.My Dr. Jekyll won out early.
The late Greg Clark, one of Canada's best-known storytellers 50 years ago, wrote about his fishing jaunts, but not his hunting trips, which would not have been "understood" by his readers, much like the story of the deer hunt in Bageant's youth, caused this reader to turn a page without reading it.
Meeting Clark, it was hard to imagine him sighting on a deer, but no harder than seeing him hurling his five-foot frame up Vimy Ridge in 1917, leading a platoon to the top, doing whatever it took to get there.
Bageant points to the militarily obsessed, the strange ones - far too numerous for comfort but still a minority in the gun culture - and defends the use of guns by people defending themselves. With statistics.
In the next instant he's worried about what the crazies who own guns "will do if one day things spiral out of control. What happens when this country finally hits Peak Oil Demand (he's a follower of James Howard Kunstler) and the electrical grid starts browning down and even little things become desperately difficult or unaffordable? What happens if the wrong kind of president declares the wrong kind of national emergency? What will be the first reflex of those hundreds of thousands of devotees of lethality?"
Fri, 2008-09-12 15:14
#41
Quoting Farmpunk from a ways back in this thread:
[QUOTE]
Farmpunk
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 12955
posted 01 September 2008 07:57 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I like his style. Babblers may not, given that most appear to lean towards academia more than stylistic readability in writers.
[END QUOTE]
-------------------------------------
I have been hoping to see the appearance of that academic stream that you suggest dominates babble (well, any stream, actually), but not one iota of social or psychological analysis do I see. Some musing along literary lines, but as you suggested, just revulsion demonstrated for some of the rougher concepts - even when they are used analytically (and incorrectly) to try to understand what is happening down there.
Are you familiar with the Mennonite practise of "shunning"? [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]
Sat, 2008-09-13 01:57
#42
Just out ...an American expatriate tells us in Joe Bageant's latest blog offering an explanation of some Canadian-American differences:
"Scots-Irish in Canada and US are different
Joe:
I've been reading your blog just about as long as it has been around, and I bought your book as soon as it came out. Kudos on your quickly percolating career as a redneck pundit in the UK press. Try not to turn into one of those 18th Century Savage Red Indians taken back to England for display as a curiosity illustrative of the wonders of the Americas. But I'm sure you won't, and if you do and get paid for it, it's all good anyway.
I recently gave up on the USA (Abu Ghraib was the last straw) and moved to Canada, where I'm now married to a lovely Canadian girl and going through the process of becoming a Canadian citizen. I love it up here in Toronto, and we visit quite often with her parents in rural Ontario.
People up here so closely resemble Americans, but seem so much less invested in domination of the world and oppression of the weak: even Sarah's Pentecostal parents (no joke) wouldn't dream of denying gay people the right to get married or of messing with the socialized health care everyone up here is entitled to, and people up here are pretty upset about even Canada's limited peacekeeping involvement in Afghanistan. Churches are drying up for lack of congregations as an ever-increasing chunk of the populace self-reports as non-religious.
My question for you is this: if the Ulster Scots have been such a formative influence on the American psyche, especially vis-a-vis its hard-bitten individualism and its imperialistic belligerence, then why is Canada so singularly lacking in these traits? This place is crawling with Scots-Irish -- they may be the largest ethnic group in the country, and they dominate the maritime provinces.
It's a tough nut to crack, and I don't expect you to have an answer. History is complicated, I guess, and Canada and the US have been through much different experiences in the last 200 years: ongoing membership in the Empire and then the Commonwealth, and their ill use by the English during the World Wars, has done a lot to shape Canadian attitudes toward foreign military adventures, and America's original sin of African slavery is quite a different cup of tea from the aboriginal genocide that continues to have real political consequences up here. But it's an interesting question to contemplate, I think, and if it provides you with any matter for your ruminations on the souls of nations and the way history shapes and is shaped by different cultures, then this will turn out to have been a worthwhile message to send.
I hope you're doing well, Joe. You are a sane human voice crying out in the wilderness, and I can't tell you how much of a comfort it is for a heartbroken expat like me to hear someone sing about the America I thought I grew up in, but that increasingly seems like it never
existed.
Take it easy,
Matt
Toronto
-----------------------------------------------
Uplifting, hope generating, or what?
-----------------------------------------------
Sat, 2008-09-13 05:23
#43
N.Beltov
What I do not see Joe Bageant write about is that while right-wing ideas have been spread far and wide, left wing ideas were, and are, deliberately silenced. 70-80 years ago the left was stronger and, for example, the great organizing drives that developed so many industrial unions, for example, were carried out by socialists and communists. If liberals complain about the lack of such organizing work it's only because they forget that they they were, themselves, part of that campaign of silencing the left.
What ordinary people need are socialist ideas. That's the antidote to trained selfishness, racism, religious fundamentalism, and so on. But those organizers are gone, or too old, or too few, as a result of which what most people get is a steady diet of hate.
The remedy to class war from the right is class war from the left. There's no other way.
Sat, 2008-09-13 05:37
#44
Have a good gander at Bageant, NB, and see if he doesn't explain the process by which we of the left lost traction.
Your thoughts on means of revival would be difficult where you don't own the presses or use of the airwaves, and your planned audience doesn't want to read or watch anything but sports, anyway.
I hope he has something to say about education, which he escaped to find. Seems to me the last avenue for change - before all are required to teach creationist science, anyway. That would be the time to head for the bunkers, methinks.
Sat, 2008-09-13 06:26
#45
N.Beltov
I'm sure there is lots to read - and just to be clear I have added him to my links for progressive blogs to have a look now and then - but I just wanted to make a preliminary observation. The author seems to be good at outlining and elaborating on what the right does without, however, elaborating on what the left did when it was successful in the past or what the left should do to be similarly successful again.
Some writers on the left seem to very good at elaborating on current problems and extremely lousy at outlining any remedy to those problems. I don't know if the deer hunter falls into that camp without a lot more reading.
Sun, 2008-09-14 04:30
#46
George, are you Bageant's press agent?
I'm curious to read what Stargazer thinks of the book.
Sun, 2008-09-14 05:24
#47
I read it before I go to sleep. Which means I can only manage to get in a few pages each night but I do like his writing style. Regarding the race thing - Deer Hunting With Jesus focuses mainly on whites, in particular those white whom are poor. The writer feels that even the small business owners are in bed with big corporations. I'm not so sure everything is as cut and dry but so far, I have to agree with a lot of his positions.
The thing I do find troubling is his dismissive attitude of what he calls "liberals". He writes as if all those on the left are elitist, and forgets that many of us have struggled just as hard as the people he writes about. Many of us were single parents, poor farmers, outcasts in one way or another.
He discusses the need for education, but in the next sentence, gets on about elitist lefties (who, for the most part, were just like the people he focuses on - after education.) So what is his solution? He wants to see an educated class of people yet he clearly feels these same educated people are forgetful of their past. I don't think that is correct. I think that when poor people seek the power of knowledge, they are more often than not to understand poor uneducated whites, and have more sympathy for their plights, because we understand these plights, we've been there.
Non educated - you forget who has your best interests. Educated? Well you forget those roots you came from.
That's the part I do not agree with because certainly right wingers with money are not working to help the very people who vote for them.
It's early so forgive my rambling...
Mon, 2008-09-15 05:09
#48
Your post reflects the concerns that we all share about Bageant's apparent contradictory position on education. He first says it's necessary for folks to break free from the redneck culture, but also says that's hard as hell to do, and the education system in those parts has lowered the bar to an impossible level for graduates to expect entry to meaningful post-secondary education.
But plow on. I don't want to spoil the read for you, but his chapter, "The Covert Kingdom" will explain more of what is bursting forth politically these days. And the folks in that "kingdom" aren't about to begin reading.
Like to see what you think of that chapter - and his answer to all liberals' primary question: what we can do about it, politically.
Adding to the little positive note...he does point out that the "red" states are limited and recoverable by the "blue" forces. But again, I'd really like to see your response to his "solution".
I await the outcome of your nightly read. [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]
Thu, 2008-10-02 16:57
#49
How far along are you in Deer Hunting, Stargazer? Have you had enough of Bageant ?
Don't you think that he explains the Palin phenom perfectly?
Fri, 2008-10-03 05:25
#50
I'm just past the guns section (of which I do not agree with at all as he completely ignores little things like facts and statistics) otherwise, I wish he would get into the real issue, that being that the left has been shut out by the very people he champions in his book, and how the right bears that responsibility, not the left, as he says.
So far a very simplistic book which steers clear of some of the most important issues (as discussed above).
Fri, 2008-10-03 05:42
#51
You're gonna love "The Covert Kingdom" (I hope [img]frown.gif" border="0[/img]