Late last month Joe Bageant died of cancer at 64 years of age.

I did not want to let his death pass without some mention.

If I had to name one author who has had the most profound effect on me over the last couple of years it would have to be Joe Bageant. His humanity, empathy, and heartfelt storytelling were evident not only in the two slim books of his, Deer Hunting for Jesus and Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir, but also in his public appearances.

A modern day Steinbeck with an equal eye for injustice, possibly without the mastery of the written word to win a Pulitzer, but more than made up for by being a participant rather than just an observer. In a limited sense a literary version of a Michael Moore without the ego and flair.

He not only gave me a greater understanding of what faces the white underclass of America but in turn made me more deeply appreciative of Australia and our “sense of commonwealth”.

About as real as they get.

RIP Joe.

csteele,
Joe RIP.
do you actually mean vail or did you mean vale ?

I haven't read Bageant's books but I've heard a few interviews with him on RN: http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2010/09/01/2999519.htm
and am grateful to him for explaining deep southern ideology to me. Ironically, the stereotypically ignorant bible belt in the US is enamoured of the Enlightenment ideology its founding fathers infused in the Constitution. Sadly, this blind adherence is arguably the single biggest factor that maintains conservative liberal hegemony and the dominance of the wealthy over the downtrodden. Guns for the masses in exchange for power for the elites, who also have their guns bristling on high, enforcing their spurious cowboy logic unilaterally. Joe tells us that having no free health care in the US is equated with freedom. And this has doubtless been a factor behind the dominance of this neo-Roman empire; money that might have been squandered on health care, better wages and conditions has been retained to build the mightiest war machine in history, so that the state is the reification of popular ideology, the Shane of Western folklore--the loner who rides off into the sunset after setting the innocents free. For the more civilised city-folk there is the space program with its thrusting symbols of phallic potency: enough to soak the pants of the dourest feminist and reduce tough-minded Republicans to tears, the space program is akin in its profligate obsessiveness and earthly indifference to any of the excesses presided over by Caligula or Nero.

Joe Bageant, bless his heart, tried to break through the machismo crap that the US still ejaculates---like a bock-toothed boy from the bayous---at home and abroad.
Yet even with the willing compliance of its under-paid and neglected masses, the US is nearly broke.
When it finally ends up in the gutter, with nothing to keep it warm but pathetic memories of its glory days, like a drunken fallen-gunslinger it will struggle bathetically to its feet and go out in a blaze of glory, firing off its weapons willy nilly.
Joe Bageant was a voice of reason.

Well said, Squeers.

I read a long article by Joe Bageant and was impressed.
Some see things more clearly than others - his gift was his ability to articulate what he saw.

individual - what a prat-like comment...what are you - OLO's word inquisitor?
Some people have no capacity to detect and respect the spirit of a post and your comment was not in keeping with it.

Oh Squeers, and any others who have not so far not leafed the pages of a Joe book, I do urge you to have a look.

I bought his 'Deer hunting with Jesus' on-spec, never having heard of him, during a brief spell in Sidders in a 'wander around' book shops.

I picked the book up simply because of the title and started reading, then pushed an old woman out of her seat when she stood up to return a book and started reading a few pages. I was sold in no time.

This is not just about his home town and the towering US national 'intelligence'. It can be read to understand what is happening here too.

Coupled with books like 'The Family' and ''For God's sake' the reader soon understands the forces of iggerance that drive our national politics here in Australia and right across the West.

The foolish notions taught in International Relations about Westphalia seeing the end of religion in state affairs, is exposed in no time at all.

The world is done for, and this book is yet another signpost to our fate.

I suggest you beg buy or borrow a copy Squeers.

Adams reran an interview with him from a couple of years ago, last week. I missed it again but it's available on ABC downloads.

That dimwit, or those dimwits, from Counterpoint should read it and give us all one of their oh-so-special 'understandings' of it.

Dear individual, I had always thought vail was to doff one's hat as a mark of respect while vale was a valley. I will check when I get home.

Dear squeers, while you do give a sense of part of Joe's message what was striking about his books was his empathy for these people. Certainly there was frustration with with the way they approached their politics but the anger was reserved for those forces within American politics who took advantage of a deep sense of individual responsibility to neuter a whole class of people. DHFJ was lauded by some as predicting the GFC but rereading it now he was just stating the bleeding obvious.

However it was Rainbow Road that really rattled my chain for reasons I will expand on when I don't have to do it with a single finger. 

I would echo TBC's recommendation that you and Poirot try and get your hands on one of his books. Well worth the effort.

Come of it poirot you're a lefty intelligentsia aren't you? Very quiet about the hyperbowl of course.

Hahaha imagine if the Rodent or the mad monk had said hyperbowl. The lefties would have gone nuts.

Though Joolia in her recent attempts to distance herself from the Greens is actually out-Abbotting Mr Rabbit!

PS: I realise it is moot point not mute point and bear with me not bare with me, but I like the sound of things sometimes. I made up Baron (as opposed to Barren) Julia and liked the sound of that too.

Will pick up a book based on your recommendation csteele.

Fostering ignorance has always been the mainstay of Conservative politics in the US. Focussing issues of civil liberties and 'freedoms' around the narrow perspective of gun ownership and 'white' religious conservatism is a great distraction from the real causes of economic disparity. The opiate of the masses - never a truer word.

Houellie,

Ewe are probably rite. I take myself a little two seriously sometimes.
Perhaps I knead a brake from OLO - get back too sum real life : )

Dear csteele,

Thanks for this thread. Anyone with a taste for John Steinbeck will also be absorbed by Bageant's - "Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir." It packs quite a punch.

"Lose all your troubles,
Kick up some sand
And follow me, buddy,
To the Promised Land.
I'm here to tell you,
And I wouldn't lie,
You'll wear ten-dollar shoes
And eat rainbow pie."
(American hobo song).

Eternal rest grant to them, O Lord.
And let perpetual light shine on them.
May they rest in peace. Amen.

RIP
Joe Bageant.

Dear Poirot

At last I can understand what you write! So clear.

There is some nasty humour to be found in mocking the sounds of others, so long as no one dares to mock the mocker, of course.

Our premier is unable to say 'asked' and without fails struggles out with 'arkst', twice as hard to say though it is, along with millions of our fellow Aussie cousins.

My mother has managed to create her own creole format of English, all quite deliberate but hard to dislodge from the brain once back in more normal English. She seems to have studied the 'average mans' spoken word and distorted it even further.

The one I most appreciate is on those blogs concerning school chaplains. Their supporters, tending to the bottom end of the intelligence measurement, invariably refer to them as 'Chaplins'.

Indeed, they are.

TBC,

"Chaplins"....

- conjures up some comical visions of school "counselling" sessions.

Poirot

Did you mean 'councilling'?

csteele,

Great thread. I haven't had anything to do with Bageant and his work, but will be having a look.

For the record, a 'vale' is a valley. Vale (pronounced 'vah-lay') is Latin for farewell.

Hi all...

I too would like to add my feelings of profound sadness at Joe's passing. He indeed had a unique appreciation of those folk who never had a presence or voice, in a land of apparent 'milk and honey'.

And in my former occupation, I met many who were the living examples of those who Joe tried vainly to assist, by attempting to articulate their specific employment problems. As well as their (invariably difficulty), domiciliary circumstances also.

Indeed - Vale Joe Bageant, you will be sorely missed.

Dear Otokonoko, you are right, Vale is farewell as Individual flagged. Though vail wasn't too far off the mark I am a comforted a little by the thought that one of the last people in the world to have a problem with me mixing my Latin would have been Joe himself.

Vale Joe Bageant it is.

In facing a serious illness before the age when Americans receive universal Medicare Joe has identified with some of the characters in his book Dear Hunting With Jesus. One of its most startling statistics was that the local hospitals often are the largest source of bankruptcies in a community.

“...medical bills are the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the united States for the uninsured. Half of the uninsured owe money to hospitals, and at any given time one third of them are being chased by collection agencies that will not hesitate to haul them into court for a hundred bucks.”

But get this,

“Sixty percent of those filing for bankruptcy have health insurance.”

My brother has remarked how little there was in the American mainstream media about Joe's passing while most of the Australian outlets carried something. The American Fox News was bereft as far as I can tell.

Some of the letters posted on Joe's website show how many of us responded to he and his message. In the preface to the Australian edition of DHFJ he says “Australian readers display the same rowdy, open spirit, and the often wry understanding of politics...”. Why then so different in our social histories? I liked Joe's conclusion.

“I remember what an Australian once told me: 'I'm glad we got the convicts and you got the puritans.'”

“Be thankful.”

To aptly quote Steinbeck;

“Mack and the boys avoid the trap, walk around the poison, step over the noose while a generation of trapped, poisoned, and trussed-up men scream at them and call them no-goods, come-to-bad-ends, blots-on-the-town, thieves, rascals, bums.”

Though he got there late Joe was one of the “ Beauties, the Virtues, the Graces”.

Many people know of the warning by President Dwight Eisenhower about the dangers of the “military-industrial complex”.

“Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

Most often quoted by those making statements about America's adventures overseas the focus is almost always about the 'military' part of the equation. In Rainbow Pie Bageant talks about the stripping of dignity and skills of over 20 million Americans in less than a generation by the 'industrial' complex and how its rapaciousness continues unabated with every free trade agreement signed.

He says; “When WW II began, 44 percent of American's were rural, and over half of them farmed for a living. By 1970, only 5 per cent were on farms.”

Now “lest the noble, bawdy bumpkins themselves forget their roles in the national drama, they are teleprompted as it were, by tabloid TV; by the Jerry Springer Show's hair-pulling fights between married working-class women and their husband's young blonde piece of sexual side action”

What saves Rainbow Pie from sentimentality is Bageant's deep indignation about what has been done to these people, or rather his people because he identifies so closely with them.

“For the past forty years the tool most often used to denigrate my people has been political correctness”.

Damn, that was one of the many things in this book to hit the mark. I have little sympathy for Pauline Hanson's policies though I can claim to have expressed empathy for those who felt drawn to support her and even the lady herself. I did attend an anti-Hanson rally but also took some delight in the “Please explain” moment. Bageant made me see how low that was.

csteele.

The working class, led by their nose rings, willingly, in return for trinkets, smoke and mirrors, and then grateful for them all while still watching as the smoke vanishes without trace or benefit to them.

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

I liked Joe's writing, but I fear he excused his fellow 'mercans from any responsibilities surrounding their situations.

I scoff at the 'freewill' line, the 'pull up your socks' of Gillard and Abbott and millions more besides them,including Hansonites, but at some stage, there needs to be some acceptance that merely blaming bad TV and idiot NewsCorp crap just wears thin, surely?

The health fiasco is a great example. Communism in action, to the Yanks.

Don't they read fables and fairy tales? Too busy reading the Bible I suppose but surely, somewhere in 300m people, one of them has read The Emperors New Clothes?

I'd like to go to the states, to meet these amazing people who'd rather die than ask for help, who believe it is an expression of freedom to live in the gutter, a man's right no less, but I'm not sure I'd live too long if I ever was foolish enough to speak.

Dear TBC,

Freedom is an interesting concept when applied to the United States. With the world's highest incarceration rates by a country mile, about six times that of Australia and over ten times that of the Scandinavian countries, in a very literal sense it doesn't deserve the title 'the land of the free'.

While I think many Australian's have a idea of the attractiveness of the freedoms that come with any democratic society we do recognise there is a balance required to achieve a degree of egalitarianism in our country.

Lose some choices to get a universal health care system in place, give up the freedom of choice over wearing a seatbelt or motorcycle helmet to save citizen's lives. Etc.

To Americans the notion of freedom is virtually a religion and why not, it is a high ideal. But just as unfettered capitalism is destructive to the fabric of a society so is absolute freedom. It decrees a rejection of the notion of a common weal.

The real freedom on on offer is the freedom to have a crack at the big lottery that is the US, you even have a lottery for Green Cards. If you crash and burn then so be it but at least you got a ticket to the greatest show on earth. And I bet that if you did get yourself over to the States to visit some of the gutter dwellers a large proportion would not be prepared to deal themselves out of the game.

“the national mythology holds that we are a 'nation of rugged individualism', the implication is that there are no classes, no masses, just 300 million rugged, freedom loving Daniel Boone/Marlboro types in charge of their own destinies.”

That individualism myth has allowed the cutting off of the limbs of any proper union movement, the demonising of any notion of collectivism, and an easily conquered, hyper-divided under-class.

csteele

Indeed, I don't disagree with your round up.

Australia demonstrates many of the same afflictions.

There is an idea that Oz is not a working class nation but a middle class on. A denial as big as anything Joe exposes in the US.

It is 'faith' that drives these lies, and blind faith at that, plus a national reluctance to reflect and question.

That all comes from our economic system, which dangles tantalising images the weak and befuddled see not as holograms-on-the-clouds but 'real'.

Bread and circuses, son et lumierre, call it what you like, it's a national illusion/delusion.

Joe had the ability to understand that, see his neighbours as suckers, and yet still like them as fellow humans but he also made excuses for them, in my view.

Still, then again, maybe he just saw the futility of fighting in a nation that refused to read 'The Emperor' and so kept on with their blind faith, in religion, individualism and 'economics' as understood throughout the West today?

I enjoyed reading his book anyway.

Thanks for the introduction to a thinking American - I'd never heard of the guy before this thread.

I see lots to like.

"Tom [Thomas Jefferson] and Ben [Benjamin Franklin] could never have guessed we would chase prepackaged spectacle, junk science, and titillating rumor such as death panels, Obama as a socialist Muslim and Biblical proof that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs around Eden.

In a nation that equates democracy with everyman's right to an opinion, no matter how ridiculous, this was probably inevitable.

After all, dumb people choose dumb stuff. That's why they are called dumb."

Nice work Joe.

Thanks Csteele

I doubt Joe Bageant would've give a fart's chance in a hurricane about how 'vale' was spelled. Indicating the author of that particular pedantic post being more a a part of the problem than contributing anything towards a solution.

Particularly after reading the following from Joe:

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/12/america-y-ur-peeps-b-so-dum.html#more

Also, TBC I agree with your observation regarding Joe, like many 'Americkuns' tend to see no further than 'sea to shining sea', but he can be forgiven for his insight into a complex culture.

Thank you Joe Bageant.

Dear Ammonite,

In moving to Belize to live on $5,000 per year (much of his other earnings going to worthwhile causes) in response to his past consumption patterns speaks to me of someone with a greater world view than just from 'sea to shining sea'.

Sure his focus was on the States, understandably so, but he did not have the luxury of an Oxford education of the likes of Christopher Hitchens who has ended up somewhat as an apologist for the US anyway.

To me one of Joe's most visceral essays was Revenge of the Mutt People.
http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2006/01/revenge_of_the_.html

Some might read it and say Bageant was making excuses for what went on at Abu Grahib and perhaps it is the eye of the beholder but to me he was instead giving reasons or explanations. He was also apportioning blame and responsibility.

“Middle class American liberals cannot have it both ways. It has come down to the simplest and most profound element of democracy: Fairness. Someday middle class American liberals will have to cop to fraternity and justice and the fact that we are our brother’s keeper, whether we like it or not. They’re going to have to sit down and actually speak to these people they consider ugly, overweight, ill educated and in poor taste. At some point down the road all the Montessori schools and Ivy League degrees in the world are not going to save your children and grandchildren from what our intellectual peasantry, whether born of neglect or purposefully maintained, is capable of supporting politically.”

Joe finishes with;
“We mutt people, the pit bulls, have always been your own, whether you claim us or not. And until you accept that you are your brother’s keeper, and help deliver us from ignorance, you will continue to have on your hands some of every drop of blood spilled -- from the sands of Iraq to the streets of East L.A. All the socially responsible stock portfolios, little hybrid cars and post-modernist deconstruction in the world will not wash it off.”

http://www.geelongadvertiser.com.au/article/2011/04/19/254411_news.html

csteele

AS I read your first link, I pictured the Australian Flag draped thugs at Cronulla.

I certainly do not deny that Joe's home grown philosophy has no relevance for the rest of the world - particularly many whites. I would also add that not only was he writing from an American perspective but also a male one. Not that there aren't white female rednecks - there are however, their experience would add another dimension to the diversity of white culture. Maybe there is a Joanna Bageant out there somewhere.

Dear Ammonite,

Your term “Joe's home grown philosophy” doesn't sit well with me for some reason. Perhaps I'm more comfortable with 'Joe's perspective'.

It is a perspective we aren't use to hearing elucidated so it appears to have a uniqueness, but millions of 'poor white trash' to some degree have shared the same.

If there is a philosophy it is one of worker solidarity and while it can be said to be home developed it is a universal thread through much of the world's history over the last 150 years. The latest round of union-bashing laws in the US would have Joe trumpeting from the page if he was still with us.

I was intrigued by the thought of a Joanne Bageant. It set up a line of thinking that for some strange reason landed me at...wait for it...Oprah Winfrey. You will be thinking she is about as far away from 'white trash' as you could get, and you would be right. I could get caned for this.

Bear with me though. Oprah was born to a single teenage mother in rural Mississippi, never knew her father, raped at nine, sexually abused by family members for four years, pregnant at fourteen, lost the child, lost several siblings to drugs and suicide, used crack cocaine, battled weight problems etc but ended up being the first black female billionaire.

Looking past what is the 'quintessential American success story' what was it that made her so successful? Like Joe she had empathy in spades. That she, to some degree, com-modified it to bring her great wealth shouldn't detract from the fact that it is an undeniable facet of her character.

She has managed to survive criticizing the war in a country that usually attempts to tear people down for less. Look at the Dixie Chicks.

While there are those who learn their learn their leftist views from manifestos Bageant (and to a lesser extent Winfrey) has the street cred that gave his perspective its potency.

He will be missed.

Jesus csteele! That was a bit low wasn't it? Oprah!

I have to confess to be ill informed here, since I've never watched her show but it seems to me she is a winner in the USA because she has tapped into the dominant, indeed, only US meme on sale.

Like their current 'white' president, she hardly oozes 'black' anywhere.

Even her 'story' sounds just a little too confected to be real, even if every single word of it is.

It has all the hallmarks of an evangelical Christian 'change over' life story about it and it certainly ticks all the boxes to comply with the US success meme.

Angela Davies might have made the spot, but hardly Oprah. Sorry.

csteele

"home grown philosophy" was not meant to be an insult - it means that Joe was not indoctrinated into any formal ideology (as people often are through religion or tertiary education) which enabled his original thinking, think you are being a bit precious.

As for 'Joanna Bageant', I think an equivalent need be white - black is a different perspective again. As for Oprah and Angela Davis - kudos to them both but my hero is Rosa Parks - what she did took a level of courage few have. And no white woman (even if she was trailer park resident) would've had to sit in the back of a bus.

Most influential white women come from the middle class - anyone think of female white equivalent to Joe Bageant? Maybe black women have had to be stronger, dunno, maybe white women are not noticed - like women's contributions are largely absent from history.

Please understand I am not looking for a gender war argument here - just thinking about how some people manage to break through - like Joe and Rosa and others don't or we just don't know about them.

Dear TBC,

I thought I might get a caning. As Joe says in Rainbow Pie;
"Not only can poverty not be bought, but the very memories of it's psychological pain, losses, and defeated dreams can shapeshift, reinvent themselves, and come prancing back in new raiment to rule over a past that never was."

But I think Joe and Oprah, both for very different reasons got to stages in their lives where they were answerable to no one. Climbing the ladder in America has always meant being differential to those above. Freedom generally only comes with wealth and power usually only afforded to the privileged classes. 

These two were not from there. That is why their freedom combined with deep empathy and good communication skills is such a potent mix.

Dear Ammonite,

My goodness I hope I wasn't being precious since that was not my intention. To me Joe was more about stating through research, examples, and testimony, self evident truths. There was an expectation on his part that the reader possessed a common decency and that all he has to do was inform them of those truths for their own innate philosophies to kick in.

I know there was a bit more to him than that but I saw him less trying to covert us with new ideas but more with new perspectives. That to me was his genius. Happy to be shown different though.

Oh come now csteele, I am not 'caning' you at all. I was shocked that anyone could think of Oprah in such a light, is all.

Yes, she has wealth and power, and that is central to the US meme.

I understand your hunt for Ammonites female Joe (was it Ammo?) but I'd prefer Rosa over Oprah.

I doubt Rosa made a motza, which is what Oprah is all about.