Joe Bageant -- Deer hunting with Jesus: dispatches from America's class war
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Right.  I agree that this is an extremely important book.  Anyone
who is interested in society and culture in the U.S. and where that
society and culture is going needs to read Bageant.  It's important
because of the very harsh consequences these social and cultural
changes are having on a large segment of our society, but also
because this is an especially hard problem to solve.  Bageant is the
kind of writer who can hit this target straight on center and do it
in a way that is both witty and hard-hitting.

Some of Bageant's reasons that this problem is so hard to solve: (1)
Those who are being neglected and mistreated by the system are
under-educated, which means that they are less likely to be able to
help themselves in any rational way.  (2) Politicians are very
capable of deceiving and mis-guiding many of those mistreated by the
system into fighting against the very forces that might help them.
(3) Our political system responds to money, which, again, means that
those without, those that the system is currently mistreating are
less than likely to have it respond to *their* needs.  (4) Those who
are both wealthy and in power are very capable of creating the
conditions and influencing our political system so that it tilts
toward giving them an even bigger share of the economic pie.

A word about the "economic pie" and its division -- Yes, perhaps it
is true that it's better to get a smaller relative share of a bigger
economy, *but* that is not what is happening in our country.  The
last 30 years have shown no growth in the wages and wealth of those
outside the upper classes, even though a huge amount of wealth has
been created in that period.  We are proving in the U.S. that we can
have an expanding economic system in which a rising tide does *not*
lift all boats.  Some, though definitely not all, of those who've
been left out do vote, and their bitterness seems to be what is
contributing to a very dysfunctional federal government in the U.S.

Bageant does of very respectable job of helping a liberal like me
see guns rights issues from the other side.  That's definitely worth
doing; I do need help with that point of view.  But, it's still a
"sucker's play": It's still about politicians convincing you to vote
for them to protect your right to own as many guns as you want while
they trash your economic interests.  Bageant also helps us
understand how and why guns rights vs. gun control is not a
resolvable issue in the U.S.  I suppose that there are several lessons for liberals
here: (1) Let them keep as many guns as they want, move on
to another issue where we have hope of doing some good. (2) If you
want to help those we are being economically abused by our political
and economic system, do *not* give politicians another tool (guns
rights) that they can use to detract voters from the economic issues
that our government *should* be working on.

With respect to religion, Bageant focuses on the very most extreme
fundamentalist Christians, for example, the Reconstructionists, the
Dominionists, the End-of-times people, and those whose goal is a
theocratic state.  Perhaps he is right that there is some worry of
them gaining enough control to destroy our government or of having
some destructive influence in our federal policies.  But, really,
I'm more worried about the influence that slightly more moderate
right-wing, fundamentalist Christians have on our government.  It's
also the case that the politicians that are dragged into office on
top of their support for right-wing Christian politicians are having
a significant depressive influence on the economy in this country.

Bageant helps us see things from the point of view of those who earn
little (minimum wage or not much more), are the first to be laid
off when there is a down-turn or a recession, have no financial
cushion, get no employment benefits (certainly not enough to help
them survive serious medical problems, have no savings for
retirement, have low prestige, and on top of all that, have poor
health because of a lifetime of hard physical labor and smoking and
poor eating habits.  Add to that a lack of a decent education that
might help them get a job with a reason wage and might help them
understand how they got this way, and you end up with a very
depressing picture of lower-middle-class working America.

Some of this does not make sense.  But, perhaps this is Bageant's
point: the emotions and feelings rhetoric and irrationality he
describes is not something that will be fixed by reasoning and
talking, no matter how intelligent.  In fact, he makes the point
that this is a culture that has an aversion to intelligence and
intellect.  Now, try to reason your way out of that.  It can't be
done.

Bageant is describing a class conflict between an anti-intellectual,
defensive, suspicious culture and the "elites" they fear and
distrust.  And, we have the politicians that have learned how to
exploit that.  Bageant is especially critical of what he calls
slogan-as-political-awareness, fanatical religiosity, bellicose
piety, and patriotism that has led us to a high-tech military and to
wars against godless heathens who are sitting on *our* oil.  His
book gives a critique of the belief in the American right to your
own opinion and to vote based on the opinion even if it's gut-level
and uninformed.  And, it runs parallel to a belief that education
does not imply better choices, because those with more education,
elites, do not have "good" values.

Bageant's analysis of the state of the health care system in his
region is especially caustic.  But, again, he leads us to the point
where there seems to be no way to make sense of the opposition to
health care reform that is so strong among the very people who are
being treated so poorly by our current health care system.  Bageant
claims that non-profit hospitals are the regions produces of the
most personal bankruptcies.

You will find more of this kind of analysis of our abused underclass
in "Night comes to the Cumberlands", by Harry Caudill.  It's about a
slightly different region (south eastern Kentucky) in a different
time period (first half of the 20th century), but the people have
similar problems and some of the causes are the same: lack of
education, lack of jobs, distorted political views that lead them to
vote against their own interests, etc.

One part of both Bageant's and Caudill's explanation that makes me a
bit uneasy is their heavy emphasis on the hereditary and ethnic
roots and causes of these conditions and problems.  They both point
to ethnic and cultural roots of the people they describe and point
to origins in England, Scotland, Ireland that led to personality
types that are violent and anti-government and anti-intellectual.
These are what Bageant calls "Borderers", who he describes as
violent, opposed to any taxes (even though they might benefit from
them), easily incited to oppose health care legislation and fair
labor laws and environmental regulations (even it's their
neighborhood that is being trashed), etc. If Bageant and Caudill are
right, and I am suspicious about this analysis, then I don't know
what possible changes might produce employable, well-educated,
citizens.  This culture is almost designed to prevent that.  It's
also very sad that these same traits seem tied to the patriotism
that has helped our government drag us into the wars that
disproportionately punish these same people.  And, I worry that the
most dysfunctional aspects of this culture are self-perpetuating.

Since I'm pessimistic about our ability to solve and fix the
problems that Bageant describes, I think that the advice I'd give to
someone who is about to read "Deer hunting with Jesus" is that they
should try to figure out what Bageant says is the cause of this
situation, both in terms of heredity and through the media that
condition and inform our choices of lifestyle and attitude.  While
reading, ask yourself what are the influences that he describes and
is he correct about the weight of these influences.  Reading with
that motivation makes this an extremely valuable book.

Bageant gives some of that explanation in the second half of the
chapter titled "Republican by default".  It's partly a story about
well organized and highly motivated Republican operatives.  They're
highly motivated because they have a large financial stake in this
fight.  Part of the story is about attitude and moral values.  The
people that Bageant knows in the region, working class and blue
collar people have been worn down and brutalized by the system and
have been taught by the system to be satisfied with the material
world and goods it provides and that keep them satiated.  An
additional piece of Bageant's explanation is about fear and aversion
and dislike: the people that Bageant is talking about dislike and
are made uneasy by people and ideas who are different from
themselves.  These are people who rarely travel to foreign countries
(except when our military sends them), whose range of experience is
narrow, and who are made uncomfortable both by people who are not
like them and by values that are different from theirs.  Lack of
diversity produces rigid, narrow value systems.

"Dispatches from America's class war", by the way, sounds a bit
dramatic, to me, *but* we very much are seeing a very serious
struggle between those who have and are trying to get more and those
who have not and are likely to get even less.  This struggle will
have profound consequences for our society, and that's why Bageant's
book is so valuable and important.

02/17/2014

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