A new book in the Gonzo journalism vein tries to explain ... working-class small towns

[marmar]

From The American Prospect:


Fear and Loathing in Middle America

A new book in the Gonzo journalism vein tries to explain to coastal elites what they've never understood about the working-class small towns in the middle of the country.

Sasha Abramsky | July 20, 2007 | web only



Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War by Joe Bageant (Crown, 288 pages)

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Every so often, you pick up a book and two pages in your nose is glued to it. Not necessarily because of the subject matter per se -- though good subject matter certainly helps -- but because the prose is so damned electric.

Usually, I've found, when it comes to reportage like this, the book's author has a single name: Hunter S. Thompson. Recently, though, I've added another name to my stuck-nose lexicon, having been utterly ensnared by Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting With Jesus.

Bageant grew up in a fundamentalist Christian, ultra-working-class family in a claustrophobic little Virginia town named Winchester. Then, in his own terminology, he made his escape. He moved west and made a pretty decent career for himself in the world of journalism. A few years ago, though, he felt a craving for his childhood home and, now deep into middle-age, decided to relocate once more.

So the self-proclaimed socialist, atheist, heavy-drinking, three-times-married Joe returned home, to a landscape dominated by rabid, demon-battling fundamentalists (including his younger brother, a fire-and-brimstone preacher); NASCAR; overpriced mobile homes; greasy food; depressing, dead-end, anti-union workplaces; and gung-ho patriots whose pick-up trucks boast bumper stickers such as "Kick their ass. Take their gas."

Lucky for us, Bageant didn't hop on the next plane back west, and didn't chalk it all up to a terrible, misconstrued nostalgia. Instead, he stuck to his guns -- literally -- and tried to understand why people in his part of the country, people he genuinely loves despite his utter detestation of their politics, are so dyed-in-the-wool conservative that it'd take the Apocalypse to prize them away from supporting George W. Bush.

"In the days before the spine of the labor movement was crushed, back when you could be a gun owner and a liberal without any conflict, members of the political left supported these workers, stood on the lines taking beatings at the plant gates alongside them," he argues. "Now there is practically no labor movement, and large numbers on the left are comfortably ensconced in the true middle class... From that vantage point, liberals currently view working whites as angry, warmongering bigots, happy pawns of the American empire -- which begs the questions of how they came to be that way, if they truly are." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=fear_and_loathing_in_middle_america

[Jim__]

1. I agree that Bageant is a good writer, and I enjoyed the book, however ...

... Bageant might have spent some more time researching some subjects. He really adopts the right's caricatures of the left's positions on such things as gun control. He seems to have gotten his misinformation on the 2nd amendment direct from the NRA, and probably should have taken the time to actually read the amendment and research the discussions at the Constitutional Convention rather than just dismiss the "security of a free state clause" - it really is important in understanding the 2nd amendment.

A good read, but he doesn't seem to get that most city people are in the much the same position as poor rural people, and that forging a union between these people is the way to fight against the system; not buy the caricatures that are deliberately created by the powerful.