This is another vital read for those who want to know what is REALLY going on in America these days beyond the corporate media spin. Joe Bageant writes eloquently about the plight of working class people in Winchester,VA. This book's implications were stark even before the beginning of the recession. Here is my Amazon.com review:As a progressive who grew up in exactly the kind of town the author describes, I found "Deer Hunting With Jesus" to be a chilling and dead on accurate account of modern day America. Unless you've had the experience of seeing the house you grew up in only 20 years ago boarded up and sold at a HUD auction, or turned into a crack house as my best friend from high school's house recently was (we were solidly middle class by small town standards), you really can't appreciate what the author is trying to describe.
That said, this is no biased political rant, as the author's staunch defense of gun ownership demonstrates. It is instead a desperate warning to all Americans just how perilously close we are to seeing our way of life destroyed by our own misguided collective actions. The author believes that progressives and the white working class (rednecks as he calls them) ought to be able to find political common ground based upon economic interest. He's also realistic enough to realize that it is unlikely to happen in time to rescue America from the precipice we seemed so determined to fling ourselves over.
Be forewarned, it is depressing as hell and in no way conforms to the Republican OR Democratic narratives of what America needs to do to preserve our way of life. It is the kind of truth-telling book that could only be written by someone who has seen enough of living on both sides of the red-blue divide to truly understand what ails this country.
In all, a perfect antidote to what the author calls the "American Hologram" of our mass media culture.
2 comments:
"The author believes that progressives and the white working class (rednecks as he calls them) ought to be able to find political common ground based upon economic interest."
This will never happen. Every time it gets close, the powers that be muck it up: provoking racist reactions, stirring fears of terrorism or taunting the effete frog lovers. The white working class is too easily manipulated by someone cynical enough to do it.
Oh sure, divide and conquer. The oldest political game in the book.
I think that's why they fear Obama, that he might actually be a uniter rather than a divider. Can't have that.
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