Deerhunting with Jesus by Joe Bageant

We went to hear Joe Bageant speak at Glebe Books last night and he is the real thing - a southerner, self-proclaimed 'redneck, white trash' come good. He left school at 16 - all working class kids were encouraged to do so by the school - joined the navy and then, on leaving, picked up a scholarship of some kind to study. He's been a journalist for forty years. He writes a lot of what I call the social outrage genre.

Deerhunting is about the poor working whites in America, people whose earning power diminishes as capitalism thrives, who are only the next pay away from losing their homes (which are worth less than they paid for them), who cannot afford health insurance and for whom a serious medical condition will spell bankruptcy. He explores why these people continue to support the Republicans, the role that religion plays in their worldview and the reasons they refuse to seek education and advancement if it means taking any 'handouts' from the state. It's a little repetitive but he's passionate about this - or passionate but resigned I should say.

Last night he spoke with an air of sad acceptance about the state of first world countries. He doesn't believe that things will change and he can see only doom and gloom for the working poor people who live in them. He says the USA will only see itself as achieving 'recovery' when it gets back to the same corrupt and out of control state it was in when it caused the GFC, which of course spells further disparity between rich and poor and further disaster.

One of the things he did mention was the role of television - Fox obviously - as the only source of information for these uneducated people. He says the television medium grooms people's emotions - it's Christmas so it's time to shop, it's football season so it's time to cheer, it's war so it's time to fly flags - and it just guides people through the seasons of their lives. There's something scifi about this concept: I'm sure I've come across this type of mind control in Blade Runner and in various novels. I'm just as sure it's happening in the press here in Australia, spectacularly in papers like The Telegraph, but also slightly more subtly in the broadsheets. And of course on TV, though I can't manage commercial television so have no exposure to it.
Anyway, it's interesting to read what Joe Bageant has to say. He lives in a second world country, Mexico, now and seems to have adopted the Buddhist approach of living a small life well, which while it doesn't deliver a big solution at least allows him to accept what he sees as the inevitable collapse with calm and grace.