Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class WarCrown Publishers, 2007 - 273 síður After thirty years spent scratching together a middle-class life out of a “dirt-poor†childhood, Joe Bageant moved back to his hometown of Winchester, Virginia, where he realized that his family and neighbors were the very people who carried George W. Bush to victory. That was ironic, because Winchester, like countless American small towns, is fast becoming the bedrock of a permanent underclass. Two in five of the people in his old neighborhood do not have high school diplomas. Nearly everyone over fifty has serious health problems, and many have no health care. Credit ratings are low or nonexistent, and alcohol, overeating, and Jesus are the preferred avenues of escape. A raucous mix of storytelling and political commentary, Deer Hunting with Jesus is Bageant's report on what he learned by coming home. He writes of his childhood friends who work at factory jobs that are constantly on the verge of being outsourced; the mortgage and credit card rackets that saddle the working poor with debt, i.e., “white trashonomics†; the ubiquitous gun cultureâ€"and why the left doesn't get it; Scots Irish culture and how it played out in the young life of Lynddie England; and the blinkered “magical thinking†of the Christian right. (Bageant's brother is a Baptist pastor who casts out demons.) What it adds up to, he asserts, is an unacknowledged class war. By turns brutal, tender, incendiary, and seriously funny, this book is a call to arms for fellow progressives with little real understanding of “the great beery, NASCAR-loving, church-going, gun-owning America that has never set foot in a Starbucks.†Deer Hunting with Jesus is a potent antidote to what Bageant dubs “the American hologram†â€"the televised, corporatized virtual reality that distracts us from the insidious realities of American life. |
From inside the book
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Síða 37
... lawyer in town would take a tenant case against any landlord . The lawyers drink at the coun- try club with the landlords and make substantial fees in rental real estate transactions . They are on retainer to stymie 37 AMERICAN SERFS.
... lawyer in town would take a tenant case against any landlord . The lawyers drink at the coun- try club with the landlords and make substantial fees in rental real estate transactions . They are on retainer to stymie 37 AMERICAN SERFS.
Síða 59
... lawyers . In other words , he's your average older working factory guy these days . Last year he blew out two lumbar ... lawyer , " he says . That makes me kind of sad , because I know the lawyer , a local buzzard specializing in such ...
... lawyers . In other words , he's your average older working factory guy these days . Last year he blew out two lumbar ... lawyer , " he says . That makes me kind of sad , because I know the lawyer , a local buzzard specializing in such ...
Síða 228
... lawyer costs more money than they have . Wealthy people have lawyers for payback . Poor people have them for DUIS . In America your economic status pretty much determines your social status . A dentist's wife is treated differently than ...
... lawyer costs more money than they have . Wealthy people have lawyers for payback . Poor people have them for DUIS . In America your economic status pretty much determines your social status . A dentist's wife is treated differently than ...
Efni
INTRODUCTION | 1 |
American Serfs | 19 |
Republicans by Default | 51 |
Höfundarréttur | |
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