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 3
... plant , you can make styrene mop buckets at Rubbermaid , or you can “ bust cartons , ” " stack product , " and cashier at Wal - Mart and Home Depot . But whatever you do , you're likely to do it as a " team assembler ” at a plant or ...
... plant , you can make styrene mop buckets at Rubbermaid , or you can “ bust cartons , ” " stack product , " and cashier at Wal - Mart and Home Depot . But whatever you do , you're likely to do it as a " team assembler ” at a plant or ...
Síða 29
... plant at dis- count rates . At the same time , and more important , this business cartel controls most elected offices and municipal boards . It also domi- nates local development and the direction future employment will take . Which ...
... plant at dis- count rates . At the same time , and more important , this business cartel controls most elected offices and municipal boards . It also domi- nates local development and the direction future employment will take . Which ...
Síða 76
... plant . Bidders from around the world participated via the Internet . Newell is not the first company to gouge our local labor force or move plants abroad . It's a damned sorry story , one that has become a textbook case for business ...
... plant . Bidders from around the world participated via the Internet . Newell is not the first company to gouge our local labor force or move plants abroad . It's a damned sorry story , one that has become a textbook case for business ...
Efni
INTRODUCTION | 1 |
American Serfs | 19 |
Republicans by Default | 51 |
Höfundarréttur | |
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