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Eat, Fight, Fuck, Pray
An Interview with Joe Bageant
by Joshua Frank
 Joe Bageant is author of Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War just published by Random House Crown. He recently spoke with DV co-editor Joshua Frank about his new book, religion, rednecks and what it’s like to serve beer to an underage horse.
Joshua Frank: So Joe, what the hell is going on with the redneck strain of the working class anyway? Why do they seem more apt to embrace evangelism rather than a labor union? Is it, as psychologists would say, learned helplessness, or worse, idiocy?
Joe Bageant: Well, Josh, that’s a pretty broad brush you’re painting with there. In fact, it’s too broad to be answered, but that will not stop me from responding with my usual shrillness and tin drum noise punctuated by flatulence. Let me start by saying the term redneck does not apply especially to southerners. I have found indigenous redneck culture and communities in Maine, Oregon Kansas, New York, Massachusetts, and California … in virtually every state and in large numbers. Among loggers, cowboys, poles, Germans, and even Latino rednecks.
Really. Don’t you think beer and low riders and macho sports
aesthetic of Latinos, the heterosexual, patriotic Jesus focused
Catholic is that much different from their Jesus focused Baptist Dixie
and Midwestern counterparts? The low riders of LA are the same as beer
and muscle cars of the south. In fact the first rednecks were probably
the striking miners at the Ludlow Colorado massacre, who wore red
bandanas and were seen as tough, surly, angry working class people who
had to be kept down. The sun on the neck definition is another more
recent one that got applied especially to Southerners, during the civil
rights era I suppose.
We have been taught to use these ethnic,
regional and racial labels to cover up the real issue in America that
the rich want keep hidden another 200 years—that we are a classist
country. That one class owns pretty much the whole country these days
and that all the rest are left to suck hind tit and pretend they are
all members of something called “the middle class.” The only real
middle class is that thin layer of commissars, lawyers, teachers,
journalists, and other caterers to the empire, those people necessary
to manage it and count the beans, dumb down the kids and lock up enough
people to keep the privatized gulags in business.
Anyway, I
assume you are referring the heartland white working class people who
attend fundamentalist churches. Ever since around 1800 about one-third
of white America has been fundamentalist Christians, about one-third of
Americans have had a born again experience. The thing that is different
now is that these churches have access to political power. They were
welcomed across the church-state wall of separation by cynical GOP
strategists to whom giving the Republicans another chance to sack
Washington, loot the national kitty and maybe pull off a good oil raid
in the Middle East, was more important than our constitution. Now that
they’ve let John Calvin’s wooly beast into to tent, we find it chewing
on the constitution and generally stinking up the joint—it’s not going
to leave without a fight.
As to the last parts of your
question: When it comes to embracing the church instead of a labor
union, I can remember a time when the churches stood behind the labor
unions. Have we learned to be helpless? Man, we are helpless.
Capitalist conditioning has replaced citizenship with consumerism. I
mean, what are you or I doing? I write a book so the global publishing
chain of Bertelsmann makes more money; you and I both sit here on the
Internet spewing electrons across circuit boards that keep Bill Gates
and the stock brokers farting through silk while we preach to the choir
who bought our books. There are far better alternatives. We could grab
some axe handles and heat up the tar bucket and start to burn some shit
down. That still works you know.
Joshua Frank: I’ve always thought that’d work.
Joe
Bageant: But we won’t. Because we are all programmed to participate
through purchase, whether it is my book at Barnes and Noble or the
software that enables us to read CounterPunch. Or choose the candidate
that has been preselected and purchased in advance by the people who
have essentially made Americans into a nation of iPod implanted pizza
drivers and well dressed lawn jockeys sitting in front of monitors on
the empires electronic plantations.
Joshua Frank: So how can we change this political myopia?
Joe
Bageant: Our involvement with politics, our political lives, are merely
as spectators who listen to commercials for three years before the
magical moment before we “cast our vote” by simply going shopping in
the tiniest shopping space of all—the voting booth—with the most
limited choices possible that can still be called a choice: two twin
parties whose parents, the corporations, have to display them against
different colored backgrounds so people can get a clue as to their
difference. (“I am for fighting the war until the last dog is dead,” as
opposed to “I am for pulling the troops out, but not until a few
hundred thousand more dogs are dead. I don’t wanna be seen as weak on
the dead dog thing.” Or my favorite, “We can’t leave now or there will
be chaos?” What the fuck is it we have created there now?) Right now
the owning class Westchester Country Club Democrats is offering us two
flavors, Hillary Clinton (bitter vanilla) and Barrack Obama (Mocha
hope.)
Soooo … What’s going on politically with the great
beery redneck nation? Nothing. We don’t think about politics until the
last half hour before time to vote. Then a sort of a heartburn grips
our chests, and all the negative campaign ads, and the sound of Bill
O’Reilly’s voice and last night’s beer and bratwurst and Hillary’s
stern beady eyes drill in on us … preachers call down lightening bolts
and fighter planes do a double roll over the desert … then suddenly an
acidic clot curdles in our throat, we close our eyes and we projectile
vomit all our fears and suspicions and prejudices and state injected
messages in the direction of the party making the most noise right up
until the last minute. That’s what we do down here.
What do ya’ll do?
Joshua
Frank: Well, I grew up in Montana with rednecks aplenty. Most of my own
family is small farmers who were forced to move to the little towns in
the area because of the onset of industrial agriculture. They lost the
land they worked. Most of them are still proud rednecks. I respect the
work ethic, but not all the culture that goes along with it. Up in Big
Sky country, folks know politicians lie, so they put their trust in God
instead.
Pick up trucks. Gun racks. Elk hunting. Beer drinking.
It’s a way of life there. I enjoy most of it. It takes some pretty damn
rough times before people stand up and say, enough is enough! You’d
think they’d be screaming from the mountaintops by now. But they
haven’t because they don’t think they can do a damn thing about their
lot. And that’s where you get a lot of that anti-government sentiment.
The Freeman and the Unabomber. It resonates quite well. As it should.
The state doesn’t stand up for the little guy, but for the big
corporations and they know it. The elites, however, always seem to
capitalize off of their collective weakness—mainly their inability to
stand up in the face of power. But anymore, the mainstream “right” and
“left” are almost one in the same when it comes to the fundamental
economic issues of our times.
Anyway, this is supposed to be an interview with you. Not me!
Joe
Bageant: I lived in northern Idaho for years and had a lot of truck
with Montanans like yourself. And to me they are among the best people
in this country, tough uncomplaining people, kinda like Southerners,
but with far less racism (unless you happen to be an Indian in some
cases). Once when I was trending bar on the reservation, a Montana
cowboy led his horse right into the place and demanded a beer for his
steed. He had been drunk for two days, driving south toward New Mexico
with his horse trailer, down from Alberta, Canada, and was obviously
looking for a good old time tension-releasing brawl. “Well sir,” I told
him. “That horse ain’t old enough to drink.” “That horse is 18,” he
replied. I peeled back the horse’s lips and checked his teeth. I had
horses of my own and knew how to check their age. “That horse is nine
years old,” I said. “Just about the age a good cow pony starts getting
some real sense.” He threw back his head and laughed. The situation was
defused and we sat there in the Bald Eagle Bar and jawed until closing
time. A good, tough, brave man of the kind America doesn’t make
anymore. Tipped me ten dollars, then went off to wrap himself in a
blanket and sleep in his truck until first light.
At the same
time though, there is a belief in authority, a reverence even, that is
so typically American. America has never been a nation of true
dissenters. Even during the Sixties. Don’t let the old newsreels fool
you. You gotta remember that when those kids were gunned down at Kent
State, one half of America was cheering and an even larger portion did
not give a shit. But the footage was so shocking, and we actually had a
rather liberal media back then, and so, like Twin Towers footage, it
was shown over and over and written about until the message finally
soaked in. But Americans for the most part are on the side of their own
oppressor and like it that way. Heartland Americans were happy when the
working man was shot down at Ludlow, and happy when the Bohunk and
Pollack miners were gunned down at the Latimer mines (again, the
rewriters of history have made it seem otherwise). The good people of
the heartland were happy with the kangaroo courts that framed and
murdered Joe Hill and Sacco and Venzetti. And today they are happy when
they see police in black Kevlar beating down young radicals in Seattle
and Old Jewish women in Miami protesting turning that city into a free
trade zone labor gulag.
Joshua Frank: Your book has been put out
by a major publishing house. As you note, these cats are in the
business of making money, and I’m assuming they wanted to make your
book palatable to the run-of-the-mill liberal audience. What was that
process like?
Joe Bageant: For lefties it can be infuriating. My
publisher is Random House, is owned by owned by Bertelsmann, the former
Nazi German publisher that made massive profits from Jewish slave labor
and published ant-Jewish propaganda for Hitler. It also owns Doubleday,
Bantam, and a slew of other media around the world. So today we see the
irony of scores of Jewish editors etc working for Bertelsmann, but this
time instead of tattoos, they are sporting blackberries, worrying about
theater tickets and treating their Salvadorian nannies like shit.
Anyway,
big publishers Random House Crown roll the ball right down the middle
of the aisle looking for a strike to sell the most books to the broad
middle class. No leftie gutter balls. Let Seven Arrows have’em. On the
other hand, Crown publishes Anne Coulter, which tells you something
about the real middle road and what sells. Everyone must do that to
keep their jobs and climb the ladder of the company, which constitutes
the corporate brand allegiance that is their lives, livelihood and
personal identity in the Empire. Their lives are the brand. The brand
is their lives. As in, “I am an editor at Harper Collins, the one who
did the Martini Book of Common Wisdom,” or “Hillary’s book,” or
whatever.
At one end, you have the editors, many of whom care
about the life of the mind but have internalized capitalist market
driven values, and thus feel courageous when they really are not. At
the other end you have the company management, who see all books merely
as units. Naturally, in a system like that, the pull is always
rightward toward profit driven and non-risky thinking. Consequently,
the American reading public for idea based books, which is small as
hell, thinks it is expanding its knowledge through reading when they
buy books, when actually, all most want to do is see their viewpoints
reaffirmed. But what really happens is that they are drawn more
rightward by the narrowness of available choices in a marketplace that
loves the homogeneity and standardization of thought which makes
marketing much easier.
In all fairness though, I would be the
first to say that a publisher like Random House seems to put energy,
resources and talent behind you, once they are committed. Frankly, they
put in more than I really care to deal with sometimes. But when I hear
the horror stories of some very good writers working with small
publishers and their limited resources, I know I have been fortunate
that way. Lucky to have the editor, publicist and agent I have. Most
writers would kill for what sort of landed in my lap, given that I was
not looking to write a book in the first place. I try not to be an
ingrate, but at the same time I am not at all impressed with this
stuff. I might have been at your age, but not now. Thankfully, it has
come too late. It’s rather like a beautiful woman coming to the bed of
an 85-year old man. Delightful to behold, but no distraction from the
path that took so long to hew through the jungle of false thinking and
ill-focused passions.
I had the good standard middle class New
York Jewish editor. She had the job of reconciling my cranky agrarian
based redneck leftist thinking with the publishing environment and the
marketplace as it is. I am a rather uncontrolled writer given to free
association and distracting rants. When it comes to something as long
as a book, I absolutely need an editor for guidance. Someone to say,
“That sucks. It’s unreadable,” and make suggestions. Without her work,
it would not be getting the glowing reviews it is getting so far.
Writer/editor
relationships can get very personal as you know, and we had class
issues, given was the chasm between our backgrounds. But I must say the
editor made every effort to bridge that gap, once she got around to my
book, when, at times, I simply refused to. Mostly when drunk and
depressed by the glacial process by which books are published. To
compound matters, time was running out for me. I was very ill with my
lung disease at the time and was diagnosed as having about 18 months to
live, which turned out to be somewhat wrong; I’ve got a few more years
in me yet. So here I was sneezing blood, working 55 hours a week at a
straight gig, and trying to write a book too while my editor had put me
on the back burner so she could work on Barack Obama’s book. Needless
to say, I was a very miserable camper during much of the process.
At
the same time, the entire grisly process brought my editor and I closer
together as human beings, and I now consider her among my good friends,
even if our backgrounds have forever conditioned us in different
directions. I shudder for the fate of her children in this world the
same as I do for those of my adopted family in Belize.
As to
Belize, I’ve pretty much got my scene together there and consider it my
home, though what I will do for money in the long term, I do not know.
Presently I am back here to cooperate in the promotion of the book, and
will be here a few weeks longer. I’m beginning to understand that I
will always be spending significant amounts of time here, if for no
other reason than earning money. A lot has happened in the past several
months. I began to live on $4000 a year, as I had vowed, which causes
stress on my marriage and family life, as you would imagine. And now I
have a deep regret for the trees wasted in the publication of my book
and hate what my air travel to Belize does to the upper atmosphere,
regarding global warming. If I ever do another book, I can try to do it
on recycled paper, insist it be done by union printers, and then, as I
do now, donate all the royalties except the $4000 to small-scale
development projects. But frankly, I don’t have anything to say that is
important enough to justify the damage done by publishing it. Nothing
that cannot be said on the Internet with far less environmental damage.
But who knows? Life has a funny way of making us eat every word.
Joshua Frank: What do the folks of your town, of which you write so frankly, think about the book?
Joe
Bageant: Not much so far. The working class people in the book, who
never buy or read books at all, seem rather mystified when someone
exposes them to parts of it. They relish figuring out who is who and
generally agree with its message about class in America. The town’s old
families are pissed. Some have called me. One asked why I wrote such
“mean things about this town’s leading families.” Leading families! Can
you imagine that? Another told me there is “no such thing as class in
Winchester. We are all happy and equal.” I just about choked on that
one. They tell me the local newspaper is oiling up its guns for an
attack. And some upper crust family is bound to try and sue me, I’m
sure.
Joshua Frank: So when is this class war you write about
going to come to a head, or has it already? I’m talking about blood in
the streets and mansions on fire. Will there ever be a true class
revolt in the United States, or will any sort of militant dissent be
stopped dead in its tracks by the Feds?
Joe Bageant: I don’t
think that will ever happen, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep up
the fight. I think so-called terrorism and ecocide may tear down the
system for us, though. Danger has no favorites. The good old days of
“the teeming masses,” that sweat soaked, beer farting mob of working
class Americans who didn’t have a pot to piss in, much less a credit
card, but instinctively knew fascism when they saw it, are over.
Seattle in 1999 may not happen in the states again. We have all become
an artificial product of corporately “administrated” modern life.
Joshua
Frank is co-editor of Dissident Voice and author of Left Out! How
Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush (Common Courage Press, 2005),
and along with Jeffrey St. Clair, the editor of the forthcoming Red
State Rebels, to be published by AK Press in March 2008. Read other
articles by Joshua, or visit Joshua's website.
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