If you read and a partial to social networking sites GoodReadsfits (my) bill. We should try to get some Left book discourse going there. I mean do it consciously. But if you dont know about the platform, check it out.
Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War by Joe Bageant
My review
rating: 5 of 5 stars
Written with insight and a strong and warm identification with his subjects, Bageant nonetheless doesn't pull any punches. This is a "left" book in a nation that is so often constrained by a maudlin liberalism when it writes commentary.
At best -- like Hunter S. Thompson it's pretentiously 'hip' or self consciously opinionated like so many of the registered libertarians born out of Havard's Lampoon.
I live in Australia and I can relate to the great tragedy that is the lot of Middle America. The "Red Neck" penchant for conservatism is a political phenomenon that's almost unique to the US. Elsewhere we can still talk about class despite the massive inroads neo liberalism have made on the working class psyche world wide.
So Bageant is offering us anthropology that explores how any of us can be screwed over without knowing the names of our tormentors.
And with G.W Bush free to ransack the planet your US problems are very much ours too. Bageant also offers a tragic seriousness that is missing from the video journalism of folk like Michael Moore. This is a story not about issues but about everyday people at the grindstone...being worn down.
I wish we here had Bageant's equal.
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