ElementalMom

Deer Hunting With Jesus

Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War by Joe Bageant. 2007, Crown Publishers. 267 pages of sheer rampaging depression upon a backdrop of a subtly pounding headache you weren’t quite sure you had, but are now mainlining excedrin to try to relieve, unsuccessfully.

How’s that for the opening of a book review?

I was ranting to Beverly, our dock neighbor, about the hell my parents are going through, learning the lumps of the American Lack-of-Medical-System while it slowly murders my stepfather, the Bear, by inches. This isn’t something I’ve blogged about a lot, mostly because a great deal of the pain involved is way too close to the vest, and a bit much to discuss out loud in public. But sometimes, like this last week, where the Bear was in two different surgeries and several different dialysis treatments and not a little bit of psychological abuse, designed, as far as I can tell, to both dehumanize him and compel obedience, I was done with holding my act together, and had started ranting to poor Beverly, who simply had the misfortune to be the first person who noticed that I looked like crap.

She handed me Bageant’s book. And walked away. So in I went, as much for a hit of bibliotic escapism as anything else. And found myself being drug backwards through my very own history and background, through the socio-ethnic matrix that explains what the hell makes Americans capable of so much atrocity, so much mindless hatred, such willful, blind ignorance.

Page after ugly yet totally honest page, I found myself nodding, connecting the dots right along with Bageant, squirming uncomfortably, thinking “yeah, I’m related to those people.” Pretty horrifying moments for someone who thinks of themselves as a humanistic liberal. Apparently, there-but-for-the-grace-go-I. As a nation, we are either super-wealthy and utterly heartless, or we are overworked, sick, and incapable of reading well enough to string two original thoughts together. I finally understand how we could possibly have elected Bush twice. I finally have a window that makes a little sense into the fundies who are so sucked into the vision of the Rapture that they’re blowing the shit out of everything.

While I was writing this, my Mom called to tell me about a mutual acquaintance of ours, who after an 18-year career as a Sheriff in a small town, is tired of getting screwed over, tired of living paycheck-to-paycheck, tired of realizing that his family is up to their neck in debt again, after already filing bankruptcy once. So he’s signed up as a consultant to a heartless megacorp I won’t even name, to go teach Iraqis how to be police officers. I suppose the fact that he’s lived in the desert all his life, surrounded by nothing but lily-whites and Indians somehow qualifies him to pass along techniques that will work in the cradle of civilization. ::shrug:: It gets him away from his family for a year at a time, makes excellent money, and buys them another lease on their debt-go-round. Somehow, this exemplifies to me every last thing that’s wrong with the whole damn system.

I guess it feels so much worse, Bageant’s writing, because I’m at a stage right now where 3/4 of everything I say to people makes them tilt their heads and change the subject. EC, babywearing, extended breastfeeding were bad enough; now there’s homeschooling, food sensitivities, and living on a boat. The cesarean epidemic, global warming, godforbid I mention the political crisis in this country. Anyone who reads this blog knows that I have enough soapboxes for eight people. And that right there is the problem. Why am I one of the few people I know who either knows about this stuff, or bothers to get in a twist about it?

Many years and two vehicles ago, I had a bumper sticker that said “If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention.” So much has changed since I got that, about me, my politics, my worldview. And it’s only gotten worse. I have no stickers on my car any longer. Back in my Humboldt-soaked treehugger youth, I had this idea that it was just that people were unaware of the issues, and all you had to do was talk to them, and they’d be on board.

Isn’t youthful naivete adorable?

Anyway, I really recommend the book for anyone who’s still, in their heart, baffled by how America got to be the way it is now. But I recommend you pick up a stiff drink to have along with.