Joe Bageant
-
Waltzing at the Doomsday Ball: Capitalism is dead, but we still dance with the corpse By Joe Bageant
As an Anglo European white guy from a very long line of white guys, I want to thank all the brown, black, yellow and red people for a marvelous three-century joy ride. During the past 300 years of the industrial age, as Europeans, and later as Americans, we have managed to consume infinitely more than… Continue reading
-
Live from Planet Norte: Totalitarian democracy and the politics of plunder By Joe Bageant
The uniformity on Planet Norte is striking. Each person is a unit, installed in life support boxes in the suburbs and cities; all are fed, clothed by the same closed-loop corporate industrial system. Everywhere you look, inhabitants are plugged in at the brainstem to screens downloading their state approved daily consciousness updates. iPods, Blackberries, notebook… Continue reading
-
Joe Bageant: Lost on the Fearless Plain
The investing class has put thousands of billions into movies, TV and other media to keep the hologram lit up over the past six decades. Which is to say, keep the public in an entertained stupor, awed, mislead, and most importantly, distracted. But the payoff probably runs in the trillions. Continue reading
-
Joe Bageant: There ain’t no escape from collapse
I don’t think it’s possible to ‘hang out’ until the collapse is over. For starters, it could take 50 years. Or it could take five years. If we knew, more people would probably get off their asses, even in America. But I don’t think it will be all at once, or even recognizable at any… Continue reading
-
Joe Bageant: Joe, why did you crap out on us?
Did everything get so hopeless you just gave up? I liked your fighting spirit here, in 2004, and feel when you’ve got a voice, as you have, we’d appreciate hearing it as a call to arms instead of an old man’s complaints. I can say this without being ageist, I’m probably older than you. Continue reading
-
Cantina Tolteca — pissing away them Kokopelli blues (or) Visions of el rio — Live from the cantina of no return By Joe Bageant
Cantina Tolteca is one of those manly Mexican watering holes, where you piss up against a tile barroom wall while ordering the next round from a passing barmaid. With a beer and three shots of mescal in your sails, and the jukebox playing La Paloma, a man feels about as free and unselfconscious here as… Continue reading
-
Joe Bageant: From Wall Street to Skank Street
Some people understood at the time that it was a banker rigged game from top to bottom, one that included an elite cadre of players ranging from Wall Street to the Fed, the IMF and the World Bank. Most saw only a few aspects of the global financial growth-bot. But they saw them clearly enough… Continue reading
-
Joe Bageant: Moon Over Gringo Gulch
Ajijic is one of those sunny roosting places south of the horse latitudes preferred by aging Americans who’ve put away a few bucks, and Canadians whose government still stands behind its national retirement plan, for the time being at least. They come here in winter, from Buffalo, Scranton and Calgary, Ontario and Ohio, to roast… Continue reading
-
Round Midnight — tortillas and the corporate state By Joe Bageant
There is a terrible science fiction-like awe in the autonomous American economic monolith, in the way that it provides for us, feeds on us and keeps us as its both its lavish pets and slaves. The commodity economy long ago enslaved Americans and other “developed” capitalist societies, especially Americans. The most profound slavery must be… Continue reading
-
Joe Bageant: Once more for the record
Obviously Barack Obama has wiped his ass on his campaign promises. That’s yesterday’s news. Americans demand jazzy new and ever more shocking ‘news’ daily, or else they fall asleep before their TV sets face down in their sausage pizzas from Brooklyn to Beaumont (or their fat free vegan lentil soup, as the case may be… Continue reading
-
Joe Bageant: MP3 file of Joe on the Jeff Farias Show
When it comes to being interviewed, one of my very favorite radio hosts is Jeff Farias. Most liberal radio interviewers get caught up in the Empire’s media noise, and become part of the self-referential circle jerk of facts and figures and mainstream media citations that pass for news and information in this country. Continue reading
-
Joe Bageant interviewed by Ian Masters, KPFK
On Sunday, Jan 24, I was a guest on Ian Masters’ Background Briefing radio show, KPFK, Los Angeles. Ian’s show is noted for its hard authoritative analysis by America’s leading political pundits and experts. Being neither, naturally I shotgunned my way through the interview as best I could. Listeners did not seem to mind. Continue reading
-
Joe Bageant: Taking Tea with the Lizards
The Republican Party will beat the living piss out of anybody for a buck. The Democrats will fly the flag of FDR, even as they pirate the public coffers on behalf of Wall Street. Don’t think the American people have not noticed these things. After thirty years of pistol whipping and emptying of their wallets,… Continue reading
-
The Devil and Mr. Obama By Joe Bageant
Well lookee here! An invite from my limey comrades to recap Barack Obama’s first year in office. Well comrades, I can do this thing two ways. I can simply state that the great mocha hope turned out to be a Trojan horse for Wall Street and the Pentagon. Or I can lay in an all-night… Continue reading
-
Joe Bageant: Buddy, can you spare me a lek?
People often comment on the intelligence and insight, the humor and sincerity, of the letters Ken and I receive on joebageant.com. And they say that the readers write as if we have known each other all our lives. I respond that yes, we have, but just did not know each other’s names. And that many… Continue reading
-
The Iron Cheer of Empire: No free tortillas in the Workhouse Republic By Joe Bageant
It may be my bias, or my imagination, or my distaste for toil, but from here [in Ajijic, Mexico] America looks like one big workhouse, “under God, indivisible, with time off to shit, shower and shop.” A country whose citizens have been reduced to “human assets” of a vast and relentless economic machine, moving human… Continue reading
-
LONGVIEW: Deer Hunting With Jesus
Much has been said about white working-class voters. But those who’ve been doing all the talking are pollsters and political operatives. As part of our Long View series, ANP traveled to rural Virginia to talk to someone who’s lived the life and knows from personal experience what those voters are thinking — author Joe Bageant.… Continue reading
-
Joe Bageant: How much freedom can one man stand?
Freedom comes in many forms in America, and new forms are constantly being created. The latest has been freedom from basic financial security. The weakened economy has given corporatists an excuse to, as they say, ‘let workers go.’ Which sounds as if companies are granting employees some sort of freedom: ‘Go on George, twenty years… Continue reading
-
SNUFFING GRANDMA By Joe Bageant
Every day I get letters asking me to weigh in on the health care fracas. As if a redneck writer armed with a keyboard, a pack of smokes and all the misinformation and vitriol available on the Internet could contribute anything to the crap storm already in progress. Besides that, my unreasoned but noisy take… Continue reading
The New Dark Age 