13 Quotes by Joe Bageant

Doesn't it seem more reasonable to take action to heal the social pathology that generates crime than to use gun control to blow another political toe off American liberalism during each election cycle?

What white middle America loathes these days are poor and poorish people, especially the kind who look and sound like they just might live in a house trailer. They will swear on a stack of Lands' End catalogs that they are not bigots, but, human nature being what it is, we are all kicking someone else's dog around, whether we admit it or not.

Getting a lousy education, then spending a lifetime pitted against your fellow workers in the gladiatorial theater of the free market economy does not make for optimism or open mindedness, both hallmarks of liberalism. It makes for a kind of bleak coarseness and inner degradation that allows working people to accept the American empire's wars without a blink.

Never experiencing the life of the mind scars entire families for generations.

You never know you are in a prison unless you try the door.

The reality is that our economy now consists of driving 250 million vehicles around the suburbs and malls and eating fried chicken. We don’t manufacture much. We just burn up ever scarcer petroleum in the ever-expanding suburbs built with mortgage money lent to people who haven’t a clue.

If middle-class Americans do not feel threatened by the slow encroachment of the police state or the Patriot Act, it is because they live comfortably enough and exercise their liberties very lightly, never testing the boundaries. You never know you are in a prison unless you try the door.

Cultural stupidity accounts for virtually every aspect of Sarah Palin, both as a person and a political icon. Which, come to think of it, may be a pretty good reason not to misunderstimate her.

Doesn’t it seem more reasonable to take action to heal the social pathology that generates crime than to use gun control to blow another political toe off American liberalism during each election cycle?