I'm not sure what exactly I expected from Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War. Maybe I expected some even-handedness? A realistic portrayal of life in the poor, Republican south? Instead, the book features a handful of lengthy essays in which Bageant bad-mouths anyone poor who isn't pro-union and anti-conservative. He claims that Republicans, the religious, and corporations are keeping people down in a desperate attempt to maintain class lines in the United States.
And we're supposed to believe Bageant, of course, because he grew up in West Virginia and was one of the "lucky few" to make it out.
His opinions are, at times, downright offensive. Calling the military a "de facto draft," for example, really didn't sit well with me. I'm not really sure I got anything out of this book, but for the spirit of finishing what I start, I did finish the whole thing. Somehow.
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