Deerhunting With Jesus: Don’t Americans Get Americans?
There’s a review by Brad Tyler of Joe Bageant’s book on America’s class war, Deerhunting With Jesus, in the Houston Chronicle
The general gist is that the working man and woman is complicit in being kept down by The Man, being easily distracted by “Nascar, Bud Light and attack ads”.
And why do people vote for the “very boot that’s that’s standing on their neck?”
The answer to this issue as earlier considered by Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas, and proffered by the book and the review, is education. Or as it’s phrased here, the people are “poor and stupid”.
Limited education equates to limited earning potential equates to a knee-jerk conservatism that’s too busy trying to ward off disaster with lottery tickets and rent-to-own big-screens to risk anything toward their collective betterment.
Bageant’s “people” like their guns and their Jesus and it’s suggested that liberals don’t get that - which I thought they did.
Anyway I’m writing about this on Irish KC because of the definition of who “Bageant’s people” are:
“His people” are the Scots-Irish, fighters, drinkers, fierce protectors of their own sense of identity and, Bageant argues, an undersung influence on American manners and mores. He finds them singing karaoke at the Royal Lunch bar, standing in line at Food Lion, working the late shift at the Rubbermaid plant and living in disintegrating double-wides.
I’ve never been aware that the Scots-Irish in America are clear on what their own identity even is let alone been fierce protectors of it, though given their numbers they most definitely are an undersung influence on American mores. Long before a famine in Ireland the Scots-Irish were moving to America. Throw in a few generations with the reproduction that entails and the numbers you have are clearly undersung compared to the flag-waving descendants of the later immigrant Irish Catholics with their parades and festivals.
Still though, I never knew it was their fault that Bush was re-elected in 2004. Even if the whole thing comes across as patronising, it is nice to have somebody to blame.
See Also:
• Immigration: The Economics View
• The Irish Soldiers of Mexico
• Homesick Cures For the Irish In America
• Illegal Irish Immigrants Worse Than Illegal Mexican Immigrants
• American Slang Created by Irish
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
I’ve been retyping a comment on pop-historians and Plastic Paddy’s for ages now, Eolaí, and can’t get it just right. Probably because a comment box doesn’t afford scope enough on someone else’s site. I’ll do a proper post on this soon on my own one to get it off my chest.
For now though, I understand your frustration - The descendants of the Presbyterian Scots-Irish by far outnumber the Catholic Irish immigrants who came later, yet the former’s influence is all but ignored.
Primal Sneeze -
Check out “Born Fighting” by James Webb.
It’s likely the most authoritative book on this subject I have ever read.
I’ll do that, Pete. Having read the reviews (including yours) it sounds well worth it.