Redneck Manifesto: An Open Letter to Jim Goad
Hi Jim!
Well, I just read your book. Great book! Great data! And great rescue of the redneck. You pretty much avoided the pigeon holes while dealing with all the stereotypes. Good trick! Lots of fresh, common sense angles on topics that aren’t otherwise covered in the media.
I especially like the section on how management gets raises when workers get pay-cuts. But there are pros and cons to this one. In reality pay goes up with productivity. (If you don’t think carpenters make much now, see what they made before nailguns.) Management can be more or less productive as well.
But I think you walked into a big one with this *class* thing. This gives people a chance to fit you into their paradigm, then neutralize you. It’s like a lifering for a liberal publisher. Without *that* would the book have seen print?
It’s not that we don’t have class trouble. Class is worth all the hassling in the world. It’s just that it’s no more a worthy scapegoat than rednecks are!
You try to prove your point that class is special by saying that rabblerousing about it will cause a person trouble (among the unwashed). Sure, but that ain’t special. If you’re honest about anything, you’ll have someone with clout after your hide. With class you’re just safe from the Left is all.
I like your statement about the unreality of liberals. But it also applies to class. Identification with anything is a sure way to stop dead in your tracks.
Besides, money, power and self-interest are spread around more than you suggest. My family on all sides are as redneck as can be. Started poor but many of us are now self-made capitalists. That’s a twist you don’t account for.
Then there’s delusion. I see more of the working class these days talk like MBAs. They think they can win with the market, with TQM-speak, by managing their assets. But it’s usually not too fancy: multi-level marketing is their sure ticket to easy street. Oh, and lawsuits. It’s just embarrasing. They talk bad about their neighbors. They’re just itchin for their chance to be snobbish. Classism is everywhere. It’s within. Like every kind of trouble.
Rich and poor alike party hard and screw themselves up, or don’t. There are fools on all sides. Sure, each culture has its own special ways. And they all make for great stories. OK, it is a good point that the rich are more protected from falling as far. We like to think. They die comfortable alcoholic deaths, as opposed to lying in the gutter.
Did you look at the “Statistical Abstract of the US” (based on the census) to get your facts on incomes in steady dollars? The changes were not all against The People like you suggest. The upper classes and millionaires have boomed, sure. But it seems likely that a lot of the middle class made the same hop up as people went to double incomes. So that’s where a lot of them went. Poverty has stayed steady. Anyway, official poverty isn’t the same as hunger poverty. Supposed poverty would’ve been wealth for my relatives, who just the same didn’t go hungry or lack for interesting things to do. Commodities are cheaper than ever today.
Your “Playin Hard” and “Prayin Hard” is great stuff. But you lighten up on the religionists…why? You think the “who cares if they praise the lord, we’re all genetic goo in the end” viewpoint isn’t its own slavish preconception? Why do those who are into the subjective “I’ll do what I want,” so often enjoy boiling life down to objective genetics? Another scapegoat has popped up, is what. The modern jive about religion/science is just another way to avoid seeing that the problem is deeper than any “issue.”
Yeah, it would be great if we could get back to joking about sex and race. (*Libel* would have to be thrown in there, too.) But class or issue consciousness won’t help. If they’re not conscious of something deeper, they won’t be able to joke! They’ll just turn into commies! Every group gets co-opted in the end, even the ‘group’ of self-interest.
I mean, your book is very funny until I see that you’re serious about ‘eat the rich.’ Sure, let’s bring ’em down. But do you think it will fix much? The unions are just as bad. House-cleaning has no end. It’s like when a comedian pauses for a sermon break after a bunch of great jokes and says they’re in favor of banning all guns and expects the crowd to cheer , which it does if they’ve read their crowd right, but that only makes them part of someone else’s joke. Their own jokes end where their groupthink starts.
Well, the light you shine on the redneck is refreshing. It’s one of a kind! I only hope someone will go just a bit further with it someday.
—Jeff Potter
Out Your Backdoor –a zine, book publisher, and website for DIY integration (bikes, boats, backyards, hobbies, philosophies, reviews of sleeper movies, unbestsellers and zines)
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“Go your own way. Be true to your vision. Look to the lodestar and create.
Do that and you’ll live in poverty, die young, your neighbors will think you a loser.
Kerouac was beat. Waylon and Willie were outlaws.
The Flower Children were freaks.
Tom Pain was a loser.
But it was paradoxical. Was St. Francis a loser? Only by losing all do we gain Eternal Life, he said. Was Whitman a loser?
Yes, they were, and so was Pain. Born to lose? No, he wasn’t a born loser. He was a self-made man. He had acquired the ability to lose, through diligent and unceasing effort.”
–Jack Saunders, America’s Most Suppressed Writer, http://thedailybugle.com
