Joe Bageant

“Remember when welfare mothers were robbing us all blind and driving Cadillacs? ”

— Joe Bageant

If middle-class Americans do not feel threatened by the slow encroachment of the police state or the Patriot Act, it is because…

— Joe Bageant

The four cornerstones of the American political psyche are 1) emotion substituted for thought, 2) fear, 3) ignorance and 4) propaganda

— Joe Bageant

They [Christian rednecks] were so stupid that they couldn't pour piss out of a boot even if the instructions were printed on…

— Joe Bageant

“Somewhere in between are the rest of us natives, in whom such change revives long-buried anger at those faraway people who seem…

— Joe Bageant

“Republican or Democrat, this nation's affluent urban and suburban classes understand their bread is buttered on the corporate side. The primary difference…

— Joe Bageant

“Parties do not lead revolutions. They follow them. And then only when forced to.”

— Joe Bageant

“Inconceivable though it may seem to urban Americans, it is easily possible for many working Americans not to know a person of…

— Joe Bageant

The reality is that our economy now consists of driving 250 million vehicles around the suburbs and malls and eating fried chicken.…

— Joe Bageant

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

— Joe Bageant

“This book is written from a changing town in Virginia, but this class of mine, these people--the ones who smell like an…

— Joe Bageant

Cultural stupidity accounts for virtually every aspect of Sarah Palin, both as a person and a political icon. Which, come to think…

— Joe Bageant

“Along with the concept of American Dream runs the notion that every man and woman is entitled to an opinion and to…

— Joe Bageant

“Somebody left the American Dream in the toaster too long. It's now burnt to a crisp.”

— Joe Bageant

“Nearly all of these successful folks have made it in the business world by sticking with the free market ideal of survival…

— Joe Bageant

“The tide of our national meanness rises incrementally, one brutalizing experience at a time, inside one person at a time in a…

— Joe Bageant

“man! Can you believe they actually allow this stuff to be sold over there? Glad we got laws against that crap in…

— Joe Bageant

“There, in the unconscious, we sleep upon the psyche's oceanic floor, together like some vast bed of kelp, each wavering strand an…

— Joe Bageant

“What white middle America loathes these days are poor and poorish people, especially the kind who look and sound like they just…

— Joe Bageant

“Looking at Great-Great Grandpa Baldwin's photograph, I think to myself: You've finally done it. It took four generations, but you've finally goddamned…

— Joe Bageant

“There was and still is a tremendous fear that poor and working-class Americans might one day come to understand where their political…

— Joe Bageant

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

— Joe Bageant