Revenge of the Mutt People

Today's recommended reading: the provocative, rough-hewn and politically incorrect Revenge of the Mutt People by Joe Bageant, courtesy of Smirking Chimp. It's making the rounds of the listserves and blogs. I've included a couple of excerpts below. Your reaction?

... About half of the Americans killed in Iraq come from communities like Winchester, Virginia or Romney, West Virginia or Fisher, Illinois or Kilgore, Texas or... . About forty-five percent of the American dead in Iraq come from communities of less than 40,000, even though these towns make up only twenty-five percent of our population. These so-called volunteers are part of this nation's de facto draft--economic conscription--the carrot being politically preferable to the whip. The carrot does not have to be very big out here where delivering frozen food wholesale to restaurants out of your own car entirely on commission is considered a good self-employment opportunity. I'm serious. One of my sons did it for a couple of months. Once you grasp the implications of such an environment regarding the so-called American Dream, the U.S. Army at thirteen hundred bucks a month, a signing bonus and free room and board begin to look pretty good. Even a nice long ass kicking tour of the tropics killing brown guys becomes attractive. Especially compared to competing with other little brown guys at home, humping "big-roll sod" across ever-expanding MacMansionland. In the process, we mutt people learn worldly lessons that the post graduate set raving about the jobless economy cannot know. For instance we know firsthand that there is no way to beat little brown sod balling guys willing to sleep in their cars and live on canned beans and store brand soda. Better to go "volunteer" for the army ...

... The problem is this: pit bulls always escalate the fight and keep at it until the last dog is dead, leaving the gentler breeds to clean up the blood spilled. We mutt people, the pit bulls, have always been your own, whether you claim us or not. And until you accept that you are your brother's keeper, and help deliver us from ignorance, you will continue to have on your hands some of every drop of blood spilled... from the sands of Iraq to the streets of East L.A. All the socially responsible stock portfolios, little hybrid cars and post modernist deconstruction in the world will not wash it off.