Re comments on the earlier thread: I couldn’t make it through more than 50 pages of Joe Bageant’s ‘Deer Hunting With Jesus’, because the thesis of the book was as follows: ‘we [in Appalachian Virginia] choose politicians who hurt us because they say the right cultural things. We are perfectly willing to mess things up for everyone else because we resent them. Please come and save us from ourselves! But don’t do it in any way that we could possibly take as implying that we’re not better than you.’